Russia's foreign policy

The paper studies Russia’s Ukraine policy since the Orange Revolution. Russia’s policy toward its western neighbor has evolved from unhappy relations with Victor Yushchenko to rapprochement with Victor Yanukovich and then confrontation over the revolutionary power change in Kiev in February 2014. The paper argues that Vladimir Putin’s actions following February revolution in Kiev demonstrate both change and continuity in Russia’s foreign policy. Although these actions constituted a major escalation, relative to Russia’s previous behavior toward Ukraine, the escalation of relations with Kiev also reflected a broader policy pattern of Russia’s assertive relations with the Western nations adopted by the Kremlin since the mid-2000s. What made Russia’s conflict with Ukraine possible, even inevitable, was the West’s lack of recognition for Russia’s values and interests in Eurasia, on the one hand, and the critically important role that Ukraine played in the Kremlin’s foreign policy calculations, on the other. The paper provides an empirically grounded interpretation of Russia’s changing policy that emphasizes Russia–Ukraine–West interaction and a mutually reinforcing dynamics of their misunderstanding. It also addresses four alternative explanations of Russia’s Ukraine policy and discusses several dangers and possible solutions to the crisis.

The book provides an insight into the dilemma of the "true right-wing position". It makes an attempt to describe the rightists' journey from conservative and religious universalism to narrow-minded ethnic nationalism by means of the the analysis of the central stage of the process: the formation of conservative nationalism - a doctrine, which has already left the conservative coast but has not reached the racist or state-oriented fascism yet. The study of conservative nationalism goes through three stages. The first part describes the formation of conservative nationalism in the classical models worked out in France, Germany and Japan. Part two focuses on the most representative and historically consistent conservative nationalist country - Russia. The last part presents a case study of the political thought of Igor Shafarevich, a famous mathematician and prominent nationalist thinker of the 20th century.
The language of the text: Polish. However, comprehensive, 40-page abbreviations in English and Russian are added to the main text. The numbers in parentheses under the paragraphs of the abbreviations refer to the footnotes of the main text.

This paper intends to answer the question of how Sino-Indian controversies, specifically relations between India and the US, and Sino-Russian cooperation influence the ties between Russia and India. The paper offers an analysis of the key fields of cooperation between Russia and India, which are mainly defined by a strong interdependence in a number of areas, such as military and technical cooperation and nuclear energy. Through the lens of the neo realist paradigm, the current relations between Russia and India are studied in the context of each country's relations with the US and the PRC. The balance of power in Asia is shifting towards China due to its dynamic foreign policy and economic expansion during the past decade. As a result, China's increasing activities in Asia reduce India's potential for development, while a worsening confrontation between the US and Russia forces Moscow to drift towards Beijing. The paper concludes that the actual cooperation between Russia and India is mutually beneficial and to a large extent supports New Delhi's ambitions to contain a shift in the balance o f power in Asia. However, the escalating Sino-Indian controversies and a growing rapprochement between Russia and China could cause a deterioration in relations between Russia and India. This, in turn, could predetermine India's choice in favour of a close rapport with the US in the longer term.

Russia has not only violated numerous treaties, especially with Ukraine. It has also devalued important networks and organizations it had been integrating or cooperating with for years, if not decades. While most of these international institutional links are formally still in place, it is unlikely that Russia will become a fully functioning part of them anytime soon. A good-case scenario would be that the Donbas conflict becomes “frozen” and that the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk “republics” develop into more or less peaceful Russian protectorates resembling Transdniester, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia – something the West could, perhaps, live with. However, the issue of Crimea’s annexation will remain open and may persist as a matter of contention for decades. While Western states and international organizations have been willing to put up with Russia’s territorial diversions in Moldova and Georgia, they cannot accept an official territorial seizure by military force.

This paper attempts to advance the neoclassical realist framework by elaborating on the interaction between system-level and unit-level factors in the formation of states' behavior. With an empirical focus on post-Cold War China-Russia relations, which represent the ambivalent combination of a consistently growing strategic entente and a simultaneous reluctance to form a full-fledged political-military alliance, this study establishes two major unit-level factors – differing economic models and negative historical memories – that create hurdles for alliance formation between the two countries. However, under greater systemic pressure from the US-led unipolarity, China's and Russia's state leaders have not only increased bilateral military-to-military cooperation but have begun to actively implement policies to deliberately transform, if not remove, the existing non-systemic hurdles. Therefore, the neoclassical realist framework can be understood and further tested as a dynamic interaction model in which the unit-level circumstances, while moderating the causal impact of the system, are themselves being transformed by the system via state policies, as is their impact on states' foreign policy.

