Russia as a Great Power (Basees Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)

Russia as a Great Power

After a period of relative weakness and instability during most of the 1990s, Russia is again appearing as a major security player in world politics, a shift that will have profound effects for regional and global stability and power relations. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of Russia’s current security situation, addressing such topics as the type of player the new Russia will be in the field of security, the essence of Russian security policy, the sources, capabilities and priorities of the country’s security policy, and its prospects for the future. One important conclusion to emerge is that, while Russian foreign policy under Vladimir Putin has become more pragmatic and responsive both to problems and opportunities, the growing lack of checks and balances in domestic politics makes political integration with the West very difficult and gives the president very great freedom in applying Russia’s growing power abroad. This book analyses both external and internal dimensions of security, along with so-called hard and soft security issues and the intricate interplay between them. This book will appeal to Russian and Eastern European scholars and academics looking for the most up-to-date and erudite analysis of Russia’s current security situation. Jakob Hedenskog is a researcher at the Swedish Defence Research Agency. He has published extensively on Russia and the CIS, including The Ukrainian Dilemma: Relations with Russia and the West in the Context of the 2004 Presidential Elections. Vilhelm Konnander coordinated the practical editing of the present volume. He currently works with security policy issues and those related to the Baltic Sea area in the Department for European Security Policy in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Bertil Nygren is an associate professor in political science at Stockholm University, and has published extensively on Russian domestic and foreign policy. Ingmar Oldberg is Deputy Director of Research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency and has published extensively on Russian foreign, regional and military affairs. Christer Pursiainen is Senior Research Fellow at the Nordic Centre for Spatial Development (Nordregio) in Stockholm and Chief Expert on EU–RF relations at the Russian–European Centre for Economic Policy (RECEP) in Moscow. His publications include Russian Foreign Policy and International Relations Theory.

BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European studies (formerly BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies) Series editor: Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent Editorial Committee: George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley Terry Cox, Department of Government, University of Strathclyde Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath David Moon, Department of History, University of Strathclyde Hilary Pilkington, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, highquality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. 1 Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000 Roman Wolczuk

6 Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness Sarah Hudspith

2 Political Parties in the Russian Regions Derek S. Hutcheson

7 Performing Russia – Folk Revival and Russian Identity Laura J. Olson

3 Local Communities and PostCommunist Transformation Edited by Simon Smith

8 Russian Transformations Edited by Leo McCann

4 Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe J. C. Sharman 5 Political Elites and the New Russia Anton Steen

9 Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin The baton and sickle Edited by Neil Edmunds

10 State Building in Ukraine The Ukranian parliament, 1990–2003 Sarah Whitmore

17 Soviet Dissent and Russia’s Transition to Democracy Dissident legacies Robert Horvath

11 Defending Human Rights in Russia Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and human rights commissioner, 1969–2003 Emma Gilligan

18 Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001 Screening the word Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski

12 Small-Town Russia Postcommunist livelihoods and identities: A portrait of the intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999–2000 Anne White

19 Russia as a Great Power Dimensions of security under Putin Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen

13 Russian Society and the Orthodox Church Religion in Russia after communism Zoe Knox

20 Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 Truth, justice and memory George Sanford

14 Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age The word as image Stephen Hutchings

21 Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia Philip Boobbyer

15 Between Stalin and Hitler Class war and race war on the Dvina, 1940–46 Geoffrey Swain

22 The Limits of Russian Democratisation Emergency powers and states of emergency Alexander N. Domrin

16 Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe The Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction of the changes 1988–98 Rajendra A. Chitnis

23 The Dilemmas of Destalinisation A social and cultural history of reform in the Khrushchev era Edited by Polly Jones

Russia as a Great Power Dimensions of security under Putin

Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen

First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 Editorial matter and selection, Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-415-35996-1(Print edition)

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

Introduction

ix x xiii xiv

1

PART I

Dimensions of external security

11

1

13

Russia as a great power IVER B. NEUMANN

2

Foreign policy priorities under Putin: a tour d’horizon

29

INGMAR OLDBERG

3

Russia and NATO: community of values or community of interests?

57

JAKUB M. GODZIMIRSKI

4

The logic of foreign and security policy change in Russia

81

METTE SKAK

PART II

Dimensions of regional security 5

What prospects for Russia in the Baltic Sea region? Cooperation or isolation? VILHELM KONNANDER

107

109

viii 6

Contents Filling ‘the gap’: Russian security policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova under Putin

130

JAKOB HEDENSKOG

7

Russia’s relations with Georgia under Putin: the impact of 11 September

156

BERTIL NYGREN

8

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change: the cases of Central Asia and Iraq

182

LENA JONSON

PART III

Internal dimensions of security

201

9

203

Putin, the army and military reform ISABELLE FACON

10 Russian economic security in a medium-term perspective

227

ROLAND GÖTZ

11 Forming a new security identity in modern Russia

257

NIKITA LOMAGIN

12 Nuclear safety and environmental risks of north-west Russia: a source of cooperation and conflict

278

CHRISTER PURSIAINEN

PART IV

Terrorism: a new security threat

299

13 Russia’s approach to the fight against terrorism

301

EKATERINA STEPANOVA

14 Counter-terrorism as a building block for Putin’s regime

323

PAVEL K. BAEV

Conclusions and perspectives

345

Index

356

Illustrations

Maps 1 2

Russia and its neighbours Russia and its southern perimeter

xvii xviii

Figures 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5

The components of Russian GDP Oil and gas production forecast for Russia to 2090 Coal production, consumption, imports and exports: forecasts to 2020 Gas production, consumption, imports and exports: forecasts to 2020 Oil production, consumption, imports and exports: forecasts to 2020

229 231 248 249 250

Tables 3.1 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 11.1

Russian schools of thought and NATO: attitude matrix Population Determinants of population development Countries of the world, by population, 2003 Countries of the world, by population, 2020 Countries of the world, by population, 2050 Russian gross national income, 2000 Economic position of Russia in 2000 Rates of growth of the Russian economy Russia in 2010 under different scenarios Investment in Russia as a share of GDP Small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia, 2000 The hierarchy of environmental threats in north-west Russia

63 232 233 233 234 234 236 237 238 239 240 244 260

Contributors

Pavel K. Baev is a senior researcher and the head of the Foreign and Security Policies programme at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and Head of Working Group 1 (International Dimensions of Civil Wars) at the newly created Centre for the Study of Civil War at PRIO. After receiving his Ph.D. in international relations from the Institute of USA and Canada, Moscow, in 1988, he worked in the Institute of Europe, Moscow until October 1992, when he joined PRIO. Isabelle Facon is a research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, Paris and Seminar Director at the Collège Interarmées de Défense (Russian Geopolitics) and the Institut Catholique de Paris (World Politics), Paris. She was formerly a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford. A specialist in Russian defence and security policies, Facon is particularly interested in military reform and developments in civil–military relations in Russia. Jakub M. Godzimirski, Ph.D., was Acting Head of Section at the Department of Strategic Studies in the Polish Ministry of Defence, 1993–4, and has been a senior research fellow at the Centre for Russian Studies, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), in Oslo since 1995. Godzimirski’s main research focus is on Russian foreign and security policy, but he also works on projects dealing with other aspects of Russian and East European politics. Roland Götz, Dip. Oec. Publ., is Head of the Russian Federation and CIS research unit at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin. An expert on the economy of the former Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states, he has a special interest in the regional and sectoral structures and economic statistics of states in transition. His current research relates to the situation and development trends of the Russian economy, as well as the regional problems and energy sector of Russia. Jakob Hedenskog is a security analyst at the Department of Defence Analysis at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). He has

Contributors xi written The Ukrainian Dilemma: Relations with Russia and the West in the Context of the 2004 Presidential Elections (2004), and also published reports on Russian regions and military affairs. Holds an MA in political science and Slavonic languages from Uppsala University, Sweden. Lena Jonson, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Senior Associate at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, where she heads the research programme on Russian National Security Strategies. Her work includes numerous publications, with a focus on Russian foreign and security policy, most recently on Russian policy in Central Asia. She has previously been affiliated to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. During 2002 she served with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Vilhelm Konnander coordinated the practical editing of the present volume for the Nordic Security Policy Research Programme. Educated at Uppsala University, Stockholm University, Moscow State University and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) between 1991 and 2001, he currently works with Security policy issues and issues related to the Baltic Sea area in the Department for European Security Policy in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He has held numerous board and executive positions within Swedish politics and non-governmental organizations, and is currently a board member of the Swedish branch of the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES). His main interests are in Russian and Baltic Sea affairs. Nikita Lomagin is Associate Professor of World Economy at St Petersburg State University, from which he holds degrees in history (Candidate of Science) and law. He has held various positions at the College of Europe, George Washington University, Washington, DC, and Harvard University. His research focuses on the new Russian foreign policy, soft security issues, international organizations and modern Russian history. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. Iver B. Neumann, D.Phil. (Oxon), is Senior Researcher at NUPI, where he headed the Centre for Russian Studies from 1995 to 1997. He is currently writing the history of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for its centenary in 2005. Among his 12 books are Russia and Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations (Routledge, 1996) and Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation (University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Bertil Nygren is Associate Professor at the Department of Strategy and Security Policy, Swedish National Defence College, Stockholm, where he heads a research programme on Russia and the CIS. He is also

xii

Contributors senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University, where he has held various leading administrative positions. He has published numerous monographs, anthologies and articles, mostly on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, the most recent being an anthology co-edited with Yuri Fedorov, Russian Military Reform and Russia’s New Security Environment (Swedish National Defence College, 2003).

Ingmar Oldberg is Associate Director of Research and former project leader at the Department of Defence Analysis, Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). He has written many books, reports and articles on Russian and Soviet foreign policy, specifically with regard to the neighbouring countries to the west; on Russian regional policy, for instance, concerning Kaliningrad; and on Russian military affairs and environmental problems in Eastern Europe. In 2002 he was a guest researcher at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. Christer Pursiainen is Senior Research Fellow at Nordregio – the Nordic Centre for Spatial Development – in Stockholm, and Chief Expert on EU–RF relations at the Russian–European Centre for Economic Policy (RECEP) in Moscow. A specialist in international relations theory and Russian affairs, he has initiated, led and participated in several international research and educational projects and programmes. Mette Skak is Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. She received an MA in Russian language and history in 1980, and a Ph.D. in 1989. Since then, she has been working at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University – from 1993 as Associate Professor. Skak’s main area of interest is Russian and Central and East European foreign and security policies, currently with a focus on Russia as an actor in the international system, as well as the fake dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 and its broader context. Ekaterina Stepanova is a senior researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow, where she chairs a research group on non-traditional security threats. Stepanova holds a Ph.D. in history from Moscow State University. In 2003 she was on leave from IMEMO to work as a researcher on armed conflict, terrorism and transnational crime at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Acknowledgements

Work on this book started with a conference on Russia’s security policy held in Stockholm in March 2003. It was organized jointly by the Russia research project of the Nordic Security Policy Research Programme (www.nnss.org), headed by Christer Pursiainen, and the Network Northwest Russia, headed by Bertil Nygren, and it was hosted by Nordregio, the Nordic Centre for Spatial Development. Most of the participants reconvened at a seminar in August 2003 to discuss additional papers and drafts. After that all papers were completed, revised and updated so as to cover developments up to the end of 2003. We are especially grateful to the institutions that have participated in financing the activities of both networks – the former by the Nordic Council of Ministries, and the defence ministries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden; the latter by the Swedish National Defence College. Thanks are also due to our eminent and diligent language editor Eve Johansson, without whom the texts would have been significantly less coherent in style and prose. The editorial board consisted of Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen. The main day-to-day responsibility has been in the hands of Vilhelm Konnander, who has borne the brunt of the editing and formatting of the present volume. Ingmar Oldberg read all the texts with particular incisiveness and pushed the work forward insistently. While the structure of the book has been planned collectively by all the editors, Christer Pursiainen (with Vilhelm Konnander) bears the main responsibility for the Introduction and Ingmar Oldberg (assisted by Jakob Hedenskog and Bertil Nygren) for the Conclusions. Our choice of language is UK English, whereas Russian names in transliteration follow the spelling of the original, letter by letter: for example, Rossiiskaia, Gorbachev and Andreev. Exceptions to this rule have been made to match the customary Western spelling found in the press and elsewhere of common names such as Chechnya and Yeltsin. Finally, it must be pointed out that the views expressed in this book are those of the respective authors only. The editors Stockholm, June 2004

Abbreviations

ABM AC AIDS AMEC APEC bcm BEAC CBSS CFE CFSP CIS CPSU CSBM CSCE CSTO

Anti-Ballistic Missile (Treaty) Arctic Council Auto-immune deficiency syndrome Arctic Military Environment Cooperation Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation Billion cubic metres Barents Euro-Atlantic Council Council of the Baltic Sea States Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (Treaty) European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy Commonwealth of Independent States Communist Party of the Soviet Union Confidence- and security-building measure Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe Collective Security Treaty Organization (Organizatsiia Dogovora Kollektivnoi Bezopasnosti) CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction ESDP European Security and Defence Policy EU European Union EurAsEC Eurasian Economic Community FEP Fund for Effective Politics FPS Federal’naia Pogranichnaia Sluzhba (Federal Border Service) FSB Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (Federal Security Service) G7 Group of Seven industrialized countries G8 Group of Eight industrialized countries GAN Gosatomnadzor (Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear and Radiation Safety) GDP Gross domestic product Goskomstat Gosudarstvennyi komitet statistiki (State Committee on Statistics) GUUAM Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova HELCOM Helsinki Commission

Abbreviations xv HIV IAEA IEPP IMF IMU ISA KFOR KGB MD MFA Minatom MNEPR MoD MVD NATO NCM NDEP NGO NMD NNSS NPM NPP NPT NRC NVO OECD OPEC OSCE PCA PCM PFP R&D SCO SDPU-o SES SFOR SME SORT SPS STUK SVOP

Human immunodeficiency virus International Atomic Energy Agency Institute of Transition Economies International Monetary Fund Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan In-depth safety assessment Kosovo Force Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (Committee on State Security) Military District Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Atomic Energy (Russia) Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme for Russia Ministry of Defence Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (Ministry of the Interior) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nordic Council of Ministers Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership Non-governmental organization National Missile Defense (USA) Nordic Network for Security Studies Novoe politicheskoe myshlenie (new political thinking) Nuclear power plant Non-Proliferation Treaty NATO–Russia Council Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Partnership and Co-operation Agreement Partidul Comunistilor din Moldova (Communist Party of Moldova) Partnership for Peace Research and development Shanghai Cooperation Organization Social Democratic Party-united (Ukraine) Single Economic Space Stabilization Force Small and medium-sized enterprise Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty Soiuz Pravykh Sil (Union of Right Forces) Säteilyturvakeskus (Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority) Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike (Council of Foreign and Security Policy)

xvi Abbreviations SVR Tacis TFP UN VTsIOM WMD WTO

Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki (Foreign Intelligence Service) Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States Total factor productivity United Nations Vserossiiskii Tsentr po izucheniiu obshchestvennogo mneniia (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Institute) Weapons of mass destruction World Trade Organization

Map 1 Russia and its neighbours.

Minsk

SYRIA

Yerevan

IRAQ

ARMENIA

Map 2 Russia and its southern perimeter.

ISRAEL

LEBANON

Ceyhan

TURKEY

Tblisi

CHECHNYA

Moscow

GEORGIA

Ankara

Black Sea

MOLDOVA

Chisinau

UKRAINE

Kyiv

BELARUS

Mediterranean Sea CYPRUS

GREECE

BULGARIA

ROMANIA

HUNGARY

SLOVAKIA

POLAND

Tehran

UZBEKISTAN

IRAN

Ashgabat

TURKMENISTAN

AZERBAIJAN

Caspian Sea Baku

RUSSIA

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

Islamabad

TAJIKISTAN

CHINA

KYRGYZSTAN

Kabul

Dushanbe

Tashkent

KAZAKHSTAN

Astana

Introduction

Russia as a great power The motivation for this book is the need for a renewed analysis of Russia, which, after a period of relative weakness and instability during most of the 1990s, has again reappeared in world politics as a major security player, claiming the status of a great power. This is partly due to the fact that, with the advent of Vladimir Putin as president, Russia gained increased political stability, and partly because the Russian economy started to show steady growth. Russia made skilful use of the policy windows of opportunity that were opened to it as a consequence of the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 and, albeit in a different way, the war in Iraq in 2003. This new situation gives rise to questions such as: what kind of player is Russia in the field of security; what is the essence of its security policy; what are its sources, capabilities and priorities; and, not least, what are the prospects for the future? These questions, among others, are discussed at several levels and from many angles, combining empirical and theoretical analyses, by researchers from four Nordic countries, Russia, Germany and France, representing different disciplines and institutions.

The dimensions of Russia’s security policy Discussion of Russia’s security policy, in the context of the contemporary international system, is necessarily multidimensional. When trying to draw a comprehensive picture, the first question which arises is: what is ‘security’? During the Cold War, the literature and debates on the Soviet Union’s security policy were predominantly about traditional military security, overshadowed by the security dilemma between the two superpowers. While it is true that the security dilemma no longer dominates Russia’s relations with the West, the traditional military security matters have certainly not become irrelevant to consideration of Russia’s policies today. Although Russia’s military capacity, or its relative position, cannot be

2

Introduction

compared to that of the Soviet Union, it still remains a major military power by any measure. Many of the chapters of this book accept this traditional definition of security, connected to military and strategic matters, as a starting point. Even so, security policy cannot be discussed as an isolated field of activity without referring to overall foreign policy goals, economic capabilities and goals, domestic political constellations, and so on. What has happened is that, over the past decades, the traditional military threat-related concept of security has been ‘enlarged’. A more comprehensive conception of security first emerged in the academic debate at the end of 1960s or the beginning of 1970s as a reaction to the emergence of perceived threats that were not state-centred traditional military threats but rather global problems. In more recent debates, more and more nonmilitary threats and issues are regarded as part of security. These issues are sometimes discussed, as opposed to traditional military ‘hard security’ issues, in terms of ‘soft security’, including issues such as environmental problems, nuclear safety, illegal immigration, cross-border crime, the transport of dangerous materials, infectious diseases and minority problems. Thus it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ security. The ongoing anti-terrorism campaign in the world community has proved how questions such as aviation security, money laundering, drug smuggling and the disposal of radioactive and other kinds of dangerous material have suddenly become essential elements in defining security in its traditional military meaning as well, or at least that they are closely connected to military security matters. The widened concept of security, or its more flexible use in recent academic debates and practical applications, is taken into account in this book. Russia is in many ways a perfect example of a country where security policy cannot rely on the traditional military threats only, but where security has to be understood more widely. A second dimension of security, and one which is very closely connected to the question of Russia’s identity, is the territorial or geopolitical dimension. During the time of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical and political entities that were mostly discussed in both the Western and the Soviet literature, in relation to Soviet foreign and security policy, were the West (including the USA and Western Europe), the Third World (including China as a special case), and the international communist movement (including both the socialist countries and the communist parties that were not in power). After the retreat of the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical situation and environment of the new Russia looked quite different. Soon in Russian debates two concepts were introduced to reflect the new geopolitical identity and realities: the ‘near abroad’ as the particular sphere of Russia’s national interest, consisting of the former Soviet republics (excluding the Baltic states); and the ‘far abroad’ for the rest of the world.

Introduction 3 In this book, however, a slightly different approach is chosen. Russia’s role in security matters is approached as that of a global security player or a great power, on the one hand, and as that of a regional power on the other. On the global level, Russia is trying either to ‘balance against’ or to ‘bandwagon with’ the other power centres. How Russia does this, and what motivates its policy choices, are the questions to be discussed. On the regional level, which here means the ex-Soviet space, Russia’s great power status compared to its neighbours is not contested. What are its motivations, goals and priorities, and what are the instruments it uses towards its neighbours? The chapters of this book will also show that there is an interesting interplay between the global and regional levels of great power policy. A third dimension of Russia’s security policy elaborated in this book is the distinction between the external and internal factors. In Soviet studies, the distinction between the external and internal/domestic contexts was adopted in the 1960s. The idea, against the background of so-called singlefactor theories that had dominated the field earlier, was that there are several factors, or sources of motivation, working at the same time and which explain the country’s foreign and security policy behaviour. While this general principle is still generally accepted in contemporary research, more attention has been paid recently to the linkages between the factors and levels. In this book, the external and internal factors are discussed separately or in combination in many chapters. External factors may include the overall balance of power of the international system, or other countries’ policies, or particular events such as those of 11 September 2001 (in the USA known as 9/11), and so on. These external factors may place some external limitations or restrictions on Russia or open up new opportunities, and they engage Russia in strategic-choice situations where it must assess the possible actions and reactions of others. Internal factors include the domestic political system, bureaucratic power struggles, ideologies or ‘schools of thought’ in Russian foreign and security policy thinking, military and economic structures and capabilities, and so on. This means that, for a full examination of Russia’s security policy, it is necessary to open the ‘black box’ of Russia and consider its policy not only as a result of a state’s rational choice. Taken together, these different factors help to explain Russia’s security policy as a result of the complex interplay of several structural and non-structural sources of motivation. Finally, one dimension that is a theme running through almost all the chapters is the temporal dimension. The focus is on both change and continuity of policy, and the explanations for the different features. Some chapters draw a long line from Russia’s history to the present; others note the importance of the Soviet legacy; some point to the difference between the periods of President Boris Yeltsin and President Putin. But in many cases the dividing line is literally 9/11. Obviously, this was a milestone

4

Introduction

event also from the point of view of Russia’s role in and approach to the global, regional and domestic arenas of security. But precisely how did this event affect Russia’s security policy thinking? What has changed and what has not, what is the underlying motivation for policy change in many security-related fields, and what are the future perspectives? These questions are dealt with in detail by many of the authors, and put into a broader perspective in the concluding chapter.

Previews The chapters of the book fall largely into four groups. The first and most general part deals with Russia as a global security actor. Iver B. Neumann starts this discussion by framing contemporary Russia’s security policy against a wide historical background. He argues that there is a line to be drawn from Ivan III (1482–1505) to Vladimir Putin; the motivation behind Russia’s security policy it is not only the country’s security as such but its striving for recognition as a great power by other great powers. However, here contemporary Russia faces a problem, since, according to Neumann, the international system of today, especially when it comes to Europe, is a ‘network system’, and the settings within which a country will or will not be recognized as an important player are quite different from those of the traditional state-based international system. Russia seems still to base its thinking on the concepts of states and sovereignty, while other European great powers base theirs rather on the concepts of societies and integration. If Russia continues in this way, Neumann argues, it will still be recognized as a great power from the traditional point of view, but ‘it will be a player of different kind’. Ingmar Oldberg continues the discussion of Russia’s great-power ambitions by reviewing its recent policies towards the most important geopolitical entities – the USA, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), China and other major powers in Asia. He argues that, while the great-power motivation underlies the general foreign and security policy line, Putin’s Russia has conducted a differentiated policy, always carefully adapting to the conditions of each region and country. In his analysis, Oldberg shows, on the one hand, which the fields of cooperation are and, on the other hand, what the sources of potential competition and conflict with each of the foreign actors are. He concludes that Russia has adopted a very pragmatic line according to its own capacities and overall balance of power, which in practice has often meant rather cooperative security vis-à vis the West but neo-imperialist aspirations towards the direct neighbours in the CIS. Jakub M. Godzimirski also discusses the relations between Russia and the West, focusing especially on the Russian relationship with NATO. He reviews these relations from the obvious clash between Russia and NATO

Introduction 5 in 1999 in connection with the Kosovo war to the establishment of a warmer and more institutionalized relationship, especially after 11 September. Concluding that in the current situation NATO has somewhat declined in importance in Russia’s eyes, he also discusses Russia’s decision to side with the West against terrorism, with the temporary episode of Russia’s allying itself with France and Germany against the US–British positions on Iraq 2003. In explaining Russia’s stands, Godzimirski differentiates between four schools of thought – realists, geo-economists, Eurasianists and Atlanticists – while President Putin’s policy is treated as ‘pragmatic’, often balancing between the schools. From this perspective, Godzimirski considers whether a security community has been established between the USA, NATO and Russia against the common enemy – namely, terrorism. Mette Skak offers both a conceptual, theoretical and an empirical analysis of Russia’s foreign and security policy. Her main empirical point is that a more pro-Western policy has gained ground in Russia, based mainly on President Putin’s contention that this is necessary in terms of the country’s economic and overall modernization. The relative success of this process in the prevailing conditions of domestic anti-Westernism she explains by adapting Robert D. Putnam’s notion of the ‘two-level game’ to the Russian case. From this viewpoint, foreign policy is a game field where the audience consists of both the domestic and the international parts. Her argument is that in playing the game Russia’s leaders apply different orders of preference at different levels. For the domestic audience, Russia tends to be illiberal, neo-imperialist and anti-American; for the international audience, Russia is liberal and bandwagons with the USA. While the first part of the book is devoted to Russia’s efforts to play a global great-power role, the second part zooms in to discuss Russia as a regional security player. Vilhelm Konnander starts this discussion by analysing Russia’s approach to and role in Northern Europe, with special emphasis on the Baltic Sea region. He thus explores the Russian greatpower reflex reaction and how Russia is adapting – or not adapting – to a changed policy framework. In particular he discusses the Russian capacity to reorient its foreign policy goals, and how Russia has taken the opportunity which was fortuitously granted after 11 September 2001, once again to play the great-power game at which it is best, thus losing out on chances to participate in European integration. He argues that if its approach in the Baltic Sea region were to set a precedent, Russia is in for a tough ride in its relations with Europe. Jakob Hedenskog’s theme is Russia’s policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. He notes that these three countries constitute a ‘gap’ between Russia and the EU, and Russia’s intention is to fill it, mainly for economic but also for military–strategic reasons. Recent developments in Russia’s policy testify to an increasing priority being given to relations

6

Introduction

with Ukraine, at the cost of Belarus. However, all these countries remain important to Russia and, in trying to influence them, Russia uses several instruments in combination. The effectiveness of Russia’s economic power as a means of exerting influence varies from country to country, but energy especially has been used effectively as a means of exerting control over Ukraine. Russia’s military bases have been used to influence Moldova, while this has not been so notable in the case of the two other countries. Similarly, although all three countries have large Russianspeaking minorities, this instrument has been most useful in Moldova. Finally, Russia directly or indirectly controls a large part of the three countries’ information space. Bertil Nygren then focuses on Russia’s policy towards the Caucasus, especially Georgia, and on what kind of change has taken place as a result of Russia joining the US-led alliance against terrorism. He argues that relations between Russia and Georgia have seriously deteriorated since Putin came to power – along a ‘downward spiral’, as he puts it. In the autumn of 2002, Russia came closer than it had done at any time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union to using force in an international war. According to Nygren it was precisely the events of 11 September 2001, and the resulting US policy towards Afghanistan, that made it logically possible for Russia to use force against its closest neighbours in the name of the common war on terrorism. Taking into account that the USA has also increased its presence and influence in the region, Nygren concludes that there are all the ingredients for a potential drama for the decade to come. Lena Jonson concentrates on Central Asia, which Russia formerly treated as firmly belonging to its immediate sphere of interests. However, since 11 September 2001 Russia has accepted the US and NATO presence in the region. Why did this policy change take place? This puzzle she explains by deriving four possible explanations from the theoretical international relations literature. The international structure explanation would suggest that the change of Russian policy towards Central Asia is entirely the result of Central Asia becoming a global ‘front yard’, and Russia is adapting its policy to the new balance. The instrumental explanation sees the Russian policy change only as an instrument for increasing the country’s influence at the international level in general, by bandwagoning with the USA. The institutional rivalry explanation explains Russia’s policy change as the outcome of a contest between different domestic interest groups. The socializing explanation refers to a process whereby Russia finds it to be in its own interests to work within a shared framework of accepted international norms and rules of behaviour. Jonson concludes that the first two explanations apply best to the Central Asian case, while the socializing factor played a role in the Iraq case. The third part of the book is devoted to the internal factors that define Russia’s security policy. Isabelle Facon discusses the Russian military reform, starting by reviewing the present condition of the Russian armed

Introduction 7 forces. While she writes that the second Chechen war has shown that the army is not in total disrepair, she paints quite a grim picture of the state of Russia’s overall weapon systems and military personnel in terms of training and social conditions. The military reform has been a crucial question, but there have been several obstacles to real progress here. Facon points not only to the lack of financial support but also to the lack of coherent policy; instead of coherence there has been a great deal of inter-bureaucratic rivalry as well as differences of opinion concerning the basic solutions to the problem. However, Facon identifies a new start in this field in late 2001. Against the background of these developments, she discusses civil–military relations as well as the armed forces’ attitude towards President Putin’s international cooperation in the field of military security. She concludes by noting that there may be a contradiction between the Russian leadership’s effort to keep the military’s actions and ambitions in check and its attempts to reform and modernize the armed forces at the same time. Almost all the chapters previewed so far note that Russia’s security policy is closely interdependent with its economic capacity and economic interests. To further highlight this important aspect, Roland Götz gives a detailed and balanced analysis of Russia’s economic prospects in both the medium- and the long-term perspectives. He does not confine his analysis to the traditional economic factors and structural economic conditions, but includes Russia’s declining population and developments in its population structure, serious health problems such as HIV/AIDS, and environmental conditions. While the present economic situation in Russia is fairly favourable, thanks to growing oil and other energy exports, he concludes that only modest economic growth is to be expected in the medium-term perspective. The long-term effects of, for instance, growing health problems may be a serious obstacle on Russia’s road to economic growth. Thus Götz argues that Russia may try to play the role of a great power in world politics, but that this role will rest on very weak economic foundations for at least some time to come. Nikita Lomagin brings up the issue of hard security versus soft security, claiming that this is exactly where Russia may slowly be forming a new security agenda and identity. He shows first how public opinion regards soft security, and especially ecological, problems as real threats in Russia, and goes on to review the development of the soft security discourse from Soviet times to the present. He notes, however, that hard and soft security issues rarely go together, and the respective bureaucratic institutions often compete with each other. Looking at state and regional-level practices, especially in the allocation of resources, Lomagin concludes that there is great reluctance among the decision-makers to accept the new threats and corresponding new methods as important for Russia’s security, compared to the traditional hard security matters. In order for so-called soft security to become more important in determining Russia’s security agenda and

8

Introduction

identity, Lomagin proposes that an enlightened leadership should pay more attention to these crucial threat scenarios. A different kind of security dilemma is reviewed by Christer Pursiainen. He discusses the nuclear safety and environmental problems in north-west Russia. These problems are not exclusively internal to Russia, but constitute actual or potential threats for other countries as well. First, Pursiainen maps the risks and presents the main threat scenarios and the conditions that lie behind them. He notes that the risk perceptions vary from extreme alarmism to complete public neglect of the problems – the latter especially from the official Russian side, contributing to mutual suspicion and mistrust between the neighbouring countries and Russia. He goes on to depict Russia’s domestic policy-making in this field, and highlights the diminishing role, or total abolition, of the independent control organizations within the Russian environmental and nuclear administration during the Putin era, as well as the negative developments in the relations between the Russian state and civil society in these issue areas. These developments, being seen as negative in the West, may create additional obstacles to relations between Russia and Europe. Finally, Pursiainen discusses the international regime-building to solve these soft-security problems. He concludes that, while a degree of institutionalized cooperation on these issues has evolved, many sources of conflict also remain. The last part of the book looks in more detail at one of the new security threats, namely terrorism, which has largely dominated Russia’s security debates both before and after the events of 11 September 2001. Ekaterina Stepanova analyses the approach Russia has chosen to fight terrorism. She begins by showing how terrorism as a concept is rather flexible and includes several types of conflict. Russia is predominantly concerned about what she calls conflict-generated terrorism, closely connected to the war in Chechnya. Looking at the effect of 11 September on Russia’s approach, she notes that Russia has increasingly been imitating the US model of a fourfold policy: make no concessions, destroy terrorists or bring them to justice, isolate and put pressure on actors which sponsor terrorists and bolster the anti-terrorist capabilities of your allies. Stepanova concludes by differentiating between two approaches at the opposite extremes of a policy continuum – a short-term reactive approach and a long-term preventive approach. While she argues that Russia has mainly followed the first, reactive approach, at least before 11 September 2001, she goes further to suggest a mid-term anti-terrorist strategy. This would be based on efforts to support non-militant structures that nevertheless have the same aim as the terrorists, thus isolating and splitting the terrorists further, and at the same time efforts at the ideological level supporting the moderate Islamic groups in order to create a challenge for the radicals from within the Muslim community itself. Finally, Pavel Baev looks at the issue of terrorism from a different perspective, developing rather critical arguments against the Russian

Introduction 9 leadership’s way of using the current spirit of anti-terrorism for its own advantage. He notes that all the terrorist attacks in Russia are associated with one local conflict – in Chechnya. However, he points out the contradiction in Russia’s position in that, while it proclaims the Chechen conflict to be its own internal affair, it claims at the same time that its actions are part of the global war on terrorism. He then goes on to look at President Putin’s ‘pyramid of power’, consisting of several ‘clans’ with often clashing interests, and claims that terrorism is being used by the president very much as a ‘political technology’ to manage the rival bureaucracies and the public at large. In fact, Baev argues, the threat of terrorism serves much the same function as the threat of ‘imperialist aggression’ did for the leaders of the Soviet Union. Thus, the motivation of counter-terrorism is actually instrumental by nature: it is being used as a tool to control the domestic political space rather than to fight terrorism itself. This is apparent in the centralization of power to the president, the politicization of the Federal Security Service (Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, FSB) and other special services, as well as in the manipulation of public opinion in support of the regime. The editors’ concluding chapter summarizes the above arguments and findings thematically, adding some updates and some perspectives, concerning in particular the internal security concept under Putin. A general conclusion is that, while Russian foreign policy has become more pragmatic and responsive both to problems and opportunities under Putin, the growing lack of checks and balances in domestic politics makes political integration with the West very difficult and gives the president great freedom in applying the growing Russian power abroad.

