 Hello and good evening. My name's Dan Plesch and I'm director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy. Thank you for joining us on a warm sunny evening in London when you perhaps have got exams to bug up for or spring parties to go to. I did think of bringing up the Turkish government and seeing if they could shoot down another Russian aircraft which if they'd done that 24 hours ago it might have increased the turnout. Certainly when I asked Andre to come and speak of course it was at a time of a very new turn in recent history with Russia as a military player in the Middle East. I think it's perhaps a test of the power of international relations as a predictive discipline as to whether one could find any western analysis predicting that not only would Russia be involved militarily in the eastern Mediterranean but that it would be doing so apparently with the prior agreement of the United States dating back at least to the meeting between the secretaries Lavrov and Kerry in the United Nations last September and perhaps still less as a predictive model from the west that by all accounts at this particular moment there is a more or less ceasefire still in place in Syria after six years that more or less this is seen as a great success for Russia in international collaboration in some ways and at least some kind of progress on the apparently never ending fighting albeit with continuing horrors and refugee flows. One might if one was writing an essay about the UN Security Council and the Great Powers say that perhaps unlikely allies locked in the Security Council can indeed occasionally act together in some crude way for the international benefit. At any rate I think it's a test that almost all international relations scholars would have failed and yet here we are not withstanding the fact that only a few months before Russia was in the west generally deemed to be a great source of evil after the annexation of Crimea and the events in Ukraine and that is of course resulted in sanctions but still apply from the European Union and it was interesting just as a listener of western radio and television how the British Defence and Foreign Secretary or more or less within 24 hours went from denouncing Moscow as the almost in Reagan's terms as the found of evil in the modern world to heralding our new found collaboration with President Putin in the Middle East a piece of verbal diplomatic gymnastics for which you surely get a close to a 10 I think if one was to hand be handing out awards in the Olympics for diplomatic somersaults. At any rate I think that's something of a sketch of the background as to why I wanted to ask Dr Bacoff to come and speak to us this evening. Of course we're here at the School of Oriental African Studies at the University of London and one might say well this is best suited to a school of Slovonic studies but then of course Russia is an Asian power as well as a European one and according to a fair number of people in the west not even a European one really but an Asian one although those of us who read Tolstoy and many others and realise that actually Russia always was and is at the heart of European construction. I'm particularly delighted that we can bring Dr Bacoff here. He comes from an organisation of approximately the same size as so I, some 7000 students at Moscow's Russia's premier international affairs university. He is editor-in-chief of Russia's international trends journal, a member of the American ISA and of the executive board of the Russian political science association as well as being director of the academic educational forum on international relations. And as in English terms as a deputy vice chancellor or a deputy vice chancellor of the university I think those people who think that or have a fantasy or imagination that all senior Russian officials must be bald and 70 years old and somehow related to Brezhnev should realise that in case of Dr Bacoff he probably gives a good 20 years to any of the senior management in this university. So here too I think we can see that perhaps our preconceptions are not what we are not congruent with facts but then one shouldn't ever allow a fact to spoil a good theory. Well we'll see in a moment whether facts and theory will match up in Dr Bacoff's presentation. He's here to talk to us on the subject of Russia and the West towards a new understanding but very much through the lens of international relations theory rather than just a theory. Just immediate current affairs analysis. We've had a great time chatting over the last day or two and we hope that we'll have a relationship between our two universities going forward, exchange visits and exchange students and I think it's overdue that we had a stronger relationship between SOAS and Russian institutions. Not least because as an American by adoption and having lived 20 years in Washington I do get rather tired about SOAS always importing an American to tell us about the rest of the world. So perhaps on this occasion we can get to a Russian to talk to us about Russia and Russia's relationship with the West. So I hope you'll join me now in giving a warm welcome to Dr Andrew Bacoff. Good evening. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me here. The subject of my talk is Russian-Western relations through the lens of international relations theory. My talk comes in four parts. The first part will be devoted to the main conceptual disagreements between the IRS community in Russia and West particularly in the US. The second part I'm going to lay out and brief the principal assumptions of my approach to the topic. The third one will be concerned with the current power structure in Eurasia with the security challenges and strategy options that stem from it both for the West and for Russia. In the same breath I'll try to explain what Russia wants in the world and how this aligns with what Western states want from Russia. To do it convincingly and comprehensively I will have to address Russia-EU, Russia-China and Russia-US relations as well as the Russian strategy in the post-Soviet space to include its stake on the Ukraine crisis. Final I shall talk synoptically about the possible future of our relations with the West and what should be done on each of the fronts to encourage the trends leading to the lasting European peace and stability and to undermine the tendencies leading to the overall Eurasian instability. The IR theories are countless, as you know, and one would think that in the world of science we should all seek a situation when the same object of reality is described more or less similarly from different theoretical angles. After all we all look at the same thing, right? But the more theories, the more confusion in international relations theory. In IR combining theories is a challenging and thankless task. Proponents of different paradigms, be it realism, liberalism or constructivism, appear to even different planets. This is not because some of these theories are wrong because generally they are not. The reason is that policy makers discredit those theories by believing too much in one of them. Foreign policy theories can easily be converted into different foreign policy ideologies and hence