"A third of a century ago, when the Soviet Union was in the painful process of disintegration, the long-term prospects of Russia’s foreign policy looked quite dim and blurred for at least two reasons. First, the irreversible nature of the recent Soviet collapse was still in question; a resurrection of the old state in a federate or confederate format did not seem entirely utopian. Second, at that point, many in Russia expected that the end of the Cold War and the subsequent Soviet disintegration would lead to fundamental changes in the international system at large and that the world would enter truly uncharted waters, which made any speculations about Russia’s likely role in this world very uncertain and arbitrary.
Both assumptions turned out to be false. Over time, it became crystal clear that the Soviet Union had gone away forever. Still, the world and the international system had not changed that much, despite all the balance-of-power adjustments. The new post-Soviet Russia had to play its part following the old Realpolitik notes. Global politics remained mostly a game between a limited number of great or major actors; military force was still a major currency of international influence and stature, and there were no prospects in sight for any global government or even for achieving a higher level of global governance. The West at large, and the United States in particular, demonstrated explicit disregard for some of the basic norms of international law when these norms happened to constrain their international ambitions.
As throughout all human history, after the end of the Cold War, the world continued to be a dangerous and—quite often—inhospitable place, where you did not get what you deserved but what you were in a position to negotiate with others. In Moscow, they had to get rid of the early post-Soviet idealism and learn how to survive in this not-so-friendly environment. Arguably, the learning curve was not too steep, but over one-third of a century, Russia accumulated significant experience in promoting its interests, sometimes under very complicated and rapidly changing external circumstances. Keeping this experience in mind, one can outline the most significant accomplishments of that period as well as the most important yet unaccomplished missions that Russia’s leadership will have to work on in the years and even decades to come.
Major Accomplishments
Aleksandr Dynkin:
World Order Transformation: Economy, Ideology, Technology
One of the most significant of Russia’s accomplishments over the last three and a half decades has been its ability to preserve strategic nuclear parity with the United States. In the early 1990s, there were serious doubts about that—many experts believed that due to various factors, Russia would be forced to move to the “second league” of nuclear powers and would, therefore, be tempted to adopt the strategy of “minimal deterrence,” similar to that of France or the United Kingdom. However, the overall nuclear parity between the United States and Russia is still there, and in some critical dimensions of missile technologies, Moscow appears to be even ahead of Washington. In any case, Russia remains a nuclear superpower, and this unique status motivates the United States to stay engaged in a bilateral U.S.-Russian dialogue on strategic stability and nuclear arms control. More importantly, Russia’s robust nuclear arsenal allows Moscow to count on a reliable deterrence capacity for all, even in highly hypothetical conflict scenarios. The critical value of this capacity became apparent after the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. There are significant reasons to argue that robust nuclear deterrence is the single most important factor preventing a direct large-scale military clash between NATO and Russia in Europe.
Moreover, the country’s leadership managed to radically modernize its conventional armed forces as well. Back in the 1990s, the Soviet Army was in a state of breakdown, and Moscow’s anti-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus, known as the First and Second Chechen Wars, visibly demonstrated profound problems with recruiting, training, equipping, and deploying armed forces even within Russia’s national territory. Energetic efforts gradually enhanced the capacity to conduct diverse peacekeeping and peace-enforcing operations and to project Russia’s military power at long distances from its national borders. The military operation in Syria, launched in the fall of 2015, as well as multiple engagements of Russian private military companies in remote conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, serve as graphic illustrations of this enhanced power projection capacity. The Russian-Ukrainian military conflict that has lasted for three years and that indirectly involves major Western nations is another demonstration of the high degree of resilience of Russia’s armed forces and of the revived production capacity of the national defense industry.
Russia inherited the Soviet position of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which allowed Moscow to actively use its veto power in the United Nations. For a long time (1997–2014), Russia was a member of the G8; it entered APEC, actively participated in G20 summits, and became one of the founding members of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In Europe, despite a fierce conflict with the West, Moscow is still engaged with the OSCE and participates in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization and some other sub-regional multilateral bodies. Such broad participation in various international organizations and forums allows Moscow to secure its political presence in many regions of the world and also to gain new experience in working in complex and not always comfortable formats. Institutionally, Russia can claim a well-developed network of diplomatic missions in all corners of the world. In terms of this indicator, it holds sixth place in the world, which is higher than the United Kingdom, Germany, or Spain. The national diplomatic school has longstanding traditions, considerable experience, and is considered one of the most professional in the world. The same can be said about Russian academics, universities, and other research and analytical centers that provide expert advice to foreign policy decisionmakers, conduct area studies, provide language training, and so on.
