Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

Existential nationalism: Russia's war against Ukraine

‘If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine’ is the sentiment used by Ukrainian protesters mobilising against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Such a sentiment signifies the stakes of a war where Ukraine is a democratic nation-state fighting for its right to exist against a Russian invasion. Meanwhile, Russia is fighting for a version of Ukraine that is subservient to Russia's idea of what Ukraine should be as a nation-state: under a Russian hegemon geopolitically, where Ukraine's national idea and interpretation of history can be vetted and vetoed by the Russian state. While nationalism scholarship equips us to study Russia's war against Ukraine through the lens of Russian ethnic nationalism and Ukrainian civic nationalism, the ethnic/civic dichotomy falls short of unpacking the more pernicious logics that pervade Russia's intentions and actions towards Ukraine (demilitarisation and de-Nazification). Instead, this article explores the logics of Russia's war and Ukraine's resistance through the concept of existential nationalism where existential nationalism is Russia's motivation to pursue war, whatever the costs, and Ukraine's motivation to fight with everything it has.     

Islamic radicalization in Russia: an assessment

To what extent does Russia face the threat of Islamic radicalization? This article provides an assessment of the nature and severity of the threat and its changing dynamics from the Yeltsin to the Putin periods in post‐Soviet Russia. It argues that, contrary to many accounts, the threat was at its greatest during the late 1990s and in the Yeltsin period. Moreover, the Putin administration adopted a series of policies that have had some significant successes in stemming the flow of Islamic radicalism within Russia. This has involved a policy mix, including repression and coercion, most notably in the military campaign in Chechnya; diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and broader Muslim world to improve Russia's image; pro‐active domestic policies to co‐opt and support moderate Russian Muslim leaders and their communities; and attempts to construct a national identity and ideology which supports the multi‐confessional and multinational nature of the Russian state and recognizes the Muslim contribution to Russian statehood and nationality. Although these policies have had their successes, there are also significant limitations, the most notable of which is the failure to address the problems of poor governance in the North Caucasus, which has sustained the Islamist insurgency in the region. The failure to develop an intermediary Muslim civil society in Russia more generally also contributes to the continuing appeal of Islamist radicalism, particularly among younger Russian Muslims.     

The narratives of exclusion and self-exclusion in the Russian conflict discourse on EU–Russian Relations

The article focuses on the interplay of the narratives of ‘exclusion’ and ‘self-exclusion’ in the Russian discourse on EU–Russian relations. Since the late 1990s, this discourse has acquired an increasingly conflictual orientation, whereby the official foreign policy objectives of ‘strategic partnership’ with the EU and Russia's ‘integration with Europe’ are increasingly problematised across the entire Russian political spectrum. In the analysis of the Russian conflict discourse we shall identify two at first glance opposed narratives. Firstly, the EU enlargement has raised the issue of the expansion of the Schengen visa regime for Russian citizens, travelling to Europe. Particularly acute with regard to Kaliningrad Oblast', this issue has also generated a wider identity-related discourse on the EU's exclusionary policies towards Russia. Secondly, the perception of Russia's passive or subordinate status in EU–Russian cooperative arrangements at national, regional and local levels resulted in the problematisation of the insufficiently reciprocal or intersubjective nature of the EU–Russian ‘partnership’ and the increasing tendency towards Russia's ‘self-exclusion’ from integrative processes, grounded in the reaffirmation of state sovereignty that generally characterises the Putin presidency. This article concludes with the interpretation of the two conflict narratives in the wider context of debates around the project of European integration.     

Russia resurgent? Moscow's campaign to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’

