Russia and the World

The Internal-External Nexus

Natasha Kuhrt

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415813204
• eBook ISBN: 9781317850366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

This volume brings together analyses of key domestic, foreign and security policy issues during the Putin and Medvedev administrations. Indeed, the chapters demonstrate the extent to which domestic and foreign policy issues are inextricably linked, in particular in the domain of security, whether 'hard' or 'soft'. Internal debates regarding Russia's trajectory, including issues of national identity; economic modernisation, human rights and democracy, continue to be at the forefront of concern.

Moreover, these debates are intimately connected to Russia's self-image and the image therefore, that it wishes to project in the wider world. The debates focus on Russia as 'energy superpower'; as one of the 'BRICS'; as an Eurasian landbridge, or a window on the Asia-Pacific. Such debates are a constant reminder of the uncertainty surrounding Russia's future path. This book expresses these uncertainties which range from the role of nuclear weapons and energy to critiques of Russia's approach to concepts such as sovereignty and self-determination; the fight against terrorism, insurgency, and the role of Islam within and without. Russia may have left the 'chaos' of the Yeltsin years behind but, as we move into 'Putin 3.0', the concerns of these chapters will remain critical both to Russia itself, and to Russia's relations with the wider world.

This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

Introduction

NATASHA KUHRT

THIS COLLECTION OF ESSAYS IS BASED IN PART ON PANELS convened for the British International Studies Association Conference at Exeter in December 2008: two panels were focused on Russian foreign and security policies, and a separate panel dealt with religion and nationalism in Russia. While it might be suggested that the latter topic is principally a matter of domestic, rather than international concern, several of the essays included here suggest that the domestic and international are becoming increasingly intertwined in Russian foreign policy. Indeed, opening up the ‘black box’ of domestic politics seems more relevant than before in Putin’s Russia.

Russian foreign and security policies under Putin’s and then Medvedev’s stewardships have represented efforts to overcome the chaos of the Yel’tsin years, when initial optimism regarding Russia’s future, which was seen as lying in convergence with the West, was tempered by disillusion with domestic policies linked to a foreign policy which appeared to entail subservience to Western actions. Under Putin, Russia has appeared to be re-emphasising aspects of the Soviet heritage which represent elements of continuity, spanning Soviet and pre-Soviet eras. Taking seriously Russia’s role as the USSR’s successor state in the juridical sense, Putin has worked to make this an empirical reality. This has extended to describing the collapse of the USSR as a ‘geopolitical disaster’, and the rebuffing of criticisms directed at Stalinist policies, including the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and even forced collectivisation in Ukraine. Thus, rather than disassociating itself from such policies, the Putin regime appeared at times to be actively reclaiming itself as the inheritor of the Soviet mantle. As Luke March suggests in his essay on nationalism and foreign policy,

Overall, the Kremlin’s view of the Soviet past partially recalls the standard Khrushchev and Brezhnev lines: an active inculcation of ‘patriotic’ symbols without the direct mention of Stalin, and focus on defects of Stalin’s personality rather than the Stalinist system. What emerges is contradictory. On the one hand the USSR is criticised as being an overly centralised bureaucracy dominated by obsolete ideology, and Russia’s emergence from it an act of national self-determination …; on the other, it is portrayed as a continuation of Russia’s victorious tradition of 1,000-year-old statehood.

The end of communism then, while clearly heralding the end of ideological confrontation, has in some ways made Russian foreign policy less predictable. March suggests that the lack of a consistent nationalist ideology makes Russia a more difficult partner for the West, precisely because of this unpredictability. He rejects the notion of Russia as practising a kind of lawless nationalism. In fact, Russia’s rulers have always used nationalists as ‘bogeymen’ with which to frighten ordinary Russians. However, March draws our attention to the fact that while the Kremlin has regularly also enlisted this nationalism in an instrumental fashion for its own devices, it always runs the danger that once unleashed, such nationalism will be far less easy to control.

On the one hand, the Kremlin periodically co-opts and mobilises nationalism (even extreme forms); on the other, it repeatedly suppresses nationalism when its political implications become destabilising. Such an approach prevents nationalism, either of extreme or moderate orientation, becoming an influential, independent force in Russian politics, for good or for ill. So, to a large degree, the Russian elite is a prisoner of its own methods: although Medvedev has made counteracting extreme nationalism ever more a priority, the Kremlin’s past record of creating nationalist demands that it then has to suppress indicates that such efforts may be primed for failure.

