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Abstract
Russia has consistently opposed US hegemony since the early 1990s. Moscow has sought to create a world overseen by the UN Security Council and several power centres supporting an anti-hegemonic axis. Until recently, Russia's resources have been very limited. Russian opposition therefore was largely conceptual or a work in progress. Russian policy was largely reactive – and non-confrontational. However, the failure of the Russia-US relationship to develop practically has highlighted negative views of US hegemony, and the greater wealth generated through high energy prices is supporting an increasingly active Russian policy.
Notes
1Cited in Boris Piadyshev (ed.), ‘Nesmotrya na kataklizmi 2004, god zakonchilsya v tselom so znakom plyus’ (‘This year was not an easy one’), Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 1 (2005).
2See, for example, Andrew Kuchins, Vyacheslav Nikonov and Dmitri Trenin, US-Russia Relations: the Case for an Upgrade (Moscow: Carnegie Centre 2005), <www.carnegie.ru>.
3Yevgeniy Volk, ‘Vkhozhdeniyu v novuyu geopolitiku’ (‘New Geopolitics for Russia’), Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 1 (2005).
4‘Washington Hails US-Russian Satellite Launch Cooperation’, Mosnews, 22 March 2006, <www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/22/sealaunch.shtml>.
5See Sergei Oznobishchev, ‘Rossiya i SSHA: vozmozhen li otkat k “kholodnomu miru?’, Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 6 (2004).
6Cited in ‘Russian Foreign Minister Acknowledges Growing Divergence With US’, Mosnews, 5 Dec. 2005, <http://mosnews.com/news/2005/12/05/moscowwashington.shtml>.
7Attitudes on the USA: FOM Monitoring Public Opinion Foundation Database, <http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/ed053718>.
8Mikhail Bezrukov, ‘Institutional Mechanisms of Russian Foreign Policy’, in Leon Aaron and Kenneth M. Jensen (eds.), The Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy (Washington DC: USIPP 1994), 68–9.
9Bobo Lo, Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Reality, Illusion and Mythmaking (London: Palgrave MacMillan 2002), 173.
10See Andrei Kozyrev, Preobrazhenie (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnoshenia 1995), Chapters 8 and 9.
11‘Concept of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation’ (below Foreign Policy Concept 1993), Diplomaticheski Vestnik, Special Edition, No. 1 (1993), 11.
12The domestic reaction to this early western orientation in Russian foreign policy is thoroughly examined in Neil Malcolm, Alex Pravda, Roy Allison and Margot Light, Internal Factors in Russian Foreign Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996).
13Dmitri Simes, Russia After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its Place as a Great Power (NY: Simon & Schuster 1999), 213.
14Yevgeniy Bazhanov, Sovremenni mir (Moscow: Izvestiya 2004), 125–6.
15E. Primakov, ‘Mnogopolyarniy mir i OON’ (‘A Multi-polar World and the UN’), Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No.10 (1997). It is often argued that Primakov adopted policies with a renewed focus on Eurasia which Kozyrev had neglected. There was in fact some continuity in policy: Kozyrev had pursued a policy that was more complex than critics acknowledged, including developing relations with the CIS. Allen Lynch, ‘Russian Foreign Policy in the 1990s’, in Rick Fawn and Stephen White (eds.), Russia After Communism (London: Frank Cass 2002), 165–9. For more in-depth examination of Primakov's efforts to build axes with China and India, see Lo, Russian Foreign Policy; Thomas Ambrosio, Challenging America's Global Pre-eminence: Russia's Quest for Multipolarity (Aldershot: Ashgate 2005).
16‘Introduction’ in Andrei Melville and Tatiana Shakleina (eds.), Russian Foreign Policy in Transition: Concepts and Realities (Budapeast: CEU Press 2005), x–xii.
17Foreign Policy Concept 1993, Section: ‘The Russian Federation in the Changing World’.
18Yuri Fyodorov, ‘Boffins’ & ‘Buffoons’: Different Strains of Thought in Russia's Strategic Thinking. Chatham House Briefing Paper, BP 06/01, March 2006, 4.
19‘Introduction’, in Melville and Shakleina, Russian Foreign Policy in Transition, xi.
20Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, 23–6.
21Foreign Policy Concept (2000), in Igor Ivanov, The New Russian Diplomacy (Washington DC: The Nixon Center/ Brookings Institution Press 2002), 168.
22Ivanov, New Russian Diplomacy, 118.
23Ibid., 46–7, 110.
24Ibid., 110, 119.
25Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation (2000), Section IV. For an English language version of the Concept, see Ivanov, New Russian Diplomacy.
26Mikhail Titarenko, in ‘Vkhozhdeniye v novuyu geopolitiku’.
28Anatolii Torkunov, ‘Russia and the West: Common Security Interests’, International Affairs, Moscow, No. 8 (2004).
29Sergei Kortunov, ‘Rossisko-Americanskoe partnyorstvo i vuizovi XXI veka’ (‘Russian-American Partnership: A Chance to Open a New Page’), Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 4 (2002); Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Dmitri Simes, ‘Rejecting Russia?’, The National Interest, Summer (2005); Andrei Kelin, ‘Spokoino negativnoe otnosheniye k rasshireniyu NATO’ (‘Attitude to NATO Expansion: Calmly Negative’), Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 12 (2003).
30For more discussion of Russia's growing political and economic confidence and consequent political independence, particularly in its relations with the USA and EU, see the chapters by Dov Lynch and Fiona Hill in Marcin Zaborowski (ed.), Friends Again? EU-US Relations After the Crisis (Paris: Institute for Security Studies 2006).
31Dmitri Trenin, The Post-Imperial Project (Moscow: Carnegie Centre 2006), <www.carnegie.ru>.
32Cited in Owen Matthews, ‘Reversal of Fortune’, Newsweek, 10/17 April (2006).
33A leading French expert has noted that although Moscow made loud rhetorical statements about the US-led action and sought to support a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis in opposition to it, some French and German diplomats considered this to be half-hearted and that Moscow was effectively hiding behind Paris and Berlin rather than confronting Washington directly. Isabelle Façon, ‘Kosovo and Iraq: Two Test Cases for the Partnership Between Post-Soviet Russia and the West’, in Osvaldo Croci and Amy Verdun (eds.), The Transatlantic Divide: Foreign and Security policies in the Atlantic Alliance from Kosovo to Iraq (London: Manchester UP 2006).
34Yuri Rubinsky, ‘The Worst Quarrels Occur Within Families’, Russia in Global Affairs, No. 3 (July–Sept. 2003) <http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/4/492.html>.
35Vagif Guseynov, ‘Voina, raskolovshaya mir’, in Vagif Guseynov and Sergei Kortunov (eds.), Irakski Kriziz: stanovleniye novovo mirovo poryadka (Moscow: Institut strategicheskikh otsenok i analiza 2004), 441.
36Vladimir Baranovsky, ‘The Kosovo Factor in Russia's Foreign Policy’, The International Spectator 35/2 (2000), 113, 124.
37Kortunov, ‘Rossiisko-Amerikanskoe partnyorstvo’.
38Torkunov, ‘Russia and the West’; Bazhanov, Sovremenni mir, 134.
39Alexei Arbatov, The Transformation of Russian Military Doctrine: Lessons Learned From Kosovo and Chechnya, Marshall Center Papers, No. 2 (2000), 3, <www.marshallcenter.org/CISSMCPaperstwo.pdf>. For a Western account of the impact of Kosovo on the NATO-Russia relationship, see John Norris, Collision Course: NATO, Russia and Kosovo (London: Praeger 2005). For ‘all the flaws in Russia's approach to the Balkans, and despite its many strategic gaffes, Russian involvement in Kosovo was surprisingly positive. Throughout the conflict, the USA and Russia remained in constant contact … and the Kosovo crisis provided daily evidence of a level and breadth of fundamental engagement between Russia and the [US] that would have been unthinkable fifteen years before’, he argued, 308.
40Yuri Baluyevsky, ‘Strategic Stability in a Globalised World’, Russia in Global Affairs, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2003), <http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/5/500.html>; Viktor Starodubov, Rossiya-SSHA: Global’naya zavisimost’ (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya 2004), 152.
