Lecture by SIR ANTHONY RUSSELL BRENTON, KCMG

It was Condoleeza Rice who described Russia as ‘a nineteenth-century power in a twenty-first-century world’. Her point was that, in her view, Russia continues, anachronistically, to pursue her own narrowly defined national interest in a world where diplomacy is increasingly about multilateral cooperation and the development of international law. The immediate context of her remarks was the 2008 Georgia war, but a number of other examples might be cited: the cutting off of gas supplies to Ukraine and, in the UK case, the murder of Litvinenko and the enforced closing down of most British Council offices in Russia.  At the multilateral level, Russia is the only major country which is not a member of the WTO, she is the subject of by far the largest number of cases brought for breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, and she has played a strikingly minor role – given her pivotal position on the issue – on global climate change.  To what extent is Rice’s charge accurate?  To what extent is Russia’s behaviour explained by her recent history?  What are the prospects for change?

In HM Diplomatic Service since 1975, with overseas postings in Cairo, Brussels, Washington and Moscow, as well as being a Director of the FCO from 1998-2001, Sir Tony Brenton has substantial experience of Russia.  He served in the British Embassy in Moscow from 1994 to 1998, through Russia’s first-ever democratic Presidential election, the privatization of the economy, the economic collapse, and Russia’s first engagement with the global economic institutions.  He returned as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008, and thus had to deal with the numerous problems of those years, including Litvinenko, the British Council, the energy conflicts and the war with Georgia.  He is supremely well-qualified to offer an insider’s assessment of the truth or otherwise of Rice’s dictum, and how things might develop in the future.

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