The APEC Leaders’ Week in Vladivostok is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the Asia-Pacific community the prospects for economic partnership with Russia and how it can be used to promote economic and political security in the region on a multi-polar basis.
Russia holds the chairmanship of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for 2012. Vladivostok is getting ready to host the APEC Leaders’ Week. For us this is both an honorable and a responsible mission. The declaration adopted by the APEC leaders in Honolulu last year reads: “Our region is now in the vanguard of global growth.” As APEC chairman, Russia will do all it can to consolidate these leading positions for the region.
Russia’s strategic aims in the Asia-Pacific Region are threefold: to protect national interests and security on its eastern borders, to use the economic and political potential of the region to modernize and develop the entire country and, last but not least, to create decent living conditions for its people on the Pacific coast.
Of paramount importance in implementing this strategy is economic cooperation with its regional partners. History shows that joint implementation of long-term economic projects is the best way of building mutual trust and reducing tensions.
Russia gained such experience in its relations with Western Europe in the late 1960s—early 1970s. Now that the Asia-Pacific Region is moving toward the forefront of the global economy and politics, our strategic task should be to raise our political and economic cooperation with the region to the level we previously reached with Europe.
Therefore, Russia’s goal is not just to fly its national flag in the Pacific. The APEC Leaders’ Week in Vladivostok is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the Asia-Pacific community the prospects for economic partnership with Russia and how it can be used to promote economic and political security in the region on a multi-polar basis.
The economic and social upsurge of the Trans-Baikal area and the Far East should become the locomotive of such a partnership. The development of natural resources of this vast territory is bound to influence all civilizational processes in the Asia-Pacific Region and far beyond.
However, this work requires enormous investment, something which Russia is not yet capable of implementing on its own. It could though be done through international cooperation, to be conducted according to Russian law and on the basis of mutual benefit.
Russia is interested in combining the innovative development of its mining, oil, gas and coal industries and the electricity industry in the Trans-Baikal area and the Far East with the modernization of engineering manufacturing, including aircraft engineering, instrument-making, shipbuilding, car production and electronics, the upgrading of the scientific and educational base and high-quality services in order to supply products with high added value to the domestic and foreign markets.
The development of the technological foundation requires substantial investment in the infrastructure, research and development and training. Russia will also have to import advanced technology and equipment in some areas to ensure the rapid modernization of its economy. In turn, the creation of new jobs combined with housing and industrial construction would help Russia improve its demographic status. It would be able to overcome the infrastructure fragmentation of Siberia and the Far East and their economic isolation from the European part of the country which has taken shape over the last two decades. This would consolidate the integration of Russia’s European and Asian parts and, as a result, strengthen its national security, integrity, and political and economic independence.
The interests of Russia’s internal and external security are closely interconnected in the Far East. Russia must strengthen its internal stability in order to resolve its external tasks. In turn, stable domestic development is only possible in the absence of foreign threats and if its relations with its neighbors are good.
Russia has no hidden agenda in the region. It is not interested in forming closed military alliances that would threaten anyone’s security. On the contrary, we want to deepen diverse multilateral economic cooperation with all countries that are prepared to engage with us.