Building a strategic partnership with China can be included in the list of unquestionable accomplishments of Russia’s foreign policy. This partnership has involved demilitarizing the long Russia-China border, settling old territorial disputes, and fostering intense political, economic, military, and humanitarian cooperation. It is worth mentioning that closer ties with China have not turned Moscow into a junior partner to Beijing and have not prevented the Kremlin from engaging in strategic partnerships with some of China’s rivals and competitors in Asia, like India and Vietnam. The significant potential of cooperation with New Delhi, which had accumulated during Soviet times, was not lost; rather, it received an additional impulse despite the many challenges and complications of the last few years. In sum, Russia’s pivot to Asia—the largest and most dynamic continental market in the world—is still a project in the making, but it can already be regarded as a clear success story.
Zhao Huasheng, Andrey Kortunov:
The Kazan BRICS Declaration — a New World Order Manifesto
At the same time, Moscow managed to largely restore its former position in the MENA region, which, after the Soviet disintegration, had fallen under almost exclusive U.S. control. Russia’s support was critical in preventing a political regime change in Syria in 2015 and in keeping President Bashar al-Assad in power in Damascus for more than nine additional years. The Kremlin accomplished a lot in reaching out to leading Arab nations of the Gulf without sacrificing its traditional links with the Islamic Republic of Iran. For a long time, Russian policy in the MENA region has been an example of a mostly successful and delicate balancing act of numerous regional conflicts and clashes—between Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shia, Israelis and Palestinians, Turks and Kurds, theocratic and secular regimes, and so on. Given the limited resources that Moscow can afford to invest in the region, Russia’s comeback to the Middle East’s political scene should be considered an unquestionable foreign policy success.
Throughout almost all of its history, the Soviet Union had been practically isolated from the global economy, except for the economic integration with its partners from the so-called “socialist camp.” Post-Soviet Russia earned a prominent place in many important global markets, including hydrocarbons, atomic energy, arms, agriculture and food, cyber-security, and others. Large Russian companies achieved international status, joining the top echelon of global business in their respective sectors and forging diverse transnational partnerships and alliances. This broad engagement allowed Russia to actively participate in setting the rules of the game and to influence global prices in a variety of markets important to Moscow (e.g., in global oil markets through the so-called OPEC+ mechanism).
Summing up, one can argue that since the Soviet disintegration, Russia managed to preserve and, in many ways—even enhance its capacities to influence the external environment both at the regional and the global levels, and in some cases, it is in a position to define the dynamics of essential international trends. Russia’s influence is particularly apparent in the security-related dimensions of global politics. Moscow’s impact on economic, social, financial, and technological trends in the modern world is significantly lower. However, the country plays an active role in some of the key global markets, including arms, food, hydrocarbons, atomic energy, higher education, and many others.
On top of that, every year, Russia receives large numbers of foreign migrants, remaining a preferred destination for many guest workers and immigrants from other post-Soviet countries. Russia has one of the most advanced segments of the global Internet and can claim a visible share of the world’s transportation and logistics infrastructure. The country also retained a large part of the Soviet research and development and education potential. Russia’s university graduates are welcomed in research centers and educational institutions around the world. All these assets may contribute to Russia’s future global and regional influence, assuming that the international system will gradually move in the direction of a more diverse and diffuse form of power distribution. Of course, a lot will depend on how these assets are further cultivated and used.
Finally, it would make sense to argue that Russian foreign policy, with its heavy reliance on military power, a highly centralized decisionmaking process, and unique traditions of diplomacy and foreign intelligence, nearly perfectly fits the current international environment characterized by exceptional levels of uncertainty and by abrupt and often unpredictable shifts in dominant trends. The environment calls for prompt resource mobilization and maximum flexibility in making the most important decisions without compromising the continuity of the overall long-term foreign strategy. In this sense, Russia indeed has unquestionable advantages over many other major powers, where foreign policy efficiency is brought down due to deep domestic political splits, complicated systems of checks and balances, and the powerful impact of public opinion fluctuations on top decisionmakers. At the same time, these apparent differences in the decisionmaking mechanisms inevitably generate additional problems in relations between Russia and some of its international partners, especially Western liberal democracies.
Unfinished Business
The Stabilizing “Basic Principles”: Moscow Reduces Options for Pre-Nuclear Escalation. Russia’s leading experts on the new Russia’s nuclear doctrine
All the aforementioned accomplishments notwithstanding, there are a number of critically important foreign policy goals that Russia still has to meet. Above all, right after the Soviet disintegration, there were hopes that Moscow would establish a circle of friendly nations at its borders. Furthermore, within the Russian leadership, there were expectations that common history, economic interdependence, and mixed cultural identities would pave the way for new successful integration projects engaging most, if not all, of the post-Soviet space. However, such hopes and projects had only limited success—the most visible achievement being the Eurasian Economic Union launched in 2015 and the Russian-Belorussian Union State, which has existed for a quarter of a century.
