Byzantine Blog

Time to End the Era of Dictates and Force

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that the time has come to stop imposing solutions, since no regional problem, be it Kosovo, Iran or Sudan, can be resolved by force.

“It is time to make a decisive break with a past in which ideology split and divided the world. It is time to abandon the policy of dictates and the concept of superpowers. Unfortunately, practice shows us that these past attitudes still linger on today,” Putin told a luncheon he hosted for the diplomatic corps in Moscow four days ahead of the parliamentary elections in Russia.

“We cannot forge ahead until we agree on new and clear rules and principles for cooperation in international affairs, universal principles that are accepted and recognised by all. But if we are to achieve this we first need honest debate and direct dialogue. Without this we will not succeed in developing meaningful and realistic solutions to the urgent issues facing the world in this era of globalisation. It was precisely this kind of discussion that I called for when I spoke at the Munich conference in February,” said Putin.

Strengthen the Legal Dimension in International Relations

“Russia wants to strengthen the collective and legal dimension in international relations. I am convinced that there is not a single regional problem in the world today that can be resolved using force, using the sword, to speak figuratively, whether it be Kosovo, Iran, Sudan or any of the other problems we see in the world around us,” Putin said, adding that the “international missions can succeed only if the emphasis is not on military force but on other modern factors that influence global processes.”

What’s Good for the Goose...

Among other issues, Russian president also noted the phenomenon developed during the past few decades, of a flood of western-financed non-governmental organizations religiously policing the eastern European governments and expressed hope that eastern democracies will be afforded the same luxury in the West:

“We hope that our NGOs will be able to work in North America, in the United States and in other countries in as comfortable an environment as that which we provide for their counterparts working in Russia.”

The luncheon in the Kremlin for all foreign ambassadors to Moscow was the first in modern Russian diplomatic history and it could become a tradition, the Kremlin administration indicated.