Russian Foreign Policy under Dmitry Medvedev, 2008-2012

Valerie Pacer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781138943537
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317373056
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: Economics

Although the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev is often seen as a continuation of Vladimir Putin's presidency, with the same policies applied in the same way, this book disagrees, arguing that Medvedev's foreign policy was significantly different from Putin's. The book considers especially the relationship between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic security configuration, including both NATO and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a relationship of great importance to Russia, given constant attention. It discusses a wide variety of issues, including "frozen conflicts", security co-operation and nuclear weapons reductions, highlights the different tone and approach under Medvedev, exemplified especially by his draft European Security Treaty, and shows how after Putin's return to the presidency there has been a shift in foreign policy, with much great emphasis on influencing Russia's immediate neighbours and on Eurasian union, and less emphasis on rapprochement and co-operation.

1 From Putin to Medvedev

Maintaining the status quo?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315672403-1

As President of Russia, Medvedev struggled to establish an identity distinct from his predecessor, Prime Minister, and eventual successor, Vladimir Putin. Analysis of Medvedev as Russia’s leader conducted by academics, diplomats, and journalists means that a seemingly inevitable comparison to Putin will be made. While Medvedev’s discussions and negotiations with the West achieved some positive results, he was considered by some to be ‘playing the good cop to his predecessor’s adopting the tough cop role’ (Krickus, 2009: 16). The portrayal of Medvedev as a ‘dorkish lawyer’ who occasionally ‘puts on a leather bomber jacket and talks tough, but it doesn’t become him’ provided an image of the president in contrast to Vladimir Putin and publicity photos released of Putin that are designed to show him as a macho strongman (Parfitt, 2011b). The failure of Russia to follow through on his modernisation plans has prompted a comparison between Medvedev and ‘a student who, after getting a D on his exam, goes off on a rant asserting that he had studied long and hard’, rather than as a strong leader of a large country (Fishman, 2011: 4). Comparisons to Putin have also come from the diplomatic community. The most famous characterisation of the relationship between the two men was that of ‘Batman’ and ‘Robin’, Putin and Medvedev respectively, which was introduced via the Guardian’s publication of Wikileaks cables (Harding, 2010). A former Western diplomat, however, explained that he preferred a comparison of the two men whereby ‘Putin is the frat-boy to Medvedev’s nerd’.

Despite these less than flattering depictions, Medvedev’s presidency is important to furthering our understanding of Russian foreign and security policy in the early twenty-first century. Whether he was chosen to be the ‘good cop’ or to balance factions inside the Kremlin or because of his loyalty to Putin, this does not mean him he cannot have his own initiatives and policies as a president. At the same time, it cannot be expected that there should be only dissimilarities between the policies of Putin and Medvedev, given that Medvedev owed his presidency to Putin and, in the eyes of many, ‘Putin was the man with the authority, while Medvedev was the person in power’ (Sakwa, 2011: 308). By focusing on one area of policy, foreign security policy in the Euro-Atlantic region, an examination of the Putin and Medvedev presidencies will establish that although the two men were largely similar in their thinking and actions, there are important differences that should be recognised.

The presidential succession

To understand the Medvedev-Putin relationship and the dynamic that exists between the two men, it is important to consider how and why Medvedev became the President of Russia. Under Article 81 of the Russian Constitution, the president is limited to being elected to two consecutive terms but is not otherwise prevented from returning to the presidency (Russian Constitution, 1993). This meant that Putin was barred from candidacy for the 2008 presidential election unless constitutional reform was undertaken. There was some speculation that a chosen candidate would contest the elections, remain in power for an appropriate amount of time, and then resign the presidency, which would result in an election in which Putin could stand as a candidate or that there would be constitutional changes which would result in the transfer of presidential powers to the position of prime minister, thus allowing Putin to retain control from a different office (Goldman, 2008: 5–6). Despite the various theories of events that might occur after the election, it was clear that there would still need to be a candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

Putin’s search for a successor would result in an end to his balancing act between the two leading factions within the Kremlin, the siloviki, or the people with a military or security background in the government, and the economic liberals, since one faction would provide the presidential candidate (White, 2006: 42). Despite choosing between the two factions, the chosen candidate would have to appeal to both groups as an acceptable president. In a Levada Centre poll from November 2007, Medvedev was listed as the third most likely person to be appointed successor (17%), behind both Sergei Ivanov (19%), the First Deputy Prime Minister from the siloviki clan, and Viktor Zubkov (32%), the Prime Minister (Levada Centre, 2007).

