Alliance-building between great power commitment and misperceptions: failed balancing despite alignment efforts in the post-Soviet space

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses upon alignment behaviour in the post-Soviet space and seeks to explain why balancing Russia by certain post-Soviet states, despite their numerous efforts to form alliances, has failed. Whereas this failure lies within the explanatory realm of the classical alignment theories, it is more puzzling why some of these post-Soviet states understood the limitations of balancing well and acted accordingly, while others failed to do so at detrimental costs. Trying to explain the failure of balancing Russia, the paper introduces a new theoretical concept that complements the existing alignment theories, and subsequently moves to explain the empirical puzzle of variations in post-Soviet states’ assessment of alignment options. In doing so, the paper focuses upon three case studies, namely Georgia and Ukraine on the one hand, that increased their efforts to balance Russia in the last decade and ended up detrimentally, and Azerbaijan on the other hand that refrained from doing so. Unit level variables such as the elites’ mis-perceptions/miscalculations of their alignment options as well as distribution of material capabilities, domestic politics and different strategic cultures are employed to explain the variation. The theoretical concept offered in the paper allows for an accurate understanding of alignment behavior in the post-Soviet space.

KEYWORDS:

• Balancing
• bandwagoning
• strategic hedging
• misperceptions
• Georgia
• Ukraine

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. During the early phase of Shevardnadze’s tenure, tendency existed in Georgia to bandwagon with Russia, because of the belief, that Gamsakhurdia, with his nationalist and anti-Russian rhetoric had caused the latter to back separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Zurcher 2009).

2. Overall, the misperceptions within the Georgian elite are reminiscent of Robert Jervis’s (Jervis 1968) hypotheses on misperception, fitting quite well into hypothesis one, especially with the perception of Russia’s relative weakness.

3. In numerous interviews during the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, the then US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice had indicated that President Saakshvili had misunderstood the messages from Washington.

4. Even in 1990s, at times of Russia’s relative weakness, US had never committed itself to a formal alliance with the GUUAM states to the extent it had committed itself to the security of the Baltic countries.

5. As a study by Taras Kuzio claims, following its independence, in Ukraine, societal attitude towards Russia was very much an elite-driven and manipulated process. In this regard, the elite entrepreneurship thesis that argues that ethnic conflict is often cultivated by elites rather than masses can also be applied to explain the foreign policy alignment or preference of a society.

6. It is not surprising that in public opinion the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ranks first among the most important issues facing the country (before unemployment). Also, overwhelming majority of people claim that they would never accept Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state (81%) or as a formal part of Armenia (96%) (2013 Caucasus Barometer Azerbaijan, https://caucasusbarometer.org/en/).