Page 44 - bneMag bne_December 2020_20201201

44 I Southeast Europe bne December 2020
Maia Sandu won a convincing victory in Moldova's presidential election.
Multi-vector foreign policies
After almost 30 years of independence, most of the ex-Soviet states have already gone in their own directions, leaving only a core of five formal allies and partners, not including Moldova but comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, writes Trenin. “Moreover, since gaining independence from Moscow, all of Russia’s nominal allies have been pursuing what they proudly call multi- vector foreign policies,” he says.
Perhaps the best example of a state that has actively and successfully pursued a multi-vector foreign policy is Kazakhstan, which has maintained its independence from its two big neighbours Russia and China while establishing thriving diplomatic trade and investment relations with both.
As a geographically large, sparsely populated country full of desirable natural resources, this was initially
a matter of survival. But as time went on, Kazakhstan also reached out to further flung countries including the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, India, Turkey, the UAE and others, allowing it to build new trading relations and punch above its weight diplomatically.
“While multivectorism was a strategy of necessity in its early years, it has evolved to empower Kazakhstan to effectively protect its independence and negotiate its relationship with the great powers on its borders and further afield,” says a paper on the issue, "Between the bear and the dragon: multivectorism in Kazakhstan as a model strategy for secondary powers", published earlier this year.
Its authors say Kazakhstan has gone beyond "trying to ‘hedge its bets and avoid choosing alliances. Instead, Kazakhstan has a strategic preference for ‘enmeshing’ Great Powers in complex exchanges and positive-sum relations with the region through building regional institutions and pursuing multilateral approaches. Moreover, these ties with the Great Powers are not clientelistic in nature.”
Like Kazakhstan’s recently retired president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who
No longer Russia’s backyard
It is now almost three decades since the breakup of the Soviet Union, of which Moldova was a small part, and Russia’s attitude towards the former Soviet states is evolving. In a comment for bne IntelliNews, “Moscow’s New Rules”, Dimitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center argues that the change – often overlooked by commentators who
see an aggressive Kremlin looking to create “new Crimeas” – is demonstrated by Russia’s response to the crises in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Nagorno- Karabakh that all erupted in the second half of this year.
“Russia is learning to mind its limitations; to repel residual nostalgia; and to think straight, putting issues before personalities, and staying focused on its own interests, leaving the empire farther and farther behind,” writes Trenin.
This has certainly not always been the case in Moldova, where Natalia Otel Belan, regional director for Europe and Eurasia at the Center for International Private Enterprise, points to “Russia’s constant meddling” over the last three decades. “Since the beginning, Russia had influenced the country in many ways, primarily by creating ‘crises’
that it would then step in to ‘solve’,”
she tells bne IntelliNews. “The most significant example is the long-standing Transnistria conflict. Russia used the conflict to constantly put Moldova’s
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sovereignty under question and extend its influence on Moldova’s state institutions, legislation and economy, resulting in a generally weak state.
“Over the years, Russia used its influence over Moldova as leverage to advance its own interests in the wider region, including in negotiations with the West on other issues, not always related to Moldova,” Belan adds.
She does, however, point out that “there have been signals of a so-called potential geo-political consensus regarding Moldova among Moscow, Brussels and Washington”, that first appeared with the change of regime in June 2019, when Sandu and Dodon briefly joined forces to oust politician and businessman Vlad Plahotnuic, who had managed to capture most
of Moldova’s key institutions.
After the latest election, Russia was surprisingly quick to accept the defeat of its preferred candidate. President Vladimir Putin, who had not yet congratulated US president-elect
Joe Biden on his victory earlier in November, sent a cordial though not effusive telegram to Sandu. “I hope that your activity as the head of state will contribute to the constructive development of relations between our countries. This would undoubtedly meet the fundamental interests of the peoples of Russia and Moldova,” the message read.