Russia's military incursion into Georgia in August 2008 and formal recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia raise fundamental questions about Russian regional policy, strategic objectives and attitudes to the use of armed force. The spectacle of maneouvre warfare on the periphery of Europe could form a watershed in post‐Cold War Russian relations with its neighbourhood and the wider international community. The speed and scale with which Russia's initial ‘defensive’ intervention to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’ led to a broad occupation of many Georgian regions focuses attention on the motivations behind Russian military preparations for war and the political gains Moscow expected from such a broad offensive. Russia has failed to advance a convincing legal case for its operations and its ‘peace operations’ discourse has been essentially rhetorical. Some Russian goals may be inferred: the creation of military protectorates in South Ossetia and Abkhazia; inducing Georgian compliance, especially to block its path towards NATO; and creating a climate of uncertainty over energy routes in the South Caucasus. Moscow's warning that it will defend its ‘citizens’ (nationals) at all costs broadens the scope of concerns to Russia's other neighbour states, especially Ukraine. Yet an overreaction to alarmist scenarios of a new era of coercive diplomacy may only encourage Russian insistence that its status, that of an aspirant global power, be respected. This will continue to be fuelled by internal political and psychological considerations in Russia. Careful attention will need to be given to the role Russia attributes to military power in pursuing its revisionist stance in the international system.     

Imperial versus National Discourse: The Case of Russia

Abstract. It is inaccurate and misleading to apply the term ‘nationalism’ to Russia prior to the present day. Both Tsarist and Soviet leaders sought to maintain an empire and not a nation‐state, and their national consciousness was imperial rather than national. The lack of Russian nationalism was crucial for Russian history since it explains the failure of both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Modern societies cannot be successfully constructed upon the basis of imperial thinking. The absence of Russian nationalism also has significance for nationalism theory. Russia possessed the social, political and cultural characteristics that have been adduced as ‘causes’ of nationalism by a wide variety of scholars, yet Russia failed to develop a nationalist movement. This suggests that what is crucial to modem nationalism is the appearance of a particularist, secular ideology, since the most notable aspect in which Russia differed from Europe was Russia's universalistic, religious and imperialist discourse of national identity.     

‘New Cold War’ or twenty years’ crisis? Russia and international politics

President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy can be characterized as a ‘new realism’, repudiating some of the exaggerated ambitions of Yevgeny Primakov's tenure as foreign minister in the late 1990s while asserting Russia's distinctive identity in world politics. Rather than acting as a classic ‘balancing’ power prescribed by classic realist theory as the response to the hegemonic power of a single state, Russia under Putin tended to ‘bandwagon’ and the country has been a vigorous ‘joiner’. Putin insisted that Russia retains its ‘autonomy’ in international politics while moving away from earlier ideas that Russia could constitute the kernel of an alternative power bloc. However, the opportunity to integrate Russia into the hegemonic international order may have been missed because of what is seen in Moscow as the resolute hostility of groups in the West who continue to pursue Cold War aims of isolating and containing Russia. The Cold War was transcended in an asymmetrical manner, and this has given rise to four major failures: political, strategic, intellectual and cultural. The world faces the danger of the onset of a new era of great power bloc politics, thus restoring a Cold War structure to the international system. With none of the major strategic issues facing the international community at the end of the Cold War yet resolved, we may be facing a new twenty years’ crisis.     

Contesting Putin's nation‐building: the ‘Muslim other’ and the challenge of the Russian ethno‐cultural alternative

This article explains the crystallisation of a new Russian national discourse, shaped by a challenge posed to Putin's statist non‐ethnic national model by a popularly formed ethno‐cultural alternative, constructed through negation of the ‘Muslim other’. The article describes this new and previously overlooked phenomenon of Russian nationalism and explicates the social mechanism behind its formation. The article concludes that when rampant corruption exists, generating a breakdown of legal order, the ‘other’ is defined through behaviour that deviates from accepted local norms, while the contrasting normative ‘general public’ is defined as ‘Russian’. Such group definitions mean that the current process of Russian grass‐roots exclusive national consolidation is based predominantly on culturally based behavioural codes, rather than on mere ethnic or religious affiliation, as is widely believed. Additionally, a conceptual landmark discourse shift from the question of Russia's mere plausibility as a nation‐state to a focus on its ongoing definition is demonstrated.     