Part I

Dimensions of external security

1

Russia as a great power Iver B. Neumann

Since the early 1990s, Russia has struggled to find its role in the novel realities of international relations. In the various dimensions of Russian security policy, the concept of a great power stands out as a unifying formula for the conduct of affairs. This chapter presents some elements of what being a great power means to Russia. It uses a broad brush and compresses vast expanses of historical time. Given the outline of this book, it is also warranted to tackle the subject from a European perspective. Thus, when this chapter touches on such issues as Chechnya it does so to the extent that they interconnect with issues of European security. The chapter begins with an account of what in this author’s view is Russia’s great success in the arena of European security since 2001. It then asks how it was possible for Russia seemingly to improve its standing so rapidly in such a short time-span. In doing so, it draws on the concept of securitization. Drawing further on the concept of securitization, it then tells a second story: about Russia’s 500-year-long struggle for recognition as a European power. It concludes that Russia’s major problem in Europe in the years to come is not, first and foremost, a security problem but a general political problem that has repercussions for security policy.

Post-11 September During the 1990s, in most areas and from most angles, Russia was a mess. Security policy was no exception. Sergei Karaganov summed up the overall problem when he singled out the key problem for Russia as being ‘to get out of the no-man’s land it found itself in after the Cold War as a semi-partner semi-enemy of the West’.1 Discussions of its nuclear capacity concentrated on the state’s inability to guarantee adequate maintenance, on the possibility of terrorists pilfering materials, and on the brain drain of personnel. Its army was a mess and, for reasons to do mainly with the inherent inertia of organizations and the inability of the politicians to face up to a struggle with those organizations, reform proved unattainable. The navy spent most of its money on a huge platform that turned

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out to be a white elephant. The air force and the rocket defence suffered all the expected problems that are bound to arise when the hightechnology – and therefore capital-intensive – military branches can no longer rely on adequate funding. Military and social morale was, it seemed, at a low ebb. During the first half of the 1990s debate raged as to whether the Russian Federation would go the way of the Soviet Union. As late as 10 September 2001, bets were on as to whether Chechnya would actually be able to succeed in its attempt to be ‘the one that got away’. Seen from the perspective of the conglomerate of old communists and Russian nationalists that made up the main opposition to the ruling regime, the worst problem was that the state no longer commanded respect, either at home or abroad. Their programme for a strong state – gosudarstvennost’ – fastened on two things: first, the need for the state to be in command directly and decisively over ‘the people’ (not ‘society’: that is a liberal category that these people rarely used); and, second, the need for Russia to remain a great power – that is, a power that was ranked on a par with its historical European neighbours as well as with China and even the USA. Although the opposition was particularly vocal in making these demands, they were not necessarily qualitatively different from mainstream thinking. Allen Lynch was certainly not alone in commenting on Russia’s foreign relations overall in the 1990s that ‘most striking, perhaps, has been the Russian effort to maintain the appearance of great-power status abroad while most of the sinews of Russian power have withered into evanescence at home’.2 This is an ongoing concern.3 This was the situation when Vladimir Putin became president, and it presented a number of clearly defined issues which, in the Russian setting, were seen throughout the country as crying out for strong leadership. Putin’s strategy, as set out, for example, in his great Millennium speech in December 1999, was to build bridges from a position of strength. He tried to build a historical bridge from the present to the past without excluding the Soviet period – that is, to start developing a seemingly continuous identity in time for a country that felt itself to have had no continuous history. By acknowledging the need to look at Russia’s history as continuous, he also reached out to all those who sympathized with different parts of it – liberals who saw the changes of the 1990s as being to Russia’s benefit, communists who wanted recognition of the modernization of Russia that they felt had been achieved during the Soviet period, and oldstyle nationalists who wanted recognition of Russia’s long history as a strong state in Europe with interests in Asia. The major theme of the speech – and the major theme of Putin’s reign – has been to stress that Russia’s Westernization must be a Westernization of Russia’s own choosing and carried out in Russia’s own way. Putin simply co-opted the opposition’s stress on the importance of gosudarstvennost’ to Russian history as to its present:

Russia as a great power 15 The main thing is that Soviet power did not let the country develop a flourishing society which could develop dynamically, with free people. First and foremost, the ideological approach to the economy caused our country to lag increasingly behind [otstavanie] the developed states. It is bitter to admit that for almost seven decades we travelled down a blind alley, which took us away from the main track of civilization . . . The experience of the 1990s vividly shows that genuine and efficient revival of our Fatherland cannot be brought about on Russian soil simply by dint of abstract models and schemata extracted from foreign textbooks. Mechanically copying the experiences of other states will not bring progress. Every country, Russia included, has a duty to search for its own path of renewal. We still have not made much headway . . . Society has been in a state of schism [raskol] . . . Russia will not soon, if ever, become a replica of, say, the USA or Great Britain, where liberal values have deep-seated traditions. For us, the state, with its institutions and structures, has always played an exclusively important role in the life of the country and its people. For the Russian [rossiianin], a strong state is not an anomaly, not something with which he has to struggle, but, on the contrary, a source and a guarantee of order, as well as the initiator and main moving force of any change. Contemporary Russian society does not mistake a strong and effective state for a totalitarian one.4 Putin started to implement such a programme, to general acclaim in the West. The key problem in terms of security, however, was that very few people outside the communities of professional Russia-watchers and those interested in future energy resources really cared what Russia did. For a small state it may be a very nice existence to be overlooked, but if a larger power is overlooked it is impossible for it to be a great power. In order to be great you need the recognition of others, and in order to be recognized you need to be noticed and thought of on a regular basis. To be a great power is, among other things, to be present when absent – that is, to be taken into consideration by other powers as a matter of course and in issues that the power in question itself may not even know are being discussed. It is to have a droit de regard, even when you are absent in mind and body. Russia needed to be seen. Putin’s chance to be seen arrived with a bang when the twin towers collapsed in New York on 11 September 2001. He immediately – apparently against the express opinion of some of his key advisers – rushed to the side of his fellow president, George W. Bush. These acts of spoken solidarity were soon followed up with a whole string of other acts, the most important of which were probably the negative one of not protesting at (or even vetoing) a US military presence in Central Asia, a traditional Russian sphere of influence, and the positive one of playing the role of go-between. Russia was back in the thick of things, ostensibly as the USA’s ally in what

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the latter insistently but inaccurately refers to as the war against terror. The chapter by Bertil Nygren in this book analyses how Russia’s interests in Chechnya dovetailed with the interests that drove the United States’ Afghan campaign against the Taliban. The point here is simply that this dovetailing resulted in Russia regaining its visibility in the security field. Judging from the way in which Putin and other top Russian politicians have presented their participation in the Afghan campaign to domestic and foreign publics, it seems that the possibility and desirability of such an effect was key to President Putin’s choice of policy in the first place. Russia’s return to the global security arena did not come to a halt with the US Afghan campaign, however. The unilateralism that has been a consistent trait of US foreign policy since 11 September afforded Russia new opportunities to increase its visibility. Following what it proclaimed to be its success in Afghanistan, the USA changed its focus from Tora Bora to Baghdad, and mounted increasing pressure on the Iraqi regime. In so doing, it availed itself of international organizations and alliances only incidentally. As George Bush put it on 20 September 2001, in an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, his opponents were evil incarnate, and everybody who was not with him in fighting them was against him: We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions – by abandoning every value except the will to power – they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies. [Applause.] . . . We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. [Applause.] From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime . . . This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom. We ask every nation to join us . . . The civilized world is rallying to America’s side . . . The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them. [Applause.]5 The major theme here is the impossibility of remaining neutral in a fight between good and evil, and Bush elaborated on it in a series of speeches in

Russia as a great power 17 the following months – for example, in his ‘Rose Garden Speech’ of 4 April 2002: ‘Since September the 11th, I’ve delivered this message: everyone must choose; you’re either with the civilized world, or you’re with the terrorists. All in the Middle East also must choose and must move decisively in word and deed against terrorist acts.’ The US way of demanding unquestioning loyalty to the line that it defines at any given time, which is visible here, is a rather different way of approaching questions of security from that which is found in Europe. In the line-up before the Afghan campaign there were already clear signs that Europeans were unhappy with the US Alleingang, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) invoked Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty as an act of solidarity with the United States only to be told that its help was not needed. The USA has followed a similar line where the question of the relevance of the United Nations has been concerned: the UN has been welcomed as an arena where the United States may garner general support, but all US spokesmen, Secretary of State Colin Powell included, have been quite clear that if the UN Security Council does not reach the conclusion that the USA thinks it should reach, then the USA is ready to act alone. Again, this US line on the role of multilateral diplomacy in the area of security is at loggerheads with half a century of uninterrupted European tradition. This chapter is not about transatlantic relations, so it does not consider in detail the transatlantic configuration, such as the roles played by the United Kingdom (UK) or by the calendar of domestic German politics. The point here is that, as a result of US choices made in the run-up to the Afghan campaign and again during the run-up to the Iraq campaign, there was a split between the USA on the one hand and the two traditional key European Union (EU) players – France and Germany – on the other. Russian analysts who had followed the consolidation of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, influenced by balance-of-power thinking in both its Soviet and its realist guises, had been biding their time in anticipation of a transatlantic tiff of one kind or another.6 A breach now opened up, and Putin was quick to step into it. In January 2003 the world was treated to newspaper front pages and newsreel that covered a joint press conference given by the heads of state of France, Germany – and Russia. Russia was once more not only clearly visible but right in the European eye of power. In the course of two years, then, Putin’s Russia has gone from being an overlooked presence in European security policy to becoming a highly visible player. This has happened without any major changes taking place in its power capabilities. This is, of course, not to deny the changes in economic and military policy that have indeed taken place; nor is it to deny that throughout the 1990s, and even now, Russia has been and is a formidable nuclear power. It still maintains a nuclear warheads production programme that involves ten closed cities with a total population of 760,000

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people, 130,000 of which work at nuclear facilities, and this is only part of Russia’s activities in this area.7 But such material factors cannot explain the sudden shift in policy, for what is relatively stable cannot explain something that suddenly shifts. We need to look elsewhere, to the way the actors concerned make sense of the world, in order to account for the change. This is where the concept of securitization is helpful. The inelegant verb ‘securitize’ refers to the elegant idea that something typically becomes a question of security when it is lifted out of the general political agenda and made into a question of life and death.8 As Barry Buzan has put it: The securitizing formula is that . . . threats require exceptional measures and/or emergency action to deal with them. Securitization classically legitimates the use of force, but more broadly it raises the issue above normal politics and into the realm of ‘panic politics’ where departures from the rules of normal politics justify secrecy, additional executive powers, and activities that would otherwise be illegal.9 What happened immediately after 11 September was that terrorism was securitized. It used to be a question of general policy, and as such it was first and foremost the responsibility of the police. Now it was made into a question that required exceptional measures and emergency action, by the military, on a global scale. Using another inelegant verb, terrorism was also ‘violized’ – that is, turned into a casus belli that called not only for exceptional measures in general but for war and so for large-scale loss of life.10 The USA’s securitization and violization of terrorism in the immediate aftermath of 11 September mirrored the securitization and violization of terrorism that had taken place in Russia over the Chechen question. It is this harmonization of the US and Russian political life-worlds that is of the essence, for it is here that the two parties created the preconditions for their alliance that was to follow and for the concrete actions taken by that alliance. Where Russia is concerned, a second factor has to be added here. One of the reasons why Russia’s visibility was so low during the 1990s was that the security agenda was to a high degree dominated by developments in sectors where Russia was peripheral. The ‘soft security’ debate presupposed a way of framing questions to do with power, and particularly with the appositeness of ‘soft power’, that did not easily fit in with traditional Russian ways of framing these questions. The debate over operations other than war (peace operations etc.) involved ways of conceiving of military operations that again did not chime with a traditional Russian agenda. Other ways of wielding security influence – economic, ecological, and so on – have to be bankrolled on a rather hefty scale. Russia did not have the resources to do that. The net result of all this was that the action in the

Russia as a great power 19 security field overall was where Russia was not, and vice versa. The Afghan campaign, on the other hand, meant that conventional warfare was back at the centre of the security agenda. Although Russia’s conventional capabilities were flagging compared to what they had been in Soviet days, besides its nuclear capability this was still the one sector where Russia could play a key role. Furthermore, the campaign was planned to play itself out in the one theatre Russia was still able to maintain as a sphere of influence – namely, Central Asia. As noted above, US policy since 11 September has not exactly been marked by a broad and multilateral co-optation of allies. Russia was welcomed because it rallied to the cause. Conversely, this meant that Russia did not have to invest heavily in the alliance. It seems that the result was a loose alliance between the two countries that was restricted to one security sector and one issue: namely, what both parties were happy to call the war on terror. The more recent move by Russia, when it distanced itself from the US line in the run-up to the Iraqi campaign in order to throw its weight in with France and Germany behind the UN track, demonstrates that Russia gives priority to expanding its room for manoeuvre and its visibility over its alliance with the USA. Throughout the Cold War it remained a Soviet priority to try to exploit transatlantic tiffs. The recent Russian move is a reminder that this priority was fuelled not only by communist ideology but also by classic balance-of-power thinking. What is new in the present situation is not Russia’s priorities but the fact that the USA no longer gives priority to its working relationship with its European allies, be that over Russia or over other challenges. Russia has simply harvested what has come its way. How far will Russian security policy be able to exploit this situation? The issue seems to be bound up with the debate that has been raging between neo-realists and constructivists on the future fate of NATO, and is perhaps best approached from that angle. Since the end of the Cold War, neo-realists have consistently argued that, since NATO is an alliance, and since alliances break down once the threat they were formed to withstand is gone or the gain they were formed to win is won or gone, NATO’s days were numbered.11 NATO’s demise would come about as a result of a systemically inevitable shift in the balance of power. Against this, neoliberals have argued that institutions such as NATO had their own weight, which might change the actors’ priorities. Constructivists went one better, and argued that NATO had survived against the odds since a Western selfunderstanding had evolved whereby membership of NATO had become a naturalized part of what it meant to be part of Western civilization.12 If NATO is now being shunted to one side – which is a distinct and perhaps even likely possibility – it now appears that this analysis was wrong. Neo-realists would argue that it was wrong because it underestimated the natural tendency of the system to induce balance-of-power thinking among its members. On the other hand, there are good reasons

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for concluding that the key factor is not the system’s automatic influence on the players. What needs to be analysed is not why all players abandoned NATO but why the USA gave higher priority to the need to fight its own wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and follow its own unilaterally determined foreign policy course overall, than it gave to fighting what it disparagingly calls ‘war by committee’ and maintaining NATO. One answer to this question would be that the US political leadership thought along the same lines as the neo-realists – that it was more important to maximize their immediate advantage than to risk cooperation that might lead nowhere. If this is the case, then neo-realist thinking generally, and its prediction about the demise of NATO specifically, will be seen to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It may be more useful to see US foreign policy and neo-realist thinking as two symptoms of a specific way of conceiving the world, rather than to see them as distinct phenomena, with one being an explanation of the other. The importance of this to Russian security policy is potentially very high, for if the USA continues to act on such premises then its first priority will not be to maximize the benefits from an alliance between deep-rooted democratic regimes – which, according to all the NATO documents of the 1990s, was exactly what NATO was – but rather to maximize what are seen as the USA’s geopolitical interests. As pointed out already by George Kennan in his 1950 analysis of US foreign policy, a long-term thread in US policy is to see to it that no one power dominates Eurasia. As long as the Soviet Union was candidate number one for the role of dominant power in Eurasia, the thing to do would be to form an alliance with other powers – which was what duly happened during the Cold War: NATO was such an alliance.13 Here the much-debated relative weight of geopolitics and ideology for US NATO policy in the twentieth century is not relevant, for as long as the Cold War was on, these two factors pulled in the same direction. Now, the picture has become more complicated. At present, the EU has become the new candidate number one for this role. In geopolitical terms, it therefore makes eminent sense for the USA to ally itself with Russia as a possible counterweight. As long as Russia pledges allegiance to economic and political systems that are roughly in accordance with the models held up by the USA, ideology will not work against a US realignment with Russia. And even if Russia comes across as a little authoritarian, the USA may still find that geopolitics outweighs ideology. The US realignment away from the EU and towards Russia, the beginning of which can already be seen, is therefore likely to continue. This becomes even more likely the more strongly the EU resists US leadership and instead chooses to develop to the full its own political and economic models. All this means that the future looks very bright indeed for Russian security policy, for it means that US interest in Russia is not tied specifically to the war on terror but to the new constellation in European politics overall. This is a rather more stable base on which to build.

Russia as a great power 21 To this may be added a facilitating factor. Already before 11 September there was a marked difference between the EU and US policies towards Russia. The EU insisted on discussing the human rights situation, particularly with reference to the situation in Chechnya, and this focus was balanced by a constructive policy in the economic sector (with talks about the possible expansion of the Common European Economic Area being a key factor). The USA, on the other hand, was less involved in both sectors. After 11 September both the USA and Russia set aside other concerns such as the integrity of civil society and the rights of prisoners of war under international law in favour of state security with considerable ease. In their security thinking, both give priority to traditional concerns of sovereignty, rather than to the network-, institution- and integration-based multilateral approach favoured by most Europeans. If the USA and Russia are both playing a security game focused on the defence sector and on so-called hard security, while the EU is more even-handed in its approach to different sectors, then this may be a factor that facilitates US–Russian joint action in future contingencies over US–EU joint action. This factor will play directly into the US equation of how to balance its policies on Russia and the EU. As noted above, as seen from the US point of view, geopolitical arguments favour Russia, while the ideological arguments may go either way. If the USA and Russia find common ground in downplaying human rights specifically and soft security generally, while the EU maintains its policy, then a constellation of ideologies may well emerge quite quickly that favours enhanced Russian–US cooperation. To sum up, a string of factors help to explain why Russia’s visibility has increased so rapidly over the past two years. First, the US Afghan campaign meant that US securitization brought to the fore an area where Russian policy was already securitized, namely terrorism. Second, this development shifted security attention away from sectors where Russia was only a peripheral player towards one where it was well equipped to play a role – conventional warfare. Third, this conventional warfare was planned for and played itself out in a geographical area – probably the only geographical area – where Russia was eminently poised to participate. Fourth, the nature of the newly forged relationship with the USA was such that Russia still had enough room for manoeuvre to avail itself of a classic balance-of-power gambit whereby it threw its weight in with France and Germany against the USA in the run-up to the Iraqi campaign, thus further heightening its visibility by emerging from the shadow of the USA, which was without doubt its senior partner in the Afghan campaign. As seen from Moscow, things are going well for Russia in the area of security. And when things are going well it is always wise to heed Machiavelli’s advice: do not rest on your laurels, but prepare for the problems to come, for problems will indeed come. Here two problems may colour Russia’s, and therefore Europe’s, security horizon in the years to come. They may not be the most pressing, or the most talked about.

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Problem one: too much securitization The idea of securitization raises one general problem that in the opinion of this author has taken on new salience in the face of a war against a country which, for reasons that may seem paradoxical (but let us leave that aside), has considerable sympathy among the world’s one billion Muslims. The problem is how much to securitize. In the 1990s, this question was discussed as a question of the pros and cons of making, say, ecological questions part of the security agenda. The main argument in favour was that this would heighten the salience of ecological challenges in political life overall, and would therefore more likely than not lead to more resources flowing in the direction of this sector. The main argument against expanding the security agenda was that the kinds of solution that are key to that agenda – namely, the use of force – may not be very well suited to resolving issues of environmental security. But there is another aspect to this question: the danger of having our lifeworld swamped with security concerns. Swedish diplomat Torsten Örn recounts in his recently published book Varfö r diplomati? 14 how a Swedish agricultural attaché to the Soviet Union found himself on the wrong side of Soviet security policy for picking some wild flowers that he wanted to bring home to his sweetheart. The KGB accused him of intending to measure the radioactivity of the petals, which, they informed him, would be an act of espionage. The logic is reminiscent of that of US debates about the hazards of East–West trade during the Reagan area: if we sell the Soviets good X, the money that they save from buying it from us rather than make it themselves may be used to produce weapon Y. It follows that we should sell them nothing. These are two examples, trifling perhaps, of how everything can be securitized. In relaxed times, men and women of integrity may indeed treat this matter frivolously. But not all times are relaxed times. The logic on display here is potentially stifling, not only to global exchange but to social life in general. A fairly recent episode in Russian history illustrates this point. In the 1930s the number of individuals, institutions and whole countries that were appointed enemies of people increased exponentially. The number of issues that were securitized also exploded. At its peak, every single citizen of the Soviet Union save one, Stalin, was reduced to a potential dvurushnik – a two-hander. The expression is a more concrete variant on the Native American idea of speaking with two tongues; its meaning was that the two-hander could act in seemingly legitimate ways as it were with the right hand, while using the sinister or left hand to act in the interests of the class enemy. There is a general lesson here, for the idea of closing Soviet borders and closing working-class ranks was that everybody should feel secure in themselves. The result, however, was the opposite, that the almost total fixation on security and the need for ‘vigilance’ (bditel’nost’) gave way to an environment of insecurity, bordering on the paranoid.

Russia as a great power 23 There is an obsolete meaning of the English concept of security that may be good to think with in this regard. In Macbeth, ‘Security is mortals’ cheefest enemy’.15 We are damned if we do not heed challenges – but it has to be added that we are equally, if differently, damned if we become so vigilant that it threatens the very concept of social life itself. This, after all, was what happened to ‘the good Macbeth’; he learned that the hunt for total security was self-defeating, and that in the end not only social life but human life is simply risky. There are ditches on either side of every road; it is little use to stay away from the ditch of naivité only to drive into the Stalinist ditch of too much vigilance. In the wake of 11 September, possible securitization looms over a whole swathe of new areas. This is a challenge for Russia – but no more so than for the rest of Europe, and perhaps not as much as for the USA, where clear and present dangers are now suddenly spotted in ever new places. But we all seem to share an interest in trying to halt the securitization of ever new areas of social life.

Problem two: kinds of greatness This is a common challenge, but it is a particular challenge to Russia. In a stimulating paper, Flemming Splidsboel-Hansen16 argues that ‘post-Soviet Russia essentially is confronted with the same basic challenge in the international arena as was Gorchakov’, by which he means the challenge Alexander Gorchakov (Russian Foreign Minister from 1856 to 1882) had to face of rebuilding Russia’s standing when he took over after the defeat in the Crimean War in 1856, and that doing this involved consolidating domestically and gaining more visibility internationally. This was the challenge facing Putin.17 From the very outset of his tenure he signalled that this was at the heart of his programme, and he pursued policies that substantiated that programme. The discussion so far has suggested that since 11 September the change in the policy environment has facilitated Putin’s work, and that Putin was quick to spot and act on the new opportunities afforded him. As a result, Russia has had spectacular success in increasing its visibility. This is a precondition of achieving that explicit if elusive goal: to be recognized as a great power. It remains for Russia to consolidate domestically, of course, but much has been achieved in the course of the past year and a half. Looking further back in time than the Gorchakov era, there are examples from 500 years ago to show that gaining the recognition of the European powers is a theme that runs through Russian history in its entirety. Ever since the first continuous forerunner of today’s Russian state emerged on the European scene, this struggle has been waged.18 In 1486 ‘a noble knight by the name of Nikolai Poppel arrived in Moscow with a letter from Frederick III, but without any specific mission, purely out of curiosity’.19 It was only after this trip, the historian Nikolai Karamzin tells us, that the Holy Roman Empire came to know that

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Moscow was a power unto itself, ‘stronger than the Polish one’; up until then the Empire seemed to have thought that the Slavs to the east of Poland were vassals of the Polish–Lithuanian state. With the Reformation decades away, slotting into this European order was first and foremost a question of finding some kind of relationship to the Empire and the Emperor. Upon Poppel’s return, he started to spread the word about the Russian state and about the riches and power of its ruler. Here is the official Soviet diplomatic history’s version of what ensued: In 1489, Poppel returned to Moscow, now already as the official agent of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In a secret audience, he suggested to Ivan III that he should petition the Emperor to confer upon him the title of king. From the point of view of West European political thought, this would be the only means of legalizing a new state and introducing it into the common system of European states – and at the same time place it in a certain state of dependence on the Empire. But in Moscow, another point of view held sway. Ivan III answered Poppel with dignity: ‘By God’s grace, we are the ruler of our land from the beginning, from the first of our ancestors, it has been given us by God, and as it was for our ancestors, so it is for us.’20 Ivan III insisted on signing his written answer to the Emperor with the title ‘Great ruler of all of Rus’ by God’s grace’, and for the next three generations there ensued a tug-of-war between the Russian and Western courts regarding titles. As early as 1508, Ivan’s son Vasilii sent a letter to the Emperor asking for an alliance in his war against Lithuania. In 1514 Emperor Maximilian, somewhat belatedly, sent his envoy Georg Schnitzenpaumer back with an encouraging letter in German. Writing about this letter, Karamzin notes that ‘instead of the word tsar, he wrote Kaiser’.21 ‘Kaiser’ may be translated back into Russian as ‘imperator’, and so the letter was taken by the Russian court to mean that the Emperor acknowledged Vasilii as a fellow emperor. However, in Maximilian’s letter of 4 August 1514, where he confirms an alliance against the Lithuanian king, there is no mention of the Russian king being a ‘Kaiser’. The circumstances surrounding the letter brought by Schnitzenpaumer have been at issue in Russian–European relations ever since. Peter the Great referred to it as a precedent when, emerging victorious from the Great Northern War in 1721, he took the title ‘Imperator’. At a November 2002 conference in Vienna, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the status of the letter came up, with Austrian historians underlining that the use of the title had not been confirmed, and a Russian scholar insisting that it was a fully fledged document of international law.22 All this suggests that Russia’s main current problem in the European theatre may not be a question of security as such. As witnessed by last

Russia as a great power 25 year’s events in Vienna, the question of Russia’s status in relation to other European powers is still with us, and not only as a matter of putting the historical record straight. There is a line to be drawn from Ivan III’s 500year-old campaign to be recognized as the peer of the Holy Roman Emperor to Putin’s ongoing campaign to be recognized as the peer of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Jacques Chirac. This line is first and foremost to do with form, for the entities from which the now Russian head of state seeks recognition, the ground on which he seeks it, and the content for which he seeks it have all shifted. The imperative question now, however, is not about recognition but about recognition as what, by what. Literally for centuries, Russia has been recognized as a player in the security area; it has established itself as having the economic and military capabilities to pursue the steady and long-term aims it has set itself, and in most periods those long-term aims have been such that they have not threatened to overthrow the European and then the global system of states. There can be no reasonable doubt whatsoever that Russia has been a key member of that system, and remains so today.23 The problem, however (to put it in the form of the title of a recent James Bond film), is that when talk turns to Europe ‘the world is not enough’. In terms of European politics, it is no longer enough for Russia to be a respected global security player in order to be a regular European power, for European politics has shifted. European politics is in an everstronger degree emerging as more than a system of states, more even than a solidary society of states: it is more like a republic. It works on a network model, and is institutionalized in and around the European Union. What it takes to be recognized as a great power in such a setting is rather different from what it meant traditionally to be recognized as a great power in a system of states. Furthermore, the two kinds of recognition may be at loggerheads, for the more visibility and the more recognition Russia garners in the area of global security, where the name of the game is sovereignty and power politics, the greater becomes the distance between this kind of Russian policy and mainstream European policy, where the name of the game is integration. Of course, the two may be combined. As seen in the light of the last one and a half years, one precondition for Putin being a welcome third at a press conference with Schröder and Chirac was precisely that Russia had increased its visibility by means of its global security policy. Russian global policy may be converted to local European currency. But – and this is crucial – in this way Russia will continue to be in Europe, but not of Europe: it will be a player, but it will be a player of a different kind. This game may be taken quite far: as seen from Paris or even Berlin, it may be argued that a power such as the UK has been able to take a similar kind of game all the way into the EU. Still, there is a trade-off here beyond which it is not easy to go. Interestingly, it is not to do with security specifically but with politics generally. It concerns what kind of community Russia wants to be.

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In the nineteenth century, in the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Russia opted for a similar dilemma when it decided to maintain an ancien régime while other European powers went for modernization. In the twentieth century, in the wake of the First World War, Russia again parted ways with other European powers by trying to implement a socialist future while the others hung onto their bourgeois present. In the twenty-first century, Europe seems to be set on a course of integration. If Russia wants to repeat its former pattern it should hang onto its sovereign present while others forge ahead. The problem, however, is that this will without doubt entail a whole swathe of interesting challenges of incompatibility. Russia has deftly exploited the mounting transatlantic tensions and played its cards so well that any geopolitician would applaud. If it wants to make further headway in European politics, however, it is not the imperatives of the geopolitician’s world scene that should be the most pressing. It is the European scene, where the game is not only evolving around states and sovereignty but also around societies and integration. Russia may remain a transatlantic balancer, or it may begin to integrate with Brussels-based Europe.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Helge Blakkisrud, Geir Flikke, Jakub Godzimirski and Ingmar Oldberg for comments to a previous draft that was presented in Stockholm on 7 March 2003.

Notes 1 Quoted in Dov Lynch, Russia Faces Europe, Chaillot Paper no. 60, Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2003, p. 29. 2 Allen C. Lynch, ‘The realism of Russia’s foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 53(1), 2001, p. 7. 3 See e.g. Andrei Kokoshin, ‘What is Russia: A superpower, a great power or a regional power?’, International Affairs, 48(6), 2002, p. 122, where a case is made for Russia’s great-power status on the grounds that it has nuclear weapons and is still able to play a constructive role globally, for example, in relations between India and Pakistan. 4 See http://www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru/data/news_print.html?he_id⫽15&news_id⫽ 53. 5 See http://www.state.gov/coalition/cr/rm/2001/5025.htm. 6 Flemming Splidsboel-Hansen, ‘Explaining Russian endorsement of the CFSP and the ESDP’, Security Dialogue, 33(4), 2002, pp. 443–56. See e.g. the October 1999 document Strategiia i razvitiia otnoshenii Rossiiskoi federatysii s Evropeiskim Soiuzom na srednesrochnuiu perspektivu (2000–2010 gg) [Strategy and the developments in the relations of the Russian Federation with the European Union in a medium-term perspective (2000–2010)] (http://www.eur.ru). 7 See Oleg Bukharin, ‘The changing Russian and US nuclear warhead production complexes’, SIPRI Yearbook 2002: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2002, p. 587.

Russia as a great power 27 8 Ole Wæver, ‘Securitisation–desecuritisation’, in Ronnie Lipschutz (ed.), On Security, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. 9 Barry Buzan, ‘The logic of regional security in the post-cold war world’, in Fredrik Stjärnfeldt and Tim Shaw (eds), The New Regionalism: A Reader, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. See also Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998, chapter 2. 10 See Iver B. Neumann, ‘Identity and the outbreak of war: Or why the Copenhagen School of Security Studies should include the idea of “violisation” in its framework of analysis’, International Journal of Peace Studies, 3(1), 1998, pp. 7–22. 11 John Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, 15, 1990, pp. 5–56; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993. 12 Mike Williams and Iver B. Neumann, ‘From alliance to security community: NATO, Russia and the power of identity’, Millennium, 29(2), 2000, pp. 357–87. 13 The key question, as will be seen, becomes whether in US thinking NATO was, and remains, only such an alliance. 14 Torsten Örn, Varfö r diplomati? Ett kulturhistoriskt perspektiv [Why diplomacy? A cultural history perspective], Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002. 15 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act III, scene v, v. 32. 16 Flemming Splidsboel-Hansen, ‘Past and future meet: Aleksandr Gorchakov and Russian foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 54(3), 2002, p. 384. 17 This historical parallel was being officially invoked as far back as 1996. See Dov Lynch, Russia Faces Europe, p. 12, note 11. 18 The importance of Rus’ to European medieval history is duly noted: the point here is simply that this was ancient and interrupted history by the end of the fifteenth century. 19 Nikolai Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo [History of the Russian state] (1818–26), Vol. 6, chapter 5, Moscow: Olma-Press, 2004. 20 Zorin, V. A. et al. (eds), Istoriia diplomatii [A history of diplomacy], 2nd edn, Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1959, p. 262. 21 Karamzin, Istoriia, Vol. 7, chapter 2. 22 I thank Andreas Kappeler for this information. 23 For example, when Putin picked Russia’s membership in Europe’s system of states as the baseline for his 25 September 2001 speech to the German Bundestag (http://eng.bundesregierung.de/top/dokumente/Artikel/ix_57912.htm? template⫽single&id⫽57912&script⫽1&ixepf⫽_57912), press coverage throughout Europe did not problematize it.