Post-Cold War China-Russia strategic cooperation has displayed significant development and become an increasingly important factor in contemporary international politics. However, there has been no theory-grounded framework and corresponding measurements that would allow an accurate and systematic assessment of the level of China-Russia alignment and its progress over time. How closely aligned are China and Russia? How to define and measure strategic alignments between states? This book bridges area studies and International Relations literature to develop a set of objective criteria to measure and explain the development of strategic alignment in post-Cold War China-Russia relations. It establishes that on a range of criteria, China-Russia alignment is moving towards a full-fledged alliance. It is solid and comprehensive and continues to show a consistent incremental upward trend. There are strong structural incentives for furthering the China-Russia alignment, and there is little that might hinder the effective functioning of a China-Russia alliance. The alignment framework developed in the book can be applied to other cases of interstate strategic cooperation to facilitate comparisons between different strategic alignments.

The  collection  of  essays  provides  an  analysis  of  the  dynamic  changes  of  the  contemporary  world  order  and  Russia’s  role  in  these  transformations.  The  interplay  of  domestic  and  foreign  policies  is  considered.  Special  attention  is  paid  to  the  geopolitical  competition  of  the great powers in the post-Soviet space.

Post-Cold War China-Russia relations have always been a matter of debate. Since the end of the Cold War, the China-Russia strategic cooperation has progressed consistently, showing immunity to exogenous shocks. This paper explores the international-systemic incentives for the China-Russia alignment and examines the actual mechanisms of the China-Russia military cooperation to identify the foundations for a military alliance. The paper argues that China-Russia relations are " on the verge of an alliance, " meaning that a strong basis for an alliance is in place, and only minor steps are needed for a fully-fledged alliance to materialize; the occurrence of such steps is still an open question.

АННОТАЦИЯ:
Российско-турецкие отношения – один из наиболее сложных вопросов внешней политики Турции, равно как и Росси. К настоящему времени в отношениях Москвы и Анкары накопилось достаточно проблем как экономического, так и политического характера, которые способны серьезно повлиять на их будущее. Расхождения в «сирийском вопросе» лишь обнажили назревающие негативные тенденции, развитие которых в дальнейшем может привести как к серьезному охлаждению в контактах между двумя странами, так и обострить их противостояние в имеющихся между Москвой и Анкарой «конфликтных зонах» - сферах столкновения политических и экономических интересов Росси и Турции. Не будет преувеличением признать, что несмотря на все позитивные перемены последних лет, рост товарооборота и тесные политические контакты президентов двух стран, приемлемый уровень политического доверия между двумя государствами так и не достигнут. Более того, реальные шансы на его достижение уменьшаются. В то же время, не вызывает сомнений необходимость максимального использования потенциала существующих между Москвой и Анкарой отношений.

In the international framework India is finding a larger position for itself. This hope is focused on the belief that India is a prosperous democracy with substantial human and material resources; it is an increasingly strong economic power; it has a proven record as a responsible and law-abiding regime, and as a member of the non-aligned party it has consistently shared the interests of the developing nations. Indian foreign policy makers argue that India wants to re-invent itself at this point of 'take-off' as a great force. India needs new alliance for the proposed new position, including the dominant superpower, the United States of America (US). The US has said it would turn India into a great force. This essay attempts to examine the old pattern of relations with Russia that India had enjoyed. There's an Indo-US triangular alliance taking its place. How is this current type of strategic partnership distinct from that of the Indo Soviet/ Russian alliance? However, both countries' natural desire to strive towards multipolarity in world politics has helped restore the relationship, particularly over the past decade. Remarkably, ties with the US no longer stand in the way of stronger relations between India and Russia. The turbulent security climate marked by what is frequently assumed to be the state-sponsored insurgency in vulnerable Asian areas, the war in Afghanistan, and the political turmoil in both Afghanistan and Central Asian countries has paved the way for a strategic alliance between India and Russia.

This paper explores the correlates of Russia’s aggressive international policy and argues that rising oil revenues increase the aggressiveness of presidential foreign-policy rhetoric. Using content analysis and machine-learning techniques, I generate a measure of aggressive discourse as the share of anti-Western sentences in Russian presidential speeches delivered between 2000 and 2016. These are analyzed using OLS regression with lagged dependent variables. I conclude that the aggressiveness of foreign-policy rhetoric in Russian presidential speeches positively correlates to oil prices. I also find no support for alternative explanations linking hawkish foreign policy to NATO expansion or domestic legitimacy concerns.