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In 2015, more than 60 per cent of Russians supported the actions of their government in Syria, despite the lack of clarity on the reasons behind Moscow’s involvement. One would expect such a bold m...

Russian relations with the West have deteriorated significantly in the past two decades, in particular after the rise of Vladimir Putin. The factors leading to this shift included domestic issues such as the role of the military and security elite, as well as the reemergence of authoritarianism and growing concern in Russia for the expansion of Western influence in post-Soviet space.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union began to challenge the West in the “Global South,” with an initial focus on Africa, where the European colonial system was in the early process of disintegration. For nearly half-century, until its final implosion at the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was one of two global superpowers, along with the United States, whose competition for power and influence led to its engagement around the world with nearly all other states. Initially, the Soviet Union and the United States faced one another across what Winston Churchill called the Iron Curtain in Central Europe. Soon, however, the emergence of a host of states from the decolonization of West European empires in Africa and Asia created new platforms for competition between the superpowers. The USSR and the United States virtually expanded their competition to the Third World, where each viewed it and their competition for influence in zero-sum terms.

The charges and countercharges between Russia and the West, the expanded military budgets and exercises, the denigration in both Russia and the US of past nuclear arms agreements, and Russia’s dire...

The focus of this article is on global governance in an era in which major new actors join those who have for the past quarter century, and longer, set the rules for the liberal international order. That order has been characterized by Western political and economic dominance, the expansion—one might even say imposition—of democratic political institutions and ‘open-door’ economic policies. For the past decade, Russia has increasingly challenged the West and the existing international order across a broad set of fronts. These actions have ranged from rhetorical challenges to the global system to the use of military intervention meant to impose its policy objectives on other states, as well as cyber-attacks on national elections and direct support for right-wing political groups in the West seemingly meant to instill instability within the member states of the Western community, to support like-minded right-wing political groups, and to challenge the very existence of that community itself. Russia’s efforts to redefine the existing world order and to reduce the dominant position of the USA in defining and maintaining that order seem to have gained an important new ally in Donald Trump and some of his key advisors, who appear to question the very foundations of that order and to call for the US withdrawal from it.

This chapter outlines the evolution of military relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and developing countries and assess the role that military assistance plays in overall Soviet policy. One of the most important changes in Soviet policy toward the Third World during the past decade has been the increasing emphasis on the expansion of military relations between the Soviet Union and individual developing states. By the 1970s the Soviets were able to employ their newly developed military power, including an oceangoing fleet and long-range transport aircraft, in conjunction with access to port and air facilities, to support distant and scattered political and strategic goals. As Soviet goals in the Third World included the cultivation of the goodwill of developing countries, Third World leaders could no longer be depicted as reactionaries who should be swept away by the tide of revolution.

The purpose of the present examination is 1) to summarize briefly the evolution of historical Russia as the amalgam of multiple ethnic and cultural communities into a growing imperial domain; 2) to outline more specifically the policies pursued by the tsarist and communist regimes to integrate minority communities into the Russian majority; 3) to examine the impact on Russia of the collapse of the former USSR; and 4) to trace current efforts by the Russian government to reintegrate the disparate parts of the former USSR, including especially regions of other post-Soviet states with a significant ethnic Russian population, into a new “Greater Russia.” Although it will touch on Soviet integration policies that targeted national minorities who, by 1989, represented half of the population, the focus will be on recent and current policies intended to “Greater Russia.”

The current crisis in Russia’s relations with the West has more often than not been blamed in the West on Russia itself and the authoritarian policies pursued by Vladimir Putin. As reprehensible as many aspects of Russian policy might be, the West has contributed to the deterioration in the relationship by ignoring Russian policy concerns and attempting to take advantage of Russian weakness. By acting thus the West has not only created major problems for itself. It has also made any diplomatic solution to the Ukraine tragedy increasingly unlikely.

