Russian Foreign Minister pulls Foreign Affairs article

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has decided to pull an article from the next issue of the US-published Foreign Affairs journal.

“As a result of the excruciating and sluggish exchanges with the editors, the likes of which could only be found in diplomatic history, it was decided to give up trying to place Sergey Lavrov’s article in Foreign Affairs,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman. 

Apparently, they were arguing over whether to include a sub-heading.  Foreign Affairs wanted to include one that implied that referred to the possibility of a new Cold War.  Lavrov didn’t. 

There’s a good overview of the spat at the New York Times (it’ll probably go behind a firewall soon, so read it quick), although Russophile rightly takes the NYT to task for some biased reporting towards the end of their ‘article’.  Foreign Affairs themselves have published their own take on the story on their website.

Anyway, following the spat, the Russian Foreign Ministry decided to publish Lavrov’s “Containing Russia: Back to the Future” article on their website.

I’ve just read it and, to be honest, it’s a bit dull.  I’d have been disappointed if I paid for Foreign Affairs only to find this bland restatement of Russia’s position on International Politics.

Essentially, it restates Russia’s belief in the Westphalians system of international sovereignty, it’s belief in a system of international rules, that the US pursuit of an ideological crusade for democracy is destabilising, that it’s only natural that a country should take advantage of its competitive advantages (ie. in Russia’s case, energy) in the international marketplace, and that if we all work together we can solve all the world’s problems.