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A Former Superpower Coming Out of Hibernation: Today’s Russia in World Politics
Abstract
Today’s Russian Federation is the legitimate successor to the former Soviet Union. The breakup of the latter, almost two years
after the end of the Cold War following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Warsaw Pact, did not drag the
former into disintegration or demise. Despite the withdrawal from territories that had been under Soviet rule in the ‘near
abroad’ and around the Soviet flag worldwide, and despite the Chechen secessionist movement, Moscow remained the glorious
capital of a Russia that, while profoundly wounded in its greatness and international prestige, was nevertheless territorially
united and nationally sovereign.
... The As for politics, both are authoritarian systems, in which the authority of decision making is on the hands of a small ruling elite, uncontrolled by free elections, autonomous legislative structures or 18 The term "frozen conflict" suggests a situation in which active battles have ceased or retreated, but there is no peace treaty other besides a thin ceasefire (Puddington 2017 :48). 19 The decade of impoverishment and disorder that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union was the source of humiliation and resentment particularly to the extent that these calamities can be blamed as erroneous or deliberately failing advice by the western experts. Moscow"s incapability of preventing due east expansion of NATO and the European Union, the role of the West in inciting Colour Revolutions and then the severe sanctions with the annexation of Crimea are added to the "offences" against the former superpower (Friedberg 2017:33). ...
The tectonic shifts in global economy, the emergence of the Internet, the refugee crisis have all contributed to the fuelling of populist labyrinths that reinforce authoritarian leaders. This raises the question of whether authoritarianism is viable in a post-modern world, with the emergence of authoritarianism in China and Russia. China is emerging as a new economic model: authoritarian modernization, state capitalism or socialism with Chinese features as an alternative to western liberal democracy. The Russian-like state monopolist capitalism , sovereign democracy and Eurasianism dominate the imperial power with the Soviet past. If rivalries eventually culminate in a war of the Great Powers is perhaps the key issue of 21st century geopolitics, highlighting a battle of beliefs and values.
This essay aims to analyse and interpret the EU–Russia approach in the energy sector under the prism of interdependence. It seeks to account for both the increasing cooperation among EU member-states and Russia as far as security of supplies is concerned, but also provides a sound explanation for the steady clashes between the two sides. For this reason, we use the terms sensitivity and vulnerability to refer to the position that each side holds on bilateral energy matters and, accordingly, to the actions it is capable of taking to resolve its problems. This model of interdependence provides a profound understanding of the bifurcated relationship between the EU and Russia and interprets both its cooperative and conflictive elements.
Globalisation's advent is based on the dominant role of liberalism in the development and organisation of the world system. In both economic and political realms, liberal values and theories guide the process of globalisation. Today's neoliberal form of globalisation, however, is under attack nowadays. While attention is usually directed to anti-globalisation movements, this article examines Russia's re-emergence in the global system and her impact on globalisation. It argues that, politically and economically, Russia acts principally as an ‘anti-globalising’ force. She rejects western style capitalism, and retains a strong role for the state in economic activities. She fights against US supremacy and works for the establishment of a multi-polar global system. In this attempt, Russia aims to establish a Russian-led regional zone in her near abroad, thus fortifying regional tendencies and countering globalising trends.
Russia's experience of financial crisis has been novel: crisis was followed by growth rather than depression, and did not lead to any increased role for foreign economic agencies or actors in Russia's economy. This novel experience resulted from the structure of Russia's economy in the 1990s, the limited role of financial intermediation in the Russian economy and rising oil prices. Consequently, the chief outcome of crisis has been political, the renewal of central political authority and a reining in of major economic interests. This has helped to solve the problem of state finances, which was the source of the 1998 crisis, but neither economic growth nor increased central political authority have managed to deal with the problem of capital deficiency in Russia so that it remains dependent on energy exports to continue growing. Potentially, this leaves Russia exposed to ‘resource curse’ problems. While these have been avoided so far, the absence of constraints on political leaders might lead to such problems in the future.