Bibliography Books and journals Bukharin, Oleg, ‘The changing Russian and US nuclear warhead production complexes’, in SIPRI Yearbook 2002: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2002, pp. 583–97. Buzan, Barry, ‘The logic of regional security in the post-Cold War world’, in Fredrik Stjärnfeldt and Tim Shaw (eds), The New Regionalism: A Reader, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

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——, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998. Karamzin, Nikolai, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo [History of the Russian state] (1818–26), Moscow: Olma-Press, 2004. Kennan, George F., American Foreign Policy 1900–1950, New York: New American Library, 1951. Kokoshin, Andrei, ‘What is Russia: A superpower, a great power or a regional power?’, International Affairs, 48(6), 2002, pp. 100–25. Lynch, Allen C., ‘The realism of Russia’s foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 53(1), 2001, pp. 7–31. Lynch, Dov, Russia Faces Europe, Chaillot Paper no. 60, Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2003. Mearsheimer, John, ‘Back to the future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, 15, 1990, pp. 5–56. Neumann, Iver B., ‘Identity and the outbreak of war: Or why the Copenhagen School of Security Studies should include the idea of “violisation” in its framework of analysis’, International Journal of Peace Studies, 3(1), 1998, pp. 7–22. Örn, Torsten, Varfö r diplomati? Ett kulturhistoriskt perspektiv [Why diplomacy? A cultural history perspective], Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002. Splidsboel-Hansen, Flemming, ‘Past and future meet: Aleksandr Gorchakov and Russian foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 54(3), 2002, pp. 377–96. ——, ‘Explaining Russian endorsement of the CFSP and the ESDP’, Security Dialogue, 33(4), 2002, pp. 443–56. Wæver, Ole, ‘Securitisation–desecuritisation’, in Ronnie Lipschutz (ed.), On Security, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993. ——, ‘The emerging structure of international politics’, International Security, 18, 1993, pp. 44–79. Williams, Mike and Iver B. Neumann, ‘From alliance to security community: NATO, Russia and the power of identity’, Millennium, 29(2), 2000, pp. 357–87. Zorin, V. A. et al. (eds), Istoriia diplomatii [A history of diplomacy], 2nd edn, Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1959.

Media and Internet Bush, George W., ‘Address to a joint session of Congress and the American people’, 20 September 2001 (http://www.state.gov/coalition/cr/rm/ 2001/ 5025.htm). Putin, Vladimir, ‘Millennium speech’, December 1999 (http://www.pravitelstvo. gov.ru/data/news_print.html?he_id⫽15&news_id⫽53). ——, Speech at the German Bundestag, 25 September 2001 (http://eng.bundesregierung.de/top/dokumente/Artikel/ix_57912.htm?template⫽single&id⫽57 912&script⫽1&ixepf⫽_57912).

2

Foreign policy priorities under Putin A tour d’horizon Ingmar Oldberg

Introduction Even if Russia’s days of superpower status faded away with the Soviet Union, there is a rare consensus in the country that it has been, is and must remain a great power. The problem, which concerns Russians as well as their neighbours and other states, is by what means and to which concrete ends this status is to be maintained. Russian foreign policy is often analysed by distinguishing between military or security-political means and aims, on the one hand, and economic ones on the other – the latter being seen as conducive to peaceful cooperation and integration with the West.1 When analysing President Boris Yeltsin’s foreign policy in the 1990s and making scenarios for the future, the Russian political scientist Sergei Medvedev discerned four alternative policy lines in order of ‘benevolence’: liberal internationalism, minimalist cooperation with the West, obstruction of Western policy (‘damage limitation’) and, finally, confrontation amounting to isolationism and neo-imperialism.2 Similarly, Medvedev’s Finnish colleague Henrikki Heikka distinguishes three strategic options: cooperative security, including integration into European structures; multipolar ‘balancing’ to maximize independence; and anti-Western great-power (derzhava) neoimperialism.3 In general, Russia’s foreign policy is defined by its relationship to Europe. Using these distinctions, this chapter will examine President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy priorities since 2000 by analysing Russian policy in different geographic areas – namely, the United States, European states and organizations, the former Soviet republics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the major states in Asia. Some comparisons with Yeltsin’s foreign policy are inevitably made. Throughout, the reasons for the policy choices and the responses they encounter will be examined.4 Policy is here conceived as including both statements and actions. The chapter focuses on the president and his officials, since they dominate Russian foreign policy-making both formally and in reality. This has been the case especially under Putin, who has restored central control after

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Yeltsin’s divide-and-rule regime.5 However, some attention will also be paid to other domestic Russian actors in cases where they have influenced the decision-makers.6

Russian US policy When Vladimir Putin took over the Russian presidency from Yeltsin on 31 December 1999, Russian policy towards the United States, the only remaining superpower, was concerned about the advancing US plan to build a National Missile Defense (NMD) against so-called problem states and to abrogate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Russia staged an international campaign against this plan, which was seen as a threat to strategic stability and to Russia itself. Relations were further strained when George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton as US president in January 2001, partly because he took the final decision to implement the project. However, Russian–US relations improved after the presidents met at their first summit in June 2001, and the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 led to a breakthrough.7 While some Russian experts wanted to make support for the USA conditional on concessions concerning the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Putin immediately and wholeheartedly endorsed the US declaration of war on international terrorism and the creation of an anti-terrorism coalition. The obvious reason was that Putin already saw Russia as fighting such a war in Chechnya and that the resumption of this war in 1999 had greatly contributed to his accession to power. Russia thus supported the US-led attack against the Taliban regime and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, partly by intensifying its own provision of supplies to the Northern Alliance troops, partly by offering intelligence cooperation and overflight rights. Despite internal opposition, Putin also accepted the establishment of US bases in Central Asia to back up the fight against terrorism.8 Russia hailed the success of the war, and some commentators even claimed that Russia had been a more useful ally for the United States than its NATO allies.9 In exchange for the Russian support, the USA softened its criticism of the war in Chechnya, which it called an internal affair. Another sign of rapprochement was the Russian decision in the autumn of 2001 to close down its military bases in Cuba and Vietnam, which had long burdened relations with the USA. The strategic relationship was further strengthened as Russia toned down its campaign against the US NMD project, partly because the ABM Treaty actually allowed abrogation, partly because Russia realized that its strategic capability was not seriously threatened and that the project could not be stopped anyway. At a summit meeting in Moscow in May 2002, Russia and the USA signed the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (SORT), which provided for the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons by two-

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 31 thirds by 2012 and replaced the second Russian–US Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement (SALT-2). Professing a will for ‘genuine partnership based on the principles of mutual security, cooperation, confidence, openness and predictability’, the treaty also expressed a common interest in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.10 After this, Putin concluded that Russia and the USA have a special responsibility for global stability and that the confident partnership between them has a positive impact on the whole international system.11 Russia and the United States also agreed about crisis management in some conflicts – for example, to avoid war between the nuclear powers India and Pakistan; Russia also supported the USA’s so-called Road Map for peace between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Through a frequent exchange of visits and meetings, Putin’s relations with Bush developed into what seemed like personal friendship.12 Putin also strove to develop Russia’s economic relations with the United States, the world’s biggest economy and importer with a major influence in the international financial institutions on which Russia is dependent for investment and for handling its large debts. In particular Russia stressed its potential as the world’s leading oil exporter (in 2002) which allegedly was able to meet the USA’s growing needs more reliably than the Middle East oil nations and at prices independent of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC). An energy dialogue started, which in 2002 resulted in the first Russian oil deliveries to the USA and a decision to build a terminal at Murmansk for such exports.13 The Bush administration responded by recognizing Russia as a market economy (rather than an economy in transition) and promising support for Russian membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO). American companies increased their investments in Russia, especially in the energy sector, and in 2002 they held the biggest share of accumulated foreign investments in Russia. However, there were also several problems and diverging interests in the relationship between Russia and the USA. Concerning economic cooperation, Russian oil exports to the United States are still negligible, and enormous investment and considerable time will be needed before Russia can play any real role in US imports of energy. Even though the parties may need each other, Russia is principally interested in high prices, whereas the USA wants low prices based on competition. As for foreign investment in Russia, there are still many restrictions and the legal framework for investment is changeable and uncertain. Membership of the WTO for Russia requires market reforms, which might threaten domestic stability in Russia.14 As for security policy, Russia opposed US policy on the so-called axis of evil, including Iraq, Iran and North Korea – countries which the USA viewed as threats to its security. Russia doubted the USA’s reasons for attacking Iraq, namely Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and support for al-Qaida. Together with France,

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Russia recommended the continuation of weapons inspections under the United Nations (UN) mandate and threatened to veto a resolution in the UN Security Council. When the USA and the United Kingdom went to war in Iraq in March 2003 without a UN mandate, Putin called it a great political mistake and wanted an end to the war, and the State Duma postponed ratification of SORT. After the war Russia pleaded for a speedy transfer of power to the Iraqi people and for a significant UN influence over the process.15 However, Russia still wished to maintain good relations with the United States. Before and during the Iraq war Putin spoke out against starting an anti-US campaign and stated that Russia was not interested in a US defeat; and after the war he hailed Saddam Hussein’s removal.16 Russia accepted a UN resolution on the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq which also gave the UN a role in the reconstruction of Iraq. The Duma ratified SORT in May 2003. This reconciliation was helped by the USA also showing an interest in maintaining its ties with Russia. Before the war, Congress had ratified SORT, and during and after it top officials had visited Moscow. Putin welcomed Bush’s presence at St Petersburg’s tercentennial celebrations in June, declaring that the Russian–US partnership was unshakeable and ‘conducive to uniting the international community in the face of new threats’, and the parties agreed to strengthen strategic cooperation and expand communication channels.17 The post-war stabilization of Iraq proved to be a problem of staggering dimensions for the USA, but for Russia the war meant a foreign policy defeat and a loss of economic influence in Iraq. Another effect of the Iraq war was intensified US pressure on Iran and North Korea with regard to their nuclear programmes. Russia continued to provide nuclear technology to Iran and maintained ties with North Korea, but made concessions so as to meet US concerns. Its partnership with the USA was also disturbed by the USA’s keeping its military bases in Central Asia and by US support for Georgia and Azerbaijan against Russian pressure. Putin’s Russia is thus clearly striving for partnership with the US superpower, partly because this would serve to give it a special status ahead of other great powers, and partly because the two countries have common interests concerning the fight against terrorism, the spread of WMD, and international stability. However, Russia’s power ambitions and economic interests, particularly in regions close to Russia, often collide with the USA’s actions. Russia’s US policy is thus a mix of growing cooperation with the remnants of former hostility and competition. Russia is obviously not as important for the United States as the United States is for Russia.

Russian policy towards Europe: the NATO dimension Considering itself a part of Europe, Russia has always striven to play an important role in shaping its security. Ever since Soviet days, NATO, as a

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 33 military organization dominated by the United States, has been seen as a problem. In the 1990s the Russian leadership advocated its dissolution, since the main opponent, the Warsaw Pact, had been dissolved, and the strengthening of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – an organization involving all the countries of Europe and in which Russia is the equal of all the other members. However, when the NATO states instead chose to maintain and transform NATO for new tasks while developing cooperation with Russia and other non-members, Russia accepted this and in 1997 signed a Founding Act on consultation and security cooperation with NATO. In 1999, however, Russia severed its official relations with NATO when the latter, under US leadership, undertook a so-called humanitarian intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on account of Kosovo, which Russia saw as a violation of the UN Charter and the principle of territorial integrity. NATO’s adoption of a Strategic Concept that widened its responsibility to areas beyond the North Atlantic was perceived by Russia as legitimizing NATO interventions in the former Soviet space.18 Yet Yeltsin helped NATO to broker peace and force Yugoslavia to withdraw its troops from Kosovo, and Russia participated in NATO’s peacekeeping force. Putin continued that policy. In early 2000 he decided to restore official relations with NATO, even though criticism of the war was upheld, and he even talked about Russia joining NATO – if its national interests were heeded. Russia later felt justified in its opinion when NATO intervened in Macedonia in 2001, this time to support the government against Albanian separatists. Putin also took steps to restore relations with individual NATO states – for example, the UK, France and Germany. One motive for this was to exploit resistance in Europe to the US NMD plans. As an alternative, Putin proposed a common Russian–European missile defence. His military and foreign policy doctrines of 2000 still mentioned NATO as a problem, but made a distinction between the USA and Europe. The idea of Yeltsin’s foreign minister, Yevgenii Primakov, of a multipolar world system in which the USA does not dominate, was still being mentioned in this connection.19 However, when the European NATO states proved not to be keen on such cooperation with Russia, which excluded the US ally, and Russia’s relations with the USA improved, as shown above, the concept of multipolarity was mentioned less frequently. The war against terrorism after September 2001 also improved Russia’s relations with NATO. In May 2002 a new common council, the NATO–Russia Council (NRC), was formed, in which Russia became one of the 20 members. Its goal was to promote cooperation concerning not only the fight against terrorism but also in crisis management, nonproliferation, arms control, regional air defence, rescue operations and emergency situations. In this connection Putin concluded that NATO was changing into a more political and less military organization, and that

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relations between it and Russia had reached a new level and quality.20 The creation of a NATO response force to buttress the strategic concept became a new test for Russia, and it remains to be seen whether Russia can cooperate with it. Putin’s main concern with regard to NATO since 2000 has been to stop its enlargement eastwards. Russia had earlier opposed NATO membership for the former Warsaw Pact states Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and called for guarantees that no NATO troops or nuclear weapons would be stationed in these countries. Thus, when these countries became full members of NATO in 1999, they made efforts to improve relations with Russia, and NATO exercised restraint concerning the stationing of NATO bases in the new member countries. Gradually Putin accepted the fact. He paid a visit to Warsaw in January 2002, declaring that Russia’s relations with Poland were now free from political problems and emphasizing economic cooperation.21 Relations were also normalized with the Czech Republic and Hungary. NATO membership for the three Baltic countries was still more difficult for Russia to tolerate because they had until recently been part of the Soviet Union.22 More importantly, it was seen as increasing the military threat near Russia’s own borders and resulting in the encirclement of the Kaliningrad region. Since NATO had made the resolution of all outstanding territorial and ethnic issues a condition for membership, Russia intensified its campaign against the ‘discrimination’ against the Russianspeaking minorities in Estonia and Latvia. It refused to sign border agreements with Estonia and Latvia and to ratify the border treaty with Lithuania that Yeltsin had signed in 1997. Political relations with these states also remained on a low level. The Russian military threatened to strengthen Russia’s military positions in the Baltic region. These measures also satisfied nationalist interest groups in Russia. However, as the NATO decision on enlargement in November 2002 drew closer, and as the leading NATO states seemed intent on admitting the Baltic countries regardless of Russian objections, Putin chose to accept this fact too.23 Already in early September 2001 he declared that, even if the enlargement was unnecessary, since there was no threat to the Baltic states, Russia respected their independence and would not start any ‘hysterical campaign’ which could only make the situation worse.24 Russia’s improved relations with the United States and NATO after 11 September 2001, which gave it a greater role as a partner, obviously made it easier for Russia to accept the new NATO enlargement. The Baltic states welcomed this rapprochement, modified their description of Russia as a threat, and called for improved relations with Russia. When NATO took the decision to admit the Baltic countries and four other states, namely Russia’s former Warsaw Pact allies Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria plus Slovenia, while calling for intensified cooperation with Russia, Russia took no military countermeasures and maintained its exchange with NATO.

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 35 True, Russia was very slow to normalize its relations with Estonia and Latvia. It continued for a long time to refuse to sign border treaties with them and to attack their minority policies. An exception was made for Lithuania. In May 2003 the Russian Duma finally ratified the border treaty with Lithuania. The explanation for this may be that Russia remains dependent on Lithuania for transit to Kaliningrad, and there is no Russian minority problem there. Russia’s relations with NATO were also affected by the recent war in Iraq. While the UK and several other states, including the new East European and Baltic members, supported the USA, Russia sought cooperation with the opponents of the war and, together with France, threatened to veto a UN resolution legitimizing a war. When visiting France in February 2003 Putin claimed that Russia and France had the same view of the future world architecture, which ought to be multipolar.25 During the war Putin invited the French and German leaders to Russia, and they agreed on stressing the role of the UN in Iraq.26 Later, during a visit by British prime minister Tony Blair, Putin underlined that the world community should not only serve the interests of one member (which has to be seen as an attack on the USA), and again mentioned the concept of multipolarity. At the same time, however, this concept was defined as strategic partnership between the United States, Europe, Russia and China.27 Thereafter Russia’s cooperation with the opponents of the Iraq war in NATO lost some momentum, as all parties tried to mend fences with the United States, and vice versa. In sum, Putin strove to improve Russia’s relations with NATO and even to secure influence on its decisions, though Russian membership of NATO was not possible. Exploiting the differences among the NATO members, Russia sought to establish closer political ties with France and Germany, and normalized relations with the new Central and East European members, whereas it made little effort to do so with the former Soviet republics Estonia and Latvia.

Russian policy towards Europe: the EU dimension Obviously, Russia’s European policy is increasingly formed by its economic interests and the role of the European Union (EU). The EU is basically seen as an economic counterweight to the military organization NATO, which is dominated by the USA. This has been stressed especially when Russia’s relations with the latter have been tense, as they were before September 2001. Thus Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov once stated that Europe must stand united in order to play an independent role and to contribute to a multipolar world, and that close cooperation between Russia and the EU would give Europe a dignified role in world politics.28 In his speech to the Russian Federal Assembly in May 2003 Putin described ‘broad rapprochement and real integration with Europe’ as

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Russia’s historical choice, while mentioning the United States only once in the context of fighting terrorism.29 Russia thus signed a Partnership and Co-operation Agreement (PCA) with the EU in 1994, and Putin has developed this cooperation. As prime minister, he launched a medium-term strategy to this end in October 1999, and he has participated in summits with the EU. Putin applauded the EU Northern Dimension initiative launched by Finland in 1999 in order to integrate north-western Russia into European structures. Russia also showed a positive interest in the emerging security and military structures of the EU, including the creation of a rapid reaction force. In October 2001 an agreement on regular consultations in security matters was signed, which Russia viewed as a step towards a common security policy. At the same time, Russia expected the EU to ‘coordinate’ its policy in the CIS space with Russia and wanted to bar the EU crisis management force from being used there. Russia realizes that the EU force is dependent on NATO resources, and that most EU states are also NATO members. To the extent that Russia improves its relations with NATO and the NATO response force develops, Russian interest in the military dimension of the EU may weaken. Concerning some international issues, such as the Israel–Palestine conflict and the war in Iraq, Russia has stood closer to the EU and key EU members such as France and Germany than to the United States. It has also intensified its cooperation with the EU concerning terrorism. At the tenth EU–Russia summit meeting in November 2002 a joint declaration was issued condemning terrorism in all its forms, and there was talk of a strategic partnership over terrorism.30 However, Russia resents the fact that the EU and its members, particularly France and the Nordic countries, are much more critical of Russia’s war against terrorism in Chechnya than the United States is. Russia’s main interest in the EU and its member states is obviously in the economic sphere. Since the 1990s, the EU member countries together have become Russia’s biggest trading partner and investor, ahead of the CIS countries and far ahead of the USA, and this share is bound to grow with EU enlargement. Russia’s debts are also mainly to European states and institutions. Russia’s exports (which exceed its imports) are dominated by energy products such as oil and gas. This is important to EU countries, too, especially Germany, although Russia’s share in the EU’s total imports and foreign trade is small.31 An energy dialogue developed into an energy partnership which included many common projects and investments in Russia.32 When Russia complained at an EU summit that the EU states set an upper limit for energy imports from any non-member state, the European Commission stated that such a limit was not needed and expressed an interest in long-term gas contracts and the building of pipelines.33 In 2002, the EU also recognized Russia as a market economy, and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi could even envisage Russia as a member of the EU.34 In 2003 Russia and the EU decided to create four

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 37 common ‘spaces’ – on the economy; on freedom, security and justice; on external security, and on research and education – which were to be handled by a joint Permanent Partnership Council. Still, there were many problems.35 First, Russia criticized the EU’s protection of its industrial and agricultural producers (at the same time as it wanted to protect its own markets). It was reluctant to reform the monopolistic gas sector, which subsidized Russian consumers, and to provide sufficient legal guarantees for foreign investors.36 Second, the EU’s enlargement to include the Baltic countries and several Central European states was a special problem for Russia. True, Russia basically took a positive view of the process, partly because EU membership was proffered as an alternative to NATO membership. Some Russian economists pointed out that instead of their present bilateral agreements with Russia the new members would be covered by the EU PCA with Russia, which would mean lower customs fees for Russian exports to and transit through these states. The Russian border regions would also receive more support. In 2001 the EU and Russia agreed that the enlargement should lead to increased Russian trade with both the old and the new EU members.37 Moreover, Russian companies with a presence in the new (and old) member states would get access to the whole EU market. The adaptation of their economies to EU market rules could also benefit Russian companies. Gradually, however, the Russian leaders realized that EU enlargement also had disadvantages. Generally, it meant that former allies and former Soviet republics would be fully integrated into Western Europe – not only militarily integrated through NATO – and thus definitively decoupled from Russia. Also, Russian diplomats feared that because of their negative experiences of Russia these new members would influence EU Russian policy in such a way as to make it more critical of Russia. Third, the reorientation of the future EU members’ trade away from Russia to their EU partners, which has been going on throughout the 1990s, will be reinforced. To counteract this, Russian state and private companies have made efforts to maintain and expand their positions by new investments, especially in the energy sector, where these states remain dependent on Russia. For example, in 2002 the private oil company Yukos bought a majority share in Lithuania’s major refinery (from an American company). When Latvia wanted to sell shares in the Ventspils oil terminal, the Russian state-controlled Transneft acted aggressively by stopping oil deliveries to it, evidently so as to reduce the price of shares. At the same time Russia took steps to reduce its own dependence on Baltic transit (for example, by opening new oil terminals on the Gulf of Finland), and a new gas pipeline to be laid across the Baltic Sea to Germany was proposed. Thus, EU enlargement did not hinder Russia from using the economic levers at hand against the prospective EU members.

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A fourth and important problem with EU enlargement that worried the Putin administration was the fact that the new members had to adopt the Schengen agreement, which meant a strict visa regime for people from non-EU member countries. This meant special problems for the Kaliningrad region, which threatened to become more isolated from the rest of Russia. Its inhabitants, who had enjoyed visa freedom in Lithuania and Poland since 1992, were also heavily dependent on trade with these countries. The Russian leadership reacted especially to the introduction of visas for transit between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia. In May 2002 Putin claimed that it would violate Russia’s territorial integrity and citizens’ human right to visit a part of their own country, and made the whole of its relations with the EU contingent on this vital issue. Instead of transit visas, he proposed the same type of transit across Lithuania as people from West Berlin had enjoyed across East Germany during the Cold War (disregarding the difference that there was little risk of their defecting at the time). Other officials proposed transit in closed trains, transit also across Poland and Latvia, and ‘corridors’. The latter especially upset the Poles for historical reasons. Instead of demanding free visas to Poland and Lithuania only for Kaliningraders, Putin proposed a visa-free regime for all of Russia to the EU. In the end, at the November 2002 summit with the EU, Putin accepted a compromise instituting ‘facilitated transit documents’, which were to be approved by Lithuania, and agreed to sign agreements on the readmission of refugees, to allow the expansion of foreign consulates in Kaliningrad, and to speed up the printing of Russian passports. In return, Lithuania promised to accept internal Russian passports until 2005 and the EU to investigate the possibility of rapid transit trains across Lithuania and of visa freedom with Russia in future.38 In 2003 new problems occurred when Russia refused to extend its partnership agreement with the EU to the new members without prior negotiations on compensation for economic losses, and when it hesitated to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, which needed Russian support before it could enter into force. However, just before the enlargement took place on 1 May 2004, Russia consented to the extension of the PCA in return for compensation regarding tariffs and quotas. At the following summit an agreement was reached on bilateral market access, including Russian reforms in the energy sector, which was seen as paving the way for Russian membership of the WTO. In response to this Russia again vowed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. To conclude, Russia under Putin is striving to develop its partnership with the EU and its members, partly for political and partly for economic reasons, since it depends on the EU countries for trade and assistance – more so than on the United States. Sometimes the concepts of multipolarity and ‘balancing’ appear in this connection. However, Russia does not

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 39 hesitate to use its economic power in the energy field, especially with respect to the new EU members which still depend on Russia for energy supplies. Russia’s sheer size, its power ambitions and its remaining structural problems prevent real integration into Europe. Indeed, it would probably be easier for Russia to join NATO than to join the EU.

Russia and the CIS states Even if Putin’s Russia has increased its cooperation with the United States and the European countries, the CIS and its member states are still considered to be the most important area in Russian foreign policy statements. (The concept of the ‘near abroad’, in which the Baltic states were once included, is now rarely used.) Putin, in his address to the Federal Assembly in 2003, mentioned the fact that they are neighbours with many centuries of historical, cultural and economic ties as reasons for this. There is mutual dependence, and tens of millions of Russians live in the CIS countries. Russia considers the CIS space a sphere of strategic interest but, according to Putin, is also interested in stability and economic progress there.39 This is, moreover, the area where Russia has the most influence and also sees the biggest threats to its security. Similarly, Putin’s Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 stressed the importance both of military–political cooperation against extremism and terrorism and of economic cooperation, including the ‘rational common use’ of natural resources.40 These are code words, respectively, for the perceived threats from Muslim fundamentalism in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the ambition to keep control over oil and gas resources (for instance, in the Caspian Sea region). Another obvious ambition is to keep foreign influence out of the area, especially from the USA and its allies, as will be shown in the following. For these purposes Putin has continued to develop the CIS, which was originally created in 1991 as a substitute for the Soviet Union. To make it more efficient, cooperation between the members’ security councils was instituted. Russia’s ‘peacekeeping’ forces in the Caucasus and Central Asia operate under the aegis of the CIS, as do many military exercises. However, Russian officials admit that the CIS is an amorphous organization which is unable to take binding decisions because of the diverging interests of its members, and they complain that Russia has to bear almost all the costs.41 The Russian government therefore downgraded the CIS ministry to a commission in 2001, and at its 2002 summit meeting the CIS decided to reduce the size of its structures by one-quarter. Russia also has to fight the efforts of the other members of the CIS to increase cooperation among themselves and seek support in the West. Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova thus formed their own organization (GUUAM), which received some US support. However, because these states also have economic problems, depend on Russia, and

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have diverging interests, the organization proved inefficient, and Uzbekistan and Moldova downgraded their participation in 2002. In practice Russia has concentrated its efforts on more limited, regional organizations in certain fields. The Russian Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 stated that integration should proceed at different paces and to different degrees, and that Russia’s relations with each country should develop according to their willingness to respect Russian interests, including the rights of Russian minorities. In the military field, this has meant particularly the 1992 Collective Security Treaty, of which the current signatories are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia.42 On its tenth anniversary, the grouping was made into an organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).43 It was to be registered in the UN as a regional organization and aimed to conduct peacekeeping operations together with NATO. A ‘coalition staff’ was formed and subordinated to the Russian General Staff. The organization also created three regional joint commands and a rapid reaction force in 2001, and joint exercises were held.44 To support Tajikistan against incursions from Afghanistan, Russia has maintained troops in Tajikistan ever since 1991. When Uzbek Islamist guerrillas made incursions from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the Fergana Valley in 1999 and 2000, Russia increased its military support to these states. With Belarus Russia has developed the closest military cooperation, including large-scale exercises, a common air defence system, a strategic radar station, and integration of the defence industries. The two states have created the Russia–Belarus Union with a common State Council, a union parliament, a union citizenship, and so on. Belarus even more than Russia perceives NATO and its expansion as threats.45 Moreover, Russia puts military pressure on some CIS states that are not in the CSTO. It keeps a naval base at Sevastopol in Ukraine. In Moldova it maintains forces (although reduced) in the Transnistria region and supports the separatist regime there against the government, even after a proRussian communist became president in 2001.46 It supports Armenia, which continues to occupy vast areas around the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, and retains a strategic radar station in Azerbaijan. In the weak Georgia, Russia has gone on supporting the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia against the central government with ‘peacekeeping’ forces, and refused to leave three of its four military bases, in violation of international agreements. On 11 September 2002 Putin issued an ultimatum demanding that Georgia take measures against the Chechen ‘terrorists’ seeking refuge there and pressed it to agree to cooperation against them.47 However, these military activities also encounter problems. The CSTO is totally dependent on Russian forces, since the other partners cannot afford to contribute, and the maintenance of these forces has become a

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 41 heavy burden on Russia’s armed forces, which have been much reduced since the early 1990s and have been preoccupied with the new war in Chechnya since 1999.48 When the US-led war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan started in 2001, the CIS rapid reaction force was not ready. The Sevastopol base depends on Ukrainian supplies, and the Russian naval base there can only be moved at huge cost.49 Another problem is that Russia cannot prevent the CIS states – all of which are under more or less authoritarian leaders – from seeking support from the West and NATO, nor can it prevent the latter from providing it. Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan have talked openly of NATO membership, participated in NATO exercises and supported the US operation in Iraq. The USA sent military advisers to help Georgia fight terrorists – a step which the Russian military condemned but Putin then had to condone. Even if a US deputy foreign minister on the eve of the Iraq war found it hard to criticize Russia’s preventive measures against terrorists in Georgia, the USA continued to support Georgia, established an airbase, and started reconnaissance flights over Georgia during the Iraq war. The USA supported the Western-oriented Mikhail Saakashvili to take power and assert central control over the autonomous province of Ajaria, which had also enjoyed Russian support. Again Russia had to acquiesce. When Russia attempted to take control over the Kerch Strait controlling the Azov Sea, Ukraine reacted strongly and turned to the West for support, so that Russia had to stop.50 The establishment of NATO bases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in connection with the war in Afghanistan in 2001 obviously strengthened their bargaining position vis-à-vis Russia, so that they could demand and in fact got payment for the Russian bases.51 The Russian military and others therefore worried about Russia’s loss of influence in Central Asia, but Putin pointed out that the victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan together with the USA radically reduced the threat to Central Asia and Russia in a way that Russia could not do alone. The Islamist guerrilla activities around the Fergana Valley currently seem to have ceased. The Russian leadership now appears to be hoping that the US presence in Central Asia will be temporary. In order to show that Russia retains interests in the region, it established a new airbase in Kyrgyzstan near the US one in November 2002, and Putin himself inaugurated it.52 Besides exercising military influence, Russia has increasingly striven to resume economic integration with the CIS states, which remain to a great extent dependent on Russia as a market as well as on transport ties with Russia. In 2000, Putin’s government transformed the customs union with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into a more fully fledged organization, the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). The imposition of visa regimes on non-member states became a powerful means of putting pressure on them because many people depended on work and travel in Russia. In Georgia, however, South Ossetia and Abkhazia were

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exempted from visas, which hardly pleased the government in Tbilisi. In September 2003, EurAsEC was superseded by the creation of a Single Economic Space (SES) including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It aimed at forming a free trade zone without restrictions, established common bodies, and was open to more members. However, the problem with these organizations was that they, too, lacked powers and their activities were largely declaratory. The SES also envisages gradual integration at different levels and speeds in each member state. Ukraine made its membership conditional on its constitution and international obligations being respected.53 Obviously, if such economic integration really is achieved it would complicate integration with the EU and even the WTO, which are major objectives especially for Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s most powerful means of pressure is the dependence of the other CIS states on its energy resources, the transport of energy and other goods across its territory to Europe, and the huge debts owed to Russia. In order to recover these debts, Russia is trying to take over key companies in many countries and thus get control of their economies from the inside. In Ukraine, for instance, Russian companies have gained control over oil refining and other industries. While Western states have criticized the market situation and political corruption in Ukraine, Putin improved relations with the regime of President Leonid Kuchma and even signed a border treaty in early 2003. With regard to Belarus, which is totally dependent on trade with Russia since unlike the others it shuns integration with the West, the 1999 Union Treaty with Russia foresees the introduction of a common currency, the rouble, to be issued by a single national bank in Moscow, in 2005. In 2002, Putin even wanted to introduce the common currency one year earlier.54 Russia and its companies have from time to time reduced deliveries of oil and gas and can play Belarus and Ukraine off against each other over prices and the construction of new pipelines. In order to keep Azerbaijan and the Central Asian states dependent on Russian pipelines for export in the western direction and to prevent Western energy companies from gaining influence, Russia has expanded and modernized its own pipelines to the West. It tried for a long time to stop the construction of the oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan via Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, which enjoyed US support, and opposed the building of a connecting pipeline from Kazakhstan across the Caspian Sea as well as a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, which would feed into a projected gas pipeline running parallel to the Baku–Ceyhan oil pipeline. Following a similar deal with Uzbekistan, in April 2003 Russia signed an agreement with Turkmenistan which secured the export of huge amounts of Turkmen gas to Russia for a 25-year period, to be paid for at half the West European price and with Russian goods. This kept Turkmenistan dependent and out of the European market, relieved Russia of large gas

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 43 commitments to Ukraine, and enabled it to resell the gas at world market prices.55 Having the advantage of more favourable economic development than its CIS partners, Russia has thus increasingly used the economic means at its disposal, which looked more acceptable than raw military and political pressure but could be at least equally efficient. However, there are limits to this power too. Integration with CIS states runs the risk of entailing Russian subsidies to them, besides opportunity costs. Russia itself is dependent on transit westwards through Ukraine and Belarus for the energy exports that play such a vital role in its economy. Economic integration with Belarus and the takeover of energy companies there are hindered by the fact that the Belarusian economy remains largely state-owned and under the control of the all-powerful president Aleksandr Lukashenko. When Russia raised customs duties on oil exports to support its agriculture in early 2003, companies boosted deliveries of crude oil to refineries in Belarus. As Belarus then reduced its export duties to the West, its re-exports of Russian oil surged.56 Furthermore, Russian energy companies often lack capital and technology to compete with their Western counterparts, for instance in Central Asia, partly because the exploitation and transport of energy resources in Russia also require increasing amounts of investment. Russian companies have therefore entered into cooperation with Western companies at home, in the West, in Central Asia and in Azerbaijan. Thus Lukoil even showed an interest in the Baku–Ceyhan oil pipeline. Russia and Ukraine have signed a contract on creating a gas consortium intended to include German partners. The CIS area is thus the one where Russia has the greatest power ambitions. In its relations with the weakest states this has sometimes led to it resorting to military pressure that smacks of neo-imperialism. Being the strongest country in the CIS by far, Russia is striving to maintain and develop the old integration ties in all fields and to form a bloc on a par with those existing in the West. As the multilateral mechanisms have proved ineffective, Russia is focusing on bilateral relations and partnership with each state. Political cooperation is facilitated by the fact that Russia makes little fuss about authoritarian rule and human rights violations in most CIS states, whereas this is a concern especially for European states. However, Russia’s power ambitions are thwarted by the fact that the CIS states are independent and their authoritarian leaders to varying extents cooperate with and seek support from the West. Uzbekistan aspires to a leading role for itself in Central Asia. Sensitized by its economic crisis throughout the 1990s, Russia has also discovered that integration and power entail costs. Increasingly, Putin has relied on the economic levers available to it, especially in the energy field. Even so, since its CIS partners are weaker and less developed, Russia has switched its trade from them to the West, and the CIS partners are trying to do the same. The CIS region is thus gradually being differentiated and oriented towards the

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West, although Russia maintains significant influence. In this region, Russia faces a difficult choice between power and profit.

