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Journal of International Relations and Development
Volume 3, No. 3 (September 2000)
Russian Post-Communist Foreign Policy Thinking at the Cross-Roads: Changing Paradigms
by Alexander A. Sergunin
*
Introduction
The demise of the union of soviet socialist republics (ussr) and its marxist ideology, the re-emergence of russia as a separate, independent entity, and the challenges of the post-cold war world have compelled russia to redefine its national interests and make significant adjustments in the spheres of both foreign policy and the conceptual basis of its international strategy. In turn, this has led to a fierce debate on foreign policy priorities among scholars, experts and practitioners. This debate is far from ending. Neither a coherent international strategy nor a solid theoretical basis for it have yet been found.
This article deals with the evolution of Russia’s foreign policy thinking during the 1990s. It has three main purposes. First, to distinguish and depict the main theoretical approaches and foreign policy schools in the country. Second, to outline the problematique of the Russian foreign policy discourse. Third, to examine the institutional dimension of post-Communist international studies such as the main research, training, library and archival centres as well as professional associations.
Theoretical Frameworks and Foreign Policy Schools
The Russian post-communist foreign policy discourse departed from ideological rather than theoretical issues. There are at least four explanations for why this happened. First, after the collapse of Marxism, which had served as the official theoretical basis for the social sciences, a sort of theoretical vacuum emerged. For some time, Russian academics simply did not dare to touch on theoretical problems because they were too sensitive for them. They were unable or did not want to fill the above vacuum with some new theory or a theory borrowed from abroad. Second, Russian scholars had to respond to the real challenges posed by the post-Cold War international environment and meet the immediate needs that confronted the newly born Russian diplomacy. This environment was more favourable to applied rather than theoretical studies. Third, with the rise of numerous ‘think tanks’ and a more or less independent mass media the demand for foreign policy experts has dramatically increased. Many gifted scholars have moved from the academic institutes and universities over to analytical centres, newspapers and TV programmes or tried to combine these new jobs with their old ones. This has made international studies more popular but their quality and standards of expertise have become worse (Tyulin 1997:188). Fourth, the chronic economic crisis and changes in public attitudes to science have had a most negative impact on the state of the field in Russia. The state and society as a whole have lost interest in science and higher education and the prestige of these fields have declined accordingly. Salaries have fallen dramatically and social security has almost been destroyed. Scholars have migrated from the academia either abroad or to other sectors (private business, politics, think tanks, the mass media). According to the Russian Vice-Prime Minister Vladimir Bulgak, 15,200 Russian scientists have taken up foreign citizenship and another 5,000 work in foreign countries on a contractual basis (these figures include specialists in natural sciences) (Rossiyskaya gazeta, 10 January 1998:2).
In sum, these factors have prevented rather than facilitated the development of foreign policy theories in post-Communist Russia. Moreover, they have been conducive to the ideologisation of the Russian foreign policy debate.
There have been several schools of foreign policy thought in post-Communist Russia, differing both in their conceptual foundations and in their approaches to specific international issues. Along with purely Russian schools, almost all of the classic international relations paradigms - realism, idealism/liberalism and globalism (or state-centric, multi-centric, and global-centric approaches to international politics) can be identified. It goes without saying that these schools have been relatively fluid coalitions, and condensing the complex debate into just a few categories obviously risks oversimplification. They do, however, provide a helpful framework for analysing Russia’s post-Communist foreign policy discourse. Such an approach leads one to ask certain questions, seek certain types of answers, and use certain methods in theory-building. It also brings order to the analytical effort and makes it more manageable.
The early stage of this discourse is manifested by the "Atlanticism"-"Eurasianism" dichotomy.
The Atlanticists ("Westernisers")
These were a relatively small but influential group of high-ranking government officials and academics who favoured the pro-Western orientation of Moscow’s international strategy. Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev became their recognised leader (Arbatov 1993:9-10; Crow 1993:22-23). From August 1991 to the end of 1992, the ideas of this group dominated policy formulation and implementation as well as the foreign policy discourse in Russia. For that reason, Yeltsin’s foreign policy was clearly pro-Western.
The Atlanticists believed that the West (Western Europe and the United States) should be the main orientation for Russian diplomacy. They insisted that Russia historically belongs to the Western (Christian) civilisation. They saw the main task of Russian international strategy as one of building a partnership with the West and joining Western economic, political and military institutions - the European Union (EU), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), G-7, and so on. Mr. Kozyrev stressed that Moscow's main guideline is to "join the club of recognised democratic states with market economies, on a basis of equality" (NATO Review February 1993:7). He regarded such a partnership as the principal source of international support for Russian reforms.
During that period (1991-93) Moscow refrained from opposing NATO enlargement. Moreover, on a number of occasions high-ranking Russian officials (President Boris Yeltsin, Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, etc.) proposed that Russia could itself one day become a full member of NATO (Pravda, 23 December 1991; Rossiyskaya gazeta, 5 March 1992). In the Atlanticists view, NATO was an important instrument for providing both European and trans-Atlantic security. The Atlanticists maintained that combined with the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), NATO could become the starting point for the formation of a new type of Euro-Atlantic Community; one which could guarantee international stability from Vancouver through to Vladivostok.
The Atlanticists insisted that Russia should reduce the global activities of the former USSR due to a lack of resources, and radical changes in the country’s foreign policy doctrine should be implemented. They believed that a renunciation of the global imperial policy and the ideological messianism of the former Union could open up prospects for domestic reforms and facilitate Russia’s national revival. At the same time, this was not to lead to Moscow’s self-isolation from wide-ranging processes of international co-operation (Zagorski et al. 1992:11).
However, a new geopolitical situation following the breakdown of the USSR, and a number of international and domestic developments, caused a crisis in the ‘Atlanticist’ school of thought, as well as a shift towards traditional strategic concepts. The Atlanticists split into two groups. While Kozyrev's followers became more assertive as to the West and the 'near abroad', a number of liberal politicians, academics and journalists were in favour of 'civilised dialogue' both with the West and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The liberals opposed Kozyrev's 'linkage tactics' regarding troop withdrawals and Russian national minorities in the ex-Soviet republics. They were also against the maintenance of Russian military bases and a considerable military presence in the 'near abroad' (Arbatov 1992; Goncharov 1992:3).
Eurasianism
The Yeltsin-Kozyrev pro-Western line evoked painful reactions from many Russian politicians and intellectuals who tried to develop some alternative concepts of foreign policy. Since 1992 "Eurasianism" has been the first serious alternative to the pro-Western theories that were dominant in Russian foreign policy thinking during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The "Eurasianist" concept (evraziistvo in Russian) became very popular among Russian intellectuals during the mid-1990s. The concept drew heavily on a philosophical school of 1920s Russian emigres who had tried to find a compromise with the Stalinist version of Socialism. It stresses the uniqueness of Russia. One of its key postulates is that in civilisational terms Russia has never been part of Europe (Iskhod k Vostoku 1921; Fedotov 1991; Solonevich 1991). Hence, it should choose a ‘third way’ between the West and the East. Globally, Russia should be a bridge between these civilisations.
Contemporary proponents of this theory have been split into two opposing groups. One of them resided in the reformist (so-called 'democratic') camp, while the other belonged to the Slavophiles.
The "Democratic" version.
The Democrats tried to adapt Eurasianism to their views for a number of reasons. First, they realised their own weakness in terms of neglecting the national question and Russian national values. The nationalists and the Communists were obviously stronger in this field and thus, in part, managed to capture the sympathy of the ordinary people by appealing to their humiliation over their national dignity. Obviously, the adoption of Eurasianism by the Democrats was part of a strategy aimed at conquering both Russian public opinion and the political elite. Second, Eurasianism was a reaction by those Democrats disappointed by both the West’s reluctance to admit Russia to its institutions, and the scale of Western assistance to Moscow. They understood that it was unwise to rely too heavily upon the West. By adhering to Eurasianism they tried to demonstrate to the West that it could well lose a potential ally.
Finally, the "democratic" Eurasianism reflected the geopolitical position of Russia, the need to maintain stable relations with both the East and South. Speaking at a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry in February 1992, Sergei Stankevich (1992a:100), the then Advisor to the President, said:
There is no getting away from certain facts. One of them is that we are now separated from Europe by a whole chain of independent states and find ourselves much further from it, which inevitably involves a definite and, indeed, a quite substantial redistribution of our resources, our potentialities, our links and our interests in favour of Asia and the Eastern sector.
As apparent from the term Eurasianism itself, the geographic frame of reference for the Eurasianist foreign policy concept implied first of all the Eurasian continent. Other regions were of peripheral interest for Eurasianism. Hence, in the methodological sense, the Eurasianist foreign policy concept was relatively close to the geopolitical school of thought (comparable with Mackinder’s (1904; 1919) "Heartland" theory).
The Eurasianist philosophy in the democratic version departed from a thesis on Russia's special mission in history. According to Stankevich (1992b:4):
Russia's role in the world is [...] to initiate and maintain a multilateral dialogue between cultures, civilisations and states. It is Russia which reconciles, unites, and co-ordinates. It is the good, Great Power that is patient and open within borders, which have been settled by right and with good intentions, but which is threatened beyond these borders. This land, in which East and West, North and South are united, is unique, and is perhaps the only one capable of harmoniously uniting many different voices in a historical symphony.
One other observer has put it in more pragmatic terms: ‘[...] the primary object of Russia's mission today is to be fundamental to Eurasian continental stability [...] Another aspect of Russia's mission is to guarantee at least minimum respect for human rights in post-Soviet space’ (Pleshakov 1993:22-23).
The basic idea of the Eurasianist security concept according to the "democratic" version was the notion of national interests. According to Stankevich, the national interests of any country are predetermined by its geography, history, culture, ethnic composition, and political tradition. Stankevich believed that the Russian national idea should be one characterised by democracy, federalism, and patriotism rather than totalitarianism, imperialism and socialist internationalism. More precisely, he identified Russian national security interests as follows: self-preservation; the prevention of further collapse; the creation of a system of democracy and federalism that checks both imperial dictatorship and separatist tendencies; efficient guarantees for ethnic Russians who live in the ‘near abroad’; and the evolution of a strong and efficient state with a stable foreign policy (Stankevich 1994:31-32).
The Eurasianists believed that the government had paid too much attention to the Western direction of its foreign policy, while Russia’s most compelling needs were in the South and East. The Eurasianists argued that, first of all, Moscow should deal with "the arc of crisis" developing on Russia’s southern borders, and with the problems which had arisen in relations with its own sizeable Muslim population. Russia, they argued, has to develop an active diplomacy to meet the challenges posed by Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic countries. In addition, they contended that coping with these threats and challenges is more important than maintaining an active dialogue with the West on European and trans-Atlantic issues (Stankevich 1994:24).
The Eurasianist approach gave priority to the consolidation of economic, political and security ties between the countries of the FSU, preferably within the context of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (Travkin 1994:34-35). The Eurasianists persuaded the Yeltsin government to make the CIS a priority for Moscow’s international policy, and to initiate the Commonwealth’s integration.
For the "democratic" version Eurasianists, Eastern Europe was geographic priority number two after the CIS. In 1992-93, the Eurasianists viewed this sub-region through the prism of Russia’s economic, rather than purely security, interests. They complained about the disruption of traditional economic ties with Eastern European countries, which had appeared to have re-oriented themselves towards the West. However, the school also predicted that very soon these countries would again be interested in co-operation with Russia as the Western markets would no longer have vacant niches (Travkin 1994:38).