Missed Opportunities: Winston Churchill,the Air Ministry,and Africa, 1919–1921

Relying on a thorough examination of relevant archival documents housed in several European archives, this paper analyses Austrian Chancellor Metternich's Near Eastern policy from 1829 to 1833 with special attention paid to Austria's relations with Russia. Its primary goal is to refute some already deep-rooted claims relating to Metternich's attitudes towards Russia and the Ottoman Empire from 1829 to 1833 and to offer a different assessment of his role in the diplomatic concert to the one generally held by proving firstly that Metternich did not fear Russia's policy towards the Ottoman Empire during this period, secondly that his policy was consistent and the meeting in Münchengrätz in 1833 was not such an important turning point in the Austrian—Russian relations but simply the climax of the already existing good relationship between the two conservative Powers, and, finally, that no Austro-Russian quid pro quo was agreed upon in this North Bohemian town, which means that Metternich did not have to give up Austrian interests in the Near East for the Russian support in the West because both countries' interests in the two areas were identical. Finally, the paper attempts to point out the fact that though Metternich's policy definitely was conservative, it cannot be sufficiently explained by such a superficial single-word labelling because much of his rationality based upon an in-depth analysis of the affairs lay beyond it, at least of those issues concerning the Eastern Question in the early 1830s.     

Ambassador George Buchanan and the July Crisis

During the July Crisis, the United Kingdom was put under strong pressure from Russia and the latter's ally, France, to declare it would fight alongside them. Britain had made the entente cordiale with France in 1904 and a Convention with Russia in 1907. The British Ambassador to St. Petersburg, George Buchanan, was the key figure in diplomatic communication between Britain and Russia at this time and his performance has drawn diverse comments over the decades. Some analysts believe he genuinely sought to restrain Russia from war, but was undermined by his own government, who too easily accepted St. Petersburg must mobilise its army. But others feel Buchanan's reports of Russian mobilisation were ill-informed and unhelpful to the government in London. This article examines Buchanan's performance, arguing that he attempted to preserve peace for a time and does not deserve some of the criticisms levelled at him. Nonetheless, the preservation of the Triple Entente was a priority for him and, after about 28 July, once it became clear that European war could not be avoided, he became tardy in reporting Russia's war preparations, appearing more interested in defending his hosts’ behaviour than in providing an accurate analysis of events.     

The future of NATO enlargement after the Ukraine crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that his country's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was partly in response to NATO enlargement. NATO leaders counter that eastern enlargement is not a cause of the Ukraine crisis, and they argue that enlargement does not threaten Russia, but rather it creates stability for all of Europe. This article examines the history of NATO–Russian tensions over enlargement, considers how NATO's enlargement policy factored into the Ukraine crisis, and reviews options for the future of enlargement. Drawing on diplomatic history and geopolitical theory, the article explains Russia's persistent hostility towards NATO's policy of eastward expansion and highlights NATO's failure to convert Russia to its liberal world‐view. The alliance's norm‐driven enlargement policy has hindered the creation of an enduring NATO–Russia cooperative relationship and helped fuel the outbreak of conflict in Georgia and Ukraine. In light of this, NATO should alter its current enlargement policy by infusing it with geopolitical rationales. This means downgrading the transformative and democratization elements of enlargement and, instead, focusing on how candidate countries add to NATO capabilities and impact overall alliance security. A geopolitically‐driven enlargement policy would prioritize countries in the Balkan and Scandinavian regions for membership and openly exclude Georgia and Ukraine from membership. Ultimately, this policy would have the effect of strengthening NATO while giving it more flexibility in dealing with Russia.     

Russia's European policy under Medvedev: how sustainable is a new compromise?

This article argues that Dmitry Medvedev's term in office, despite the continuity in Russia's foreign policy objectives, brought about a certain change in Russia's relations with the European Union and the countries of the Common Neighbourhood. The western perceptions of Russia as a resurgent power able to use energy as leverage vis‐à‐vis the EU were challenged by the global economic crisis, the emergence of a buyer's market in Europe's gas trade, Russia's inability to start internal reforms, and the growing gap in the development of Russia on the one hand and China on the other. As a result, the balance of self‐confidence shifted in the still essentially stagnant EU–Russian relationship. As before, Moscow is ready to use all available opportunities to tighten its grip on the post‐Soviet space, but it is less keen to go into an open conflict when important interests of EU member states may be affected. The realization is slowly emerging also inside Russia that it is less able either to intimidate or attract European actors, even though it can still appeal to their so‐called ‘pragmatic interests’, both transparent and non‐transparent. At the same time, whereas the new modus operandi may be suboptimal from the point of view of those in the country who would want Russia's policy to be aimed at the restoration of global power status, it is the one that the Kremlin can live with—also after the expected return of Vladimir Putin as Russia's president. Under the current scheme, the West—and the EU in particular—does little to challenge Russia's internal order and leaves it enough space to conduct its chosen course in the former Soviet Union.     

