Preserving Influence in a Changing World:Russia’s Grand Strategy
By Andrei P. Tsygankov[1]
San FranciscoStateUniversity
Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 58, No. 1, March-April, 2011, pp. 28-44.
Abstract
Russia has been creating flexible international coalitions in order to achieve its central objective of becoming an independent center of power and influence.
Russia is never as strongas we fear andnever as weakas we hope.
Klemens von Metternich
1. Introduction
From Europe to the Middle East and Asia, scholars and politicians are increasingly recognizing the prominent role of Russia in international affairs. From a weak and inward-looking nation of the 1990s, Russia has emerged into a power that is capable of defending its international prestige using available economic, military, and diplomatic means. It has exploited its energy clout to expand Russian relations abroad and cemented its military presence in the strategic area of the Southern Caucasus by defeating Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia. By mobilizing its soft power, the Kremlin has also contributed to reversing the colored revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. After being seriously hit by the global financial crisis, Russia has quickly recovered as an important international player.
Russians themselves have often presented their successes as the historically inevitable return of Russia to the rank of a great power. At least until the global economic crisis, and certainly immediately following the crisis in the Caucasus, such rhetoric was supported by the official declarations that projected Russia to become the world’s fifth largest economy, free from dependence on exports of oil and a full-fledged member in a multi-polar international order, by 2020. As far as Western observers of Russia are concerned, they remain divided. While some view Russiaas weak and unable to form a coherent strategy, others warn that the Kremlin is increasingly effective in challenging the West’s position in the world. The United States’ attempt to “reset” relations with Russiahas yet to changethis dualistic perceptionof Moscow’s motives.
The argument pursued in the paper is neither nor skeptical, nor alarmist. I argue that since the 2000s, Russia’s central objective has been to become an independent center of power and influence by creating flexible international coalitions. The country has largely recovered from the chronic illnesses of the 1990s by gaining a greater confidence and reviving important attributes of a great power. Using various foreign policy tools, the Kremlin has succeeded in building pragmatic alliances within the former Soviet region and across the world. As successful as this strategy has been, Russia is not in a position to become a rising great power relative to growing international challenges, such as the continued expansion of the Western and Chinese influences in Eurasia. The fact that Russia continues to muddle through is not a guarantee that such will be the case in the future. I arrive at this conclusion by evaluating Russia’s international objectives against the tools and outcomes of its foreign policy. Following the literature on grand strategy and foreign policy, I analyze both the hard and soft dimensions of Russia’s power.[2] Traditionally, grand strategy has been viewed as a long-term plan to match military and economic capabilities,[3] yet scholars have also paid attention to domestic and institutional aspects[4] and, more recently, to ideas and visions[5] behind grand strategy.
In my assessment,Russia’s success may only be preserved if the Kremlin acts on some existing opportunitiesand if it is more effective in explaining these objectives to the outside world. Assertive in defending its core interests, Russiamust also serve as an advocate of multilateral arrangements towards achieving international peace and security. If Russia is to succeed in escaping the alternative -- an unstable society, dwindling population and truncated sovereignty –the Kremlin should learn how to better combine assertiveness and international recognition.
The article is organized in six sections. The next section reviews the Western debate on Russia’s strategy. I then describeRussia’s objectives by focusing on consensus within the foreign policy elites, views of Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, and the official documents. The following two sections analyze key tools available for conducting Russia’s strategy and offer a preliminary assessment of it, respectively. In my assessment, the tools of Russia’s foreign policy are impressive, yet prescribe a greater reliance on soft, rather than hard, power in achieving global and regional influence. The final section reflects on the prospects of Russia’s strategy in the light of existing international challenges.
2. The Debate on Russia's Strategy
Western observers of Russia’s international policy may be divided into Skeptics and Alarmists. The two groups are not irreconcilable, but emphasize different aspects of Russia’s foreign policy.
