Assertive foreign policy despite diminished capabilities: Russian involvement in Syria

ABSTRACT

In 2015, more than 60 per cent of Russians supported the actions of their government in Syria, despite the lack of clarity on the reasons behind Moscow’s involvement. One would expect such a bold move to come from a powerful state with a healthy economy and strong geopolitical leverage. However, in 2015, Russia was struggling economically; its inflation had been rising and the GDP had contracted dramatically. The Kremlin’s decision to engage in Syria further strained the country’s already tense relations with the West. In this article, we argue that in some instances traditional security studies do not provide sufficient tools to understand some of the choices that Russia makes in its foreign policy. While physical security contingent on the state’s ability to project power is important to the Kremlin, in many cases, national interest in the preservation of the continuity of what is called ontological security (a security of being) prevails.

KEYWORDS:

• Ontological security
• Russia
• Syria
• security
• regime change

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Dina Moulioukova is a Lecturer in International Studies at the University of Miami and Assistant Director and co-founder of the Global Security Initiative. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Miami with a focus on innovative approaches to security studies.

Roger E. Kanet is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at both the University of Miami and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Notes

1 The total economy of California was reported in 2018 to be almost twice as large as that of Russia (Corcoran, 2018).

2 This is especially important to consider, given the “virtual” nature of the Russian economy: the Russian fuel and energy sector was and continues to be the “value pump” of its otherwise unsustainable economy. In 2016, the current non-oil sector account deficit amounted in nominal terms to $92 billion and 10.4% of GDP, revealing the vulnerability of the economy to trade shocks (World Bank, 2016). In addition to driving the Russian economy, this “value pump” finances the security net to millions of Russians. Many are employed by nonviable enterprises and depend on the state for heavily subsidized health and educational systems.

3 By “ontological security” we are referring to a state’s ability have answers to fundamentally existential and identity questions. When their actions are reproduced as routines, they create a sense of continuity and order (Giddens, 1991). Ontological security is threatened by the rupture of continuity. This, as a rule, happens in critical situations or at the radical disjuncture of an unpredictable kind that affects substantial numbers of individuals and threatens to destroy institutionalized, “normal” routines (Rossdale 2015, p. 373). These situations produce anxiety and represent threats to identity. Unlike fear that is tied to a particular situation, anxiety comes from the challenge to one’s identity (Giddens, 1991).

4 Foreign Minister Lavrov’s (2014) response to EU expansion was quite clear on Russia’s position: “The EU Eastern Partnership programme was also designed to expand the West-controlled geopolitical space to the east … There is a policy to confront the CIS countries with a hard, absolutely contrived and artificial choice – either you are with the EU or with Russia. It was the use of this approach to Ukraine that pushed that country … to a profound internal political crisis”.

5 For an assessment of Russian energy policy see Moulioukova and Kanet (2015).

6 At the time of Russia’s airstrikes in Syria more than 16,000 tweets were posted on Twitter on the topic of Russia and Syria. At the same time, only 1074 tweets mentioned Russia’s role in the Ukrainian crisis (Nechepurenko 2015).

7 For a perceptive analysis of those factors that influence Russian policy in Syria see Frolovskiy (2019).

8 This is a continuation of Putin’s narrative beginning in a speech in 2005, when he stated, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. For the Russian people, it became a real drama. Tens of millions of our citizens and countrymen found themselves outside Russian territory. The epidemic of disintegration also spread to Russia itself” (Putin, 2005).