The Eurasianists recommended co-operation with the Third World rather than with the industrial West (Lukin 1994:110). While the former perceives Russia as an equal partner the latter treats Moscow as a ‘second-echelon’ state. In addition, a number of prosperous and rich Asia-Pacific nations such as Japan, South Korea and some of the members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) could be promising trade partners and a source of investment for Russia’s troubled economy. Moreover, military co-operation with India and China could be important pillars for the new Eurasian security complex (Miasnikov 1994:228-38; Sergunin and Subbodin 1996a:3-8; Sergunin and Subbodin 1996b:24-7).
At the same time, the "democratic" version of Eurasianists has not denied the importance of keeping good relations with the West. They do not object to Russia entering either the international economy or the ‘defence structure of the advanced part of the world community’ (Bogaturov et al. 1992:31). In their view, Russia’s most important interest consists of improving relations with the European Union, and gradual integration into the European economic and political system. At the same time, Russia should oppose the transformation of Europe into a closed economic system and military-political union, just as it should oppose the appearance of a dominant regional power (Germany). For the Eurasianists from the "democratic" pole, it is best to preserve both the multipolar nature of European politics and the role of the United States in the region. Simultaneously, both the function and role of NATO should be reconsidered (Lukin 1994:115).
The main point in the Eurasianists’ dispute with the Atlanticists has been the need to adjust the balance between the Western and Eastern directions of Moscow’s international strategy. As one advocate of "democratic" Eurasianism explained, ‘partnership with the West will undoubtedly strengthen Russia in its relations with the East and the South, while partnership with the East and the South will give Russia independence in its contacts with the West’ (Malcom 1994: 167).
Initially, the "democratic" Eurasianists were much less influential than the Atlanticists within the Yeltsin government and Russian political elites. However, as Russian society’s discontent with Kozyrev’s pro-Western line increased, Eurasianism became stronger among both policy-makers and foreign policy experts. Starting to coalesce in 1992, by 1993 the "Eurasianist Democrats" were able to influence foreign policy and security debates in Russia. The theoretical framework of Russia's 1993 foreign policy doctrine (especially the setting of regional priorities) was obviously affected by "democratic" Eurasianist ideas (Kontseptsiya Vneshney Politiki 1993). The nationalists and the Eurasianists were together successful in forcing Kozyrev to link Russian military politics and troop withdrawals with national minorities’ rights in the ex-Soviet republics (especially in the Baltic states).
The Slavophile version.
In contrast to the "democratic" version of Eurasianism, the Slavophiles downplayed the country’s unique geopolitical position and instead stressed Russia's distinctiveness from both the West and the East. Elgiz Pozdnyakov (1993a:6), a Russian authority in international relations theory, noted:
The geopolitical location of Russia is not just unique (so is that of any state), it is truly fateful for both herself and the world... An important aspect of this situation was that Russia, being situated between two civilisations, was a natural keeper of both a civilised equilibrium and a world balance of power.
According to the Slavophiles, this predetermined in no small measure the evolution of the Russian state as a great power and the establishment of a strong central authority. Unlike the Democrats, the Slavophiles have not been frightened to label Russia as an empire and to support its revival (Pozdnyakov 1993b:30).
Contrary to the "Democrats", the Slavophiles opposed Western assistance. They considered it irrelevant and burdensome, and proposed a reliance on Russia's own resources. They opposed Russia's joining of the Western economic, political and military institutions on the basis of it restricting the country's sovereignty. They also favoured turning the protection of Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics into a top foreign policy priority. Contrary to the "Democrats", however, the Slavophiles did not rule out the use of force to defend these minorities.
Finally, they proposed to change the current geopolitical priorities by paying more attention to Russia’s southern and eastern neighbours and to keep a relatively low profile in the West.
By the end of 1993, both versions of Eurasianism - "democratic" and Slavophile - found themselves, similar to Atlanticism, in a critical situation due to a number of intellectual and political factors. Other schools of thought, alternatives to both Atlanticism and Eurasianism, then became influential.
The Rise of the Derzhavniki
The emergence of derzhavniki was the end result of the process of consolidation of the three major political forces - the industrial lobby, the federal military and civilian bureaucracies, and the moderate "Democrats". This group was quickly labelled the derzhavniki or the gosudarstvenniki (proponents of state power). The term derzhavnik denotes the advocating of a strong and powerful state which can maintain order and serve as a guarantee against anarchy and instability; a relatively traditional Russian view of the state's role.
As for Russia’s foreign policy, the derzhavniki proposed that it should be guided by the principle of self-limitation and self-sufficiency (Russia’s National Interests 1992:135). It was argued that Russia should not compete for influence as a global power. But this period of concentration on its internal problems should not, however, prevent Russia from pursuing an active foreign policy in various parts of the world. The derzhavniki opposed a choice between pro-Western or pro-Asian lines in Russia’s foreign policy. They believed that Russia is both a European and an Asian country. According to the derzhavniki, the best way to define Russia’s identity was to become Russian and to respect the nation’s own history and values (Vladislavlev and Karaganov 1992:36).
Along with the "Democratic" Eurasianists they considered the CIS and the "near abroad" as a top priority for Moscow’s security policy. ‘Russia must bear its cross and fulfil its duty by playing an enlightened post-imperial role throughout the ex-Soviet Union’, observed Vladislavlev and Karaganov (1992:35):
A decisive component of Russia’s new mission in the world is to ensure, with help from the world community, that the ex-Soviet area does not become a geostrategic hole radiating instability and war and ultimately endangering the very existence of humanity.
A need for the gradual economic and military integration of the CIS has also been acknowledged. Belarus and Kazakhstan have been most the promising partners in the Commonwealth in this respect. The derzhavniki have put pressure on the government to create a proper CIS mechanism to provide such integrationist processes with the essential institutional support. However, they stated that Russia’s assertive policy in the ‘near abroad’ should not imply an imperialist policy. The derzhavniki assumed that any attempt to forcibly re-establish the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire would be fraught with danger; overstraining Moscow itself and also possibly leading to international isolation (Blackwill and Karaganov 1994:19).
This group regarded the West as an important priority in Moscow’s foreign policy and favoured better relations with the West, but not at the cost of diminishing Russia’s role as an independent great power with its own ‘spheres of influence’. They remained fairly sceptical as to the West’s willingness and capability to help Russia in realising its reforms. They argued against an excessive reliance on Western economic assistance and political guidance and advocated an active arms export policy regardless of Western opposition (Strategiya dlya Rossii 1992:5).
It was the derzhavniki who first suggested that the West may well choose to implement a sort of neo-containment policy towards Russia because of its irritation with Moscow’s less than compliant tone, its increasing concern about signs of Russian dominance in the post-Soviet space, as well as over Moscow’s reluctance to accept NATO enlargement, to restrain its arms sales, and to stop playing the ‘Chinese card’ (Blackwill and Karaganov 1994:19-20).
The derzhavniki have been the leading critics among Russia’s political elites over Western policies concerning NATO’s expansion. They have warned that enlargement could lead to a resumption of the East-West confrontation, although in a milder form than before. They recommended that the West should delay its decision on expansion for a number of years. Moreover, both Russia and the West should propose some positive programme for Central and Eastern European countries to reduce their security concerns. There could be bilateral or unilateral Western guarantees for their security, and an early enlargement of the EU and Western European Union (WEU), and so on. In addition, Russia should develop its relations with the EU and WEU as a counterweight to NATO’s offensive capabilities (Karaganov 1995:63-64).
As a result of the December 1993 elections, which demonstrated the success of Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, the domestic basis for pro-Western policy shrunk. For many Democrats, ‘statist’ ideology became the only way to save the remnants of "Democratic" principles and confront the extremists, nationalists, and Communists. A significant group of Atlanticists (including Kozyrev) and the "Democratic wing" of the Eurasianists both joined the derzhavniki.
The so-called Kozyrev Doctrine, proclaimed by the then Russian Foreign Minister in a speech to Russian diplomatic representatives in the CIS and Baltic states in January 1994, became a symbol of the derzhavnikis’ concept of foreign policy. He declared that the vital strategic issue for Russian diplomacy was the defence of Russian minority rights in the 'near abroad'. He affirmed the need for a Russian military presence in this area and advocated the idea of dual nationality (Nezavisimaya gazeta 19 Januray 1994; Litera 1994/1995:45-52).
The year 1996 took off with the appointment of a new Russian Foreign Minister. Andrei Kozyrev was replaced by Yevgeny Primakov, previously Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service. Primakov was a less controversial figure than Kozyrev: the Democrats and the government’s opponents both acknowledged his professionalism and eagerness to protect Russia’s national interests. He also followed the derzhavniki course. Primakov proposed a slightly different set of geographical priorities - the CIS, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States of America - to demonstrate to the West Russia’s capability as a counterweight to NATO and EU enlargement (Stupavsk_ 1996:10).
Realism: Return of the Repressed
The derzhavniki with their suspicions toward idealism and romanticism and their advocacy of national interests paved the way towards the rehabilitation of the realist school of thought. The balance of power, rather than the balance of interests, was again in fashion. National, not international, security became the matter of primary concern.
Politically, the realists have belonged to different groups, although with a predominant orientation to the democratic parties and associations. The realist concept simply provides them with a common theoretical framework and ideas, which easily cross party lines.
According to the realists, Russia’s national security concept should depart from the real potential of the state, provide for the rational use of resources, combine and interact with internal, foreign policy, socio-economic, scientific, technological, information, as well as all other aspects of life and work among the state’s people. In fact, the realists were one of the first schools of thought in Russia to propose extending the concept of national security to include, not only ‘hard security’ issues, but ‘soft security’ topics as well. As the realists underlined, a security concept should contain a comprehensive analysis and classification of the existing and potential threats to Russia’s security, as well as the starting points for the development and functioning of internal and external mechanisms for both the prevention and operational elimination of these threats. In other words, the concept should be a complex of security goals and ways of ensuring them; of ways and means of achieving them that would correspond to Russia’s historical position and future role. It should ensure a co-ordinated effort on the part of both the state and the people as a whole to provide security at the national, regional, and global levels, as well as the organisation of internal and international interaction in solving urgent and long-term security problems (Shaposhnikov 1993:11).
The realists distinguish four main categories in terms of Russia’s national interests. First, there are functional interests - economic, political, social, military, humanitarian, and environmental. Second, there might be other groups, depending on the degree of these interests’ longevity - short-term, mid-term, and standing interests. Third, interests could be categorised depending on their importance - vital, important, or marginal. Finally, domestic and foreign policy interests could be defined (National Interests 1996:8).
The realists stress that in an interrelated and interdependent world national interests of different countries may overlap, cross, or even clash in various forms, ranging from "soft", diplomatic to radical, military ones. The realists also distinguish two kinds of threats to Russia’s security: external and internal.
The external sources of threat were defined as follows (Shaposhnikov 1993:14-18): (a) political: attempts to challenge the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation by exploiting inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts; territorial claims made by foreign powers; blocking integrational processes in the CIS; creating obstacles to Russia’s co-operation with the former Soviet republics Eastern European countries; political instability in neighbouring countries; human rights violations and the resultant uncontrollable mass migration from these countries; efforts to weaken Russia’s role and positions in the international organisations, and so on; (b) economic: the diminished economic independence of Russia; a decline in its economic and scientific-technical potential; fixing its fuel and raw material specialisation in the world division of labour; restricting Russia’s presence in some of the world’s markets; blocking Russia’s access to advanced technology; uncontrolled exports of capital and strategic raw materials; Russia’s non-admittance to the international financial, trade and economic organisations; smuggling, and so on; (c) military: existing and potential armed conflicts in the vicinity of Russia; the unsettled problem of nuclear weaponry in the former Soviet republics; nuclear weapon and technology proliferation; the lack of a proper border regime, especially in the south and west of Russia; the unclear status of Russian military presence in the ex-Soviet republics; the military build-up in neighbouring countries and adjacent regions, and so on; (d) environmental: ecological disasters in neighbouring countries; long-term negative effects resulting from global environmental shifts; and (e) social: the internationalisation of organised crime, drug trafficking, international terrorism, mass epidemics, the modern slave trade, and so on.
