 Such excitement at the topic. It's fantastic. Thank you very much for coming out on on a fairly barmy Canberra evening to hear Ian Bond tonight and before we get started. I think we need to observe the customary preliminaries And I'd certainly like to say that I acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians On whose traditional lands we're meeting today and to pay my respects to the elders of the Nunnel people past and present And with that ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much again for coming out to a topic on Russia Those of you who don't know me My name is Matt Sussex, and I am the new academic director The National Security College, and this is a topic very much after my own heart we've been running quite a few events recently on Russia and I am going to be extremely selfish and continue to do more of them But I think you are proof positive in coming out in such numbers tonight That that topics such as this are very very important and resonate With the public as well as the academic and the policy community Also along for the ride tonight from the NSC. We're privileged to have Martin Blushik Our media and communications person and Chris Farnham. Where's Chris? He was on the door But they will be assisting me after Ian finishes his remarks Identifying questions and handing microphones around For those of you who are new to the National Security College Let me give you a very brief praise about what we do Our purpose is to enhance primarily strategic understanding and critical thinking about Australia's National security, but I think it's fair to say that our vision is broader than that We aim, aspire if you like, to act as a leader In security teaching, in security research, and particularly also in security policy engagement And we're very ably assisted tonight in that aspiration In fact our work is virtually done in the form of Ian Bond Who will be talking to us tonight on the topic Troublemaker or Peace Maker Russia's role in the Middle East and Asia Ian of course is very well known in his capacity as Director of Foreign Policy at the Centre for European Reform And he's been there since 2013 and before that he had a very long And auspicious career as a diplomat for 28 years and his main focus was on Russia and the former Soviet Union He's been posted in Moscow in Riga and in Washington and at the UK delegations to NATO in Brussels And the OSCE in Europe, sorry, at the OSCE in Vienna His publications for CER include the EU and Russia on common spaces and frozen the politics and economics of sanctions against Russia And we'll ask Ian today to speak for around about 20-25 minutes or so To get him to sing for his supper, assuming we're paying for it And then we will have good time for questions, probably about 20 minutes or so, so with no further ado Let me invite Ian to the microphone Well Matt, thank you very much indeed for that very kind introduction I have to say that this must be the first talk that I have ever given where they've had to bring in extra chairs So thank you very much to all of you for coming out this evening It's a great pleasure to be here in Canberra, to be here at ANU And to be facing such a good audience tonight And I also would like to say thank you very much to the British High Commission Who brought me halfway around the world to talk to you here I will admit that I was quite surprised when I heard how popular this talk was going to be And how many people had signed up for it Australia is a long way from Russia You have quite a lot of issues in your own neighbourhood And I would have forgiven you for thinking that Russia was really somebody else's problem What I hope I can do this evening is to send you away thinking that it's a bit broader than that And that in some ways it poses some challenges to all of the democratic countries I'll start by talking a bit about how I think Putin sees the end of the Soviet Union And how we got to where we are now, how that set the stage for the confrontations of today I'll talk somewhat about Russia's current foreign and defence policy And the new Russian national security strategy which has just been published Notwithstanding the title of my talk, I will say something about the Russian relationship with Europe Because that has a big impact on my country and other countries in my region But also because I think it affects some of what Russia is doing in other parts of the world And I'll dig down a bit into the questions of Russia's relationship and its involvement in the Middle East Where of course both British and Australian forces are fighting Daesh And I'll have a look at what Russia is up to in Asia And whether Russia's announced pivots to Asia is really as significant as the Russians would like us to believe And then finally, if there's time, which I hope there will be I'll try and draw a few conclusions about Western policy So how did we get into the mess that we are in, if I can put it that way I mean, Putin has his version of the collapse of the Soviet Union Which he termed the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century And his version is of a great country, a world benefactor which saved mankind from Nazism Which was then betrayed by weak and incompetent leaders Who failed to prevent it being dismantled by a Western-inspired plot And that it was then betrayed again by the West Which took away its allies, enlarged NATO at the expense of Russia Stole Russia's natural resources and wasn't satisfied until it had organised an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine Which was a historic part of Russian territory Now, that's a slight caricature of Putin's position, but that is pretty closely based on public statements that he has