Umstrittene Schweizer Sicherheitspolitik ... - ETH Zürich

Orlov Vladimir A.:
Vladimir A. Orlov
1. Being a researcher, I should be accurate and stick to the principle of
“never say never”. However, I think that the probability of Europe
returning to Cold War is close to zero. Our choice is one between
a cooperative approach – more openness in easy issues such as visa
issues or in more complex issues such as fighting infectious diseases
and information warfare – and Cold Peace, that is each of us doing
basically the same thing but doing it in his own quarters. So far,
we have rather a cooperative approach than Cold Peace.
2. Answering the second question allows me to expand on the first
one: though it is not nice to see banks fall, it must be said that the
present economic crisis provides, as all crises do, opportunities –
to banks and, more important, to whole societies, to nations. It
provides a number of opportunities to Russia. For one thing, it is a
reality check. It helps stop spoiling consumerism in major Russian
metropolises which have been inflated as a result of high oil prices.
You may have expected me to complain about low oil prices, but in
fact I am happy about low oil prices because they bring things a bit
closer to normalcy. Low oil prices will make sure that my country
invests more in high technologies. For we not only know how to
extract oil; we also have a number of educated people, which allows
us to invest in nano technology. We do invest in such things, but
we do it slowly. The crisis will help us do it faster; the crisis should
destroy bureaucratic elements which prevented us from doing so.
The strongest resisting element is corruption. So, I’m concerned
about the fact that there could still be corruption mechanisms at
work.
Social unrest, by contrast, is not in my list of concerns. Of course,
people in Hungary, Latvia, Ireland, Iceland, and other parts of
Europe are unhappy as they are losing their jobs and their money.
The same happens in my country. However, people in Russia are
less depending on stocks than people in Switzerland and in the
US are. They are in fact better prepared to meet hardship because
they have had to endure hardship since the 1990s. In that sense,
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