The Domestic Determinants of Russia’s Resurrection

This chapter examines the purposes of Russian power projection abroad under the regime of Vladimir Putin. The chapter reviews the various dimensions of Russian power in international politics, including its geographic domain in its immediate neighborhood and globally, as well as areas where Russian policy influence is particularly weighty. The chapter then looks briefly at different means of Russian power, like economy, conventional and nuclear defense capabilities, and human capital. It concludes that Russia is never as weak as it seems. Although it is not necessarily “the strongest” in all areas of international politics, Putin’s Russia has considerable usable power resources for the purposes of its leadership. The chapter then looks at the purposes of Russian power projection abroad. It looks first at realist arguments that insist Russia has national interests that any Russian regime would defend. These interests, according to this argument, are historically and geographically determined. Any Russian leader would seek to defend what is described as a “traditional sphere of influence.” In contrast, the author argues that Putin’s patronal autocracy has come to behave more aggressively in building and using Russia’s formidable power resources in order to maintain social stability for the sake of the regime’s survival. In this way, the chapter links Russian domestic politics to its foreign policies under Putin.

Where (Else) in the World Is Russia?

This chapter looks at geographic regions and policy areas where Putin’s Russia has become increasingly influential. It examines in depth the three policy areas of special importance to Russian grand strategy—energy, particularly oil and gas; non-energy trade; and national and political security. It provides overviews of Russian power projection in the Middle East, including Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iran, and Israel; Eastern and Western Europe; Latin America, including Venezuela; and sub-Saharan African countries. The chapter concludes that Russian power resources are varied and that Russian influence has increased globally since the mid-2000s in particular.

Where Does Russia Matter?

This chapter surveys how and in what policy areas Russia under Vladimir Putin exercises influence over the politics, economies, and societies of other post-Soviet states. It explicitly compares Russian power resources in each of the fourteen other former Soviet republics, and surveys the ways in which his autocratic regime has employed its varied power resources to change policies in the near abroad. It concludes that Russian influence has been used differently in the more Western-leaning, liberalized former republics, like Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Moldova, as opposed to the autocracies of Central Asia, and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Belarus.

Is Russia Resurrected?

Russia has developed outsized influence in international politics in the twenty-first century, although on paper it does not have the traditional means of power that the United States or China does, for example. Yet, if we look beyond traditional realist measures of power in international relations of human capital, size of the military, and economic means, to also include the relative scope and weight of Russian influence in key policy areas, as well as assessing its geographic domain of influence under Vladimir Putin, Russia is not as weak relative to other great powers as it might at first appear. Under Putin’s autocracy, his regime has also become more willing to project power abroad in order to maintain domestic stability.

The Unsteady Economic Basis of Russian Power

This chapter looks at the Russian economy as a means of international power projection. It refutes the idea that it is a clear brake on Russia under Putin’s global ambitions. Although the Russian economy is still far too dependent on oil and gas revenues, there has been some modest diversification, and it has grown slowly even under sanctions imposed since 2014 by the United States and Europe. Still, there has been too little investment in the development of new technologies and in Russian higher education, and too often state enterprises are used as instruments in Russian foreign policy under Putin’s autocracy.

Russian Soft and Sharp Power Resources

Beyond its reformed and upgraded traditional military capabilities, Russia under Vladimir Putin’s regime has also developed some new abilities and redeployed some old Soviet-era techniques to battle the West for global hearts and minds. In one sense they are forms of soft power as understood by Joseph Nye. These are power assets like the use of social media to promote Russian interests, traditional media, cultural centers, and goodwill emergency aid, but distinct from the way Nye defines the term as a passive pull toward the goals of a particular country’s preferences, Russian policymakers have used soft power to in a sense “wage friendship.” That is, they employ soft power resources as part of their foreign policy toolkit to further state interests. This chapter also looks at what has become known as “sharp” power—which includes cyber means to shape information environments in Russia’s favor. Various aspects of Russian sharp power include cyber theft and release of information, planting false stories and using fake social media accounts to launder and amplify a message, as well as purchasing Facebook and Twitter ads to further preferred candidates in foreign elections. The chapter includes a discussion of Russian use of sharp power capabilities in the US presidential election in 2016, as well as elsewhere.

Russian Hard Power

This chapter examines Russia’s renewed defensive and offensive capabilities. It defines hard power as conventional and nuclear forces. The chapter compares Russian military power to that of the United States and China. The material in this chapter demonstrates that Russia has rebuilt and modernized its hard power resources considerably since the 2008 military reform. In some areas, by 2020, Russia was capable of seriously challenging NATO’s combined capabilities. The chapter covers the New Look military reforms that began in 2008 in Russia. It looks also at Russian spending on the military in dollar and ruble terms in order to get a more complete understanding of how much Russia actually spends compared to the United States and China. It provides a detailed overview of Russia’s existing conventional capabilities in land, sea, and air, as well as comparative nuclear upgrades.

Russian Society as Power Resource or Constraint?

This chapter examines the growth of Russian human capital since the collapse of the Soviet Union in order to understand whether the health and demography of the population can support the country’s foreign policies under Vladimir Putin. It examines trends of stubbornly low, although improving, life expectancy, and fertility, high male mortality, emigration and immigration trends, and overall population growth in the post-communist period. The chapter also looks at the effects of high Russian social inequality and wealth concentration. In order to understand whether Russian social trends are supportive of increasing the global reach of the country under Putin’s leadership, the chapter also looks at post-secondary educational reforms in Russia, and the degree to which the Russian labor force is prepared to support increased economic growth in Russia.