In the second part of our exclusive interview with Sergey Karaganov, Academic Director of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at HSE University and Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, Doctor of Historical Sciences, we discussed the key challenges facing BRICS. The main question was: will the expanded bloc become too unwieldy to make coordinated decisions? How should unity and effectiveness be maintained amid the growing diversity of its members?
– At the end of last year, you posited that the “disintegration of Türkiye” was possible. What makes you think that? And how should Russia build its dialogue with Erdogan today, given that Türkiye remains a NATO member and at the same time actively plays against Russia in the South Caucasus and Central Asia?
– You have been misled; I never said that I suppose, let alone desire, the disintegration of Türkiye. Apparently, someone has distorted my words.
Türkiye is our neighbor, and we need to cooperate. It is a historically difficult neighbor, but with which we share a vast common history. Spiritual culture, after all, came to us from the territory of Türkiye, although later Türkiye became Ottoman. The external origins of our culture came from the south, not from the West: from Palestine, Byzantium, the Muslim world, the Buddhist world. Therefore, we need to maintain pragmatic relations with them. We should also understand that the percentage of normal people who share normal human values there is much higher than in, say, the West. And in the West, there are fewer and fewer such people, and they are even being persecuted. Türkiye, for all its internal and external complexities, is a normal country.
– Mr. Karaganov, you have said that Russia is rediscovering the Global Majority. But if we look at Africa, our presence there today is mostly military and diplomatic, while China, for example, is building roads and ports. Do we risk simply remaining, so to speak, a security guarantor for Africa and missing out on real economic benefits?
– You are absolutely right, we must certainly not miss out on real economic benefits, and we are trying to do just that. The thing is, out of foolishness, we left Africa in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Moreover, we largely had a certain dismissive attitude toward Africa as something unpromising. Now we are returning, using the tools we have. But I assure you, by providing security, we are already gaining a great deal.
That said, the Chinese have advanced much further in using Africa for their economic interests. Well, let us wish them luck, especially since Chinese investment, roads, ports, and everything else make Africa more prosperous and make it a more convenient partner, including for us.
But we must understand that in 20 to 30 years, Africa will be the continent of the future, so we need to put in the work. And we are working. About five years ago, Foreign Minister Lavrov asked my colleagues and me to write a new strategy on Africa, and we wrote it.
I am glad that we are returning to this continent. I am not an Africanist, but I see that we are returning not only by military means. Our economic interests are growing; I assure you that the African vector is no longer a costly one. It is a beneficial, though still not sufficiently beneficial, direction of our policy.
– Today, BRICS is becoming a key instrument for building a new multipolar world, an alternative to outdated Western institutions. But after the expansion, the bloc now includes countries with very different, and sometimes even conflicting, interests – from China and India to Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. Will this lead to BRICS becoming a structure where it is difficult to achieve coordinated decisions? Or perhaps its new strength lies precisely in its flexibility and the absence of a rigid ideology?
– We are witnessing a historical process of the dissolution of the old system’s institutions. It is falling apart due to objective circumstances: the balance of power in the world has changed, and trade flows have shifted. We have successfully undermined the foundations of Western dominance, so the entire current system of international relations, which was largely created by the West, is crumbling. About 15 years ago, we entered a very long period of dismantling the old international system and building a new one.
BRICS is not perfect, but BRICS is one of the foundations of the future world order, because it is based on cultural openness, mutual respect, and the rejection of diktat. Of course, creating the new world order will entail – and already does involve – enormous difficulties. In 20 to 30 years, we will create a new system of international governance, in which one of the pillars will be BRICS and another will be the SCO.
I hope that on this basis we will also be able to revitalize the UN, which is currently degrading rather rapidly, primarily because its main players have drifted apart. This is also because it is overrun by a Western or Westernizing secretariat that serves its own interests.
Little by little, we will change all of this. Of course, it will be challenging, there will be contradictions and some steps backward, but the course is set. I remember that when BRICS was created, many thought it was a completely pointless idea. And now it is one of the most attractive and powerful organizations in the world, though far from perfect and far from all-powerful.
– How can BRICS today maintain unity and effectiveness amid the growing diversity of its participants? What should become, so to speak, the glue keeping this structure together? A common enemy (the West) or a positive program of modernization? Do BRICS countries share a common understanding of a just world order?
– I believe that we must formulate a new ideology for ourselves and for the world, rooted in serving the individual. If we develop a new ideology and a new practice founded on the principle that our economy and our politics must serve the free, multicultural human being, then I think we will succeed. That said, it will still take a very long time to get there, and unfortunately, along the way we will have to fight. The old system is collapsing. We have now entered what I 20 years ago called the “century of wars”. I hope it will not be a full century, but we are facing several decades of warfare.