For Putin, the long-standing ties that he had with Medvedev would have a role in influencing the decision-making process. Putin and Medvedev met in 1990 while working for Anatoly Sobchak at the Leningrad (later renamed St. Petersburg) City Council and continued working together until Sobchak lost the mayoral election in 1996 (Medvedev D., 2012a). Roĭ Medvedev writes that by 1994, the two men ‘understood each other well’ and that their relationship was ‘trusting and friendly’ (Medvedev R., 2008: 18). After a phone call in 1999 from Igor Sechin, the Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration, Medvedev met with Putin in Moscow and Putin offered Medvedev the position as the head of the Federal Commission for Securities Market, which Medvedev accepted with the understanding he would first fill the position of Deputy Chief of Staff for a period of time (approximately two weeks to a month) so that he could gain an understanding of the civil service (Medvedev D., 2012a). On 29 December 1999, Putin made Medvedev the offer to remain as the Deputy Chief of Staff and Medvedev wrote on his personal website that:

the Federal Commission for the Securities Market offered important and interesting work overseeing a huge and fast-growing market, while staying in the government involved bureaucratic work of the sort I’d never aspired to and that seemed to me boring. But some kind of instinct, something inside made me say that yes, I’d stay on and help.

(Medvedev D., 2012a)

Two days later, shortly after being made acting president, Putin named Medvedev as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration, a position he would hold for a year before being promoted to other positions, including the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration (2000–2003), the Head of the Presidential Administration (2003–2005), and the First Deputy Prime Minister (2005–2008), as well as Chairman of Gazprom (Medvedev D., 2012a).

From Putin’s perspective, Medvedev had showed himself to be reliable over the years that they had known each other since Medvedev’s positions in the Kremlin had him implementing Putin’s policies and Medvedev had not displayed a desire to acquire power which could provoke a conflict between Putin and Medvedev in the future (Rogoża, 2011: 9). Medvedev, as the choice for president, was also ‘acceptable to the maximum number of the competing Kremlin factions, and the least threatening to the most’, thus making him the appealing option to concerned parties inside Russia (Sakwa, 2011: 271). Medvedev was particularly involved with the implementation of Putin’s policies when he was in charge of overseeing national projects in 2006 and 2007 and it is because of these projects that Medvedev gained more attention and talk began about him as a possible ‘successor’ (Medvedev R., 2008: 29, 39). The long-standing ties between the two men meant ‘Medvedev was one of the few individuals with detailed information about Putin’s years in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, around which so many allegations and insinuations swirl; while Putin had detailed information on Medvedev’s dealings’, thus ensuring that the fates of the two men were intertwined and neither man would act against the other for fear of the response it would generate (Sakwa, 2011: 273). One of these ties between the two men comes from the fact that it was Medvedev who ‘helped to create a legal defence for Putin to refute the accusations of corruption by the city council’ that he was facing as a result of the food scandal when working in St. Petersburg in the 1990s (Hill & Gaddy, 2013: 174). For several reasons, Medvedev became the presidential candidate.

Before the 2008 presidential election, Medvedev had never run as a candidate for office since he had only held appointed positions, and, therefore, he benefited from Putin’s support. Medvedev broke with precedent and chose to run as a party candidate, something neither Yeltsin nor Putin had done, which provided him with the support of United Russia voters (Hale, 2010: 97).

Medvedev’s candidacy was also the focus of heavy media coverage in the weeks preceding the 2008 presidential election with stories about Medvedev occupying 80% of the 7–10 pm (primetime) coverage (Van den Brande, 2010: 49). The presidential election saw Medvedev win in the first round with 70.28% of the vote, or 52,530,712 votes; the closest contender, Gennady Zyuganov, received a mere 17.72% of the cast votes (CEC, 2008). The election itself went unobserved by organisations like the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which explained ‘that the Russian government was insisting on too many restrictions on the monitoring team that observers would not be able to do an effective job’ and thus detracts from the election’s ability to be considered free and fair by other states (McFaul & Stoner-Weiss, 2010: 79).

Medvedev owed his rise in Russian politics to Putin and he would need Putin’s support to maintain his position as president. In order to get things done as president, Medvedev needed the support of Putin because, as Prime Minister, he was both the head of government and also the chairman of United Russia, whose support Medvedev would need for the passing of legislation (Treisman, 2011: 144). It can be expected, therefore, that Medvedev would not act in a way that would be contradictory to Putin’s desires since that would result in a freeze of the government. As the president, Medvedev retained the option of dismissing Putin from his position but given Medvedev’s lack of substantial support and Putin’s own popularity, such an action would likely harm Medvedev’s presidency and see him weakened. The Putin–Medvedev tandem and the study of so-called ‘tandemocracy’ became a fixture of the Russian political landscape during the Medvedev presidency.¹

The return of Putin to the Russian presidency in 2012 is also important to consider within the context of the search for an appropriate successor. Throughout his presidency, Medvedev was faced with questions of who would be the presidential candidate in 2012. As late as April 2011, his answer was that:

I do not rule out the possibility of my running for a second term at the presidential elections. The decision will be taken very shortly since … the elections are less than a year away. This decision, however, should be, first, mature and, second, it should take into account the existing social situation, current political environment and, most importantly, the attitude of people. Before making any such decisions, one has to weigh their chances, avoid acting mechanically, and, instead, act with a clear understanding of the situation. I expect such understanding to form within a relatively short time.

