Russia's Power and Alliances in the 21st Century

Introduction

What you are defines what you do. Russia has historically established itself as a regional great power and strives to preserve that position in the new international environment. Until the Bolshevik revolution Russia had possessed no global ambitions but sought to dominate the Eurasian land mass from the Far East to the Balkans and Eastern Europe. After the short-lived global geopolitical struggle with the Western nations during the Cold War, Russia is returning to its identity as a regional great power. Its priorities once again include security and prosperity in the territories adjacent to its borders, and it increasingly sees itself as a European power with special relations with Asia and the Muslim world (Tsygankov, 2007). In the new world of globalisation, Russia does not have the global economic reach of China or India. Even though it sprawls over 11 time zones and four major regions – Europe, Central Asia, the Far East and the Arctic – and borders several others (Pavlovsky, 2009), Russia is not a global power.

Russia is, however, a peculiar regional power. It seeks to remain regional by acting globally, thus distinguishing itself from established global powers in the West and rising global powers such as Brazil, China and India. As Stephen Kotkin (2009) puts it, Russia ‘remains a regional power that acts like a global superpower’, whereas China ‘has been transformed into a global superpower but still mostly acts like a regional power’. Russia acts in the way it does because geography and history have taught it the value of staying engaged with the most advanced nations. At least since the emergence of the West as the dominant civilisation, Russia has been determined to secure recognition and be considered ‘like the West’. If the Western nations are great powers, Russia too aspires to such status. If the West demonstrates accomplishments in institution-building, economic prosperity and human rights protection, Russian leaders are also drawn to these accomplishments and attempt to replicate them at home. Such global engagement has been essential for developing the economic and military capabilities necessary for survival in a region historically populated by some of the most powerful states on earth. To secure borders and meet other challenges in Eurasia, Russia has had to develop the capabilities and status of a great power.

Remaining a great power, even a regional one, today is a serious challenge. Russia must act in the new international context, which includes preservation of a considerable Western influence and the expansion of Chinese influences in Eurasia. To succeed, Russia has to develop its capacity to be a power by exploiting its global comparative advantages, such as expertise in energy and military affairs and memberships in international organisations. Such global engagement is necessary yet again for generating revenue and protecting Russia's sovereignty and status. Many Western observers (e.g. Menon and Motyl, 2007; Wallander, 2007) are sceptical that Russia's leadership is capable of designing a coherent long-term plan with appropriate institutional, material and intellectual support, and this is in part because the Kremlin is fundamentally weakened by the competition of rival factions. The Kremlin, however, has overcome many of its weaknesses of the 1990s and reached consensus on some principal objectives of Russia's foreign policy, such as the preservation of Russia's global influence and its status as a regional great power. ¹

This article first explores the origins of Russia's great power ambitions. It then evaluates Russia's recovery after the Soviet disintegration and the country's place in the global power calculus by analysing its economic, political and military capabilities. The final section offers an assessment of Russia's likely strategy and alliances within the next 10 to 20 years given the existing international predicaments.

The origins of Russia's great power ambitions

Russia has established itself as a great power by engaging more advanced states in projects of common concern or challenging them to recognise Russia's ambitions and international claims. In so doing, Russian leaders have sought to preserve limited and regional, rather than global, control, yet they have also recognised the importance of acting globally for achieving what are largely regional objectives. These objectives included defence of its borders and cultural allies – Orthodox Christians in the nineteenth century, communists in the twentieth century and ethnic Russians after the Soviet disintegration – and these objectives required that Russia remain a great power and be recognised as such by the outside world.

Historically, Russia's power status was maintained by addressing diverse international challenges. After the fall of Byzantium in the fifteenth century, Russia emerged as the centre of Eastern Christianity and fought multiple wars with the Ottoman Empire to defend Orthodox Christians in the Crimea and the Balkans. Russia also challenged European states to recognise its regional ambitions. In the twentieth century, the Kremlin followed largely the same logic when it challenged the United States and Britain to recognise the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

By the late twentieth century, the international context had changed. Ideological confrontation yielded to the logic of economic globalisation, and Russia too had to change methods to defend its position as a great power. Russia now had to shift emphasis from defeating its rivals militarily or through counter-intelligence operations to demonstrating its ability to compete on the global markets.