– You are one of the architects of the so-called “pivot to the East”. But it is obvious that in the long term, China is becoming powerful. In one interview, you said that we need to “carefully manage the risks associated with China”. What does that mean in practice?
– I am proud that in the late 1990s, I began the process of turning to the East together with my colleagues; we put forward the “New Development of Siberia” program. Unfortunately, it did not take off. Nobody was interested in it, even though we involved many interesting people, including Yevgeny Primakov.
Then, in the late 2000s, together with young colleagues, I substantiated the necessity and benefit for Russia of pivoting to the East, primarily for economic reasons. I also kept in mind the fact that the Western track was hopeless. At that time, it was still impossible to speak openly about this, because I was already being accused of being a “Horde adherent” or God knows what.
Now it is entirely obvious that the decline of Europe has already happened. There is nothing for us to gain there; only contagion and war will come from there. Naturally, we need to deter them, to shield ourselves from the contagion, while preserving within ourselves the good that European culture has given us. But the future, of course, lies in the East. We need to recognize ourselves for what we are. We are not a European country. We are originally a Eurasian country, and we have simply forgotten that our external spiritual roots lie in the south: in Byzantium, in Palestine. From there came Islam, from there came Buddhism, and our political culture we inherit from the great Mongol Empire.
Later, there was a powerful European influence, partly useful, but for the last 150 years it has been exclusively harmful. Our European journey should have been ended 130 to 140 years ago. As far as I understand, Alexander III wanted to do just that and began this process. And you know that Slavophilism in Russia was established by the decrees of Nicholas I, who demanded the introduction of everything Russian. That was very difficult, because the entire Russian elite spoke and even thought in French, in a Western manner. Nevertheless, we are now beginning to find ourselves.
We are a great Eurasian power, undoubtedly a northern Eurasian power and the most culturally open country. Incidentally, this great cultural and religious openness, which is the main source of our country’s strength (aside from its territories and armed forces), came to us from the East.
The Mongols did plunder, but they were highly tolerant of religions. Moreover, they supported churches and beliefs. And we have inherited that. When we went to conquer or settle the former lands of the Mongol Empire, i.e. Siberia and to the south, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, we did not suppress their cultures. Therefore, we are destined by history itself to become a model Eurasian power.
As for China, one must understand that China is a vast, great culture and, in the current circumstances, it is not expansionist. On the contrary, long ago, seven centuries ago, they closed themselves off from the entire world, which even caused them some harm. I believe they destroyed their own fleet in the 15th century, which was ten times larger than the European one. But they closed themselves off, and then forgot that one needs to know how to fight, even though they had great commanders and great military traditions.
Then the evil Europeans came, suppressed them, and plunged them into 150 years of insignificance. Now the great Chinese civilization is rising, and if there is no global thermonuclear war, it will become the world’s leading civilization. But we need to know how to work with it and be friends with it, including by building a system of counterbalances. I will not list all the counterbalances that need to be established, but we have put forward (and I had a hand in this) the idea of a Greater Eurasia.
The idea of a Greater Eurasian Partnership is, among other things, the idea of building balanced relations in Eurasia, where the power of China will be counterbalanced by India, Russia, Türkiye, Iran – the great civilizational states.
– When you put forward this idea of a Greater Eurasian Partnership, how did our Chinese friends react to it?
– At first, with some mistrust. But later they accepted it, because they understood that such a balanced system of relations in Eurasia is beneficial to them. No one will be afraid of them, no one will unite against them.
But just in case, we need to create conditions so that under no circumstances does an ultranationalist government come to power in China, one that would embark on a path of expansion and aggression. That is something we must keep in mind.
For now, China is our close friend and partner. Moreover, in the current circumstances, when the West has de facto unleashed a world war (and it has already flared up), we need to think about creating a formal, say, five-year alliance with China in order to stop this revanchism of the West.
We can learn a great deal from the Chinese, for they have created an economic system that is much more effective than anywhere else in the world, based on private initiative but at the same time very tightly managed. This has allowed them to achieve fantastic results. We currently face enormous historical challenges. Among them, we must overcome the capitalism we inherited, the bandwagon of which we jumped on once the train had already started rolling downhill. But that is another enormous historical task. In general, we have quite a few historical tasks at present.
– Mr. Karaganov, we thank you for this most interesting talk!
Interview by Yulia NOVITSKAYA, writer, journalist, and correspondent for New Eastern Outlook
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