Today, Moscow has quite complicated and sometimes even confrontational relations with many of its neighbors, including the Baltic states, Georgia, and, in some ways, Moldova and Armenia as well. A long political conflict with Ukraine finally turned into a direct large-scale military standoff that continues to this day, and that will have multiple long-term implications for Russia’s positioning in its immediate neighborhood and the world at large. A group of non-recognized states (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria) has emerged on the territory of the former USSR, which Moscow has to support politically and financially and which inevitably complicates Russia’s relations with some of its next-door neighbors.
After a relatively short honeymoon, Russia’s relations with the West entered a period of long and continuous decay. As a result, Russia-NATO cooperation was terminated, as was the cooperation between Russia and the European Union. Moreover, Moscow had to leave the Council of Europe, as well as the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Russia’s participation in the Arctic Council was frozen, and the country also had to terminate its participation in the Council of the Baltic Sea States and several other sub-regional multilateral bodies. After the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022, the West imposed thousands of economic sanctions on Russia. Among other things, the EU-Russia energy partnership, which had been in place for more than half a century, came to an end with very low, if any, chances of reemerging in the future. Moscow and Western capitals became involved in intense diplomatic and information wars with each other, and most of the formerly thriving educational, scholarly, cultural, and social links were cut off or put on hold. The Western political mainstream perception of Russia also changed dramatically—the country is often looked upon as an authoritarian, aggressive, and inherently hostile entity toward the West, one that is unpredictable and irrational in its foreign and security policies. Of course, these days, politicians and opinion-makers in Moscow argue that the West itself is responsible for these biased and distorted views of Russia, but it is clear that such views also reflect the failures of Russia’s foreign policy and its foreign propaganda.
Though Russia was able to capture strong positions in some of the important global commodity markets, its overall share of global trade remains quite modest—even compared to much smaller nations like South Korea. The country continues to be excluded from the most important international production and technological chains; the structure of Russia’s foreign trade looks antiquated. Small and medium-sized businesses are clearly underrepresented in foreign economic relations—not because these business groups lack ambition, but rather because the task of harmonizing legal, technical, and investment standards even with Russia’s main partners remains not fully addressed. Despite many efforts, Moscow has not evolved into one of the major global financial centers; its role in international finances is likely to stay modest for a long time.
Russia has never managed to become a key global destination for foreign direct investments—its inflow peaked in 2008 (USD 75.9 billion) and then started declining again. Throughout almost all of post-Soviet history, capital exports from Russia have exceeded imports. The same applies to human capital: over the last 30 years, the country has lost a couple of millions of its citizens—mostly young, well-educated, energetic, and ambitious. Though most of the existing data on brain drain is questionable in terms of accuracy, one can argue that after the Soviet disintegration, about half of Russian physicists and up to three-quarters of mathematicians moved abroad. Unlike many other large diasporas (e.g., Indian, Armenian, or Greek), Russian-speaking communities abroad have not evolved into powerful political actors in recipient countries.
Fyodor Lukyanov:
‘Being in Order’ Also Means Being in the World Order
Though Russia can claim significant “soft power” capacity, this capacity is not fully activated. Quite often, Russian “soft power” outreach resonates predominantly with older age groups that were previously sympathetic to the Soviet Union or with politically marginal groups on the right and left. There are serious problems with preserving the former international stature of the Russian language. As the political confrontation with the West has reached all-time highs, it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve even minimal humanitarian ties with partners in Europe and the United States.
How can one assess the balance between indisputable achievements and still unresolved problems? Any such assessments would be biased and vulnerable to criticism. Some would claim that accomplishments in the critically important security domain clearly outweigh all failures in the very significant but not as critical domain of development. Others would question this logic, arguing that most of Russia’s achievements belong to the old instruments of international influence and, therefore, over time, their relative importance will inevitably decline; on the other hand, unresolved problems reflect mostly new foreign policy tools, and their relative impact on Russia’s position in the world will gradually increase. A lot will depend on what the new emerging world (dis)order might look like in the years to come. Continuous global instability, multiple regional conflicts, a new cycle of arms races, nuclear proliferation, rising protectionism, and the “regionalization” of the formerly global economy—all these factors would favor security over development, ‘hard power’ over ‘soft power,’ and the old instruments of international influence over the new ones. A new political consensus between major actors, a return to globalization in a modified format, and a focus on global and regional commons would tilt the balance from security to development, from ‘hard power’ to “soft power,” and from old to new foreign policy instruments. Russian foreign policy—like the foreign policies of all other nations—will have to adjust to the new external realities.
Future Challenges
While the dynamics of the international environment will have a critical formative impact on Russia’s foreign policy, at the end of the day, the strategic successes and failures of the latter will depend on whether the nation is capable of implementing a long-term modernization project when global society rapidly internalizes innovative technological, economic, and social ways of life. It is precisely this battlefield where different development models are going to compete with each other. The quality of state governance, the resilience of main political institutions, the sustainability of public consensus, and the quality of national human capital will be put to the test everywhere. The likely dynamics of domestic trends responding to fundamental external uncertainties will define, more than ever before, the capacity of a state to play an active role in world politics and the international economy. This general observation fully applies to the Russian Federation.
