One of the key human values is trustworthiness. Without mutual trust, the establishment of strong and stable relationships at any level of society, whether between individuals or social groups and organisations, is impossible. Trust (or the lack thereof) also plays a significant role in international affairs and on the global stage. In relation to world politics, trust can be understood in two ways; in interrelated, but still different dimensions.
One of them is more abstract in nature, and is associated with trust between states as actors in world politics. It can be called abstract because in this case we are engaging in anthropomorphism; the personification of the state, and even its mystification as a single body of the people. This, of course, is an artificial construct, an intellectual and spiritual fiction. But nevertheless, such an approach sometimes becomes very important in the actual practice of international relations and its perception by society. In this respect, issues of historical memory, both recent and sometimes very distant, play a large role in connection with events that are many decades, or even centuries, behind us. This allows for stable stereotypes of perception with regards to a particular state in public opinion.
These stereotypes are often expressed in stable semantic constructions, memes, which are fixed in people’s minds and in one way or another influence political approaches. For example, Russians may recall such proverbial expressions as “treacherous Albion”, “an Englishwoman does shit”, “what is good for a Russian is death for a German”, etc. Sometimes this is reflected in the pejorative nicknames given to other peoples (“Fritzs” for the Germans, “frog eaters” for the French, etc.). In this regard, it becomes clear that when it comes to political decisions in relation to a particular state, then such negative historical and semantic connotations, which undoubtedly undermine trust, can have an impact both on foreign policy decisions themselves and on their perception in society.
Naturally, these stereotypes of mistrust are not eternal, not primordial, and they can be overcome over time if there is a political will. As an example, in the previous, “pre-February 2022” era, at the highest level there was a talk about the historical reconciliation of Russia and Germany after the two world wars. Another example is the political will of Vietnam to restore relations with the United States in recent decades and overcome the traumatic historical memory of the war they fought.
Another aspect of trust in world politics is much more personalised and is directly related to individual psychology. This is a matter of trust between specific heads of state or foreign ministers negotiating with each other. Here, the subjective psychological element of mutual perception between specific individuals also plays a role in decision-making. It is clear that the professionalism of a diplomat requires an abstraction from personal perceptions for the sake of the interests of the task. But on the other hand, it cannot be denied that once mistrust arises between counterparties in diplomatic negotiations, it will continue to have a negative impact on their progress. This is true regardless of whether this mistrust arose for objective reasons (for example, the counterparty did not keep his earlier word) or in connection with the subjective psychological characteristics of the perception of the other.
In this case, the relations of the same states may change as a result of the change of their representatives in negotiations. With one president (or minister), the factor of personal trust contributes to the success of negotiations, while with another leader of the same country, personal distrust undermines this. As an example, Donald Trump’s famous phrase “I had no wars. I’m the only president in 72 years, I didn’t have any wars.” It is clear that there may be some bragging in hindsight. There may also be some reasons for this phrase. In a similar context, one can sometimes come across statements that “under Merkel there would be no war,” and even “under Poroshenko there would be no war.” The argument in favour of this lies precisely in the plane of individualised, personal trust between politicians in one case and its absence in another. It is clear that when we talk about the specifics of the psychological perception of another, trust is not the only thing that plays a role here. But it is closely connected with the factor of personal respect for the other, with the factor of perceiving the other as an equal, as a proverbial “heavyweight”. In any case, this factor of personalized trust, as we see, should not be discounted.
Another important aspect is that trust of any kind, both personal and general, must be mutual. Otherwise, it will constitute an abuse of trust by one side. This would obviously violate the principle of equality in negotiations and may make the final decision less than mutually beneficial. In this case, again, by and large, it does not matter whether there was actually a breach of trust, or whether there was only a subjective psychological perception of the actions of the counterparty as such. It doesn't make it any better anyway. The recent history of Russia can provide, in our opinion, two examples of this. First, they apply to the final results of Mikhail Gorbachev’s negotiations with his Western counterparties. There, quite clearly from our point of view, one could see much greater openness and trust on the one hand than on the other. It was not for nothing that Ronald Reagan then remembered at one of the press conferences with Gorbachev the Russian proverb “Trust, but verify.” Another example, we repeat, in our opinion, is associated with Vladimir Putin’s persistently repeated statement that “we were made fools” at the Minsk negotiations on Ukraine after 2014. As a result, both played their role in subsequent political history.
The issue of a complete loss of mutual trust is especially acute in the context of severe international conflicts between the parties involved. Here trust collapses in every sense, historical-semantic, personal, military-political, and in any other sense. It is naive to expect that it will at least somehow recover in the medium-term, if we take the case of hyper-trust on the one hand and abuse of trust on the other. By this logic, there is no point in expecting a restoration of trust between Russia and the West. It has been lost for a very long time.
Therefore, in the current context, the issue of preserving and strengthening trust between non-Western countries begins to play a key role. If we take, for example, the BRICS countries, then here, on the one hand, in the relations between some of them we can see both the traumas of historical memory and negative semantic stereotypes, which can also undermine trust, if not between politicians, then in a broader sense one society's perception of another. But on the other hand, in the case of BRICS, there is a fairly clearly expressed mutual political will to strengthen trust between member countries, and not to undermine it.
The issue of trust is closely related to the issue of the political consolidation of BRICS, with the development of joint economic, financial and other projects under the auspices of this association. Only in this case, I think, BRICS will be able to move to a qualitatively new stage of its development, from a purely symbolic alternative to the West, issuing beautiful declarations once a year, to the real core of the non-Western world order.