Russian policy in Asia Even if Putin’s Russia is mainly oriented towards the West and has greatpower ambitions in the CIS area, his Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 accorded great and growing importance to Asia. The greater part of Russia lies in Asia and, since it has more nuclear weapons than any other Asian state, Russia is also a major military power there. Putin has shown great interest in cooperation with the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization and offered Russia as a bridge to Europe. One reason for this is to develop the Asian parts of Russia, which, despite their rich natural resources, are poorer than the European parts.57 Russia is paying special attention to China, the world’s most populous state, which is armed with nuclear weapons and has a fast-growing economy.58 Putin continued Yeltsin’s policy of strategic partnership with China, which was launched in 1996 as a reaction to NATO enlargement. During one of their frequent meetings, the parties concluded a Treaty on Good-neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation in July 2001, including strategic cooperation, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, a commitment not to make territorial claims on each other or to enter into alliances against each other, and on consultations in the event of threats to peace.59 They agreed on the value of the UN and multipolarity, the ABM Treaty, NATO enlargement, condemned the interventions in Kosovo and Iraq, opposed US hegemony, and supported each other’s territorial integrity against terrorists and separatists (for example, in Chechnya, Tibet and Taiwan). Putin worked to develop the Shanghai Forum grouping into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with China and four of the Central Asian states.60 This served not only to solve common problems, such as border disputes and terrorism, but also the mutual interest in keeping the USA out of Central Asia. China, too, felt threatened by the new US bases in the Central Asian region. Russia also wished to increase trade with China. In the 1990s China became the biggest market for Russia’s arms exports, which played a vital role in sustaining the Russian defence industry when the Ministry of Defence was starved of funds for procurement. The border trade was very important for the Russian Far East, which suffered especially from the economic slump in the 1990s, and big projects were launched involving the exploitation and export of oil and gas. In 2001 the Russian and Chinese governments signed an agreement on building an oil pipeline from Angarsk to Daqing in Manchuria, which would supply China with 20 million tonnes every year starting in 2005.61 China is in desperate need of oil imports. However, there are several problems and, here again, divergent interests.

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 45 First, even if the Russian leaders rarely speak about it publicly, they fear China, with which the Soviet Union had tense relations for 30 years. This resulted in armed clashes in 1969 and a military build-up of huge standing forces along the border. While both sides have reduced their conventional forces in the border area and withdrawn them from the border itself, the Russian military edge over China has shrunk since the 1990s. For this reason, and in order not to provoke the United States too much, Russia has not exported the most modern weapons to China. Second, both states are more dependent on trade with third parties than on trade with each other, and the share of their mutual trade in the total foreign trade of each country is still below 5 per cent. In 2002 Putin fretted that China (excluding Hong Kong) had eight times more trade with the USA than with Russia.62 Moreover, while the Russian economy was in recession for most of the 1990s and has only grown since 1999, the Chinese economy has grown steadily to become the second-largest in Asia thanks to the market reforms that gave China WTO membership in 2001. In particular, Russia is worried that the lively border trade will lead to mass migration from China to Russia’s thinly populated Far Eastern provinces and eventually lead to a complete Chinese takeover. The border regions, which once belonged to China, have seven million inhabitants and over 100,000 Chinese immigrants, whereas the adjacent Chinese regions have 70 million people; this discrepancy is growing. Russia therefore controls the border strictly and maintains a visa regime. Significantly, in 2003 Russia did not allow a Chinese company to buy shares in the Slavneft oil company, while soon after this BP was permitted to buy a large share in another company.63 Third, Russia and China have competing interests in third countries, where many Chinese industrial goods have become more competitive than Russian ones. The Russian recession allowed Chinese business to enter Central Asia, and China may become a strong claimant to the energy resources there if Russia does not satisfy its needs. The Chinese have regained economic dominance in Mongolia, long allied with the Soviet Union, and Putin has therefore taken steps to revive the ties with Mongolia. Thus, it should be noted that the friendship treaty did not speak of a formal alliance and that it made a point of not being directed against third parties. Nothing was said about mutual, let alone military, assistance. Moreover, both states have friendship treaties and strategic partnerships with several other states. Hence, the treaty can at best be seen as a negative security guarantee which could also be used as a means to balance and exact favours from others. Interestingly, when Putin talked about multipolarity in China in 2002 he explained that it presupposes a dialogue with third parties and that crises in Asia should be met by an axis of stability consisting of leading states such as China, Russia, Western Europe and the USA.64

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As shown above, the treaty with China did not hinder Russia from improving relations with the USA, accepting NMD, signing SORT, tolerating NATO enlargement and forming the NATO–Russia Council. In fact, these measures can be seen as counterbalancing China. China, too, managed to improve its relations with the United States, even though it remained critical of US support for Taiwan and an East Asian missile defence system. Balancing China, Putin also continued Yeltsin’s policy of developing relations with Japan, the biggest economy in Asia, by means of official visits, military exchange and increased trade. Unlike China, Russia backed the idea of giving Japan a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and Japan supported Russian membership in the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries (the G7), in which China is not involved.65 In particular, Russia wanted Japanese investments in Siberia and the Russian Far East, and in 2000 the parties agreed on a deal worth US$9.6 billion to build gas and electricity bridges from Sakhalin to Japan. In 2002 Russia started to negotiate with Japan about laying the Angarsk pipeline inside the Russian border to Nakhodka, with only a branch into China. Although longer, this alternative has the advantage of opening up a wider market. Japan, for its part, has become more interested in reducing its heavy dependence on oil from the unstable Middle East, and it can offer more capital investment than China.66 However, there are definite limits to Russia’s partnership with Japan. Japan is safely anchored in a defence alliance and vital trade links with the United States, and its distrust of Russia is deep by tradition. As a condition for a peace treaty and various agreements, Japan demands the return of all the four Kurile Islands which Russia occupied at the end of the Second World War. Russia has proposed compromises, reduced its forces, and opened the islands for visits and fishing, but it has refused to cede all the islands and in 2000 launched a federal programme to develop them. The trade in and exploitation of energy resources are also hampered by structural and technical problems, mainly on the Russian side. Concerning Sakhalin, Russia prefers to involve Western companies and to export oil and gas to several countries, including South Korea and China. It should also be kept in mind that Japan has far more trade with China than with Russia. Concerning Korea, President Putin changed Yeltsin’s policy of focusing on trade with South Korea and withdrawing support from North Korea, the old communist ally. In 2000, Putin was the first Russian head of state ever to visit Pyongyang. A new friendship treaty was signed, and arms exports from Russia were resumed. In 2001, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il paid a return visit, by train, which lasted several weeks. Russia doubted that North Korea possessed nuclear weapons but recommended international security guarantees, including guarantees from the USA, to North Korea in exchange for closure of its nuclear weapons programme.

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 47 However, Russia shared the concern of the USA and the regional powers about North Korea’s plans to develop nuclear weapons and its abrogation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2002. Putin extracted a promise from Kim in 2000 not to proceed with the missile programme – news which he was pleased to disclose at a meeting of the G8.67 He was deceived: Kim soon dismissed the promise as a joke. A primary Russian goal was to be admitted to the multilateral negotiations on security on the Korean Peninsula with the United States, Japan and China. When Russia was allowed to participate in a six-nation conference in Beijing in August 2003 it spoke out against nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and held military exercises off its coast with US, Japanese and South Korean ships.68 Russia was also disappointed by North Korea’s resistance to the building of a railway connection from Russia to South Korea. In South-East Asia, Putin strengthened ties with the old communist ally Vietnam, and a treaty on strategic partnership was signed during his visit there in 2001. If this caused alarm in the USA or China it was probably soothed by Russia’s decision to leave the Cam Ranh naval base. In general, Russia concentrated on trade with the fast-growing economies in this region, irrespective of political orientation, and especially – and with some success – promoting its arms exports.69 Putin further continued Yeltsin’s policy of developing relations with India, the second great power in Asia after China armed with nuclear weapons. Visiting India in October 2000, Putin elevated the relationship by signing a treaty on strategic partnership. Russia is interested in developing trade and military ties with India, which is its biggest recipient of arms exports after China. The parties were united in opposing the US NMD programme, ‘humanitarian interventions’ like that in Kosovo and, later, the war in Iraq. They upheld each other’s territorial integrity against terrorists and separatists in Chechnya and Kashmir, respectively.70 As a counterweight to NATO Russia has long proposed a triple alliance with China and India, and that India should join the Shanghai Six nations in which all members would be united against terrorism. This aim has so far failed because India and China have been traditional enemies, who even fought a border war in 1962. China has also supported India’s worst enemy, Pakistan, and probably helped it construct nuclear weapons. Russian trade with India (and many other states) fell drastically in the 1990s, while India’s trade with the West grew and the USA became its most important trading partner. In Western Asia, Putin maintained relations with the old allies Iraq and Syria. As for Iraq, before the 2003 war Russia opposed the UN sanctions on Iraq and intensified its trade with Iraq. It became Iraq’s main trading partner, acquired a significant role in the Iraqi energy sector, and in August 2002 signed a deal worth some US$40 billion. Consequently, the US-led war and occupation were a big blow to Russian influence in the country. In order to recover its losses, Russia strove for a stronger UN role and a speedy transfer of power to the Iraqi people.

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Putin further developed Yeltsin’s good relations with Iran, including the export of heavy weapons and nuclear power technology. This, however, brought Russia into conflict with the United States, which claimed that Iran was constructing nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism. As in the Iraq case, Russia doubted the first claim, but after the war in Iraq it decided to take back spent nuclear fuel and agreed to stricter control by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) being imposed on Iran.71 Besides, Putin continued Russia’s efforts to boost business interests in Arab states, which were more or less critical of US influence, and indeed managed to sell weapons there as well. Trade agreements were signed, for example, with Saudi Arabia, whose hitherto close relations with the United States were disturbed after 11 September.72 In October 2003, Putin participated as an observer in the Organization of Islamic States’ conference in Kuala Lumpur.73 Concerning the Israel–Palestine conflict, Russia has long tried to play a mediating role of its own and, unlike the USA, retained contact with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. On the other hand, Putin has also improved relations with Israel since Yeltsin’s time because of the rising wave of terrorism in both countries and the great number of Russian immigrants in Israel. Russia participated in the quartet of mediators with the USA, the UN and the EU, and supported the USA’s Road Map, designed to result in a peace agreement in three years between Israel and an independent, democratic Palestine. A final example of Putin’s active foreign policy pragmatism is the relationship with Turkey, a traditional enemy of Russia and a NATO member which hosts US bases on its territory. In Yeltsin’s time Turkey was lambasted for its support to Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Turkic Central Asian states, its support for the Baku–Ceyhan pipeline project and its restrictions on Russian transport through the Bosporus. However, Putin found common interests with Turkey in the fight against terrorism and separatism (of the Chechens and Kurds, respectively), resistance to the US-led war in Iraq, and increased trade. In 2003, the Blue Stream pipeline across the Black Sea for the export of Russian gas to Turkey was opened, and the export of Russian arms to Turkey is under discussion.74 Summing up, Putin has made attempts to find counterweights to NATO in Asia by means of strategic partnerships with the great powers China and India. He has revived relations with old allies like North Korea and Vietnam, and developed ties with Iran and Iraq, and exports of Russian arms and nuclear technology have played an important role in this. However, it has been impossible to create anti-US blocs, since some allies are at odds with each other and they too have growing ties with the West. China poses a future threat to Russia, and partnerships with countries like Iran and Syria strain Russia’s relations with the United States. Here as well Russia has increasingly put its stakes on peaceful economic coopera-

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 49 tion, especially in the energy sector, which has opened the door to old US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Conclusions Russian foreign policy under Putin has become more active compared with what it was under Yeltsin, who in his last years was quite tired and ill, and Putin has not committed blunders and faux pas on the international arena as Yeltsin did. Putin has travelled to and received visits from many more countries, resuming relations with old allies and states, such as those in Eastern and Central Europe, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam, as well as making new friends. He has shown an ability to take initiatives and seize opportunities, for instance, to improve relations with the United States since September 2001 and to intensify energy cooperation with the EU. The analysis in this chapter also shows that Putin has conducted a differentiated foreign policy, adapted to the conditions and changes in each region and country. With regard to the United States, the only superpower and the biggest economy in the world, Putin is striving for a special strategic partnership built on common security interests – mainly in fighting terrorism and the proliferation of WMD and in international stability – and on the prospect of energy exports to the vast American market. This strategic aim, based on Russia’s possession of a huge nuclear arsenal, its problems with Chechen terrorism, its geographic size and location, and its rich energy resources, places Russia ahead of the other great powers and members of the UN Security Council and the G8. However, the USA’s involvement in the CIS area and its offensive policy in the Middle East, for instance, sometimes clash with Russian political and economic interests there, which adds an element of competition or obstruction to Russian policy towards the USA. In relation to Europe, Putin’s Russia wants not only partnership but also integration. Naturally, this interest is based on geographic location, the concentration of the Russian population west of the Urals, cultural affinity and historical tradition; however, it is increasingly based on economic needs and advantages as well. Russia is thus a member of several European (or European-centred) organizations and has many agreements with the EU. Most of Russia’s trade goes to EU member countries, and some EU member countries and candidate countries are dependent on Russian energy supplies. When relations with the United States have turned sour, as they did over the war in Iraq, Putin, like Yeltsin before him, has also tried to establish closer relations with like-minded great powers in Europe, such as France and Germany, while talking about multipolarity and balancing US hegemony. Nevertheless, there are clashes of interest here too. Russia opposes NATO enlargement to and activities among its former allies and former

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Soviet republics – most recently the Baltic states – because this is seen as a threat to its security and as damaging to its prestige. Most European states prefer maintaining ties with the USA to forging new ones with Russia. Furthermore, the European governments were generally more concerned than the US leadership about the war in Chechnya and about democracy and human rights in Russia. Even though Russia accepted EU enlargement eastwards (partly as an alternative to NATO), it opposed the adoption of Schengen visas and the introduction of other restrictions by the new members, which may curtail trade and travel, above all for the Kaliningrad exclave. Russia’s sheer size and economic structure preclude real integration into Europe until a far-distant future. This, together with Russia’s power ambitions vis-à-vis its close neighbours, thus restricts its European policy to one of growing cooperation mixed with elements of competition. Concerning the CIS area, Russia seeks to maintain and develop integration under its leadership, which can be seen as neo-imperialism in some newly independent states, and to form organizations matching those in the West – the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty and the Common Economic Space. Russian power here rests on centuries-old bonds, overwhelming military power, conflicts in and between the other states, and – not least – their economic weakness and dependence on Russia for trade and transport, especially with regard to energy. However, Russian dominance-cum-integration in the CIS is undermined by nationalism and the vested power interests of the political elites in the other states, their search for support from Western powers, and the willingness of the latter to provide it. Because of Russia’s own economic decline in the 1990s, Russian leaders do not want the CIS states to become a heavy burden, hampering profitable trade with more developed states in the West. Asia, finally, is the continent where Putin, like Yeltsin, under the banner of multipolarity has sought most eagerly to balance the United States and NATO, for example, by forming strategic partnerships with the great powers China and India. Relations with old allies such as North Korea and Vietnam have been revived, and ties with Iran and Iraq developed. However, the creation of an anti-US bloc has proved impossible since some allies are at odds with each other and also have growing ties with the West. Russia also fears China becoming a threat in the future, and its relations with North Korea and Iran cloud those with the USA. Russia’s influence in Iraq was destroyed by the US-led invasion. In Asia, too, Russia has increasingly chosen peaceful economic cooperation, especially in the energy sector, thus opening the door to old US allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. A common feature in policy on all these different directions seems to be that the Putin administration is putting growing emphasis on developing the Russian economy, which is seen as a prerequisite for a strong state, rather than maintaining military ambitions abroad at any price. Russia has

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 51 also realized its strength in the energy sector and used it with some success against its dependent neighbours. Economic means may in fact be more efficient and compelling than military or political pressure. Summarizing Putin’s foreign policy by using the options mentioned in the introduction, it seems to fit best Medvedev’s option of limited (minimalist) cooperation with the West mixed with some obstruction and with tendencies towards neo-imperialism vis-à-vis Russia’s immediate neighbours. In Heikka’s terms, Putin can be said on the whole to have preferred cooperative security with the West to multipolar balancing and neoimperialism. It comes as no surprise that in real life the options are combined and adapted differently in different directions. The concept of multipolarity is sometimes redefined from one of balancing US hegemony to one of dialogue among major powers, for example, in the UN Security Council or the G8. This does not at all exclude occasional conflicts among the members. It thus seems justified to characterize Putin’s foreign policy as pragmatic, as both foreign analysts and Putin himself often describe it. The Australian political scientist Bobo Lo labels Putin as a ‘strategic opportunist’ on the following grounds: He is not fixated on ideology, geopolitics or cultural and civilizational categorizations. He has shown that he is prepared to be whoever and whatever depending on context and timing. Thus, he is European in Europe, transcontinental ‘strategic partner’ when dealing with the USA, Asian or Eurasian in Asia, and cautiously integrationist in the CIS. At the same time he does not subscribe to the infantile view that cooperation with the West must necessarily be at the expense of good relations elsewhere.75 Putin’s strategic aim and fundamental belief still appear to be that Russia was, is and will be a great power, special and different from the other, largely regional, great powers in Europe. Imperial thinking dies hard and may influence Russian foreign policy for many years to come. The UK and France also needed a long time to give up their empires, but they are now safely embedded in peaceful, democratic integration in Europe.

Notes 1 A good recent example is Bobo Lo, Vladimir Putin and the Evolution of Russian Foreign Policy, Malden: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 51ff. 2 Sergei Medvedev, Russia’s Futures: Implications for the EU, the North and the Baltic Region, Helsinki and Berlin: Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Institut für europäische Politik, 2000, pp. 64ff. 3 Henrikki Heikka, Grand Strategies and the Northern Dimension of European Security, Helsinki and Berlin: Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Institut für europäische Politik, 2003, pp. 19–25.

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4 This chapter builds on the author’s chapter in Jan Leijonhielm et al., Rysk militär förmåga i ett tioårsperspektiv [Russian military capacity in a ten-year perspective], Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2003, pp. 67ff. News items from Russian media are mainly taken from BBC Monitoring, Global Newsline, Former Soviet Union Political File (e-mail subscription). 5 For more detail on this see Lo, Vladimir Putin, pp. 9ff. 6 For more on domestic factors, see the chapters by Mette Skak, Lena Jonson and Pavel Baev in this volume. 7 On this see also the chapters by Mette Skak and Jakub Godzimirski in this volume. 8 On this see also the chapters by Lena Jonson and Pavel Baev in this volume. 9 Kommersant, 22 May 2002. 10 Russian President, ‘Rossiisko-amerikanskaia vstrecha na vysshem urovne’ [Top-level Russian–US meeting], 24 May 2002 (http://www.president. kremlin.ru/summit8, retrieved 31 May 2002). 11 Russian President, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 12 July 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 4 November 2002). 12 BBC Channel One television, 27 September 2003. 13 US White House, ‘Joint statement by President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin’, 22 November 2002 (http://www.whitehous.gov/news/ releases, retrieved 25 November 2002); and Prime-TASS, 22 September 2003 (BBC Monitoring). 14 On economic problems, see the chapter by Roland Götz in this volume. 15 Russian President, ‘Zaiavlenie dlia pressy . . .’ [Statement for the press], 11 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/t4xt/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003); and ‘Sovmestnaia press-konferentsiia . . .’ [Joint press conference], 29 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003). 16 Russian President, ‘Zaiavlenie dlia pressy . . .’ [Statement for the press], 3 April 2003, (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003). See also the chapter by Mette Skak in this volume. 17 RTR (Russian television channel), 1 June 2003 (BBC Monitoring). 18 On relations between NATO and Russia, see also the chapter by Jakub Godzimirski in this volume. 19 Bertil Nygren, ‘Russia and Europe or Russia in Europe?’, in Yuri Fedorov and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russia and Europe: Putin’s Foreign Policy, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, pp. 18ff. 20 Russian President, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 28 May 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events, retrieved 31 May 2002). 21 Russian President, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 16 January 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events, retrieved 4 February 2002). 22 On this see also the chapter by Vilhelm Konnander in this volume. 23 See also Ingmar Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement: Russia and the Baltic States in the Context of NATO and EU Enlargements, User Report, FOI-R0808-SE, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), February 2003, pp. 23ff. 24 Russian President, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 3 September 2001 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events, retrieved 12 October 2001). 25 Russian President, ‘Otvety prezidenta . . .’ [Replies by the president], 11 February 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 19 March 2003). 26 Russian President, ‘Zaiavlenie dlia pressy . . .’ [Statement for the press], 11 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/t4xt/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003). 27 Russian President, ‘Sovmestnaia press-konferentsiia . . .’ [Joint press conference], 29 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003).

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 53 28 Quoted in Nygren, ‘Russia and Europe’, p. 26. 29 RTR, 16 May 2003 (BBC Monitoring). 30 European Commission, ‘Tenth EU–Russia summit: Joint statement on the fight against terrorism’, 11 November 2002 (http://www.eu.int/comm/external_relations/russia/summit, retrieved 13 November 2002). 31 Boris Ye. Frumkin, ‘The economic relationship between Russia and Europe: Current situation and emerging trends’, in Fedorov and Nygren, Russia and Europe, pp. 97ff. 32 Frank Umbach, Globale Energiesicherheit: Strategische Herausforderung [Global energy security: Strategic challenge], Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003. 33 European Commission, ‘The EU–Russia energy dialogue’, 11 November 2002 (http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/russia/summit, retrieved 13 November 2002). 34 ITAR–TASS, 27 August 2003. 35 On ecological problems, see also the chapters by Nikita Lomagin and Christer Pursiainen in this volume. 36 Frumkin, ‘The economic relationship between Russia and Europe’, pp. 100ff. See also the chapter by Roland Götz in this volume. 37 Frumkin, ‘The economic relationship between Russia and Europe’, pp. 109ff. 38 European Commission, ‘Tenth EU–Russia summit: Joint statement on transit . . .’, 11 November 2002 (http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/russia/summit, retrieved 13 November 2002). 39 RTR, 16 May 2003 (BBC Monitoring). 40 Rossiiskaia gazeta, 11 July 2000. 41 V. Trubnikov, ‘Tenth anniversary of the Commonwealth of Independent States’, International Affairs, 1, 2002, pp. 18, 24. 42 When the treaty was prolonged in 1999, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan left it. 43 In Russian the Organizatsiia Dogovora Kollektivnoi Bezopasnosti (ODKB). 44 Hannes Adomeit and Heidi Reisinger, Russia’s Role in Post-Soviet Territory, Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 2002, pp. 6ff. 45 On Belarus, see also the chapter by Jakob Hedenskog in this volume. 46 On Moldova, see also the chapter by Jakob Hedenskog in this volume. 47 TVS, Interfax, 11 September 2002; and ITAR–TASS, 8 October 2002 (BBC Monitoring). On Georgia, see the chapter by Bertil Nygren in this volume. 48 On this, see the chapters by Isabelle Facon and Ekaterina Stepanova in this volume. 49 Moscow News, 32, 2003. 50 On Georgia and Ukraine, see the chapters by Bertil Nygren and Jakob Hedenskog in this volume. 51 Wall Street Journal Europe, 22–24 August 2003. On this topic see also the chapter by Lena Jonson in this volume. 52 Wall Street Journal Europe, 8–10 August 2003. 53 ITAR–TASS, 17 September 2003; Interfax-Ukraine, 18 September 2003; Interfax, 19 September 2003 (BBC Monitoring); and Russian President, ‘Soglashenie o formirovanii edinogo ekonomicheskogo prostranstva’ [Agreement on the creation of a Single Economic Space], 19 September 2003. 54 See also the chapter by Jakob Hedenskog in this volume. 55 Izvestiia, 21 August 2003 (BBC Monitoring); and Vladimir Socor, ‘Caspian Great Game’, Wall Street Journal, 23–25 May 2003. 56 Moscow News, 35, 2003. 57 Nezavisimaia gazeta, 14 November 2000. 58 On this relationship until 2001, see also Ingmar Oldberg, ‘Towards alliance?

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59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Ingmar Oldberg Russia’s relations with China in an international context’, in Ingolf Kiesow (ed.), From Taiwan to Taliban: Two Danger Zones in Asia, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2002, pp. 24ff. Xinhua, 16 July 2001 (BBC Monitoring 17 July 2001). The members of the SCO are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Aleksandr Lukin, ‘Russia, US, China and the Iraqi conflict’, International Affairs, 3, 2002, p. 18. Russian President, ‘Interviu prezidenta . . .’ [Interview with the president], 4 June 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 18 December 2002). Lukin, ‘Russia, US, China and the Iraqi conflict’, p. 19. Russian President, ‘Interviu prezidenta . . .’ [Interview with the president], 4 June 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 18 December 2002). The Group of Seven became the Group of Eight (G8) when Russia joined it in 1997. Lukin, ‘Russia, US, China and the Iraqi conflict’, pp. 18ff.; Interfax, 29 April 2003 (BBC Monitoring 30 April 2003); ITAR–TASS, 3 June 2003 (BBC Monitoring); and Russian Ministry of Energy, ‘Energeticheskaia strategiia Rossii na period do 2020 goda’ [The Russian energy strategy for the period up to 2020], p. 70 (http://www.mte.gov.ru/files/103/1354.strategy.pdf). The missile North Korea fired across Japan in 1998 became a major reason for the US NMD programme and the Japanese endorsement of a regional missile defence. On the G8, see note 65. ITAR–TASS, 1 September and 28 August 2003; Interfax, 27 August 2003; NTV, 25 August 2003 (BBC Monitoring); and Washington Post, 27 August 2003. On Indonesia, for example, see Interfax-AVN military news agency, 27 August 2003 (BBC Monitoring). Russian President, ‘Zaiavlenie prezidenta . . .’ [Statement by the president], 4 December 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 6 December 2002); and Moscow News, 48, 2002. Interfax, 27 August 2003; ITAR–TASS, 26 August (BBC Monitoring); and Washington Post, 27 August 2003. Interfax, 27 August 2003; and Moscow News, 33, 2003. Dagens nyheter, 13 October 2003. Interfax, 24 December 2002 (BBC Monitoring, 25 December 2002); and Turkish Daily News, 24, 25 December 2002. Lo, Vladimir Putin, p. 131.

Bibliography Books and journals Adomeit, Hannes and Heidi Reisinger, Russia’s Role in Post-Soviet Territory, Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 2002. Fedorov, Yuri and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russia and Europe: Putin’s Foreign Policy, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002. Frumkin, Boris Ye., ‘The economic relationship between Russia and Europe: Current situation and emerging trends’, in Yuri Fedorov and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russia and Europe: Putin’s Foreign Policy, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, pp. 97ff.

Foreign policy priorities under Putin 55 Heikka, Henrikki, Grand Strategies and the Northern Dimension of European Security, Helsinki and Berlin: Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Institut für europäische Politik, 2003. Leijonhielm, Jan et al., Rysk militär förmåga i ett tioårsperspektiv [Russian military capacity in a ten-year perspective], Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2003. Lo, Bobo, Vladimir Putin and the Evolution of Russian Foreign Policy, Malden: Blackwell, 2003. Lukin, Aleksandr, ‘Russia, US, China and the Iraqi conflict’, International Affairs, 3, 2002. Medvedev, Sergei, Russia’s Futures: Implications for the EU, the North and the Baltic Region, Helsinki and Berlin: Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Institut für europäische Politik, 2002. Nygren, Bertil, ‘Russia and Europe or Russia in Europe?’, in Yuri Fedorov and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russia and Europe: Putin’s Foreign Policy, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002. Oldberg, Ingmar, ‘Towards alliance? Russia’s relations with China in an international context’, in Ingolf Kiesow (ed.), From Taiwan to Taliban: Two Danger Zones in Asia, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2002. ——, Reluctant Rapprochement. Russia and the Baltic States in the Context of NATO and EU Enlargements, User Report, FOI-R-0808-SE, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, February 2003. Trubnikov, V., ‘Tenth anniversary of the Commonwealth of Independent States’, International Affairs, 1, 2002. Umbach, Frank, Globale Energiesicherheit: Strategische Herausforderung [Global energy security: Strategic challenge], Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003.

Media and Internet BBC Monitoring Global Newsline, Former Soviet Union Political File (e-mail subscription, hereinafter referred to as BBC). BBC, Channel One television, 27 September 2003 (BBC). Dagens nyheter, 13 October 2003. European Commission, ‘Tenth EU–Russia Summit: Joint statement on the fight against terrorism’, 11 November 2002 (http://www.eu.int/comm/ external_relations/ russia/summit, accessed 13 November 2002). ——, ‘The EU–Russia energy dialogue’, 11 November 2002 (http://www. europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/russia/summit, accessed 13 November 2002). ——, ‘Tenth EU-Russia Summit: Joint statement on transit . . .’, 11 November 2002 (http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/ russia/summit, accessed 13 November 2002). Interfax, 24 December 2002, 29 April 2003, 27 August 2003 and 19 September 2003 (BBC). Interfax-AVN military news agency, 27 August 2003 (BBC). Interfax-Ukraine, 18 September 2003. ITAR–TASS, 8 October 2002, 3 June 2003 and 26 August 2003 (BBC). ITAR–TASS, 27 August 2003, 28 August 2003, 1 September 2003 and 17 September 2003. Izvestiia, 21 August 2003 (BBC).

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Kommersant, 22 May 2002. Moscow News, 48 (2002), 32 (2003), 33 (2003) and 35 (2003). Nezavisimaia gazeta, 14 November 2000. NTV, 25 August 2003 (BBC). Prime-TASS, 22 September 2003 (BBC). Rossiiskaia gazeta, 11 July 2000. RTR (Russian television channel), 16 May 2003 and 1 June 2003 (BBC). Russian Ministry of Energy, ‘Energeticheskaia strategiia Rossii na period do 2020 goda’ [The Russian energy strategy for the period up to 2020], p. 70 (http://www.mte.gov.ru/files/103/1354.strategy.pdf). Russian President, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 3 September 2001, available on the official website of the President of the Russian Federation (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events, retrieved 12 October 2001). ——, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 16 January 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events, retrieved 4 February 2002). ——, ‘Rossiisko-amerikanskaia vstrecha na vysshem urovne’ [Top-level Russian–US meeting], 24 May 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/ summit8, retrieved 31 May 2002). ——, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 28 May 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events, retrieved 31 May 2002). ——, ‘Interviu prezidenta . . .’ [Interview with the president], 4 June 2002 (http://www.President.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 18 December 2002). ——, ‘Vystuplenie prezidenta . . .’ [Speech by the president], 12 July 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 4 November 2002). ——, ‘Zaiavlenie prezidenta . . .’ [Statement by the president], 4 December 2002 (http://www.president.kremlin.ru/text/appears, retrieved 6 December 2002). ——, ‘Otvety prezidenta . . .’ [Replies by the president], 11 February 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 19 March 2003). ——, ‘Zaiavlenie dlia pressy . . .’ [Statement for the press], 3 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003). ——, ‘Zaiavlenie dlia pressy . . .’ [Statement for the press], 11 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/t4xt/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003). ——, ‘Sovmestnaia press-konferentsiia . . .’ [Joint press conference], 29 April 2003 (http://194.226.82.50/text/appears, retrieved 3 June 2003). ——, ‘Soglashenie o formirovanii edinogo ekonomicheskogo prostranstva’ [Agreement on the creation of a Single Economic Space], 19 September 2003. Socor, Vladimir, ‘Caspian Great Game’, Wall Street Journal, 23–25 May 2003. Turkish Daily News, 24 and 25 December 2002. TVS, Interfax, 11 September 2002. US White House, ‘Joint statement by President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin’, 22 November 2002 (http://www.whitehous. gov/news/releases, retrieved 25 November 2002). Wall Street Journal Europe, 8–10 August 2003 and 22–24 August 2003. Washington Post, 27 August 2003. Xinhua, 16 July 2001 (BBC, 17 July 2001).