made He certainly regards the collapse of the Soviet Union as, in general, a bad thing He's made no secret of his view that NATO enlargement was all about putting Russia in its box He has cited ancient history or even mythology to explain the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples And he makes an unfortunate habit which actually has got worse in recent times Of stressing Stalin's good points, rather than mourning the victims of Stalinism Now, you know, my perspective on the fall of the Soviet Union is rather different First of all, I think it was a very brutal system And secondly, in terms of what it actually delivered It certainly delivered a rapid pace of modernisation in the early stages When Russia was starting from a very low base But it was a system which had built into it massive inefficiencies Which were almost bound sooner or later to lead to trouble And the irony is, Putin thinks that the breakup of the Soviet Union was something which was engineered by the West It was something which absolutely horrified leaders like George H.W. Bush and John Major in the UK They were much more worried about instability in a country which possessed the world's largest nuclear arsenal Than they were about the self-determination of Georgians or Ukrainians Now, I think in one way, Putin does understand the problems that were built into the Soviet economic system In some remarks recently, he said, the inability to embrace change, to embrace technical revolutions and new technology Led to the collapse of that economy But he also has embedded in him this idea that this was a sort of gangland hit that was perpetrated by the West And that infects his view of what the West is up to There is a permanent suspicion of Western motivations Now, you see that carried over into the new national security strategy which he signed off on the 31st of December last year This has become a bit of a tradition and I wish that actually the Russians would stop this But somewhere around Christmas or New Year, over the last few years you've got a foreign policy concept, a military doctrine and now a new national security doctrine And you know, I have my nice pile of Christmas books that people have given me to read And then into my inbox will come 40 pages of dense bureaucratic Russian It is not exactly a page-turner I have read it so you don't have to I mean, various things strike me about it The first is it's a very broad definition of national security It includes areas like culture and education Which I don't think most Western governments would regard as national security issues as such But it does give you an idea of where Putin and those around him think that threats to Russian interests are coming from They are obsessed with the idea that the West is trying to undermine traditional Russian values The latest version of the national security strategy is much darker in tone than its predecessor which was published in 2009 You know, that contained phrases about how Russia had overcome the crisis of the last decade of the 20th century There's a real sense in the 2009 national security strategy that Russia thinks it's on a sort of upward trajectory And that's despite the fact that at that point actually the Russian economy was going into a deeper recession But that sense of optimism and being on an upward course, that's missing from the new iteration In fact, the UK-based Australian analyst and former Australian diplomat, Bobo Lowe, said recently That he thought that this was the most anti-Western, anti-American and anti-nato official document that the Russian government had produced in the last 25 years So it's a very gloomy, besieged feel to this document I mean, that leads me to an observation about this thing which is that if someone would give me a dollar for every reference in it to traditional Russian moral and spiritual values I could buy a drink for most of you, I reckon It's not simply that there is a military confrontation between Russia and the West It's not simply that NATO is, at least in Russia's view, moving infrastructure into areas on Russia's borders I have to say, looking at what NATO is actually doing, it's pretty hard to see this stuff, but that's the way that it's viewed from the Russian side of the border But it's that external values are being pushed onto malleable young Russian minds And that's why I think these sections on education and on culture appear in the national security strategy Because there is a sense that Russia has to defend against this, that you have to have more patriotic education You have to have the right kind of history to prevent people being infected by these ideas And one of the changes from the 2009 national security strategy is that back then one of the cultural tasks was described as enabling the Russian people to share the best of Western culture That's gone. Western culture is now not regarded as something that you want the Russian people to share I could buy you a second round of drinks if I had a dollar for every appearance of the term stability And what worries me, we're all in favour of stability But it's clear, not just from this document, but from the way that Putin uses this term in general That he is obsessed with stability, not in the sense of the absence of chaos, but in the sense of the absence of change There is a great novel by an Italian, Lampedusa, called The Leopard And the old noble in there, the kind of great revelation that he has Is that for things to stay the same, everything has to change That is absolutely a lesson which Putin has not learned Now, the national security strategy is not a strategy in the military sense of something which links together means and ends It is designed to influence as well as to