41Sergei Oznobishchev, ‘Istoriya ne zakanchivaetsya no menyaetsya’ (‘No Need to Start From Scratch’), Roundtable Discussion, Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 12 (2004); Vagif Guseynov, ‘Udar po iraku izmenit mir. Epoch voini otzovetsya i na kaspii’, in Guseynov and Kortunov, Irakski Kriziz, 381.
42 The Priority Tasks of the Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Moscow: 2003), 49, <www.mil.ru>.
43‘Iran in Rush With Nuclear Program Because of US Hardline Policy – Senior Russian MP’, Mosnews, 24 April 2006, <www.mosnews.com/news/2006/04/24/irankosachev.shtml>.
44Bazhanov, Sovremenni mir, 134.
45Discussion of Russian experts at ‘Russia: Quo Vadis’ seminar, EU Institute for Security Studies, Paris, 5 April 2004, <www.iss-eu.org/activ/content/rep04-04.pdf>.
46Kortunov, ‘Rossiisko-Amerikanskoe partnyorstvo’.
47Vladimir Degoev, ‘Istoriya ne zakanchivaetsya no menyaetsya’.
48Roy Allison, ‘Strategic Reassertion in Russia's Central Asia Policy’, International Affairs 80/2 (2004), 277.
49Cited in Aleksandr Iurin, ‘Pragmatism of the Most Difficult Meeting’, International Affairs, Moscow, No. 6 (2005). US officials concurred, noting positive and productive relations with Russia, particularly in law enforcement and intelligence cooperation in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, and, according to US Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow, in ‘understanding how the nature of the threat to civilised countries everywhere has changed’. Speech by Vershbow, Perm, Russia, 27 Feb. 2003 <http://moscow.usembassy.gov/links/print_statement.php?record_id=30>. See also comments by Secretary Rice, 9 Feb. 2005, <www.russiaprofile.org.>
50A recent US analysis stated that in 2001–2, Russia-US relations enjoyed a ‘vigorous resurgence’, also noting that issues at the top of the agenda seemed to be the same and that the international situation was favourable for the development of a strong and lasting partnership. See Stephen Sestanovich (ed.), Russia's Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should Do, Independent Task Force Report No. 57 (NY: Council on Foreign Relations, March 2006), 25, <http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Russia_TaskForce.pdf>.
51 Priority Tasks; Iurin, ‘Pragmatism’; Vladimir Dvorkin, ‘An Outlook for Joint Countering of Security Threats’, Russia in Global Affairs 3/4 (Oct.–Dec. 2005), <www.nato.int>.
52Andrew Monaghan, ‘Russia, NATO and the EU: A European Security Triangle? Or Shades of a New Entente’, Russie.NEI.Visions, No. 10a (Paris: IFRI 2006), <www.ifri.org>.
53Judy Dempsey, ‘NATO and Russia to Trade Intelligence’, International Herald Tribune, 7 Feb. 2006. On Russian initiative, Black Sea Fleet units will participate in Operation ‘Active Endeavour’, a NATO maritime surveillance and monitoring operation in the Mediterranean. Political agreement to contribute was reached in Dec. 2004, and since then Russian military authorities have been working to meet the pre-deployment inter-operability standards applied to all participating elements.
54Fyodorov, ‘Boffins and Buffoons’, 4.
55Nadezhda Arbatova (ed.), Rossia i ES: bratya po oruzhiu (Moscow: Russia in a United Europe 2003); Nadezhda Arbatova (ed.), NATO, Rossia i evropeiskii soyuz (Moscow: Russia in a United Europe 2003); Nadezhda Arbatova (ed.), Evrobezopasnost: est li v nei mesto dlya Rossii … ?, (Moscow: Russia in a United Europe 2002).
56Oznobishchev, ‘Rossiya i SSHA’.
57Ibid.; Sestanovich, Russia's Wrong Direction, 26.
58Iurin, ‘Pragmatism’.
59Yuri Fyodorov, ‘Strategic Thinking in Putin's Russia’, in Yuri Fyodorov and Bertil Nygren (eds.), Russian Military Reform and Russia's New Security Environment (Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College 2003), 170.
