On January, 19-20, London hosted Russia-UK expert workshop dedicated to security issues between the two countries. The event was organized within the framework of RIAC-RUSI (Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies) joint project. RUSI is a leading British think-tank in the sphere of security. The workshop was attended by over 20 experts, former government officials and diplomats with expertise in nuclear and conventional weapons, European security architecture, non-distribution of weapons of mass destruction and unconventional security threats. Igor Ivanov, RIAC President, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, UK former Foreign Secretary spoke at the event.
Igor Ivanov opening speech, 19, January 2017, London
Dear Sir Malcolm,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all, let me say that I am very pleased to be here today and to participate in this meeting of Russian and British experts. As President of the Russian International Affairs Council, I consider the RIAC-RUSI project on opportunities for the UK-Russian cooperation in security to be very important and timely. Unfortunately, these days we do not have too many mechanisms for a bilateral expert dialogue between Moscow and London. Most of attempts to launch such a dialogue for this or that reason have not been successful. This deficit of bilateral communications on the expert level makes the RIAC-RUSI initiative even more significant.
Let me express my deep gratitude to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well as to the British Embassy in Moscow – without their generous support this meeting would hardly take place. I would also like to thank the leadership of RUSI as well as both the RUSI and the RIAC staff in charge of the organization and logistics. Let us hope that discussions today and tomorrow will pave the way for a candid and productive communication line in the ‘second track’ format.
When you start reflecting about the Russian-British relations, you are not likely to find many compelling reasons to be optimistic. I think that all the differences of opinions notwithstanding, we can all agree with at least two basic conclusions.
First, we have to accept that our relations today — above all, political relations between Moscow and London, — are close to the zero point. Both sides have a lot of complaints and grievances to address to each other. This situation should not surprise us. Problems and grievances can emerge even among partners and allies — suffice to mention Brexit. However, when there is not dialogue and problems are not addressed and properly dealt with, they tend to accumulate and to poison the relationship in general. This is exactly what we have seen in the Russian-British relations recently.
Second, the current state of the Russian-British relations does not meet long-term interests of both sides. Moreover, it seriously limits their respective abilities to respond to very real security threats and challenges that both our countries have to confront on the day-to-day basis. This poor state of bilateral relations prevents Russia and UK from fully implementing their responsibilities as permanent members of the UN Security Council in providing for maintaining international peace and security. This is truly unfortunate since the need for a more active UN Security Council role in dealing with numerous crises around the globe is evident to everybody.
We all remember well enough the narratives of the two sides, mutual reproaches and even direct accusations. I do not think that I should spend your time retelling them now. It is highly unlikely that we could convince each other to change views of the other side on the fundamentals.
I consider more productive to recall some of the positive pages of our common history. Through analyzing our success stories, we can try to identify the means that we can use today to get our relationship out of the current crisis.
I keep thinking, for instance, about the state visit of President Putin to the United Kingdom in July of 2003. I took an active part in the preparation of this visit together with my peer partner Jack Straw. That was the first official visit of the head of the Russian State to the Great Britain in the last hundred and fifty years. The visit was timed to the 450th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
I do not want to go into too many details related to this event. Nevertheless, I would like to remind you that at a press conference during the visit President Putin referred to the United Kingdom as “one of the priority partners” for Russia; he expressed his confidence that the visit would serve further progress in the bilateral relationship. In its turn, the British side designated the relations with Russia as ‘splendid’ and stressed that the visit opened new opportunities for the British — Russian cooperation.
Why do I get back to this visit? With one goal only — we should not forget that this visit took place right after the United States actively supported by the United Kingdom launched the military invasion to Iraq. As all of you well know, Russia was emphatically against the Iraq war. There were many other problems, on which the Russian and the British positions were quite different. However, we did not break our dialogue, and the continuity of communications helped us to avoid escalating our disagreements and in some cases helped us to reach important agreements.
