London – I’m pleased to integrate the data I wrote yesterday, in my analysis of the current global geopolitical situation, with the interview of the Russian Organization “Znanie” with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergej #Lavrov, on the sidelines of the Forum St. Petersburg International Economic Centre, June 17, 2023.
Question: Journalists usually pester you with quick questions on the most pressing topics. We, thanks to the platform provided to us by the “Znanie” Organization, have the opportunity to elevate ourselves to a slightly more “strategic” level and to speak, for example, about how you see this emerging multipolar world. Some are concerned that this world may become less secure due to the fact that there will be no one-player dominance. What is his position on this?Sergej Lavrov: “There is a point of view that starts from the fact that there was the Soviet Union, there was the Warsaw Pact, and that the United States presided over the Atlantic Alliance. These two poles of the bipolar world ensured stability. A negative stability, sometimes even dangerous, but all these risks, these dangers, were located on the sidelines of the “coexistence” between these two opposing ideological and socio-economic systems.
Perhaps, it makes sense to remember that they were rather safe, predictable times. Predictability was bad, we knew what to expect from each other. Sometimes, on some issues we collaborated: we have been in space, we have started productions in partnership. But we kept our respective military doctrines and war “machines” aimed at each other. And these were perfected on the basis of the need to ensure victory should, God forbid, something happen. Then, in reality, reason prevailed.
There were agreements on the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons, their limitation, anti-missile defense. Unfortunately, when the Warsaw Pact and, subsequently, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, all of this was hastily dismantled by the United States, which set itself up as the winner of the “Cold War”.
They established that the “end of history” had come, as the famous political scientist F. Fukuyama said at the time; and meaning, by this, that from then on only liberal democracy would dominate, and that no other system would ever again appear or be able to develop.”
Question: But then he admitted that he was wrong …
Sergej Lavrov: “Then he admitted he was wrong. This does him credit. Although the kind of mentality that is reflected in the thesis of the “end of history” is still manifested quite actively in the West. Because when the West requires everyone to respect the “rules” on which the world order is based, we are witnessing precisely what F. Fukuyama was talking about.
It is the “end of the story” because, as the West currently carries out its conception of “rules”, only the West has the right to decide who gets to do what. As if to say, everything is allowed to us, while others are only allowed what we allow them to do. This is the typical colonial mentality. As R. Kipling wrote in his time on the fact that the white man’s burden was that of having to manage a multitude of obtuse people. They are practically the same words. When the instincts of the United States and their “allies” began to manifest themselves (I would say perhaps of the Anglo-Saxons and their allies, given that the Anglo-Saxons have now “subjugated” the whole of Europe and all the remaining “collective West” to which we reference, where we also find Japan, Australia and New Zealand), when these instincts began to manifest themselves in a particularly evident way in relation to the special military operation that we were forced, out of necessity, to launch following many years during which we tried to persuade our Western colleagues of the absolute unacceptability of their line towards Ukraine, which has turned it into a direct threat to the Russian Federation, a threat to our security and an instrument of language annihilation, of Russian education and culture, even to the point of physical annihilation of people, whom they called “beings” (I am referring to the inhabitants of Donbass) and who they threatened to eliminate either legally or physically (and there are many, of declarations of this kind), well, by now it is clear that the tenacity with which the West at the moment demands that everyone “punish” the Russian Federation, that no one interacts with us, reflects its awareness of the fact that it will soon no longer exist a unipolar world. These spasms we are witnessing are, to a certain extent, spasms of an agony that could last for years, for an entire historical epoch, as I hypothesize, of transition towards a multipolar world.“Question:But the process has now begun, as has already been said.
Sergej Lavrov: “Undoubtedly, countries such as China, India (countries of civilization, like Russia in essence), continents and civilizations such as Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the countries of ASEAN, who perceive themselves as part of a civilized community, understand that relying on the tools that the West has created and imposed on all others as the only possible functioning mechanisms of the economy, such as property privacy, its inviolability, the free play of the market, fair competition, the presumption of innocence and much more, is at the basis of the world economy, at the basis of the functioning of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The West, overnight and without any hesitation, as we are seeing, transformed all these tools from mechanisms to guarantee a service to trade and the world economy to tools of coercion, blackmail and punishment, as we are seeing now. In our case, we are at something like 15,000 different penalties. A singular “story”. But sanctions are a far from new method that the West uses to “punish” the disobedient. According to a statistic, one in four countries in the world are under sanctions, imposed above all by Americans, Europeans and those who collaborate with them.
Now we observe a tendency to separate from these dynamics in order to be able to continue in commercial and investment activities, to strengthen economic relations, set up joint ventures and logistic chains in such a way that we do not have to depend on the structures and mechanisms controlled by the West.
This process is laying the objective foundations for the realization of multipolarity. Because multipolarity understood as cultural and civilizational commonality (I have indeed given the example of India, China, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America), i.e. culture, language, tradition, including religious values, it has always existed.
The various “Kiplings” have tried to represent the rest of the world as a “wild jungle”.
Even Josep Borrell, a well-known diplomat of the European Union, formulates his thoughts on the basis of the same categories: Europe is a “flower garden”, while everything around it is a “jungle”, a jungle which, in some way, must be civilised, or from which it is necessary to defend oneself. Cultural and civil identity has always been there.
Now, with their sanctions and their aggressive actions, the United States and others with them are essentially forcing, forcing the rest of the world to introduce material bases to support their cultural and civil identity. This is why I believe that the process is unstoppable.”
Question: In this new multipolar world will the role of the UN decrease in importance? And on the other hand, will the role of organizations such as the BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization acquire more importance?
Watch the full interview.