However, the realists were also keen to emphasise that at present the main sources of threat to Russia’s security come from within the country which is in a deep system crisis. Internal threats were described as follows (Shaposhnikov 1993:14-18; Lukov 1995:5-7):
(a) the potential disintegration of the Russian Federation as a result of inter-ethnic and centre/regions conflicts;
(b) socio-economic tensions stemming from economic decline, the rupture of economic ties, inflation, rising unemployment, deep social differentiation, the degradation of science, the education system, medical services, and so on;
(c) organised crime and corruption;
(d) cultural and spiritual degradation; (e) the degradation of the environment; and (f) the lack of information security.
To cope with these threats, Russia should first accomplish its domestic reforms. Only in this way will the country have the necessary resources to restore its internal, and to some degree its external, stability. The realists believed that the cohesion of all levels of security - intraregional, national, CIS, European, Asia-Pacific, global - should be reached. This should be aided by the rational and effective use of all forces and means currently at the disposal of the Russian state.
Moreover, the realists prefer political, diplomatic, economic and other peaceful methods to meet security challenges. However, they do not rule out the use of military force if differences between states’ vital interests cannot be reconciled (National Interests 1996:9-10).
The regional priorities of the realists are similar to those of the derzhavniki. Rogov (1993:76) suggests that there are three main circles of Russian interests - (1) "near abroad"; (2) East Europe, the Middle East and Far East; and (3) the West (the United States and Western Europe). The remainder of the world meanwhile is of peripheral importance for Russia.
The "near abroad" is the first regional priority in Russia’s international strategy. The main goals of Moscow’s foreign policy in the ‘near abroad’ are to prevent the rise of unfriendly regimes and the emergence of ethnic and religious conflicts, to establish stable relations with its neighbours, to protect Russian citizens’ human rights, to shape a common security space on CIS territory, and to resolve territorial disputes with the New Independent States (NIS) (Election 1995: 18-20).
According to the realists, re-imposing Russia’s military and political dominance over the post-Soviet space at any cost would cause many sacrifices and lead to countless failures. Instead, Russia’s diplomatic inventory must contain a wide range of accurately weighed and measured economic, political, military and cultural methods which could assist with the protection of Russian interests and with the development of friendly relations with their neighbours. The realists have emphasised that CIS integration could only be achieved once Russia becomes attractive to its partners. Integration will be costly for Moscow; Russia could afford it only if its domestic reforms succeed (Elections 1995:19).
The second circle of Russia’s national interests includes Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. The realists were critical of Kozyrev’s policies towards Central and East European countries because Moscow has been unable to prevent their drift towards the West both in economic and security terms. According to the realists, Eastern Europe must be shown, through clever initiatives in various fields, that it will be safer and more prosperous, not in the role of a cordon sanitaire thrown around Russia, but functioning as a connecting link between Eurasia and Western Europe (Elections 1995:20).
In line with other schools of thought, the realists have stressed the Eurasian geopolitical location of Russia. However, Russian foreign policy on the continent should be defined by real interests rather than messianic ideas.
Russian policy towards the Middle East should be determined by its interests in the ‘near abroad’ - the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Potentially, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan could be Russia’s opponents. According to Lukin, very likely, Russia will, in the years ahead, have to vigorously resist Islamic fundamentalism, the spread of which would threaten to destabilise the situation both near and inside the CIS. Still, it is essential, however, not to be drawn into a confrontation with the biggest Islamic countries (including Iran), but to instead seek various avenues of agreement and develop mutually beneficial interstate relations. Russia must rebuff all attempts by Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan to encroach on Russian economic, political, and military interests (Elections 1995:21).
As for the Far East, the realists have noted Russia’s current weakness and declining role in the region. Rogov (1993:76) admits that some of the ex-Soviet republics could be drawn into the spheres of interest of such regional centres of power as China or Japan. Arbatov (1993:72) even suggests that China may represent the greatest external security threat to Russia in the long run. He and other realists do not approve of too quick a military rapprochement with the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and warn of the possibility of Russia’s one-sided dependence on Beijing (ibid.; Trush 1996:4). For that reason, Arbatov (1993:72) observes the interests of Russia in the region may best be served by the maintenance of America’s political role and limited military presence. If the United States were to withdraw, the Japanese reaction could be none other than re-militarisation in view of the rapid growth of economic and military power in China. A clash between these two giants could draw Russia into the conflict as well. In addition to keeping the US military presence, Russia’s national interests would be best served by a new multilateral security system in the region.
According to Rogov, the third circle of Russian interests includes Moscow’s relations with the West, in particular with the United States and Western Europe. As for the United States, the realists see a number of areas where the two states have common interests: (a) accomplishing Russian economic and political reforms; (b) developing a bilateral arms control regime (in particular, further reductions in strategic armaments and a nuclear test ban); (c) preventing the rise of resurgent regional powers which could violate the existing power balance; (d) nuclear, chemical and biological weapons non-proliferation; and (e) peace-keeping (Rogov 1995:5; Rogov 1993:76).
At the same time, the realists have singled-out some sources of tension between Russia and the United States - Russia’s inability to move fast with its domestic reforms; the lack of a common enemy, which is indispensable for any military-political alliance; the model of mutual nuclear deterrence inherited from the Cold War; America’s refusal to admit Russia into the Western community; the preservation of the system of military-political alliances set up by the United States during the Cold War; NATO and EU enlargement through admitting the Soviet Union’s former "clients" but not Russia itself; NATO’s aggressive policies in the Balkans and Russia’s arms and dual-use technology transfers to Third World countries (Rogov 1995:5-8).
Many of these differences may well remain in the foreseeable future. According to the realists, Russia should be firm as regards its most vital interests (for instance, preserving a common European security system and arms control regime, the prevention of a military build-up and alliances in the country’s vicinity, and Moscow’s dominant position in the post-Soviet security space). At the same time, Russia should avoid quarrelling with America over differences on secondary matters such as nuclear deals with Iran, missile engine technology transfers to India, advanced weaponry transfers to China, and so on (Rogov 1995:9).
Concerning European security problems, the realists have focused first of all on NATO and EU enlargement. They do not oppose the latter, and regard the former as detrimental to the regional security system. The realists do not favour NATO’s dissolution. On the contrary, they acknowledge the Alliance’s positive role in the maintenance of European security both in the Cold War era and beyond (Arbatov 1993:71). But they also believe that NATO should not be extended and strengthened at the expense of Russian security. According to the realists, to prevent a new clash between the East and the West the Organisation on Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) should become the main collective security organisation on the continent (Arbatov 1995b; Arbatov 1996:248-9). The realists have also focused on the search for a compromise with the West. They have proposed both a delay in NATO’s expansion by a number of years, and that its eventual enlargement be limited to the Visegrad countries only, and not be extended to the Baltic states. They have also proposed a special Russia-NATO charter to ensure Moscow’s security (no further expansion to the CIS countries, no military bases and nuclear weapons on the territory of new members, the continuation of arms control dialogue, and so on.) (Arbatov 1995a:146; Rogov 1995:10-1; Trenin 1995:20-6). The Russian-NATO Paris agreement (May 1997) was concluded, in fact, on the basis of these principles (Rossiyskaya gazeta 28 May 1997:3; International Herald Tribune 28 May 1997: 1,16).
The realists pointed to the Kosovo crisis as evidence of the threat emanating from the NATO-centric European security model. However, they recommended to resume the dialogue with NATO after the end of the war because they realised that it is impossible to ignore this influential pole of the world power (Arbatov 1999:8; Pyadyshev 1999:2).
The realist legacy has had a fairly mixed record. On the one hand, realism has contributed positively to the Russian foreign policy debate. The realists have helped to overcome the crisis in Russian foreign policy thinking which had been generated by the struggle of two extremes represented by such powerful schools of thought as ‘Atlanticism’ and ‘Eurasianism’. The realists succeeded in articulating Russia’s real security interests and priorities to both domestic and foreign audiences. Moreover, the spread of their ideas made Russian security thinking more predictable and understandable for the West. The new Russian national security concept which was approved by the President in December 1997 (and revised in January 2000) drew heavily upon the realist ideas (Kontseptsiya Natsionalnoy Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii 1997:4-5). On the other hand, the coming of realism with its emphasis on national interests, national security, and national sovereignty implied an obvious return to the old paradigms belonging to the age of classical modernity. They failed to develop any concepts addressing the challenges of post-modernity.
Geopolitics: New Opportunities in Russia?
Along with realism, its close ‘relative’ - the geopolitical school of thought - is currently in fashion in Russia. In part, it could be viewed as a counter-reaction to Russian theories concerning Marxism and Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking (NPT) which both denied the role of geopolitical factors in international relations.
One additional reason why many Russian theorists have been fascinated with geopolitics is that this concept assisted them in escaping from the intellectual dead-end caused by the Atlanticism-Eurasianism political controversy. At a certain stage, the two schools realised that both pro-Western or Eurasian orientations were imposed by ideological preferences rather than dictated by Russia’s real national interests. The geopolitical paradigm was seen by many thinkers as having a solid theoretical basis compared to several other concepts. In fact, all leading ‘Eurasianist’ theorists became followers of the geopolitical school (Pozdnyakov 1993c; 1994; Pleshakov 1995:101-7).
The geopolitical school departs from the assumption that every state consists of three indispensable components: territory, population, and political organisation. Wherever people may live, and under whatever political system, their activities are invariably conditioned by the physical environment. Every state has unique geographical features. Its territory has a location, landscape, form, size, and natural resources. These specifics account for the equally unique historical background of any country. Of the numerous factors influencing people’s activities, geography changes least of all. It underlies the continuity of national policy provided that the geographical area remains unchanged (Pozdyakov 1992:4).
The size of territorial possessions is a tangible element of the relative strength of a country in defending its interests. Natural resources and geography are factors for either the solidity or looseness of social and economic ties. Coupled with climate, they set a limit on agricultural production and condition internal communications and foreign trade. The country’s strength should therefore be assessed primarily by looking into geography.
According to proponents of the geopolitical paradigm, today’s divided world is both a political and a geographic reality to be reckoned with by the political and military strategy of every state, as well as by the concept of national security and interests. Every country’s vital interests include its self-preservation as a specific cultural and historical community (Pozdnyakov 1992:5).
Many Russian adherents of geopolitics, in fact, accept Cohen’s (1963) concept of two geostrategic regions: the maritime world dependent on trade (with the United States as its core) and the Eurasian continental world (where Russia is the core). According to Pozdnyakov (1992:7), the United States, as one of the two geostrategic regions, is now the only remaining superpower. In addition, it is trying to take advantage of this situation as a means to achieve some of its goals which, until recently, have been largely unattainable.