Alternative identity,alternative religion? Neo‐paganism and the Aryan myth in contemporary Russia

ABSTRACT. As in all post‐Soviet states, the Russian intelligentsia has been preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the beginning of the 1990s. Although the place of Orthodox religion in Russia is well documented, the subject of neo‐paganism and its consequent assertion of an Aryan identity for Russians remains little known. Yet specialists observing the political and intellectual life of contemporary Russia have begun to notice that the development of references to ‘Slavic paganism’ and to Russia's ‘Aryan’ origin can be found in the public speeches of some politicians and intellectual figures. This article will attempt, in its first section, to depict the historical depth of these movements by examining the existence of neo‐pagan and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture, and focusing on how these discourses developed in different spheres of post‐Soviet Russian society, such as those of religion, historiography, and politics.     

Policing the near abroad: Russian foreign policy in the South Caucasus

This article tries to understand Russia's policies towards the South Caucasus and answer the question of whether there is a tension between Russia's interests and policies. An attempt is made to identify Russia's strategic interests in the region and the crucial factors that shape Russian policies. Based on the assumption that today's Russia gives de facto support to the secessionist regimes in Georgia, the author attempts to explain what the Kremlin's motives are in supporting the secessionist regimes. The author investigates whether Russian support for the separatist regimes in the South Caucasus is a reaction to the foreign policy orientation of the parent states or a part of Russia's security political interests. On the one hand, supporting instability in the South Caucasus cannot be a part of the Kremlin's strategic interests, because that can pose a threat to the North Caucasus. On the other hand, however, Russian policies are not designed to achieve long-term stability in the South Caucasus, and controlled instability seems to suit the Kremlin. Why Russia vies for coercive hegemony and supports secessionism are the central questions of this article.     

Geopolitics and the Northern Sea Route

Experimental transit voyages along the Northern Sea Route to the north of Russia are breaking new ground each year and the route is already significant for the export of raw materials from Russian ports. National and corporate interests are now driving Russia's Arctic policy, rather than, as formerly, an exclusive focus on security, and the Russian government has ambitious plans for the development of the route. Future regular transit of the Northern Sea Route between Europe and Asia, at present facing serious obstacles, could be accelerated not only by climate change, but by overload on, or interruptions to, the existing route through the Suez Canal, which passes through some of the world's most volatile regions. Despite the formidable impediments to regular year round transit of the Northern Sea Route, governments of the non‐Arctic states with most at stake, particularly Germany and China, appear to be taking no chances, and to be jockeying for influence in the Arctic region. The interests of the non‐Arctic trading states, and of the European Union, more inclined to view the Arctic Ocean as part of the ‘common heritage of mankind’, are however potentially different from those of Russia, and indeed of Canada in respect of the North East passage, both determined to maintain their exclusive national jurisdiction over emerging sea lanes through their territorial waters. Great issues are at stake here. The emergence of new sea lanes has historically impacted heavily on the international balance of power. Where the merchant fleets go, navies will shortly follow.     

‘An enemy at the gates’ or ‘from victory to victory’? Russian foreign policy

Russian foreign policy reflects an evolving balance between vulnerability and opportunity. For much of President Putin's second term, Russia has been on the defensive. Despite increasing economic strength, observed in greater activity and an apparently more confident rhetorical stance, Russian diplomacy reflected a sense of vulnerability in Moscow. Indeed, diplomacy was largely inward looking: on the one hand it was a tool with which to unite and mobilize the Russian population rather than confront the West; on the other hand, it was a means of preventing external interference in Russian domestic affairs. On another level, Moscow sees an international situation destabilized by the unilateral actions of the US and an attempt by the ‘western alliance’ to assert and export its value system. But Moscow also believes that the international situation has reached a moment of transition, one which presents an opportunity for a Russia that lays claim to a global role. Russian foreign policy reflects a broad consensus in Moscow that asserts Russia's status as a leading power with legitimate interests. This moment of opportunity coincides with Moscow's desire to rethink the results of the post‐Cold War period and to establish Russia as a valid international player. Continuing constraints and recognition that its domestic priorities proscribe Moscow from seeking confrontation with the West, which it cannot afford. Nonetheless, the attempt to establish the legitimacy of sovereign democracy as an international model of development appears to represent an important development in how Russia will approach wider European politics.     

