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Alliance Firmed, 1907–1910

KEITH NEILSON

in Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894-1917

This chapter describes Izvolskii and his successor's efforts to steer Russian foreign policy between Germany and Britain that determined the nature of Anglo-Russian relations from mid-1907 to the ... More

This chapter describes Izvolskii and his successor's efforts to steer Russian foreign policy between Germany and Britain that determined the nature of Anglo-Russian relations from mid-1907 to the beginning of 1911. The reception of the Anglo-Russian Convention in both countries was largely favourable. British policy was to ensure that Izvolskii's efforts did not affect British interests and for Britain to remain strong against any German threat. The great expectations of the Anglo-Russian Convention held in 1907 had not been realized. At home, Edward Grey faced the unrelenting opposition of the Radicals in his own party towards anything suggesting a closer relationship with Russia. Abroad, Grey had to deal with German diplomacy. Germany's endeavours, alternately threatening and cajoling to sunder Russia from France and Britain, and her attempt to induce Britain to agree to naval arms limitation, but always within the context of a general political agreement that would isolate Britain in Europe.Less

The Élite’s Russia

KEITH NEILSON

in Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894-1917

This chapter discusses Russia as political system and a collection of personalities. The Russian autocracy was seen to be an old fashioned kind of government, one that put great emphasis on ... More

This chapter discusses Russia as political system and a collection of personalities. The Russian autocracy was seen to be an old fashioned kind of government, one that put great emphasis on individuals rather than on institutions or process. The information provided by the embassy in St. Petersburg was impressive. With extensive contacts in Russian society, the British were attuned to the undertones of Russian politics and their knowledge compares favourably with modern research. British policy towards Russia was based on the elite's beliefs about the nature of Russia, Russian policy, and the attitudes of individual Russians.Less

Forging the Anglo-Russian Convention

KEITH NEILSON

in Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894-1917

This chapter discusses the Anglo-Russian Convention, which was the culmination of continuous British attempts to come to a diplomatic understanding with Russia. The shock of defeat in the ... More

This chapter discusses the Anglo-Russian Convention, which was the culmination of continuous British attempts to come to a diplomatic understanding with Russia. The shock of defeat in the Russo-Japanese War led to a complete reassessment of Russian foreign policy, a move personified by Izvolskii as foreign minister. Given Russian weaknesses, a policy of recueillement was necessary. Russia mended her diplomatic fences comprehensively. In addition to negotiating the Anglo-Russian Convention, Russia restored good relations with Japan and tightened her relationship with France.Less

Russia's Contested National Identity and Foreign Policy

Andrew C. Kuchins and Igor Zevelev

in Worldviews of Aspiring Powers: Domestic Foreign Policy Debates in China, India, Iran, Japan and Russia

This chapter examines the Russian foreign policy discourse. For the purposes of discussion, the leading schools of thought and policy practitioners in Russia in 1992–2011 are categorized into three ... More

This chapter examines the Russian foreign policy discourse. For the purposes of discussion, the leading schools of thought and policy practitioners in Russia in 1992–2011 are categorized into three groups: pro-Western Liberals; Great Power balancers; and Nationalists. It is shown that the main magnetic pole in Russian debates over identity and foreign policy orientation is the status of the Western democratic market development model as well as the role of the United States and the West more broadly in international relations. The three categories of pro-Western Liberals, Great Power balancers, and Nationalists can be approximately correlated to pro-Western, neutral toward the West, and anti-Western. The main axis of debate revolves around the first two categories of liberals and Great Power balancers. The most significant factor with the potential to push the needle in one direction or the other is the world economy and how it affects the oil price. The lower price environment favors liberals who call for deeper structural reform of the Russian economic and political system to increase efficiency, while the higher price environment discourages reform and fuels greater assertiveness.Less

Großraum Thinking in Russian Foreign Policy

David G. Lewis

in Russia's New Authoritarianism: Putin and the Politics of Order

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt’s theory of international relations and applies it to Russian foreign policy. It outlines the emergence of Schmitt’s thinking about the ‘Grand Space’ or the ... More

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt’s theory of international relations and applies it to Russian foreign policy. It outlines the emergence of Schmitt’s thinking about the ‘Grand Space’ or the Großraum as the most important unit of analysis in international relations. This understanding of the world as divided into macroregions centred on great powers became widespread in Russian foreign policy thinking after 2012. The chapter explores different features of Russia’s regional policy in Eurasia and its sphere of influence politics through the prism of Großraum theory, including its spatial challenge to the universalism of the liberal international order.Less