into different foreign policies. One should very carefully distinguish between explanatory and normative theorizing. Liberalism and realism as theories both work fairly well in explaining the current Russian-Western crisis. They both privilege restraint, rationality and peace and stability. But as foreign policy ideologists liberalism and realism and ensuing foreign policy moves are vastly incompatible. When you have them meet in real politics await big time trouble. And this is exactly what we have been witnessing in the past two decades in Eurasia culminating in the Ukraine crisis. The American approach to the academic study of international relations as we see it in Russia is in the main liberal and heavily charged ideologically. This has not yet reached the level of Brezhnev's politics in Soviet Russia but that's definitely the way they are headed. The mainstream thinking in the US and frankly in the West in general is based on a particular set of presumptions. Doubt or criticism regarding this set of ideas can make you an intellectual pariah. For the sake of argument I have formulated these seven presumptions in a provocatively simplified way. I may be wrong but this is how we see it. Number one, the world political order which emerged after the collapse of the USSR is durable and will remain in place over a long term without fundamental changes. Number two, humankind is on its way towards a unified political model which has the western type of liberal democracy even though different countries can do it at a different pace. All countries in the world therefore fall into two broad categories advanced and backward. This division is not economic. It comes in function of their ability to accept and adopt the norms of western democracy. Number three, the process of liberal globalization is objective and progressive in nature. In the course of this process national states give up part of their sovereignty to supranational institutions. The only exception is the United States which remains the principle guarantor of a sustainable globalization process and should therefore not only maintain but even increase its own sovereignty. Number four, a liberal and non-liberal states should have different rights in the international system. This is in essence a theory of moral inequality of states. The former have a right to influence domestic and foreign policies of the latter and in certain cases this right can be extended to a full blown military intervention. At the same time non-liberal states have no moral claim for armed resistance or a comparable offensive military capability. Number five, states are no longer pool balls with their essential interests inherent in them. Rather there is a permanent struggle of domestic elites in those countries. It is not considered appropriate today to discuss the issues of national interests, national security or national sovereignty. The subject of discussion is the security and sovereignty of certain elites. Therefore restriction of sovereignty can be in the interests of people living in a particular country. In case at the top of this country are the wrong elites. In this case to legitimize these elites and to revoke their sovereignty is considered not only acceptable but morally justifiable. Even though these elites may have been democratically elected. Number six, the USA remains the only world leader for the foreseeable future. It has the right to protect and expand liberal world order even by force if necessary. Natural the US cannot execute it single-handedly, consequently it has allies and draws on its help. However it is not acceptable for any other country to place restrictions on the activities of Washington related to world liberalization. And finally number seven, after the collapse of the USSR the character of international relations has drastically changed. Security competition has been replaced by cooperative action as part of the global liberal economic order. But also against new common challenges shared by all civilized nations. It is a global and long-term uniting movement under the American leadership of seven presumptions. Now according to this logic a particular US president can be criticized for exceeding the necessary measure of violence in the world arena in a particular case. But the general right of the US to use military force abroad cannot be called into question. Or the range, rank of priority or nature of the new common challenges which pose a threat to American leadership could be subject of some discussion. But no one can doubt that those challenges are a shared problem and all countries should relate to the support of America. It is not accidental that one of the favorite terms of American researchers is responsibility. Meanwhile the question of to whom and why we should be responsible and how it correlates with international legal notion of sovereignty is taken off the table. Ideological presumptions outlined above underlie the bulk of the theoretical constructs in the West and are rarely subjected to critical reasoning. Consider the theory of democratic peace for example. There is a popular view that liberal democracies do not go to war with each other. Let us agree that this is the case. It is the case. But it is also possible that the true explanation behind it is not shared liberal values but the fact that they belong to the same military alliance or alliances and project their aggressive nature on outside democratic world, non-democratic world. In this case the theory of democratic peace suddenly appears to be without any substance. Because de facto what you say here is that a democratic peace theory is only valuable theoretically when it effectively accounts for no wars between liberal democracies in the anarchical system. But once you bring the notion of the American pacifier factor you end up having a hierarchical system in Europe and a group of East Asian US allies and suddenly the democratic peace theory loses all its explanatory or theoretical value. Hence the greatest enthusiasm for mathematical methods in American political science and international relations because obviously quantitative methods are only effective when they are lasting parameters of the international system. Also the problem with the quantitative analysis in international relations theory and political science is that the formal modelling has a very unclear relation to moral criteria. The latter has a subject nature and nothing in common with actual mathematical variables. Calculation of sustainable development indicators makes sense only in relation to a situation where developed countries ought to help the underdeveloped ones. Or the listing of countries according to their per capita gross national product is pointless without taking into account the value of consumption standards in each country. Or calculation of a country's vulnerability to terrorist threats is meaningless if a researcher thinks that the Arab Gulf monarchies are the main sponsors of terrorism and the US is their main supporter. In conclusion one needs a conventional general moral criteria to engage in productive formal modelling. And this has to be universal across the global scholarly community and not just specific to