inform and to guide And particularly when you get to the foreign policy section, it's actually quite strong on Russia's desire for good relations with almost everyone Even with NATO, if NATO was prepared to have a relationship on Russia's terms to recognise a Russian sphere of influence in effect Then Russia would be perfectly happy to cooperate But you have to look at not just what's in the national security strategy, but at what the kind of people who had the last word on what went into it Are themselves saying about their relations with the outside world And if you look at Putin and if you look at the secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, who used to be the head of the Federal Security Bureau, the internal security service of Russia They have a very conspiratorial view of the world They believe that bad things happen because bad people make them happen And they certainly do not believe in the concept of spontaneous revolutions Revolutions are inspired by somebody If there is a revolution in Ukraine, it's because the Americans wanted there to be a revolution in Ukraine And that's where I'm going to turn to the Middle East Because that sense carries through into Russian policy in the Middle East If there is instability in the Middle East And if the West has supported change in the Middle East Then that must mean that the chaos that is now grouping the region is a result of a deliberate Western policy of creating chaos in the region Now I'm not going to claim that Western policy in the Middle East has been a great success In many respects, if you look at Iraq, if you look at Libya, it's been pretty catastrophic But that does not mean that because it's catastrophic, we wanted it to be a catastrophe When I look at Russia's renewed engagement in the Middle East It seems to me that there are probably three things that they are seeking to achieve One of those is to show that unlike the West, which undermines not only its enemies but its allies in the region Russia looks after its own So the Americans on this narrative, through President Mubarak of Egypt under a bus Allowed him to be toppled or even engineered his fall Russia is not going to do that with President Assad I am strongly of the opinion that one of the goals of the Russians in going into Syria is to ensure that Assad stays in power I do not buy the idea that they would even swap him for another acceptable leader from the Alawite minority from the same group as Assad Because why would they? Thanks to their airstrikes, Syrian armed forces are now making gains, Assad is moving forward And if the Syrian leading elite didn't overthrow Assad during almost five years of rather disastrous conflict Why would it be sensible for Russia to try to displace him now when actually he is making some progress? So that seems to me to be the first thing that is going on The second thing which is linked to that is about presenting the West with an uncomfortable if not an impossible choice Which is, I call it the Chechen Gambit because it reminds me of what happened in Chechnya The Chechen conflict started with secular nationalists leading the Chechen opposition to Russia And I think if it had stayed that way then probably by now Chechnya would have been independent Most of the world would have recognized Chechnya as independent The Russians and I think Putin in his FSB days before he became Prime Minister and then President probably had something to do with this Killed off the moderate secular nationalist leader And the figurehead of the Chechen revolution became a guy called Shamil Basayev A mad Islamic radical who just happened to have worked for Russian intelligence before he became a Chechen separatist And Putin was then able to say to the West, ok we are doing some things in Chechnya which you don't like We are basically flattening the capital with military action People are disappearing, yeah we know you don't like this stuff But the alternative to us is Shamil Basayev, a man who beheads Western hostages Which would you like? And inevitably Western protests about what was happening in Chechnya subsided and disappeared Does that sound familiar? The British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said last week that about 70% of Russian airstrikes in Syria are hitting people who the UK believes should have a part in Syria's post-Assad future Those people are being cleared off the battlefield so that at some point there is a choice for the West Do you go with Assad who is up to his neck in blood but is not going to threaten your terrorist attacks on your streets or our streets Or do you go with Daesh which has killed far fewer people in Syria than Assad has But which is much more of a threat to the West And I think the third element in what the Russians are up to in the Middle East is securing a place at the top table And in that they have succeeded I have my doubts that Putin has a solution to the Syrian problem But he can certainly block the West from some of the things that we might at some point have decided to do I mean for example the Turks have for some time wanted to have to create safe areas in Syria With the presence of Russian air defence assets in Syria Creating no fly zones to be able to have relatively safe areas from airstrikes and so on is off the table It's just impossible Now I think there's a flaw in Putin's thinking about Syria Which is that this is not just a conflict between the people who are on the ground fighting there But it's also a proxy conflict which involves Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others for that matter But certainly those primarily And I think at least some of those countries are prepared to keep fighting to the last Syrian I don't see at