Routledge Handbook of Russian Security

Roger E. Kanet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780815396710
• eBook ISBN: 9781351181228
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The Routledge Handbook of Russian Security offers a comprehensive collection of essays on all aspects of Russian security and foreign policy by international scholars from across the world.

The volume identifies key contemporary topics of research and debate and takes into account the changes that have occurred in the study of Russian security strategy since the end of the Cold War. The handbook is organised into five sections:

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• The theory and nature of Russian security policy

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• The domestic and foreign policy nexus

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• Instruments used by Russia in pursuing its security

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• Global and regional aspects of Russian security and foreign policy

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• Case studies of Russian involvement in a series of security conflicts.

The book concludes with case studies of the major examples of Russian involvement and operations in a series of security conflicts, including that in Georgia, the intervention in Ukraine and occupation of Crimea, and the ongoing Civil War in Syria.

This volume will be of great interest to students of Russian security, strategic studies, foreign policy, European politics, and International Relations in general.

PART I

The history and nature of Russian security strategy

Introduction

Roger E. Kanet

This first section of the Handbook examines the nature and historical roots of Russian security policy, including the carryover legacy of Soviet thinking and policy on the topic. We also relate the study of Russian security to the broader theoretical questions relevant to the field that have been the focus of scholarly and public debate in recent decades. In Chapter 1, entitled ‘Russia’s Pursuit of Great-Power Status and Security’, Anne Clunan of the Naval Postgraduate School places Russian security policy in the context of Russia’s elites’ commitment to re-establishing Russia’s status as both a totally independent sovereign power and a major global actor. In many ways, she provides the framework within which the remaining chapters of the volume are placed.

In Chapter 2, entitled ‘Putin’s Operational Code and Strategic Decision-Making in Russia’, Graeme Herd of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies examines the beliefs about the international system that underlie Russian security policy. He maintains that ‘[a]ccording to Russia’s dominant national security narratives, Russia is encircled, besieged and threatened by enemies within and without.… That is why a significant amount of what occurs is considered in the context of “conspiracy theories” and virtually everyone is suspected of some form of villainy or “opposition to the regime”’. These beliefs are shared across political elites and society, and form the basis of Russian strategic thinking and foreign and security decision-making.

Chapter 3, by Mark Kramer of Harvard University, tracks ‘The Soviet Legacy in Russian Security Policy’. He notes that ‘Russian political leaders had to confront a wide range of foreign policy issues left over from the Soviet regime’; these included new territorial issues with neighbouring post-Soviet states, as well as those with other neighbours. It also involved economic problems, as well as the long-imbedded views of members of the foreign and security policy elites, many of whom were carryovers from the Soviet administration. Kramer concludes that ‘[u]nder Putin, continuity with the Soviet past has been increasingly conspicuous, despite the passage of time’.

In Chapter 4, Hanna Smith of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats and Aleksanteri Fellow at the University of Helsinki examines ‘Military Might as a Basis for Russian Great Power Identity’. She notes the central importance for Russia historically of military might—and success—in its efforts to influence the international political system. She then examines in some detail the use that the Russian Federation has made of military capabilities over the past two and a half decades and the role that this has played in Russia’s return to great-power status.

In the concluding chapter of this introductory section of the Handbook, Chapter 5, Suzanne Loftus of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and Roger E. Kanet of the University of Miami discuss the relationship of Russian security strategy to ‘The Russian Challenge to the Liberal World Order’. After outlining the numerous challenges to the current Western-dominated order created over the past half century from within the system itself, they assess the efforts by Russia to undermine and replace that order. They conclude that, at a minimum, Russia will ‘win’ in terms of its desires to decrease Western influence in the world, including fewer democratisation projects and a dwindling American hegemony.

1

RUSSIA’S PURSUIT OF GREAT-POWER STATUS AND SECURITY

Anne L. Clunan¹

Russian leaders have spent the early twenty-first century securing Russia’s status as a sovereign state and great power. Both of these statuses were in question at the dawn of the Millennium, not least because the international understanding of these concepts had changed (Neumann, 2014). When the status attributes required for sovereign statehood and being a great power shift, the authority of states changes, with substantial potential for conflict over loss of or gain in rights and privileges. The end of the twentieth century saw significant changes in the standards for sovereign statehood and great-power status. Sovereignty became contingent upon the state’s protection of its population’s human rights and economic well-being and conformance with criteria of good governance (Clunan, 2009b; Neumann, 2014). Heads of state were put on trial in an International Criminal Court for crimes against their own people, while non-state actors gained increasing recognition in global and local economic and security governance (Clunan and Trinkunas, 2010).