In the second chapter, ‘Growing Confrontation Between Russia and the West: Russia’s Challenge to the Post-Cold War Order’, Suzanne Loftus and Roger Kanet track the gradual deterioration of Russian-US relations, with emphasis on Russia’s growing resistance to what it sees as direct challenges to Russian interests. Over time, as its resource base improved, Russia has been more assertive in challenging Western initiatives. The confrontation is based not only in part on great power competition but also on very different conceptions of the nature of governance, at both the state and the international levels. Loftus and Kanet are not confident that relations will improve in the near future, short of Western acceptance of Russia’s expanded role in Eurasian and global security.

In this introduction, entitled ‘The Russian Challenge to the Security Environment in Europe’, Roger E. Kanet notes the collapse of the positive expectations of the early 1990s that Russia would enter the Western community of states and poses the question ‘why’? He points to the qualifications of the diverse group of analysts assembled here to provide at least partial answers to the question, although they differ, sometimes significantly, in their overall assessments of factors of central importance. Several themes cut across the chapters: (1) the substantial responsibility of the West for the deterioration in relations; (2) the restraint exercised in Russian-US relations; (3) the importance of ‘great power identity’ in driving Russian policy; (4) the hypocrisy of the West, especially the EU, in demanding exclusivity in relations with Eastern partners; and (5) the inherently weak position from which Moscow is pursuing its challenge of the West.

Throughout the Cold War, studies of Soviet foreign policy were generally ‘atheoretical’. In so far as they were based on theoretical models from international relations, those models tended to be some version of ‘realism’ or ‘neorealism’. Over the past two decades, since the end of the Cold War, other approaches – especially those based on ‘constructivism’ – have challenged the domination of the ‘realist’ framework in studies of Russian foreign policy. The articles in this special issue of International Politics examine the strengths and weaknesses of the various theoretical frameworks employed to explain Russian policy.

American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11. Edited by A. Trevor Thrall, Jane K. Cramer. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. xvii + 235 pp. $39.95 paperback (ISBN 978-0-415-77769-8). Avoiding Trivia: The Role of Strategic Planning in American Foreign Policy. Edited by Daniel W. Drezner. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2009. viii + 190 pp. $24.95 paperback (ISBN 978-0-8157-0306-8). Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers. By Glen S. Krutz, Jeffrey S. Peake. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. xi + 252 pp. $75.00 hardcover (ISBN 978-0-472-11687-4). The majority of the published studies of US foreign policy focus on the implementation of policy—on American policy in a region, US relations with a country or policy concerning a particular issue. The three books under review here, however, concern the making of US foreign policy in the domestic political system rather than with its implementation. At first glance these volumes appear to deal with quite disparate topics—strategic planning in US foreign policy making, the expanding role of executive agreements in US relations with other countries, and the importance of fear and threat inflation in foreign policy making, especially since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001. But on further examination, all three of these important publications examine aspects of foreign policy decision making in the complex environment that is the US political system with its numerous checks and balances and its unique political culture. Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements and American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear both focus on the means employed by the executive branch of government in building support for what it views as important policy decisions, while Avoiding Trivia represents a call for greater planning and forethought, rather than mere reaction to ongoing events, as the foundation for US foreign policy. In other words, all three volumes deal with the complex problem of foreign policy decision making in a political system in which political authority is distributed across different branches and levels of government. Although the three books all examine aspects of the decision-making process in US foreign policy, their respective areas of focus are distinct enough that I will discuss them individually rather than attempt to force them into a common mold or framework for comparative purposes. In discussing the three books, however, I will point …

Although the NATO alliance has suffered from policy disagreements throughout its history, current divisions derive mainly from a shift in US grand strategy associated with the Bush Doctrine, which is based on assumptions of US hegemony, an assertive nationalist approach in relations with other states, including erstwhile allies, and the preemptive/preventive use of force. Although this approach has failed to achieve its objectives, the underpinnings on which it is based are deeply rooted in the American political psyche. Given the different interpretations of the security challenges facing the member states of the NATO alliance system, the deeply imbedded views of uniqueness and hegemony that characterize the American political psyche, and the likely unwillingness of the next generation of US political leaders to revise US policy so fully as to eliminate all aspects of recent US attitudes and behavior, it is highly unlikely that the close institutional relationships that characterized the cold war years will be an important feature of future US relations with European states.