- How did globalization influence the security sphere and especially what did it mean for the conflicts?

 

- The concept of globalization in itself connotes a certain level of constraint or handover of the state sovereignty, which has been consecrated in the modern nation-state system. When we examine this concept in terms of leadership or management capability for globalization, however, it should be considered who or what forces are taking the lead of the 21st global changes. Few would deny that the current globalization means a proliferation of the values and worldviews of the pan-Atlantic power led by the United States and West European countries.

Although it has been claimed, since the formation of UN as the representative for the international community, that every local conflicts are to be resolved first at local level, a kind of interventionism, in which the international community intervenes in the local conflicts, has been also approved when the conflicts fail to be settled peacefully at local level and their aftermaths are likely to endanger the public interests of the international community severely.

Even under this basic hands-off principle of the UN, the processes of resolving the local conflicts are always uneven and its rules are often broken easily. We can find a representative case of this situation in the Kosovo conflicts. It was evident that the so-called international will or intention was reflecting to a certain extent the will or intention of the pan-Atlantic powers. In other words, the solutions conducted by the 'international will' were not always approvable and supportable from the standpoints of Russia and China.

So I think this kind of problems will continue. In this situation, I would argue, the international community should help first local conflicts to be settled at the local level. Even in some inevitable cases that the conflicts and wars nonetheless continue or spread out, the international community should make coherent the basic principles for conflict resolution and the conditions for justifying its intervention.

 

- What are the major security interests of the Asia-Pacific region? Are they different from the top list of the West?

 

- The differences in the security interests between the West and the Asia-Pacific countries, I think, are unavoidable due to the existing gaps in the state and industrial development, in democratic political maturity, and in perceptions on universal human rights of living such as ecology and environment.

While the security interests of the West are largely focused on threats of terror resulting from religious or ethnic conflicts, threats from proliferation of WMD, and climate change caused by global warming, the priority of the Asia-Pacific countries is mainly given to such issues as each country's domestic stability, settlement of ethnic conflicts, state and social integration, economic security, and peaceful settlement of North Korean nuclear problems etc.

It is true that this disparity of priority in security interests has caused the differences and conflicts between the West and the Asia-Pacific countries on various international issues. In this situation, therefore, the roles of such international organizations for multilateral cooperation as ASEM and APEC become crucial because they are consultative bodies in which the Asian countries and the Western powers can be getting together to solve those global problems. These organizations should keep their efforts to share the international agendas and to find out their solutions.

 

- Do you think the international community should pay more attention to the North Korean issue? What it is not a top priority for the international community tpday?

 

- The North Korean nuclear crisis, the biggest challenge among the issues related to North Korea, has drawn a lot of attentions and concerns of the superpowers like the Western countries, Russia and China, since it appeared as a major target of international control by the WMD nonproliferation regime in the early 90s. Nevertheless this issue continues without settlement so far and the Six-Party Talks has reached a deadlock in the recent years.

I would argue that the international community should make more systematic and active efforts to find a solution not only to the North Korea's nuclear crisis but also to her vigorous missile development, economic difficulties, food shortage, and human right issues.

Despite their gravity, why the North Korean issues have not been regarded as a top priority and imminent task of the international community? It is due to Korea's geographical conditions; since it is located quite far from the West, the issues related to North Korea have got less attention than the various problems from the Middle East, Caucasus, and Africa.

Also it is due to the geopolitical position of the Korean Peninsula, which has made collisions between land and sea powers inevitable. As the history proves, the problem of the Korean Peninsula can’t but develop into an international problem. Around the Korean Peninsula, in other words, there is a 'structure of power relations' in which the West represented by the United States and the EU can’t carry through their interests unilaterally in the name of international community.

As the international community recognized that its resources and efforts invested for the North Korean problems hardly resulted in its expected outputs, the North Korean issues began to attract less attention of the Western countries. This fact has been proven in the process to settle the North Korean nuclear issues and the cases of conflicts between North and South Koreas.

 

- How can Russia contribute to the making of a safer world?

 

- I think that Russia has both capacity and moral responsibility to keep the stability first in the former Soviet bloc. Every independent countries in this region, except the three Baltic countries, has been in a very challenging situation, in which it has to build a nation state, establish democratic market economy in a short period of time, and settle its national and regional security problem all at once. Accordingly Russia, the lawful successor of the Soviet Union and the most powerful country with relatively stable statehood in this region, should take a moral responsibility to make contributions to the stability and security of those former Soviet countries.

As possible contributions of Russia, first of all, I would say securing border stability in the former Soviet region. I think that Russia can play a significant role in blocking off border-crossing of extremism and illegal drugs from unstable Afghanistan to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. This would not only secure the territorial and social stability of these countries but also be linked directly with the security of South Russia and the Europe.

Also Russia can make contributions to peaceful settlement of territorial disputes between these countries and ethnic conflicts within a country. In order to find a peaceful way out of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan had a meeting in Kazan under the mediation of the Russian president Medvedev. Although this meeting failed to reach an agreement, this case has an important historical and political meaning that Russia, as the superpower in this region as well as the successor of the former Soviet Union, played a certain role of mediation in order to resolve the almost 20 year long ethnic and territorial conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

 

By Yulia Netesova

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