the moment a scenario in which Putin is able to impose a solution in which everybody else basically gives up And says okay we have fought for nothing for the last five years We accept that our sad is going to be in charge Maybe with some token opposition figures attached to a government of national unity But fundamentally nothing really will have changed I simply don't think that those external players who themselves have invested so much At least treasure in the conflict are going to give up the struggle straight away And I think that there is a side benefit from Putin in Russia's engagement in the Syrian conflict Which is that it's putting enormous stresses on European unity because of the refugee crisis I can't prove that Russia is deliberately exacerbating the refugee crisis But I am pretty certain that it is deliberately exploiting it within Europe If you look at the levels of Russian support for anti-immigrant populist parties in a number of European countries And if you look at the propaganda that we see from RT and from Sputnik They are working on heightening tensions on playing up the differences between European countries on how to handle migration I think that's a real problem for us So that's the troublemaker side Now I don't want to say that this is a one colour picture Because you can look at another aspect of Russian behaviour in the Middle East And in relation to the Iran nuclear talks, the Russians have actually played a very constructive role Even when the West had sanctioned Russia over its intervention in Ukraine The Russians continued to play a constructive role in the Iran talks I think there are a number of reasons for that But the greatest one is self-interest The Russians had no interest in having another nuclear power on their borders Even if relations are currently quite friendly between Tehran and Moscow You can't guarantee that that will always be the case And if the Iranians had gained a nuclear weapon You would not know what eventually what use that might be put to And not only that, but what you could be relatively certain of Was that it would lead to greater American and Israeli military engagement in the region And quite likely to a conflict between Iran and those countries Which would certainly not be good for Russia sitting not so very far away from Iran across the Caspian Sea So I think there was a strong Russian self-interest in helping to manage this process Of getting the Iranians out of the nuclear weapons business And secondly, I think again, there was a top table issue there That it gave the Russians a chance to enhance their international prestige And to show that there were certain issues that could only really be solved if you had the Russians at the table What I'm not sure about with Russia in the Middle East is whether it actually has a long-term strategy And why I say that is its economic interests are actually not well served by the current state of its relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia I mean, the irony of the nuclear deal is that it will bring back onto the market a lot of Iranian oil Which will further drive down the price of Russia's main export And the bad relationship with the Saudis is certainly not going to encourage them to play their traditional role As the sort of swing producers who will cut their production in order to raise the price So there are some interesting dynamics there and we have yet to see how they will play out now that there is a nuclear deal But it's not clear to me that the Russians have quite thought out the tactics of where this leads them Now, turning to Asia, and Russia of course, as with the Americans, claims that it is turning to Asia Now I'm looking forward to discussing an excellent paper that Matt has written on Russia's rebalance to Asia And any of you who care to come to Sydney on Friday afternoon will be able to join us in discussing that There's a sort of eternal question for Russia, which is, is Russia a European or an Asian power? And of course geographically, most of it is in Asia But demographically, most of it is in Europe And I think notwithstanding the fact that Putin has moved away from rhetoric which he used to use about how Russia was a great European power I think that most of the Russian population still regards itself as not Asian at any rate Whether they regard themselves as European is another question, or whether they regard themselves as something a bit special But there's a slight discomfort in this pivot to Asia Are they pivoting as outsiders or as part of the Asian scene? Now I agree with what Matt said in his paper that a rebalance to Asia is necessary if Russia wants to secure a place in the Asian century The question for me is whether it's actually possible for Russia to do that Russia's physical presence in Asia is not what you might anticipate The infrastructure links between the European part of Russia and places like Vladivostok have barely improved since the 19th century And it's not clear to me that the Russians either have the resources or are prepared to invest the resources that would be necessary to reorient their economic links And to strengthen the ties across the country in the way that they would have to The other thing that concerns me about where Russia is heading in Asia is again whether they have a strategic view I mean they are trying to build a stronger relationship with China and I absolutely understand the point of that Everybody is trying to build a stronger relationship with China because of its economic strength, because of its growing weight on the international political scene But at the same time the Russians are trying to preserve their traditional good relations with China's regional rivals, India