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#7
Russia: Dearth of Foreign Policy Strategists Noted
Vremya MN
7 December 2001
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Anastasiya Kornya: "The Sweet-Sounding Word 'Adviser'"

Foreign policy experts are willing to help the state, but the centralization of government is clearly not conducive to qualified expert appraisals.

The highly publicized recent Civil Forum is beginning to produce results: The next round of "civil debates," to be hosted by the Effective Policy Foundation, will deal with the details of a specific project--a national public council on foreign policy. Ideally, the council should become one of the control groups that will--according to the original plan--serve as a liaison between the government and the civil society for the continuation of the dialogue at the forum.

According to the organizers, the plan to set up this council has already won the general approval of Presidential Administration Chief Aleksandr Voloshin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. The council is expected to unite the leaders of unofficial but "active" public organizations, respected academics, experts, and other members of the social elite with the heads of ministries and departments. They will meet quarterly to make decisions on matters researched in advance in the expert subdivisions of the council and thereby formulate a national consensus on foreign policy issues. One thing is not quite clear, however: What are they supposed to do with this consensus?

The organizers of the debates expected the participants to recommend ways of building specific elements of the new structure. This did not happen, however. The legislative branch of government, represented by Deputy Chairman Vyacheslav Igrunov of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs and Relations with Fellow Countrymen, confined itself to categorically denying government agencies the qualifications required for a completely effective ethnic policy. The executive branch, represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Meshkov, did not attend, citing circumstances beyond its control. Gleb Pavlovskiy, the Kremlin's chief political theorist, made vague allusions to the causes of the current battles in the Kremlin. Members of the social elite, who constituted the majority of participants, wanted an answer to their main question: Does the government really need any advisory councils? Judging by all indications, it has no great need for them.

There is no question that foreign policy is the inalienable prerogative of the president, and as some participants in the debates correctly pointed out, public opinion cannot and must not be the supreme adviser in this area. If Vladimir Putin had been guided by the results of public opinion polls after 11 September (when the prevailing response was spiteful: "They had it coming, those bourgeois pigs"), the alignment of forces in the world arena would be completely different today. On the other hand, there is clearly a vacant niche in the area of analytical and advisory support for foreign policy strategy, and nature abhors a vacuum.

Today Russia does not have a center for the planning of foreign policy strategy as such, Director Mikhail Delyagin of the Institute of Globalization Issues maintains. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has had no inclination to play this role for a long time. The Security Council, which had almost risen to this level, has now become a host of retired statesmen. Deputy Director of the Europe Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Chairman of the Presidium of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council (SVOP) Sergey Karaganov has noted that the advisory community is on the verge of extinction. There is still a glimmer of hope for the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, but the academy institutes, which worked in close contact with foreign policy agencies and the intelligence community in the good old days, supplying them with highly qualified analyses, cannot come up with any expert conclusions on urgent issues today. In fact, the experience of SVOP is quite indicative. This council has united government officials with the business and social elite for 10 years now. In other words, it could be viewed as an active national council, but its actual influence in the area of state foreign policy is highly questionable.

In general, the reason is quite obvious. As government becomes more centralized, the group of individuals and organizations with access to it, even if only as advisers, keeps growing smaller. The more competition there is for the role of adviser, the less objective interest the state has in a substructure of qualified experts. Consensus, on the other hand, is, if you will pardon the expression, a horse of a different color.

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