The Russian Federation emerged as the successor state of the SU after its dissolution in 1991. In the two decades that passed since, Russian foreign and security policy concepts and strategies have varied across a broad range. Changes were dependent on the acting president in place and to a lesser degree as well on the affiliated foreign minister at any given time. The strategies were commonly defined along two aspects. On the one hand the reference to the concept of vulnerability which served as argument for a strong government and securitisation on the basis of mistrust, particularly towards the West. On the other hand the strategies were defined by establishing the position of Russia towards the West, specifically the EU and the US. The state’s relations to the West ranged, depending on the leading officials, from dissociation and anti-western perspectives often related to nationalist concepts, to rapprochement and alignment. The latter has been specifically a phenomenon in the early years after the breakup of the SU when Russian leaders attempted to construct a partnership with the western actors. However, the enthusiasm was pushed aside soon enough based on thoughts about NATO and later also EU expansion eastwards.
Since 2000 Russian foreign and security policy has become relatively steady, robust and assessable, under the long-term lead of Vladimir Putin. He promoted the concept of 9 pragmatism under which Russia makes considered approaches based on its strengths and weaknesses to promote its position as a major power and establish foreign relations on
Vladimir Putin who started his career in the Committee for State Security (KGB, Komitet gosudarstvennoy
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bezopasnosti), became Prime Minister (1999), became President (2000, re-elected 2004), remained Prime Minister under the succeeding President (2008), and was reelected as president in 2012.
that basis. It aims to establish a pluralist international environment in which it represents one of the decisive actors (MacFarlane, 2006, p.43f). This approach clearly represents Russia’s continuous foreign and security policy goals which encompass a return to great power, increased regional influence through common economic and political institutions, and a multilateral international system based on the UN as the central international security organisation (Drent, 2012, p.7). The realisation of these aims relies on a demonstration of Russia’s capacities and for it to step up its position. Over time his led to an increase in nationalist approaches to promote Russia’s own characteristic solutions to international issues. Zweynert describes this with a view on economic development and state involvement, particularly in Putin’s second term as President. He argues it is based in short on the failure of westernising reforms, and the difficult transformative experience in comparison with former satellite states (Zweynert, 2010, p.550f). But also in the traditional nationalist policy area of foreign and security politics, Russia looked to present itself as a strong actor during Putin’s and Medvedev’s terms. As discussed below in the section on EU-Russia cooperation, in the recent Decree on Foreign Policy in 2012 Putin stated that Russia is going to promote its own interests much more pronouncedly in cooperative efforts (Chirkova, 2012, p.4). The drive to establish itself as a great power in the international system is however build on a dated concept of power-politics and therefore has hindered Russia from developing into be a democratic state. Instead the elite have governed the country in a manner to never loose their aim out of sight. On that basis reform and modernisation are limited by the greater aim of gaining economic and political power. While this could be construed as strategic adherence, there is clear criticism expressed in the literature which describes this as manipulation in order to ensure the economic and political gains solely for the elite (Fischer, 2012, p.5).
The neo-authoritarian type of governance is clearly embedded in the mechanics of Russian politics and shows in the structures of its foreign and security policy (Allison, Light
& White, 2006). The constitution of the Russian Federation which entered into law in 1993 decreed the Russian president as the main organ in foreign and security matters. This means that he defines strategies, concepts, has the final say in the handling of any internal and external security issues, and represents the country and its decisions domestically and internationally. The conduction of the tasks in turn is left to the ministry of foreign affairs and respectively the ministry of defence, which are both accountable to the parliament (Allison, Light and White, 2006, p.331). Thus theoretically the basis for a non-authoritarian type of governance is provided to some extent, however the dominant
position of the president is inescapable. Political parties, on the other hand have little possibility to exert influence on decision making processes in Russia. First of all no president since 1993 has been member of a political party, which means political parties are kept from proximity to power. Moreover throughout the last two decades additional laws have been adopted to reinforce the president’s independence. He appoints most members of the government, bureaucrats and the governors of the regions, and he has the power to suspend the parliament. Instead, political parties are left with the approval of the prime minister which the president proposes (Kynev, 2012, p.8). In this regard Richard Sawka’s concept of the ‘dual state’ serves as an accessible description, highlighting the differences between the constitutional state and the bureaucracy of the vertical of power (Sawka, 2011, p.3).