This was the case in 1995, when together with Pauline Neville-Jones and with other colleagues we were able to work out the Dayton Agreements and to stop the bloody war in Bosnia. This was the case in 1999, when just a couple of months after the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia together with Robin Cook and other participants we managed to prepare the European Security Charter and to sign the adapted CFE Treaty at the OSCE summit in Istanbul. In 2002 together with Jack Straw, we worked on preparing the Rome NATO Summit with Russia, which resulted in launching the NATO-Russian Council. Together with Chris Patten, we worked on long term plans for the Russia – EU cooperation.
Of course, even during the heydays of the Russian-British cooperation we also experienced setbacks and failures. Nevertheless, the main thing was the presence of political will and our firm conviction that security challenges of the XXI century called for common actions. This is why we were all committed to turning the page of the Cold war as soon as possible and to writing new history together.
Unfortunately, at some stage, this process got stalled and later it was replaced by mutual accusations and an information war. All of us can now watch the manifestations of this change and judge about its repercussions for the East and for the West.
The experience of history and conventional wisdom suggest that it is in our common interests to start moving out of this critical situation as soon as possible. Getting back on track will be slow and complicated. Still, nobody will do this job for us.
So, where should we start? The most evident thing, as I can see it, would be to stop the information confrontation, which is very unlikely to result in a clear victory for either side. I understand that to influence independent media would be a challenge, but we could, at least, demonstrate more constrains and mutual respect at the official level.
We also need to put together a high level Task Force, which will include not only state bureaucrats, but parliamentarians, public opinion leaders, business persons and civil society representatives in order to launch a multifaceted discussion on the future of our relations. First, we need to investigate whether the two sides are ready for a practical cooperation. If the answer is ‘yes’, then we should explore specific areas of potential collaboration. I am sure that the list of such areas will be quite impressive. Let me underscore – I am not talking here about unilateral concessions, but about areas of common interests, where the synergy of combined efforts by the two countries can bring along positive results. It seems that, above all, we should discuss regional and global security, as well as economic cooperation.
One can predict that there will be many questions, on which we cannot and will not fully agree. This is only natural for a complex relationship and we should not overdramatize such a situation. We can put the ‘difficult questions’ on a back-burner or delegate them to appropriate expert groups for further considerations. In any case, such questions should not become a deal-breaker; they should not block or slow down our cooperation in the fields where this cooperation meets long-term interest of both sides.
Nothing that I have just outlined is a product of my imagination completely detached from the real life. Of course, for centuries Britain and Russia had been difficult partners to each other. However, in the most critical moments of the European and world history we always managed to get to the same side of the barricade confronting common challenges and common enemies. This was the case during the Napoleonic wars; this was the case during the First World War.
During the Second World War our ancestors had the courage and the wisdom to look beyond much more fundamental, seemingly irreconcilable contradictions in order to pursue a common cause: to defeat Nazism and to lay the groundwork for a new international security system. There were many examples of such a strategic vision during the post-war decades. Now, it is up to our generations to demonstrate similar wisdom and commitment.
Finally, let me briefly touch upon another important subject. The meeting today and the RIAC-RUSI project in general are focused on the security dimension of our bilateral relations. Nevertheless, we should not forget that the security dimension is closely related to many other dimensions of this complex relationship. One cannot imagine Russian-British relations without a diverse economic cooperation, without a vibrant cultural interconnection, without multiple joint projects in education and research, without a thick network of civil society exchanges. Quite often, activities in these dimensions do much more than just complimenting the political dialogue. They outpace the political dialogue and create a certain ‘margin of safety’ in the overall relationship, absorbing – at least partially – unavoidable shocks at the political level. It goes without saying that these dimensions of the Russian-British relations have to be properly analyzed and evaluated. I hope that at some point they will constitute an organic part of the bilateral expert dialogue.
Please allow me to wish all the participants of the expert dialogue the most substantive and thought-provoking discussion today and tomorrow; I hope that we will have an opportunity to pursue it further in Moscow in February.
Thank you for your attention.
