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Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an eloquent speech at the UN General Assembly, he could have posed on stage as a head of state, he tried, but a more modest performance joined in, says political scientist Professor Mark Galeotti.
A speech by a politician at the UN General Assembly provides an opportunity to show how great an artist he is for his profession. Some take on the role of statesmen, others are passionate, but Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the 75-year event is more reminiscent of the behavior of a bankrupt who wants to convince his creditors that all is well for him, wrote Professor Mark Galeotti. , An Eastern European expert in an opinion piece published in the Moscow Times.
In the speech, Putin wanted to present himself and his country as a strong member of the international community, but his words suggest that he is speaking for his weak nation. He based this behavior on the summer when, through the Russian Embassy in Germany, he sent a kind of guide to German historians on how to view World War II in the form of a 9,000-word essay. In this, he transferred the responsibility for the rise of Nazi Germany entirely to the Western powers, forgetting Stalin’s role in enabling warfare.
International system
The interpretation of history is important in the sense that World War II laid the foundations for the current international system, which values Russia above its successor to the Soviet Union in real terms. Putin likes this situation. Of course, if one can reach the territory of a sovereign state, as the Russian leadership did with Crimea, which seceded from Ukraine in a formal referendum in 2014, he will violate that order and fall into the crime of poisoning political opponents, even in other countries, but Putin’s words revealed that he fundamentally considered this world order to be good.
He also spoke of his unwillingness to fundamentally reform the Security Council, of which one of its five permanent members (Power5, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, United States) is his state. It can be noted that the world has changed significantly and diversified during the three-quarters of a century, but Moscow does not support reforms that would affect the veto of P5 in the council. The Moscow Times publicist translates this as saying that the “big five” are very happy to hear from everyone, but they do not renounce their prerogatives.
Putin actually started a special conference at P5, not knowing that Russia has become an outcast in the eyes of the West since the annexation of Crimea, there are sanctions in place against it that could be followed by new ones due to the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny. The case would be that Russia is present in the elite club, which would send a message to the world that it is still a special power that geopolitics matters and everyone is debating those issues, but few decide.
Between two molars
Putin is particularly upset that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was left alone on the world stage as a superpower, but that does not mean that he did not realize that with the rise of China in recent years, the world has become become bipolar again. The Russian president did not mention China, but his speechwriters were felt to be thinking about it. Beijing is both an ally of the Russians in the West and a challenger to global political influence. Moscow definitely wants to prevent Russia from moving between the two giants.
One of his ideas to counteract the decline in Russian influence is the concept formulated in 2016 to create the Eurasian Association, an integration of integrations that would extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the continent and would be open to all Asian and European countries. . In words, it would be a pragmatic international organization organized for trade cooperation, but it is clear that simply breaking down the borders would increase the influence of bigger and stronger countries.
conclusion
How then can we summarize Putin’s speech? He came out in favor of maintaining P5’s status as a permanent member of the Security Council. He pretended that Putin’s power politics was not a problem for many countries in the world, but that Russia was simply a peaceful partner for most of the world’s states. He sought solutions to prevent his country from being trapped by the confrontations between the United States and China.
The writer of the Moscow Times article does not know how conscious or unconscious he was, but Putin’s speech to the UN General Assembly was revealing. While he viewed Russia as a world leader, from vaccine research to cyber warfare weapons control, it was in fact simply an attempt to defend the authority of his declining nation before world public opinion.
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