and Vietnam Can they keep all three of those relations as good as the two relations with India and Vietnam have been? I don't know. I don't know what the Chinese think about the fact that the Russians are selling them and the Vietnamese the same class of submarines when the Chinese and the Vietnamese are in a standoff in the South China Sea I don't think it is a deliberate Russian policy to stoke a regional arms race But in their pursuit of markets for their defence business, which actually is important in terms of their own defence modernisation in terms of providing the resources for it I think they are taking some non-strategic decisions in the region, which ought to be of concern in terms of an area which is already quite tense If you look at the relationship with China, one of the motivations is clearly to be able to say to the Europeans in particular, we have alternative markets We sell you an enormous amount of gas, but maybe tomorrow we'd rather sell it to the Chinese Now this is not a real threat in a way because the infrastructure isn't there for doing that But there is no question that the Chinese have an interest in acquiring gas and energy resources from wherever they can get them And that if the Russians are prepared to offer it at the right price, the Chinese will buy it But there are also areas in which it is not so clear that China and Russia have coinciding interests And Central Asia is one of those Xi Jinping went to Moscow in May last year for the 70th anniversary celebrations of the end of the Second World War And he and Putin agreed that China's Silk Road economic belt and Russia's or the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union should be harmonised I was in Moscow three or four weeks after that and asking people, well what does that mean? And nobody could really tell me But what it seems to me is that Russia is in a situation where it's trying to preserve its influence in Central Asia And really what we're talking about here is the parts of the Silk Road programme which engage Central Asia And Russia is trying to keep its influence in those areas at a time when objectively its relative strength there is declining And China's is increasing The Chinese are handling this in a very subtle way What they're doing so far is that they recognise that for Russia the provision of security in that region is what buys Russia influence And the Chinese are sort of occupying the economic space and allowing the Russians to continue to provide security But I don't know how viable that model is in the long term I mean essentially the Chinese are reaping all the economic benefits and the Russians are providing the security force At some point I guess the Russians will start to ask themselves whether they really want to be doing that if they're not getting any profit out of it Looking at other parts of Asia and the parts that perhaps are closer to you in some ways There's a certain amount of Russian muscle flexing going on So a week or so ago they sent two strategic nuclear bombers to fly around Japan Which is something that they have been doing on an increased tempo in Europe for quite a few years now really since the tension around Ukraine started They're beefing up their pacific fleet, modernising their pacific fleet which I guess hasn't been modernised since the Soviet period So it's probably long overdue I don't know quite what they're up to I mean is this about the US? Are they in a sense saying to the US well you are pivoting to Asia You are strengthening your military presence in this region We have to do the same Are they sending some sort of message to the Japanese? The Japanese are spending more on defence Becoming more assertive in the defence and security field Is Russia trying to say to the Japanese don't overstep the line We've got your number Or are they subtly signalling to China That they are not prepared to be the junior partner in every area of the relationship I don't know and you can't get it out of the national security strategy There isn't a very clear statement of how Russia sees the security picture in this region Some of it looks quite opportunistic I would say Now the good side of that is I don't see that there is the same kind of direct confrontation between Russia's view of its interests in Asia and the Pacific And Western goals in the region in quite the way that there is in Europe I mean over North Korea the Russians have been a relatively passive but also a relatively benign participant In the six-party process such as it is And they've been content for the most part to tuck in behind China And certainly not to encourage nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula And I think there are some of the same sorts of thoughts that guide their policy towards Iran For me if there is a risk in the Russia-China loving if that's what it is It's not so much actually what they will do together in this region But it's more broadly the way in which they operate in international organisations And the interests that they see in either undermining or at any rate changing the balance of the international liberal order Whether that's in relation to UN human rights mechanisms or governance of the internet They have some interests in the international arena that are at variance with those of the Western democracies I'm going to come to a conclusion you'll be glad to hear I suppose I have to answer the question that was put in the title which is you know peace maker or trouble maker And I suppose my answer would be yes But we're in a more complicated situation with Russia than we were in the Cold War In a sense you expected confrontation across the board and you got it And so we need a more subtle set of responses in a way Our