a group of countries for good old verification and falsification reasons. Now let's turn to Russia. Firstly almost no one in Russia considered the new political order which took shape after 1991 as fair and just. Accordingly the new order was considered to be not suitable for Russia in the long run. It is no wonder that over time Russian researchers do a critical view on the new unipolar American centric world and the results of the USSR collapse. And this effectively has put an end to any fruitful academic cooperation research between American and Russian scholars. Unless Russian colleagues too accept the infamous seven presumptions. And this is highly unlikely. Russian studies of international relations by and large at this moment in time are divided into two main groups. The first group of authors brings to light trends which in the foreseeable future could put the USA leadership into question. The second describes and analyzes events which already confirm and attest to those tendencies. By the mid 2000s Russian expert community after successfully adapting the western scientific approach decided to change direction. It was time to stop re-selling American stories and articles and start coming up with original concepts. This coincided with growing moralism of political science in the USA. American researchers were more often than even in the 1990s in suppressing the contemporary global order as an antagonism of liberalism and autocracy. In fact this very much resembled the ostentatious USSR ideology of the Brezhnev epoch. After the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 American political analysts criticized Soviet experts for getting stuck in the past and turning a blind eye to the negative shifts in the USSR international power position. Nowadays it is the turn of Russian academic community to get the same sense about the American foreign policy studies. Nevertheless I believe that opposing ideological approaches are not a precondition for a major conflict. It is merely an intervening and complicating factor. All things considered a precondition for a major conflict between major powers lies in how offensive military capabilities of major powers correlate. Luckily here we look much better which allows me to be generally optimistic about the future Russian-Western relations. It is necessary to emphasize that the condition of the story I am telling you is in no way dependent on either the upcoming American elections or parliamentary or presidential elections in Russia. This arises from the version of material understanding of IR which has been espoused in three essentially complementary theoretical schools to which I am quite sympathetic and choose to apply them synthetically. There is structural realism, the power transition theory and a way of Marxism. These theories may seem different in the way they have been constructed and it is generally not favored in IR to combine different theories drawing on different explanatory logic. But in fact these three do work together pretty well in explaining the nature phenomena I am interested in. So in essence my argument centers on the power structure and power relations of what is sometimes called Eurasia. Surely it is hardly possible to forget about the current sour relationship between the peoples and nations living here as well as about the mutual distrust, suspicion and even fear irresponsibly exploited or genuinely felt by the ruling elites of these countries. But this can be instrumental only in explaining the tactical and short term variations of those relations but not in accounting for their fundamental logic. In my version of events the domestic political circumstances of any of these countries involved do not play any significant role in changing the course of the global and European politics. In the long run not all this relations should be in any meaningful way affected by the ways the current Ukrainian crisis is going to evolve. Strategically and over the long term the future Russian-Western relations will continue to be largely shaped by the basic distribution of material power in the world but notably in Eurasia. Just like it had been the case all the way up until the Ukraine crisis. Having said that I do acknowledge the importance of the ideological preferences of the population expressed in their geopolitical attitudes towards each other. This highlights the importance of such aspects as trust and satisfaction with the existing rules and the institutions versus suspicion and dissatisfaction or friendship and economic and security dependence versus enmity and economic and security. Non-dependence. While the foreign policy outcomes are determined by the basic power structure to understand the nature of distrust or enmity one need a different paradigm. So here so neatly comes Marxism which basically claims that ideological incompatibility between states can be explained by the incompatibility of their respective socio-economic structures of their societies. But let's for now return to the structural explanation of the systemic level. The original and international architecture of interstate relations in Eurasia took shape more or less definitively in the mid 2000s. With the EU enlargement idea coming to the fore as starting to define the rationale of the union as never before in its history. With the rise of China becoming a troubling reality for its neighbors and with Russia's return to history as a major European power. Territorially large, sufficiently populated, heavily armed, but technological and economically inferior. A big bad gorilla, as John Mearsheimer famously put it. The previous time Russia was a major European power was the concert of Europe in the 19th century. The classical age of multiplicity and the first episode of globalization. We all remember the tragic result of that classical multiplicity. The resemblance may indeed be striking. The principal nation states in Europe now and then seemed to be roughly in balance. Precisely as it was the case on the eve of the Great War. One of the actors is seemingly dissatisfied with the system and this is Russia. Now the question is if it is going to challenge the dominant power and upset the balance by starting a major war. As the theory would predict. The structural resemblance may be striking but it is misleading. The dominant country at that time was the United Kingdom. Germany was indeed able to claim regional hegemony and was clearly dissatisfied. It did therefore make perfect strategic sense for Germany to challenge the dominant power. It is always more costly to dislodge the incumbent power than to stay in power. But the dynamics of Germany's economy and demography did not make it impossible. Also the great powers in Europe on the eve of the First World War were operating in the anarchical system. There was of course a hierarchy of potentials with Britain sitting at the top. But it was anarchical in the sense that there was no higher sovereign in the original system to pacify it. In that situation a war was a possibility. Both structural realism and the power transition agreed that the preconditions of a major conflict were in place. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the power structure in Europe has been entirely different. Facilitating peace rather than conflict. First the power situation is bipolar to date in exactly the same way as it was during the Cold War. One of the poles is still Russia with its enormous offensive military capabilities vis-a-vis any other European nation state. The bulk of its 145 million population concentrated along its western borders and with its strategic independence. Here I would like to narrow down for practical purposes my definition of a great power. In my story a great power is a country which is not dependent on any other state or a coalition of states to provide for its own security. The other pole is obviously the US maintaining a major military presence in Europe. But there is another difference. It is the major institutional character of the security environment in Europe. Mainly two institutional parameters NATO and the EU. These are two macro coalitions of satisfied states supporting the global dominant power of the US. There is no way you take the US out of equation and therefore out of the European picture in balance of power. If you do you assume that the factor of NATO is not essential to it. The latter presumption was entirely plausible in the event of the diminishing of the Russian power in Europe as it had been declining up until the early 2000s. The increase in the significance of the Russian factor has made the evacuation of the American troops for Europe highly unlikely even in the face of the Chinese challenge. Indeed the relative strengthening of Russia in the early 2000s and before that put the European security in the face of an important dilemma. One of them was the waning of the American interest in Europe and its pivot to Asia. This would have demanded from Europe to build up its independent military capability and the EU was experiencing quite a lot of difficulties with that. But the Russian factor, the Russian economic boom in the 2000 together with a more assertive stance on the world stage resulting in the Ukraine crisis convinced the US that pulling out of Europe was not an option. Under this scenario the EU is unlikely to become strategically independent any time soon but at least the possibility of war from a structural perspective in Europe is zero. So we still have a situation in which we have hierarchical concert of European powers in the West and the US military involvement serving as an important stabilizing factor. It alleviates in what could have been the intense security competition inside the EU but also between Russia and the EU. But this does not make the situation any easier because we still have a major crisis in Europe and that is the Ukraine crisis, very little cooperation on the continent and very bleak prospects for the near future. Now here I would consider three major factors. Russia's new role in Europe and Eurasia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the future of the EU and the US global strategy. The message I'm going to get across here is straight forward. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia stopped being a Eurasian power whose wealth, population and strategic interest had laid both in Europe and in Asia and emerged once again as a fundamental European power both in terms of its demography, economy and general culture if not domestic politics. A new European Russia along with other states that appeared on its western borders were bound to join the EU. The reason was no other conceivable way of putting behind the previous power structure and intense security competition which came with it. But the problem is that the enlargement policy of the EU has excluded this possibility altogether. That means living out of the EU such countries as Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. The resulting division of Europe will be ideologically antagonising for both sides and not politically and strategically viable as it will establish a disequilibrium of forces with a dissatisfied Russia to one side of the border and dissatisfied middle countries like Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine in between them. The reason why these countries are never joining the EU in this kind of strategic setting is because Russia will never let them. Furthermore, the scenario will leave us with a dissatisfied Europe for not being able to consolidate the process of the European unification on which it embarked in the 1990s and of which the break of the USSR and the Yugoslavia were all logical steps. Given the present economic and demographic trends, it is indeed clear that Russia is not going now or in any feasible future to increase its strategic feasibility and presence anywhere in Latin America or Asia Pacific apart from Europe. Russia is therefore not a global dissatisfied power as many people think. Given the rate of its economic growth even in the 2000s, which was 6% a year, it can only dream of increasing its share in the global GDP up to 5% maximum. Russia could of course join China in a coalition of the global dissatisfied, but China in essence is a satisfied power at least for the near future. China conforms to the rules and Russia in light of its actual economy in place in the International Division of Labour, there is no other way but to conform to the rules too, which it has been effectively doing since the 1990s. But it is a dissatisfied regional power as it finds itself outside of the group which de facto and de jure determines the policies of the European continent which affect Russia directly. And Russia on the other hand can do little if anything at all to influence those policies. There is actually a strong moral and normative case for Russia's inclusion in the EU and NATO because the current structure is in sharp contradiction with the fundamental liberal and democratic principles on which the EU rests. This is the principle of affected interest. This principle coming from the democracy theory implies that power should be accountable to those it affects. In the scenario I am trying to present here, Russia as well as other SIS countries are heavily affected by the power of the EU in terms of the regulations but not only them. But the prospects of Russian citizens or the citizens of Belarus for example to influence the way the decisions are made in Brussels is virtually nonexistent. Such a structure of Europe divided ideologically but also militarily and politically is not sustainable over the long term. This will either lead to the end of the European project in the vicinity of the next 15-20 years, which I consider more likely to happen, or to the inclusion of all those countries into the EU and NATO starting with Russia and then followed by Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus and Moldova. But this will completely change the balance of power within Europe, it will change Europe beyond recognition. It will make the US military involvement with Europe permanent, NATO less relevant, it will also make China less formidable as a potential challenger in the global power and wealth distribution. Now the reason why this is the only way to go is because Russia seeks recognition. Recognition for the status it de facto has, one of the strongest powers in Europe whose place