MOSCOW- This scribe is currently visiting Moscow to participate in the 7thMoscow Conference on International Security (MCIS). The city is agog withsociable Ministry of Defence staffers keen to make the stay of over 850guests from ninety countries comfortable.
The temperature is ranging between three degrees below zero to three abovebut the snow from the last snowfall, still frozen on the sidewalks, chillsone to the bones. The traditional Russian hospitability however is full ofwarmth. One would have expected that with the diplomatic row stirred byBritain and numerous other Occidental nations including the US followingsuit, would have marred the environment but it did not stop the guests frompouring in.
The growing Pak-Russo ties are visible. Although these ties are noteither/or vis-à-vis India as Indo-Russo ties have been traditional and theerstwhile USSR as well as Russia have been India’s greatest arms supplierstill the Washington decided to cozy up to New Delhi, albeit for its ownethnocentric reasons, Moscow has moved closer to Islamabad.India’s Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is also in town, embarking on hermaiden three-day visit, as defence minister, to Moscow. It was hearteningto note former Russian diplomat, Gleb Ivashentsov, defending Moscow’sgrowing strategic ties with Islamabad, stating that “refusing dialogue withPakistan would not be in the interest of Russia.”
Video conferencing from Moscow, Ivashentsov added: “We view Pakistan as amajor state with around 200 million people. It is a nuclear state. It is acountry which plays an important role in regional and internationalmatters.” The former director of Russian foreign ministry’s Second AsianDepartment (2AD) was speaking at a forum, ‘Regional Security: A view fromMoscow and Delhi’, organized simultaneously in New Delhi and Moscow on theeve of MCIS.“It is noteworthy that Pakistan has joined the Shanghai CooperationOrganization (SCO) since it is a regional counter-terrorism organization.
The participation of Pakistan in this framework should make a positivedifference,” Ivashentsov, who is a member of Russian foreign ministry’sofficial think tank Russian Council for International Affairs (RIAC), held.Both India and Pakistan were admitted as full-time members of theBeijing-headquartered eight-member bloc at the grouping’s summit in Astanalast year. Gleb Ivashentsov categorically stated that Moscow couldn’t goback on its growing military cooperation with Pakistan, much to the chagrinof New Delhi. “We cannot embargo our deliveries to Pakistan.
Because it is a sovereign state with a sovereign policy,” Ivashentsov said,adding that Moscow had, so far, only supplied helicopters to Pakistan.Although a number of joint military exercises have recently been conductedbetween the duo that had hostile relations during the cold war era and hadcrossed swords indirectly during the Soviet occupation of Kabul.
Noting that the road to peace in Afghanistan passed through Pakistan,Russian MP and deputy leader of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence andSecurity Alexei Kondratiev stated that international cooperation inAfghanistan was being hampered by the US. “There is an attempt to portrayRussia as a force of evil in Afghanistan. There is an information waragainst Russia in Afghanistan’s media in this process,” Kondratiev said.“It affects a lot of aspects of political and economic cooperation betweenRussia and Afghanistan,” he added.
The Russian parliamentarian held up Russia’s aerial campaign in Syria as anexample that could be replicated to help bring about peace in Afghanistan.He noted that Russian forces’ assault on the Islamic State in Syria hadlargely been successful as it was able to take care of political, militaryand social components.Kondratiev remarked, “Russia has been largely successful in its Syrianoperation because it could simultaneously take up all these three factorsinto consideration and these learnings are vital for situations like thatin Afghanistan.”
The 2018 MCIS focused on the defeat of terrorists in Syria. Russianparticipants shared their experience on combating IS and provided estimateson further development of the situation in the Middle East, includingpost-conflict rehabilitation. Security issues facing Europe, Asia, Africaand Latin America were also in the spotlight of the forum. A Specialsession addressing “Soft power” phenomenon as a tool to pursuemilitary-political objectives was the most popular aspect of the conference.
It was brought out that soft power is the ability to attract and co-opt,rather than by coercion (hard power), which is using force or giving moneyas a means of persuasion. Soft power is the ability to shape thepreferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defining feature ofsoft power is that it is noncoercive; the currency of soft power isculture, political values, and foreign policies. Recently, the term hasalso been used in changing and influencing social and public opinionthrough relatively less transparent channels and lobbying through powerfulpolitical and non-political organizations. Soft power has been criticizedas being ineffective by authors such as Niall Ferguson in the preface toColossus.
Neorealist and other rationalist authors dismiss soft power out of hand asthey assert that actors in international relations respond to only twotypes of incentives: economic incentives and force. One is reminded of USPresident George W Bush, who threatened “either you are with us or againstus” as opposed to soft power. Russia, which needs India as a defencemarket, will never dump it for Pakistan but is willing to accommodatePakistan in its own calculus in the region.
Sultan M Hali—The writer is retired PAF Group Captain and a TV talk showhost.