Two historical forces shaped Russia's behaviour. First, although it has emerged as historically dependent on the West's power and recognition, Russia has never been colonised by Western nations and greatly values its political and spiritual independence (Poe, 2003). Such independence has kept alive Russia's ambitions to preserve its influence in Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Second, being a continental empire with vast borders made Russia wary of multiple and varied challenges to its security. Russia compensated for this vulnerability by developing a highly centralised political system in order to be able to respond rapidly to threats from abroad. ² The highly centralised state also gained an upper hand internally – often by suppressing resistance from commercial classes.

Other established and rising powers face relatively few external threats to their security. Russia, however, remains preoccupied with the security of its borders and natural resources and acts as a concerned regional power. Much of this preoccupation has roots in Russia's militarised history and geography of resistance to real and perceived threats from abroad. By contrast, Western states, especially those protected by the oceans from potential invasions, historically have faced fewer security challenges.

Recovering state and power capabilities

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's power capabilities declined substantially. Russia lost one-sixth of its territory, its economy shrank by some 50 per cent and the state was divided by powerful individuals, practically losing the ability to govern. ³ Western states expected Russia to follow their political and economic recommendations, yet programmes of Western assistance served mostly to encourage the destruction of the previous economic system and to build relationships within a narrow and corrupt ruling elite (see Cohen, 2000; Reddaway and Glinski, 2001; Wedel, 1998). For example, the figures of the overall capital flight during 1992–99 exceeded the amount of financial assistance. ⁴ The so-called reformers in Russia were well aware of this state of affairs, yet they were unable to say ‘no’ to Western ‘assistance’.

The situation has changed since the late 1990s, when Russia began to recover. Russia's economic power, both in terms of share of global gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita, has increased (Young, 2010, in this issue, figures 1 and 2). By 2007 the economy had recovered to its 1990 level growth continued to grow at about 7 per cent per year. Thus during 1999–2007 the overall size of the economy increased about six times in current dollars – from $200 billion to $1.3 trillion. Russia's per capita GDP quadrupled to nearly $7,000, and about 20 million people were lifted out of poverty (RIA Novosti, 2008).

Another dimension of Russia's recovery is that its middle class now constitutes about 25 per cent of the population (Kommersant, 2008). The social aspect of recovery is essential for preventing internal destabilisation and allowing the state to conduct an active foreign policy. Over 2000–05, the average Russian saw a 26 per cent annual growth in his or her income, relative to only a 10 per cent rise in that of the average Chinese (Crandall, 2006). As a result, the number of Russians who thought that the chosen development course in Russia was correct grew year on year. Even the global financial crisis has not changed the fact that almost 80 per cent of Russians remain satisfied with their living standards (RIA Novosti, 2010a).

Other significant Russian power resources are its oil and gas reserves. Russia has approximately 13 per cent of the world's known oil reserves and 34 per cent of its gas reserves (Arbatov, Belova and Feygin, 2006). This power resource has gained in importance as global energy demand and prices have risen. Russia's main energy markets are in Europe, and Europe is expected to increase considerably its consumption of national gas over time. According to estimates by the International Energy Agency, Russian gas will account for about 33–34 per cent of European demand compared with the current 25 per cent (RIA Novosti, 2010b). Energy remains Russia's important comparative advantage and, although the global economic recession has seriously affected Russia, energy experts project recovery of the markets within the next several years.

Acting assertively on recovered state and power capabilities

Recovery of state and power capabilities allowed the Kremlin to act assertively in foreign policy. The philosophy behind such assertiveness has been state-led international economic expansion. Rather than becoming wide open to Western economic and political influences – something that the new Russian leadership had experimented with during the 1990s – it now pursued a course of selective openness managed by an increasingly strong and nationalistic state. In the world of growing energy prices, the emphasis shifted from providing macroeconomic discipline and tough fiscal policies toward a desire to capitalise on Russia's reserves of natural gas and oil. As viewed by Vladimir Putin, the role of the energy sector is to work with the state to promote international economic expansion and to reinforce the sovereignty and independence that were undermined during the 1990s.

