Vladivostok: new APEC routes

As a country currently presiding in the APEC forum, Russia is expected to ensure uninterrupted work and comfortable conditions at the forthcoming APEC summit. The Vladivostok summit will be attended by the presidents and prime ministers of 20 states, leaders of 535 world companies, and hundreds of journalists and observers.
Russia is also expected to put forward new proposals to be included in the agenda of the forum. Professor Sergei Luzyanin comments on the initiatives to be voiced at the forum and on how Russia is planning to use APEC’s resources for its own development.

The 24th APEC Summit held under the slogan “Answering Challenges. Expanding Opportunities” will focus on 12 issues to be discussed at plenary sessions, and in the course of special workshops and round table discussions. The integration issue and the so-called “applied” issues will take about 70% of the forum’s time concentrating on the development of high technologies and problems related to currency, infrastructure, logistics, water resources, food security and energy. The participants will also discuss the future of transnational companies and developing markets and consider the cities’ adaptation to business needs.

Unlike previous summits, the agenda of APEC Russia 2012 is free from elevated rhetoric about a single integration space and the benefits of “total liberalization”. Instead, the forum reveals a more “down-to-earth’ agenda addressing urgent issues that large and small nations of the Asia-Pacific region are faced with.

A special session will be dedicated to Russia, titled “Russia in APEC: Towards Equal Partnership”. The Vladivostok forum is thus set to boost the image of Russia as a country holding the rotating presidency of APEC and to provide it with more chances for modernization and development. Implementation of the Russian mega project Siberia and the Far East is serving this very purpose.

Along with domestic initiatives, Russia is expected to come up with a new vision concerning global initiatives. The tacit Russian-American and Chinese-American struggle for the brains and money of Asian neighbors has been present on the sidelines of the APEC forum for years. Moscow and Beijing opposed the American initiative to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership without Russia, China, and other countries which was launched at the Honolulu summit in 2011. Apparently, Russia will have to come up with an alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Vladivostok. Russia’s new initiative will be presented by President Putin.

Experts of the Russian Council on International Affairs have worked out a Eurasian-Pacific ties-building initiative.

This implementation of this initiative should make it possible for Russia and other APEC countries to expand to Eurasia and incorporate the Eurasian space in the area of the APEC forum. Russia will benefit from such an arrangement, both geopolitically, and economically. It will enable Russia to position itself as a key element of liberal cooperation. In addition to establishing transport corridors, including the Trans-Siberian Railway, it will ensure the strengthening of a fledgling common trade space from the Pacific to Europe. Russia’s arguments acquire ever more weight in connection with the country’s accession to the WTO.