March concludes that ‘unless the Kremlin more actively and consistently promulgates and defends the moderate, civic nationalism its official nationality ostensibly aspires to, “enlightened patriotism” will remain much more an aspect of self-serving elite rhetoric than the daily cultural and political experience, either of Russia’s citizens or its international interlocutors’.

James Headley, who takes a constructivist approach to the vexed question of Russian identity in an examination of Europeanness and European norms suggests that Russia sees itself as a European nation, and that there is some validity to this in that Russia is much more in step with European norms than many commentators would suggest. Tensions arise when Russia attempts to position itself as a ‘norm-maker’ rather than a ‘norm-taker’ and opposes the ‘standardisation’ of European norms. Headley also demonstrates that Russia is concerned by an apparent ‘merging of the notion of “European norms” with the notion of “EU norms”, and the subservient position in which such practices place Russia’. Russia wishes instead to be viewed as an equal partner in the creation of both European and universal norms. In a discussion of self-determination and sovereignty, Headley demonstrates the way in which Russia has presented itself as a potential norm-maker, rather than norm-taker. Indeed he notes that Russia has been remarkably consistent in its approach to self-determination conflicts, but has accused the EU of double standards in its approach to the recognition of Kosovo. However, Russia’s insistence on it being a European state is also used by Russia to legitimate certain actions: for example it may defend non-democratic actions as democratic. Putin’s foreign-policy discourse has been successful in presenting a Russia which is very starkly differentiated from that of Yel’tsin’s. A certain pragmatism had already begun to appear in the Yel’tsin era, a convergence of centrist and more nationalistic views, and this was solidified in the first years of Putin’s administration. These views had been fused with those of industrialists such as Arkadii Vol’skii (the chair of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs), as well as lobbyists for the Military Industrial Complex. In contrast to the early Yel’tsin years, there was now a push for an increase in weapons sales, in particular to countries such as China and India, amid general accusations that Russia had neglected old allies. There was then a crystallisation of these views into the more pragmatic, non-ideological approach of the initial Putin period, 2000–2003, accompanied by a fusion of state and business interests. Certain leitmotivs can be discerned: the need to reassert Russia as a ‘Great Power’ being regularly cited by Russian policy-makers as a priority. There is still uncertainty as to how this should be effected: some have described Russia as a wielder of soft power (Tsygankov 2006; Stent 2008). However, the extent to which this is either soft power in the usual sense or an effective means of projecting Russian influence is less clear.

In her essay on Russia’s ‘International Images and its Energy Policy’, Valentina Feklyunina uses public opinion surveys in several European countries to demonstrate the range of views regarding Russia’s role as an energy supplier. It is interesting to note that there is not necessarily a correlation between the level of energy dependence on Russia, and people’s anxiety regarding Russia’s role as energy supplier: thus in some states which had a relatively low level of dependence on Russia, people were nevertheless more anxious about Russia’s role than those in states with high levels. As Feklyunina explains, the perception of Russia as an unreliable energy supplier has worked against Russia’s efforts to promote soft power, rather than hard power, as an instrument of foreign policy. Classical realist approaches to foreign policy point to the importance of the politics of prestige. So it may be more appropriate to continue to think of Russian soft power in these terms, rather than in a constructivist sense.

Feklyunina concludes that Russia’s image as an energy supplier is intrinsically linked to its image as a great power. For this reason, while Russia has attempted to try to reverse the negative image it projects in the sphere of energy, in the end:

Choosing between Russia’s ‘attractiveness’ as a reliable partner or as an energy supplier that would be prepared to compromise if necessary, and Russia’s ‘prestige’ as a strong country that would not succumb to external pressure, the Russian authorities have repeatedly opted for the latter. Therefore, they have been prepared to take actions—both in the energy sphere and beyond—that would contradict Russia’s image as a reliable partner if those actions were perceived as maintaining or enhancing Russia’s image as strong country.

In a piece on the place of the Russian Far East in Moscow’s Asia Policy, Natasha Kuhrt suggests that the region is

at one and the same time, both a microcosm of many of the domestic problems facing Russia today, and of the foreign policy and security dilemmas connected to these. What appear at first glance as purely domestic issues, such as migration and demographics, environmental degradation and energy resources, can all be securitised and linked back into Russia’s self-conceptualisation as either a successful ‘Great Power’ on the path to modernisation, or conversely as a declining resource base and ‘raw materials appendage’.