3

Russia and NATO Community of values or community of interests? Jakub M. Godzimirski

One needs the enemy. T. S. Eliot1 His opponents never knew which side he would come at them from. It was always difficult to second guess him. Anatolii Rakhlin, young Putin’s judo coach.2

Introduction One of the most intriguing changes of the past few years is what many observers have called a new beginning in relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Only four years ago, when NATO decided to resort to arms in order to put an end to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and launched a 78-day air campaign in March 1999 against Slobodan Milosevic’s abuses in Kosovo, relations between Russia and the Western alliance sank to their lowest point in the post-Soviet period. NATO’s Kosovo operation was accompanied by another highly symbolic step: in March 1999, after two years of preparation, NATO opened its doors to three new members and former (albeit unwilling) Soviet allies – Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The alliance’s decision on enlargement and then its implementation in the first weeks of the Kosovo operation meant that Russia – at least, this was the Russian reading of the situation – found itself facing a new geopolitical challenge. An apparently aggressive Western military alliance at war with one of Russia’s traditional allies in the Balkans was approaching Russia’s borders, and at a time when Russia was still struggling to cope with the consequences of the August 1998 economic collapse that had revealed the naked truth about the real state of affairs in the country. In this situation, any notion of this aggressive NATO enlarging again, not only closer to Russia’s borders but even to countries that only ten years earlier had formed part of the Soviet inner empire, was seen as justification for rethinking the whole Russian policy towards the alliance and the opening of what in the Russian political discourse was sometimes referred to as an era of ‘cold peace’.

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By contrast, when NATO decided at its Prague meeting in November 2002 to invite more new members, including three former Soviet republics, no loud protests were heard from Moscow. This is not to say that the Russian authorities necessarily welcomed the decision, but their reactions were mild in view of the salvos Russia had fired against the enlargement only a few years earlier. What happened in the time between Kosovo and Prague to make Russia tone down its criticism of NATO and accept the alliance’s decision to enlarge? Finding a satisfactory answer to this intriguing and crucial question, and giving some interpretations of the shift in Russia’s attitude towards NATO, is the main aim of this chapter.

Russia, NATO and Kosovo: reaching the nadir On a list of the issues that have had the most negative and disturbing impact on relations between Russia and the West over the past ten years, the question of NATO enlargement would be near the top. NATO’s 1997 redefinition of its strategic goals and the implementation of the new ideas through intervention in European conflicts also definitely contributed to the souring of relations between Russia, which was in search of a new state identity, and the West, which was seeking a new formula for its relations with the former arch-enemy in the East. Several more or less successful attempts have been made to help Russia and the West to gloss over their differences,3 but NATO’s decision to resort to arms in defence of basic human rights in Kosovo in 1999 seemed to put an effective end to cooperation between these two important pillars of European security. The then Russian prime minister, Yevgenii Primakov, decided to make a literal U-turn over the Atlantic when, on a flight to Washington, learning that NATO was about to launch attacks on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, he ordered the pilot to turn back to Moscow. This was a highly symbolic move signalling the willingness of the Russian elite to confront the West on this issue and to cut all formal contacts with NATO.4 Although the weakened Russia was not prepared to intervene militarily, some Russian leaders called for serious measures to be taken to put an end to what was seen as an aggressive war against Russia’s traditional Balkan ally. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was interpreted by most of the Russian political elite and by the Russian public as a clear confirmation of the alliance’s aggressive designs.5 An important source of discord in relations between Russia and NATO was the way in which the two approached the realm of international relations. For NATO its Kosovo mission was a clear and ultimate manifestation of a value-driven policy of defence of the basic human rights and democracy with the help of military means; from the Russian point of view the intervention in Kosovo was a manifestation of an interest-driven policy of the West and a clear attempt by the West to encroach on Russia’s regional and global interests. However, Russia soon realized that it was in

Russia and NATO 59 its own interest to play a more constructive role. The country’s authorities realized that confronting the West on Kosovo would be too costly an option and decided that Russia was to serve first as an intermediary who was to initiate the peace process in the Balkans and then as a partner in the post-conflict settlement. The role given to former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as a peace mediator in the conflict and the decision to send Russian peacekeepers to Kosovo were the most visible Russian contributions in this respect. These decisions were also a visible sign that it was possible to find a modus vivendi with NATO, even in a situation where the gap between what the alliance presented as a value-driven policy and what Russia interpreted as an interest-driven policy choice was as wide as it was in the case of Kosovo. This could also be seen as a signal that Russia, although frustrated by the West’s apparent disregard for Russia’s interests, was willing to adopt a more pragmatic policy towards the alliance and to seek cooperation with it. Over the next two years Russia’s relations with NATO evolved in a direction that was almost unthinkable at the moment of cessation of hostilities in Kosovo. What seemed to be irreparable damage to Russia’s relations with the West became seemingly less important when both the West and Russia only two years later faced what they both saw as the same dangerous enemy. There were three important factors that helped Russia and the West to open what is sometimes interpreted as a new chapter in their relations. The first was the re-emergence of the conflict in Chechnya on the Russian domestic and international agenda (August–September) 1999; the second was the fact that this conflict – and Boris Yeltsin’s evident inability to continue as Russia’s president – catapulted to power as prime minister a fairly unknown KGB colonel turned St Petersburg democrat, Vladimir Putin; the third was the terrorist attack on the USA in September 2001, which resulted in a complete redrawing of the ‘interest map’ of the only remaining superpower and gave Russia a unique opportunity to reposition itself on the new global power map. The immediate result was a partial convergence of the West’s value-driven and Russia’s interest-driven policy on the international arena: Putin’s Russia seemingly decided to redraw its own mental interest map and the West decided to rethink the ‘value basis’ of its own policy. All these three factors, although in different ways, have had a direct bearing on relations between Russia and NATO. The first period of the second Chechen war boosted Russia’s self-confidence and its belief that military means alone could solve difficult political and social problems. NATO’s action in Kosovo seemingly inspired the Russian leadership. On the first, paradoxically enough, the Russian operation in Chechnya, which was so heavily criticized by the whole civilized world, helped to reestablish a sort of parity in relations between Russia and NATO. On the one hand, at least in the first phase of the second Chechen war, the

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Russian military managed to get rid of their inferiority complex vis-à-vis their Western counterparts. They believed they proved capable of launching what they saw as a successful military campaign with minimal losses to their own forces and wiping out all organized military resistance in the war-torn republic. They also believed that their action was justified in the light of what NATO had undertaken in Kosovo only months earlier – they could reject any Western criticism of their action in Chechnya by referring to NATO’s action in Kosovo. At the end of 1999 it might have seemed that there was a draw in the contest between the West and Russia. The West had had its own small victorious war in Kosovo, and Russia was launching its own victorious war in Chechnya – a war that was also to play a central role in the redrawing of Russia’s political map. On the second factor, as it is widely believed that the war in Chechnya played a decisive role as a launching-pad for the political career of the relatively unknown Putin,6 who in March 2000 was elected the new president of Russia, this war also resulted indirectly in bringing a new and important actor to the international stage – an actor who was seemingly willing to adopt a new, more pragmatic approach to both the domestic and the foreign and security policy of Russia. Putin’s decision to call US president George W. Bush immediately after the 11 September attacks on the USA placed Russia on the USA’s post-11 September strategic map as an important partner. Putin was also able to persuade the Russian political elite that this pro-Western choice best served Russia’s short- and mediumterm interests. Grigorii Yavlinskii’s account of the results of the meeting between Putin and 21 Russian political heavyweights witnesses that there was no mood among Russia’s elite for closer cooperation with the West. When Putin asked his guests what kind of policy Russia should adopt ‘one participant advocated support for the Taliban, while 18 participants proposed that Russia remain neutral in the fight between America and the terrorists. Only two said that Russia should participate in the antiterrorist coalition.’7 Third, Putin’s decision to call Bush on 11 September not only opened a new chapter in the Russian–US dialogue; it also helped Russia to adopt a more flexible and sophisticated policy towards a NATO that had visible problems with finding a proper place in the new post-11 September world.

Russia and NATO: schools and attitudes The fact that the new ruler in the Kremlin came from the former Soviet intelligence community added a special flavour to speculations as to Russia’s choice of its future path. The question ‘Who is Mr Putin?’ and what sort of Russia this former spy was about to build dominated the Western agenda in the first months after his ascent to power. That Putin was willing to put his own personal mark on both Russia’s domestic policy and its foreign policy was proved beyond any doubt when he launched

Russia and NATO 61 many domestic reforms and ordered the revision of the whole set of Russian official doctrines outlining Russia’s security, defence and foreign policy. Before analysing the content of the official doctrines signed by Putin in the first year of his presidency, it is worth recalling the main lines of the pre-Putin Russian discourse on NATO. Although NATO has been portrayed in the Russian official discourse first and foremost as a military alliance and a power factor, it is not the purely power-related issues but Russian representations of NATO and the Russian ‘reading’ of the nature of international relations that have played the decisive role in shaping Russian attitudes towards the alliance. Russia’s main problem with NATO was more of a mental than of a purely military and technical character. To understand Russia’s swings in policy towards NATO it is necessary to reconstruct its representation of the world and place NATO on Russia’s mental map. What were the main ideas on the world and NATO expressed by the milieux representing different schools of thought on Russia’s place in the world?8 The realists. NATO has been perceived as a relic of the bipolar competitive world by those who tend to read the international system in purely realist terms. The very fact that NATO survived the dissolution of the Soviet pole of the bipolar world system surprised them and is treated as an anomaly because its survival contradicted what could be labelled ‘realist common sense’. According to the realist reading, alliances whose main purpose is the protection of their members against the aggressive designs of other powerful members of the anarchic global system are doomed to disappear once the threat is no longer there. NATO, however, has not only survived but also seemed to find a new niche and decided to enlarge. It has also decided to flex – and use – its military muscle by intervening in European ‘hot spots’ where Russia traditionally also had some stakes and wanted to play a more active, prominent and independent role. NATO’s more or less successful interventions, combined with the decline of Russia’s realist capabilities and Russia’s growing realization of its military and political weakness, have only added to the list of concerns shared by the proponents of the realist school of thought. The geo-economic school. A ‘softer’ version of realism with a strong spatial component is the ‘geo-economic’ approach to the question of security, with a focus on the economic rather than the military instruments of achieving the goals of national strategy. Michel Foucher notes that today the world may be witnessing the end of the classical geopolitical thinking on international relations, as what is decisive for a country’s international position is not its control of territory and military power (the central ideas in traditional geopolitical thinking) but rather its economic performance. One of the first to theorize on the geo-economic paradigm was the American specialist on strategy Edward Luttwak,9 and his views

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have gained ground in Russia as well.10 The geo-economic approach results in a redefinition of national goals: according to this school, the world is still an arena of competition, but the actors are much more interdependent. They tend to pursue their goals through economic competition rather than annihilation, as waging war on each other is ruled out from the arsenal of means available to achieve geo-economically defined goals.11 Since not military but rather economic means and strategies are important to achieve ‘geo-economic’ goals, the proponents of this school do not have any special attitude towards NATO; rather they see it as irrelevant for the formulation and implementation of the ‘geo-economic’ strategy for Russia. The Eurasianists. The Eurasianists – the proponents of a Messianic version of realism with strong elements of ‘identity-based’ (and biased) politics – claim that Russia is not part of Western civilization but rather a bridge between West and East. Because of its unique Eurasian location, the country has a special mission that can be fulfilled first of all through cooperation with the former Soviet republics (within the Commonwealth of Independent States, the CIS) and other powers with strong interests in Eurasia. China and India are often mentioned in this context, but Japan, South Korea and some Islamic countries are also listed as important partners. For them NATO is as much a power factor as an expression of Atlantic values which they see as a threat to Russia’s ‘ideological’ exceptionalism. They fear NATO not only as a potential source of military threat to Russia (a view they share with pure realists) but also as an institutional ‘bearer’ of certain values that could threaten Russia’s very ideological foundations if imported into the country by the new leadership embarking on the policy of Westernization. The Atlanticists/Democrats. The Atlanticists/Democrats are those who preach Russia’s return to what could be described as ‘democratic normalcy’. They see in NATO not a military organization but rather an institutional expression of the values and norms which Russia in their opinion should also follow in order to modernize and narrow the civilizational gap. In addition, they can see some positive effects the existence of NATO has had on the international system, as the alliance has functioned as a provider of security and stability not only to those who were already in but also to those who lived in its immediate neighbourhood and were in need of help, or wanted to join the alliance and thus had to live up to its normative requirements. When addressing the issue of NATO, the Russian elites had to deal with at least three dimensions of the alliance. NATO could be seen as a power factor, as an institutional factor and as an identity factor. For realists, for instance, the identity dimension of NATO was not relevant at all as in the ‘realist vocabulary’ there is no place for ‘identity considerations’. What matters for realists is that NATO represents a certain military potential and that the future intentions of those who have this potential at their dis-

Russia and NATO 63 posal are unknown and uncertain, although in the view of most realists power tends to be used in a predatory way in order to get the upper hand in relations with other, weaker actors. In a similar way, for those who had a positive attitude towards NATO and approached the alliance in a ‘constructivist (and constructive) way’, the most important thing about NATO was not the number of its soldiers, tanks and aircraft (threatening Russia, in the realists’ view) but the intentions of those who had this arsenal at their disposal – intentions that were to a very great extent a result of their attitudes towards the outside world; attitudes that in turn were shaped by their mental maps and the values and norms forming the ideological basis of the alliance. As Russian Atlanticists/ Democrats represented a liberal–institutional approach to international relations, they saw NATO as also being important within the framework of the institutional paradigm: NATO was one of a number of institutions that made the surrounding world a safer place because it based its actions on the consensus principle and was an arena on which one could deal in a constructive way with latent, potential and actual conflicts threatening peace in Europe. After a brief period of pro-Western, Atlanticist policy pursued by the first Russian minister of foreign affairs, Andrei Kozyrev, in 1992 Russian policy towards the alliance came to be marked by a profound scepticism and an openly expressed fear of being marginalized and confronted with the alliance’s military might approaching Russia’s western borders. One of the most important official statements on foreign policy in the first years of Russia’s independent statehood was the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, published in January 1993.12 The document gave some important clues as to Russia’s attitude towards NATO, and especially NATO’s planned activities in the traditional Russian sphere of interests in Central and Eastern Europe. Without mentioning NATO in that context, the document stated clearly that ‘we [Russia] cannot allow the Western powers to force Russia out of the East European region, which is already becoming a reality’. On 3 November 1993, only three weeks after the Russian military had

Table 3.1 Russian schools of thought and NATO: attitude matrix School

NATO as a power factor

NATO as an institutional factor

NATO as an identity factor

Realism Geo-economics Eurasianism Atlanticism

⫺ 0 ⫺ ⫹

⫺ 0 ⫺ ⫹

0 0 ⫺ ⫹

Key ⫹ ⫽ positive attitude; ⫺ ⫽ negative attitude; 0 ⫽ no attitude.

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helped President Boris Yeltsin to do away with the opposition in the Russian parliament, the country’s leadership adopted a new official Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation13 addressing issues relevant to relations with NATO. Also in November 1993, the so-called Primakov Report on the negative consequences of NATO enlargement was published in Moscow. It discussed many issues crucial for Russia’s security in the light of NATO’s (then still unclear) enlargement plans.14 In January 1994, Russia seemed to be appeased by NATO’s proposal for the creation of a new framework for cooperation between the alliance and the countries of the former Soviet bloc. The Russian policy-making community saw the Partnership for Peace (PFP) as a clear sign that NATO was reckoning with Russia’s reservations and as an alternative to enlargement. Russia was offered special treatment by NATO within the PFP framework. On 31 May 1995, Russia officially accepted its Individual Partnership Programme under the PFP and the document on Areas for Pursuance of a Broad, Enhanced NATO–Russia Dialogue and Cooperation. On 26 September 1995, NATO presented a draft proposal of a Political Framework for NATO–Russia Relations. However, only two days later the alliance released the conclusions of its Study on Enlargement in which it formulated clear entry criteria to be met by potential new members.15 The publication of the study meant that NATO was entering a new, more practical phase in its preparations to enlarge. In January 1996, Yevgenii Primakov was appointed Russia’s new minister of foreign affairs, and with this appointment an advocate of a more assertive Russian foreign policy came to put his personal mark on the Russian approach to NATO. The Primakov period in Russian foreign policy was characterized by a return to thinking in terms of balance of power. However, Primakov was aware that Russia lacked a sound power basis and decided therefore to launch a purely realist policy of counterbalancing the West by seeking closer ties with other global centres of power – China and India.16 This multipolar approach did not prevent a setback in relations with NATO. On 27 May 1997 the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation was signed in Paris. Then, only a fortnight later, NATO decided to invite three former Soviet vassals – Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary – to join the alliance in 1999. Although Russia was again given special treatment by the alliance, and a new political channel was opened between NATO headquarters and Moscow, the decision to enlarge was seen in Russia as a setback in realist terms – as a defeat of Russian foreign and security policy and as a slap on the face. The most important single reason why Russia felt betrayed was that the country’s elite defined NATO enlargement as the most important challenge, and not only politicized but also strongly securitized the issue. Once Russia’s prestige was put to the test in this single case, the failure to stop enlargement had automatically to be seen as

Russia and NATO 65 a humiliating defeat, although there were no traceable signs that NATO had any real aggressive designs and the alliance decided to open a new phase of dialogue with Russia in connection with this enlargement move. This feeling of being ignored and overlooked came to dominate Russia’s official attitude towards NATO in the period between the alliance’s decision to enlarge and its decision to go to war in Kosovo. It was therefore not so surprising, taking into consideration Russia’s primordial instincts where NATO was concerned, that the official Russian reaction to these two ‘watershed events’ – NATO enlargement and what was seen by Russia as the alliance’s military action against a sovereign European state and Russia’s traditional close ally – was full of anger and frustration.

Putin and NATO: words and deeds Putin has always had a rather ambiguous attitude towards NATO. In an interview with two Russian journalists on the eve of presidential election in Russia in March 2000 he gave the following description of NATO as he had perceived it during his time as a spy in Germany: ‘We were working from the territory of Eastern Germany. We were interested in all information on our main enemy, and our main enemy was NATO.’17 At the same time, when he was still the secretary of the Russian Security Council and head of its counter-espionage organization the Federal Security Service (Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, FSB), he showed visible restraint and sobriety when he had to deal with the deteriorating situation in Kosovo. He was critical of NATO’s action but stated that Russia should avoid any confrontation with it over the issue because the country was simply too weak to play this confrontational game: ‘Russia must not get involved in an exchange of strikes. Russia cannot engage in any military action, specifically in its present state. I am feeling that we are being pushed to that. But nobody will succeed in that.’18 This ambiguity in Putin’s attitude – which was a mixture of the probably deeply rooted elemental Soviet mistrust of NATO, a sober assessment of NATO’s actual military and political might, and the realization that Russia was at that stage unable to confront it – was a characteristic trait of his policy towards the alliance in the period between his ‘appointment’ as acting president on 31 December 1999 and 11 September 2001, when he adopted an apparently more pro-Western line. In order to identify the evolution of Putin’s attitude towards NATO, this chapter now looks first at how the official documents on Russia’s security, foreign and defence policy, which Putin signed in the first year of his presidency, approach the question of relations with NATO and then at Putin’s own statements on NATO in the period between December 1999 and September 2001. This section focuses only on what could be termed the more extreme expressions of the Russian president’s attitudes towards NATO.

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One of the first legal acts of the new acting president was the signing of the new version of the National Security Concept on 10 January 2000. On 21 April 2000 the new version of the Military Doctrine was adopted by the Russian Security Council and signed by Putin, now the elected president. Then, on 28 June 2000, Putin approved the new Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation.19 There is, of course, room for debate about whether the official doctrines are really a guiding tool for the actual formulation and implementation of the country’s policy, but it cannot be denied that they are the best tools available to enable us to learn more about and get a better insight into the mental world of the Russian policy- and decision-making community. No matter how general, self-contradictory, incoherent, misleading, deceptive and obscure these doctrines may appear, and no matter how limited the impact they have on actual policy-making, they are the sole officially accepted and standardized expressions of the official views on the country’s position in the international setting. To learn more about the official Russian understanding of NATO under Putin it is therefore quite natural to start by taking a look at how these official documents define NATO and then look at how – and whether – these official views are translated into the actual policy choices made by the Russian decisionmakers. The National Security Concept 2000 placed NATO in a broader context, mentioning its plans to enlarge among other threats to Russia’s security. It identifies one of the most important sources of threat as ‘the strengthening of military–political blocs and alliances, above all NATO’s eastward expansion’, and adds: Elevated to the rank of strategic doctrine, NATO’s transition to the practice of using military force outside its zone of responsibility and without UN Security Council sanction could destabilize the entire global strategic situation. The growing technical advantage of a number of leading powers and their enhanced ability to create new weapons and military equipment could provoke a new phase of the arms race and radically alter the forms and methods of warfare. The National Security Concept also states that a major source of tension in the international system is the attempt to ‘create an international relations structure based on domination by developed Western countries in the international community, under US leadership and designed for unilateral solutions (including the use of military force) to key issues in world politics in circumvention of the fundamental rules of international law’. NATO is not specifically mentioned here but it is obvious that it and the USA are the main culprits intended here. The Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 calls for cooperation with NATO, because this would serve security and stability on the continent of Europe.

Russia and NATO 67 This cooperation should be based on a realistic assessment of the role of the alliance, and existing documents – first of all, the 1997 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Co-operation and Security – should serve as the legal framework for this interaction. The Foreign Policy Concept presents a list of conditions to be fulfilled before Russia can cooperate. These are: ‘compliance with key clauses of this document [Founding Act], primarily those concerning non-use or threat of force, and non-deployment of conventional armed forces groupings, nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles in the territories of the new members’. In addition, it contains a list of Russian grievances with respect to NATO. The most important of these are ‘the provisions of NATO’s new strategic concept, which do not exclude the conduct of use-of-force operations outside the zone of application of the Washington Treaty without the sanction of the UN Security Council’, and the alliance’s enlargement plans, towards which Russia retained its negative attitude. At the same time, the document identifies four NATO countries – the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France – as particularly important for Russia’s defence of its national interests in European and world affairs, and for the stabilization and growth of the Russian economy. The last of this triad of official documents, the Military Doctrine of 2000, does not mention NATO by name. However, it is obvious that many provisions of the document were ‘inspired’ by NATO’s very existence. The document mentions several external threats to Russia’s security, and many of them can be directly related to NATO’s actual or thinkable activities. A glance at the list of external threats to Russia’s military security reveals the potentially negative role NATO can play in this context. NATO, although not named directly, is still seen more as a potential source of strategic threat to Russia’s security than as an opportunity. Of the 12 main external threats enumerated in the new Military Doctrine, NATO has a positive role to play only in one case – the fight against international terrorism, which only one year later was to become the real glue of Russia’s cooperation with the West – while in all other cases the alliance seems to be still seen as at least a potential source of danger. This rather negative perception of NATO is closely linked to more general, traditional perceptions of the nature of NATO as a vehicle and instrument of the USA’s policy of building a hegemonic, unipolar world system, with a special role assigned to itself.20 Putin probably shared this predominantly negative perception of NATO. In the period between his nomination in December 1999 and 11 September 2001 he was sending rather confusing signals on his intentions towards cooperation with NATO. He decided to re-establish official contacts with NATO and met NATO’s secretary-general, Lord Robertson, on his first post-Kosovo visit to Russia on 16 February 2000.21 On 5 March 2000, in his famous BBC interview, he sent a shock wave when he said that Russia could join NATO.22 During the interview Putin was asked whether

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Russia viewed NATO as a potential partner, or rival, or an enemy. He answered that Russia is a part of European culture and that Russia cannot be isolated from Europe and from the civilized world. He added that this was also one reason why he could not regard NATO as an enemy. He stated that Russia wanted a situation in which it would be treated as an equal and trusted partner, accused the West of introducing new rules of engagement in international politics, and repeated that Russia was striving for equal cooperation and partnership and was even interested in reaching higher levels of integration with NATO. The real bomb went off when Putin gave a positive answer to the next question, on potential NATO membership for Russia. He said that the possibility should not be ruled out, but that Russia’s interests would have to be taken into account, and that Russia would have to be treated as a fully fledged partner. After adding a fairly standard Russian negative assessment of the consequences of the eastward expansion of the alliance, Putin concluded on a more constructive note and said that, notwithstanding the problems in relations with NATO, Russia was not ready to slam the door and embark on a policy of self-isolation. Although Putin had plenty of opportunities to discuss various forms of cooperation openly with NATO, he continued to send confusing signals. He met Lord Robertson in Moscow again on 19 February 2001 and agreed to open a NATO Information Office in the Russian capital; then he outlined Russia’s policy towards NATO in his annual State of the Nation speech in April 2001, in which he formulated conditions for Russia’s cooperation with the alliance.23 Finally, only a few weeks before the 11 September attacks, during his first-ever press conference organized in Moscow on 19 July 2001, Putin repeated his proposal that NATO be disbanded.24 Answering a question on measures Russia could take if NATO decided to enlarge again, he outlined various scenarios for developing a new security architecture that would meet the new challenges better than NATO, which he described as a Cold War relic. The first option would be the disbandment of NATO; the second to include Russia in NATO; and the third to create a new pan-European security organization as a substitute for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The fourth possibility would be the continuation of today’s situation with a ‘European security system on many levels’ in which ‘we shall continue to distrust each other’. Putin decided, however, to clarify that ‘we [Russia] do not view NATO as a hostile organization and do not see its existence as a tragedy – although we don’t see the need for it either.’ As can be seen from the statements quoted above, Putin lacked a clearcut policy towards NATO, and considered and discussed many possible options, ranging from Russian membership of the alliance to its disbandment. Now for the first time, on 11 September 2001, he had to make an unambiguous choice. When he learned of the attacks on the United States he could have taken one of three courses of action: remaining neutral,

Russia and NATO 69 adopting a confrontational line, or choosing a cooperative approach. In the weeks after the attacks on the USA, Putin in fact made two important decisions. The first, of a highly symbolic character, was made on 11 September, 45 minutes after the attacks on the USA, when he decided to call President Bush and offered his condolences. The second, of a strategic character, was taken on 22 September when he ordered the Russian power structures to cooperate fully with the USA and requested Russia’s allies in Central Asia to do the same. However, after Bush’s statement that those who were not with the USA in its fight against the threat of international terrorism were on the side of the terrorists, remaining neutral was no longer a viable option for Russia. The real choice was between joining the antiterror coalition the USA was forming or siding – directly or indirectly – with the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. For Putin the pragmatist, the choice was simple: he decided to use this window of opportunity to improve Russia’s international standing and sided with Washington unconditionally.

Interpreting Putin’s post-11 September choices A staunch realist, for whom the question of power parity between the two state actors involved is perhaps the most important gauge by which he measures the action and defines the quality of the emerging relationship, could describe Putin’s choice as nothing more than classic bandwagoning which the Russian leadership wanted to disguise and ‘sell’ to its domestic public as a strategic partnership in a fight against a common enemy and as the re-emergence of a US–Russian global concert of powers. From a realist perspective, Putin’s choice of this strategy was a wise move: by putting Russia on the USA’s post-11 September agenda he was able to establish a direct link with the most important power factor and actor in the transatlantic community. From that perspective NATO became to a certain extent irrelevant for Russia. So long as Russia could retain a special and privileged position on the US interest map, and have direct access to the US policy-makers, it did not need NATO as an ‘institutional’ intermediary; this was especially so after the US–British action in Iraq in 2003 when the links between the USA and two of its European allies (Germany and France) were severed by their criticism of the way the USA has been pursuing its goals in the confrontation with Iraq. In the Russian realist reading, all important real and realist decisions are taken in Washington. Establishing what was presented as a strategic partnership with the USA, and strengthening this partnership even in a situation where some other US European allies were airing doubts about the goals and methods of the USA’s post-11 September policy, was the best way of securing Russia’s influence in a situation where the sole superpower seemed no longer willing to play the multilateral game. Russia, in contrast to some traditional US allies, had the interest, the will and the incentives to embark on a policy of strategic rapprochement with Washington.

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Putin’s policy of establishing close cooperation with the USA had, however, a strong institutional–liberal component as well. Having recognized that the world had changed after 11 September and that Russia had to focus on domestic reforms as the most important means of improving its international position, he embarked on a policy of building a new institutional framework for the future and a new functional regime that could help Russia solve its problems and promote its interests in close cooperation with the most influential global actors. As Putin focuses first and foremost on the economic revival of Russia, understanding that only a strong economic performance can help the country overcome its structural problems, he is interested in strengthening Russia’s cooperation with the economic institutions of the Western world, such as the G8 (the Group of Eight industrialized countries) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the global economy Russia wants to become a part of, those economic forums are much more important for Russia than NATO is. Putin also realizes that the West does not pose a real threat to Russia’s ‘hard’ security and no longer sees NATO, a Western military alliance set up to defend the Western values which Russia is also – at least in a declaratory sense – willing to follow, as a hard security challenge. In the post-11 September setting the alliance is doomed either to pursue goals that are consistent with the Russian hard security objectives or to disappear as a viable instrument of transatlantic cooperation. NATO therefore has a certain, if rather marginal, role to play in Russia’s attempts to build a new, post-11 September institutional setting. The NATO–Russia Council (NRC) set up in May 2002 is useful as a forum for discussion, and the alliance has a role to play in Russia’s designs. However, NATO should be treated not exclusively as a Western defence alliance – which was its original role and a source of concern for Russia so long as Russia had its doubts about the strategic intentions of the West – but as a military tool that could be used wherever and whenever it is necessary from the point of view of the new anti-terrorist coalition in which Russia hopes to play first fiddle by strengthening its institutional strategic partnership with the USA (which happens also to be the most powerful of the NATO allies). The other developed countries in the G8 should, in Russia’s view, join the US–Russian strategic partnership, which should become the cornerstone of the new international system based on the idea of the concert of ‘democratic powers’ opposing the fundamentalist forces of chaos threatening the entire world. In the Russian, and to a large extent Western, interpretations, the forces of chaos confronting Russia in Chechnya and the West elsewhere stem mainly from the Muslim world. This fact gives what could be labelled a strong additional ‘constructivist’ flavour to the cooperation between Russia and the West after 11 September. In addition to establishing a strategic partnership with the USA (or bandwagoning with the USA, as a realist would say), setting up new institutions and contributing to the cre-

Russia and NATO 71 ation of a new functional regime (as a liberal institutionalist would claim), cooperation between Russia and the West has been cemented by the emergence of a new and dangerous Islamic ‘Other’.25 Until 11 September this Islamic Other featured mainly in the Russian discourse as a bearded Wahhabite representing the Islamic international in Chechnya. The whole Russian official discourse on Chechnya between the launching of the second Chechnya war in August 1999 and the 11 September 2001 attacks on the USA had been based on this image of an ‘Islamic Other’ threatening Russia and ‘hijacking’ the cause of the Chechen national liberation movement. The war in Chechnya was not a conflict between Chechen separatists and the central authorities in Moscow, the Russian authorities claimed; it was Russia’s contribution to the fight against the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. In Russia’s view, the West had been too preoccupied with the problem of violations of human rights during the Chechnya war and, instead of joining Russia in its fight against the forces of chaos, it had turned a blind eye to these Russian claims.26 In Russia’s reading the West was now punished for its naivety on 11 September when the USA was attacked by the same forces Russia had fought in Chechnya. These attacks ‘helped’ the West to understand the gravity of the situation and forced it – as many Russian analysts, not without satisfaction, claimed – to join Russia in its ‘anti-terror operation’. The attacks on the USA helped Russia to complete the construction of the ‘threat bridge’ to the West.27 After 11 September, Russia and the West had to face not only a common threat but also a common enemy. Putin apparently decided to grasp this opportunity to change the perception of Russia as the Other.28 The immediate Russian and Western reading of the post-11 September situation was that Russia and the West were facing the same Islamic Other, symbolized by Chechen field commanders Shamil Basaev and Khattab (in Russia’s case) and Osama bin Laden (in the case of the West). This ‘commonality of enemy’ was to become a major building block of the new Western–Russian partnership. It was deliberately brought into play by NATO’s secretary-general, Lord Robertson, as well. Two weeks after 11 September he announced at a press conference: ‘Today the West and Russia have a common cause that they didn’t have two weeks ago.’29 Two months later, at a press conference in Moscow, he reiterated this point: ‘At the moment we are involved with the issue of terrorism, a kind of terrorism that might be seen as an area where we already have got a common enemy.’30 After signing the documents on the creation of the NRC in Rome, Lord Robertson also referred to the common enemy as a reason why Russia and the West should work together: ‘And if we need a reminder of why [NATO and Russia have to cooperate], then there is a simple answer. There is a common enemy out there.’31 By this clear delineation of the boundaries of the post-11 September Other, and by assigning the role of the Other to the Islamic fundamentalists, both Putin and the