Among Russia’s future challenges, one should single out long-term demographic problems. Many economists argue that by mid-century, a self-sufficient economic cluster should serve a common market of at least 300 million consumers, as only such a market allows for the scale of production needed to achieve international competitiveness in the most important sectors. Though these assumptions could be questioned, the fact remains that the most successful multilateral economic integration projects (the European Union, ASEAN) and national economies (the United States, China, and India) serve markets larger than 300 million people. As for Russia, most demographic forecasts predict a further decline in the national population. Even in the best case—and arguably not the most likely scenario—by 2050, Russia’s population will not exceed 155–160 million, with people older than 65 constituting a quarter of this number. This reality suggests that Russia’s future should be sought within a new multilateral integration system involving some of its populous neighbors and partners.
Ivan Timofeev:
Why Multilateral Diplomacy Is in Crisis
Another significant factor that limits Russia’s future foreign policy ambitions is the state machinery, which was designed and constructed to serve very specific foreign policy needs. The Russian bureaucracy, at various levels, remains bulky, costly, and not always efficient. Inter-agency coordination, as well as state institutions at large, are not well developed, which means that some of the most important decisions are made in “manual control” mode, with no clearly defined procedures or minimal transparency. Russia still faces problems of corruption, clanship, and nepotism. Enhancing the efficiency of national and local governance is a key prerequisite for a successful foreign policy.
Critics of the Russian economy could argue that the existing model of economic growth, which emerged in the country a quarter of a century ago, has already depleted its former efficiency. This includes the system of foreign economic relations, where there is still a visible domination of large public and private corporations focused mostly on exporting energy resources and other raw commodities. Meanwhile, the overall share of Russia’s main export items in global trade is likely to decline in the future—the only question is how steep or gradual this decline will be. Global markets are shifting toward high-tech products and a broad range of services provided by a variety of small and medium-sized private businesses. Moreover, traditional cross-border trade is gradually giving way to more advanced industrial collaboration, where the exchange of products and services is being replaced by the forging of bilateral or multilateral production and technological chains.
In other words, Russia will have to find a new place for itself in the international division of labor. This task is complicated by the exceptionally challenging geopolitical and geoeconomic environment in which Russia will have to operate in the foreseeable future. This environment is far more complex and less conducive to Russia’s modernization goals than it was right after the Soviet disintegration. However, this time, the country has more experience and is in a better position to avoid many of the mistakes it committed earlier. Russia’s long-term foreign policy goals beyond the ongoing crisis in relations with the West should be based on a couple of principles.
First, Russia has to maintain a well-calibrated balance between ensuring defense sufficiency and pursuing the goals of sustainable development; the position of a “besieged fortress” is not going to meet strategic national interests.
Second, the ongoing confrontation with the West will sooner or later have to give way to some form of peaceful coexistence and at least limited cooperation in order to reduce the risks of a new escalation and the costs of an uncontrolled arms race. A measured restoration of relations between Russia and Europe is of particular importance for both sides.
Third, Moscow has little to gain and a lot to lose if the existing international system and the fundamentals of international law were to completely and irreversibly break down. On the contrary, Russia can benefit greatly from promoting universal and regional multilateral institutions and international regimes that can protect its interests in the future.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a General Meeting of the Russian International Affairs Council
Fourth, since Russia’s international environment is likely to remain unstable and unpredictable in the foreseeable future, the key goals of national foreign policy should include minimizing the negative implications of this instability and unpredictability for the country’s domestic development. A degree of protectionism and import substitution is not a bad thing for Russia’s economy. At the same time, the country must make full use of new opportunities that might emerge within the international system.
Fifth, Russia should be in a position to look beyond its immediate, narrowly defined national interests. Within the emerging world order, the international stature of a country will largely depend on its ability to contribute to the extended reproduction of global and regional commons. It will be critically essential for Russia to define its specific new role in this reproduction, in particular by contributing to new systems of energy, food, and information security, to global climate change management, to preserving biodiversity, and so on.
At the end of the day, the most important foreign policy choice that the country will have to make is not a choice between the East and the West, between globalization and sovereignty, but between modernity and tradition. It is a choice between competing foreign policy priorities in the context of long-term deficits of financial, material, and human resources. This deficit will not disappear after the end of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which means that Russia’s capacity to influence some of the central dimensions of the future world order will be limited. On many practical matters, Moscow will be a deal-taker rather than a dealmaker. It will be forced to join multilateral coalitions, where it is likely to be a minority, not a majority, shareholder.