These changes have led to substantial conflict between Russia and the West over their rightful roles and authority in the post–Cold War international system, conflict that will continue as Russia, China and Western countries vie to set the standards of international order in the twenty-first century. Russia much prefers an absolutist, nineteenth-century version of sovereignty and great-power status, rather than ones defined by good governance. The former ranks Russia as a great power in a sovereignty hierarchy. The latter challenges Russia’s position as a full member of the sovereignty group.

The existence of an international status hierarchy, like any social structure, is part of the global hegemony that orders particular eras (Cox, 1981; Hopf, 2013). The architects of that hegemony and the arbiters of international status have long been European sovereigns, including Russia, and, since the early twentieth century, the United States. During the Cold War, the Western great powers fostered economic and political liberalism that diffused globally outside the Soviet bloc countries and eroded sovereignty, elevating non-state actors to the international political and legal stage. The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in an era of global liberalism, one that demanded all states adhere to Western human rights, democracy and market standards.

Russia since 1996 has sought to strip the meaning of great-power status and sovereignty of liberal normative content. In their calls for recognition of a ‘multipolar world’ order and new ‘Great Power Concert’ (Krickovic and Weber, 2018, 297), Russia’s post-Soviet leaders seek to limit the criteria associated with being a great power to military capabilities married with ‘responsible’ behaviour, by which they mean respect for absolute sovereignty and non-interference in great-power spheres of influence (Clunan, 2014a). They have sought to change the post–Cold War collective definitions of international status in such a way as to undo the softening of sovereignty brought about by the global spread of liberal humanism and market liberalism. ‘Russian observers emphasise the destabilising effects of these changes, and they are especially concerned about the eroding power and authority of nation-states, which they still regard as the ultimate guarantor of stability and order, both domestically and internationally’ (Krickovic and Weber, 2018, 296–297).

Internally, Russia has built a massive security and state-building apparatus (Bershidsky, 2017; Galeotti, 2017) to shore up sovereign-statehood and great-power status. Since 2000, Russia’s leadership has actively cultivated statist patriotism, which focuses on the state, rather than the people, as the essence of Russia throughout its thousand-year history (Laruelle, 2014, 7–8). Recent ideological efforts to support Russia’s great-power status and internal sovereignty emphasise Russia’s ‘old’ European values, distinguished from the ‘new’ and ‘radically’ individualist values of Western Europe and the United States (Makarychev, 2018; Laruelle, 2017). This self-image places Russia on par with other great powers at the centre of distinct civilisations (Tsygankov, 2012, 2016).

Russian efforts to define the normative statuses of great power and sovereign statehood would, as often as not, place the United States beyond the pale, as an irresponsible state not worthy of being labelled a great power because of reckless ideological wars against sovereign nations and democracy promotion. In contrast, Russia’s armed interventions are cast as the normal, responsible actions of a great power. Rather than the aggressive destruction of the post–Cold War security order that the West sees, Russia views its annexation of Crimea and armed intervention in Ukraine as upholding the norms of sovereign-statehood and great-power rights.

Russian officials associate ‘security’ with ‘making Russia strong again—both domestically and internationally’ (Snetkov, 2015, 2). At the root of this conception of security is an institutionally and economically strong and centralised state with the statuses of a sovereign, and great, power. Great-power and sovereign-statehood statuses are of such importance for Russian leaders and elites that they are called out as key security objectives in both Russia’s 2009 and 2016 National Security Strategies (Schelin, 2016, 92).

Two core security questions will continue to occupy Russian elites in the twenty-first century: How to maintain Russia’s status as a great power? And, can its status as a sovereign state be combined with the centripetal forces of globalisation in a century where its military, technological and economic capabilities are eclipsed by those of the United States and China? This chapter first explains why understanding status as a concept is necessary for explaining how Russian policymakers view security and act on those views. It next addresses what status and security mean for Russian security elites. It turns to the impact these meanings have had on Russia’s use of force in the early twenty-first century, before drawing some conclusions for the security of Russia’s status as a twenty-first-century great power.

Why status matters for understanding Russian security politics

Scholars of Russia agree that Russia’s security behaviour stems from concerns about its status, both as a great power and as a sovereign state. Many view Russian security behaviour as resulting from the interaction of its search for a post-Soviet identity and domestic debates about its internal and external security (Snetkov, 2015). Authors in this vein variously stress status aspirations and conflicts (Clunan, 2014a; Neumann, 2008; Wohlforth, 2009), resentment of the West (Malinova, 2014), subaltern identity (Morozov, 2015), ontological security (Zarakol, 2011), disrespect from the West (Karaganov, 2016a, 2016b; Tsygankov, 2018) and different conceptions of the West (Leichtova, 2014). These all generate expectations of status recognition and respect from the West (Larson and Shevchenko, 2010, 2014; Sakwa, 2008; Tsygankov, 2012).