Concerns at the macro security level regarding the rise of China take on a dual aspect, fusing together domestic and external security concerns, given the fact that several of the Russian Far Eastern krai and oblasti adjoin north-eastern Chinese regions. Moreover, socio-economic indicators, serious enough in European Russia, are at critical levels in this region. The modernisation agenda which was made the centrepiece of the Medvedev presidency, has elaborated ambitious development plans which include a socio-economic development plan for the Russian Far East. However, these plans are predicated on China as the main economic partner, and on the continuation of high prices for oil. While there is much to commend economic cooperation with China, the asymmetry at both the global and regional levels in economic terms can make the economic relationship appear less one of mutual interdependence, and more one of dangerous dependence. As Kuhrt argues, the

fear of becoming a ‘raw materials appendage’ to China is instrumentalised in order to hinder cooperation at the local level; however the paradox is that Russia’s economic and energy policies tend to reinforce the emphasis on raw materials, and aspirations expressed as a desire for the status of ‘energy superpower’ are fraught with problems. The overreliance on energy revenues has skewed the economy and has had broader repercussions at the global and regional levels. Moreover it has not addressed the deeply entrenched problems of development in the Russian Far East….

There is now an acknowledgement that Russian power in the Asia-Pacific has been largely one-dimensional, based principally on hard military power. The modernisation agenda has at least focused greater attention on the need to increase economic effectiveness. However, attempts to engage with the Asia-Pacific region to promote Russia’s integration into the wider region come up against the issue of Russia’s lack of economic competitiveness; but Russia can no longer afford to let the Russian Far East remain in a state of isolation from both European Russia and the Asia-Pacific region. The choice facing the Russian Far East, as Viktor Ishaev, the presidential envoy to the Russian Far Eastern okrug has suggested, is one between ‘dual integration or double periphery’ (Khabarovsky Krai Government 2009).

The debate on the future of Russia as an energy power demonstrates that so-called ‘soft power’ on its own may not be enough: ‘hard power can and typically does amplify soft power … the effective use of soft power can amplify hard resources’ (Wilson 2008, p. 122). Jennifer Mathers accurately describes the way in which the ultimate hard power instrument—nuclear weapons—continues to be utilised as a marker of Russia’s Great Power status, in particular in regard to its relations with its significant other, the United States. However, she makes it clear that above all Russian leaders regard nuclear weapons as political, rather than military instruments.

On the military front, as Mathers notes, the Five Day War with South Ossetia reinforced the ‘view among Russia’s political leaders that this—not a cataclysmic exchange of strategic nuclear weapons—would be the type of war that Russia’s armed forces would be most likely to face and must be prepared to fight in the foreseeable future’.

Mathers emphasises the way in which Putin deliberately uses Gorbachev’s vocabulary of the ‘New Political Thinking’ in speeches designed for a Western audience, using language ‘which was almost certainly intended to evoke positive memories of another cooperative, Western-facing Russian leader’. Thus Putin has used the terms ‘reasonable sufficiency’ or ‘minimum sufficiency’ on regular occasions in the first few years in office 2000–2003 when he wished to signal Russia’s need for partnership with the United States. Later on, the rhetoric around nuclear weapons became more assertive and less cooperative, however, as Mathers argues, ‘even the most uncompromising and assertive statements … tended to contain a plea for greater cooperation with the United States in the field of strategic nuclear arms control’. With the accession to power of President Barack Obama, and the espousal of the policy of ‘reset’, the discourse espoused by President Dmitrii Medvedev again echoed the vocabulary of Gorbachev’s ‘minimum sufficiency’. As Mathers concludes ‘Russia regards its nuclear capability as providing a deterrent to attack, not weapons to be used to fight a war’. Nevertheless Russia continues to view nuclear weapons as indispensable attributes of a Great Power, and so is unlikely to relinquish them altogether. Moreover, ‘it is Russia’s position as a major nuclear weapons state that its leaders invoke when they want to ensure that Russia’s views are heard’.

The other type of conflict which Moscow has had to face under both Yel’tsin and Putin and Medvedev’s administrations, is the war in Chechnya, and the subsequent transmutation of this war into regional conflict, turning the entire North Caucasus into a hotbed of terrorism. The extent to which the domestic and the international are intertwined is amply demonstrated by Aglaya Snetkov in her piece on Russia’s struggle with terrorism. Snetkov argues that it is impossible to separate internal from external security: most focus exclusively on the external sphere when writing about security, but she pleads for attention to be paid to internal–external security. By focusing on the first two years and last two years of Putin’s presidency, Snetkov shows how internal issues related to challenges arising from domestic Islamic terrorists have been increasingly conflated with international Islamic terrorism.