and destiny are with Europe. Once this recognition is granted, no more struggle will be necessary and the tension will be largely over. Russia also needs accommodation with Europe for practical reasons which in fact have a lot to do with European strategic interests because this is the only way it can address its internal problems, assure steady growth and last but not least provide for regional security in the smaller Eurasia, that is Eurasian Economic Union and the neighbouring countries. The current challenges with this union result from the weakness of Russia both economic and strategic. But this weakness also entail more regional instability in Eurasia. The turning of Russia into global and recognised state will change dynamics in the Eurasian Union making it more pragmatic and more efficient. Right now what we have is de facto smaller countries manipulating Russia, taking advantage of it. For their own benefit, knowing that being internationally isolated, Moscow needs these countries as its only allies. Now I'd like to point out the problems that are in the way of Russian US rapprochement. First is Ukraine. It is clear that the Minsk agreements as the basis for the settlement are no longer operational. Paradoxically the only side that wants them implemented is Moscow. Kyf, it seems to me, is intent on building a mono-ethnic consolidated Ukraine for which the sizeable Russian speaking minorities of Ukrainians and Russians alike is a huge obstacle on this way. They definitely don't consider them as part of their society. If the opposite were true, it is hard to imagine that they would have used the same brutal tactics of fighting the so called terrorists which de facto the Ukraine citizens as they did in the spring and summer of 2014. Consider that Russia has already accepted over one million refugees from Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict. The number of those who fled to the central and western Ukraine pales in comparison. The only thing it shows is that Ukraine was and remains a deeply divided nation, which the prospect of unification is a serious problem, but not an impossible one to resolve. On the other hand, the self-proclaimed republics over which Russia in fact exerts very little influence are too disorganized and divided to be able to come up with a common position and then stick to it. And given the Kyft's policy, I would not be surprised if the only two options they actually consider is independence or joining Russia. One can hardly blame them for that in these circumstances, but what can be done? Well, for me lifting sanctions is an indispensable first step. Number two would be putting pressure on Ukraine from both sides to reintegrate the east of Ukraine. Number three, the West should undertake to reconstruct the western central Ukraine and Russia the east of Ukraine under full control of international financial institutions. Problem number two, China. Despite Russia's apparent effort to pivot to Asia, this turn will be effectively limited to China alone and therefore deserves Russian security interests. An alliance with China will ultimately make Russia strategically dependent on China and its massive economy, which is the last thing Russia can think of. It may improve somewhat its ties with other Asia-Pacific states, but due to the enormous influence the US enjoys there and the premium the US places on containing China, Russia risks endangering its relative power position in the region even more. Russia on the contrary seeks accommodation with Europe. It is ready for it, but in the meantime it is trying to improve on it relative power position vis-à-vis Europe by aligning with China. Does Russia want an alliance with China? This question is irrelevant because even if it does, the trouble is China is not interested. In the long run, should China rise to the original and therefore global hegemony, a Russian-Chinese alliance will be at best a pale version of US-British or more pertinently US-Canada alliance, with a major difference lying in the cultural chasm between Russia and China, which makes such an alliance over the long term hardly viable. My argument is that Russia will be neutral to US-China growing tensions and will effectively have the same stance as Europe on this matter. So the US may in fact want the Russian-China alliance because A it may strategically weaken it and B it will prevent Russia from siding with Europe on the China issue. Now the third problem is the persistent misconceptions about Russia in the EU. The first one has to do with the Eurasian integration policies and allegedly negative attitudes towards NATO and the EU eastward expansion. One has to start by saying that NATO and EU expansion was not particularly conducive to the European security in the first place because as I said before it did not envisage Russian joining it. One has to be clear, Russia has never feared a direct military threat from NATO. All it was worried about was the lessening of the space of independent action in the region. After all, having no country over which to project influence is a nightmare for any great power. There is no other way to make great power nervous than to take away all its allies in the neighbourhood. Another big controversy with regard to Russian foreign policy is the Eurasian integration project. There is a strong-headed argument that Russia is trying to recreate the Soviet empire. My answer to those claims would be a look at the map. None of the countries involved in the scheme has any viable alternative to maintaining their current economic performance, let alone improving it other than through close integration with Russia. This integration isn't their vital interest, not ours. Let's consider each country in turn, Belarus. Belarus is a one-man overtly authoritarian country. It is viable, self-sustaining but lacks the market and resources to feed its economy. In the Soviet times it used to be an assembly conveyor for the country's industry. Now it is continuing on the same track. Belarus would like to flood with the EU but getting into EU as a member is not an option due to the political regime which is highly unlikely to change anytime soon. With this in mind, Russia is the only Belarusian friend and ally. Armenia and Azerbaijan are bogged deeply down in a territorial dispute and neither of them is willing to compromise. Moscow has repeatedly tried to resolve this conflict, but the issue means a great deal to both parties. Moscow is a de facto peace care mentor in the region with no real leverage to its credit to bring the conflict to an end. Moscow leaving the region, however, means an inevitable war there. Armenia is blocked by Azerbaijan and Turkey, so Russia is its only ally and trading partner. The Central Asian Republic is an easy case. The region integration for them is a way of soft balancing against China, which is de facto dominating their national economies already. The West has to understand that by discouraging a pro-Russian orientation in all of these countries, the West and the EU in particular are in danger in big time their prospects for survival. They are not offering them anything in return. But that will mean mayhem in Eurasia, especially in the Caucasus