(Medvedev D., 2011a)

A couple of weeks later, Putin was similarly asked about the 2012 election and he responded that ‘it is too early to speak about that … [but] we shall make a corresponding decision … [and] you will like it and be pleased’ (ITAR-TASS, 2011d). When it was announced in September 2011 that Putin would be the candidate, the decision was explained by Medvedev as ‘a deeply thought-out one’ which had been the product of discussions that had begun ‘as early as when our union was being formed’ (RIA Novosti, 2011b).

In a 2012 press conference, Putin denied there were other motives for the decision beyond him having higher public approval ratings and, therefore, the support of the people for a presidential run (Putin, 2012c). Yet if poll results were the entire reason behind the Medvedev-Putin job swap, the decision would have been clear and public speculation not as high. During the entire Medvedev presidency, there was only one month, May 2011, where Medvedev’s approval index surpassed that of Putin’s and most months Medvedev’s was several points lower (Levada Centre, 2012). As suggested by Mark Galeotti, it is possible that Putin and his inner circle had concerns about Medvedev’s capabilities as president or his desire to remain in the spotlight, which led to the ‘phenomenal blunder’ of Putin’s return to the presidency (Whitmore, 2012). According to Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin spin doctor who was fired after supporting a 2012 presidential run for Medvedev, the public conflicts seen in the tandem in early 2011, particularly due to comments Medvedev made regarding Western involvement in Libya as well as the support that Medvedev started receiving from some of the Russian elites in 2010, led to Putin’s government having ‘a constant fear that Medvedev would sack the government, suddenly … and that would create a completely different situation’ (Hearst & Elder, 2012). If the policies and public statements of Medvedev are the reason that Putin returned, and an issue of foreign policy is central to the concerns Putin had, then Putin and Medvedev could not have been completely in step on issues in this area.

Putin, Medvedev, and foreign policy schools of thought

Reasons for foreign policy differences between Medvedev and Putin lie not only with the circumstances of the time but also on different ideological approaches to foreign policy. Margot Light has identified three schools of thought on Russian foreign policy: the Pragmatic Nationalist, or someone who is seen as pursuing ‘a more independent policy vis-à-vis the West and a more integrationist stance towards the successor states’, the Liberal Westerniser who supports ‘a market economy and … pro-Western views’, and the Fundamentalist Nationalist, someone who ‘combined extreme nationalist with antipathy towards economic reform’ (Light, 1996: 34). Andrei Tsygankov suggests a different categorisation for Russian foreign policymakers, which includes Westernisers, Statists, and Civilizationalists. In the post-Soviet period, the Westernisers who emerged ‘argued for the “natural” affinity of their country with the West based on such values as democracy, human rights, and a free market’, while the Statists who ‘are not inherently anti-Western’ focus on ‘the state’s ability to govern and preserve the social and political order’ (Tsygankov, 2013: 5–6). The Civilizationalists ‘sought to challenge the Western systems of values, insisting on the cultural distinctiveness of Russia and Russia-centered civilization’ (8). Rather than attempting to classify just Russian foreign policy perspectives in the post-Soviet period, Peter Duncan presented three categories for the foreign policy trends emerging in all post-Soviet states, which consisted of Westernism, Eurasianism and pragmatism. Under this approach, the ‘Eurasianists tend towards cooperation with China and certain Middle Eastern states such as Iran, rather than the West’, the Westernists prefer to look at policies which ‘aimed at cooperating with the United States, the European Union, NATO, and the plethora of international organisations dominated by Western states which promote market economies and democracy’, and the pragmatists ‘avoided ideological commitment to Westernism or Eurasianism … in the pursuit ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Interviews
• Transliteration and sources
• Abbreviations and key terms
• 1 From Putin to Medvedev: maintaining the status quo?
• 2 Russia’s Euro-Atlantic security interests: preserving and building influence
• 3 Russia and the ‘frozen’ conflicts of the Euro-Atlantic space: different conflicts, different roles
• 4 Russia and the OSCE: hard versus soft security
• 5 Russia and NATO: the limits of cooperation
• 6 Russia and the Euro-Atlantic security agreements: compliance and controversy
• 7 Medvedev’s draft European Security Treaty: a different idea?
• 8 Nuclear reductions and missile defence: prospects for cooperation between Russia, the U.S., and NATO
• 9 The return of President Putin: a change of course
• 10 Conclusion: Medvedev’s presidential legacy
• Bibliography
• Index