However, this does not mean that Russia cannot maintain its status as one of the major powers with a significant impact on the international system—primarily in Eurasia, but also on a global scale. A lot will depend on whether Russian society is in a position to approach the external environment as an opportunity rather than as a challenge or a direct threat. This long-awaited shift in the national mentality will undoubtedly be one of the most significant tasks for the new generation of Russia’s political leaders.
First published in the Horizons (Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development)"
Both assumptions turned out to be false. Over time, it became crystal clear that the Soviet Union had gone away forever. Still, the world and the international system had not changed that much, despite all the balance-of-power adjustments. The new post-Soviet Russia had to play its part following the old Realpolitik notes. Global politics remained mostly a game between a limited number of great or major actors; military force was still a major currency of international influence and stature, and there were no prospects in sight for any global government or even for achieving a higher level of global governance. The West at large, and the United States in particular, demonstrated explicit disregard for some of the basic norms of international law when these norms happened to constrain their international ambitions.
As throughout all human history, after the end of the Cold War, the world continued to be a dangerous and—quite often—inhospitable place, where you did not get what you deserved but what you were in a position to negotiate with others. In Moscow, they had to get rid of the early post-Soviet idealism and learn how to survive in this not-so-friendly environment. Arguably, the learning curve was not too steep, but over one-third of a century, Russia accumulated significant experience in promoting its interests, sometimes under very complicated and rapidly changing external circumstances. Keeping this experience in mind, one can outline the most significant accomplishments of that period as well as the most important yet unaccomplished missions that Russia’s leadership will have to work on in the years and even decades to come.
Major Accomplishments
Aleksandr Dynkin:
World Order Transformation: Economy, Ideology, Technology
One of the most significant of Russia’s accomplishments over the last three and a half decades has been its ability to preserve strategic nuclear parity with the United States. In the early 1990s, there were serious doubts about that—many experts believed that due to various factors, Russia would be forced to move to the “second league” of nuclear powers and would, therefore, be tempted to adopt the strategy of “minimal deterrence,” similar to that of France or the United Kingdom. However, the overall nuclear parity between the United States and Russia is still there, and in some critical dimensions of missile technologies, Moscow appears to be even ahead of Washington. In any case, Russia remains a nuclear superpower, and this unique status motivates the United States to stay engaged in a bilateral U.S.-Russian dialogue on strategic stability and nuclear arms control. More importantly, Russia’s robust nuclear arsenal allows Moscow to count on a reliable deterrence capacity for all, even in highly hypothetical conflict scenarios. The critical value of this capacity became apparent after the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. There are significant reasons to argue that robust nuclear deterrence is the single most important factor preventing a direct large-scale military clash between NATO and Russia in Europe.
Moreover, the country’s leadership managed to radically modernize its conventional armed forces as well. Back in the 1990s, the Soviet Army was in a state of breakdown, and Moscow’s anti-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus, known as the First and Second Chechen Wars, visibly demonstrated profound problems with recruiting, training, equipping, and deploying armed forces even within Russia’s national territory. Energetic efforts gradually enhanced the capacity to conduct diverse peacekeeping and peace-enforcing operations and to project Russia’s military power at long distances from its national borders. The military operation in Syria, launched in the fall of 2015, as well as multiple engagements of Russian private military companies in remote conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, serve as graphic illustrations of this enhanced power projection capacity. The Russian-Ukrainian military conflict that has lasted for three years and that indirectly involves major Western nations is another demonstration of the high degree of resilience of Russia’s armed forces and of the revived production capacity of the national defense industry.
Russia inherited the Soviet position of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which allowed Moscow to actively use its veto power in the United Nations. For a long time (1997–2014), Russia was a member of the G8; it entered APEC, actively participated in G20 summits, and became one of the founding members of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In Europe, despite a fierce conflict with the West, Moscow is still engaged with the OSCE and participates in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization and some other sub-regional multilateral bodies. Such broad participation in various international organizations and forums allows Moscow to secure its political presence in many regions of the world and also to gain new experience in working in complex and not always comfortable formats. Institutionally, Russia can claim a well-developed network of diplomatic missions in all corners of the world. In terms of this indicator, it holds sixth place in the world, which is higher than the United Kingdom, Germany, or Spain. The national diplomatic school has longstanding traditions, considerable experience, and is considered one of the most professional in the world. The same can be said about Russian academics, universities, and other research and analytical centers that provide expert advice to foreign policy decisionmakers, conduct area studies, provide language training, and so on.
Building a strategic partnership with China can be included in the list of unquestionable accomplishments of Russia’s foreign policy. This partnership has involved demilitarizing the long Russia-China border, settling old territorial disputes, and fostering intense political, economic, military, and humanitarian cooperation. It is worth mentioning that closer ties with China have not turned Moscow into a junior partner to Beijing and have not prevented the Kremlin from engaging in strategic partnerships with some of China’s rivals and competitors in Asia, like India and Vietnam. The significant potential of cooperation with New Delhi, which had accumulated during Soviet times, was not lost; rather, it received an additional impulse despite the many challenges and complications of the last few years. In sum, Russia’s pivot to Asia—the largest and most dynamic continental market in the world—is still a project in the making, but it can already be regarded as a clear success story.
