Article
The foreign policy of post-soviet Russia: A quest for identity
This article examines the difficult search for identity in modern Russia amid debate over its future development. It explores practices in such countries as China and Germany, which have successfully adapted national identity to the need for modernisation and effective development in a new historical environment. The article analyses the risks that stem from Russia’s inclination towards focusing on the past and absolutising the factor of space. Finally, the piece offers suggestions on how to forge Russia’s new identity.
The article presents the results of the research «Development methodology of international institutions effectiveness assessment, analysis and assessment of the G8 effectiveness and possibility of different reform models for realization of Russia's foreign policy priorities during global governance system crisis» conducted within the State University - Higher School of Economics plan of fundamental studies. Functional analysis methodology is used to assess G8 effectiveness in realization of global governance functions, priorities, cooperation with multilateral institutions and mechanisms. Special attention is given to dynamics of Russia's role in the G8 and the G8 effectiveness in Russia's priorities realization. The paper examines the G8 and the G20 comparative effectiveness. The research is based on the specialized data base of the G7/G8 and the G20 documents issued from 1998 to 2009 and special programme for their analysis.
Publication presents the authors' view of the key events of the past year and a forecast of development in Russia's foreign policy.
The paper analyses the process of establishment and development of the national system of international development assistance in Russia. The analysis covers the period starting from 2005 when key national priorities for international development assistance were defined and amounts of foreign aid were substantially increased on the threshold of Russia’s G8 Presidency preparations. The emerging structure of governance, the aid flows and amounts of allocated ODA, as well as the funding priorities in the sphere of development assistance are described on the basis of the analysis of official documents, statements and speeches of officials, reports of international institutions, and statistics available for public access. Russia’s participation in multilateral international organizations and institutions in the sphere of development cooperation is also considered. Drawing on the results of the analysis the author proposes recommendations for further development of the national system of international development assistance in Russia.
The paper is based on a vide range of evidence collected by a group of researchers headed by the author in 2006–2010. The nature and scope of the collected evidence allow arriving at veritable conclusions on the specifics of Russia’s image in Africans countries, particularly, on the positive and negative aspects of the influence of the image of the USSR on it. The research shows that, on the one hand, an independent image of post-Soviet Russia in Africa has not formed yet, first of all because of Russia's very weak information, economic, and political presence on the continent, what is a prerequisite for the formation of its image as non-positive by itself. However, on the other hand, post-Soviet Russia has partially inherited the image of the USSR, up to now associated for many Africans first and foremost with the support of their struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, apartheid, and economic backwardness. An independent image of present-day Russia in Africa is rather absent than negative, and it has objective opportunities for constructing its image as positive by making African policy more active, mutually beneficial, and taking into account the specific features of African culture, including political and business. In the meantime, it is important to remember that these opportunities are diminishing as the generations of people who remember the Soviet Unionin leave the public scene.
The reader describes various aspects of the international position of Russia and its policy in the beginning of the 21st century. The general problems of international relations in the present-day polycentric world are discussed.
This book aims to explain the reasons behind Russia’s international conduct in the post-Soviet era, examining threat perceptions and national security doctrines. Serguning analyzes Russian foreign policy discourse with a particular focus on the major foreign policy schools of Atlanticism, Eurasianism, derzhavniki, realpolitik, geopolitics, neo-Marxism, radical nationalism, and post-positivism. The author critically assesses the evolution of Russian foreign policy decision-making over the last 25 years and analyzes the roles of various governmental agencies, interest groups and subnational actors. Concluding that a foreign policy consensus is gradually emerging in contemporary Russia, Sergunin demonstrates that Russian foreign policy discourse aims not only at the formulation of an international strategy but also the search for a new national identity. Sergunin argues that Russia’s current domestic situation, defined by numerous socio-economic, inter-ethnic, demographic, environmental, and other problems, dictates the need to abandon superpower ambitions and to set modest foreign policy goals.
This article accounts for the revival of geopolitics in Russian post-Soviet foreign policy thinking and also for the fact that geopolitics-inspired foreign policy prescriptions had relatively little impact on the actual conduct of Russian foreign policy. It is argued that classical geopolitics was revived in Russia in order to objectively present the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a crisis. The crisis, in turn, was constructed using a number of themes first articulated by classical Eurasians, namely ideology, modernisation and Russia's distinctiveness. However, geopolitical thinking had little practical relevance because the solution to the crisis was eventually conceptualized in non-geopolitical terms.
The article analyses worsening of the US-Russia Relations in 2012. It discusses domestic and foreign policy reasons of the relations deterioration, explores the nature of the relations, and provides forecast for the near- and middle-term future. The paper also provides analyses of the model of "selective pragmatic cooperation" between the US and Russia, which emerged by the biginning of 2013.
The article analyzes main trends of the international cooperation between Russia and Germany in the field of innovative development and modernization.