Russia in the World

At a recent meeting of the Australian Institute for International Affairs (AIIA) a prominent Australian analyst and commentator suggested that Russia and China were “not natural allies”. There was therefore a risk, he suggested, of geopolitical instability in the Eurasian region. This analysis is flawed on a number of levels.

I’ll admit it, I have come to enjoy defending Russian President Vladimir Putin to readers. It’s the easiest job in the world, you know? One thing that makes deriding Putin opponents so easy is the fact that after four years of constant mudslinging, the ultimate villain remains unscathed. Yes, Putin makes political analysis of the current geo-political mess easy work. It’s too bad more people in the west don’t pay attention. Here’s the latest light work from my desktop.

Currently, a movie featuring Meryl Streep recreates the dramatic events surrounding the publication, in 1971, of the Pentagon Papers, in a crowing salute to so-called freedom of the American press. Alas, the takeaway is that since the publication of these damning documents about the Vietnam War, freedom of the press has become a fiction.

In the past years, Russia’s foreign policy has been focused on expanding influence in the most remote corners of the planet. In particular, the Russian party has successful relations with the small island states of Oceania located in the South Pacific and with Fiji in particular.

The cooperation at the regional level gives additional depth and solidity to the economic relations between the two countries. It demonstrates the level of mutual trust and facilitates the establishment of truly warm relations, economic and cultural integration. By understanding this, Russia and China encourage contacts between their regions.
One of the important trends of Russian-Chinese inter-regional cooperation is the Volga-Yangtze Project.