Snetkov suggests that in the early period, Russia perceived itself as a weak state which was in itself a threat to Russian security:

Within this construction of Russia’s identity as a weak state, the issue of international terrorism transcended both the internal and external spheres, and played a dual symbolic role. On the one hand, it was identified as the main source of danger for Russia’s internal sphere (Putin 2000), due to the role it was said to play in the second Chechen war in 1999, but also in the external sphere as a major global threat to the current world order. On the other hand, it also became a way of re-establishing Russia as a strong power on the international stage. Although it was presented as the source of threat and thus an existential threat to Russia, international terrorism provided an avenue for Russia to return to the international stage as an equal and active participant in cooperation with other great powers against international terrorism.

In the later period, the impact of international terrorism on domestic security became a key ‘referent threat to Russia’s existence’ and this was seen as having prevented Russia from regaining its identity as a strong state. Now the terrorist threat was downgraded and treated as a phenomenon to be dealt with by legislative or judicial means. A normalisation process was embarked on in Chechnya itself which was linked to the idea of Russia as a strong state. The Chechen conflict was now historicised, which served ‘to reinforce further the official narrative that President Putin had succeeded in rebuilding Russia as a strong state without internal security problems’.

The essays by Ekaterina Braginskaia, Domitilla Sagramoso and Aglaya Snetkov all deal with various aspects of the challenges which Islam represents for Russia. A further essay by Roland Dannreuther addresses Russia’s relations with the Middle East, in the broader Islamic world. It is manifest that it is impossible to divorce Russian domestic concerns regarding its own Muslim population from its policies towards the Middle East. Indeed, Dannreuther describes the latter as a ‘constitutive element in the struggle to defeat Chechen secessionism and to counter the broader threat of Islamist extremism within the Russian Federation’. He argues that the apparent victory in Chechnya by the end of the Putin presidency provided a ‘vital source of legitimation’ for the Putin regime (including the Putin prime-ministership). It also allowed the regime to crack down on Muslim non-governmental organisations. In an apparent paradox, the Putin administration has witnessed an unprecedented improvement in relations with Israel. This is in part due to agreement over Kosovo, where, in Russia’s eyes, Muslim terrorists have been rewarded with their own state. Parallels were drawn between this scenario and the rising calls for self-determination of the Palestinian people. For this reason, Israel gave Russia its support over the second Chechen war and the two began to coordinate their counter-terrorism strategies.

Despite this convergence of views, Dannreuther suggests that Russian policy towards the wider Middle East has been characterised by an ‘ideologically blind’ and economically ‘hard-nosed’ opportunism—Dannreuther therefore rejects notions of a new Cold War logic to Russian policy in the Middle East as an inevitable expression of an anti-Western agenda. However, he warns that notwithstanding the lack of ideological content to its foreign policy, Russian economic opportunism can still produce tension in its relations with the West in particular. The Russian insistence on pushing ahead with the Bushehr reactor in Iran is one such example, although Dannreuther notes that engagement with Iran is constrained by longstanding suspicions between Moscow and Tehran. Ultimately however, Russia is more concerned to be viewed as an upholder of international order and international norms than as a revisionist power. Russia’s resurgence in the Middle East is less attributable to the success of particular policies and more a result of dissatisfaction with US policies, in particular the ill-fated democratisation agenda of the George W. Bush administration in the region. Russia’s agenda therefore, while not always in tune with Western policies, reflects that of a conservative status quo power which fears instability in the Middle East, ‘rather than a Cold War zero-sum logic’.

While in her essay on the radicalisation of jamaats in the North Caucasus, Sagramoso indicates the way in which fighting jamaats became increasingly close to the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Nationalism for Export? The Domestic and Foreign-Policy Implications of the New ‘Russian Idea’
• 3. Is Russia Out of Step with European Norms? Assessing Russia’s Relationship to European Identity, Values and Norms Through the Issue of Self-Determination
• 4. Russia’s International Images and its Energy Policy. An Unreliable Supplier?
• 5. The Russian Far East in Russia’s Asia Policy: Dual Integration or Double Periphery?
• 6. Nuclear Weapons in Russian Foreign Policy: Patterns in Presidential Discourse 2000–2010
• 7. When the Internal and External Collide: A Social Constructivist Reading of Russia’s Security Policy
• 8. Russia and the Middle East: A Cold War Paradigm?
• 9. The Radicalisation of Islamic Salafi Jamaats in the North Caucasus: Moving Closer to the Global Jihadist Movement?
• 10. ‘Domestication’ or Representation? Russia and the Institutionalisation of Islam in Comparative Perspective
• Index