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Article Excerpt
This article describes the changes that Russian foreign policy has undergone in the post-Soviet period. It begins with a discussion of Russian self-identity in the world, the breakdown of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a transitional phase, and the new foreign policy and security arrangements that have developed among the various members of the former Soviet Union. Neither Russia nor the West are reacting in an adequate and timely manner to this qualitative change. The full de-ideologization of foreign policy after the end of the Cold War has still not been completed, neither by Russia, nor by the West.
The author concludes by providing a list of post-post-Soviet foreign policy goals, and non-goals, for Russia.
INTRODUCTION
With inevitable simplification, current and future Russian foreign policy depends upon five changing factors: 1. The character of the domestic ruling political group; 2. World prices of oil and gas and the status of the natural resource dependent economy; 3. Less on relations with the West, but more on the situation in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Eurasian South; 4. Choice within the Russian political mentality between a global superpower mentality for Russia or a more limited self-identification as no more than a regional power; 5. Choices by the Russian political class within the triangle: isolationism, active nationalism, and internationalism (globalism). During Putin's presidency in 2000-2008 Russia modified its foreign policy from a modest regional power mentality to self-identification as a global energy power. It also repudiated the semi-isolationism and self-restrictions of the 1990s towards a new international globalism. Taking into consideration "long cycles" of the Russian/Soviet/ Russian globalist strategy, these changes were not only logical, but inevitable.
"AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM" AND "RUSSIAN UNIQUENESS"
Despite all the obvious differences, American and Russian societies of the last two centuries have some common basic characteristics, which manifested themselves in a certain commonality of the major systems of beliefs current respectively in America and Russia. Both nations possess vast territories with rich national resources. The well-known American idea and psychology of the "frontier" moving to the West all the way to the Pacific was mirrored in Russian consciousness with the "frontier" of Russian lands moving to the East--through Siberian space to the shores of the same Pacific, but on the other side. The acquisition of new free lands and the constant widening of the state distinguished both the early American state and the Russian Empire from the national psychology of dense borders in old Europe.
Both America and Russia are very pluralistic from the ethnic point of view and each combines within one state more than one hundred nationalities and ethnic groups. The multi-ethnicity of the population required certain tolerance from each group to other system of values, which is an important prerequisite for the pluralistic democratic organization of society. The well-known image of America as a "melting pot" for nationalities, where they melt into one unique and new American nation, was almost literally paralleled in the twentieth century in the ideological formula of the Soviet Union as a "melting pot" for its 150 nationalities, where they would meld into a new Soviet nation.
The concept of "American exceptionalism" is often interpreted as "exceptionalism based on democracy." The American model of society is interpreted as exceptionally and uniquely democratic. But originally the idea of American exceptionalism and uniqueness was much broader. It included reference to the unique geographic, geopolitical, ethnic and religious composition of American society. Almost the same characteristics of uniqueness were included in definitions of Russian Eurasianism, so well developed in the nineteenth century by the philosophical schools of both the Slavophiles and Eurasianists. Even the evolution of the American and Russian versions of exceptionalism from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries to some degree ran in parallel. The American understanding of exceptionalism changed from a traditional anti-colonial or religious character to the notion of America as the exceptional superpower, whose uniqueness lies in enormous power (nuclear, military, financial, economic) and in democracy. Russian geopolitically, religiously and culturally based Eurasian exceptionalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was modified in the twentieth century into the Soviet ideology of the exceptionalism of the Soviet Union as a superpower, whose uniqueness lay in its socialist model of society, the global ideological influence of communism and the projection of power (nuclear, military, ideological) spread far beyond its borders.
The post-Soviet transformation of Russian foreign policy in the 1990s was marked by the recognition of national weakness caused by the collapse of communism as a messianic ideology and the disintegration of the unitary state into fifteen new states. For a certain period, preoccupied with the tasks of domestic stabilization and economic survival, Russia was reluctant to take a decisive leading role even within the sphere of post-Soviet space. But when Moscow finally tried to adopt the position of regional leader, then the rebirth of a new Russian globalism under Putin in the first decade of the twenty-first century occurred, but now already in the new historic conditions of the "end of the post-Soviet space."
CHANGING GEOPOLITICAL ORIENTATIONS OF THE NEW INDEPENDENT STATES
The mid-2000s saw the fifteenth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This decade and a half comprises an era in itself. The geopolitical space occupied formerly by the Soviet Union underwent dramatic political, economic and social changes. In this period the unofficial term for the area covered by the 15 new independent states, which emerged from the former Soviet republics, was "post-Soviet space." This umbrella notion stressed the common historic roots, shared political and economic culture and common residual features and specificities for the group of societies, which more and more diverged with each passing year.
After a decade and a half of the independent and sometimes controversial development of this group of states, the time has come to recognize the end of post-Soviet space. Of course, this does not mean that the historic influence of the Soviet period has expired. A residual "Sovietism" of some (especially Central Asian) regimes and societies remains. But common Soviet "origin" is no longer a dominating integrating factor for the group of newly-independent states (NIS). New centrifugal policy orientations are quickly fragmenting the "post-Soviet space" into new partial geopolitical entities.
Where does post-Soviet space start and end?
The notion of a "post-Soviet space" was of a transitory character. Some analysts considered it to be simply a common analytical "blanket" temporarily adopted to cover a group of countries with obvious structural commonalities but with as yet unclear political relations with each other. The terms "post-Soviet space" and "Newly-Independent States" highlight opposing developmental trends within this group of countries. The term "NIS" was more willingly used by politicians and researchers in the region, since it stressed national sovereignty and a break with the former regime; while the term "post-Soviet space" was more often applied by Western scholars, who stressed continuity and the common Soviet origin of the new regimes. Numerous centres for Soviet studies in Western universities were renamed in the early 1990s as "post-Soviet studies" instead.
In the beginning, after the legal dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and for several years later, the post-Soviet space possessed visible parameters of unity or at least uniformity (though the three Baltic states dropped out from this uniformity much quicker than the other former Soviet republics): political and economic ties within the group of newly-independent states (including in terms of international trade) were significantly more intensive than their ties with external partners; the common economic space originated in the formerly centralized Soviet...
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