interest is in a rules-based system And so I think the fundamental principle on which we have to operate in dealing with Russia Is that that is what we need to protect Now the Russians I think prefer a system of great power bargaining It's always interesting for me to look at the importance that Russia attaches to the UN Security Council And the way that when Russia was putting forward proposals for changing Europe's security architecture They wanted a European Security Council They like systems in which the big powers make decisions and the small powers accept the decisions that are made for them And I don't think that's a route that we should follow them down The second thing that I would say is we need to compartmentalize as well as the Russians do They did not throw their toys out of the pram in the Iran talks when the West sanctioned them over Ukraine They took a very cold look at what were their interests in the Iran talks and what were their interests in Ukraine And they pursued the two independently And what I'm seeing a little bit in Europe in relation to Syria Is that some countries are saying well you know we need the Russians to help us on Syria So we must do some sort of deal with the one Ukraine I'm sure the Russians would be delighted if we did that But I don't think that they would be surprised or disappointed if we didn't So we need to be as good as they are at keeping separate things separate Finally I think we need to be patient I'm assuming that Putin is going to be in power until 2024 at least Well that is when his next, I mean I assume he will stand for re-election in 2018 And it's a six year term So assuming that he stays healthy And he's obviously a man who looks after himself You know, I wish I had his ams But he's going to be there for a while So we can't just sort of hope that he's going to go off the scene He hasn't really built a succession mechanism And that ought to be a bit of a worry And what are the ways in which I think the Chinese have been smarter than the Russians Is that the Chinese have actually developed a system Whereby you have some predictability about who comes next And also some sort of guarantee that as you leave power You're not going to be chucked in jail or worse Putin doesn't have that confidence You know, he put Medvedev in place But he didn't have the confidence that Medvedev would protect what he, Putin, wanted to build in the country So that does make me worry that if you look out beyond 2024 The system may be more brittle than we think it is What that says to me is that we have to build for the long term We actually have to keep talking to the Russians Isolating the Russians as a mugs game Whether it plays a positive role or a negative role It will play a big role And what we should be doing is laying the foundations for the long term Trying to identify the people who have a future The people who have bright ideas I think we have not done enough to cultivate Russia's younger generation To look for scholarship schemes and the like And to build a group of people who don't think the West is always out to get them If, as I said, the national security strategy is intended to influence as well as to inform One of its audiences is people in Russia And it is intended to make them feel that they're living in a country which is under siege Now I am, perhaps, hopelessly optimistic But I hope that one day the Russians will break out of that psychological framework That fear of the outside world And realize that their lives could be so much better if they were better governed That the West is richer and happier Not because it has cheated the Russians But because the Russians' own leaders have cheated them I don't know whether that's realistic Maybe, as I say, that's just a utopian dream But that would be my hope And on that note, I'm going to end and open the floor to questions Thanks Ian I must say that I don't think I've ever heard anyone cover such a broad sweep On Russian strategic security policy so persuasively in such a short time So well done, thank you I'm sure you've got a lot of questions so I won't fill up the airwaves Can I ask that when we go to you That you just give your name or affiliation if you'd like to And try and keep your questions as short as possible So that we can get through as many as we can Hi, my name is Nikola Peerich I'm a PhD student here at the National Security College Thank you very much for a very interesting presentation I've got a few comments, I'll limit myself to one And I have a burning question So I'll go with the comment first It's sort of a constructive criticism Much of the talk focused on a lack of sort of grand strategy in Russia Whether it's the Middle East or the Asian pivot And yet I couldn't help but think When you notice Russia's strategy of exacerbating the immigration crisis Or migrant refugee crisis in Syria That kind of smacked of some sort of grand strategy So I was just wondering, to me it seemed like a bit of a contradiction And maybe in some ways echoing Putin's conspiratorial thinking towards the West But I'll leave that as a comment My burning question is as a diplomat If you could give us some thoughts on your take on the situation When the whole chemical weapons issue exploded in a way And it seemed obvious that the US was going to intervene And then the sort of Russian diplomatic outflanking movement to take that away And we didn't have an intervention in Syria So that's something I'd be really interested in hearing about Thank you On the grand strategy question I want to underline I don't think that the Russians are deliberately provoking the refugee crisis I don't think that the Russians are as it were standing on the Syrian border pushing people across But