RUSSIA AND THE WTO

If I am permitted to keep quoting from myself again and again, here is yet another such quote. "The higher strategy in a game is not so much about winning, as about being able to use your opponent’s possible win to your advantage." It comes from the entry Playing The Game Of Lose To Win in the Lady section.

The current negotiations about Russia’s entry into the WTO are no less demonstrative of the Russian skill in playing the lose to win game than any other example from history, shown in the larger entry. On the basis of my lifetime professional experience, I can testify to the fact that it is by no means in Russia’s interest to join the WTO. It is much more profitable to stay outside that organization’s web of restraints, while concluding all sorts of highly advantageous separate agreements with other nations that cannot do without Russia and have to accept her terms “in the parking lot,” where Russia is the king. All she needs is just an excuse not to join the WTO. It is therefore rather pathetic how in the US-Russian WTO negotiations the United States is so desperately trying to win that same game, which the Russians have all along been bent on losing!