Andrei Tsygankov

Scholars disagree on how to interpret Russia’s assertive foreign policy. According to some observers,
Russia’s authoritarian culture and political system have historically required the Kremlin to depend on
the Western threat image at home and to engage in revisionist behaviour abroad. These observers
recommend that Western nations abstain from engaging Russia as an equal contributor to shaping the
global system. This article assesses the validity of the authoritarian expansionism theory by comparing
it to other prominent perspectives on foreign policy, realism and constructivism. The article argues
that, by perceiving Russia’s historical and institutional distinctness as fundamentally threatening to the
West, the theory overlooks important sources of foreign policy contestation at home and potentially
varying directions abroad. The article selects the historically important cases of the Crimean War, the
Cold War and the Russia–Georgia War to demonstrate the theory’s flaws and to highlight the role of
factors other than Russia’s authoritarianism in the nation’s foreign policy.

Since the Soviet disintegration, Russians have engaged in discussions of what constitutes their system of distinct values. Today the language of a “distinct civilization” is widely employed by top officials. This paper seeks to understand this discourse of distinctiveness as shaped by both history and politics. It studies the ideological shift by employing analysis of speeches by major officials and meaningful historical parallels. Like earlier historically significant concepts of value distinctiveness, Vladimir Putin’s civilizational discourse has resulted from a combination of external pressures and domestic vulnerability stimulating the rise of a distinct political coalition.

This article combines quantitative and textual analysis of editorials in leading American newspapers devoted to Russia's internal politics from 2008 to 2014. Despite rapprochement under President Dmitry Medvedev, the media image of Russia has been overwhelmingly negative since 2008. Negative media editorial opinions of Russia reflect fears of autocratic political systems that are represented as a dangerous mirror image of the American system. To maintain this binary, aspects of Russian politics that did not fit into the neo-Soviet autocracy narrative were ignored. An original contribution of the article is its identification of key frames used by leading American media outlets to construct a narrative about contemporary Russia as a neo-Soviet autocracy. It demonstrates that this narrative is instrumental in confirming domestic perceptions of American national identity that emphasize its association with freedom at home and leadership of the 'free world' abroad. As such, these findings are significant for reaffirming the importance of media framings, associated narratives, and control over them to global governance and soft power.

Работа в сфере теории международных отношений в России не всегда встречает понимание и наталкивается на трудности объективного характера. Немало тех, кто рассматривает ее как нечто вторичное по сравнению с прикладными и региональными исследованиями.

The author shares his opinion on the influence of events occurring in the world over the last years on state viability and provides his view on possible types of states and its’ tasks including Russia as well as on criteria of a strong state in the 21st century.

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western-led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy-makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.

The paper studies Russia’s Ukraine policy since the Orange Revolution. Russia’s policy toward its western neighbor has evolved from unhappy relations with Victor Yushchenko to rapprochement with Victor Yanukovich and then confrontation over the revolutionary power change in Kiev in February 2014. The paper argues that Vladimir Putin’s actions following February revolution in Kiev demonstrate both change and continuity in Russia’s foreign policy. Although these actions constituted a major escalation, relative to Russia’s previous behavior toward Ukraine, the escalation of relations with Kiev also reflected a broader policy pattern of Russia’s assertive relations with the Western nations adopted by the Kremlin since the mid-2000s. What made Russia’s conflict with Ukraine possible, even inevitable, was the West’s lack of recognition for Russia’s values and interests in Eurasia, on the one hand, and the critically important role that Ukraine played in the Kremlin’s foreign policy calculations, on the other. The paper provides an empirically grounded interpretation of Russia’s changing policy that emphasizes Russia–Ukraine–West interaction and a mutually reinforcing dynamics of their misunderstanding. It also addresses four alternative explanations of Russia’s Ukraine policy and discusses several dangers and possible solutions to the crisis.

The paper explores a shift from engagement to confrontation in Russia's policy toward Georgia since the Rose Revolution. In addition to emphasizing power and security as explanations of Russia's behavior, the paper focuses on considerations of honor and prestige. The latter are relational and a product of Russia's perception of its ties with Western nations.

Although some observers view Russia's role in the international system as that of maximising power at the expense of existing institutions, the reality is more complex. Russia's historical experience includes a series of attempts to combine ideas of good global governance with a search for strengthening material capabilities.

One important critique of the ''West's''hegemony in international relations (IR) theory has been this theory's inability to come to terms with the problem of difference or the Self⁄ Other dialectic. To further highlight the importance of the Self⁄ Other relations, this article proposes to analyze Russian theoretical discourse of relating to Europe and the West.

In attempting to understand Russia's foreign policy, scholars have focused on the country's material capabilities, political culture, and beliefs of its leaders. This scholarly literature has produced important insights, yet it has also missed some significant developments in Russia's international thinking.

Abstract Scholars disagree on how to interpret Russia's assertive foreign policy. According to some observers, Russia's authoritarian culture and political system have historically required the Kremlin to depend on the Western threat image at home and to engage in revisionist behaviour abroad. These observers recommend that Western nations abstain from engaging Russia as an equal contributor to shaping the global system.