To geopoliticians’ minds, two things are of paramount importance for the maintenance of world order and stability: (a) establishing a clear boundary between Western sea power and Eurasian land power in Europe, and (b) preserving the unity of the Heartland. According to some analysts, both of these principles of global security are seriously challenged by the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The boundary between the West and Eurasia has shifted eastward. To date, this boundary has not been properly defined. Russia, which controlled most of the Heartland, has shrunk in terms of territory and is currently unable to play the role of balancer in a geopolitically unstable world. A geopolitically unbalanced Eurasia might provoke a universal re-division of the world with its resources and strategic boundaries. In turn, it could imply a protracted period of turbulence, rift and bloody conflict. The Kosovo war, Chechnya, the civil wars in Tajikistan and Afghanistan have already demonstrated some implications of the lack of such a geopolitical balance. To avoid an even worse scenario, both Russia and the West should make joint efforts to stabilise the post-Soviet geopolitical space. It could restore Russia’s historical mission to be the mediator and to serve as a safeguard against forces aiming at world-wide domination. Echoing Mackinder’s three geopolitical theses, Pozdnyakov (1992:12) coined his own geopolitical formula: ‘He who controls the Heartland can exercise effective control over world politics, above all by maintaining a global geopolitical and power balance, without which lasting peace is unthinkable.’
Some Russian theorists prefer to produce "soft" geopolitical concepts which do not neglect the plurality of factors influencing international politics, but regard geography or spatial dimensions as the most important ones. According to one definition, geopolitics is about "how the states use spatial factors to identify and attain their political purposes" (Vestnik MGU 1994:3). According to Pleshakov (1994:32), geopolitics
can be defined not only as objective dependency of some nation’s foreign policy from its geographic location but also as objective dependency of an international actor from the totality of material factors which provide this actors with control over the space.
Some scholars, such as Gadzhiev (1997:4, 16-39, 85-9), view geopolitics as a subfield of political science or equivalent of international relations theory which emphasises the spatial-temporal dimensions of world politics.
For other specialists, the geopolitical paradigm is a theoretical departure in order to justify their reading of Russia’s foreign policy priorities. Sorokin (1995:8) believes that geopolitics as a discipline consists of two parts: ‘fundamental’ geopolitics which produces a theoretical outlook of the world, and ‘applied’ geopolitics which aims at policy-relevant recommendations. For example, this group of geopoliticians use geopolitics to prove the importance of the ‘near abroad’ and adjacent regions for Moscow’s national interests (Razuvayev 1993a; 1993b:109-16 Podberezkin 1996: 90-4).
Despite the seemingly old-fashioned argumentation, the geopolitical paradigm should retain its influence in the Russian foreign policy debate in the foreseeable future. Not only the existence of a theoretical vacuum, but the current geopolitical challenges and the need to define Russia’s national identity (including national interests and security politics) make this paradigm both significant and attractive to Russian policy-makers and analysts.
The Idealist/Liberal Paradigm
Despite the dominance of the realist/geopolitical paradigm, the idealist/liberal perspective on international relations is also represented in Russia. In fact, Atlanticists drew upon some idealist principles. Idealism emphasises globalisation trends in the world economy which strengthen the trend toward global management of economic and political developments and generally increases the relevance of international legal frameworks, thus reducing global anarchy. Idealists believe that the development of multilateral institutions and regimes could guarantee stability of the international system. Although the trend toward a multipolar world is not neglected within the idealist/liberal perspective, it argues that the future development of the international system is no longer predominantly determined by the shape and outcome of rivalries among the major centres of economic and military power, but increasingly by the dynamics of their common development and interdependency (Khrustalev 1992; Zagorski et al. 1992:5-13). The idealists/liberals argue that the geopolitical drive for control over territories does not matter anymore, and suggest that it should be replaced by geoeconomic thinking (Zagorski 1995a:5-8).
The debate between realists and idealists in Russia on more practical aspects of diplomacy has mainly concentrated on two issues: CIS integration and European security. For instance, Zagorski (1995b:263-70) argues that the real dilemma of Russian politics in the CIS is not further disintegration versus integration, but rather reintegration versus eventual ‘natural’ new integration on the basis of democratic and market reforms yet to be completed. Zagorski also argues that, in order to pursue the latter option, one needs to recognise that the major building blocks of the experience of the European Union do not apply to the CIS and another North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-type of soft integration should be the goal.
As to European security, the major controversial issue was NATO enlargement. While mainstream thinking has put forward the geopolitical argument against enlargement, the liberals have argued for a co-operative solution to the issue which would strengthen and institutionalise interaction between Russia and the West. The basic argument of liberals has been that the predominant interest of Russia in Europe should be the strengthening of multilateralism as a guarantee that there will be no return to balance of power politics in Europe (Tyulin 1997:187).
Pro-Western liberals viewed no serious threat stemming from NATO enlargement. They believed that NATO extension was a natural reaction of the former Soviet satellites to Russia’s unpredictable behaviour. They criticised Yeltsin for his failure to persuade the Central and Eastern European countries that Russia posed no threat to their security any longer. The liberals also were discontent with Yeltsin’s inability to make full use of the opportunities that were opened to Russia in the framework of different security arrangements ranging from PfP (Partnership for Peace) to OSCE programmes (Kortunov 1996:74-75).
The liberals considered NATO as the main guarantor of stability in Europe (in particular in relations between Western and Eastern Europe) (Maksimychev 1994). They believed that Russia was interested in NATO’s responsibility for the stability of borders in Central and Eastern Europe, a region with a number of potential hotbeds of instability that could endanger Russia and the CIS member-states. The liberals thought that once NATO accepted the Central and Eastern European countries, which are currently anti-Russian, it will no longer have an incentive to be hostile to Moscow and that they would become more benevolent neighbours to Russia. In this view, partnership between NATO and Russia could become an instrument of conflict resolution in Russia’s relations with its neighbours (Kozin 1994). The liberals also emphasised that the Western direction was the only one where Russian national security interests have not really been challenged. Moscow should have good relations with NATO to allow free hands in coping with the ‘arch of instability’ extending from the Black Sea and North Caucasus through Central Asia further on to China (Trenin 1994).
The liberals pointed out that NATO is not an aggressive or totalitarian military organisation. Rather, NATO is an alliance of democracies (Kortunov 1996:75). It is a defensive rather than offensive security organisation. The liberals maintained that Russia has to focus on its domestic problems such as economic decline, organised crime, environmental decay, nationalism and separatism which they consider much more dangerous than NATO enlargement. They proposed that Russian diplomacy should be focused not on resistance to NATO expansion, but on dialogue with NATO on disarmament and confidence-building (Churkin 1995).
More generally, NATO has been regarded as a mechanism that helped modernise societies, overcome nationalistic aberrations, and condition the thinking and behaviour of new political elites (Kortunov 1996:76). Some liberal analysts even believe that ‘national humiliation’ experienced by Russia in the case of NATO enlargement is useful for the future democratic transformation of this country. According to some accounts, NATO’s extension will force Yeltsin (a) to progress with economic reforms; (b) to pay more attention to Russia’s neighbours such as Belarus, China, Iran, and Japan; and (c) to start real military reform (Makarov 1997:9). According to the liberals, NATO overreacted to Milo_evi_’s Kosovo politics by bombing Serbia but should remain Russia’s main partner in ensuring European security (Orlov 1999:15; Trenin 1999:1,4).
Realists and idealists disagree on the nature of the post-Cold War European security model. Realists believe that in an age of multipolarity only a flexible pan-European security system can guarantee a balance of power on the continent and the national sovereignty of particular countries. They hope that the OSCE, the only organisation where Russia acts on an equal footing with other major Western powers, can be the core of such a security system. Liberals, however, are quite pessimistic as regards the possibility of creating an effective pan-European structure where Russia could have a major say. According to Zagorski (Zagorski and Lucas 1993:77-107; Zagorski 1996:67), a "Big Europe" is emerging as a result of the expansion of West European and trans-Atlantic institutes rather than on the basis of the only pan-European organisation such as the OSCE. Transformation of these organisations and, especially, of the EU into the pillars of a ‘Big Europe’ cannot but result in the marginalisation of current pan-European structures, in particular of the OSCE, which reduces the available options for Russia’s integration into European developments. The main objective of Russia’s policy should not be joining Western European organisations, but using co-operation with them to facilitate its own integration into the world economy and the community of democratic states. This aim may be attained not only through membership, but also by creating mechanisms of "extra-institutional" co-operation between Russia and the EU, NATO and other organisations.
Although liberals are unable to dominate or at least influence the Russian foreign policy discourse they, however, do play a useful function by challenging the realism/geopolitics and providing this paradigm with an intellectual alternative.
The Neo-Marxists
There are two main versions of Marxist-inspired political thought in Russia. The first is more traditional and is exemplified by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), led by Gennady Zyuganov. The second one is close to social democracy and has been developed by certain organisations and authors such as the Gorbachev Fund, Alexander Yakovlev, Dmitri Furman and so on. The former group can be called traditionalists, whilst the latter can be named social democrats.
Traditionalists.
The Communists have been unable to reconcile themselves to the demise of the Soviet Union and to the country’s loss of great power status. They believe that Gorbachev and Yeltsin led the USSR to defeat in the Cold War and finally to its collapse. These leaders are regarded as national traitors (Elections 1995:7).
As some pro-Communist experts have suggested, in the search for a national security doctrine Russia should choose between two alternatives - (a) the domination of national-state interests over cosmopolitan ones, and Russia’s independent position in the international relations system; or (b) an orientation towards Western values and the joining of a ‘community of civilised countries’ (Podberezkin 1996:86). The CPRF opts for the first alternative. The Communists emphasise the invariable nature of the country’s national interests which do not depend on a concrete regime or dominant ideology. They believe that the main Russian national interest inherited from its history consists of preserving the country’s territorial and spiritual integrity. The idea of a powerful state based on multi-ethnicity is equivalent to the Russian national idea. Thus, the breakdown of the Soviet Union and weakening of the Russian state have undermined Russian security and worsened its geostrategic position.
As for threat perceptions, pro-Communist analysts have singled out some global developments that could challenge Russian national security (Podberezkin 1996:88): (1) resurgent powers that aim at changing their regional and global status and which may shift the world power balance (Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, etc.); (2) the rise of regionalism in the world (EU), NAFTA, ASEAN, etc.) which could potentially increase Russia’s isolation; (3) the aggravation of global social, economic and environmental problems; and (4) a decrease in the significance of nuclear deterrent force and the rise of unstable regional alliances with high conflict potential.
The Communists have also advocated a number of measures to prevent a further weakening of Russia’s international authority (Podberezkin 1996:88): (1) the non-expansion of UN Security Council membership; (2) strengthening the Security Council’s role in peace-keeping and solving of international conflicts with minimal Russian involvement in peace-keeping operations; (3) improving the nuclear non-proliferation regime; (4) observing the principle of equality and reciprocity in concluding nuclear arms control agreements with the United States; and (5) opposing the scheme ‘Europe without Russia’ or attempts to replace the OSCE with NATO as the principal security organisation on the continent.
The Communists believe that Russia is not part of the West nor of the East. It should define its own, independent way. At the same time, the Communists are not really fascinated with Eurasianism, seeing both Russian and world history as the result of objective processes rather than messianic ideas. However, they acknowledge the need for a national ideal or doctrine that could consolidate Russian society (Podberezkin 1995:89).
Moreover, a number of regional priorities could be identified as part of the Communist foreign policy platform. Similar to the Eurasianists and the derzhavniki, the Communists regard the CIS and ‘near abroad’ as the first priority for Moscow’s foreign policy. As they believe that the Soviet Union has been dissolved illegally, the Communists have tried to foster the reunification of the former Soviet republics. Even so, they have ruled out the use of force to restore the USSR. According to Zyuganov, this should be done on a "voluntary basis" (Zyuganov 1995:86; Pushkov 1995:4). Along with some liberals and nationalists, the Communists have put pressure on the Yeltsin government to protect Russian minorities abroad.