Apocalypse Delayed: Katechontic Thinking in Late Putinist Russia

David G. Lewis

in Russia's New Authoritarianism: Putin and the Politics of Order

This chapter explores the role of messianic thinking in Russian foreign policy. Russia’s international role was increasingly expressed in terms of exceptionalism, reviving a long historical tradition ... More

This chapter explores the role of messianic thinking in Russian foreign policy. Russia’s international role was increasingly expressed in terms of exceptionalism, reviving a long historical tradition of messianic thought in Russian political philosophy and spiritual thinking. This messianism, however, also borrowed from more modern philosophical trends, including Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the biblical figure of the katechon. In Russian reinterpretations, Russia is the katechon, playing a role as the ‘restrainer’ in the international system and acting as a bulwark against global chaos.Less

The Politics and Practice of the Russian Occupation of Armenia, 1915–February 1917

Peter Holquist

in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire

This chapter discusses the key role of the Russian empire in the dynamics leading up to the slaughter of the Armenian population in the six eastern provinces of the Ottoman empire. It examines the ... More

This chapter discusses the key role of the Russian empire in the dynamics leading up to the slaughter of the Armenian population in the six eastern provinces of the Ottoman empire. It examines the changing parameters and content of Russian policy in “the areas of Turkey occupied by right of war,”, highlighting these regions as an arena for conflict among various institutional actors within the Russian state. First, it shows the Russian state to be a complex actor in the immediate prewar and war period. Second, the conduct of the Russian state in the face of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) irredentist agitation and attempts to rouse the Muslim population of Kars and Batum against Russian rule provides an instructive parallel to Ottoman measures. Finally, the chapter shows that the Russian military's policy toward occupied Armenia proceeded according to its own dynamics, which produced policies that were callous and frequently brutal, yet they rarely had the purposefulness that is so often ascribed to them.Less

The Road Ahead

Jack Matlock

in Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin

Jack Matlock Jr., U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, is the author of Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1995) and Reagan ... More

Jack Matlock Jr., U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, is the author of Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1995) and Reagan and Gorbachev: The End of the Cold War (2004). He assessed the impact of Putin's illiberal measures on Russia's nascent democracy and on U.S.–Russian foreign policy in two interviews between 2003 and early 2005. He believes that Putin has a better understanding of Russia's interests than Yeltsin. The danger is that he will go too far in recentralizing political authority and rely too heavily on police methods. He pointed out that the end of the Cold War gave the Soviet leadership an opportunity to reform without the pressures of an adversarial U.S.–Soviet relationship.Less

The Obama Administration’s “Reset Button” for Russia

Andrew C. Kuchins

in Russia: The Challenges of Transformation

This chapter address the key themes and issues driving Washington's perspective on and policy toward Russia to set the historical background for an examination of the Obama administration's efforts ... More

This chapter address the key themes and issues driving Washington's perspective on and policy toward Russia to set the historical background for an examination of the Obama administration's efforts to improve ties with Russia during the past year and the future prospects for the relationship. The approach is explicitly U.S.-centric in its analysis of Russian actions, principally in the context of how they are perceived and how they influence U.S. policy toward Russia. The focus is likewise on the Obama administration's Russian policy, which is popularly summarized by the notion of a “reset.” The chapter thus examines the origins and sources of this reset, its nature and limitations, and its prospects.Less

Post–Crimean War Period, 1856–1910

in Power in Uncertain Times: Strategy in the Fog of Peace

This chapter investigates Russian and British policy between the Crimean War and World War I. It concentrates on Russian and British responses to uncertainty about their strategic and technological ... More

This chapter investigates Russian and British policy between the Crimean War and World War I. It concentrates on Russian and British responses to uncertainty about their strategic and technological environments. It also explores their security environments and strategic choices. The effect of relative power and complexity on strategic choice is then evaluated. Russian strategy reserved the nation's right to play in European great power politics, and they succeeded. It is shown that the Crimean War disclosed the weaknesses of the British army as an antiquated and poorly led field force. Britain reduced tight commitments and maximized flexibility in effect to a diverse and shifting security environment. The prevailing features of Russian and British strategy are most coherent with the representation that strategic responses to a complex security and technological environment indicate concern with their relative international position.Less

The Domestic Determinants of Russia’s Resurrection

Kathryn E. Stoner

in Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order

This chapter examines the purposes of Russian power projection abroad under the regime of Vladimir Putin. The chapter reviews the various dimensions of Russian power in international politics, ... More