Great-power status is central to Russia’s sense of security and is responsible for its approach to issues ranging from nuclear arms control, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) expansion, wars in Ukraine and Syria to election interference to Chechnya (Clunan, 2009a; Krickovic and Weber, 2018; Snetkov, 2015). Great-power status remains the common unifying element in Russia’s ongoing search for a national identity (Moshes, 2018). Russia’s status, internally as a sovereign state and externally as a great power, is at the centre of Russian political debates about security. Understanding status is, therefore, critical to explaining Russian security conceptions and behaviour (Clunan, 2009a; Krickovic and Weber, 2018).

Status is about who is endowed with legitimate social power—authority. The struggle for sovereign and great-power statuses is over which political entities are legitimately seen to have rights and responsibilities on the international stage (Moldova but not Transdniestria, China but not Taiwan) and of those entities which ones have special responsibility over international peace and security (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) that ‘ordinary’ but powerful sovereigns lack (Brazil, Germany, India and Japan). Status is contingent on socially constructed standards of belonging to particular social groups and cannot be reduced to material attributes. States’ status claims are judged not only by other states but also by their own societies.

The social standards of international and national society, therefore, are important in internal decisions about how to obtain or enact a particular status and thereby achieve a secure—a legitimate—identity. For this reason, status conflicts involve not only states but also leaders and their societies. The conveyance of authority makes status a power resource for the state and its leaders internally and externally, which has long made it of interest to realists (Gilpin, 1981; Renshon, 2016, 2017; Wohlforth, 2009). Such authority, however, is social (Wohlforth et al., 2018; Paul, Larson and Wohlforth, 2014)—it is intersubjectively agreed to exist when an entity is seen to have certain socially valued attributes (or status) and to act in accord with certain socially constructed procedures and standards required of the desired status (status enactment) (Clunan, 2014b).

For much of the post-Soviet period, Russia was viewed at best as a regional great power and at worst, a failing state (Willerton et al., 2005). It was an ‘Upper Volta with missiles’ in German Chancellor Kohl’s depiction of the late Soviet Union, or an ‘Upper Volta with gas’ in Russian businessman and parliamentarian Aleksandr Lebedev’s 2005 view (Simon, 2009). Russian and Soviet elites since the 1980s have challenged the international standards of status to give Russia a more favourable international place in the reigning status hierarchy (Clunan, 2009a; Larson and Shevchenko, 2003). For most in the West, Russia no longer had the authority to enact the status as a great-power guarantor of international security that was co-equal with the United States and superordinate to NATO (Clunan, 2014a; Pouliot, 2010). These external evaluations of Russia not only denied Russian claims that Russia was a great power, but they also raised questions about Russia’s status as a sovereign state.

Holders of status may change the standards of belonging (Gong, 1984). Status claimants, such as post–Cold War Russia, will often contest these social standards or their lack of recognition in meeting them (Deng, 2008; Larson and Shevchenko, 2003, 2010). It is this revision and contestation of standards that connects status conflict with a state’s level of satisfaction with the existing international order and its proclivity to accept or revise that order.

Changing its post–Cold War status has been central to the Russian leadership’s agenda for the twenty-first century (Schelin, 2016; Snetkov, 2015). In so doing, Russia’s international security elites put forward the world as they wish it to be. This perspective depicts,

a stylised view of international politics that overstates the degree of international chaos in order to promote a vision of global order that advances Russia’s status aspirations, justifying an enhanced status for Russia even as its material power continues to decline.

(Krickovic and Weber, 2018, 297)

Pursuing status will somehow make this desired world materialise (Krickovic and Weber, 2018).

International status conflicts are fraught precisely because socially conferred status is what grants or denies a state the legitimacy, if not the material power, to enact that status and to set status standards. This means that states can be denied great-power status even when they defeat a recognised great power in war (Ward, 2017). This also allows states, such as post–Cold War Russia, to have a status that is higher than its materia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Lists of figures and tables
• Contributors
• Preface: Russian security policy
• Part I The history and nature of Russian security strategy
• Part II Domestic politics, threat perception and Russian security strategy
• Part III Instruments of Russian security strategy
• Part IV Global and regional aspects of Russian security strategy
• Part V Case studies of Russian security strategy
• Index