Zhao Huasheng, Andrey Kortunov:
The Kazan BRICS Declaration — a New World Order Manifesto
At the same time, Moscow managed to largely restore its former position in the MENA region, which, after the Soviet disintegration, had fallen under almost exclusive U.S. control. Russia’s support was critical in preventing a political regime change in Syria in 2015 and in keeping President Bashar al-Assad in power in Damascus for more than nine additional years. The Kremlin accomplished a lot in reaching out to leading Arab nations of the Gulf without sacrificing its traditional links with the Islamic Republic of Iran. For a long time, Russian policy in the MENA region has been an example of a mostly successful and delicate balancing act of numerous regional conflicts and clashes—between Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shia, Israelis and Palestinians, Turks and Kurds, theocratic and secular regimes, and so on. Given the limited resources that Moscow can afford to invest in the region, Russia’s comeback to the Middle East’s political scene should be considered an unquestionable foreign policy success.
Throughout almost all of its history, the Soviet Union had been practically isolated from the global economy, except for the economic integration with its partners from the so-called “socialist camp.” Post-Soviet Russia earned a prominent place in many important global markets, including hydrocarbons, atomic energy, arms, agriculture and food, cyber-security, and others. Large Russian companies achieved international status, joining the top echelon of global business in their respective sectors and forging diverse transnational partnerships and alliances. This broad engagement allowed Russia to actively participate in setting the rules of the game and to influence global prices in a variety of markets important to Moscow (e.g., in global oil markets through the so-called OPEC+ mechanism).
Summing up, one can argue that since the Soviet disintegration, Russia managed to preserve and, in many ways—even enhance its capacities to influence the external environment both at the regional and the global levels, and in some cases, it is in a position to define the dynamics of essential international trends. Russia’s influence is particularly apparent in the security-related dimensions of global politics. Moscow’s impact on economic, social, financial, and technological trends in the modern world is significantly lower. However, the country plays an active role in some of the key global markets, including arms, food, hydrocarbons, atomic energy, higher education, and many others.
On top of that, every year, Russia receives large numbers of foreign migrants, remaining a preferred destination for many guest workers and immigrants from other post-Soviet countries. Russia has one of the most advanced segments of the global Internet and can claim a visible share of the world’s transportation and logistics infrastructure. The country also retained a large part of the Soviet research and development and education potential. Russia’s university graduates are welcomed in research centers and educational institutions around the world. All these assets may contribute to Russia’s future global and regional influence, assuming that the international system will gradually move in the direction of a more diverse and diffuse form of power distribution. Of course, a lot will depend on how these assets are further cultivated and used.
Finally, it would make sense to argue that Russian foreign policy, with its heavy reliance on military power, a highly centralized decisionmaking process, and unique traditions of diplomacy and foreign intelligence, nearly perfectly fits the current international environment characterized by exceptional levels of uncertainty and by abrupt and often unpredictable shifts in dominant trends. The environment calls for prompt resource mobilization and maximum flexibility in making the most important decisions without compromising the continuity of the overall long-term foreign strategy. In this sense, Russia indeed has unquestionable advantages over many other major powers, where foreign policy efficiency is brought down due to deep domestic political splits, complicated systems of checks and balances, and the powerful impact of public opinion fluctuations on top decisionmakers. At the same time, these apparent differences in the decisionmaking mechanisms inevitably generate additional problems in relations between Russia and some of its international partners, especially Western liberal democracies.
Unfinished Business
The Stabilizing “Basic Principles”: Moscow Reduces Options for Pre-Nuclear Escalation. Russia’s leading experts on the new Russia’s nuclear doctrine
All the aforementioned accomplishments notwithstanding, there are a number of critically important foreign policy goals that Russia still has to meet. Above all, right after the Soviet disintegration, there were hopes that Moscow would establish a circle of friendly nations at its borders. Furthermore, within the Russian leadership, there were expectations that common history, economic interdependence, and mixed cultural identities would pave the way for new successful integration projects engaging most, if not all, of the post-Soviet space. However, such hopes and projects had only limited success—the most visible achievement being the Eurasian Economic Union launched in 2015 and the Russian-Belorussian Union State, which has existed for a quarter of a century.
Today, Moscow has quite complicated and sometimes even confrontational relations with many of its neighbors, including the Baltic states, Georgia, and, in some ways, Moldova and Armenia as well. A long political conflict with Ukraine finally turned into a direct large-scale military standoff that continues to this day, and that will have multiple long-term implications for Russia’s positioning in its immediate neighborhood and the world at large. A group of non-recognized states (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria) has emerged on the territory of the former USSR, which Moscow has to support politically and financially and which inevitably complicates Russia’s relations with some of its next-door neighbors.