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West established the distinction between Friend and Enemy that Carl Schmitt has labelled ‘the specifically political distinction on which political actions and purposes are based’.32 Although there were many other reasons behind Putin’s decision to call Bush on 11 September, a major motive was probably to seize the opportunity to dispel the image of Russia as the West’s most important Other by pointing at other ‘Others’ who posed a more direct threat to both the West and Russia. This strategy could be described as the strategy of redrawing the boundaries of ‘Otherness’. In the post-11 September situation, Russia, though still different from the West, has become an Other who is less ‘other’ than the other Others and more like ‘Us’ than Others, especially those other Others who pose a direct existential threat to both Us and ‘Our Russian Others’. The choice of the cooperative path could therefore be seen as a sort of filling in and submitting of a membership application to the Western club of nations. Putin could also hope that by submitting this ‘application’ at a time when both the West and Russia were facing the same ‘civilizational’ threat (Islamic fundamentalism) he could persuade the West to lower the threshold and give Russia access to the Western club, even if the country still had some problems with meeting all the formal entry criteria.33 By joining the Western club, Russia would be able not only to save money it would otherwise have to spend on building strategic parity (or at least a credible and sufficient anti-Western defence) but also to secure its place under the Western (for which read US) umbrella that could protect it against other global civilizational (Islam) and strategic economic and demographic (China) threats.34 Putin’s post-11 September policy could be described as the adoption by Russia of a three-step value-based policy towards the West. The first step – civilizational self-identification resulting in the Western willingness to widen the definition of Us to encompass Russia as well – served to place Russia on the Western side of the post-11 September front line. As Russia was engaged in a military conflict with what it had presented to the West as the same enemy, this was a relatively easy task, especially in a situation in which the world, after 11 September, came to be perceived again in binary terms: either you are with Us against the Islamic Others or you are against Us and join those whom We define as Others. Notwithstanding all its shortcomings and its arguments with the West, Russia defined itself as belonging to the civilization of the Christian world that was confronted by Islamic fundamentalism. The second step was to anchor Russia in the West by establishing new or strengthening existing institutional networks to bind Russia with the West and give Russia some influence on the decisions of the West. By responding positively to this Russian attempt, the West recognized indirectly that Russia was adhering to, or at least was trying to show that it was willing to adhere to, certain basic Western values, and could be accepted

Russia and NATO 73 as a member of the enlarged Western economic and security community. In that way Russia not only defined itself as belonging to the West, but also managed to get itself defined as ‘Western’ by the West. The third step in this value-driven policy was perhaps the most important one, as the new situation compelled the West to see Russia as a reliable and serious economic partner. The new situation, caused by the 11 September attacks on the one hand and Russia’s economic revival on the other hand, together with a skilful ‘rebranding’ of the country’s image, has contributed to making Russia an attractive economic partner, producing ‘added economic value’ inseparably linked with the ‘political and identity value’ choices made by Putin after 11 September. Thus, metaphorically, prior to 11 September Russia had made an effort to construct a rather narrow ‘threat bridge’ to the West by presenting its war in Chechnya as a front line in the war between the West and the Islamic fundamentalists. Then, when the West itself came under attack from that same enemy, Russian political ‘engineers’ skilfully widened the bridge and used it to establish institutional and economic bridgeheads on the Western side, from which they launched a political offensive that was to give them unquestionable economic and political benefits. However, the events of late 2002 and early 2003 revealed that this could be something more than a simple pro-Western alignment in Russian policy, and that Russia was in fact on the way back to the realist multipolar game that seemed forgotten and irrelevant in the months after Putin chose a pro-Western path on 11 September. From Moscow’s realist perspective it may suddenly have seemed that it was possible to drive a wedge into the transatlantic community and even indirectly contribute to the demise of the Western defence alliance which had been a thorn in the side of first Soviet and then post-Soviet military and political planners for many decades. It seemed that the institutional foundation of transatlantic cooperation, NATO, was being shaken by the dispute over the choice of strategy towards Iraq between the USA and the UK, on the one side, and those whom post-Soviet Russia used to treat as the country’s traditional European partners, Germany and France, on the other.35 On his visit to Paris in February 2003 Putin signed a joint statement on Iraq with his French and German counterparts and called the move ‘the first brick in the construction of a multipolar world’.36 Later on, during the visit to Moscow by President Hu Jintao of China on 27 May 2003, Putin signed a similar statement on the creation of a multipolar world system.37 In his conversation with Russian journalists on the same day, he also elaborated on Russia’s role in the new multipolar world system and the strategic importance of Russia for Europe. ‘If Europe wants to be independent and a fully-fledged global power centre, the shortest route to this goal is good relations with Russia.’38 The fact that he signed the statements on the creation of a multipolar world and invited Europe to cooperate more closely with Russia to achieve the same goal is a clear hint as to

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whom he treats as Russia’s potential partners in what could be interpreted as an attempt to counterbalance the US hegemony. In a speech to Russian officers given on 21 February 2003, Putin presented a rather dramatic view on the situation in the world: The current geopolitical situation in the world is complicated and the global correlation of forces is visibly imbalanced. A new international security configuration has yet to be created. We cannot overlook the increasing aggressiveness of very influential forces in some countries of the world and the diminishing effectiveness of international security and conflict-resolution institutions. This is a cause for concern.39 Putin’s attempts to strengthen the work on the construction of a multipolar world, through cooperation with other influential actors (Germany, France, China and the European Union) – a cooperation that could counterbalance these unnamed ‘increasingly aggressive and very influential forces in some countries’ that both Russia and its potential partners seem to treat as a threat to the existing international order – may be seen as Russia’s response to the new situation in which the multilateral bodies are no longer effective as an arena of discussion and decision-making. However, in order to establish a closer cooperation with at least Russia’s European potential ‘brothers in multipolarism’, something had to be done about the institutional anchor binding Germany and France with the global hegemon and a source of concern for Russian realists. The internal crisis in NATO could therefore be seen as a good opportunity for Russia to ‘help’ Europeans cut – or at least weaken – their transatlantic link. Russian realists could interpret the situation surrounding Iraq and the dispute between the USA and the UK, on the one hand, and Germany and France on the other, as the emergence of a deep split between the traditional Western allies. The situation could provide Russia with a good opportunity to achieve one of the strategic, long-term goals of its policy at relatively low cost to itself. It may have seemed at that moment that Russia only needed to wait and see others do the job of dismantling NATO. Getting rid of NATO as an effective instrument of transatlantic cooperation at no cost to Russia could be tempting, not only from the realist point of view but also from the pragmatic one advocated by Putin. This could also explain why Putin decided to side with Chancellor Schröder of Germany and President Chirac of France, and seemingly reentered the traditional ‘divide and rule game’ in relations with the West. The only remaining pragmatic problem was that Russia had neither any long-term strategy for what to do if the ‘NATO disappearance dream’ came true nor effective means to fill the possible post-NATO vacuum with new, viable institutional solutions. Russia could simply be risking NATO’s disappearance and a US withdrawal from Europe, causing more harm than good to its own long-term strategic interests in a situation when the

Russia and NATO 75 country was still too weak to impose its will on the ‘strategic neighbourhood’. Having realized that, Putin seems to have decided to withdraw to his position before the Iraq conflict and to have used the St Petersburg summit meeting with President Bush in May 2003 to signal that Russia was again a reliable partner of the whole West. The summit was described as a ‘fencemending’ exercise and a show of good personal chemistry between Putin and Bush. However, as Lilia Shevtsova said in her interview with the Washington Post, ‘personal chemistry cannot replace the substance’.40 The lack of substance, resulting to a great extent from the lack of common values and a common interest platform, is seen by many observers as the main challenge in relations between Russia and the West. It may therefore seem that even the emergence of a common enemy in the aftermath of the 11 September attack on the USA has not yet resulted in the establishment of a functioning security community encompassing both Russia and the West. The commonality of short- and even medium-term interests is not the only precondition for a security community to be established: the most important basis of a security community is the mutual trust stemming from community of values and norms regulating relations among its members and their perception of the international environment. Over the past ten years the ‘value gap’ between Russia and the West has been narrowing, but it still seems too wide for the West unconditionally to accept Russia as a real member of the Western security community – of which NATO is still the most visible institutional manifestation.

Notes 1 T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, London: Faber and Faber, 1948, ch. 3. 2 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1156020.stm. 3 One of the best accounts of the development of relations between NATO and Russia can be found in J. F. Black, Russia Faces NATO Expansion: Bearing Gifts or Bearing Arms?, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 4 For details see Vladimir Kozin, ‘The Kremlin and NATO: Prospects for interaction’, International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations, 46(3), 2000, pp. 12–20. 5 For more on the Russian public and Kosovo see Vladimir V. Serebriannikov, ‘Voina v massovom soznanii’ [The war in the mass consciousness], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 9 April 1999; and ‘Znakovoe sobytie ukhodiashchego veka: Agressiia NATO protiv Iugoslavii v zerkale sotsiologii’ [The defining event of the past century: NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia in the mirror of sociology], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 16 April 1999. 6 The well-known Russian political commentator Lilia Shevtsova summed this up as follows: ‘For the first time in Russian and Soviet history the leader was raised to power on the wave of war’ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/ correspondent/1156020.stm). 7 Quoted from William Safire, ‘Testing Putin on Iran’, New York Times, 23 May 2002.

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8 This presentation of Russian schools of thought is based to a great extent on the work of Alexander Sergounin (see the Bibliography) and Aleksander Rahr and J. Krause, Russia’s New Foreign Policy, Arbeitspapiere zur Internationale Politik, no. 91, Bonn: Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, 1995. 9 Edward N. Luttwak, ‘From geopolitics to geoeconomics’, The National Interest, Summer 1990; and ‘The theory and practice of geoeconomics’, in Armand Clesse, Richard Cooper and Yoshikazu Sakamoto (eds), The International System after the Collapse of the East–West Order, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, pp. 220–36. 10 One of the most consistent analysts to use the ‘geo-economic approach’ in Russia is Sergei Rogov, who has underlined the importance of the economic basis for Russia’s foreign and security policy and advocates its adaptation to the new realities. Sergei Rogov, ‘Rossiia i SShA na poroge XXI veka’ [Russia and the USA on the threshold of the 21st century], Svobodnaia mysl’, 4 and 5, 1996; and ‘Vektory bezopasnosti 2001 goda’ [The vectors of security in 2001], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 12 January 2001. 11 See Luttwak, ‘The theory and practice of geoeconomics’, pp. 220, 229–30. 12 The Russian text of the doctrine was published in Diplomaticheskii vestnik, vypusk spetsialnyi, January 1993. An English translation was published in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, FBIS-USR-93-037, 25 March 1993. 13 The first draft of the new Russian military doctrine had already been published in 1992 in a special issue of Voennaia mysl’, May 1992, pp. 4–7. For an article commenting on this proposal, see Aleksandr Vladimirov, ‘Eta systema mogucha i dostatochno zla’ [This system is powerful and evil enough], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 22 September 1992. The first official military doctrine was adopted by the Russian Security Council on 3 November 1993, and an English text was published in Jane’s Intelligence Report, January 1994. An in-depth analysis of the document can be found in Charles Dick, ‘The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 7(3), 1994, pp. 481–506. 14 The report was presented by Yevgenii Primakov at a press conference on 25 November 1993 and was discussed in Nezavisimaia gazeta, 26 November 1993. 15 The text of the study is available at http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/enl9501.htm. 16 For more detail on this doctrine see Aleksei Pushkov, ‘The “Primakov Doctrine” and a New European Order’, International Affairs (Moscow), 44(2), 1998, pp. 1–13. 17 Vladimir Putin, Ot pervogo litsa [In the first person], Moscow: Vagrius, 2000. 18 ITAR–TASS, 30 March 1999. 19 An overview of the official Russian documents on the country’s security, foreign and defence policy is available at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website at http://www.ln.mid.ru/ns-osndoc.nsf/osndd. 20 For more details on this reading see, for instance, Vladimir Chernega, ‘Budushchie vzaimootnoshenii Rossiia–NATO’ [Future relations between Russia and NATO], in The First Anniversary of the NATO–Russia Founding Act: Appraisal and Outlook, Documents on the International Conference, Moscow, 19–20 June 1998, Moscow: INION RAN, 1999. 21 For the Joint statement on the visit, see the NATO website at http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2000/p000216e.htm. For a Russian view on the importance of the visit and the future of Russia–NATO relations see Vadim Solovev, ‘NATO i Rossiia otkryvaiut novuiu stranitsu sotrudnichestva’ [NATO and Russia open a new page of cooperation], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie,

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22 23 24 25

26

27

28

29 30 31

32

33

2 June 2000; and ‘Pochemu by Rossii ne vstupit v NATO’ [Why Russia will not be joining NATO], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 2 June 2000. The text of the interview can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/ static/audio_video/programmes/breakfast_with_frost/transcripts/putin5.mar.txt. The text of Putin’s State of the Nation speech was published in Johnson’s Russia List, 5185, 4 April 2001. Associated Press, ‘Highlights of Putin news conference’, 19 July 2001. Another translation is also available at http://www.strana.ru, a website created by Putin’s close aide Gleb Pavlovskii as a sort of propaganda channel. For the Russian reading of the importance of the Islamic factor, see Aleksandr Ignatenko, ‘Ot Filippin do Kosovo: Islamizm kak globalnyi destabiliziruiushchii faktor’ [From the Philippines to Kosovo: Islam as a global destabilizing factor], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 12 October 2000 (http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2000-10-12). The Minister of Defence, Sergei Ivanov, believed to be ‘number two’ in Putin’s Russia, tried to convince the West that Russia had a special civilizational mission in the Caucasus and in Central Asia when he said: ‘Russia, a front-line warrior fighting international terrorism in Chechnya and Central Asia, is saving the civilized world from the terrorist plague, in the same way that it saved Europe from the Tartar–Mongol invasions in the 13th century. And we pay for it, in suffering and privation.’ See UPI, 4 February 2002. In his televised speech on 25 September Putin expressed this in a very direct way: ‘We also believe that the events in Chechnya cannot be seen out of the context of the struggle against international terrorism’; quoted from Boris Piadyshev, ‘After the terrorist attacks’, International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations, 47(5), 2001, p. 6. On Russia as Europe’s most important ‘Other’, see Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, London: Routledge, 1996; Iver B. Neumann, ‘The geopolitics of delineating “Russia” from “Europe”: The creating of the “Other” in European and Russian tradition’, in Ola Tunander, Pavel Baev and Victoria Einagel (eds), Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory and Identity, London: Sage, 1997, pp. 147–73; and Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation, Borderlines 9, Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Reuters, ‘US attacks draw NATO, Russia together: Robertson’, 25 September 2001. See http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s011122b.htm. See http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2002/05-may/e0528a.htm. Having a common enemy may, however, not necessarily be a strong enough basis for the development of a true partnership. As Angela Stent wrote concerning Russian–US relations, ‘This partnership, however, needs fresh impetus. Without a more forward-looking agenda, it could stagnate or deteriorate, if the United States and Russia continue to disagree over issues involving Russia’s ties to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. US–Russian ties must have a stronger foundation than a common enemy. There are several areas where Russia and the United States have compelling reasons to cooperate, areas that could provide a firmer basis for a partnership based on mutual interest.’ Angela Stent, ‘Whither the US–Russian partnership?’, Moscow Times, 27 November 2002. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen [The concept of the political], Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, [1932] 1991, p. 26. For more on the role of the Enemy in establishing a political and not least a security community, see also Reinhart Koselleck, Feindbilder [Enemy images], Göttingen: Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, Jahrbuch, 1993, p. 83, and passim. These problems included deficiencies in the Russian market economy, problems with the freedom of the press and the functioning of democratic institutions, and human rights abuses in Chechnya.

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34 See, for instance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books, 1997. 35 Sergei Karaganov presented a rather grim picture of the situation of the alliance as a consequence of bad choices in the past: ‘NATO, a traditional security organization, has found itself in a rather difficult situation. As its historical mission was fully completed by the early 1990s, there were calls for reform; the organization needed to be remade as a viable tool for countering new threats. If NATO had wisely followed that line and established a solid alliance with Russia, it would have given birth to an entirely new security system. But inertia and old habits prevailed, and NATO chose to simply expand and initiate useless cosmetic reforms. Numerous problems eventually emerged in its relations with Russia, and much energy was spent in unfruitful discussions. In the long run, NATO came to a position where it is now – overlooking the backwater of world politics.’ Sergei Karaganov, ‘The chances and challenges of the New World’, Russia in Global Affairs, 2, 2003, pp. 8–18. 36 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL Newsline, 12 February 2003. 37 RFE/RL Newsline, 28 May 2003. 38 RFE/RL Newsline, 28 May 2003. 39 RFE/RL Newsline, 24 February 2003. 40 Washington Post, 1 June 2003.

Bibliography Books and journals Black, J. F., Russia Faces NATO Expansion: Bearing Gifts or Bearing Arms?, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books, 1997. Chernega, Vladimir, ‘Budushchie vzaimootnoshenii Rossiia–NATO’ [Future relations between Russia and NATO], in The First Anniversary of the NATO–Russia Founding Act: Appraisal and Outlook, Documents on the International Conference, Moscow, 19–20 June 1998, Moscow: INION RAN, 1999. Dick, Charles, ‘The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 7(3), 1994, pp. 481–506. ‘Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation’, Diplomaticheskii vestnik, vypusk spetsialnyi, January 1993. Foucher, Michel, ‘La fin de la géopolitique? Réflexions géographiques sur la grammaire des puissances’ [The end of geopolitics? Geographical reflections on the grammar of powers], Politique étrangère, 1, 1997, pp. 19–31. Godzimirski, Jakub M., ‘Russian national security concepts 1997 and 2000: A comparative analysis’, European Security, 9(4), 2000, pp. 73–91. Jane’s Intelligence Report, January 1994. Karaganov, Sergei, ‘The chances and challenges of the New World’, Russia in Global Affairs, 2, 2003, pp. 8–18. Koselleck, Reinhart, Feindbilder [Enemy images], Göttingen: Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, Jahrbuch, 1993. Kozin, Vladimir, ‘The Kremlin and NATO: Prospects for interaction’, International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations, 46(3), 2000, pp. 12–20.

Russia and NATO 79 Luttwak, Edward N., ‘From geopolitics to geoeconomics’, The National Interest, Summer 1990. ——, ‘The theory and practice of geoeconomics’, in Armand Clesse, Richard Cooper and Yoshikazu Sakamoto (eds), The International System After the Collapse of the East–West Order, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, pp. 220–36. Neumann, Iver B., Russia and the Idea of Europe, London: Routledge, 1996. ——, ‘The geopolitics of delineating “Russia” from “Europe”: The creating of the “Other” in European and Russian tradition’, in Ola Tunander, Pavel Baev and Victoria Einagel (eds), Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory and Identity, London: Sage, 1997, pp. 147–73. ——, Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation, Borderlines 9, Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Piadyshev, Boris, ‘After the terrorist attacks’, International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations, 47(5), 2001, pp. 1–15. Pushkov, Aleksei, ‘The “Primakov Doctrine” and a New European Order’, International Affairs (Moscow), 44(2), 1998, pp. 1–13. Putin, Vladimir, Ot pervogo litsa [In the first person], Moscow: Vagrius, 2000. Rahr, Aleksander and J. Krause, Russia’s New Foreign Policy, Arbeitspapiere zur Internationale Politik no. 91, Bonn: Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, 1995. Rastopshin, Mikhail M., ‘Vstrechat tanki NATO nechem’ [Nothing to encounter NATO’s tanks with], Nezavisimoe voyennoe obozrenie, 13 August 1999. Rogov, Sergei, ‘Rossiia i SShA na poroge XXI veka’ [Russia and the USA on the threshold of the 21st century], Svobodnaia mysl’, 4 and 5, 1996. ——, ‘Vektory bezopasnosti 2001 goda’ [The vectors of security in 2001], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 12 January 2001. Schmitt, Carl, Der Begriff des Politischen [The concept of the political], Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, [1932] 1991. Serebriannikov, Vladimir V., ‘Voina v massovom soznanii’ [The war in the mass consciousness], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 9 April 1999. ——, ‘Znakovoe sobytie ukhodiashchego veka: Agressiia NATO protiv Iugoslavii v zerkale sotsiologii’ [The defining event of the past century: NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia in the mirror of sociology], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 16 April 1999. Sergounin, Alexander, Russian Foreign Policy Thinking: Redefining Conceptions, COPRI Working Paper no. 11/1993, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI), 1993. ——, ‘Russian domestic debate on NATO enlargement: From phobia to damage limitation’, European Security, 6(4), 1997, pp. 55–71. ——, Post-Communist Security Thinking in Russia: Changing Paradigms, COPRI Working Paper no. 4/1997, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI), 1997. ——, Russia: Long Way to the National Security Doctrine, COPRI Working Paper no. 10/1998, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI), 1998. ——, ‘Russia and the world: Changing paradigms of Russian foreign and security policy under Yeltsin and Putin’, Paper presented at NUPI’s Conference The

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Russian Federation – Ten Years of Statehood: What Now?, Oslo, 23–24 August 2001. Solovev, Vadim, ‘NATO i Rossiia otkryvaiut novuiu stranitsu sotrudnichestva’ [NATO and Russia open a new page of cooperation], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 2 June 2000. ——, ‘Pochemu by Rossii ne vstupit v NATO’ [Why Russia will not be joining NATO], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 2 June 2000. Stent, Angela, ‘Whither the US–Russian partnership?’, Moscow Times, 27 November 2002. Vladimirov, Aleksandr, ‘Eta systema mogucha i dostatochno zla’ [This system is powerful and evil enough], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 22 September 1992.

Media and Internet Associated Press, ‘Highlights of Putin news conference’, 19 July 2001. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, FBIS-USR-93-037, 25 March 1993. Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, 28 June 2000 (http://www.ln. mid.ru/ns-osndoc.nsf/osndd). Ignatenko, Aleksandr, ‘Ot Filippin do Kosovo: Islamizm kak global’nyi destabilizirushchii faktor’ [From the Philippines to Kosovo: Islam as a global destabilizing factor], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 12 October 2000 (http://www.ng.ru/ideas/ 2000-10-12). ITAR–TASS, 30 March 1999. Johnson’s Russia List, 5185, 4 April 2001. Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, 21 April 2000 (http://www.ln.mid.ru/ns-osndoc.nsf/osndd). National Security Concept of the Russian Federation, 10 January 2000 (http://www.ln.mid.ru/ns-osndoc.nsf/osndd). NATO, Study on Enlargement, 1995 (http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/ enl9501.htm). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL Newsline, 12 February 2003; 24 February 2003; 28 May 2003. Reuters, ‘US attacks draw NATO, Russia together: Robertson’, 25 September 2001. Safire, William, ‘Testing Putin on Iran’, New York Times, 23 May 2002. Shevtsova, Lilia, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/ 1156020.stm. UPI, 4 February 2002. Voennaia mysl’, May 1992, pp. 4–7. Washington Post, 1 June 2003. http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2000/p000216e.htm. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1156020.stm. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/breakfast_with_fr ost/transcripts/putin5.mar.txt. http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s011122b.htm. http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2002/05-may/e0528a.htm.

4

The logic of foreign and security policy change in Russia Mette Skak

Introduction In 1999 it was possible to frame analyses of Russia in terms of drastic scenarios such as chaos and conflict. Russia had barely recovered from the August 1998 economic meltdown, and the political scene in Moscow was more or less paralysed by the rapid succession of prime ministers and President Boris Yeltsin’s deteriorating health. In the spring Russia opposed NATO’s war on Yugoslavia over the fate of Kosovo, and in October 1999 the second Chechen war began. Later the mood changed to one of cautious optimism concerning Russia and its foreign and security policy. This can be seen from titles such as ‘reluctant rapprochement’ with respect to relations between Russia and the Baltic countries in the context of the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU).1 This change is part of a larger trend for a reappraisal of Russia’s standing in world affairs, which in turn has to do with actual policy changes in Moscow. Clearly, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 upon the United States, the world’s only superpower, play into this as the watershed event for Russian foreign and security policy as well.2 Yet even before 11 September analysts had already begun to downplay scenarios of state collapse and the dismemberment of the Russian Federation, and to point instead to Russia’s emerging consolidation as a highly regionalized and pluralistic but nevertheless viable state entity.3 Predictions of civil war and warlordism as likely consequences of the regionalization of the Russian armed forces are now receding into the background.4 Together with these structural developments towards recovery, and economic growth (due not only to Russia’s windfall gain from higher oil prices but also to the reforms of the preceding years),5 – the coming to power of a new, vigorous president, Vladimir Putin, must be mentioned. Such personal factors matter because of the very strong powers the Russian constitution vests in the president, including power over foreign policy (Article 86) and hence security policy. Certainly not everything Putin stands for is to be welcomed. Amid the

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generally positive reappraisal of Russia’s standing in world affairs there are voices expressing concern about a backlash for democracy in Russia. Putin carries political responsibility for the continuing brutality of Russia’s armed forces and secret services in Chechnya, and his ‘war on terrorism’ appears to include a return to Stalinist practices of using informers in Moscow.6 Restrictions on the media, for instance in their coverage of the upcoming elections, and a worsening human rights situation are often mentioned, and Putin’s own visions do include oxymorons such as ‘managed democracy’ and ‘dictatorship of the law’, suggesting a bias towards authoritarianism. Consequently, one must be careful to specify exactly in which areas and in what way it makes sense to speak of a turn for the better in Russia. While it may be necessary to speak of negative trends for democracy with respect to Russia’s home front, it is possible to speak of an emerging democratic peace7 between Russia and some of its neighbours, namely its neighbours to the west. Thus, it is the contention of this chapter that the Baltic Sea region, and in particular the three Baltic states and Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic coast, is a net winner from Russia’s recent policy reorientation, along with the Balkan region. Specifically, (a) Russia has been able to accept NATO’s eastward enlargement, including a tacit but concrete acceptance of the fact that the Baltic states will be members of NATO by May 2004; and, equally significant, (b) Russia has been able to compromise on the issue of a transit regime for Kaliningrad in the face of its neighbours’ (Poland and Lithuania) accession to the Schengen regime in connection with their entry into the EU.8 The implication of this is a further improvement of the security situation of the Nordic countries, at least as far as issues of hard security are concerned. The concluding section of this chapter will return to this. Even without these changes in Russia and Russia’s policy, the foreign and security policy of post-Soviet Russia merits discussion on account of the unique turbulence of its foreign policy scene, in contrast to other postcommunist states where a broad consensus of pursuing integration with the Western world for the sake of consolidating the breakaway from Moscow’s control established itself quickly.9 The key difference between Russia and its post-communist neighbours which explains this pattern is that Russia, or to be more precise, Moscow was the centre of the Soviet empire – something that has translated into a syndrome of imperialistic political culture resurfacing in the policy positions of today’s Russian policy-making elite.10 This has brought frustration and cynicism about the volatility of foreign policy decision-making in Russia, even among Western academic experts on Russia.11 It is therefore worthwhile to relate the recent developments in Russian foreign and security policy to its evolution since Russia gained independence in late 1991. The topic for consideration here is the overall dynamics of foreign and security policy in Russia – the logic behind foreign policy change, so to speak.

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 83 To investigate this, the analysis in this chapter takes three basic steps. First, there is a conceptual clarification of what ‘national interest’ and ‘security’ mean in the Russian context, or, rather, how they have come to be understood by the Russian political elite and what room for manoeuvre that leaves for the country’s political leadership. The second, theoretical part of the analysis presents Robert D. Putnam’s two-level games framework for foreign policy analysis and his concept of win-sets as a fruitful way to capture the contradictory logic of Russian foreign and security policy throughout the past decade or so. The third, empirical part of the analysis examines the clash between the domestic win-set of derzhavnik12 anti-Americanism and neo-imperialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the external win-set of liberalism and ‘bandwagoning’ with the USA as the avenue for restoring Russia’s state capacity. The point is Putin’s efforts to reconcile these opposing win-sets through his platform of an ‘enlightened derzhavnik’, hereby learning from the political fate of Mikhail Gorbachev and later Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s first minister of foreign affairs, as well as from the policy failure of Kozyrev’s successor, Yevgenii Primakov. Finally, some conclusions are drawn, among other things in terms of security in the Nordic countries and the policy implications for the West in the broad sense. The idea behind this chapter is thus to place the recent foreign policy reorientation of Russia, which is commonly linked to the terror attacks of 11 September, in a more historical context, highlighting the interplay of domestic and international political forces around Russia. The method is one of macro-analytical interpretation, including references to secondary literature, rather than the meticulous tracking of developments in a particular area of Russian foreign policy and detailed documentation of sources.

‘National interest’ and ‘security’: what do they mean in Russia? Here, ‘national interest’ is used as shorthand for what foreign policy is about and ‘security’ as shorthand for what security policy is about – the twin concepts from the headline for this section. Without going into the details of the Copenhagen school of security studies,13 it is safe to say that Soviet political culture suffered from an excessive ‘securitization’ of issues which continues to haunt Russia.14 One of the challenges facing Russia today is thus to ‘desecuritize’ most of what used to be securitized in Stalin’s and Brezhnev’s days – and in addition to this to begin, if not to securitize, then at least to take seriously, mundane issues of ‘soft security’ such as the human rights, dignity and welfare of the individual citizen. Clearly, the collapse of the Soviet Union also meant the collapse of Marxism-Leninism as a frame of reference for foreign and security policy, and so post-communist Russia had to embark upon a definition of its ‘national interest’ and real national security concerns.

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A key problem in this, however, is the overly narrow ‘possession goal’15 realism which Russian analysts and decision-makers display in their approach to Russia’s national security. All too often ‘security’ has come to be understood as synonymous with ‘empire’, as Hannes Adomeit observes.16 Against this background it was of little help that Primakov used the occasion of his first interview as minister of foreign affairs to spell out his wish ‘to strengthen the foreign ministry’s efforts to protect Russia’s national interests’, which he identified as being a great power and having a policy reflecting that status.17 Primakov may or may not have identified with his supporters’ neo-imperialistic designs for his country’s post-Soviet neighbourhood, dubbed the ‘near abroad’.18 The fact remains that he presided over a foreign policy based on the hawkish 1993 Foreign Policy Concept with its emphasis on neo-imperialism and a hostile international environment.19 He actively contributed to the offensive turn of Russian conduct by singling out NATO enlargement as a threat to national security in late 1993.20 The stress on the open-ended, maximalist early Russian consensus on the understanding of ‘security’ is deliberate. It was Kozyrev’s unwillingness to let ‘national interest’ and ‘security’ translate into what came to be known as the ‘Monrovski’ doctrine for the near abroad as an exclusive sphere of Russian influence that led to his dismissal as foreign minister.21 Then came a reality check – the disastrous invasion of Chechnya (1994–6) when the Russian military had to face defeat. In all likelihood, it was a war of misperception and thus an unnecessary war – a war that might have been averted.22 The shock of Chechnya appears to have been the catalyst for the strikingly sober 1997 National Security Concept, which is mostly forgotten now. This document dropped the neo-imperialistic ‘backyard’ terminology of the ‘near abroad’, stating that: An analysis of the threats to the national security of the Russian Federation shows that the main threat at present and in the foreseeable future will not be military, but predominantly internal in character and will centre on the internal political, economic, social, ecological, information and spiritual spheres . . . The development of a qualitatively new pattern of relations with the leading world states and the political absence of the threat of large-scale aggression against Russia, while it preserves its nuclear deterrent, makes it possible to redistribute the resources of the state and society to address . . . internal problems.23 In other words, this is a threat perception focused on internal threats, whereas there is a perception of a benign international milieu, notably as far as the ‘leading world states’ are concerned – an unmistakable reference to the United States. This is no minor detail: the launching of this assess-

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 85 ment of Russia’s security happened to coincide with the culmination of Russia’s campaign against NATO enlargement as far as the Central European applicants were concerned. The 1997 National Security Concept leaves one with the impression that Russia was merely constructing a security concern over NATO enlargement all along. This conclusion finds support in the instructive analyses by Leon Aron and Coit D. Blacker.24 Aron sees the great-power mania of Russia, including the hostility to NATO, as a fairly innocent Gaullism; that is, a nonrevisionist bargaining game of insisting upon Russia’s place in the concert of great powers.25 Similarly, Blacker sees Primakov’s anti-US strategy of pursuing multipolarity by courting China and other power rivals to the USA as basically one of bluffing; that is, a game seeking to build up credibility around Russia’s willingness to defect from cooperation with the Western world.26 In Blacker’s apt phrase, it was a ‘strategy of driving west while feinting east’.27 His point about cultivating the option of jumping ship – of defecting from one camp to another in order to heighten one’s leverage in international games of bargaining – is also central to Robert D. Putnam’s model of two-level games. Already this introduction to Russian national security thinking and practice in the 1990s suggests that Russia is often caught in self-defeating games of manipulating its own interests and security. Up to this point, this chapter has said nothing about Russia’s embrace of the general idea of transition; that is, building up a democracy and market economy in Russia – something of a leitmotif in all official Russian foreign and security policy thinking. All the more paradoxical, then, are the many games of pretence and actual moves towards removing Russia from the track of state recovery through normal, peaceful cooperation with both its ‘near abroad’ and the ‘far abroad’. Meanwhile, Russia found itself unable to prevent either NATO’s enlargement – never an initiative emanating from NATO itself, but originating from the applicant countries because of their fear of Russian revanchism, a fear aggravated by personalities like Vladimir Zhirinovskii and by the war in Chechnya – or NATO’s 1999 air war punishing Serbia for its brutality in Kosovo. This brought a mood of bitterness in Russia which found its way into the next round of foreign policy and national security concepts adopted in 2000. The 2000 guidelines include a new military doctrine, and may be considered ‘Putin guidelines’ as they can be presumed to have guided foreign policy during his first years in power; that is, their explicit anti-Americanism reflects the mood in Russia prior to 11 September 2001.28 According to the 2000 Russian Foreign Policy Concept, ‘new challenges and threats to the national interests of Russia are emerging in the international sphere. A trend is growing toward the establishment of a unipolar power structure that would be dominated by the United States economically and through force.’29 The Finnish political scientist Henrikki Heikka rightly observes double standards in Russia in this document:

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‘Russia thus rejects the right of NATO to conduct out-of-area humanitarian interventions for promoting democracy, while itself claiming the right to defend the “rights and freedom” of compatriots30 in the near abroad.’31 He notices the great distance between the Russian paradigm as of the 2000 guidelines and the EU Common Strategy on Russia, aiming at Russia’s transition into a law-abiding democracy and integrating Russia into a ‘common European economic and social space’.32 Heikka concludes by detecting a grimmer and more militarized world-view in Russia and an increasingly nationalistic and assertive Russian grand strategy – in sum a consensus on the imperative to counterbalance Western power.33 No multipolarity as bluffing and feinting here!