Perspectives on the Potential of Russian Oil

A prominent American specialist on the economy of the former USSR comments on Russian oil in light of a preceding paper on the subject. Noting the congruence of Russia's economic growth with world oil prices, the author points out that the country's growth is endangered by sharp declines in those prices. He also recalls how an oil windfall shaped Russian thinking in the 1970s, questions how long Russia can pump oil at its maximum level by invoking the American experience from 1859 through the peak in 1970 until the present, analyzes the two corporate models in the Russian oil sector, and briefly outlines Putin's new approach to foreign investment in the sector. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, O18. 3 figures, 8 references.     

Imperial nationalism as the driver behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are to be found in two areas. The first is the revival of Tsarist imperial nationalist and White Russian émigré nationalist denials of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Russian imperial nationalists believe the eastern Slavs constitute a pan Russian nation of Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russian branches of one Russian nation. The second is the cult of the Great Patriotic War and Joseph Stalin and the revival of Soviet era discourse on Ukrainian Nazis (i.e., nationalists). A Ukrainian nationalist in the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin's Russia is any Ukrainian who seeks a future for his/her country outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Russian World and who upholds an ethnic Ukrainian (rather than a Little Russian) identity. The Russian World is the new core of the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin's alternative to the EU's Eastern Partnership. In the contemporary domain, Ukrainian nationalists are Nazi's irrespective of their language preference or political beliefs and if they do not accept they are Little Russians. Putin's invasion goal of denazification is a genocidal goal to eradicate the ‘anti-Russia’ that has allegedly been nurtured by Ukrainian nationalists and the West.     

Convergence: The Classic Case Nazi Germany,Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II

Despite granting permission for limited Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1930s, the ideology and policy of the Nazi regime never supported establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. During World War II, Hitler's ideologically consistent view that such a state would be a branch of an international Jewish conspiracy converged with shorter-term efforts to gain Arab and Islamic support for the Third Reich's military goals in the Middle East. The ideological convergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism found expression in the works of Nazi propagandists as well as in the speeches and radio addresses of Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, broadcast from wartime Berlin to the Middle East. Examination of the lineages, similarities and differences between Europe's totalitarian past and its aftereffects in the Arab and Islamic world remains an important task for comparative historical scholarship.     

Cartoon epic heroes in indigenous Siberian revival: The meaning of ethnicity in Putin's Russia (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

This article outlines a motivation for the Russian Federation's incursion into the Crimea, which concerns the Putin administration's relationship with Russia's citizens, rather than the outside world. I use a case study from Siberia – the Sakha people's revival of their national epic, the Olongkho – to explore the possibility that Putin's behaviour during the Ukrainian crisis serves to legitimate his authority within Russia, by appealing to conceptions of ethnicity that have their roots in Soviet‐era social engineering. Rather than deducing the Putin administration's motives from the events and relationships they immediately concern, I explore motivations emerging from the configuration of values, perceptions, and conventions that shapes and reproduces social difference in Russia. The Sakha Olongkho revival shows how the perceptions of ethnicity fostered during the Soviet era have become powerful indexes of morality and authority. Individual Sakha citizens now demonstrate their identities and values through adopting a stance towards a reified conception of Sakha ethnicity expressed in their choices of recreation, fashion and consumption. Sakha ethnicity has become integrated into the process whereby hierarchical social groupings emerge within Sakha society according to their avowal of specific tastes and norms. The relatively small size of the Sakha population – which is nevertheless the dominant ethnic group in their republic, Sakha (Yakutia) – enables us to see trends affecting the rest of Russia in microcosm. Thus, I suggest that former Soviet ethnicity has become so closely woven into Russia's morality that Putin's invasions of foreign states, in the name of the ethnic Russian community, bolster his claim to be a moral person and a legitimate and authoritative national leader.