and in Central Asia. On the other hand, Russia's policy in the region is not strategically sound either. It does everything it can to show the importance of these countries to Russia. The countries get the message just right. The increasing signs of smaller countries taking advantage of their strategic significance for Russia, notably Belarus, present for concessions, preferences and material benefits. Something Russia shouldn't will put an end to in the end. Russia is a de facto regional hegemon with a very small prospect of being threatened in its immediate neighbourhood. The security of Russia is assured. The only reason why it is so busy with the Eurasian economic integration is struggling for regional and global recognition. Accomodation with Europe will solve this problem and will make the integration in Eurasia more economically viable and sensible. The second misconception concerns the historical parameters of the Russian state. Both Russia and the West accuse each other of being on the wrong side of history. Well, Russia does it because it believes that the West hurries too much in bringing everyone the light of freedom. The West, in its turn, looks at Russia as an empire in the process of further disintegration and decline. This is a fundamental point. From this perspective, in the eyes of the West, it would be A, logical for Russia to expand, because that is what empires do, and B, it would only be right for the West to help Russia disintegrate, come to the normal condition. Well, regarding A, interestingly, before Ukraine, there was no evidence whatsoever that Russia was on the march to grab other countries' territories. It only happened when Ukraine was about to join NATO and the EU. On the contrary, during the 90s and 2000s, Russia was the main country which was advocating the territorial integrity of the former Soviet republics and was given the mandate by the Security Council in the 1990s to settle the conflicts that erupted following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Regarding B, it is clear to anyone knowing anything about the ethnic and demographic composition of Russia that it is already a nation state, with Russians accounting for over 80% of the population and dominating numerically in also called national autonomous republics inside Russia, except for Chechnya, where this also was the case, but then all Russians had to flee because of the onset of the hostilities. Finally about authoritarianism in Russia, which is another obstacle to its European choice and integration. Russia was primed for democracy in the late 1980s. The democratic revolution was done by the people who took to the streets. The elites didn't change entirely. It is true, but they did respond to the voices of the population. The way democracy turned out in reality was the plundering and wrecking of the country, but even this didn't change the course of the country. It was the separation tendencies, the growing criminalisation of the economy, which in fact threatened the unity of the country. What the West calls the resurgence of authoritarian tendencies, I would call the transformation of Russia international security state, which was inevitable in the face of the combination of internal and external threats. This is what has been happening in Russia since the late 1990s, a tendency a majority of Russia still resent, but covertly thank the providence that the security situation at home changed for the better. I am convinced that pro-European choice Russia will be provided with can be very instrumental in alleviating the sense of insecurity in the population, which is the primary cause of the strong state ideology prevalent in Russia at the moment. In conclusion, Russia is a declining great power with an improving statecraft, state of the art army, largely pro-western pro-European population. It seeks to stabilise its neighbourhood and has a strategic interest in aligning with Europe. What should the European policy be like in those circumstances? I think they should help Russia to come to Europe. Today's Europe has no strategy for Russia. The one it seems to pursue will lead the EU itself to a disaster. It is time for the EU to come up with a sound strategy, the one that is going to bring lasting peace and stability to this continent. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Sebastian and I'm working with Dan in the department. You talked about what Europe should be doing for Russia. I would just curious, are there any feelings within Russia that Russia would like to integrate closer with the EU, or is that more of an ideal scenario that we've discussed? Well, the feelings about the integration into Europe are very strong actually. The moment sanctions are lifted, everyone will ground back into the European economic space and back to cooperation is pretty obvious. The Russian population is largely pro-European. If you even look at the pattern of the population distribution, you'll see that in the far east it's only 6 million people out of 146. So it's over 80% which is in the European part of the country. So the influence of this segment of the population is enormous, and it would determine the policy rather than anything else, any strategic or other considerations. Yes, please. The invasion of Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1979, we did mention that issue. How much do you think the invasion of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan contributed to the situation in the Middle East? Well, especially those, whatever, splinter groups of religious, Islamic religion, I would say the Soviet Union has created the situation in the Middle East now. What would you say that? Well, to begin with, I'm not an expert on the Middle Eastern affairs, so I really don't want to get something wrong here. Right, but I wouldn't say go as far as you did in saying that it was the primary Soviet responsibility for the current situation. What we know is that the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan actually helped consolidation of the Afghan factions of the society in the face of the common threat which was presented by the Soviet invasion. It is clear and there is no question that the whole operation was very badly calculated. The onset of the intervention at the beginning of it was rather a shameful page of Russian military history, so I wouldn't argue with you that that was not the greatest page in our history, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that the responsibility for the current situation lies with the Soviet intervention. If you go around the archives of some of the major Western institutions and think tanks, Chatham House particularly, I used to work at the Royal United Services Institute, you will find that they held grand celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Wahhabism. In 1989 because US foreign policy chose to combat the Soviet Union by a major investment in Wahhabism and those forces. I dangle this out every year and I get to find one a bit late in the day now, but a student to do a dissertation looking at the Western celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Wahhabism. In the context of the Afghan war, I am still looking for takings. Hi, my