The Communists believe that the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact, Russian troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe and the loss of Moscow's control over this region have generated new threats to Russia's security (Elections 1995:7). The CPRF has pointed out that NATO’s eastward expansion would violate the strategic balance in Europe in a number of ways. The enlargement will inevitably: (a) destroy the existing "security buffer" between Russia and NATO; (b) bring NATO’s military presence to Russia’s borders, including military bases and probably nuclear weaponry; (c) provoke a Russian military build-up on its western and north-western borders; (d) accelerate the creation of a military alliance within the CIS and resume the confrontation between the East and the West on the military bloc basis; (e) challenge Ukraine and Moldova’s status as neutral states; (f) cause the collapse of the CFE Treaty 1 ; and (g) undermine the OSCE’s role as the backbone of the European security system (Elections 1995:8-9). They have pointed to NATO’s Kosovo intervention as a "natural" result of NATO enlargement and warned that Kosovo-like operations next time could be repeated in the CIS space, including Russia (Guseinov 1999:4).
According to other assessments, the aim of the United States is to undermine Russia’s economic, scientific-technical, and military capabilities, and also to isolate Moscow from promising trade partners and markets (in particular, in areas such as advanced technologies and arms trade). The West’s motive for doing so, it has been argued, is to hopefully prevent Russia’s transformation into a potential rival (Podberezkin 1996:90).
To put pressure on both the "pro-Western" Yeltsin government and NATO, the Communists undertook some measures through their faction in the parliament. That faction has proposed to revise the CFE Treaty in accordance with the ‘new realities’ and voiced its negative attitude to ratification of the START II Treaty until the US and NATO have changed their position on the Alliance’s extension. The Communists have again threatened to restart discussion of Russia’s participation in the Partnership for Peace programme (Zyuganov 1997:20-23). Finally, the CPRF faction has, together with the Liberal Democrats, urged the government to oppose ‘the NATO countries’ drive in the Balkans’ through bilateral channels and multilateral institutions. During the Kosovo war the Communists also suggested the lifting of the arms embargo and sending of the most advanced Russian weaponry to Serbia. They strongly objected to the resumption of Russian-NATO dialogue in early 2000 saying that this might encourage NATO to make further interventions (Migranyan 1999:1,6; Zaitsev 1999:3).
The derzhavniki and ‘realist’ camps agree in principle with the Communists on their assessment of the implications of NATO’s enlargement and the Kosovo war. However, they point out that it is wrong in the first place to represent the NATO member-states as a completely united organisation with regard to enlargement and the Kosovo intervention, and to also ignore the difference of opinion between various political forces on the pace and scope of extension and the necessity of the ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the Balkans. Secondly, the decision on enlargement was made in an attempt to overcome NATO’s identity crisis and to cope with post-Cold War threats rather than being targeted against Russia. The same is true of the Kosovo war. NATO intended to demonstrate that it is the only security organisation that can effectively solve security problems on the continent. Third, there could be a compromise between the Alliance and Russia to guarantee Moscow’s security and minimise either the enlargement’s or the Kosovo war’s detrimental effects. Such compromises were finally achieved at the Paris summit (May 1997) and during the series of Russian-NATO meetings in early 2000 (Rogov 1997:9; Trenin 1999:1,4).
As for other regions, the Communists have proposed to restore Russia’s links with its ‘traditional friends and allies’ such as Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba. This could prevent America’s unchallenged world-wide leadership and provide Russia with profitable orders for its troubled arms industry. They have accepted a détente in Sino-Russian relations as well as active arms export policy in the region because it strengthens Russia's international authority and supports the defence industry. Many leaders of the CPRF are fascinated with the Chinese model of socialism and believe that Gorbachev should have used the PRC’s experience to reform the Soviet Union. At the same time, the CPRF is concerned with the future security orientation of China and the correlation of forces in the Asia-Pacific area which is turning out to be quite unfavourable for Russia (Zyuganov 1995:87).
It should be noted that, unlike in the domestic sphere, the CPRF has failed to produce any coherent and clearly pronounced foreign policy doctrine. Instead, it has operated with an amalgam of the party leadership’s statements and remarks which have made it difficult to reconstruct the CPRF’s foreign policy platform. Despite its immense domestic influence, the CPRF has, in fact, been unable to influence the Russian discourse on diplomatic theory.
The Social Democrats
After his resignation in December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev and a number of his close friends (Aleksandr Yakovlev and Georgi Shakhnazarov being the most prominent among them) committed themselves to the creation of a social-democratic movement in Russia to confront both the Communist-nationalist coalition and the monetarists. The Gorbachev Fund and the journal Svobodnaya Mysl (Liberal Thought) became the most important pillars for the emerging social democracy in Russia. Although the Social Democrats failed to form any influential political coalition comparable with the derzhavniki, the Communists or Zhirinovskiy, they were able to produce some foreign policy concepts which affected the Russian security discourse.
Similar to the Eurasianists, Social Democratic security thinking has focused on the concept of stability. Internal stability has been defined as cohesion within the political system, adherence to normal democratic procedures concerning the rotation of ruling elites, the absence of pressing ethnic and social conflicts, and a healthy, functioning economy (Bogomolov 1994:142). International stability has been seen as the balance of interests among major international players (contrary to the balance of power in the past) (Kolikov 1994:12).
Along with other schools of thought, the Social Democrats have contributed to the Russian discussion of national interests. Contrary to the Gorbachev doctrine that was grounded on the unconditional priority of "all-human" interests over national interests, the Social Democrats have admitted that national interests is the subject of primary concern for any country. They define national interests as a manifestation of the nation’s basic needs (survival, security, progressive development) (Krasin 1996:5). National interests may be subjective in terms of their form or way of expression, but they are definitely objective in terms of their nature. In a nation-state, national interests are usually synonymous with state interests. In multi-national countries (like Russia) the articulation and representation of national interests are a much more complicated process involving numerous political actors and requiring more time and effort to achieve a public consensus.
The Social Democrats, however, do not limit themselves to the acknowledgement of the significance of national interests. They believe that in an interdependent world international actors cannot afford to solely pursue their own interests. Since the international environment has become multi-dimensional, the actors should take into account both the national interests of other players and universal (all-human) interests. According to the Social Democrats, narrow-minded nationalism is absolutely outdated and detrimental not only to the world community but, in the end, also to a nation conducting a nationalist policy (Utkin 1995a; 1995b:51-52). They realise that democracy in the international relations system is still in its infancy, and few "all-human" values have taken root in humankind’s mentality. The Social Democrats regard the creation of a global civil society as the only way of replacing national interests with ‘all-human’ values. In their view, a world civil society could be based on a system of horizontal links between both inter-government and non-government organisations dealing with economic, political, environmental and cultural issues (Krasin 1996:12). Some experts (Shakhnazarov) have proposed the creation of a world government to resolve global problems and to save humankind from imminent catastrophe (Shakhnazarov 1996:79). Thus, the Kantian (1957) project of ‘eternal peace’ - the methodological basis of the NPT and its current proponents - could be put into practice.
The Social Democrats perceive the world as moving from a unipolar (United States as the only superpower) towards a multipolar structure. None of the countries or ideologies will be able to impose its model on the others. The Social Democrats disagree with Fukuyama’s (1992) thesis on the world-wide domination of the liberal-democratic model. Various civilisational models will compete in the foreseeable future. A future world will be born in the process of the interaction of two contradictory processes - integration and regionalisation. The future poles of power will emerge on the basis of economic, religious, and cultural differentiation. Some analysts distinguish Arab-Muslim, Europe-centric (including the United States), Eurasian (including Eastern Europe), South Atlantic, Indian, and Asia-Pacific centres (Dakhin 1995:85). Others point to North America, the EU, Eurasia, the Islamic world, and Asia-Pacific as the main future poles (Kolikov 1994:13). In any case, these developments will make the world less predictable and more multidimensional than has been the case so far.
Which identity should Russia choose? The Social Democrats usually pay tribute to the Eurasian geographical position of the country, but they emphasise that, from a cultural and civilisational point of view, Russia is part of Europe and Russians are part of the European nation (Gorbachev 1992; Kolikov 1994:5). For that reason, Russia should aim at entering pan-European economic, political, and security structures. "Europe" is also defined in a civilisational rather than geographical sense: the Gorbachevian project of a Common European House or "Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok" is still popular among the Russian Social Democrats.
The Social Democrats have proposed a model of "multidimensional partnership" that is directed at co-operation with the major players of the world regardless of their geographical location. According to this model, Russia’s policy should not be based on playing geopolitical ‘cards’ (Chinese, American, European). Instead, it should be oriented to establishing long-term and stable bilateral relations as well as to promoting multilateralism (Voskresenskiy 1996:99). However, it remains unclear which methods should be used to create such relations and how to convince other powers to accept this model.
To sum up, the social-democratic foreign policy doctrine has taken over many concepts and principles of Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking. The latter, however, was complemented with some advocacy of Russia’s national interests and balanced policies towards the East and the West.
THE ‘RIGHT RADICALS’
There is a number of radical and extremist organisations in Russia. They are united primarily by their rejection of Yeltsin’s domestic reforms and by criticism of his pro-Western foreign policy. At the same time, there are also major disagreements about both the meaning of Russian history and the appropriate model for the future. Hence, they have been unable to go beyond negativism and to develop a coherent, forward-looking agenda of their own.
The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) led by Vladimir Zhirinovskiy is the most important of the right radical organisations. The LDPR faction was the largest one in the Russian Duma in 1993-95. The party also had influential positions within the Russian parliament in 1995-99.
It is difficult to reconstruct Zhirinovskiy’s foreign policy concept due to the lack of its elementary logic and the extravagant form of expression of his ideas. One should take into account his many statements that often contradict each other. It seems that Zhirinovskiy prefers geopolitics as his theoretical basis, but at the same time he may borrow some ideas belonging to another school of thought. All of these circumstances should be taken into account in the process of analysing Zhirinovskiy’s foreign policy views.
According to Alexei Mitrofanov, the LDPR representative in the Committee for International Affairs of the State Duma, Russia’s national interests include (Elections 1995:11):
- creating more favourable international conditions for the country’s economic and political development;
- securing the country’s national security and international stability;
- restoring Russia’s strategic boundaries and its historical geopolitical space;
- restoring the Russian state within its natural frontiers, primarily bringing Ukraine and Belarus back to Russia;
- regaining Russia’s rights to the ports in the Black and Baltic seas as well as passages to Western Europe;
- restoring Russia’s role as a world superpower, which is consonant with its geopolitical predestination; and
- preventing any outside interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
The "near abroad" is priority no. 1 for the LDPR. On the one hand, the LDPR’s leaders have called for the end of Russian assistance to other former republics of the Soviet Union and have declared that they do not want them as part of Russia, at least in the near future. On the other hand, however, he has also envisaged a Russia that includes all the territory of the former Soviet Union, suggesting that the former republics will experience further trouble and seek to subordinate themselves to Russia for economic and security reasons. As for Russia itself, he has suggested a new, expanded Russia which would have no separate republics based on nationality, and Russians would be essentially primes inter pares, with other nationalities allowed to maintain their cultural but not political identities (Komsomolskaya Pravda, 22 January 1994).
The Baltic states, according to Zhirinovskiy, would be part of Russia, except for Tallinn, which would be a separate city-state, and three cities in Lithuania which would form a small Lithuanian state. Koeningsberg might some day be returned to Germany. And, with respect to Finland, Zhirinovskiy has emphasised that there would be "no problem" (Elections 1995:11). But if Finland were to seek the return of Karelia, then all of Finland would have to be ceded to Russia (Morrison 1994:109). In Zhirinovskiy’s vision, Russians living outside Russia would be given dual citizenship and Russia would defend them, primarily with economic instruments of power.
