On March 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree adopting the nation's updated foreign policy concept which determines Russia as a unique country-civilization which pursues an independent and multi-vector foreign policy driven by its national interests and the awareness of its special responsibility for maintaining peace and security at the global and regional levels.
The updated doctrine emphasizes that Russia intends to defend its right to existence and freedom of development in response to unfriendly actions of the West, while not considering itself to be an enemy of the West and having no hostile intentions with regard to it.
"Russian foreign policy realignment takes into account the Russian intelligence community and foreign policy community's assessment of Russia's enemies near and far," said Professor Joe Siracusa. "It's a realistic recalibration or adjustment to the world that's in front of Russia, a very useful exercise because it incorporates the analysis, threat assessment and the intelligence (…) A couple of weeks ago, the Americans released their Annual Threat Assessment. They identified China as public enemy number one, and Russia as public enemy number two."
Commenting on the newly released concept, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov underscored that the document directly calls the US the main instigator of anti-Russian politics in the world. The document stated that the US and its satellites had proclaimed the aim of weakening Russia in every possible way, including undermining its constructive civilizational role, power, economic and technological capabilities, limiting its sovereignty in foreign and domestic policy, and violating its territorial integrity.
"Lavrov is absolutely correct, he doesn't have to make a case for this one," Siracusa highlighted. "He sees the Americans providing the greatest resistance to Russian national interests today. What is America going to do about it? Not more than it's already doing. It's already engaged in sanctions with Russia, engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine with Russia. America doesn't particularly want to cooperate on various agreements. I wish Moscow and Washington would agree at least to look at renewing nuclear arms control, which is very important. But that's going to have to wait for another day. (…) When I say 'the West', I'm talking about the European Union, NATO and Washington, DC – in other words the leadership, not the majority of the American people. The majority of the American people are not anti-Russian or anti-Chinese. The anti-Russian policy is coming from Washington, DC, from the foreign policy establishment."
The document stresses that Russia is striving towards a system of international relations that would guarantee reliable security, preservation of its cultural and civilizational identity, and equal opportunities for the development of all states.
"They want to change the rules of the road, the norms established by the United States after 1945, when the United States had a preponderance of power, and particularly after 1991 until about 2001, the United States was a unilateral power. Russia would like to come back into the G7, which was the G8 in those days, and get back to the economic table. It's very important for Russia to play a major role in large issues like migration, arms control and particularly climate change. So Russia has an important role to play and America should be looking for common ground. (…) We're moving to a world of great powers or a multipolarity which requires multilateral solutions. In other words, instead of just the Soviet empire and America face to face, they now have to deal with a rising China, a rising India, while the US is in relative decline. (…) If someone like President Trump were elected in 2024, there would be an automatic reset in Russian-American relations, so we can move to a more comfortable arrangement."