60Kortunov, ‘Russian-American Partnership’.
61Yuri Fyodorov, ‘Strategic Thinking’, 159–60; Alexandr Goltz, Armiya rossii: 11 poteryannikh let (Moscow: Zakharov 2004).
62For example, Arbatova, ‘Vkhozhdeniyu v novuyu geopolitiku’.
63 Priority Tasks, 32, 40, 45, 49, 67.
64‘Moscow Says U.S. Statements on Chechen Talks Hurting Relations’, Mosnews, 8 Sept. 2004, <www.mosnews.com/news/2004/09/08/washington.shtml>.
65Vladimir Putin, ‘Nesmotrya na kataklizmi 2004, god zakonchilsya v tselom so znakom plyus’ (‘This year was not an easy one’), Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, No. 1 (2005); ‘Russia Lashes Out at U.S. Over Human Rights Report’, Mosnews, 11 March 2006, <www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/11/usreport.shtml>
66Allison, ‘Strategic Reassertion in Russia's Central Asia Policy’, 277–8.
67Sestanovich, Russia's Wrong Direction, 28.
68See Igor Tarasenko, Long-Term Possibilities for NATO-Russia Naval Security Cooperation, NATO Defence College Occasional Paper, No. 7. (Rome: NDC 2005), 27–9.
69Kortunov, ‘Russian-American Partnership’; Baluyevsky; Priority Tasks, 45; Guseynov, ‘Voina, raskolovshaya mir’, in Guseynov and Kortunov, 443; interviews with this author, Sept.–Oct. 2005.
70‘Russia Criticizes NATO Plans to Deploy U.S. Bases in East Europe’, Mosnews, 30 April 2006, <www.mosnews.com/news/2006/04/30/russiacriticises.shtml>.
71Yevgeniy Primakov, ‘Russia and the US: In Need of Trust and Cooperation’, Russia in Global Affairs, No. 1 (Jan.–March 2006), <http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/14/1005.html>.
72Ibid; Letitia Spetchinski and Pavel Kandel’, Yugoslavskii kriziz: vchera i sevodnya (Moscow: Institut Evropi 2002), 52; Guseynov, ‘Voina, raskolovshaya mir’, in Guseynov and Kortunov, Irakski Kriziz 441.
74Vladimir Ryzhkov, ‘Sovereignty vs. Democracy’, Russia in Global Affairs 3/4 (Oct.–Dec. 2005), 102.
75Vladimir Socor, ‘Kyrgyz President Warns of Deadline on American Air Base’, Eurasia Daily Monitor 3/78 (21 April 2006), <www.jamestown.org>.
76Ibid.
77Ryzhkov, ‘Sovereignty vs. Democracy’, 105; Surkov cited in idem, 103–4.
78Interviews with this author, March 2006. For a discussion of the introduction of the NGO legislation, see Edwin Bacon, ‘Required to Register’, The World Today (Jan. 2006).
79Socor, ‘Kyrgyz President Warns of Deadline on American Air Base’.
80‘Gazprom warns EU not to block its expansion plans, “politicise” supply issues’, <http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/060420/323/g9jyr.html>.
81Russia has not sought to ‘hide’ by avoiding great power diplomacy. On the contrary, it has attempted to use its relationship with the US to be involved in strategic discussions. For an in-depth discussion of the balance/bandwagon theory discussion and where Russian foreign policy might fit, see Ambrosio, Challenging America's Global Pre-eminence, Ch. 2.
82Kortunov, ‘Russian-American Partnership’.
83Bobo Lo, ‘The Strange Case of Sino-Russian Relations’, in Thomas Gomart and Tatiana Kastueva-Jean (eds.), Understanding Russia and the New Independent States (Paris: IFRI 2006), 78.
84Interviews with this author, Moscow, Sept. 2005 and March 2006.
85Ambrosio has therefore argued that Russian policy can be seen in the light of the costs of bandwagoning theory.
86Kortunov, ‘Russian-American Partnership’.
87Ambrosio, Challenging America's Global Pre-eminence, 171–5.