This chapter examines the purposes of Russian power projection abroad under the regime of Vladimir Putin. The chapter reviews the various dimensions of Russian power in international politics, including its geographic domain in its immediate neighborhood and globally, as well as areas where Russian policy influence is particularly weighty. The chapter then looks briefly at different means of Russian power, like economy, conventional and nuclear defense capabilities, and human capital. It concludes that Russia is never as weak as it seems. Although it is not necessarily “the strongest” in all areas of international politics, Putin’s Russia has considerable usable power resources for the purposes of its leadership. The chapter then looks at the purposes of Russian power projection abroad. It looks first at realist arguments that insist Russia has national interests that any Russian regime would defend. These interests, according to this argument, are historically and geographically determined. Any Russian leader would seek to defend what is described as a “traditional sphere of influence.” In contrast, the author argues that Putin’s patronal autocracy has come to behave more aggressively in building and using Russia’s formidable power resources in order to maintain social stability for the sake of the regime’s survival. In this way, the chapter links Russian domestic politics to its foreign policies under Putin.Less

Downsizing in “Russia’s Detroit”

Stephen Crowley

in Putin's Labor Dilemma: Russian Politics between Stability and Stagnation

This chapter addresses the case of Tolyatti, the country's largest monotown, often referred to as “Russia's Detroit.” It begins by investigating another example of Russia's industrial policy, this ... More

This chapter addresses the case of Tolyatti, the country's largest monotown, often referred to as “Russia's Detroit.” It begins by investigating another example of Russia's industrial policy, this time through the automobile sector. The chapter details the rise of Russia's leading alternative union through that sector, and how its strengths and limitations mirrored those of the auto industry. It then focuses on AvtoVAZ, Russia's leading auto factory, located in Tolyatti. Just like the US city of Detroit, Tolyatti, along with AvtoVAZ, has experienced hard times. Indeed, the case of AvtoVAZ seems to provide a counter-example to one of the central claims of this book: massive layoffs took place here without large-scale social unrest, let alone a social explosion. Yet on closer inspection, the chapter finds that the downsizing of AvtoVAZ was accompanied with huge subsidies and considerable state intervention, some of which, rather than easing social tensions, made the situation even more combustible.Less

The End of the War

Jill Edwards

in Anglo-American Relations and the Franco Question, 1945–1955

Winston Churchill's references to Spain in May 1944 intensified fears in the Soviet Union of the formation of a Western bloc, a long held axiom of Russian foreign policy. So far as the United States ... More

Winston Churchill's references to Spain in May 1944 intensified fears in the Soviet Union of the formation of a Western bloc, a long held axiom of Russian foreign policy. So far as the United States was concerned, no bloc was yet envisaged and certainly not one which would include Francisco Franco. If Churchill's speech had been a miscalculation, difficulties increased a month later, when, during the United States Senate debate on foreign policy, questions were asked as to whether Churchill had extracted promises of aid from Franklin D. Roosevelt before 1941. By the end of 1944, disquiet in the United States and Britain on the Spanish question was rising. There were also reservations as evidence continued of Franco's support for the Axis powers. It was during September that the British realized that their own position in Spain in contrast to that of the United States was rapidly slipping.Less

The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission and the Defense of Orthodoxy

Lucien J. Frary

in Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 1821–1844

Responses to the independence of the Greek Church and the creation of new ecclesiastical institutions illustrate the central distinction within Greek society in the post-revolutionary era, between ... More

Responses to the independence of the Greek Church and the creation of new ecclesiastical institutions illustrate the central distinction within Greek society in the post-revolutionary era, between the indigenous Orthodox and traditional element of Greek nationalism, and the modern and secular component of Greek nationalism. In the 1830s, traditionalist Greek clergy and intellectuals, supported by the Russian embassy and ecclesiastical mission, emerged as the principal defenders of the religious element of what became the new Hellenic-Christian imagined community. As a potent source of influence and resources, the Russian ecclesiastical mission symbolized the traditions of Orthodoxy and conservatism held sacred by the Greek masses. The protection and support offered by the Russian embassy and its ecclesiastical legation to the pro-Orthodox element of Greek society helped galvanize traditionalist policy-makers and the church hierarchy against a minority of liberal critics and foreign infiltrations of “new religions.”Less

Status and Identity

Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko

in Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy

This chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book draws on social identity theory (SIT) for insights into how status concerns and social identity shape Chinese and Russian ... More

This chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book draws on social identity theory (SIT) for insights into how status concerns and social identity shape Chinese and Russian foreign policy. SIT argues that social groups strive to achieve a positively distinctive identity. When a group's identity is threatened, it may pursue one of several identity management strategies: social mobility, social competition, or social creativity. Using SIT as a framework, the book addresses several questions. First, how important were status considerations in shaping Chinese and Russian foreign policy? Second, why did China and Russia choose a particular strategy in a given context for improving their state's international standing? Third, how effective were their chosen strategies as measured by the perceptions and beliefs of the leading states.Less