The Revisionist Moment: Russia, Trump, and Global Transition

ABSTRACT

In response to recent changes in the international system, several schools of thought within the expert community have competed for influence inside Russia. Some of them push toward the establishment of a new, concert-based global power, while others warn that global instability is the new normal or doubt that the world has moved past the West-centered system. The Kremlin remains instinctively revisionist yet is also wary of any sharp and potentially disruptive moves. The global transition and Russia’s great power mentality push Moscow toward revisionism, while domestic stagnation and cautious reactions from non-Western powers encourage pragmatism in foreign policy.

Acknowledgments

An early version of the paper was presented at the annual convention of International Studies Association, San Francisco, April 4–7, 2018. The paper partly draws on the author’s Russia and America (Polity, 2019) and Russia’s Foreign Policy, 5th ed. (Rowman & Littlefield 2019). The author is grateful to Dmitry Gorenburg and two anonymous reviewers for helpful critique and suggestions. None of them is responsible for the final result.

Notes

1. As a result, some U.S. military analyses have recognized Russia as a “near-peer competitor” (Slater, Purcell, and Del Gaudio 2017).

2. For different viewpoints in the United States, see Graham (2019) and McFaul (2018).

3. For further analyses of Russia’s assertiveness and revisionism, see Tsygankov (2012), Legvold (2016), Sakwa (2017), Krickovic and Weber (2017), Clunan (2018), Karaganov and Suslov (2018), Murray (2018), Forsberg (2019), Götz and Merlen (2019), Istomin (2019), Larson and Shevchenko (2019), Schmitt (2019), Tsygankov (2019a).

4. For a position against viewing the annexation of Crimea as a violation of international law, see Nicolai Petro’s remarks (2014).

5. For a justification of U.S. global primacy philosophy, see, for example, Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth (2012).

6. For the argument that the coronavirus facilitates, not reduces, tensions among great powers, see Valdai Discussion Club (2020).

7. For other recent studies of Russian world order discussions, see sources cited in Note 3. See also Chebankova (2017), Radin and Reach (2017), and Kortunov (2019a).

8. For research on Russian think tanks, see Bacon (2018), Barbashin and Alexander Graef (2019).

9. In this article, international and world order are used interchangeably.

10. The divide between geopolitically minded and normative revisionists reflects not only individual differences, but also deep intellectual cleavages with historical roots. An example of their disagreement is the one between Slavophiles and Nicholas I over the benefit of advancement to Constantinople in the early Crimean War. For details, see Tsygankov (2012), chap. 12.

11. For instance, Eurasianism views Russia as an organic unity that is distinct from both European and Asian cultures.

12. As Timofei Bordachev (2017) writes, economic interdependence and nuclear deterrence notwithstanding, great power relations may descend further toward military confrontation if conclusions are not drawn from the conditions of 1871–1914.

13. The consensus view is that of CFDP (Strategiia dlia Rossii [2016], thesis 5.1.9). See also Miller and Lukyanov (2016).

14. This position is expressed by the Russian opposition to Putin’s regime and overall political system (see, for example, Yavlinsky 2017, 2019).

15. See, for example, Ruslan Ostashko (2017).

16. According to CFDP, the Ukraine crisis made it clear that the West aimed to restore military and political divisions of the Cold War or preserve the global dominance (Strategiia dlia Rossiii, thesis 3.7).

17. Such was the main conclusion of CFDP (Strategiia dlia Rossii, thesis 4.7).

18. Another recent poll showed that almost 60 percent favor “decisive” changes in the country (Mukhamedshina 2019).

19. On the importance of such connection and linkages, see, for example, Gabuev and Chernenko (2012) and Barbashin and Graef (2019).

20. For example, while participating in the television show “Bol’shaya igra,” Sergei Karaganov explicitly warned against Russia’s intervention in Venezuela during the period of the country’s internal crisis, when Moscow and Washington found themselves supporting opposite sides (2019b). In December 2018, Russia sent two nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela for training and made public plans to build a military presence at a Venezuelan base on the island of Orchilla in the Caribbean Sea.

21. Exceptions are domestic and international crises, during which Putin has demonstrated proneness to act quickly and rely on a narrow circle of advisors as he did with respect to the Crimea annexation.

22. For a more detailed assessment of Russia’s international goals and means, see Tsygankov (2019c), chap. 3 and (2019b).

23. For details of this worldview, see Tsygankov (2019d).

24. For further analyses of Russian military thinking, see especially Renz (2018), Fridman (2018), and Jonsson (2019).

25. Michael Kofman (2018) defined the new Russian strategy in relations with the West as raiding or series of operations to deny the stronger side a victory or “the opportunity to reinforce” followed by surprise attacks and withdrawal. For a more detailed analysis of Russia’s asymmetric power, see Tsygankov (2019c), chap. 3

26. See, for example, Schmitt and Gibbons-Neff (2020), Rouvinski (2017), and Donati, Restuccia and Talley (2020).