Moscow Urged to Expand Ties with Micro-States of Oceana

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – Putin’s Russia has a long record of using its ties with the micro-states of Oceana to gain support in various international organizations such as the International Olympic Committee, but now Dmitry Nefyodov is urging the Kremlin to adopt a radically expanded approach to these countries.

            At present, the senior Moscow security analyst says, Russia has focused on China, India and the states of Indochina and East Asia as part of its turn to the east; but it has not made similar efforts with regard to the 20 micro-states of Oceana. For a variety of reasons, that must change (fondsk.ru/news/2023/09/25/rossiya-okeaniya-nerealizovannyy-potencial-vzaimovygodnogo-dialoga.html).

            Oceana includes more than 20 states and foreign possessions of France and New Zealand, “the majority of which officially or de facto have distanced themselves from the anti-Russian sanctions of the collective West, including from the side of these two metropolitan centers.” Moreover, these states are responsible for more than 20 percent of ships flagged for convenience.

            But despite that tilt to Russia, these states aren’t generally included in broader economic cooperation meetings involving Moscow and Asia. That should change, and the best way to do that is to hold a Russia-Oceana economic cooperation meeting and to build a kind of organization that will further break these states away from the West, Nefodov says.

            Given all the tasks Moscow now faces in foreign policy, it is uncertain whether the Kremlin will heed the commentator or not. But the fact that this idea is being promoted suggests that the Russian government will take some steps in this direction, possibly on the assumption that any such moves will be ignored by the West.