Putnam’s model of two-level games Many writings on international relations and the foreign policy of individual countries remain stuck in the mostly far too abstract systemic paradigms of neo-realism, neo-liberalism and constructivism, thereby overlooking the fruitful frameworks and insights within the field of foreign policy analysis. One such framework is Robert D. Putnam’s model of twolevel games where foreign policy is viewed as a Janus head facing the domestic and the international arenas simultaneously. For Putnam it is futile to debate whether domestic politics really determines international relations or vice versa, as the arrow of causality may go both ways depending upon the empirical case.34 It makes more sense to look at interstate relations as bargaining going on at two levels of game boards: At the national level domestic groups pursue their interests by pressuring the government to adopt favorable policies, and politicians seek power by constructing coalitions among those groups. At the international level, national governments seek to maximize their own ability to satisfy domestic pressures, while minimizing the adverse consequences of foreign developments. Neither of the two games can be ignored by central decision-makers, so long as their countries remain interdependent, yet sovereign.35 Putnam stresses the dynamic nature of two-level games whereby ‘clever players will spot a move on one board that will trigger realignments on other boards, enabling them to achieve otherwise unattainable objectives’. In this sense, 11 September can be interpreted as one such move capable of triggering realignments and Putin’s role as that of the clever player here. This is basically what is meant by Putnam’s term ‘synergistic linkage’; that is, creating policy options across nations and states – transnationally, to use political science jargon. Putnam’s key concept is that of the ‘win-set’; that is, the set of all possible international bargaining outcomes that might win majority backing

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 87 on the home front of a given player or government.36 He uses the term primarily for the Level II game board, which is the domestic political configuration of preferences. Yet, in view of the challenge to Russia – of joining the international team of players capable of helping Russia towards consolidation as a state, democracy and market economy – it makes sense to perceive Russia’s external foreign policy game as one of joining the winning coalition of great powers and states – the Level I winset as it were. Another point in Putnam’s reasoning is ‘ratification’ in the broadest sense of the word, from voting rules for passing laws to any configuration of power required to endorse a given agreement or decision.37 As mentioned above, credibility and defection play an important role in his approach – for instance, the credibility of the option and threat of defection, since it may be difficult to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary defection as strategic negotiators may want to misrepresent what goes on at home.38 Putnam introduces the colourful term ‘kinky winsets’ about win-sets that are easily upset – in other words crying wolf, which negotiators often do. Both Kozyrev and Yeltsin occasionally threatened the advent to power of the ‘red–brown coalition’, the ‘war party’, and so on, if Russia were pressed further. Allen C. Lynch therefore plays down the confusion and weakness of Russian foreign policy makers, preferring to portray them as skilfully exploiting openings which the outside world created.39 Nevertheless, even if the Russian foreign policy-making elite can be seen as partly professional in its handling of the international milieu, it stands to reason that the fluidity of the domestic scene – an unavoidable outcome of the collapse of Soviet power and Russia’s transition from a closed to an open society, combined with a political culture of empire and zero-sum reasoning – has created tremendous barriers in building domestic win-sets conducive to bringing about the desired changes in Russia. The argument so far can therefore be formulated into two basic hypotheses: •

•

H(1) As for Level II – the domestic game board – the hegemonic winset in Russia tends to be an illiberal one of derzhavnik anti-Americanism and neo-imperialism, but not extremist. H(2) As for Level I – the foreign policy game board – the relevant win-set is one of liberalism that accepts the unique power of the USA and hence implies bandwagoning, not ‘balancing’.40

Admittedly, this differs somewhat from the micro-analysis of more restricted cases of international negotiation that Putnam has in mind, but he does refer to broader cases of a historical nature and evidently sees his work as more or less universally applicable. The brief empirical analysis below returns to the chronological macro-analysis of the evolution of foreign and security policy in Russia, this time as a logic of two-level

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games. First, however, mention must be made of Andrew Moravcsik’s addition to the variables and dimensions of two-level analysis presented here; namely, a government’s or leader’s option of manipulating domestic win-sets and building winning coalitions by shaping institutions, controlling information, mobilizing selectively or colluding with the other government to enhance its own standing.41 Already in his 1988 work,42 Putnam focuses on the options available for the chief negotiator – in this case the president of Russia who, as noticed from the outset, holds large powers in his hands. The chief negotiator may enhance his standing in the Level II game by increasing his political resources, anticipating the results and popularity of an international agreement, shifting the balance of power at Level II towards policies which he prefers, or simply by pursuing his own perception of the national interest – a risky venture at times, it must be said.

The evolution of Russian foreign and security policy: a two-level game Given the empirical case of Russia, a dramatically weakened and territorially shrunken power, but a nuclear power of tremendous geopolitical weight and unused – even often destroyed – potential, the two-level approach becomes all the more pertinent. Thucydides distinguished between the power of the strong and the weak. Indeed, much of Russia’s drama of transition is one of a continued Level II insistence on Russia’s strength – absolutely blind to the implications of the implosion of the Soviet Union and Russia’s need to build itself up from scratch relying on the relevant Level I win-set cited in H(2). Fortunately, neither Level II win-sets nor two-level games as such are static over a longer time perspective. Processes of learning, for instance, through trial and error,43 may be of importance and hence an important issue for analysts to consider. The Gorbachev era, 1985–91 Gorbachev’s insight was that Soviet attempts to build up alternatives to the relevant Level I win-set led nowhere; moreover, whatever grip on power the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had at home as a working Level II win-set, the Soviet Union was eroding its power from within precisely because of CPSU policies. So Gorbachev launched perestroika, demokratizatsiia and novoe politicheskoe myshlenie (new political thinking, NPM), a foreign policy doctrine for reconciling the Soviet Union with the relevant Level I win-set. As Robert G. Hermann argues, however, some of the ostensible architects behind NPM were only superficial converts to Gorbachev’s doctrine,44 a case in point being Primakov. In other words, Primakov personifies Soviet recidivism (although in Russia

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 89 he is by no means extremist). The occasionally contradictory experiment of Gorbachev ended in the August 1991 putsch, followed by Yeltsin’s peaceful conquest of power using Russia proper as a Level II win-set. The early Yeltsin era, 1992–3 Originally Yeltsin and Kozyrev reacted to the August putsch – the epochmaking episode of Soviet recidivism – by sharpening the foreign and security policy implications of NPM, calling NATO Russia’s true ally, and so on. Soon it turned out that Russia’s Level II win-set was too kinky for Kozyrev’s continuance of NPM (now dubbed Atlanticism), as witnessed in the abrupt cancellation of Yeltsin’s visit to Japan in mid-1992.45 Kozyrev was politically and bureaucratically weak, and Yeltsin himself often defected from him for the benefit of the mainstream Level II win-set as depicted in H(1); that is, illiberal derzhavnik anti-Americanism and neoimperialism. Several of Yeltsin’s presidential advisers played their own foreign policy games and were instrumental in torpedoing the win-set around Kozyrev – prominent figures like Yevgenii Ambartsumov, Andranik Migranian and, last but not least, Sergei Karaganov, then and now heading the influential Council of Foreign and Security Policy (Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike, SVOP).46 Already in early 1993, Russian foreign and security policy thus took a decisive turn towards Eurasianism,47 possession goal realism48 and derzhavnik assertiveness. Even Kozyrev changed. The mid-Yeltsin era, 1993–7 As the section on Russian foreign and security policy thinking makes clear, this was a traumatic and turbulent period for the newly established Level II win-set – its formative years, perhaps, in a more benign sense of learning as well. There was the rise to prominence of the lunatic fringe of Russian politics – for instance, Vladimir Zhirinovskii’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), following the December 1993 elections; another factor was the shock of the first Chechnya war (1994–6). Both these factors only served to strengthen the resolve of the Baltic and Central and South-East European applicants for membership of NATO.49 Russia’s counterproposal to NATO enlargement, launched at the December 1994 summit meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – placing NATO under the OSCE together with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)50 – amused no one because of Chechnya. NATO did try to turn enlargement into a win–win game for Russia through the NATO–Russian Permanent Joint Council of 1997, and Russia had in any case no choice but to acquiesce. It was important for Russia to capitalize on its own relations to NATO. Yet Primakov in his new capacity as Russian foreign minister continued to pursue multipolarity.51 China and

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Russia drew closer by 1996–7, while Russia joined the Contact Group, a great-power concert to coordinate policy in the wars in the former Yugoslavia; however, the US administration under President Bill Clinton began to have second thoughts about Russia.52 The Russian mass public was almost indifferent to NATO enlargement – in stark contrast to the elitist Level II win-set that consolidated itself through Kozyrev’s removal.53 The late Yeltsin era, 1998–9 As mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter, this was a depressing time in Russia. On the foreign policy scene Russia faced several defeats: first (and minor, given the NATO–Russia accord of 1997), the accession to NATO of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999; second, the Baltic states’ presence on NATO’s agenda for a possible second round of enlargement through the Membership Action Plan (MAP) programme of 1999; and, third, the reaction to Russia’s interventionist but otherwise utterly impotent policy among CIS countries – the formation of the proNATO group of GUUAM countries in 1999.54 The long-term effect of developments in and around Russia by 1999 was to pull the carpet from under Eurasianism or, to use Putnam parlance, pull the carpet from under the Level II win-set. Compare the key argument of the Russian analyst Dmitri Trenin: The harsh reality is that with Poland already in NATO, the Baltic states aspiring to join, and the GUUAM countries leaning toward the Alliance, there is no Eurasia left for Russia to return to. Russia simply cannot withdraw again into some kind of ‘splendid isolation’ à la the USSR. It can decide to become marginalized, but even then it can no longer hope to have a protective shell around it.55 Trenin goes on to discuss Eurasianism with empathy as a psychological reaction, or grudge against the United States, rather than a coherent strategy. Yet his conclusion is clear: neither this nor similar strategies of multipolarity will translate into viable – that is, relevant – Level I win-sets: ‘Disappointment with Eurasianism, however, is certain. No Russian-led Orthodox bloc surrounded by a buffer of Muslim states, as envisioned by Huntington is likely to emerge.’56 The Far Eastern and South Asian option of aligning with China, Japan and India is also not credible, except, of course, as a game of bluffing about defection.57 On top of all this came NATO’s Kosovo war – another defeat for Russia because of its inclination to support President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and to oppose NATO. Russia retaliated desperately through the surprise seizure of Pristina airport in June 1999 and then went on to cooperate over stabilizing Kosovo. The fact that the EU actu-

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 91 ally upgraded its relationship with Russia by launching the pioneering Common Strategy on Russia in June 199958 was largely overlooked. In August 1999 Chechen forces headed by Shamil Basaev made incursions into neighbouring Dagestan, paving the way for a new Russian war in Chechnya – and for Putin’s rise to power. On 31 December 1999 Yeltsin stepped down. The early Putin era, 2000 to 10 September 2001 Putin personified the power ministries and marketed himself as a strong man and derzhavnik by calling for the restoration of Russia’s great-power status.59 He thus immediately attracted support from communists and the entire ‘centrist’ Level II win-set. As discussed, this period was characterized by more hawkish foreign and national security policy doctrines, even if rhetoric on the CIS returned to Kozyrev’s original phrase of ‘forming a belt of good neighbourliness’. In a way, Putin’s main accomplishment at this time was to improve the image of Russia and its president by signalling new vigour. His foreign policy was activist and pragmatic, courting all centres of power from the EU to China, Cuba and even North Korea and Mongolia (a message to China). What is more, Putin swiftly restored relations with NATO.60 Partly for economic reasons he wanted to make the European part of the multipolarity equation a priority, but this was a non-starter as Russia was perceived as playing games of divide and rule between the EU and the USA, exploiting European scepticism towards the US project of a missile defence system.61 As for the USA itself, Condoleezza Rice, later national security adviser to President George W. Bush, saw widespread ‘Russia fatigue’.62 Rice later revealed a preference for cultivating ties to India – in effect opening the scenario of the USA defecting, not Russia! Originally, the Bush administration was thus deliberately neglecting Russia,63 whereas in the ‘spies war’ of spring 2001 top analysts from both countries called nervously for dialogue to avert a new Cold War.64 Interestingly, prominent Russian political entrepreneurs like Karaganov began to criticize the preceding years’ Russian foreign and security policy under Primakov and his successor as foreign minister, Igor Ivanov. Instead of calling for enlightened post-imperialism, using Russians living abroad as a Trojan horse for Russian influence,65 Karaganov now urged Russia to cease pursuing a foreign policy that smacked of the superpower policies of the Soviet Union. He pleaded for confrontation to be avoided, ‘particularly with the countries on which global development depends’, and went on to portray the pursuit of multipolarity as misguided: ‘We are only an instrument wielded by China . . . and it’s time we recognized it.’66 He was not alone in this,67 but it apparently took a personality like Karaganov and an institution like SVOP for this reassessment, even if only indirectly, to find its way into official writings:

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Mette Skak Some Russian analysts see any attempt to create multipolarity as uneconomical given Russia’s limited resources. They also feel that ‘to a certain extent it deprives Russia of its independence, almost automatically driving Russia into opposition with the United States and sometimes with the West as a whole’. It is difficult to agree with this position. Our choice in favour of a multipolar system is conditioned above all on our national interests. It is within the framework of collective global security that Russia has the best chance of finding its deserved place among the world community.68

Ivanov here rejects, yet quotes, the SVOP 2000 Strategy for Russia69 which raised some of Putin’s themes, such as the restoration of the ‘power vertical’ (restoring central authority). SVOP thus proved a dissenting voice of some influence. SVOP identified Bosnia, Iraq in 1998 and Kosovo as fiascos for the protagonists of multipolarity.70 Putin actually changed the tenor of Russian foreign policy towards internal balancing,71 warning against ‘being lured into costly global undertakings while we are heavily in debt and cannot even afford to pay wages to our own people’.72 He concluded: ‘It is high time to understand our place in the world, our wealth and our new rights depend on how successfully we meet our own internal challenges.’73 In other words, because of the perceived policy failure of Primakov’s Level I strategy of multipolarity and its concomitant (balancing against US interests), the illiberal Level II win-set of Russia was now being challenged, resulting in some defection towards the relevant Level I win-set. A process of learning appeared to be going on, although Putin was far from benign in his war against Chechnya, dubbed a struggle against ‘international terrorism’. Even if this term is often misused, Russia and its Central Asian and Transcaucasian CIS partners were indeed facing growing instability and security problems. In May 2000, Russia issued warnings to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan about possible Russian raids into the territory of Afghanistan if it continued to supply arms and manpower to the Chechens.74 Islamism had crept into the Caucasian and Central Asian regions.75 Prior to 11 September 2001 Russia found itself in a curious ‘security dilemma’ of not wanting outsiders to help it stabilize the situation in its volatile southern neighbourhood, while at the same time it was not able to deter the threats and deliver security on its own. It is against this background of growing security problems and militarized answers that the Australian analyst Bobo Lo76 characterizes Putin’s foreign policy before and after 11 September as one of ‘securitization’, implying Soviet recidivism. Yet, in view of the crisis of the mainstream Level II policies and the attempts of Putin and others to distance themselves from it through a platform of ‘enlightened derzhavnik’ internal balancing and bandwagoning, Lo’s assessment is too simplistic.

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 93 The current Putin era, 11 September 2001–3 The terror that hit the USA was a shock and a unique diplomatic opportunity for Russia, which Putin seized. He aligned himself firmly with the US war on terrorism.77 This was not just a question of gaining US backing for continued war in Chechnya as instability and terrorism to the south were getting out of control, as has just been argued. It was a double chance to get relief through security policy cooperation with the USA and to bring Russia’s foreign economic policy finally into step with the relevant Level I win-set comprising the Western world as a whole. Putin had learned that the EU could not be courted through balancing and bypassing the USA: this alienated the Europeans, who remain the real geopolitical target for Putin’s Westernization.78 Compare Trenin: ‘Joining Europe, however, will have to be based on accepting post-Cold War realities, such as America’s current global preponderance.’79 Putin accepted a US presence in Central Asia and Georgia, and later made Russia’s policy on the CIS more sophisticated, upgrading economic links.80 He went as far as tacitly to accept the entry into NATO of the three Baltic countries, and thus seemed to have passed the litmus test for Russia’s good intentions, in the words of former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. Russia’s change of policy towards viewing NATO enlargement and its own cooperation with NATO as a win–win game was officially confirmed by its behaviour at the NATO summit meeting in Prague in 2002 when the entry into NATO of the Baltic countries and others was confirmed.81 Analysts worry about the fragility of the Level II win-set behind Putin’s foreign policy reorientation: according to them, only Putin and a couple of Kremlin insiders were behind it. This is partly true, but (in contrast to Yeltsin’s era) partly irrelevant because of Putin’s efficient use of his constitutional powers over foreign policy to exercise leadership. In this way, his derzhavnik platform is turned against critics to the extreme left and the chauvinist right, while he continues to enjoy amazingly broad support at the mass level. Given the genuine electoral dimension of Russian politics, this makes his platform a powerful Level II win-set of its own, in line with Putnam’s and Moravcsik’s points about how leaders may change and strengthen domestic win-sets.82 In an interview in the spring of 2002, Trenin argued that Putin is staunchly committed to his Westward orientation not because Russian foreign policy experts have convinced him of its wisdom but because of the influence of Putin’s economic team. Their counsel is that the only way Putin can address his central security concern – Russia’s economic revitalization – is through close relations with the West on all matters.83 The advent of this economic win-set of Russian biznesmeny is significant on its own; moreover, it begins to look as if Putin’s Westernization has consolidated, judging from the diverse analyses and comments reflecting the fact that the basic Russian foreign and security policy premise of today is an inclusive outlook on cooperation with the

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USA, NATO and the EU as well as with individual countries like China and Germany.84 Indeed, 11 September was a reality shock for Russia’s Level II win-set. In sum, Karaganov’s defection is by no means trivial. It marks a broader, critical reappraisal of Russia’s contradictory and often fatal foreign and security policy under Yeltsin – an era when power slipped to various foreign policy entrepreneurs, resulting in a counterproductive practice of balancing against the USA under the banner of Eurasianism and multipolarity. Karaganov speaks for other people besides himself when he argues that ‘every Russian nationalist now . . . must be a Westerner and must do everything possible to integrate Russia with NATO and the EU’.85 His vision is one of a grand coalition against Muslim terrorism uniting the entire Western world, including ‘Israel, Japan, and even China’. Although not everyone will feel comfortable about this, or about his view of conflict pitting the rich world against the poor and his insistence on a ‘clash of civilizations’ fault line, it is perhaps needed in the Russian context in order to clarify real as opposed to imagined issues. True, Karaganov is less upbeat in his comment on the acrimony over Iraq in early 2003; still, his reasoning leaves the impression that this spectacular controversy need not divert Russia from its current pro-US strategy, but may fuel it. He writes: Preservation of the UN and its successful reorganization are impossible without the United States. Making the UN an instrument of the struggle with Washington, Moscow is but playing into the hands of the forces intent on doing away with the UN altogether . . . Moscow once again recalled the multipolar world concept (viewed as antiAmerican), took the stand in the UN Security Council that was a carbon copy of France’s . . . whereas China indicated its fundamental position on the issue but refrained from moving into the forefront . . . I do not think by the way that any vital interests of Russia were encroached on in Iraq . . . Rapprochement with Europe should remain a priority, particularly in the sphere of economic, social, and human contacts . . . As for the strategic alliance with the European Union, it is not very productive for the time being. This is the sphere where Europe will probably become relatively weaker . . . The course for the closest possible relations with the United States should not mean abandonment of economic interests, either fundamental or specific economic ones . . . As for the UN, we should not be trying to make problems for the United States particularly since the United States overcomes them with such ease . . . The long-term destabilization of the Middle East . . . offers Russia a unique chance. For at least two decades the country may rely on acceptable oil prices and the role of the global ‘energy stabilizer’. Smart use of this factor offers Russia a source of income for modernization of the country and ups its geopolitical influence.86

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 95 His comment reflects the crisis in relations between Europe and the USA, which is weakening the EU and NATO as security policy actors worldwide; yet there are also strong trends of recovery and innovative cooperation – for instance, the quartet of the EU, Russia, the UN and the USA as the powers behind the Middle East Road Map for peace.87

Conclusion: change for the better within foreign and security policy The analysis above has depicted the painful evolution towards a proWestern stance in Russian foreign and security policy by first looking into the Russian penchant for maximalist definitions of its national interest and security concerns and then applying the framework of two-level games in a chronological overview of the Russian leadership’s two-front struggle between the actor dynamics on the domestic political scene – the Level II win-set of anti-US and neo-imperialistic, illiberal derzhavnik forces – and the structural forces on the external arena, creating a single relevant Level I win-set which encompasses all the Western powers, above all the USA. An important point in the argument here is the dynamics of learning through trial and error, for instance, Putin having learned from the political fate of Gorbachev and Kozyrev, as well as from the reality shocks for Russia’s Level II win-set in the shape of the military tragedy of the first Chechen war, the defection of the GUUAM countries among the CIS members, and NATO enlargement, which in the end included the Baltic countries. By 2000 and early 2001 the USA itself was signalling defection and cold war amid an escalation of security dangers for Russia on its southern perimeter. September 11 was seized upon by Putin as a move on the Level I game board that was capable of bringing Russia into step with the Western world, thereby breaking the deadlock around Russia. Prior to this a winset that was more based on economic arguments and more popular had emerged around Putin. This, combined with Karaganov’s defection from the Primakov doctrine of pursuing multipolarity through balancing the USA (Karaganov representing Russia’s political class), helped to bring about the consolidation of Putin’s foreign policy reorientation. Russia’s new attitude draws strength from its domestic economic recovery and political stabilization, implying that Russia has something to offer beyond its geographic location. The new intimate relationship between Russia and the USA survived the Iraq acrimony, as it was the French and German stance which infuriated the USA. In October 2003, Russia broke the deadlock in the UN by signalling its willingness to endorse a Security Council mandate for managing the interim period in Iraq until the transfer of power to the Iraqis. As for the curious persistence of the Primakov jargon of multipolarity – for instance, in the joint Sino-Russian declaration signed by Putin and Hu Jintao, the latter visiting Russia in his new capacity as

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China’s president in May 200388 – it seems to be maintained mainly for reasons of convenience, as a term covering Russia’s switch to a consistently inclusive pro-US bandwagoning approach to concert building. As pointed out above, not everything about Putin is rosy. To some extent it may be argued that the victims of his improved room for manoeuvre within foreign and security policy are the Russian rule-of-law institutions, such as human rights and the freedom of the press. Critics cite his efforts to neutralize those who challenge his grip on power, including several of the oligarchs. At any rate, it is difficult to distinguish whether Putin is fighting the seven Russian Berlusconis or whether it is he who is pursuing ‘Berlusconization’ of Russia’s political system. Be that as it may, Putin’s declared goal is a Russia ‘with a developed civil society and a stable democracy’, which guarantees ‘full human rights, civil liberties, and political freedom’.89 He is in the unenviable position of presiding over a tall order of reform throughout the vast Russian Federation – a country that is also more pluralistic than ever before in Russia’s long, sad history. Let me briefly return to the introductory thesis of an improved security situation in the Baltic Sea region and raise the policy implications of the analysis here. Among the net winners from Russia’s policy reorientation, Kaliningrad and the Baltic states were mentioned, the latter because Russia now accepts their entry into NATO. This change stems from Russia’s reassessment of threats as emanating from its southern, not western, environment, as was already argued in the 1997 National Security Concept, which coincided with the escalation of Russia’s anti-NATO campaign.90 Developments related to 11 September reinforced this threat perception, which is helping to ‘desecuritize’ Russia’s relations with the Baltic Sea region and the Western world. The only outstanding issue was Russia’s demand that the Baltic countries accede to the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, as a precondition for their joining NATO. As for Russia’s ability to compromise on Kaliningrad, the actual outcome is telling for the prominence of long-term economic considerations in the Kremlin and its current Level II win-set, as Ingmar Oldberg argues.91 Russia is thus beginning to perceive both the EU and NATO as partners in long-term win–win games. This and other developments following 11 September mark a truly novel turn in Russian political thinking away from its morally arid possession goal realism. It is premature to speak of a genuine milieu goal orientation, but attitudes in Moscow are not static. This opens further room for manoeuvre and for constructive, proactive diplomacy on the part of other actors in the Baltic Sea region, where Lithuania has more than once proved its capacity for creative overtures towards Russia – most recently in furthering the compromise on Kaliningrad.92 Finland deserves praise for having placed the Northern Dimension (for which read Russia Dimension) on the EU agenda during its EU presidency in 1999 – a development scheme that includes EU spon-

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 97 sorship of projects involving Kaliningrad. In the opinion of Andrew A. Michta, ‘one “old NATO/EU” country, Denmark, has played a catalyst role, often working behind the scenes to develop a new set of relations in the Baltic region’.93 He refers to Denmark’s role in placing the Baltic countries on not just the EU’s but also NATO’s enlargement agenda, accompanied by the practical assistance it has given the Baltic countries in preparing for EU and NATO membership. Together with Germany, Denmark launched the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) in 1992, consisting of these two countries along with Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, plus the European Commission as an observer. The CBSS is a multilateral forum to which Russia attaches some significance because Germany is a member, hereby adding great-power prestige to the CBSS. The Kremlin’s pursuit of great-power concert building as the essence of its narrow milieu goal orientation in international affairs throughout history has to be taken into account in diplomacy, but without compromising the norms of equality and multilateralism, for instance, within the CBSS. Apart from that, the end of the Cold War and of bipolarity is significant for the new room for manoeuvre and, by implication, responsibility in world politics which it opens up for medium-sized and small states alike. The Baltic countries’ entry into the EU and NATO should increase their proactive, constructive diplomacy towards Russia. Russian voices can now be heard expressing concern over EU enlargement as isolating Russia – illuminating, incidentally, the myopia of the obsession with NATO. The perception of being isolated need not translate into reality. There is a need for a mix of assertiveness and empathy in Western policy towards Russia, as is demonstrated by NATO’s arrival at an inclusive enlargement policy for the benefit of the Baltic countries accompanied by the upgrading of relations between NATO and Russia to Russian semimembership of NATO through the new NATO–Russia Council. The Baltic states must now find ways to reciprocate without compromising their legitimate concerns. Michta’s point about Germany and Poland resurfacing as core powers in Baltic Sea affairs is important in more than one sense. In terms of identity, the post-Cold War Baltic Sea region will be less influenced by Nordic social democratic Keynesianism as the dominant alternative to Soviet Marxism and more by ‘Atlantic’ liberal and continental European Christian Democratic values. To some extent, the Baltic states and Russia proper are also exponents of this.

Notes 1 Ingmar Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement: Russia and the Baltic States in the Context of NATO and EU Enlargements, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), User report, FOI-R-0808-SE, February 2003.

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2 Stephen Blank, ‘The conditions for US–Russian partnership’, Orbis, Fall 2002, pp. 661–87. 3 Lars Poulsen-Hansen and Niels Erik Rosenfeldt (eds), Regionernes Rusland [The Russia of the regions], Copenhagen: Dansk Udenrigspolitisk Institut, 2001. 4 Poulsen-Hansen and Rosenfeldt, Regionernes Rusland, pp. 315ff.; and AnneKristin Jørgensen, ‘The military sector: Federal responsibility, regional concern’, in Geir Hønneland and Helge Blakkisrud (eds), Centre–Periphery Relations in Russia: The Case of the Northwestern Regions, Aldershot: Gower, 2001. 5 Martin Nicholson, ‘Putin’s Russia: Slowing the pendulum without stopping the clock’, International Affairs (London), 77(4), October 2001, pp. 867–84. 6 Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2003. 7 The theory of democratic peace holds that democracies, as the open societies they are, do not fight wars against one another; in other words, democracies tend to form security communities. Neither Russia nor its post-communist neighbours are full-blown and stable democracies, which according to some political scientists means a temporary danger of aggressive foreign policies. (Jack Snyder, ‘Democratization, war and nationalism in the post-communist states’, in Celeste A. Wallander (ed.), The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996, pp. 21–40.) Even so, it is of long-term significance that Russia and the European post-communist states are breaking away from their authoritarian past in a process of democratization and economic liberalization. 8 Cf. Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement, pp. 23–8, 64–8. True, the Russian Ambassador to Estonia continued to lecture Estonia about not overestimating the possibility for improving relations with Russia via NATO, but he went on to say that in 10–15 years Russian–Estonian relations will be like those between Finland and Russia today. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL Newsline, Part II, 77, 23 April 2003. As for the Balkans, the otherwise hawkish communist, Gennadii Seleznev, speaker of the Russian State Duma, declared in Sofia that ‘Russia does not favor NATO enlargement’ but that ‘every nation has the right to determine its own life and choose what alliances to join, and Bulgaria has apparently made its choice’ (RFE/RL Newsline, Part II, 4 March 2002). Similarly, Romanians are very enthusiastic about Putin and his foreign policy (the author’s own observations from a research trip to Romania under the aegis of the Danish Foreign Policy Society in 2002). 9 Mette Skak, From Empire to Anarchy: Postcommunist Foreign Policy and International Relations, London: Hurst & Co, 1996. 10 Ibid. 11 Bobo Lo, Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Reality, Illusion and Mythmaking, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; Leszek Buszynski, Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996; Stephen Blank, ‘Is there a future for Russian relations with Southeast Asia?’, Journal of East Asian Affairs, XIII(1), Spring/Summer 1999; and Mette Skak, Back in the USSR? Russia as an Actor in World Politics, Working Paper no. 7, Copenhagen: Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI), 2000. Bobo Lo sees Russian foreign policy as reflecting ‘the perversity of human nature. Far from exhibiting an underlying if specific pragmatism, Moscow’s relations with the outside world have been liberally streaked with irrationality’, and he goes on to speak of ‘the politics of sectionalism and personalities’, ‘illusion and mythmaking’ (Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 1). He coins the apt term ‘Potemkinization’ for Russia’s various ostensibly coherent foreign policy doctrines (ibid., pp. 66ff.). Leszek Buszynski characterizes Russia’s foreign policy as one of disorientation

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(Buszynski, Russian Foreign Policy, pp. ixff.), and Stephen Blank’s writings often expose the idiosyncrasies of Russian foreign policy-making. The word derzhava means ‘power’ in the sense of ‘great power’ (velikaia derzhava) in Russian, hence derzhavnik has come to be serve as an umbrella category for anyone wanting to restore Russia’s capacity as state and/or its role as great power in world affairs (cf. Buszynski, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 2; and Leon Aron, ‘The foreign policy doctrine of postcommunist Russia and its domestic context’, in Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The New Russian Foreign Policy, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1998, pp. 24, 33). A notorious figure, Aleksandr Rutskoi, an instigator of the October 1993 showdown, later founded a party simply called Derzhava. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, London and Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999. See also the chapters by Iver Neumann, Pavel Baev and Nikita Lomagin in this volume. Following the Swiss–American political scientist Arnold Wolfers, it is possible to distinguish two different approaches to national security: (a) the pursuit of possession goals, i.e., goals relating to the protection and expansion of the power of the individual state and its territory – corresponding to what is generally understood by realism, and (b) the pursuit of milieu goals; that is, the pursuit of order, stability and/or justice in world affairs – for instance, building strong international institutions and organizations. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962, pp. 73–4. Likewise, other proponents of the socalled English school of international relations distinguish between narrow raison d’état as opposed to broad considerations of raison de système (Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis, London: Routledge, 1992). As the present author has argued elsewhere (Skak, Back in the USSR?), the hegemonic political culture of Russia is mostly devoid of real milieu goal considerations: they are manipulated into mere possession goals. Hannes Adomeit, ‘Russian national security interests’, in Roy Allison and Christoph Bluth (eds), Security Dilemmas in Russia and Eurasia, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998, pp. 33–49. Reuters, 12 January 1996. See also Iver Neumann’s chapter in this volume. In Nezavisimaia gazeta’s coverage of his first interview he stressed the importance of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to Russia as the highest priority and saw a need to strengthen CIS integration and stabilize the region with regard to armed conflict. See Lena Jonson, ‘Russia and the “near abroad”: Concepts and trends’, in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds), The Baltic States in World Politics, London: Curzon, 1998, p. 116. Aron, ‘The foreign policy doctrine of postcommunist Russia’, pp. 27ff.; Skak, From Empire to Anarchy, pp. 144–64; and Rolf H. W. Theen, ‘Quo vadis Russia? The problem of national identity and state-building’, in Gordon B. Smith (ed.), State-Building in Russia: The Yeltsin Legacy and the Challenges of the Future, New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, pp. 48–54. Skak, From Empire to Anarchy, p. 140. Adomeit, ‘Russian national security interests’. Gail W. Lapidus, ‘Contested sovereignty: The tragedy of Chechnya’, International Security, 23(1), 1998. ‘Kontseptsiia natsional’noi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ [Concept of national security of the Russian Federation], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 26 December 1997. Aron, ‘The foreign policy doctrine of postcommunist Russia’; and Coit D.