If an emerging Sino-Russian energy nexus becomes sufficiently robust, there could be profound geopolitical consequences, including most significantly the consolidation of a bipolar order (China versus the United States) in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan's competing pipeline initiative suddenly appeared to become the front-runner in 2004, partly as a consequence of the Kremlin campaign against Yukos. Nevertheless, Russia's current plan represents a cautious strategy to preserve its flexibility and delay the difficult decision. The West should vigorously campaign for a route that reaches the shores of the Pacific, in order to enhance multipolarity in the Asia-Pacific region.
President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy can be characterized as a ‘new realism’, repudiating some of the exaggerated ambitions of Yevgeny Primakov's tenure as foreign minister in the late 1990s while asserting Russia's distinctive identity in world politics. Rather than acting as a classic ‘balancing’ power prescribed by classic realist theory as the response to the hegemonic power of a single state, Russia under Putin tended to ‘bandwagon’ and the country has been a vigorous ‘joiner’. Putin insisted that Russia retains its ‘autonomy’ in international politics while moving away from earlier ideas that Russia could constitute the kernel of an alternative power bloc. However, the opportunity to integrate Russia into the hegemonic international order may have been missed because of what is seen in Moscow as the resolute hostility of groups in the West who continue to pursue Cold War aims of isolating and containing Russia. The Cold War was transcended in an asymmetrical manner, and this has given rise to four major failures: political, strategic, intellectual and cultural. The world faces the danger of the onset of a new era of great power bloc politics, thus restoring a Cold War structure to the international system. With none of the major strategic issues facing the international community at the end of the Cold War yet resolved, we may be facing a new twenty years’ crisis.
This book describes the strategies used by President Putin from 2000 onwards to recreate 'Greater Russia', that is a Russia that controls most of the territory of the former Soviet Union. It shows the subtlety of the means of control, often through creating economic dependencies in the 'near abroad', including exploiting energy dependency, through prolonging other political and military dependencies, and sometimes through traditional 'power politics'. Bertil Nygren argues that after seven years in power the results of this strategy are beginning to show, providing comprehensive coverage of Russia's relations to the former Soviet territories of the CIS countries, including Ukraine and Putin's role in the events surrounding the 'Orange Revolution', Belarus and the attempts to form a union, the Caucasus and Russia's role in the various conflicts, Moldova, including the Transdniester conflict, and Central Asia. This is an important subject for Russian studies experts and international relations scholars in general.
Russia's era of romantic democracy is over. Boris Yeltsin's victory in the 1996 elections marked the rise of a new class of oligarchs who have profited from post-Cold War chaos. But Westerners who predict a return to authoritarianism and cultural stagnation overlook how far Russia has come since the late 1980s, and how it has opened to the world. It is not the Soviet Union, nor the land of the czars. In the short term, most Russians cannot hope for much, especially from their leaders. But with its political reforms, 98 percent privatized economy, and educated, urban population, Russia has a great deal going for it--maybe more than China.
The policies of President Vladimir Putin have undermined Russia's fledging democratic institutions but have also failed to generate any sort of coherent authoritarianism to take their place. Thus, fifteen years after the collapse of the USSR, the country still lacks any consensus about its basic principles of state legitimacy. To explain this, we must understand the ways in which the Soviet Union's institutional legacies have short-circuited all three historically effective types of legitimate rule—traditional, rational-legal, and charismatic— resulting in a highly corrupt state that still cannot fully control its borders, monopolize the legal means of violence, or clearly articulate its role in the contemporary world. If energy prices drop suddenly, leadership transition problems prove unmanageable, and/or economic inequalities provoke more widespread and sustained public protest, the growing mood of resentful nationalism could transform Russia from an unsteady and distrusted “strategic partner” of the West into something far more hostile.
This article examines the reasons behind Russia's decision to go to war with Georgia in August 2008. It evaluates the key potential drivers of Russian policy relating to structural, domestic and perceptual factors. We find that initial responses to the war, which focused on Russia as the aggressor and raised the specter of a new ‘Cold War’, are overly simplistic. The wider Eurasian region is of critical strategic importance to decision-makers in Moscow, something we find has been overlooked or underestimated in many assessments of the war. By the same token, the idea of a new Cold War conflates the structural condition of bipolarity with the much more complex and fluid contemporary regional security order. We demonstrate that it is necessary to gain a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the roots of Russian foreign policy in order to better construct more durable and cooperative relations between Russia and the West. Here we argue that existing multilateral security institutions do not provide an effective mechanism to achieve this objective. We then offer suggestions for a new security framework for Eurasia, which would prevent a repeat of the Russia–Georgia war and the resulting deterioration in Russia's relations with the West.
