Russia and the West: taking the longer view

estudos internacionais, 2024

The Russian launching of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine in February 2022 brought Russia back to the agenda of international politics. Due to the unprecedented nature of what was instantly called a "full scale invasion" or a "war of aggression" by NATO allies, the irrelevance conferred to Russia in the last decades gave place to a prominent role in world affairs. Like it or not, it seems that Russia's continental size, abundant wealth in natural resources, military prowess and long history as a diplomatic broker are once again making the headlines of mainstream media and filling the pages of specialized journals worldwide. This is the context of this special issue of Estudos Internacionais. After the end of the USSR, President Boris Yeltsin and his minister of foreign affairs, Andrei Kozyrev, strove to assure the international society that Russia had a western lineage. All in all, Russia adopted human rights discourse, defended the advantages of multilateralism, and reassured members of the "global community" that free markets were needed to guarantee political freedom. The leaders even affirmed that the communist period was a gap in the Soviet countries' history of learning with the West. Nonetheless, in spite of these efforts, Russia's conciliatory discourse was not recognized by the West. The Western State's lack of political will to solve Russia's economic problems and continuing worries about the country's military revival ensured that the self-image Russia was trying to sell about herself was not convincing. The consequent lack of support for Russia's leaders resulted in social animosity against the West. Neocommunists and ultranationalists, both political groups with clear

Pakistan Horizon, 2022

Russia has re-emerged as an important global actor after the demise of the Soviet Union with a transformed foreign policy under the leadership of Vladimir Putin who does not believe in restricting Russia to a sphere of privileged interests in its immediate periphery and is refusing to accept the post-Cold War security order in Europe. Russian foreign policy has been building up to its present expansive stage for over two decades as a continuity of its history, geopolitical position and trends of the Soviet era which have withstood the test of time. The US and the West's refusal to accept Russia as a competitor in global affairs has turned into a systematic challenge to the primacy that the US and EU have enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. Russia, despite the prevalent economic challenges will continue to position itself as an independent centre of power on the world stage towards the development of a multipolar world, possibly even in the post-Putin era. This paper focuses on Russian history, foreign policy, leadership and its perceived uneasy relations with the West in the above-mentioned perspective and was written before the Ukraine war.

South African Journal of International Affai, 2015

Russia-from a somewhat dysfunctional state in the first decade after the end of the Soviet Union to a more stable and centralized government with a desire and the capabilities to reclaim its status as a great power in world politics. Grounded in historical context and geopolitical realties, current Russian foreign policy can be characterized in Realist terms with the state asserting its interests vis-à-vis other great powers. Mariya Omelicheva also argues, however, that a constructivist focus on Russia's struggle with its self-identity is important for explaining contemporary Russian foreign policy. Inside Russia, this struggle is largely concentrated in a centralized state apparatus, although elite debates over Russia's role in the world are influenced by the military, interest groups and to some extent the Russian public. This chapter concludes with an analysis of these forces in the Russian-Georgian conflict. Despite its unique history, Omelicheva argues that Russia is a 'normal' country in the sense that the theories from Chapter 1 certainly apply in an explanation of Russian foreign policy. Like China (Chapter 6) and Brazil (Chapter 13), for example, Russia has

A central theme in debates about Russia’s foreign and security policy in 2017 has been the role it has played within ongoing international crises, with analysts seeking to discern whether Russia’s foreign policy is predominantly a product of ad hoc pragmatism and opportunism or a more systematic and long-term anti-Western perspective. As argued in the article the answer is that it is a mixture of both. The Putin regime is on the one hand seeking to continue playing a pivotal role in individual security crises whilst on the other hand endeavoring to sustain its international position and further broader global alliances, often from a position of weakness.

Rome, IAI, April 2020, 13 p. (IAI Papers ; 20|08), ISBN 978-88-9368-128-5, 2020

Russian foreign policy went from integration to confrontation with the West, particularly after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas. These two events exemplified the idea prevalent in Moscow's foreign policy elite that Russia's immediate neighbours belonged to its sphere of influence and had only limited sovereignty. Since 2015, Moscow has managed to break out of its post-2014 international isolation by actively developing its Middle Eastern policy (through military intervention in Syria) and by intensifying relations with China and Asia. It seems unlikely that Russian foreign policy will ever return to its previous focus on relations with the West. The reasons for this are to be found in the nature of Russia's political system and the idea of Russia as an international great power. Moreover, Moscow is adjusting to processes of change in the international system, such as the rise of China and the changing role of the US.

The understanding of the foreign and security policy from the modern Russia is the biggest challenge for its neighborhood and for the West countries. The foreign policy line of Russia didn't change importantly since the Soviet Union era and it is oriented to strengthen its regional economic and political hegemony.

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On April 12, 2012, in his last address to the State Duma as Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin declared, “The post–Soviet period is over.” It is in a similar vein that we wrote this book as a study of Russian foreign policy, not Russia’s post-Soviet foreign policy. While it is undeniable that the legacy bequeathed by the USSR continues to have a powerful influence on contemporary Russia, Russian foreign policy today is not a continuation of Soviet policy. For one, the main problems that faced Soviet leaders—especially the ideological rivalry with the West and China—are no longer the ones that concern the Russian foreign policy establishment. Secondly, Moscow must deal with its former imperial possessions and Soviet siblings as independent states with their own foreign policy interests and strategies (which are often at odds with those of the Kremlin). Thirdly, and by no means finally, the contemporary international political, economic, and security environment is drastically different from that of the Soviet era—so much so, in fact, that even if the Soviet Union still existed, a contemporary Soviet foreign policy would scarcely resemble its predecessor in any way.