{"id":11473,"date":"2022-11-22T14:22:29","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T14:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/2022\/11\/pb-2\/"},"modified":"2024-11-20T22:03:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T19:03:15","slug":"russia-was-not-missed-in-bali-but-it-loomed-large-pavel-k-baev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/2022\/11\/russia-was-not-missed-in-bali-but-it-loomed-large-pavel-k-baev\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia was not Missed in Bali, But It Loomed Large – Pavel K. Baev"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Global governance was\ntested at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on November 15-16 by the urgent\nneed to produce responses to many problems \u2013 from food insecurity to natural\ndisasters caused by climate change \u2013 and the outcome could be marked as\nsatisfactory. Multiple divisions were negotiated by 16 state leaders, three\nforeign ministers, two leaders of the European Union and ten invited guests with\nvarious success, but no embarrassing failures were registered. The most\ndemanding and also the most divisive of the agenda items was the war in\nUkraine, and the joint\nstatement<\/a> asserts that most participants strongly\ncondemned the Russian aggression, while noting that there were \u201cother views\u201d. The\ndissenting views remained unspecified, but they can be deduced from the fact\nthat China voted in the UN General Assembly against the recent\nresolution<\/a> compelling Russia to pay\nreparation to Ukraine (as did 12 other states, and certainly Russia), while Brazil,\nIndia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabi, and South Africa abstained (the\nresolution passed with 94 votes for and 73 abstentions).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Vladimir\nPutin announced his decision\nnot to travel<\/a> to Bali at the last\ndecently possible moment, but facing severe criticism from the majority of the elite\nclub and only lukewarm support from others was never an appealing prospect. Ukraine\u2019s\nPresident Volodymyr Zelensky in his virtual presentation addressed the summit\nas G19, and this deliberate\nslight<\/a> highlights the plain fact that\nRussia is the central part of the war problem, but refuses to indicate any\nreadiness for becoming a part of the solution. Moscow sticks to the absurdly\nmaximalist goals in its discourse on the rationale for the brutal war (which is\nstill officially defined as a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d), and the massive\nmissile strike on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure timed to the summit\nsession devoted to deliberations on bringing the war to an end, proved that bona\nfide peace\nnegotiations<\/a> would become possible\nonly after the Russian leadership would begin to internalize the defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The withdrawal\nfrom Kherson has set a key landmark on the road to this defeat, and Putin was\nunderstandably reluctant to meet his international peers with this heavy setback\nin his luggage. He could have also suspected that leaving Moscow when the shock\nof this pre-determined military disaster was still fresh was rather too risky. It\nwas left to the top brass to explain to the Russian public the necessity of\nthis \u201cdifficult\ndecision<\/a>\u201d, but nobody is in doubt where the\nresponsibility for keeping the Russian grouping that long in the strategic trap\non the west side of the River Dnipro ultimately lays. The obvious idea was\nspelled by Aleksandr Dugin, an ultra-conservative proponent of eschatological Eurasianism,\nwho suggested<\/a>\nthat an autocrat responsible for endangering and failing to protect Russia\u2019s\nterritorial integrity became useless and expendable. Few among the Russian\nelites share Dugin\u2019s vision of an approaching Armageddon, but the series of painful\ndefeats makes it impossible for Putin to trust the loyalty of even the closest\ncourtiers.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither can Putin count\non the \u201cfriendship without limits\u201d, which he has carefully cultivated with\nChinese President Xi Jinping, who is clearly disappointed in Russia\u2019s miscalculated\ndecision to make the war with Ukraine \u2013 and in its failure to bring it to a\nsatisfactory conclusion. The Kremlin has learned that Beijing will provide some\npropaganda-political backing for its war-making, but no material support is\nforthcoming, so the hopes are pinned on the steady or, even better, sharp rise\nof tensions in the China-US competition, so that Russia would become a more\nvaluable ally to its mighty neighbor. The meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden\nin Bali was a hard blow to such hopes, as the two\nleaders agreed<\/a> in the course of three\nhours long conversation to manage the disagreements carefully and avoid\nunnecessary quarrels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s presence\nin the background of this pivotal conversation could have been awkward, but his\nno-show revealed rather than concealed Russia\u2019s irrelevance for most other\nimportant discussions in the G20 format. Food insecurity is a theme of great\nconcern for the Global South, and Russia\u2019s only contribution is to prolong the\n\u201cgrain\ndeal<\/a>\u201d, from which Putin would gladly\nwithdraw because the Ukrainian export of wheat and corn annoy him, but Turkey\nand the UN act as resolute guarantors. Nuclear non-proliferation is another\ntopic of concern, and Russia\u2019s expanding military ties with Iran seriously\naggravate the problems pertaining to Tehran\u2019s nuclear program. Overall,\nMoscow\u2019s pronounced course on dismantling the world order, decried as unfair\nand neo-colonial, may find some support in various radical political fringes,\nbut cannot answer aspirations of responsible stake-holders. World order is\nconstantly evolving under pressure of various crises, and at this G20 summit it\nwas reinforced against the challenge of violent disorder unleashed by Putin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pavel K. Baev, Dr., Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Pavel K. Baev is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is also Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution (Washington D.C.), Senior Associate Researcher at the Institut Fran\u00e7ais des Relations Internationales(IFRI, Paris), and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI, Milan). His research interests include the transformation of the Russian military, the energy and security dimensions of the Russian-European relations, Russia\u2019s Arctic policy, Russia-China partnership, post-Soviet conflict management in the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin, and Russia\u2019s Middle East policy, which is supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. He writes a weekly column in Eurasia Daily Monitor<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To cite this work:<\/strong> Pavel K. Baev, \u201cRussia was not missed in Bali, but it loomed large\u00a0\u201d, Panorama<\/em>, Online, 22 November 2022, https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/blog\/2022\/11\/22\/pb-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copyright@UIKPanorama.<\/em> All on-line and print rights reserved. Opinions expressed in works published by the Panorama<\/em> belongs to the authors alone unless otherwise stated, and do not imply endorsement by the IRCT, Global Academy, or the Editors\/Editorial Board of Panorama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global governance was tested at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on November 15-16 by the urgent need to produce responses to many problems \u2013 from food insecurity to natural disasters caused by climate change \u2013 and the outcome could be marked as satisfactory. Multiple divisions were negotiated by 16 state leaders, three foreign ministers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":9703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[512,486,507],"tags":[607,656,706,760,621,644],"class_list":["post-11473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crisis-in-ukraine","category-opinion","category-russia","tag-bali","tag-english","tag-g20-en","tag-putin-en","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}