Skeptics
The Skeptics don’t believe that the Russia’s leadership is able to and interested in designing a grand strategy or a coherent long-term plan with appropriate institutional, material and intellectual support. They are convinced that Russia remains fundamentally weakened by the competition of rival clans within the Kremlin and the overall political class. For example, Celeste Wallander argues that Russia’s grand strategy is “neither grand, nor strategic, nor sustainable,” and “whether Russia will survive as a great power in the 21st century is an open question”[6] because it practices the culture of patronage and corruption that continues to reveal the ineffectiveness of the state. Dmitri Trenin makes the point by emphasizing the narrow base from which Russia formulates its international policy, standing “for a small group of people who own the country and hold political power.”[7] For these reasons, write Raja Menon and Alexander Motyl, Russia’s international assertiveness is a bluff to conceal the nation’s chronically weak fundamentals.[8] Although the arrival of Barak Obama to power has given the United States a dose of realism about its international abilities, the Skeptics remain influential. "The reality is, the Russians are where they are," Vice-President Joseph Bidensaid in the midst of the global financial crisis. "They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable."[9]
The argument by Skeptics is overstated. Although Russia is not a strong state,the relatively smooth transition of presidential power in the Kremlin from Putin to Medvedev does not fit the Skeptical perspective and may be viewed as a testament to the ruling elite’s growing consolidation. As a result of such consolidation, Russia's foreign policy too became more consistent and predictable. However narrowly formulated, such policy is widely shared within the political class and the broader society. The Kremlin's principal actions in world politics from the early 2000s – including opposition to the United States' invasion of Iraq, resistance to expansion of NATO and deployment of Missile Defense System in Europe, promotion of energy-based relations with European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries, and military intervention in the Caucasus – have all found a broad domestic support. These actions have proceeded from a coherent worldview that must be reconstructed if we are to understand Russia's future international behavior.
Alarmists
Russia’s successes did not come without a price, and many in the West have grown concerned over what they view as Russia’s unilateral and confrontational style. The second group, the Alarmists, maintain that Russia is increasingly capable of formulating a coherent grand strategy, but such a strategy is anti-democratic and anti-Western in its main orientations.[10] Assisted in it by some of Russia’s own pro-Western thinkers and activists[11]a number of Western observers have insisted that Russians are longing for a Soviet restoration and developing an essentially Stalinist outlook, which will lead to the further cultivation of an external enemy’s image and possibly even another cycle of state-organized violence.[12] The Alarmists argue that this neo-Soviet and KGB-controlled country must be economically isolated and expelled from all Western institutions, but they are also worried that Russia has gone too far for such isolation to work. “Our biggest weakness is money,” lamented former Economist correspondent Edward Lucas. “Until that changes, we have little chance of resisting the Kremlin - and even less of persuading ordinary Russians that their corrupt, cynical, brutal and incompetent rulers are harbingers of disaster, not triumph.”[13]
The problem with the Alarmist position is that it misrepresents Russia’s essentially defensive posture and fails to understand the roots of the Kremlin’s international assertiveness. Contrary to the claims about the anti-Western and imperialist nature of Russia’s foreign policy, the Kremlin’s objectives are mainly driven by domestic considerations. These objectives include securing geographic borders, improving political and economic conditions, and gaining international recognition as a power with an important voice in international affairs. The Kremlin seeks to be guided by a vision that is suitable to Russia and not unacceptable to the West. Although Russia’s foreign policy is not controlled by liberals, it is also far from being shaped by anti-Western hard-liners. Security elites have indeed gained a greater presence in commercial companies, especially those energy-related, and now are in a more prominent position to influence Russia’s foreign policy. However, the security elites do not constitute a homogenous group and have diverse preferences vis-à-vis the West,[14] which helps to understand why the insufficiently consolidated state did not become a hostage to influences. Overall, the majority of the country’s political class has come to think about international realities in terms of adjustment and stabilization, and not confrontation.[15] Most Russians also have no illusions either about balancing the West's global power or restoring the Soviet-like empire in Eurasia. Polls indicate that the general public predominantly connects the great power status with economic development, rather than military buildup or revision of existing territorial boundaries.[16]
3. Russia's Strategic Objectives
Russia’s Strategic Consensus
Russia has formed its strategy in response to activities of first two foreign ministers, Andrei Kozyrev and Yevgeni Primakov. Their example is rather negative, however. From the former, Russia learned how to not formulate its international objectives, and from the latter how to not allocate resources for meeting the objectives. Soon after his appointment, Primakov proclaimed the objective of returning to world politics as an independent power thereby ending the era of Kozyrev's infatuation with the West at the expense of Russia's national interests. However, Primakov's means of achieving the proclaimed goals proved unnecessary costly, and the Kremlin soon had to devise a less expensive strategy of defending the country's interests.
By the time of arrival of Putin, Russia's political class had already formed a consensus regarding the country's grand strategy. The consensus included two central definitions of Russia's international objectives – the preservation of global influence as an independent power and dominance in the former Soviet region. It also assumed that Russia must be "pragmatic" in devoting the country's scarce resources to those objectives. Global influence was to be exercised via Russia's diplomatic activism and institutional visibility, rather than the projection of material power. Regional dominance was also viewed by the Kremlin in soft power terms, rather than as imperial control over its neighbors' domestic and international priorities. The Kremlin assumed that Russia would have sufficient economic, diplomatic, institutional and cultural capacity to regionally negotiate the preferred international postures of the former Soviet states. Yet Russia was to limit economic subsidies and military activities abroad and to rely mainly on market-based tools of international influence.[17] Through diplomatic activism and economic means, the global and regional components were supposed to reinforce each other, moving Russia on the path of becoming an independent center of power and influence in the world.