In Eastern Europe, according to Zhirinovskiy, three cities in north-western Poland would become part of Germany, and Lvov in Ukraine might be given to Poland as compensation. He did not oppose Poland’s joining NATO. On the other hand, he warned that the Eastern European countries could become Western servants and advised them to remain neutral. He also insisted on dissolving NATO because the Warsaw Pact had already been dissolved (Morrison 1994:122).
In Zhirinovskiy’s view, Slovakia might want to become part of Russia. The Czech Republic would go to Germany. Austria and Slovenia should unite, perhaps along with Germany. Bulgaria would get the Dobrudja portion of Romania. Greece should return Thrace to Bulgaria. In the former Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians would all keep their existing borders. He proposed that all foreign or UN forces withdraw from the former Yugoslavia so that the warring parties could settle the conflict by themselves, but he also said that Russia and the Balkan states would together solve all the Balkans’ problems (Morrison 1994:100).
The LDPR considers the United States to be the principal anti-Russian power, intending to break Russia up into a multitude of states dependent on the West. However, due to American strength Russia is bound to co-operate with Washington in various fields, especially in the maintenance of international security (Elections 1995:12).
In his book, Zhirinovskiy (1993) proclaims as a geopolitical concept the necessity for Russia to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean by military conquest. Viewing this "last dash" as the "task of saving the Russian nation", he argues that Russia needs to secure access to these warm water routes in order to thrive, and that it needs to subjugate its southern neighbours in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan to eliminate threats posed by pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism. He claims that Ankara is planning to establish a greater Turkey reaching from the Adriatic to Tajikistan. This would allow Turkey to dominate Slavic populations in the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, while placing extreme pressure on Russia via the Caucasus and Central Asia. He argues that Moscow must fight back by leading a pan-Slavic and an anti-Turkish alliance, perhaps in partnership with a resurgent Germany. He suggests that a military conquest to the south would be the basis for a renaissance of a Russian military that has fallen on hard times (Izvestiya, 21 January 1994).
According to Zhirinovskiy, a religious war between Islam and Christianity could take place at the end of the 20th century. Only Russia could prevent such a war. He commented that: "Russia could be a factor for stability. It could stop the process of disintegration in Europe, the Balkans, and Central Asia [...]" (Morrison 1994:125).
In one interview, Zhirinovskiy projected a trilateral German-Russian-Indian axis, linking together an expanded Germany, a new Russia that would include most of the former Soviet Union and some additional territory, and India. With some two billion people linked together, Zhirinovskiy imagined that the world would take whatever form this axis imposed upon it. India and Russia together could neutralise China, and Germany and Russia could either neutralise or control Europe (Morrison 1994:110-1). Namely, the LDPR fears Chinese "ethnic aggression" against the Russian Far East and favours using tough economic, administrative, and military methods to stop Beijing (Elections 1995:13).
Despite the influence of the Liberal Democrats in domestic affairs, their impact on foreign policy issues has been moderate. The "Zhirinovskiy phenomenon" has shifted Russian security debates slightly to the right, but has had no direct effect on official foreign policy and military doctrines as well as on theoretical discourse.
Postmodernism In Russia?
Up until now, Russian scholarship has been quite indifferent to postmodernism as a school of Western political thought. The Russian academic community has mainly ignored both the postmodern problematique and the discussions around it. Indeed, many Russian theorists are not even aware of this particular school. Few philosophers and historians have tried to implement postmodernist approaches to their research (Kharitonovich 1995:248-50; Vizgin 1995:116-26). In the meantime, some political scientists have studied postmodernism as one of the Western schools of political thought (Makarychev and Sergunin 1996:151.168).
Predominantly postmodernism is regarded as being irrelevant for Russian political discourse. Foreign policy experts are especially unfriendly to postmodernism because, they think, it neither provides them with a theoretical framework for producing national interests or geopolitical concepts nor with practical advice on concrete issues.
However, some have suggested that a certain postmodern insight could be evolving in Russia due to some peculiarities in the national mentality. Russians have never been happy with the project of modernity grounded on rationalism, a belief in linear progress and the decisive role of science and knowledge. Even Marxism, a typical product of modernity, has been adapted to Russian conditions. Russians have never perceived other civilisations as hostile; on the contrary, they have been quite open to dialogue with other civilisations and cultures.
There is growing feeling among some Russian scholars that the country has already entered the postmodern epoch. There are completely new temporal and spatial dimensions in which individuals and society live in the period of transition. Moral values and individual perceptions of the surrounding world have significantly changed as well. At the same time, Russia’s economic and technological potential, social structure, and political system still remain in the age of modernity. This typically postmodern discrepancy between an individual’s material conditions and his/her psychological and spiritual orientations is gradually emerging as a fashionable theme in Russian social science literature. In her essay published by the main Russian political science journal Polis, Irina Busygina of the Institute of Europe, depicts a mysterious urban world of post-perestroika Moscow representing a mixture of Soviet and capitalist, Russian and Western, values and modes of living (Busygina 1995:5-9). Another adept in postmodernism believes that in the postmodern epoch politics has been freed from economics, ideology and intellectuality; it needs no longer any legitimacy, and power appears in its ‘pure sense’ - as power for power itself (Kachanov 1995:38). Other academics do not share the anti-rationalist and anti-foundationalist views of postmodernists but acknowledge the existence of the postmodern era with an absolutely new political system, actors and rules of the game which should be examined with new research methods (Panarin 1997:93-123, 172-80).
It should be noted, however, that for many Russian academics postmodernism is simply a sort of ‘intellectual game’ or ‘entertainment’. When dealing with security issues, experts still turn to more traditional theories. At the same time, postmodernist thought has begun to influence Russian foreign policy discourse - at least in areas such as modelling the new world order, Russia’s place in world civilisation, defining national interests, and so on. For example, Ilyin (1995:48-9) rejects the very idea of postmodernity because he does not believe in the end of history or man. However, he offers a relatively postmodern world view by describing the evolution of the international relations system from the Westphalian, Vienna, Versailles and Yalta models to the present one which emerges as a combination of nation-states with ‘post-urbanist mutations of civilisations’ and ‘global villages’/‘choritikas’ (from Greek ‘choritika’ - ‘rural’, ‘country’, ‘territorial’). The latter he interprets as transterritorial, transnational and global political systems based on telecommunications and political rhetoric.
Some Russian postmodernists apply the grammatological civilisational model borrowed from the Western poststructuralists to explain the causes of conflict between different nations and civilisations. This model has pretensions of being more accurate than Huntington’s notorious "clash of civilisations" theory. According to this model (Kuznetsov 1995:98-9), a system of writing is a more important civilisational connecting link between members of a nation than, say, religion or culture. Present-day Russia, for instance, is a rather loose formation from a religious point of view but, in terms of writing (Cyrillic alphabet), it is far more homogeneous. Chinese dialects differ so greatly that language functions as a common vehicle only in writing.
There is a "war of alphabets" in the world: most of the peoples and groups now at war use different systems of writing, that is, they belong to different civilisations. Some groups either waging war or involved in some other conflict include: Serbs (Cyrillic alphabet; Orthodoxy) - Croats (Latin alphabet; Catholicism), common language, Serbo-Croatian; Nagorny Karabakh (Armenian alphabet, Armenian Church) - Azerbaijan (switching from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet; Islam); Greek Cypriots (Greek alphabet; Orthodoxy) - Turkish Cypriots (Latin alphabet; Islam); Russians (Cyrillic alphabet; Orthodoxy) - Chechens (who in 1992 began switching from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet) (Kuznetsov 1995:96). In addition, there are parties to conflicts professing a common religion but using different alphabets: (1) Orthodoxes: Moldavians (Latin alphabet) - Transdniestr Republic composed of Russians and Ukrainians (Cyrillic alphabet); Abkhazians (Cyrillic alphabet) - Georgians (Georgian alphabet); Georgians (Georgian alphabet) - South Ossetes (Cyrillic alphabet); Greeks (Greek alphabet) - Macedonians (Cyrillic alphabet); (2) Muslims: central Tajik government (Cyrillic alphabet) - guerrillas (Arabic alphabet), etc. (Kuznetsov 1995:97).
"Small" civilisations used to be a source of tensions in international relations because they struggle for their survival. They wage wars against more powerful civilisations, thereby making history. Postmodernists are very sceptical with regard to the capabilities of international organisations to cope with the destabilising potential of ‘small’ civilisations.
Adherents to the grammatological model, however, have found it difficult to convince many Russian scholars that a system of writing is the main source of intra- and international conflicts. This model (Kuznetsov 1995), they argue, describes the symptoms of conflict rather than its causes. Indeed, contrary to the grammatological explanation, one can find numerous examples of conflicts both between and inside nations using the same alphabet: intra-Arab conflicts, Latin America, China-Taiwan, wars between the European nations, civil wars (from American to Russian), etc. At the same time, the grammatological model can be heuristically valuable for understanding the history of, and current border-lines between, various civilisations (Kuznetsov 1995).
As to security issues, Russian postmodernists argue that Russia should not base its policy on the concept of national interests. The latter, they believe, is, first, ‘heuristically non-productive’; second, ‘theoretically weak’; and, third, ‘politically harmful’ (Kapustin 1996:13).
The postmodernists have "deconstructed" the national interests concept in order to demonstrate its lack of meaning. For them, this concept is a mere camouflage for parochial interests. In reality, so-called national interests reflect neither a state’s nor a nation’s interests. That, in fact, they are interests of the elite, which runs the government. By imposing its perception of national interests on society, the ruling elite tries to legitimise its dominance and control over both state and society. Each stratum or group has its own version of ‘national interests’, but only the most powerful group’s version becomes officially recognised doctrine. This, however, does not mean that the successful of any particular concept necessarily corresponds to the real interests of the majority of the country’s population. For that reason, foreign policy based on quasi-national interests can be detrimental to a significant part of society (Kapustin 1996:16-19).
While the national interests concept was useful and productive during the early modernity, today it represents merely a "conservative utopia". The postmodernists have categorised this concept and the revival of realism in Russia and other countries as a ‘primitive communitarian response’ to the dominance of universalism in the age of modernity. According to a postmodernist reading, the national interests concept tends to protect "speciality" (or even "exceptionalism") against "universality" which was imposed on humankind by the Enlightenment. But this extreme leads followers of the national interests concept to an intellectual and political dead-end. Theoretically, to prove your uniqueness or special rights over something you should - one way or another - use some universal matrix. Otherwise you have no criterion with which to compare different objects. Politically, by defending only its national interests a country could provoke an endless confrontation with other international actors (Kapustin 1996:28).
The postmodernists have argued that the concept has become obsolete in the age of the transnational economy, information and communications. It does not fit into a new world order which presupposes that states give up a substantial part of their national sovereignty in favour of supranational organisations (including security matters).
The postmodernists warn that the search for Russian national interests may divert the country away from its path towards democracy. In a global sense, this can lead to confrontation with other powers which deny universal values and pursue only national interests of their own. For them, liberal democracy versus Islamic fundamentalism, one ethnic nationalism against another, exemplifies such a confrontation.
The only way out is to get rid of both extremes - universalism and communitarianism. The old universalities which proved either to be wrong or anti-democratic should be abandoned. Instead, new universal norms should be discovered based on multi-culturalism, tolerance, self-criticism, and a dialogue culture (Kapustin 1996:28). At the same time, however, the postmodernists have avoided building concrete models of security either for Russia or the world.