According to this perspective, relying on market forces is essential, but insufficient: ‘Even in developed countries, market mechanisms do not provide solutions to strategic tasks of resource use, protecting nature, and sustainable economic security’. ⁵ The state therefore has to shape policy outcomes by actively seeking to control social resources, co-ordinating the activities of key social players and assisting the country in finding its niche in the global economy. Thus the Kremlin insists on the need for Russia to protect its path of development and natural resources.

The economic recovery provided conditions for Russia's active business promotion in Europe, which accounts for 50 per cent of Russia's foreign trade. The Kremlin insisted on long-term contracts with Europeans and greater integration with European markets in order to avoid a repetition of the 1985–86 scenario when a sharp decline in energy prices had contributed considerably to the break-up of the Soviet economy. Outside European markets, Moscow hardly has a choice of not developing its capacity as a global middleman by co-ordinating its production with other key energy producers and offering its expertise in building energy infrastructure across the world.

The Kremlin has also been actively selling weapons abroad, in part to raise revenue for domestic modernisation. The main customers for Russia's armaments are global and include India, China, Algeria, Venezuela, Malaysia and Syria. Despite the global financial crisis, in 2009 Russia exported $7.4 billion worth of weapons – 10 per cent more than in the previous year (Itar-Tass, 2010).

Furthermore, the Kremlin adopted a more assertive global stance to defend its vision of international rules – partly to reflect Russia's concerns with its sovereignty and independence and partly to respond to dissatisfaction with the United States's invasion of Iraq and the former Soviet region. Soon after the invasion of Iraq, the United States pushed the entire former Soviet region toward transforming its political institutions and was then working on extending membership of its alliance to former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine. Washington also routinely denounced Russia for using energy as political leverage to influence its neighbours' policies. In response, Putin (2007) accused the United States of ‘disdain for the basic principles of international law’ and of having ‘overstepped its national borders in … the economic, political, cultural and educational policies’.

Putin's successor as president, Dmitri Medvedev, built on Putin's vision, seeking to position Russia as a more global player and a maker of new global rules. Russia thus seeks to articulate its concerns using its membership within existing international organisations, particularly its position as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and proposing new international treaties, such as a new pan-European treaty to establish a new security architecture, in which Russia would become a fully fledged participant and NATO would cease to serve as the key organisation responsible for European security. Medvedev (2008) also proposed an overhaul of the international economic order so that it was less reliant on the US, which he blamed for causing the global financial crisis by trying to substitute itself for the global commodities and financial markets. The Kremlin, along with China and other BRIC countries, has also advocated steps to reduce reliance on the dollar in international economic transactions. So far, these efforts have not had much success.

Thus Russia has become stronger and more confident since 2000. It has preserved and developed important attributes of a great power and is more recognised as such by the outside world. In the longer run, however, Russia faces multiple challenges to its ambition to remain a great power. Russia's material capabilities are limited. Although it has recovered from the longest economic depression in its history, much of Russia's recovery has been due to high oil prices. According to World Bank estimates, energy has accounted for about 25 per cent of the Russian economy and for about 50 per cent of its GDP growth (Rutland, 2008, pp. 1063–1064). Moreover, although Russia's economic growth during the seven years preceding the recent financial crisis was impressive, its share of global GDP is a mere 2.3 per cent, and may rise only to 3.5 per cent by 2020 (Kuchins and Weitz, 2008, p. 6). Consequently, Russia is unlikely to close the gap with the United States in terms of GDP during the next 10 to 15 years and the gaps between its GDP and those of China and India will continue to widen. In addition, Russia's military expenditures do not match those of China, France and the United Kingdom, not to mention the US. Overall, Russia has made some progress in some areas, but continues to stagnate and fall behind in others.