The foreign policy consensus regarding Russia's key goals and means has not been principally challenged since 1999. Politicians and pundits debate the country's priority relations with Europe, China, the United States, or the states in Eurasia, but they rarely question the value of reviving global influence and doing so in pragmatic ("nezatratnyi") way. The former liberal Westernizers and supporters of Andrei Kozyrev's course have long migrated into the camp of Statists or those defending Russia's global independence, rather than integration with Western institutions and policy priorities. For quite some time, the latter choice has been advocated only by marginalized politicians, like Mikhail Kasyanov and Boris Nemstov. Statists value stronger relationships with Europe or the United States but not at the expense of Russia’s ability to act independently and develop ties with non-Western countries. In Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s terms, solutions for Russia should come from “network diplomacy rather than entangling military-political alliances with their burdensome rigid commitments.”[18]
Putin and Medvedev: Differences of Emphasis
A product of the broad political consensus, Russia's grand strategy cuts across various administrations and groups within the ruling establishment. Putin and his successor Medvedev diverge in emphasis and style, but they share the principal elements of the above-articulated strategy. After his speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin frequently demonstrated an aggressive rhetorical style in relations with the United States. Scholars also noted his skepticism regarding the Barak Obama-initiated “reset” of U.S.-Russia relations as well as Putin’s hesitation regarding support for a new strategic arms accord and sanctions against Iran.[19] In one interview, for example, he stated that the bases for his skepticism include the United States’ continuous “re-arming” of Georgia and its unchanged intent to deploy elements of a Missile Defense System in Europe.[20]
For his turn, Medvedev has demonstrated a softer style, with an emphasis on the importance of improving relations with the Western nations. He has established a good rapport with Obama and cooperated with the United States on Iran and the new nuclear treaty. Medvedev has also avoided tough language and worked on improving the image of Russia in Western business circles. In his address to the Federation Council in November 2009, Medvedev insisted that the effectiveness of foreign policy must be "judged by a simple criterion: Does it improve living standards in our country?"[21] In June 2010, he traveled to the United States in part to facilitate investments and cooperation in the information technology sector, and in his meeting with Russia’s ambassadors in July 2010, Medvedev further highlighted the need to establish “modernization alliances” with the United States and other Western nations.[22]
These differences of style and emphasis do not undermine the established strategic consensus. Both leaders are not satisfied with the currently “unipolar” structure of the international system that diminishes Russia’s global influence. Both seek to position their country for a successful competition in the world economy, including by capitalizing on Russia’s rich energy reserves. Both remain pragmatically focused on exploiting opportunities outside the West and are eager to build flexible coalitions to promote Russia’s global interests. Finally, both are on record for defending Russia’s right to “privileged interests” in the former Soviet region and are unapologetic about recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the August 2008 war with Georgia.
Key Official Documents
The relevant official documents also emphasize the need for Russia to preserve global influence and play the role of an important regional center, but only by “pragmatic” means. Ever since Putin’s arrival to power, the definition of international objectives has shifted from attempting to balance the West toward exploiting it to Russia’s advantage. Russia seeks more actively to shape the world’s political and economic system and be recognized in such efforts by the Western nations. The thinking indicates an important change since the 2000 Foreign Policy Concept, which explicitly warned of a threat of “a unipolar structure of the world under the economic and military domination of the United States.”[23]
The Foreign Ministry report “A Review of the Russian Federation’s Foreign Policy” of 2007 embraces the objective of multi-polarity based on “a more equitable distribution of resources for influence and economic growth,”[24] and presents Russia as ready to actively shape international relations. However, the report is not anti-American and defends the notion of collective leadership and multilateral diplomacy in international relations. In the same spirit, the National Security Strategy of 2008 states that Russia continues to aspire to “defend national interests as a subject of multipolar international relations,”[25] but refrains from identifying the “unipolar” structure of the world as a key threat to Russia. Similarly, the Military Doctrine of 2010 identifies NATO enlargement as an external danger (opasnost’), but not as a threat (ugroza). Commentators interpreted this as indicative that Russia was afraid not of being attacked by the Western alliance, but of not participating in a NATO-centric system of European security.[26]