It is hard to believe that the postmodernists could become an influential school in Russian foreign policy thinking in the foreseeable future. There are at least three main obstacles to the growth of their influence. First, Russia is still at the stage of trying to define its own national identity and, therefore, realist concepts such as national interests, national security, power balance and so forth will remain attractive both for academics and policy planners for many years. Second, the postmodernists, by limiting themselves to "deconstruction" are unable to produce any new theory (opposing the very idea of theorising). Finally, Western science has already passed the peak of postmodern discourse (late 1980s-early 1990s) while Russia was still relatively isolated from these discussions. Thus, Western postmodernists probably missed their best opportunity to gain a following in Russia.
Nonetheless, as Russia continues to progress with its reforms and opens up to greater international co-operation, it will inevitably face the postmodern problematique. Responses to postmodern challenges will not necessarily be given by the Western-like postmodernists; although perhaps they could be found by some other schools of thought. But, these challenges should be met somehow; otherwise Russia may never be competitive and prosperous again.
A Foreign Policy Consensus?
Along with the polarisation of Russian foreign policy elites and public opinion, there was a clear tendency towards consensus on foreign policy from 1994-97. The NATO intervention in the Balkans in 1999 served as an additional spur to the emergence of such a consensus. The discussions of 1990s resulted in defining some common principles on which the major schools have agreed. The contours of an emerging consensus could be described as follows:
1. Realism and geopolitics have become widely recognised theoretical concepts regardless of the schools’ political and ideological orientations.
2. The priority of Russia’s national interests; the secondary role of ‘all-human’ or cosmopolitan values.
3. Russia should remain a great power with a major voice in the international community.
4. Other goals should not be given priority in Russia’s foreign policy over the country’s domestic needs. Foreign policy should serve these needs rather than be a goal in itself (as it was often in the Soviet time).
5. Russia’s main national interest consists of ensuring the country’s security and territorial integrity.
6. Today, world security includes not only military and geopolitical but also societal, environmental, cultural and other dimensions vital to the individual and society.
7. Russia should not be biased in favour of either the West or the East. Instead, its policy should be even-handed and oriented to co-operation with all countries. In fact, a moderate version of Eurasianism was tacitly accepted by the Russian foreign policy elites.
8. Among Moscow’s regional priorities, the ‘near abroad’ is the most important one. Russia has special geopolitical, strategic, economic and humanitarian interests in the post-Soviet geopolitical space and should be recognised as an unchallenged leader in this area.
9. NATO’s eastward expansion and its ambitions to be the main security provider in the Trans-Atlantic region are the most serious security challenges facing Russia in Europe. Russian diplomacy should prevent NATO enlargement, or at least minimise its effects, by excluding the Baltic states and other former Soviet republics from the list of potential members, delaying the process for several years, revising the CFE Treaty, fostering military ties with the CIS member-states, China and India and maintaining a limited dialogue with NATO on security issues.
10. Russia should be more assertive in voicing its specific interests in relations with the West. It should not hesitate to differ with Western views if Russia’s vital interests are at stake.
11. Moscow should be more realistic in assessing the West’s attitudes to Russia, in particular its position on Russia’s admission to the Western economic, political and military institutions.
This consensus has made it possible to produce a number of governmental concepts and doctrines such as the foreign policy concept (1993), military doctrines (1993 and 2000) and national security concepts (1997 and 2000) (Kontseptsiya Vneshney Politiki 1993:3-23; The Basic Provisions 1994:3-12; Kontseptsiya Natsionalnoy Bezopasnosti 1997:4-5; 2000:6-7; Voennaya Doktrina 2000:5-6). It should be noted, however, that a consensus has been reached mainly on those issues dealing with Russia’s immediate security needs. While many schools are able to identify threats to the country’s security, they are still not ready to go beyond negativism and construct a positive security concept for the future.
Russian foreign policy schools continue to differ on many important theoretical and practical issues: the meaning of Russia’s national interests and security; the correlation between "hard" and "soft" security; the future of national sovereignty; the role of international organisations in ensuring national and international security; civilisational orientations; the use of military force in international relations; functional and regional priorities; particular ethnic, religious and territorial conflicts, etc.
The Russian discourse on security still aims at responding to the fundamental question: what is Russia about? This discourse is a way to nation-building rather than to defining the country’s future foreign policy and security agenda. This is hardly surprisingly given Russia’s newly born polity, culture and even boundaries, as well as its unfinished reforms. It is understandable why fairly old-fashioned theories such as Eurasianism, realism, and geopolitics could come to dominate Russian security debates. As these concepts refer to national interest, national security, national sovereignty and territory, they seem a reliable theoretical basis for searching for a national identity. Russian and other countries’ experience shows that these concepts may provide both society and the political elites with some intellectual support for building a foreign policy consensus. However, as the country departs modernity and faces the challenges of postmodernity, many quasi-reliable paradigms (including realism/geopolitics) do not work.
What can easily be predicted, however, is that Russian security debates will not stop with the reaching of a consensus on a realist/geopolitical basis. That is the starting point rather than the end of these debates. With the achievement of a certain level of socio-economic and political stability, new concepts with an emphasis on individual and societal security will likely challenge collectivist and state- or nation-oriented theories. The entire landscape of the Russian discourse on security will be even more diverse in the years to come. Plurality rather than unification and consensus-building will probably become the main characteristic of this discourse. A completely different set of priorities could be the focus of future security debates: ensuring domestic stability and territorial integrity, preventing the rise of hostile powers and alliances may be replaced by concerns such as the environment, mass disease, international terrorism and narco-business, migration, the increasing vulnerability of economic and information networks, and so on.
Institutional Dimension and Topics for Research
Theoretical pluralism in the post-communist russian scholarship has been accompanied by the growth of research and training centres dealing with international studies. Remarkably, this growth occurred in the situation where governmental support - financial and organisational - to science and education has been cut drastically or stopped completely. Four main categories of centres can be identified: university departments and centres; the Russian Academy of Sciences; departmental institutes and research centres; and independent think tanks.
Universities
Despite the lack of finance and governmental support, Russia’s leading universities such as the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Moskovskiy Gosudarstvenniy Institut Mezhdunarodnykh Otnosheniy - MGIMO), Moscow State University and St. Petersburg University, have not only survived but also broadened the scope of research and improved curricula and training programmes. There could be at least two explanations of this phenomenon. First, professors and researchers have become free in choosing theoretical approaches and teaching methods. This created a fruitful atmosphere for developing International Relations in terms of both research and teaching. Second, universities learnt fast how to undertake fund-raising and earn money. University administrators succeeded in searching out Russian and foreign grants, establishing good contacts with wealthy sponsors and attracting promising candidates for undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate programmes who are ready to pay for training. Some prominent Western foundations and donors have initiated sponsorship programmes to assist international studies in Russia. Among these are the Soros Foundation, the McArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment, the Eurasia Foundation, IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), the EU TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States), TEMPUS (trans-European co-operation scheme for higher education) and INTAS (International Technical Assistance) programmes, the NATO Democratic Institutions Fellowship programme, Volkswagen Foundation, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Konrad Adenauer Foundation and so on. They have established offices in Moscow and some regional centres.
The growth of regional centres of international studies is a remarkable feature of post-Communist Russia. Contrary to the Soviet period when it was an elitist discipline studied and taught at a limited number of Moscow-based institutes and universities, International Relations is now spreading around Russian peripheral universities. In the 1990s, a number of peripheral universities such as St Petersburg, Far Eastern State University (Vladivostok), Irkutsk State University, Kazan State University, Kuban State University (Krasnodar), University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University, Novosibirsk State Academy of Economics and Management, Tomsk University, and Ural State University (Ekaterinburg), established faculties or departments of international relations. Along with departments which combine teaching and research some universities established special research centres dealing with foreign policy studies. For example, Volgograd University set up an American Studies Centre. University of Nizhny Novgorod has got three research centres related to international relations studies - the Institute for New Strategic Studies, Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution Research and Centre for Social and Political Studies. The Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University also created a system of regional studies centres, including centres for American, Austrian, French, German, Italian and Japanese studies.
It is premature to speak about particular academic schools in international studies in Russia, but some of them are gradually emerging in both Moscow and the regions. At least some groupings around certain research centres and intellectual leaders are already there. International relations theory is represented by centres such as MGIMO (Khrustalev 1991; Tyulin 1991, 1994), Moscow State University (Moskovskiy Gosudarstevnniy Universitet - MGU) (Tsygankov 1995; Gadzhiev 1997), Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University (Malholtra and Sergunin 1997), and Irkutsk State University (Novikov 1996). The MGIMO is leading in studies of diplomatic service history and organisation. Security studies as a discipline is well established in MGIMO, University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University. Peace research and conflict resolution can be found in MGIMO and University of Nizhny Novgorod. American studies are strong in MGU, MGIMO, St. Petersburg University, St. Petersburg Pedagogical University, University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University, Tomsk State University and Volgograd State University.
It should be noted that the rapid growth of peripheral centres has not only brought to an end Moscow’s monopoly on international studies but also provided Russian scholars with regional perspectives and added theoretical polyphony. Moreover, this process has contributed to training personnel for the local diplomatic and international business structures which are developing now relatively dynamically in the regions. In turn, this has provided the regional political, security and economic elites, which struggle with the federal centre for additional powers, with expertise on foreign and defence policy issues. Therefore, the spread of International Relations throughout regions has implicitly facilitated the process of democratisation and decentralisation of Russia’s foreign, security and economic policies in the post-Communist era.
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS)
In contrast with the universities, the RAS has not been successful in adjusting its research, financial and administrative structures and, therefore, in developing international studies. First and foremost, the Academy is more dependent on the government in terms of finance. It has fewer opportunities for launching commercial projects. Foreign foundations and private sponsors are less generous in the case of academic institutions; they prefer to deal with higher education institutes, independent think tanks and NGOs. Low salaries, the lack of resources and opportunities for a professional career provoked a real "exodus" of foreign policy experts from the RAS in the 1990s (Rossiyskaya gazeta, 10 January 1998:2).
The RAS lost many talented scholars even before the economic decline caused by the Gaidar reforms had started. Under late Gorbachev and early Yeltsin, many leading researchers preferring political rather than academic career left the RAS for high-ranking positions in the government, politics and the mass media.
However, the RAS still retains good schools in some areas of international studies. Studies of diplomatic history are traditionally good at the Institute of General History, Institute for the USA and Canada Studies (Institut SshA i Kanady Rossiyskoi Akademii Nauk – ISKRAN), Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Institut Mirovoi Ekonomiki i Medzhdunarodnykh Otnosheniy – IMEMO), Institute of Latin American Studies, St. Petersburg Division of the Institute of Russian History.
The RAS institutes are particularly good in area studies especially as many of them have been organised in accordance with the geographical principle. ISKRAN and IMEMO used to have a particular strength in American studies. The Institute of Europe, IMEMO and Institute for Slavic and Balkan Studies examine European security and integration as well as ethno-religious conflicts on the continent. The Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology specialises in conflict resolution studies. The Institutes of Oriental Studies, Far Eastern Studies, Latin American Studies, African Studies cover their respective regions.
However, the RAS pays relatively little attention to International Relations theory. Few scholars from the IMEMO 2 and the Institute of Europe have published theoretical works. University centres retain their priority in this particular field.
Departmental Centres and Institutes
Many Russian foreign policy, economic, security and defence ministries have got think tanks and training institutions of their own. For example, the MGIMO has got ‘dual loyalty’ being subordinated to both the Ministry of Higher Education and the Foreign Ministry. In addition to the MGIMO which trains students to enter the foreign service, there is a Diplomatic Academy which trains or re-trains mid-career diplomats. Along with departments (for instance, Department of Foreign Policy Studies), there are several purely research units in the Academy some of which such as the Centre for Methodology of International Studies and Centre for Global Problems are also involved in international studies. The Foreign Ministry has itself got a Department of Historical and Archival Studies which is in charge of handling the Ministry’s archives and publication of its documents.