name is Beth. I was wondering about Russia's recent success with Eurovision because Moscow is very cosmopolitan. The rest of Russia doesn't seem to be when you get past Perm or Catalina Berg. It's just not quite so European. If Russia is going to get very involved with Eurovision, which is quite a gay contest, is that going to cause a massive clash in Russian society? No. It's an interesting question. I was going to put it unprepared for it. I think Russia lost its interest in Eurovision contests when we won one of them because Russia is very willing to win and to stick a nose in everything. Once we are there, we lose interest. Actually, the popular feeling about the contest is not as vibrant as it was before the first victory. Thank you for your interest. I'm speaking to somebody who indirectly has quite good relations with Russia since my wife got a job in connection with the Sculk of a business school and is still doing little jobs for them, mainly from London. I had a few good visits to Moscow, so I got a very good feel for remarkably wonderful civilisation. It's a very pro-Russian. But I think you're too kind to Western politics because from where I'm standing, I think you think that everybody agrees with the Washington foreign policy elite. But in fact, there are big political changes taking place in Europe in attitudes. And even in the US, that elite is being challenged. That elite in the shape of Hillary Clinton is being challenged both from the left and from what we might call the centre right. And Donald Trump is being very much discounted in this country by the sort of liberal press, but I can see what his appeal is and I sometimes at talks and discussions defend his position. Do you want to put a question? My question is about the use, I think, what do you think about this? Do you think that the West is going to stop using, and I'm going to use a very crude expression here. As you said before, celebration of Wahhabism, to put it more crudely, since 1953, the West has been using Islamist groups as attack dogs for foreign policy objectives by pumping money into them. So do you think that there's going to be a winding down and do you think that political changes in Europe and the US are going to affect foreign policy in the medium term? Well, I don't really think that because as I was trying to say maybe not very clearly in my talk that from my theoretical perspective it is not what elites are in power in a particular country but how power is distributed in the international system. And from this point of view I was looking mostly at Eurasian Europe because I put Russia as a European country, not as a Eurasian country, which the USSR was as the Asian country for that matter. There is little threat, if anything, but rather there is much more compatibility and the way for Russia to fit into the European system rather than staying outside of it. Regarding the Islamic militant groups, well I think here Russia and the US now are sharing a common security interest. I don't think that this is actually a very plausible threat. Thank you. Thank you for presenting your ideas. I'm Bhavna Dave. I'm the person who works on Russia and Central Asia here. I have a couple of questions. First one, you did respond to the earlier question about what are Russia's arguments for seeking integration with Europe for becoming part of Europe. But you just mentioned that in a very sparse way. I'd like to understand more discussion of that because what are the reasons, prime motivations? How does Russia justify itself being primarily European? Looking at debates in Russia, I know the main reasons are civilizational cultural. The need to identify primarily with Europe. But overall Russia's history, the debates, there's a lot of ambiguity about where Russia belongs between Europe and Eurasia. There are many Russian analysts and others all through the last 20 years have been redefining Russia in various ways. I mean, you know, the description of Russia is Europe Pacific, Asia Pacific, Eurasian, neither Europe nor Asia. So that multiplicity of views and there's no agreement on this and that is also one key factor. So I wanted your view on, you know, a bit more in depth. And second also is connected to this point. I think I heard you mention that Russia is a nation state. Is that correct? 80% of people are Russian. Could you use an equivalent term in Russian language which says that Russia is a nation state? There is no such term. There is no, there is no notion of Gassoudastwinnes. There is no notion of nationalness or nationalism. So it's very hard to even capture the idea of Russia being a nation state in Russian language itself. So again, I think it's a very ambiguous, open-ended, unsettled kind of identity about what Russia is and what is Russianness. So, you know, Far East and Siberia, two-thirds of Russia's territories are in Far East and Siberia, but these are also territories not really well integrated into Russia and the mainstream kind of Russian identity and culture. So I think I'll stop that. Thank you. Thank you. Regarding your first questions on where Russia belongs, Europe or Asia, I don't actually see any arguments against the position that Russia is not part of Europe because, territorially, it is definitely in Europe. If you take Russia out of Europe, even at the level of abstract thinking, then you don't have any other region to place it because economically, linguistically, culturally and historically, it's not very involved with European affairs. But this is not the major problem. My analysis was structural. I was envisaging a situation when the European Union, based on the idea of expansion and consolidating the European identity, is inevitably going to face the problem what to do with the countries that are now to the east of its borders. In these countries are Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine. It can say that since you're closer to Russia and you're in the sphere of influence of Russia, we're not going to bring you in. But this is not that the EU is going to say to those countries because this runs counter to the constructivist idea of the European project as it is. So they're going to tackle this problem one way or another. The EU is going to tackle this problem. The problem which became obvious with Ukraine was that the EU wasn't thinking about it in these terms. And Russia showed clearly that it was not going to let it happen, that Ukraine was becoming part of Europe. But they already promised this to Ukraine. The same problem lies with Belarus. If there can be debate with Russia, I can agree with that, but there is no debate that Belarus is not a European country. It is fundamentally a European country in terms of its history, in terms of its population. It is very easy for the EU to absorb much easier than other countries. The only problem with that is the political system. But this political system is temporary, right? It's not going to be there for centuries. So one way or another, the problem will be what we do with Belarus, what we do with Moldova, what we do with Ukraine. In that case, you either bring them in with Russia or you leave them outside. But leaving them outside creates a greater structural