The fact that Russia has managed to muddle through thus far is not a guarantee that it will be able to in the future, and the current economic crisis narrows the Kremlin's options further. During the recent crisis, Russia, which is heavily dependent on energy, including exports, was hit particularly hard and its GDP fell by around 9 per cent in 2009, while China and India continued to grow, albeit at slower rates. Russia has also had to spend a considerable portion of its reserves to bail out domestic enterprises, including non-competitive ones, and to scale down its activist foreign policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Mankoff, 2010). The crisis has therefore slowed down Russia's international assertiveness.

Adjusting to changed global circumstances

In the twenty-first century, Russia's foreign policy will be affected by two critical factors: continuing economic globalisation and the consequent importance of economic development rather than security alignments; and the gradual decline of the West's power. Under the conditions of economic globalisation, Russia will continue to seek to preserve its regional great power status by building new alliances. Unlike the old alliances, which were exclusive military commitments, the new alliances are soft in the sense that they are non-exclusive and driven by specific economic and political needs.

In addition, the international system is moving away from the dominance of the West that characterised the post-Cold War period, although the direction of that development remains unclear. Military involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as the continuous global financial crisis, makes it difficult for the West to function as the world's economic and political authority. China and the Asia-Pacific region are emerging as new centres of the world's gravity. For much of the post-Cold War period inter-state conflicts did not challenge the West's ability to intervene, but Russia's military intervention in Georgia in August 2008 underlined its willingness to use force in pursuing its interests and challenged the West's monopoly to interfere as a peacemaker. In the increasingly post-Western world, the US may require additional allies and may have to learn to act in consultation with the Kremlin, among others. Consultations with China and Russia with regard to Iran and North Korea are among the growing signs of recognising these realities.

The persistence of economic globalisation and the decline of the West reinforce each other and encourage Russia to become more aggressive in integrating with the global economy. Apart from the Caucasus and the issue of terrorism, Russia is not likely to be preoccupied with issues of military security. A formerly ‘incomplete superpower’, because it lacked non-military aspects of greatness (Dibb, 1986), Russia still has much to do to develop its non-military capabilities – economic, demographic, institutional and cultural – to secure its great power status. The described conditions suggest a limited reliance on coercive tools without appropriate diplomatic preparations. During the 1990s, Russia's soft alliances were devised to draw the West's attention and acquire its recognition. In part to further these ends, Russia tried to strengthen relations with China and India and to integrate the states of the former Soviet Union under tighter control. In the context of the West's relative decline, however, soft alliances are increasingly becoming the only means to defend its international objectives. Following a policy of flexible coalitions, Russia may seek to devise collective security systems in both Europe and Eurasia. For example, unable on its own to respond effectively to security challenges from NATO, Russia will continue to exploit non-Western institutional vehicles, such as the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, and develop soft alliances with selected European countries, such as France, Germany and Italy, as well as China and Iran. On the other hand, in response to China's rise, Russia will also continue to build ties with the European Union, the US, India, South Korea and Japan.

Free from traditional security concerns, Russia will continue to co-operate selectively and flexibly to respond to new security challenges: nuclear proliferation, terrorism, energy and drug trafficking. A realistic outlook also requires that the Kremlin is more aggressive in investing in non-energy areas, such as administrative reform, demography and human infrastructure.

Regionally, Russia is also likely to rely on economic and cultural rather than military influences to offset Western and Chinese power. The post-Soviet world continues to be greatly affected by Russia, and the Kremlin has used its influence to change power in Kyrgyzstan and sign new co-operation agreements with Ukraine.

Conclusion

Russia's objective is to recover the capabilities of a regional great power. Concern for continued economic recovery and greater international economic integration are likely to affect Russia's foreign policy more than international security issues, such as Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme, will. The paradox is that in order to remain a regional great power, Russia must act globally by exploiting its energy clout and entering soft security coalitions in Europe and Eurasia. Due to internal weaknesses and the rapid development of other middle-ranked great powers, such as China and India, however, Russia may struggle to retain its status. The Kremlin is likely to continue to be assertive in trying to prevent such an outcome.