what I do think is that they have been exploiting what is happening in relation to Europe And whether you call it grand strategy or not I think for the current Russian administration weakening NATO and the EU Is quite an important way of relatively strengthening their position in Europe And if the biggest thing that is putting strains on the European Union at the moment is the refugee crisis Then finding a smart way to use that is pretty good tactics So it's not that I think that there is a kind of conspirator sitting there saying Well, if only we can get more refugees into Europe it will put even more strain on the system But somebody said that Putin doesn't have a strategy, he has a methodology It's about exploiting opportunities So that's how I would see that And I'd look at the CW case in somewhat in the same way And Putin actually I think could see the extent of reluctance on the part of the Western powers To go down the military route At the same time he saw a chance to gain some credit Which certainly succeeded, you know, the Russians were seen as having in a sense rescued us from a difficult position And yet what happened? Assad was left to continue to kill people You know, Assad's position was not really weakened, but Putin's position was strengthened And the West moved no further forward towards its goal of trying to replace Assad So it was a nice strategy, you know, it's the kind of thing that I think should go into diplomatic handbooks Hello, my name is Arman, I'm an international student from Kazakhstan It's a Central Asia region, so it's pretty close to me, the same So we have a big influence on Russia as well, so as well we are the Muslim country So I have one short comment on you about the biggest Western and NATO partner in the Middle East is about Saudi Arabia So as you know that Saudi Arabia is ruled by the Wahhabi regime And mostly that all terrorist organizations in the world are supported by Saudi Arabia, so it's a fact So there is no human rights, there is no rights of women, at least 70 persons were killed during January Who were against this regime So as this I have some short story about our country as well Saudi Arabia is the biggest supporter of, like they have huge support from US and NATO in our country as well A lot of mosques is supported by the oil money of Saudi Arabia and so on and so on When our country and our government would like to protect themselves and they would try to close the ultra-terroristic mosques We always have a protest from the ambassador of US or something like this So for our country have a choice, you go with Russia with no terrorist organizations at all With the status quo that you can learn, like girls can go to schools and so on and so on Or the second choice, you go with the Western countries with the NATO But you will receive the maybe new Taliban in this central Asia region So what is the command and how we could deal with this And for the one moment that Kazakhstan is the biggest producer of uranium in the world So I think that Western countries could think about it a little bit more like in this aspect as well Thank you, can you please command these kind of things Yeah, I'll do my best Yeah, well I am not a British government spokesman so I will speak as I think And what I think is that we really do have an enormous problem with Saudi Arabia And I think you're absolutely right to point to the funding that Saudi Arabia provides for radical mosques and Islamic schools in a number of parts of the world Not just in Central Asia, but certainly in Pakistan and indeed in Western countries So I do think we have a big problem and it's become a dangerous relationship for us Because actually we also rely on the Saudi Arabians as partners in the fight against terrorism You know the irony is that while they are funding some pretty unsavory groups They are also providing intelligence on some pretty unsavory groups So we find ourselves in a very uncomfortable position and I am not happy with the extent to which the UK has become linked to Saudi Arabia and the region I think there are other partners that we should be looking to At the same time I absolutely wouldn't accept the thesis that if Kazakhstan partners with NATO That automatically means that NATO is going to provide you with Saudi Arabia as an added bonus There is no question that Western countries do worry about the risks of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia We all remember that among those who fought against us in Afghanistan was the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan So we do recognise the problems And the other thing I would say is that Kazakhstan actually exemplifies a multi-vector foreign policy Probably more successfully than almost any other state in the region Your president has done a remarkable job of balancing good relations with Russia, good relations with China and good relations with the West Kazakhstan has just signed an enhanced partnership and cooperation agreement with the EU And I assume that you would not have done that if you thought that that was as it were bringing in its train radical Islamic mosques So it seems to me that of all the countries in that region, Kazakhstan is probably the one that has followed the smartest policy In terms of not becoming too dependent on any of its potential partners, whether it's Russia or any of the others Hi my name is Roman Medaus, I'm a master's student at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre I was hoping you could comment on the link between Russia's foreign policy adventures in Syria and Ukraine And to what extent you think that that is motivated by domestic concerns There's definitely the perception that as Putin's regime feels that it's