Civilisations are imagined, ratherm than real, and nations undergoing identity crises typically represent themselves through multiple civilisational visions. Scholars of geopolitics can hardly understand foreign policy without analysing those visions and social contexts, in which they rise and fall. This article selects for analysis three distinct civilisational ideas of Russia–“West,”“Eurasia” and “Euro-East”–associated with Boris Yeltsin, Yevgeni Primakov and Vladimir Putin, respectively.

This article addresses the question of interaction between Western and ''non-Western''international relations (IR) by analyzing liberal theory of IR that is emerging in contemporary Russia. We argue that, despite a growing diversity within Russian scholarship of liberal orientation, it remains largely a product of Western, particularly American, intellectual hegemony, and more so than any other theoretical perspective.

Scholarly interest has recently shifted from issues of democratic transition to those of state formation and state viability. The paper reviews scholarly contributions to understanding state weakness and suggests criteria and indicators to capture stateness in the former Soviet region. It suggests a preliminary ranking of the post-Soviet states along dimensions of national order, economic efficiency and political viability.

Abstract During 2011, Russia made progress in recovering from the global financial crisis and moved toward further political centralization. Moscow also continued to prepare for an uncertain new world by pursuing pragmatic relations with Western and non-Western powers and by seeking to increase its influence among the states of the Commonwealth of Independent States. 1

The Eurasian region continues to disintegrate, and neither Russia nor the West has been able to arrest the destabilizing dynamics. Evidence of rising instability throughout the region include the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, terrorist attacks in the Northern Caucasus, the persistent failure of Western forces to stabilize Afghanistan, the inability of Central Asian rulers to reign in local clans and drug lords, and the paralysis of legitimately elected bodies of power in Ukraine and Moldova.

Abstract Since its emergence as an independent centralized state, Russia has followed three distinct foreign policy trajectories. It frequently sided with a coalition of Western states against those whom it viewed as threatening its interests and values. The second trajectory was that of defensiveness or balancing through domestic revival and flexible international alliances. Finally, Russia has historically resorted to assertiveness or unilateral promotion of its foreign policy objectives abroad.

Russia's power resources have recovered significantly since the start of the twenty-first century and with that recovery the Kremlin has become more assertive in pursuing its great power ambitions. To remain a great power, however, even a regional one, Russia has to recover its economy and learn to exploit its comparative advantages, such as expertise in energy and military affairs and memberships in international organisations.

If the relative decline of the West and the great power shift defined as" the rise of the rest" are approaching, there are important implications for Russia's foreign policy. Drawing on the work of Russian and Western commentators, this article offers a preliminary assessment of the post-Western world's implications for Russia and its foreign policy.

This chapter describes US–Russia relations since the end of the Cold War, with special attention to the period after September 11, 2001. Although the two nations have learned to cooperate on some issues, their relationship can be described as limited engagement with elements of rivalry, rather than cooperation.

This article evaluates Russia's foreign policy after Vladimir Putin's reelection as president in March 2004. New challenges, such as the intensification of terrorist activities in the Northern Caucasus, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the destabilization of Central Asia, and the refusal by some European states to attend the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of victory over fascism hosted in Moscow became important tests of Putin's strategy of great-power pragmatism.

Abstract Russia has historically strived to bridge principles of multilateral decision making with those of multipolar balance of power. Not infrequently, Russia's efforts to maximize power have been a response to failed attempts of entering Western-centered international arrangements, such as NATO and the European Union. Independently of those efforts, Russia also has sought to preserve the capabilities of a regional great power essential for securing its border and meeting other security challenges.

Abstract Soviet elections, up to the Gorbachev years, had lacked a choice of candidate, let alone of party. But from 1989 onwards, they were largely competitive, and from 1993 onwards under a postcommunist constitution they were multiparty as well. Under the Putin leadership, from 2000 onwards, there was a movement towards 'authoritarian elections' in which control of the media and of the state itself meant that candidates and parties favoured by the Kremlin could normally be assured of success.

Russia's experience with the West-initiated globalization has been peculiar. Immediately following the end of the Cold War, Boris Yeltsin's choice was decisively pro-Western, and he sought to integrate Russia with Western institutions. Since the late-1990s, however, Russia has adopted different priorities and pursued a more selective approach to globalization.

Russian society has changed dramatically since the Soviet disintegration, and the emergence of new theories of international relations heralded this change. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union and its officially sanctioned “Marxist” social science, Russian scholars have been making intellectual headway in adjusting to new realities. Analyzing the emerging Russian IR studies helps us answer some of the key questions about Russia. How does the new Russia see itself in the world?

Under Putin and Medvedev, Russia has been creating flexible international coalitions in order to achieve its central objective of becoming an independent center of power and influence. This strategy will work only if the Kremlin can find a workable combination of assertiveness and international recognition.

The potential for US-Russian cooperation in the Caucasus and Ukraine exists and may be exploited in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine in areas such as political stabilization, their relationships with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), counterterrorism, demilitarization, and energy security. However, obstacles to such cooperation are formidable.

Abstract In an attempt to broaden our perspective on IR theory formation, this article seeks to highlight the significance of ideology. Consistent with the recently revived sociology of knowledge tradition in international studies, we view IR scholarship as grounded in certain social and ideological conditions.