disbalance in Europe than bringing them in with all the reservations that are implicit in that. In terms of how it changes the balance of power in Europe that Russia may want to dominate, even though it's not going to dominate Europe if it's become part of the EU, because it's a big territory that was economically. It's not a preponderant in the EU. It's definitely not an Asian country. It used to be an Asian country. When you look at the Soviet policies, yes, it has strategic interest in Asia. It had a system of allies in Asia. It was balancing the US in Asia. A lot of its population was in Asia because, as you know, the population was ascribed to register. Right now, the internal migration from far east and Siberia to Europe is so enormous. There's basically no one living there, comparatively, if you contrast it with the situation in Europe. So if I'm given two options what is Russia, Europe or Asia, even though there can be a debate about this, it's definitely not Asia, so probably it's Europe or I don't know what else. It's not in Eurasia either. The second question with the nation state. There is, in Russian, a term, a gesudarsta natse, a politicusca natse. The Institute of Ethnography, headed by academician Tishkov, producing a scholarship on this theme starting from the early 1990s. This is a well-established school of thought in Russia at the moment. I teach a course on ethnic process in Russia and we discuss it at a great length with students regarding how people are integrated in Siberia and far east. Well, a political nation is not an ethnic nation, but there are very few ethnic nations at this point in history owning their own state. And the obvious example is the USA. If you look at the spectrum, on one hand you have a nation state, on the other hand you have an empire. The US is obviously not an empire. Russia is not an empire either because people who are ethnically different are very much politically integrated and social and cultural integrated in the Russian identity. And the best illustration of that is the role of the Russian language. As you know, the distance from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad is greater than from Moscow to Johannesburg. But if you listen to a person speaking in Russian, Vladivostok and Kaliningrad, they'll speak exactly the same language with no regional variation, lexical variation or phonetical variation. So this is, I think, one of the best illustrations showing how integrated actually political and cultural in the country is much more than any other country of this kind of ethnic diversity. Just one nation state and multi-ethnic federation, these are not the same. So Russia is a multi, if it's defined as a multi-national federation. So you don't have a multi-national federation also calling itself nation state. I mean, there are contradictions. No, the question is why it is called the federation. It became a federation because Bolsheviks turned it into a federation, not because it was a federation before that. It was their political decision. Was the federation the Soviet times? No, it was a perfectly unitary state. Called the federation at the... It was called the Soviet times. Russian Soviet Federation. Oh, this is just a name. Well, no. Anyway, we can talk. Thank you for your talk. One of the things you didn't mention was the possible and potential divergences between Europe and the United States. I'm particularly thinking in terms of the complexities of the geopolitics of oil. As we know, the price of oil is falling and it's very volatile at present, and this has an impact obviously on Russia, but it'll also have an impact on the Middle East with the possibility of collapsing states. So what would you see that... What kind of scenarios can you foresee in terms of Eurasian politics, particularly as at least one country could collapse. I mean, I don't think Iran is going to collapse. This is the second oldest country in the world. I don't think that's going to collapse, but several other countries might if the price of oil falls below a certain level. And the other thing is, could you comment on the theories of Alexander Duggan, who I believe is quite influential in such matters? I'll start with the second question because it is easier. I'm not familiar actually with his theories, and I work in the major institution which proves that his theories are not really that influential. I know, obviously I know him personally, but I haven't ever read him, and this is not taught at the university. Regarding the first question, I'm not sure I got it right. The idea was that with the European and American positions diverging, how this is going to affect the Eurasian policies, right? Well, I think this is a very important question because, again, as I was more focusing on how Russia would fit into the European region and the power structure, the US is obviously a very important factor, and the way it is going to play out is directly dependent on the US attitude to that in a way. And I think the only way it's going to happen, the way I was trying to present it, is that the EU becomes more aware of its strategic interest in terms of their security in the future to make it more stable and to smooth out the security dilemma which now exists in Europe overtly or covertly now more overtly than before vis-à-vis Russia. But as with regard to Russia in the midlist, I am absolutely convinced that Russia is sharing the same security interest as the EU and the US with regard to the major threat from the equilibrium in the midlist. Therefore, Russia's support for Iran, because it is a very important factor in not upsetting the general balance of power and general security setting in the region. I think we can take one more question after which I hope you will join us upstairs for a drink at our reception in the Brunei Suite just about here, where we can continue the discussion more informally. Dobry iechel. Dres i. So I've heard, oh yeah, my name is Anna, and I'm studying international relations at the LSE. And I've heard a lot of people describe the Russia-West relations in terms of Samuel Huntington's famous clash of civilisations and saying this is a clash of western civilisation against Slavic Orthodox civilisation. So do you think this is an appropriate framework to describe relations between Russia and West right now? Do you mean to say that in LSE you're being told that Russian-West relation? No, not at the LSE now. No, I don't really believe this theory, because it is not proven empirically, I think. Some people say that this is actually proved that this exists, this clash. Right, well it runs counter to the theory I subscribe to, which is the power structure predominance. I might just, we will break now, but I would just add, if you go and look at the western strategic literature of the 1970s and political science literature, you will find a very strong North American argument that all countries of a Catholic population were irredeemably authoritarian. And this explains the leaderships of Latin America, Spain and Portugal. We might say someone will stop serving analysis. Anyway, with that slight diversion, will you join me in thanking Andre and then put on a drink? Thank you very much.