After a relatively short honeymoon, Russia’s relations with the West entered a period of long and continuous decay. As a result, Russia-NATO cooperation was terminated, as was the cooperation between Russia and the European Union. Moreover, Moscow had to leave the Council of Europe, as well as the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Russia’s participation in the Arctic Council was frozen, and the country also had to terminate its participation in the Council of the Baltic Sea States and several other sub-regional multilateral bodies. After the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022, the West imposed thousands of economic sanctions on Russia. Among other things, the EU-Russia energy partnership, which had been in place for more than half a century, came to an end with very low, if any, chances of reemerging in the future. Moscow and Western capitals became involved in intense diplomatic and information wars with each other, and most of the formerly thriving educational, scholarly, cultural, and social links were cut off or put on hold. The Western political mainstream perception of Russia also changed dramatically—the country is often looked upon as an authoritarian, aggressive, and inherently hostile entity toward the West, one that is unpredictable and irrational in its foreign and security policies. Of course, these days, politicians and opinion-makers in Moscow argue that the West itself is responsible for these biased and distorted views of Russia, but it is clear that such views also reflect the failures of Russia’s foreign policy and its foreign propaganda.
Though Russia was able to capture strong positions in some of the important global commodity markets, its overall share of global trade remains quite modest—even compared to much smaller nations like South Korea. The country continues to be excluded from the most important international production and technological chains; the structure of Russia’s foreign trade looks antiquated. Small and medium-sized businesses are clearly underrepresented in foreign economic relations—not because these business groups lack ambition, but rather because the task of harmonizing legal, technical, and investment standards even with Russia’s main partners remains not fully addressed. Despite many efforts, Moscow has not evolved into one of the major global financial centers; its role in international finances is likely to stay modest for a long time.
Russia has never managed to become a key global destination for foreign direct investments—its inflow peaked in 2008 (USD 75.9 billion) and then started declining again. Throughout almost all of post-Soviet history, capital exports from Russia have exceeded imports. The same applies to human capital: over the last 30 years, the country has lost a couple of millions of its citizens—mostly young, well-educated, energetic, and ambitious. Though most of the existing data on brain drain is questionable in terms of accuracy, one can argue that after the Soviet disintegration, about half of Russian physicists and up to three-quarters of mathematicians moved abroad. Unlike many other large diasporas (e.g., Indian, Armenian, or Greek), Russian-speaking communities abroad have not evolved into powerful political actors in recipient countries.
Fyodor Lukyanov:
‘Being in Order’ Also Means Being in the World Order
Though Russia can claim significant “soft power” capacity, this capacity is not fully activated. Quite often, Russian “soft power” outreach resonates predominantly with older age groups that were previously sympathetic to the Soviet Union or with politically marginal groups on the right and left. There are serious problems with preserving the former international stature of the Russian language. As the political confrontation with the West has reached all-time highs, it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve even minimal humanitarian ties with partners in Europe and the United States.
How can one assess the balance between indisputable achievements and still unresolved problems? Any such assessments would be biased and vulnerable to criticism. Some would claim that accomplishments in the critically important security domain clearly outweigh all failures in the very significant but not as critical domain of development. Others would question this logic, arguing that most of Russia’s achievements belong to the old instruments of international influence and, therefore, over time, their relative importance will inevitably decline; on the other hand, unresolved problems reflect mostly new foreign policy tools, and their relative impact on Russia’s position in the world will gradually increase. A lot will depend on what the new emerging world (dis)order might look like in the years to come. Continuous global instability, multiple regional conflicts, a new cycle of arms races, nuclear proliferation, rising protectionism, and the “regionalization” of the formerly global economy—all these factors would favor security over development, ‘hard power’ over ‘soft power,’ and the old instruments of international influence over the new ones. A new political consensus between major actors, a return to globalization in a modified format, and a focus on global and regional commons would tilt the balance from security to development, from ‘hard power’ to “soft power,” and from old to new foreign policy instruments. Russian foreign policy—like the foreign policies of all other nations—will have to adjust to the new external realities.
Future Challenges
While the dynamics of the international environment will have a critical formative impact on Russia’s foreign policy, at the end of the day, the strategic successes and failures of the latter will depend on whether the nation is capable of implementing a long-term modernization project when global society rapidly internalizes innovative technological, economic, and social ways of life. It is precisely this battlefield where different development models are going to compete with each other. The quality of state governance, the resilience of main political institutions, the sustainability of public consensus, and the quality of national human capital will be put to the test everywhere. The likely dynamics of domestic trends responding to fundamental external uncertainties will define, more than ever before, the capacity of a state to play an active role in world politics and the international economy. This general observation fully applies to the Russian Federation.