Lacking the superpower status and global reach of the former Soviet Union, Russia is striving to tailor its power-status aspirations to the constraints and imperatives thrown up by the new international system and its domestic politics. The article sheds light on Russia’s great power possibilities by examining the strategic alternatives through which it would be able to play its part in world politics. The argument set forth here is that putting on the role of a reliable strategic partner in global leadership with the EU is the most effective strategy for it to have a determining say in international affairs.
Increasingly, Central Asia, and specifically the Caspian Sea Basin (CSB), is becoming a crowded place, as government officials and oil interests from European Union countries, the United States, Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere (including increasingly energy-thirsty India) vie for partnerships with the energy-rich former Soviet republics. Russia lays special claim to what it sees as its "near abroad" (notably, the Caucasus and Central Asia), and its leaders strive to limit US influence over the energy resources of the CSB. China, a global economic power still in ascension, not only works with Russia to counter US influence in the area but also seeks to develop and import more of the region's energy resources to fuel its economic expansion. Both China and Russia aim to curb rising Islamic influence in the region. This essay examines the interests and policies in the CSB of Russia and China, respectively, since the end of the Cold War and their bilateral relationship. While the two countries enjoy a strategic partnership that serves to counter the United States economically, politically, and militarily, lingering mistrust and divergent policy interests could work to limit the extent of this relationship between these two giants of the non-Western world.
The EU is internally divided on a range of topics. Hence there is still no European strategy to deal with a strong and determined Russia that uses control of energy supplies, transportation, and distribution to reestablish itself as a major world power.
Understandings of Russian energy diplomacy often focus on its position as an ‘energy superpower’ that uses its resources as a political tool in international affairs. This article examines and questions this ‘superpower’ status, particularly noting gas shortages. The article also suggests that Russian energy diplomacy is flawed by a lack of a coherent, consensus‐based strategy for achieving this ‘superpower’ status. Moreover, it suggests that in Russia’s case, weakness goes together with strength and obliges Russia to be cooperative in its foreign relationships. Nonetheless, Russian energy diplomacy in the last two years has been marked by failure.
Having left office, the legacy of Putin will be examined in a multitude of different ways and from a variety of contrasting positions. The approach suggested here is that Putin can be seen as a leader who embarked upon a series of Caesarist strategies in order to create a stable and distinct sociological base for the post-communist Russian state. Its success can be assessed by whether Putin managed to appear as a ‘strong prince’ and/or succeeded in harmonising Russian civil and political society towards a hegemonic state, or whether he ultimately failed to solve the problems of instability that were left by his predecessor.
Russia's military incursion into Georgia in August 2008 and formal recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia raise fundamental questions about Russian regional policy, strategic objectives and attitudes to the use of armed force. The spectacle of maneouvre warfare on the periphery of Europe could form a watershed in post-Cold War Russian relations with its neighbourhood and the wider international community. The speed and scale with which Russia's initial ‘defensive’ intervention to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’ led to a broad occupation of many Georgian regions focuses attention on the motivations behind Russian military preparations for war and the political gains Moscow expected from such a broad offensive. Russia has failed to advance a convincing legal case for its operations and its ‘peace operations’ discourse has been essentially rhetorical. Some Russian goals may be inferred: the creation of military protectorates in South Ossetia and Abkhazia; inducing Georgian compliance, especially to block its path towards NATO; and creating a climate of uncertainty over energy routes in the South Caucasus. Moscow's warning that it will defend its ‘citizens’ (nationals) at all costs broadens the scope of concerns to Russia's other neighbour states, especially Ukraine. Yet an overreaction to alarmist scenarios of a new era of coercive diplomacy may only encourage Russian insistence that its status, that of an aspirant global power, be respected. This will continue to be fuelled by internal political and psychological considerations in Russia. Careful attention will need to be given to the role Russia attributes to military power in pursuing its revisionist stance in the international system.
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