During Putin’s time as prime-minister the foreign and security policy concepts and strategies have developed within the same frame as before. In 2009 Medvedev presented the National Security Strategy ‘Strategy 2020’, which retained the major aims of developing as a great power, as well as establishing a leading position in the post-soviet region. In terms of priorities the strategy has predominantly been defence prone, naming defence, state security and societal security first and foremost (De Haas, 2009, p.3).
Significantly, the strategy states that Russia has overcome its internal crisis and has established itself as an economic power. Therefore it should be recognised as one of the great powers in a multipolar system. However, as Schroeder points out, the strategy is disjointed and rather represents a list of existing threats instead of an analysis of the internal and external security political environment (Schroeder, 2009, p.9).
Also the re-election of Putin as president in 2012 was not seen as a turning point to bring major changes in foreign and security policy. Instead it was recognised that he still had major influence in politics during Medvedev's presidency (Chirkova, 2012, p.6). In May 2012 Putin presented a presidential 'Decree On Measures to Implement the Russian Federation Foreign Policy’. This drew specific attention to Russia’s interest in strengthening integration in the post-Soviet space. It highlights specifically the importance of economic integration and the creation of a free trade zone, which has been agreed in 2011 and signed by eight post-Soviet countries in 2012 (Chirkova, 2012, p.4). The regional integration in the post-Soviet space has received increasing attention over recent years, simultaneous to a stagnation in Russia’s relations to the EU and the US. Thus a current change of focus can be determined. Though it still looks towards the West, Russia has
clear ambitions to strengthen its impact in its near abroad through entering into a Eurasion Union as a political and economic framework for integration (Fernandes, 2014, p.27).
Subsequently, on the basis of the above mentioned decree on Russian foreign policy, 2013 saw the release of a new Russian foreign policy concept. This concept has been 10 designed under consideration of the current challenges that Russia and the international community face. While the new concept still builds upon the previously established priorities it entails a clear move towards the consideration of more issues shared in the international environment (Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union, 2013). Significantly, the document does not refer to the Cold War and its remnants of political interaction. But instead, at least in written form, the Russian government steps away from that recurring concept and focuses on the management of diverse global challenges mutually amplified through ‘cultural and civilisational diversity’ (Russian Foreign Ministry, 2013, Art. II.13). Interestingly the concept note highlights a lot of the political vocabulary commonly used by western actors, like soft power, multilateralism, and indivisibility of security. However, as scholars have demonstrated, the understanding of these terms differs crucially among governments which explains some of their varied actions (Monaghan, 2013, p.6f; Makarychev & Morozov, 2011, p.355). This calls for the need to commonly discuss and develop an understanding for political terms in order to enable the establishment of trust in political partnerships, specifically in the foreign and security policy sphere where sovereignty remains key for Russia.
Significantly the policy development has been embedded in an increasingly tense period of events. The start of a newly tense time period in Russian domestic politics, as well as foreign and security policy, has been heralded with the elections in 2011/2012. The Duma elections as well as the presidential elections in 2011/2012 have given rise to strong discussions and protests, domestically as well as internationally. These have brought into question the exact democratic state of the Russian governance system. While some sources ascribe this to a minority of young activists, others debate whether Putin should pay more attention to the current societal developments. Two aspects are seen as important in this regard: firstly that the young generation of protestors knows a less restrictive Russian political system, and secondly, the rebuilding phase of the political
The 2013 Foreign Policy Concept can be found here: http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/ns-osndoc.nsf/
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system can no longer be used to hide the lack of addressing the strong societal welfare issues (Rukavishnikov, 2014, p.44).
In the following, further upheaval has been fuelled through the implementation of the foreign agent law (2012) by Putin after his reelection as Russian President. This is a continuation of the NGO law that was first established in 2006. The initial law from 2006 and its amendments in 2009, 2011, and 2012 have provided for increased monitoring of civil society activity in Russia. Thereby the Russian government is set to keep NGOs but to control developments in civil society as far as possible (Crotty, Hall & Ljubownikow, 2014, p.1254).
Significantly, in foreign and security policy terms, tensions currently peak in the protests and discussions on the future of Ukraine (2013/2014), as well as the highly disputed annexation of the Crimea by Russia (2014) and the resulting violent disputes among pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian military. Further developments in this tense situation need to be monitored closely. At this point the thesis will not provide a discussion of the situation as it wants to avoid premature statements. Moreover, the times of tension over the annexation of Crimea fall outside the timeframe of the research for this thesis.