Exit the Cold War, make way for “Hybrid War”. Russia adopted on Friday, March 31, a new foreign policy doctrine designating the West as an “existential threat”, whose “dominance” Moscow must fight. The adoption of this new strategy confirms the deep rupture that has existed between Russia and Western countries since the beginning of the assault on Ukraine, which led NATO to consolidate and Moscow to turn to China.
In a document of more than forty pages recalling by its content and its language the era of confrontation between the Soviet Union and America in the last century, Russia poses as a bulwark of the Russian-speaking world against Westerners accused of wanting “weaken by all means”.
During a meeting of his National Security Council, President Vladimir Putin justified these changes by the “upheavals on the international scene” which oblige Russia to “adapt its strategic planning documents”. The new doctrine notes “the existential nature of the threats (…) created by the actions of unfriendly countries” and designates the United States as “the main instigator and conductor of the anti-Russian line”, summarized the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, adding:
“Generally, the West’s policy of weakening Russia by any means is characterized as a new kind of Hybrid War. »
Foreign policy doctrine defines the priorities that countries give themselves in international affairs, and analyzes the way in which the States in question perceive their relations with the world. In this case, the new document, which replaces a version dating from 2016, was published on the Kremlin website and goes straight to the point. It is written :
“Russia intends to give priority attention to eliminating the remnants of the dominance of the United States and other hostile states in world affairs. »
Closer relationship with Asia
Washington and its allies have implemented heavy economic sanctions against Moscow, which accuses them in return of waging a proxy war in Ukraine, by delivering arms to kyiv. In this context of isolation in the West, Russia seeks to draw closer economically and diplomatically to Asia, in particular China, a vital priority which is reflected in the new doctrine.
“The overall deepening of ties and coordination with friendly global centers of sovereign power and development located on the Eurasian continent is of particular importance,” the document reads, in the chapter on China and the United States. ‘India.
Mr Putin had displayed his complicity with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in Moscow earlier in March, touting the “special nature” of relations between their countries, which nonetheless seem increasingly skewed in favor of Beijing. so much the dependence of Moscow grows. The new Russian doctrine also gives an important place to relations with African countries, while Moscow is strengthening its presence in Africa, in particular through the Wagner Group.
Echoing the conflict in Ukraine where Moscow claims to want to prevent abuses against Russian-speaking populations, the new document presents Russia as a “civilization” rallying the peoples who constitute “the Russian world”.
While Mr. Putin presents himself as the champion of the “traditional values” of the Orthodox Church in the face of a West presented as decadent, the new doctrine also carries iron in the moral field. It is necessary to “neutralize attempts to impose pseudo-humanist and neoliberal ideological principles, which lead to the loss of traditional spirituality and moral principles”, can we read.