under pressure from sanctions, from poor economics That it might want to lash out to create this internal siege mentality So looking at the oil prices right now and seeing as the Russian economy is certainly not on stable footing Do you think that if for instance the Russian economy or the ruble really took a nosedive this year That we would see more adventurism if you were to sort of turn up the heat on the conflicts in which he already has gotten into Hi, my name is Benjamin Baker, I work for the diplomat magazine and I have two questions, I'll make them real short The first one is to what extent do you believe that the Russian engagement in Syria is at least partially a tactical one Russia is in the middle of this big military modernization and it's probably anxious to test out a lot of its military equipment And doctrine, kind of like Nazi Germany did in Spain in the 1930s The other question is something that I felt that I kind of missed a bit during your talk was to what extent does the sense of Russian belonging ethnicity This has long been a part of Russian foreign policy and is probably a keystone of their Ukraine or one of the big reasons behind their Ukraine engagement So what kind of future developments can we see in that field? Thank you My name is Terry Henderson, when you opened you talked about Putin's attitude towards what had happened to Russia and how it had been betrayed and everything With China there's a very similar attitude about how it was let down by foreigners One group of whom were the Russians who took away a lot of Chinese territory towards the north Do you think Chinese feelings about this are going to flavor China-Russia relations over the next few decades? Okay, shall I take those three then? Okay, yeah the link between domestic pressures and foreign policy adventures, I think that's quite right The question for me is how long is that sustainable? Let me take a step back I think one of the lessons that Putin draws from the late Soviet period is that as things started to go wrong economically Gorbachev's response was to retreat, to pull in his horns And I think Putin looks at that and thinks the result of it was the collapse of the Soviet Union So I think he will try and be assertive even in the face of domestic weakness But I think he also has to be hoping that the price of oil recovers Because otherwise the more assertive he is, the more problems he's actually storing up So a lot for him turns on what happens to the oil price But I do think that there is the risk of more foreign adventures And it's a really useful mobilizing tool People do rally to the flag And you see the high levels of support for Putin may not be 100% reliable But nor are they 100% lies Are the Russians using Syria as a testing ground for new weapons? Again, I think that comes probably into the category of fringe benefits I think there's no question that there's some signaling going on That the launch of the cruise missiles from the Caspian to strike targets in Syria Was intended to say not to the people who are on the receiving end Look at what we can do with cruise missiles But to say to NATO and others, look what we can do with cruise missiles This was the first time these things had been fired in anger And it was quite an impressive display So I think that is an important thing We had an interesting discussion earlier this morning actually With Matt and some of his colleagues about the Russian ethnos And the way in which Putin has flirted with this idea of the Russians As the largest divided people in the world So you start to look at Russia as an ethnic category rather than a national category And that's a very dangerous thing in a country which is actually quite multi-ethnic There are a lot of people in the Russian Federation who are not ethnic Russians So I expect to keep hearing about so-called compatriots abroad But I wonder whether, I mean the point that was made this morning was that In 2014 at the time of the annexation of Crimea Putin started talking about Russia which is the ethnic Russians But the national security strategy has gone back to talking about Russia Which is Russians of whatever ethnicity who happen to live in the Russian Federation So there may actually be a slight step back there from the ethnic definition And the question of the unjust treaties There was a very interesting article written for the Carnegie Center in Moscow Probably about a year ago now by a Russian expert on China Claiming that the Chinese had raised exactly this question By renaming part of a border town Aigun Which was the name of the place where one of these unjust treaties By which China ceded an enormous amount of territory to Russia had been signed But the Chinese have not made a great fuss about that I think it comes into the category of useful leverage if you ever need it The Russians and the Chinese have actually got a border agreement They have actually accepted that this is the border, this is where it is, this is where it stays But were relations ever for some reason to deteriorate seriously? I'm sure that the Chinese are not above just very gently touching the Russians And saying this is something that we have not forgotten It's not today's problem, we're all good friends, we have a border, we've accepted the border We remember that this was once China So I think it's always going to be there at the back of the minds But I don't think in any foreseeable future the Chinese are going to pursue that Thank you again for coming, those of you who are also interested in our program of events Please do check us out at nsc.amu.edu.au Or get in touch with either Martin or Chris and they'd be happy to help you But thank you again to Ian for these excellent presentations