Similar to the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, Federal Security Service (FSS) and Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) have got research units in their higher education institutes: the General Staff Academy, Military University, FSS Academy, and FIS Academy. They are quite active in examining the role of the military and intelligence agencies in shaping and implementing world politics. They also take part in debates on Russian national security doctrine and organisation. The Institute of Military History focuses on studying, publishing and interpreting of archival documents.
The Government of the Russian Federation runs a number of specialised higher education institutions which basically train personnel for the federal and local executive agencies. Some of them, such as the Russian Academy of Public Administration (and its regional branches), Public Economy Academy, and the Academy of Finance conduct research projects on international relations, world economy and international law.
The Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) is the most authoritative organisation among the state-run research institutes dealing with international studies. In accordance with the presidential decree (1992), the RISS is a state research organisation which should provide the governmental bodies with analytical information and recommendations related to national security (Antonenko 1996:42). The priority areas of research for the RISS include: national security and Russia’s strategic interests in different regions of the world; developments in the CIS countries; security system in Europe; Russia-NATO and Russia-EU relations; disarmament and global stability; non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and peace-keeping operations.
By virtue of their status as state research and training organisations, the above institutes have a unique opportunity to influence Russian foreign policy decision-making. Some of them (Diplomatic Academy, General Staff Academy and the RISS) are really influential. This, however, makes them politically engaged and less academic. In spite of their inclination to applied rather than theoretical research, the lack of information about research projects conducted by these institutions as well as the lack of co-ordination with the university and RAS centres the above institutes are able to make a valuable contribution to the Russian scholarship and should be counted as an integral part of the country’s academic community.
INDEPENDENT RESEARCH CENTRES
The rise of these centres is an important characteristic of Russian political and intellectual life in the post-Communist era. Most of them have been created for purely political purposes such as monitoring, providing expertise and prognoses, servicing election campaigns and so on. For this reason, few of them have been oriented to fundamental research.
Among the centres belonging to the first group (servicing foreign policy-making) the Karaganov’s Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (CFDP) is the biggest and most influential. The Council was established in February 1992 as an independent non-governmental organisation. The Council is directed by an Assembly of some 50 prominent figures in government, business, academia, and the mass media.
The Council’s activities include regular meetings and informal discussions among policy analysts and decision-makers; conferences, seminars, and discussion groups; research projects; an education campaign in the mass media; and consulting and training for technical and social assistance programmes (Antonenko 1996:40). The CFDP does not conduct projects at the request of the government structures but chooses the topic of research on its own initiative and based on the decisions of the Assembly and the Board.
Although the Council claims that it is not an analytical think tank, it does unite the leading Russian specialists in foreign and defence policy and aims at providing decision-makers with recommendations on the following topics: Russian national interests; threat assessment; developing and evaluating new strategic concepts; regional and global security; ethnic and religious conflicts; arms control; conversion and so on (Strategiya dlya Rossii 1992:5; O Voine NATO 1999)
The Russian Foreign Policy Foundation (RFPF) is another influential non-governmental actor in the decision-making process. The Foundation was established in 1992 on the initiative of the Foreign Ministry by the Diplomatic Academy, International Affairs magazine, and several powerful Russian banks (Incombank, Avtovazbank, Menatep) and companies (KAMAZ, LUKoil and others). From the very beginning, the RFPF was designed for bringing together the Russian foreign policy and business community as well as harmonising their interests (Antonenko 1996:45). For this reason, it paid more attention to practical rather than research activities.
However, its research programme is also quite impressive. The Foundation holds several conferences a year and publishes their proceedings. These include conferences on conflict prevention and resolution (1992), disputes in the Caspian Sea and Black Sea regions (1995), Kaliningrad (1992), Russia and Asia-Pacific (1995) and so on. The RFPF is very active in establishing contacts with Russian regions such as Kaliningrad, Karelia, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, and the Russian Far East including the opening of regional offices (Krasnodar and Novosibirsk) (Antonenko 1996:45).
Among other policy-oriented independent centres the Foundation ‘Political Studies’ (Andrei V. Fedorov), the Foundation ‘Politics’ (Vyacheslav A. Nikonov), Russian Public Policy Centre (Alexei Salmin), Russian-American University (Rossiysko-Amerikanskiy Universitet – RAU) Corporation (Alexei Podberezkin), Centre for Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies (Emil Pain), Centre for National Security and International Relations (Sergei Rogov), Institute for Defence Studies (Viktor Surikov) and others should be mentioned.
The second group of independent research centres which tries to combine applied and fundamental research includes: the Moscow Carnegie Centre, the Moscow Russian Science Foundation, which incorporates the Centre for Strategic Assessments (Sergei Oznobishchev, Alexei Konovalov), the Centre for Russian Political Research headed by Vladimir Orlov and Gorbachev Foundation (Dmitry Furman and Victor Kuvaldin).
ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES
Similar to other sciences, international studies as a discipline is impossible without a proper archival/library system. In the Soviet period, diplomatic archives were opened only to a limited number of scholars; the publication of a few, really important documents was allowed. Acquisition of foreign literature for libraries was under the strict supervision of the highest authorities. The libraries lacked recent foreign literature. Works and periodicals which covered contemporary international relations (in particular, Soviet foreign and security policies) used to be placed in special holding areas (so-called spetskhrans) as classified literature. The latter were also only available to selected scholars.
Reform of the archival/library system started already under the Gorbachev administration. Some archives including the foreign and defence ministries’ archives then became more accessible to researchers. The spetskhrans were abolished.
In the early Yeltsin period, in addition to the above archives, the KGB Archive and even the Presidential Archive (the former Archive of the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) were opened. Numerous documents on the recent history of Soviet foreign policy were released and published. Several million documents were sold to foreign archives and research institutes (sometimes without the due control of the government and specialists).
However, the situation changed in 1994 when governmental control over the archives was re-tightened. Moreover, given the poor financial conditions in which the archives operated the quality of services offered by the archives deteriorated. In a bid to survive, some archives put pressure on research institutes and individual scholars to launch joint commercial projects. Few efforts, however, proved to be successful because the potential ‘consumers’ of archival items were themselves poor.
A similar situation existed with the research libraries. On one hand, libraries were free in their acquisition policy and in establishing international contacts. Some of them (the State Library of Foreign Literature, Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (Institut Nauchnoi Informatsii po Obshestvennym Naukam – INION), MGIMO, MGU, Russian Academy of Public Administration, etc.) have succeeded in establishing exchange programmes with foreign counterparts, getting grants and modern equipment (including computerised search systems, Internet, video and audio systems, photocopying machines). This has allowed them to improve library services to almost the level of Western standards. However, on the other hand, the vast majority of the Russian public and university libraries are still in a difficult situation. Given the budget constraints and the lack of personnel, many libraries cannot afford new acquisitions and to provide better services. Extreme centralisation of library holdings is one more negative feature inherited from the Soviet past. As in the past, the literature on international relations (including periodicals) is predominantly located in the Moscow-based libraries (with the exception of St. Petersburg). This, in turn, creates more difficulties for the regional centres in developing international studies on the periphery. Individual researchers have to form their own ‘libraries’ that used to result from their trips abroad.
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF CO-ORDINATION
Up until the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet Political Science Association (SPSA) directed by Georgy Shakhnazarov was in charge of the co-ordination of international studies. The Russian Political Science Association (RPSA) was established as a successor to the SPSA in 1992. However, it very soon became a fighting arena between the former "scientific Communists" and the new generation of political scientists. As a result of several splits the RPSA’s development was stalled.
Nonetheless the need for a specialised international studies association that could play a co-ordinating role was felt by the majority of Russian academics. Some professional associations covering area studies tried to take the lead. The Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (established in the 19th century) tried to unite the Middle East experts. A series of conferences and interesting publications on diplomatic history have resulted from this endeavour. The Russian Association of European Studies, formed in 1990, attempted to co-ordinate research process in its own area.
The two old rivals - Moscow and St. Petersburg - claimed priority for the first professional association on American studies. In 1994, the Russian-American Association of Historians was established on the basis of St. Petersburg University. This association brought together some American and Russian historians from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, Nizhny Novgorod, and Yoshkarola (Mari-El Republic). The Russian Association of American Studies was initiated by experts in American history from MGU and ISKRAN in 1995.
Similar to the American studies story, the two Russian capitals competed in establishing a professional international studies association. In 1996, with the help of the European Office of the International Affairs Network (IAN) a Central and Eastern European International Studies Association (CEEISA) was iniciated. Along with representatives of Central and Eastern European countries, some scholars from peripheral universities have joined the Association. With the further help of the IAN the Association inter alia organised several curricula-development workshops and conferences in Budapest, Prague, St. Petersburg and Warsaw. It also arranged fellowships in American universities for young teachers from St. Petersburg University. As a result of a successful membership drive and the general activation of CEEISA (whose most recent conventions were held in Warsaw 2000 and in Prague in 1999) the Association has relatively good prospects for the future.
In 1997 MGIMO established the association of the Schools of International Relations with the financial support of the Choidiev International Foundation. Furthermore, the Association of the Russian Higher Education Institutes on Teaching International Relations, which was formed by the Ministry of Higher Education on the basis of MGIMO in 1994, supervises and co-ordinates university curricula and grants institutes with licences to open new international relations programmes. Thirty-six universities and other institutes joined this association. However, it deals mainly with routine details of teaching and training programmes rather than the co-ordination of international studies in Russia. The Association may well be perceived as an instrument of state policy that attempts to protect and improve the quality of higher education in this particular field. Therefore, this organisation by no means replaces a real professional association.
The First All-Russian Congress of Political Scientists was held in Moscow in mid-February 1998. A renewed Russian Political Science Association was established and a new leadership elected. A section on geopolitics (i.e. international relations) was created within the structure of the Association. This was a good incentive for Russian international relations specialists to create an independent professional association. In November 1999, the Russian International Studies Association was finally established. The new organisation has quickly established contacts with the ISA, CEEISA and other international associations.
Conclusions
Six conclusions emerge from the above analysis. First, Russian international studies have experienced a very quick and dramatic transformation from a discipline dominated by Marxist ideology to multiparadigmatic discourse. Second, although the realist/geopolitical school is currently dominating the discipline, other perspectives (such as idealism/liberalism, globalism and postpositivism) do exist and are producing some alternatives to the prevailing paradigm. It appears that in the foreseeable future the Russian foreign policy discourse will look like a polyphony rather than monophony or cacophony. Third, two main topics - diplomatic history and present-day Russian foreign policy - are the most popular themes among the Russian scholars and analysts. The Russian authors have taken great strides in exploring these problems. However, Russian scholarship still lacks profound theoretical works in this field. Fourth, international studies has changed its status by being transformed from an elitist discipline to a "normal" one. Fifth, the "democratisation", "demonopolisation" and "normalisation" of International Relations has had many implications at the institutional level: the number of research centres dealing with international studies has dramatically increased, new regional centres have emerged. This has made Russian scholarship even more diverse and interesting. Sixth, at the same time as the said positive development, some institutional discrepancies remain. While many university and non-governmental research centres are developing in a relatively dynamic way, some institutional components such as the RAS and archival/library system are still unable to cope with the problems of the transition period. There are also many problems with the co-ordination of research activities although the rise of the professional association offers a promising sign.
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Notes
Note *: Alexander A. Sergunin, Ph.D., is Professor of Political Science at the Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University, Russia. Back.
Note 1: Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed in Paris on 19 November 1990. Back.
Note 2: See, for example, the series of Kosolapov’s articles on IR theory in the IMEMO journal Mirovaya Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, nos. 1-5 and 11-12, 1998. Back.