Among Russia’s future challenges, one should single out long-term demographic problems. Many economists argue that by mid-century, a self-sufficient economic cluster should serve a common market of at least 300 million consumers, as only such a market allows for the scale of production needed to achieve international competitiveness in the most important sectors. Though these assumptions could be questioned, the fact remains that the most successful multilateral economic integration projects (the European Union, ASEAN) and national economies (the United States, China, and India) serve markets larger than 300 million people. As for Russia, most demographic forecasts predict a further decline in the national population. Even in the best case—and arguably not the most likely scenario—by 2050, Russia’s population will not exceed 155–160 million, with people older than 65 constituting a quarter of this number. This reality suggests that Russia’s future should be sought within a new multilateral integration system involving some of its populous neighbors and partners.
Ivan Timofeev:
Why Multilateral Diplomacy Is in Crisis
Another significant factor that limits Russia’s future foreign policy ambitions is the state machinery, which was designed and constructed to serve very specific foreign policy needs. The Russian bureaucracy, at various levels, remains bulky, costly, and not always efficient. Inter-agency coordination, as well as state institutions at large, are not well developed, which means that some of the most important decisions are made in “manual control” mode, with no clearly defined procedures or minimal transparency. Russia still faces problems of corruption, clanship, and nepotism. Enhancing the efficiency of national and local governance is a key prerequisite for a successful foreign policy.
Critics of the Russian economy could argue that the existing model of economic growth, which emerged in the country a quarter of a century ago, has already depleted its former efficiency. This includes the system of foreign economic relations, where there is still a visible domination of large public and private corporations focused mostly on exporting energy resources and other raw commodities. Meanwhile, the overall share of Russia’s main export items in global trade is likely to decline in the future—the only question is how steep or gradual this decline will be. Global markets are shifting toward high-tech products and a broad range of services provided by a variety of small and medium-sized private businesses. Moreover, traditional cross-border trade is gradually giving way to more advanced industrial collaboration, where the exchange of products and services is being replaced by the forging of bilateral or multilateral production and technological chains.
In other words, Russia will have to find a new place for itself in the international division of labor. This task is complicated by the exceptionally challenging geopolitical and geoeconomic environment in which Russia will have to operate in the foreseeable future. This environment is far more complex and less conducive to Russia’s modernization goals than it was right after the Soviet disintegration. However, this time, the country has more experience and is in a better position to avoid many of the mistakes it committed earlier. Russia’s long-term foreign policy goals beyond the ongoing crisis in relations with the West should be based on a couple of principles.
First, Russia has to maintain a well-calibrated balance between ensuring defense sufficiency and pursuing the goals of sustainable development; the position of a “besieged fortress” is not going to meet strategic national interests.
Second, the ongoing confrontation with the West will sooner or later have to give way to some form of peaceful coexistence and at least limited cooperation in order to reduce the risks of a new escalation and the costs of an uncontrolled arms race. A measured restoration of relations between Russia and Europe is of particular importance for both sides.
Third, Moscow has little to gain and a lot to lose if the existing international system and the fundamentals of international law were to completely and irreversibly break down. On the contrary, Russia can benefit greatly from promoting universal and regional multilateral institutions and international regimes that can protect its interests in the future.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a General Meeting of the Russian International Affairs Council
Fourth, since Russia’s international environment is likely to remain unstable and unpredictable in the foreseeable future, the key goals of national foreign policy should include minimizing the negative implications of this instability and unpredictability for the country’s domestic development. A degree of protectionism and import substitution is not a bad thing for Russia’s economy. At the same time, the country must make full use of new opportunities that might emerge within the international system.
Fifth, Russia should be in a position to look beyond its immediate, narrowly defined national interests. Within the emerging world order, the international stature of a country will largely depend on its ability to contribute to the extended reproduction of global and regional commons. It will be critically essential for Russia to define its specific new role in this reproduction, in particular by contributing to new systems of energy, food, and information security, to global climate change management, to preserving biodiversity, and so on.
At the end of the day, the most important foreign policy choice that the country will have to make is not a choice between the East and the West, between globalization and sovereignty, but between modernity and tradition. It is a choice between competing foreign policy priorities in the context of long-term deficits of financial, material, and human resources. This deficit will not disappear after the end of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which means that Russia’s capacity to influence some of the central dimensions of the future world order will be limited. On many practical matters, Moscow will be a deal-taker rather than a dealmaker. It will be forced to join multilateral coalitions, where it is likely to be a minority, not a majority, shareholder.
However, this does not mean that Russia cannot maintain its status as one of the major powers with a significant impact on the international system—primarily in Eurasia, but also on a global scale. A lot will depend on whether Russian society is in a position to approach the external environment as an opportunity rather than as a challenge or a direct threat. This long-awaited shift in the national mentality will undoubtedly be one of the most significant tasks for the new generation of Russia’s political leaders.
First published in the Horizons (Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development)"
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