Russia and Sanctions: The Transformational Domestic and International Effects of Unilateral Restrictive Measures

Most studies of the US, EU and Ukraine’s sanctions against Russia and Russian counter sanctions focus on their immediate and intended effects and apply these to make judgements about their efficacy. However, the complex consequences of sanctions go far beyond the target countries’ immediate reactions, as sanctions have positive and negative spillover effects that are rarely acknowledged in official discourse, which focuses on issues of the sanction regimes’ legitimacy and effectiveness. Vulnerability to sanctions leads target countries to reposition their domestic and international priorities. This article will examine three critical ‘collateral effects’ of Western sanctions and Russian counter sanctions. First, they serve as a catalyst for Moscow’s efforts to diversify economic relationship through international projects such as the EAEU, BRICS, and the “Pivot to the East.” Second, they have triggered more risk-sensitive policies in the provision of national economic security, particularly when it comes to finance. Finally, they serve as a transformational tool for national development strategies both at the industrial and regional levels.

A Multilevel World and a Flat Worldview: A Realist and Progressive Synthesis for Russia

This article is about the challenges that face Russia when reflecting on her obligations to the UN system, and on the limits of what is possible in trying to ‘master’ globalization. These challenges are not simply practical questions about the choice of foreign policy. They are deeper questions about worldview and how best to understand and navigate contemporary world politics. Several schemes have been presented to help identify and explain the foundations of our contemporary world order: geopolitical frameworks, civilizational ones, and some that are explicitly ideological. In engaging with and critiquing some of the best-known of these frameworks, the article makes the case for a worldview for Russia that is realist and progressive. This worldview recognizes the hierarchy of states and the logic of power politics in a UN-centered world, but it also moves beyond this pragmatic focus to consider the possibilities for a global dialogue of ‘pluralistic convergence’ and peaceful change that is facilitated by Russia.

Russian Foreign Policy: Three Historical Stages and Two Future Scenarios

There have been several stages in Russia’s foreign policy since 1991. From a naive and idealistic pro-Western course, to ‘getting up from its knees’, to asserting itself as an independent great power. Around 2018, this trajectory reached a plateau, with the potential for decline. Since then, Russia and the world began to face fresh challenges and an almost qualitatively different environment. Even before the start of the epidemic in 2020, it was clear that Russia required a new foreign policy, built on what had been achieved in previous decades, but geared towards the future. This would include a strong ideology, focus on internal growth and development, and the development a streamlined and more cost-effective approach to foreign policy to adjust to a more turbulent and chaotic external environment. Despite growing international chaos and unpredictability, two scenarios for Russian foreign policy are surfacing. An optimistic one in which Russia successfully adapts to these changing circumstances, and a less optimistic one where it continues its current course of internal development, failing to live up to its full potential, but nevertheless still retaining the ability to play an independent and significant role in world affairs.

The Politics of Russian Revisionism: Diplomacy of a Worldview, 2011–14

Russia’s use of force in Ukraine has been described as a challenge to the rule of international law and an event of unilateral intervention. This paper provides a reinterpretation of this standard history of Russian revisionism. Our new history places this practice in a global governance context through an analysis of the politics concerning the international legal norm of ‘non-intervention’ and its legitimate/illegitimate exceptions for collective intervention. This analysis discloses a practice of Russian diplomacy that emerges out of resistance to humanitarian interventions advocated for by Western states. This practice justifies its own state-bound humanitarian intervention as the legitimate exception to the foundation of international order, which Russian diplomacy had previously sought to restore. We argue the political discourse of the worldview of ‘state civilization’ explains these events of Russian revisionism. We conclude with an analysis of the international paradoxes of peace and conflict contingent on this Russian worldview.

Introduction

An introduction to the special issue on Russian foreign policy prepared by a team based at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. We begin with an overview of some of the contesting views about the dynamics and drivers of Russian foreign policy and some of the key theories. We then present the substantive arguments of the contributors, assessing how they fit into the overall pattern of understanding the key issues in Russian foreign policy and larger global concerns. The Introductions ends with some broader considerations, noting the tension between ‘declinist’ and ‘revivalist’ approaches to Russia today, and suggest that the contributions on the whole steer a cautious path between extreme representations of these two perspectives, while warning of the dangers of triumphalism. We argue that Russian and Russian-based views can make a specific and important contribution to larger debates about the dynamics of Russian foreign policy and Russia’s contribution to the resolution of some of the pressing issues facing humanity.

Russia’s China Policy: Growing Asymmetries and Hedging Options

This article examines the state and prospects of Russia’s policy toward China. We look at recent trends in the evolution of the world order, the history of Moscow-Beijing relations, and the changes in the balance of power between Russia and China to offer a forecast of Russia’s China policy in the near term. Special attention is paid to the role of the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation. The authors conclude that, despite the Treaty’s significance, the international situation – and indeed the relative strengths of the two countries – have significantly changed over the past 20 years. The new conditions will inevitably compel Russia to adjust its policy toward China. Moscow, as always, will seek to develop its political and economic partnership with Beijing. However, it will likely move toward hedging against risks that excessive dependence on China could bring about.

From ‘Greater Europe’ to Confrontation: Is a ‘Common European Home’ Still Possible?

Over the past thirty years, relations between Russia and the EU have gone from the idea of a ‘Common European home’ and ‘the unification of everything except institutions’ to periods of fading partnership, culminating in the post-Crimean crisis and the current systemic confrontation over geopolitics and values. Today, the EU and Russia seem to be irreconcilable in terms of values, domestic politics, and geopolitical approaches. For the time being, the most likely scenario for EU-Russia relations will be tense coexistence with cooperation restricted by a climate of general mistrust. The best prospects for constructive cooperation will come from a common commitment to pragmatic ‘neighborliness’. Nevertheless, given the turbulence and unpredictability of international politics a return to “Greater European” integration cannot be entirely ruled out. The fundamental conditions for such a rapprochement still exist, though critical internal processes and external issues need to be resolved before this process can begin.

Russia’s Policies in the Post-Soviet Space: Between Constructive Relations and Fighting the New Cold War

The article challenges the view that Russia’s goal in the post-Soviet space is to make the region an exclusive zone of Russian influence and keep other world powers out entirely. In fact, Russia has two policies towards the influence of other powers that are active in the region: a ‘business as usual’ approach, applied to China and Turkey; and a securitized ‘New Cold War policy’, applied to the US and West (especially towards their presence in Ukraine). Growing Chinese and Turkish influence has not been ‘securitized’, although the presence of both powers creates clear obstacles to the reintegration of former Soviet countries around Russia. The article draws on three bodies of literature (Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism) to explain this variation. While Moscow perceives growing Western influence in Ukraine as a threat to its domestic regime and identity as a great power and regional leader, it finds common ground with Beijing and Ankara in its concerns about the Western liberal democracy promotion agenda and views both powers as potential allies in the construction of a ‘multipolar world’.

COVID and Federal Relations in Russia

The COVID-19 crisis has provided an opportunity to re-evaluate how the federal relations work in authoritarian Russia. In particular, the crisis has confirmed that the regional governors are an integral part of maintaining the stability of the non-democratic regime. Since the whole system and thus, the political careers of the incumbent governors depend on Putin’s popularity, they are interested in maintaining it, even at the expense of their own popularity with the population. In Spring 2020 the regional governors have demonstrated both loyalty and willingness to shield Putin from political responsibility for unpopular measures associated with the epidemic.