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Blacker, ‘Russia and the West’, in Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The New Russian Foreign Policy, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1998, pp. 167–93. Aron, ‘The foreign policy doctrine of postcommunist Russia’, pp. 31–3. Blacker, ‘Russia and the West’, pp. 182–8. Ibid., p. 188. A post-11 September security doctrine on the new type of war – on terrorism – seems to have been developed in 2003 (RFE/RL Newsline, 210, 6 November 2002; and Interfax, 30 January 2003). In October 2003, Putin announced a Russian doctrine on preventive military strikes. Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, 14 July 2000, reprinted in Igor S. Ivanov, The New Russian Diplomacy, Washington, DC: Nixon Center and Brookings Institution Press, 2002. If anything Russia’s zeal to ‘securitize’ the lot of its ethnic brethren living as national minorities in the new states neighbouring Russia has served to reduce their security. Henrikki Heikka, Beyond the Cult of the Offensive: The Evolution of Soviet/Russian Strategic Culture and Its Implications for the Nordic–Baltic Region, Helsinki and Berlin: Ulkopoliittinen instituutti and Institut für europäische Politik, 2000, p. 78. Ibid., p. 85. Ibid. Robert D. Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: The logic of two-level games’, International Organization, 42(3), Summer 1988, p. 427. Ibid., p. 434. The approach of Putnam matches the liberal–pluralistic paradigm of international relations whereby states are not treated as monolithic ‘unitary actors’ but as a medium for various political forces in a society – political parties, lobbies, bureaucracies, and so on. However, the classical realist Hans J. Morgenthau had already seen a dilemma between democracy as a political system and foreign and security policy. See also Kjell Goldmann (with Sten Berglund and Gunnar Sjöstedt), Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Case of Sweden, Aldershot: Gower, 1986. Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics’, p. 437. Ibid., p. 436. Ibid., p. 439. Allen C. Lynch, ‘The realism of Russia’s foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 53(1), 2001, pp. 7–31. ‘Bandwagoning’ and ‘balancing’ are the basic opposing categories of balanceof-power strategies within neo-realism (Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill and Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979). Whereas balancing means opposing a dominant power by aligning with weaker powers, bandwagoning is the small state’s option of seeking protection from the dominant power – a widespread pattern under the current conditions of unipolarity because of the overwhelming power, including soft power, of the United States (Joseph N. Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 1990). However, what may amount to bandwagoning on the external scene is often designed – and carries significance – as strategies of internal balancing; that is, concentrating on building up power at home. It is usually overlooked that Kenneth N. Waltz, the godfather of neo-realism, saw this strategy as superior to balancing in 1979! (see Waltz, Theory of International Politics). Cf. the author’s analysis of Putin’s internal balancing in Mette Skak, ‘Russian security policy after 9/11’, Paper for the CEISA/ISA International Convention, Budapest, Hungary, 26–28 June 2003 (can be downloaded from www.ps.au.dk: click on ‘Staff/scientific’. To be published in a forthcoming volume edited by Roger E. Kanet).

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 101 41 On Moravcsik’s reformulation, I am indebted to Sten Rynning who as far as I know pioneered the application of two-level games to the study of Russia. Sten Rynning, ‘A balancing act: Russia and the Partnership for Peace’, Cooperation and Conflict, 31(2), 1996, p. 215. 42 Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics’, p. 457. 43 George W. Breslauer and Philip E. Tetlock (eds), Learning in US and Soviet Foreign Policy, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991. 44 Robert G. Hermann, ‘Identity, norms and national security: The Soviet foreign policy revolution and the end of the Cold War’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 271–316. 45 Skak, From Empire to Anarchy, pp. 181–91. 46 Ibid., pp. 141–81. 47 It was a Yeltsin adviser, Sergei Stankevich, who spearheaded the assault on Kozyrev’s Atlanticism, contrasting it to his favoured line of Eurasianism. As stated, Kozyrev ignored not the ‘near abroad’, as his critics claimed, but their calls for neo-imperialism. 48 See note 15. 49 Roland Dannreuthner, ‘Escaping the enlargement trap in NATO–Russian relations’, Survival, 41(4), Winter 1999–2000, pp. 148ff. 50 Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement, p. 19. 51 This is not an original concept, but one invented by China. Dmitri Trenin, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization, Washington, DC and Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002, p. 275. Cf. Yi Xiaxiong, ‘Ten years of China–South Korea relations and Beijing’s view on Korean unification’, Journal of East Asian Affairs, XVI(2), Fall/Winter 2002, pp. 315–51. 52 Robert Legvold, ‘Russia’s unformed foreign policy’, Foreign Affairs, 80(5), September/October 2001, pp. 62–75. 53 William Zimmermann, The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives, 1993–2000, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Analysts argue that the reason why Russia’s democratic leadership lost control over foreign policy was its ‘socialization’ into the petrified Soviet system, leaving it unprepared for dissent and unable to manage it skilfully. Yeltsin’s enthusiasm for the Level II win-set was mainly a function of its capacity for forming consensus, and Primakov personified the win-set, as seen in the unanimous support for him in the Duma, in the ‘power ministries’, and so on. 54 GUUAM is Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Lo sees the ‘near abroad’ policy of the Yeltsin years as primarily defensive: ‘Few things united the disparate elements of the ruling elite so much as Western attempts to develop closer links with the [former Soviet Union]’ (Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 116). Much more than ‘neo-colonial US ambitions’, however, it was the mixture of Russian arrogance and economic weakness that eroded Russia’s monopoly on CIS foreign economic and security policy (otherwise termed the ‘enlightened post-imperialist strategy’ by Sergei Karaganov). In the mid-1990s the CIS countries diversified their economic and security policy links, for example, through their bilateral participation in the NATO Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme (Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 117). In 2002 Uzbekistan left GUUAM, turning it into just GUAM. Although the GUUAM states’ prospects of joining NATO are meagre, the political significance of their attendance at NATO’s 1999 summit and their mutual policy coordination were not wasted on Russia: it was only then that Russia began to upgrade CIS cooperation (Dannreuthner, ‘Escaping the enlargement trap’) or, to be more accurate, take its bilateral links to these countries seriously.

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55 Trenin, The End of Eurasia, p. 275. 56 Ibid., p. 277. 57 Blacker, ‘Russia and the West’. Heikka interprets Russia’s upgrading of its strategic partnership with China through massive arms sales since 1998 as earnest; that is, ‘another dimension in Russia’s attempts to bring the multipolar system into balance’. Heikka, Beyond the Cult of the Offensive, p. 89; see also p. 90. 58 See ‘Common Strategy of the European Union of 4 June 1999 on Russia’, Official Journal of the European Communities, L157, 24 June 1999. 59 Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 1999. 60 Skak, Back in the USSR?, p. 7. 61 Anne de Tinguy, ‘Vladimir Poutine et l’Occident: l’heure est au pragmatisme’ [Vladimit Putin and the West: time for pragmatism], Politique Étrangère, 3, 2001, pp. 515–33. 62 Condoleezza Rice, ‘Promoting the national interest’, Foreign Affairs, 79(1), 2000, pp. 45–62. 63 Legvold, ‘Russia’s unformed foreign policy’. 64 Graham T. Allison and Sergei Karaganov, ‘US–Russian dialogue is needed to head off a new Cold War’, International Herald Tribune, 3 April 2001. 65 Skak, From Empire to Anarchy, p. 172. To be fair to Karaganov and SVOP, mention must also be made of the 1994 version of a ‘Strategy for Russia’ which dismissed the coercive approach of the ‘ultra-nationalists’ (by implication the Level II win-set: MS) towards the CIS as a threat to stability (ibid., p. 161). SVOP here rehabilitated Kozyrev’s ‘building a belt of good-neighbourliness’. Along with Karaganov, Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee, criticized the ‘infantile imperialism’ of Russia (ibid., p. 162), although to no avail, as seen in the overall evolution and tenor of Russia’s policy. 66 RFE/RL Newsline, 4(68), 5 April 2000. 67 Blank, ‘Is there a future for Russian relations with Southeast Asia?’, pp. 100–1. 68 Ivanov, The New Russian Diplomacy, pp. 46–7. 69 Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike (SVOP), Strategiia dlia Rossii: Povestka dnia dlia prezidenta 2000 [Strategy for Russia: an agenda for the president, 2000], Moscow: Vagrius, 2000, p. 91. 70 Ibid., p. 61. 71 Skak, ‘Russian security policy after 9/11’. 72 Vladimir Putin, ‘Vladimir Putin’s open letter to Russian voters’, Federal News Service Transcripts, 25 February 2000. 73 Ibid. 74 RFE/RL Newsline, 100–3, 24, 25, 26 and 29 May 2000. 75 Anatol Lieven, ‘The Secret Policemen’s Ball: The United States, Russia, and the international order after 11 September’, International Affairs (London), 78(2), 2001, pp. 245–59. 76 Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, pp. 8–9, 175–6. 77 Blank, ‘The conditions for US–Russian partnership’; Lieven, ‘The Secret Policemen’s Ball’; and Skak, ‘Russian security policy after 9/11’. 78 de Tinguy, ‘Vladimir Poutine’. 79 Admittedly, Trenin is too sophisticated to be agenda-setting for Level II winsets, but he goes in the right direction in his clear view of Level I options and his comprehensive verdict on Eurasianism and everything else the Yeltsin era Level II win-set stood for. Trenin, The End of Eurasia, p. 292. 80 Lena Jonson, ‘Russia and Tajikistan: New challenges to a strategic relationship’, Paper for the CEEISA/ISA International Convention in Budapest, Hungary, 26–28 June 2003.

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 103 81 ‘The NATO summit’, RFE/RL Newsline, 19 November 2002. 82 Political scientists deplore the ‘hyper-representative’ constituency behind Putin matching all strata of Russian society as something that threatens his capacity for making hard decisions and building up a meaningful party of supporters to rely on (Stephen White and Ian McAllister, ‘Putin and his supporters’, Europe–Asia Studies, 55(3), 2003, pp. 383–99). If it is a problem, then it is mainly a problem for domestic politics. Following Zimmermann (The Russian People), Putin’s stress on putting domestic needs and reform issues above foreign policy ambitions so that foreign policy will serve the citizens’ daily concerns clearly matches the preferences of ordinary people in Russia who, like people everywhere, are indifferent to the subtleties of foreign policy. Cf. ‘Transcript of Putin’s State of the Nation address’, BBC Monitoring, 16 May 2003, downloaded from Johnson’s Russia List, 7186, 19 May 2003 (http://www.cdi. org/russia/johnson). 83 Richard J. Krickus, Russia in NATO: Thinking about the Unthinkable, Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Affairs, 2002. 84 A report issued by the Foundation for Prospective Studies and Initiatives, whose Board of Trustees includes notable figures such as Nodari Simonia, Aleksandr Avdeev, Alexei Arbatov, Yurii Baturin, Andrei Illarionov and, last but not least, the grand old man of late Soviet and contemporary Russian foreign policy, Yevgenii Primakov – in other words people of considerable influence within Russia’s political class – fully endorses Putin’s 11 September 2001 choice of a ‘strategy of integration into the democratic family of nations’ as stabilizing Russia’s international position. See ‘Russia in 2003 and its foreign policy’, Excerpts from the report by the Foundation for Prospective Studies and Initiatives, 2003, downloaded from Russia in Global Affairs (http://eng.globalisation.ru/live/article.asp?rubric_id⫽1616&id⫽2550). The report stresses that the legacy of previous ‘relapses of ultimatum-making, inappropriate rhetoric, as well as confrontational or Anti-American stances’ makes it necessary to work hard to consolidate the gains made by Russia after 11 September. Analysts like Konovalov (Aleksandr Konovalov, ‘Why is NATO enlargement no longer a threat to Russia’s national security?’, RIA Novosti, 6 October 2003, from Johnson’s Russia List) – like Putin himself at times – play down the significance of Russia’s pro-NATO turn, arguing that NATO itself is changing and becoming less relevant, but on the other hand conclude that the transformation of NATO is necessary – in effect, keeping it! – through the joint efforts of Europe, Russia and the USA. 85 ‘The NATO summit’, RFE/RL Newsline, 19 November 2002. 86 Sergei Karaganov, ‘Lessons of the war in Iraq’, Izvestiia, 14 May 2003 (English version downloaded from Johnson’s Russia List). 87 See Lieven, ‘The Secret Policemen’s Ball’. 88 RFE/RL Newsline, 99, 28 May 2003. 89 ‘Transcript of Putin’s State of the Nation address’, 16 May 2003. 90 In the late 1990s Russia reorganized its military presence away from its northwest to its volatile south, leaving more defensive configurations in the northwest. 91 Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement, p. 68. 92 Ibid., p. 67. 93 Andrew A. Michta, ‘Central Europe and the Baltic littoral after 2004: A new security dynamic?’, Paper for the CEEISA/ISA International Convention, Budapest, Hungary, 26–28 June 2003, to be published in Orbis .

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Bibliography Books and journals Adomeit, Hannes, ‘Russian national security interests’, in Roy Allison and Christoph Bluth (eds), Security Dilemmas in Russia and Eurasia, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998, pp. 33–49. Aron, Leon, ‘The foreign policy doctrine of postcommunist Russia and its domestic context’, in Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The New Russian Foreign Policy, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1998, pp. 23–63. Blacker, Coit D., ‘Russia and the West’, in Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The New Russian Foreign Policy, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1998, pp. 167–93. Blank, Stephen, ‘Is there a future for Russian relations with Southeast Asia?’, Journal of East Asian Affairs, XIII(1), Spring/Summer 1999, pp. 73–110. ——, ‘The conditions for US–Russian partnership’, Orbis, Fall 2002, pp. 661–87. Breslauer, George W. and Philip E. Tetlock (eds), Learning in US and Soviet Foreign Policy, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991. Buszynski, Leszek, Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996. Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, London and Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999. Dannreuthner, Roland, ‘Escaping the enlargement trap in NATO–Russian relations’, Survival, 41(4), Winter 1999–2000, pp. 145–64. Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, 14 July 2000, reprinted in Igor S. Ivanov, The New Russian Diplomacy, Washington, DC: Nixon Center and Brookings Institution Press, 2002. Goldmann, Kjell (with Sten Berglund and Gunnar Sjöstedt), Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Case of Sweden, Aldershot: Gower, 1986. Heikka, Henrikki, Beyond the Cult of the Offensive: The Evolution of Soviet/Russian Strategic Culture and Its Implications for the Nordic–Baltic Region, Helsinki and Berlin: Ulkopoliittinen instituutti and Institut für europäische Politik, 2000. Hermann, Robert G., ‘Identity, norms and national security: The Soviet foreign policy revolution and the end of the Cold War’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 271–316. Ivanov, Igor S., The New Russian Diplomacy, Washington, DC: Nixon Center and Brookings Institution Press, 2002. Jonson, Lena, ‘Russia and the “near abroad”: Concepts and trends’, in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds), The Baltic States in World Politics, London: Curzon, 1998, pp. 112–32. ——, ‘Russia and Tajikistan: New challenges to a strategic relationship’, Paper for the CEEISA/ISA International Convention in Budapest, Hungary, 26–28 June 2003. Jørgensen, Anne-Kristin, ‘The military sector: Federal responsibility, regional concern’, in Geir Hønneland and Helge Blakkisrud (eds), Centre–Periphery Relations in Russia: The Case of the Northwestern Regions, Aldershot: Gower, 2001.

Foreign and security policy change in Russia 105 ‘Kontseptsiia natsional’noi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ [Concept of national security of the Russian Federation], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 26 December 1997. Krickus, Richard J., Russia in NATO: Thinking about the Unthinkable, Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Affairs, 2002. Lapidus, Gail W., ‘Contested sovereignty: The tragedy of Chechnya’, International Security, 23(1), 1998, pp. 5–49. Legvold, Robert, ‘Russia’s unformed foreign policy’, Foreign Affairs, 80(5), September–October 2001, pp. 62–75. Lieven, Anatol, ‘The Secret Policemen’s Ball: The United States, Russia, and the international order after 11 September’, International Affairs (London), 78(2), 2001, pp. 245–59. Lo, Bobo, Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Reality, Illusion and Mythmaking, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Lynch, Allen C., ‘The realism of Russia’s foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 53(1), 2001, pp. 7–31. Michta, Andrew A., ‘Central Europe and the Baltic littoral after 2004: A new security dynamic?’, Paper for the CEEISA/ISA International Convention, Budapest, Hungary, 26–28 June 2003, to be published in Orbis. Nicholson, Martin, ‘Putin’s Russia: Slowing the pendulum without stopping the clock’, International Affairs (London), 77(4), October 2001, pp. 867–84. Nye, Joseph N., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 1990. Oldberg, Ingmar, Reluctant Rapprochement: Russia and the Baltic States in the Context of NATO and EU Enlargements, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), User report, FOI-R-0808-SE, February 2003. Poulsen-Hansen, Lars and Niels Erik Rosenfeldt (eds), Regionernes Rusland [The Russia of the regions], Copenhagen: Dansk Udenrigspolitisk Institut, 2001. Putin, Vladimir, ‘Vladimir Putin’s open letter to Russian voters’, Federal News Service Transcripts, 25 February 2000. Putnam, Robert D., ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: The logic of two-level games’, International Organization, 42(3), Summer 1988, pp. 427–60. Rice, Condoleezza, ‘Promoting the national interest’, Foreign Affairs, 79(1), 2000, pp. 45–62. Rynning, Sten, ‘A balancing act: Russia and the Partnership for Peace’, Cooperation and Conflict, 31(2), 1996, pp. 211–34. Skak, Mette, From Empire to Anarchy: Postcommunist Foreign Policy and International Relations, London: Hurst & Co., 1996. ——, Back in the USSR? Russia as an Actor in World Politics, Working Paper no. 7, Copenhagen: Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI), 2000. ——, ‘Russian security policy after 9/11’, Paper for the CEISA/ISA International Convention, Budapest, Hungary, 26–28 June 2003 (can be downloaded from www.ps.au.dk: click on ‘Staff/scientific’. To be published in a forthcoming volume edited by Roger E. Kanet). Snyder, Jack, ‘Democratization, war and nationalism in the post-communist states’, in Celeste A. Wallander (ed.), The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996, pp. 21–40. Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike (SVOP), Strategiia dlia Rossii: Povestka dnia dlia prezidenta 2000 [Strategy for Russia: an agenda for the president, 2000], Moscow: Vagrius, 2000.

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Theen, Rolf H. W., ‘Quo vadis Russia? The problem of national identity and statebuilding’, in Gordon B. Smith (ed.), State-Building in Russia: The Yeltsin Legacy and the Challenges of the Future, New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, pp. 41–80. de Tinguy, Anne, ‘Vladimir Poutine et l’Occident: l’heure est au pragmatisme’ [Vladimit Putin and the West: time for pragmatism], Politique Étrangère, 3, 2001, pp. 515–33. Trenin, Dmitri, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization, Washington, DC and Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002. Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill and Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979. Watson, Adam, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis, London: Routledge, 1992. White, Stephen and Ian McAllister, ‘Putin and his supporters’, Europe–Asia Studies, 55(3), 2003, pp. 383–99. Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962. Yi Xiaxiong, ‘Ten years of China–South Korea relations and Beijing’s view on Korean unification’, Journal of East Asian Affairs, XVI(2), Fall/Winter 2002, pp. 315–51. Zimmermann, William, The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives, 1993–2000, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Media and Internet Allison, Graham T. and Sergei Karaganov, ‘US–Russian dialogue is needed to head off a new Cold War’, International Herald Tribune, 3 April 2001. Interfax. Johnson’s Russia List (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson). Karaganov, Sergei, ‘Lessons of the war in Iraq’, Izvestiia, 14 May 2003 (English version downloaded from Johnson’s Russia List). Konovalov, Aleksandr, ‘Why is NATO enlargement no longer a threat to Russia’s national security?’, RIA Novosti, 6 October 2003, from Johnson’s Russia List. Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2003. Reuters. ‘The NATO summit’, RFE/RL Newsline, 19 November 2002. Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 1999. RFE/RL Newsline, 100, 24 May 2000; 101, 25 May 2000; 102, 26 May 2000; and 103, 29 May 2000; 99, 28 May 2003 (Part I on Russia except where otherwise indicated). ‘Russia in 2003 and its foreign policy’, Excerpts from the report by the Foundation for Prospective Studies and Initiatives 2003, downloaded from the Russia in Global Affairs homepage (http://eng.globalisation.ru/live/ article.asp?rubric_id⫽ 1616&id⫽2550). ‘Transcript of Putin’s State of the Nation address’, BBC Monitoring, 16 May 2003, downloaded from Johnson’s Russia List, 7186, 19 May 2003 (http://www.cdi.org/ russia/johnson).

Part II

Dimensions of regional security

5

What prospects for Russia in the Baltic Sea region? Cooperation or isolation? Vilhelm Konnander

Russia’s aspirations and the nature of power: theoretical starting points ‘Russia is a European power’ Catherine the Great stated in her famous 1767 Instruction. From this statement, two questions arise: ‘What Europe?’ and ‘What power?’ The issue of Russia and Europe has been studied extensively elsewhere;1 here, power is of greater interest. Finnish political scientist Heikki Patomäki argues: ‘Power is transformative capacity. Creating conditions for trust, fostering particular symbols and values, and forging co-operation and collective identities presupposes power – and may create new resources for subsequent actions.’2 Power can also be defined as ‘the ability to afford not to learn’.3 Russia’s claim to ‘great-power’ status is deeply problematic. This can be highlighted by the concepts of constitutive and regulative rules. In short, constitutive rules specify what counts as a conscious social activity and regulative rules how such activity should be performed.4 A number of possibilities may be considered. First, if Russia claims to constitute a ‘great power’, and acts accordingly, it is bound to fail as it lacks the transformative capacity to constitute one. Second, Russia realizes that it is not a ‘great power’ but regulates its actions as if it were in order to produce reciprocal action from the West recognizing it as such. Third, Russia regards Western action as a power game and follows the rules of such a game. A final possibility is that Russia does not realize that it is no longer powerful and refuses to learn. What, then, if the game being played is not a power game but an integration game? If this is the case, Russia might miss the real action. The power game Russia is playing with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the USA, and its game of integration with the European Union (EU) are, arguably, two different constitutive games with two different sets of rules. The difficulty, then, is not only to play two games at once but also to balance them appropriately. Striking such a balance would, arguably, mean putting integration first in order to create the transformative capacity needed for long-term power building. However, as a

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great power, Russia follows the rules of power conduct. As a result, the opportunity to speak a common language on integration with other states is curtailed. The global war on terrorism after 11 September 2001 placed President Vladimir Putin in a pivotal position between NATO and the EU, giving Russia greater latitude in its foreign policy choice. The Baltic Sea region, which had represented the most critical part of NATO and EU enlargement for Russia, was downgraded on the country’s agenda as the situation allowed Moscow to reassess its general foreign policy options.5 With the USA and Russia now sharing a language on world affairs, Russia’s negative perceptions of NATO enlargement largely declined in significance. At the same time, the complex consequences for Russia of EU enlargement, especially for the Baltic Sea region, are gradually being realized. In strategic terms, it should be underlined that the area has been lost for Russia for at least decades to come. Hence, the relevance of a classic geostrategic outlook on the region is questionable. All the same, Moscow has long been reluctant to abandon this perspective and adapt to new realities. Regardless of whether one believes that transnational threats such as terrorism have rendered the traditional concept of security obsolete or not, stability seems to be a constant feature of developments in the Baltic Sea region.6 However, it is unclear if Russia will be able to reap the full benefits of such stability. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Russia’s long-term policy options and constraints where the Baltic Sea region is concerned. The analysis is based on Russia’s conduct in the region in the 1990s. From this perspective, the study goes on to highlight the prospects for Russian integration into the region – whether it may integrate or if it is headed for isolation. Is regional cooperation of real interest for a ‘great power’? Can a great power interact with countries of (perceived or real) lesser status? This question is fundamental to Russia’s ability to integrate with the Baltic Sea region. The Norwegian researchers Olav F. Knudsen and Iver B. Neumann argue that the ‘common pursuit of security is best achieved without large disparities in sovereignty among participants to cooperation, creating an atmosphere where security of “self” is high among all’.7 If sovereignty is equated with power, the question is whether a great power may cooperate with minor powers on equal terms. The answer may make it easier to discern what constitutes Russia’s status as a ‘great power’ in a concrete regional context. Great-power conduct may be determined by spatial and temporal factors, which form the geo-historical conditions for social interaction.8 Reasons for action are ‘embedded in practices, narratives about one’s identity and position in the world’.9 In terms of geopolitics, ‘Physical conditions limit what a polity can achieve at any one time by particular methods, but what the polity seeks to achieve, as well as the methods it

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 111 prefers, depends in part upon what it has taught itself about itself and the world.’ As Jakub Godzimirski notes, the decisive factors of identity are historical, spatial and social.10 Forming part of a great-power security identity, these factors serve as a backdrop against which action is enabled or restrained. As such, they may dispose an actor socially to identify the rules of the game and the game itself in one way or another. If the lesson is that the game is one of domination, a state may continue to pursue such a policy even if it is counterindicated by changes in the conditions for doing so. The obvious choice of a greater power is also to prefer bilateral relations, where its position of strength may be optimized. Thus, bilateral action under conditions of strength may give a state absolute gains, whereas the gains of multilateral cooperation are relative in character. Russia traditionally has preferred bilateral to multilateral relations. A great power is better able to exert pressure on smaller states bilaterally than would be the case if it were dealing with smaller states acting in concert; that is, multilaterally. Still, being powerful in multilateral relations may be preferable to facing a bilateral counterpart of equal or greater strength. Today, Russia’s ability to act bilaterally in Europe is becoming increasingly constrained as new states join the EU and NATO. The strategy inspired by the nineteenth-century Russian chancellor Alexander Gorchakov of forming temporary alliances for greater long-term gain is becoming more difficult as Russia faces fewer and fewer alternative partners to deal with. The multilateral and institutional option is shrinking. Russia does not have the choice of ‘multilateralism à la carte’ which the USA has. Instead, quasi-bilateral relations with the EU and NATO will dominate the agenda. Moscow has no real capacity to act as a great power towards either. The Baltic Sea region is especially relevant to study because Russia has enjoyed a historical position of dominance here since the early nineteenth century. In the 1990s, the region was moving from bilateral to multilateral relations with Russia. Now, bilateral relations are returning, but this time with the EU and NATO, forming counterparts of a completely different magnitude. The Baltic Sea region is the area where NATO and EU enlargement affects Russia most. Today, the Baltic Sea is almost entirely encircled by NATO and the EU. This includes states which were not so long ago integral parts of a Soviet Russian sphere of influence or empire. Since then, extensive regional cooperation has evolved, in particular among the members of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) – one of the few European organizations where Russia is an equal partner to NATO and EU member states.11 As will be shown, during the 1990s Russia missed the chance to exploit a multilateral option in the region and it must now adapt to the Baltic Sea states being part of its bilateral relations with the EU and NATO. Thus, this chapter explores how Russia interacted within the evolving

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multilateral framework of the Baltic Sea region during the 1990s and, starting from that, briefly discusses what can be expected in the future. The study is based mainly on previous research on the area as well as on original material. By problematizing and summarizing this interaction, the chapter aims to highlight aspects of Russia’s likely future behaviour in the region.

Russian perceptions of the Baltic Sea region and NATO Historically, Russia’s perceptions of the Baltic Sea region are at the heart of the country’s identification with Europe. St Petersburg, the ‘window on Europe’, signifies Russia’s ancient aspirations for an outlet to the sea from its landlocked continental position. According to the Russian geopolitician Aleksandr Dugin, this represents the hope for the dynamic thalassocracy as opposed to the static tellurocracy.12 Even if geopolitics to some extent has fallen out of fashion, it has nevertheless long been reflected in the way in which Russia views the Baltic Sea region. As Tsar Alexander I noted after the 1808 conquest of Finland: ‘La géographie la voulait ainsi’ (geography wanted it this way).13 Geography seems ever-present in Russia’s perceptions of itself and others. In a 1996 article, on the occasion of US president Bill Clinton’s visit to Moscow, President Boris Yeltsin divided Russia’s national ideas and values into five groups of factors: historical, geopolitical, world-view– ideological, national, and economic.14 The perception of Russia’s ‘Self’ that Yeltsin expressed was dominated by historical, spatial and social factors that should guarantee a place in world politics and the international economic system. This notion of great power seems to indicate that Russia deserved a place on the world arena, not by virtue of its own efforts but merely by existing. The Baltic Sea region remained an area of relative stability and low tension for the duration of the Cold War. To some extent, the Nordic states constituted a sub-system of tranquillity compared with the overall European pattern of conflict where the power blocs confronted each other. Denmark and Norway refrained from hosting permanent peacetime deployments of NATO troops and strategic weaponry. Swedish neutrality served as a stabilizing factor in the region. Finland’s moderate foreign policy enabled gradual rapprochement with Western Europe, notwithstanding the constraints of the Soviet Union’s influence, both actual and treaty-based.15 For various reasons, observers spoke of the ‘Nordic balance’.16 Cooperation among the Nordic countries transcended the system of alignment in Europe and offered a forum for informal discussions among Nordic politicians. Avoidance of security issues in these discussions gave Finland access to West European structures without angering its eastern neighbour. By the mid-1970s, Soviet trust in Finland encouraged the

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 113 country to co-host the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), resulting in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. The CSCE process led on to the 1984–6 Stockholm Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe. While this does not mean that Nordic cooperation was directly connected to the CSCE process, these factors per se signify the relatively positive Soviet perception of the Nordic states. Soviet prime minister Andrei Kosygin went so far as to ask: ‘Is not really the Soviet Union a Nordic country?’17 Russia’s position on the Baltic Sea took a turn for the worse during the 1990s. The consequences of changed geopolitics were felt in the need for spatial, geopolitical and economic reorientation. Before 1989 the Soviet Union, by way of the Warsaw Pact, had control over one-third of the Baltic Sea as compared to the approximately 15 per cent Russia controls now. After Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent, Russia retained only one-third of the former Soviet coastline on the Baltic.18 In terms of Baltic military infrastructure, Russia lost 80 per cent of its basing facilities as well as points of deployment and naval installations.19 One-third of the Soviet harbour capacity was located on the Baltic Sea. Russia had to give up major ports such as Riga (Latvia), Ventspils (Latvia) and Tallinn (Estonia). Kaliningrad, with the Baltiisk naval base, became an exclave of Russia, separated from it by some 400 kilometres of Latvian, Lithuanian and Belarusian territory.20 Economic relations with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gradually improved during the 1990s.21 Tallinn, Riga, Ventspils and Klaipeda (Lithuania) regained their positions as major outlets for Russian oil, gas and other products. Russian gas companies gained a monopoly over or major interests in energy supplies to the three Baltic states.22 Trade in Russian raw materials and strategic resources brought profit, especially to Latvia and Estonia. Banks in the three Baltic states played a considerable role in the Russian outflow of capital.23 During the 1990s, NATO enlargement was an issue of constant controversy with the West. Through NATO’s first enlargement in 1999, the Kaliningrad exclave came to have a direct border with a NATO country – Poland. With the second round of enlargement in May 2004, Kaliningrad is now encircled by NATO, without direct contact with the Russian heartland. This is the most drastic post-Cold War geopolitical change in Europe. It is resonant of the classic Russian question of an outlet to the sea, epitomized by the location of St Petersburg. Russia’s initial attitude towards NATO after the break-up of the Soviet Union was positive: membership of NATO was a long-term goal of Russian foreign policy in 1991 and the spring of 1992.24 President Clinton’s 1993 plan to expand NATO to Eastern Europe held out the prospect of membership for Russia as well. By this time, however, NATO enlargement had come to be perceived as a threat to Russia.25 NATO’s 1994 decision to invite new members, followed by the 1995 Study on NATO

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Enlargement, was the turning point for Russia’s attitude. In December 1994, Yeltsin warned that NATO enlargement might produce a ‘Cold Peace’ between Russia and NATO. In response to Moscow’s demand for special status, the 1997 Russia–NATO Founding Act was signed. Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement in its 2000 Foreign Policy Concept only reaffirmed the country’s negative position on this issue.26 Russia’s main concern was that the provisions of the Founding Act be adhered to. Its resistance to NATO membership for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was a source of general concern, but Russia offered few alternatives. Instead, alternative suggestions were made, for instance, a French initiative by which Sweden and Finland would contribute to the security of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania without providing military security guarantees,27 and a similar proposal by former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd.28 This won little support in the Nordic capitals,29 although it was applauded by Moscow. It was the Nordic states which, in 1997, established the 5 ⫹ 3 ⫹ 1 formula, with annual meetings on foreign and security policies between the Nordic and Baltic states and Russia.30 It appears that Russia’s position on such a dialogue, in line with the traditional semi-bilateral traditions of the region, was benign: it meant that Russia at least preserved some potential for a regional droit de regard. Despite fundamental geopolitical changes, Russia aspired to maintain the status quo in the Baltic Sea region. At a conference in Vilnius in September 1997, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin offered the three Baltic states security guarantees as an alternative to NATO accession. They should follow the Finnish and Swedish path of neutrality and form a ‘non-bloc region, along with Finland and Sweden’.31 The negative reactions to the proposal in the Baltic and Nordic capitals were predictable, emphasizing and reiterating respect for the Baltic states’ right to a sovereign foreign policy choice, and serving to underline Russia’s regional isolation still further. The purpose of this and similar moves by Russia remains unclear. Russia must have realized that they would be counterproductive, unless some basic misperception reigned or the purpose was to be provocative. The negative reactions to Douglas Hurd’s 1996 reflections should have been clear enough in Russia. By such behaviour Russia repeatedly forfeited its chances to build new regional relations.

European and regional integration Russia’s attitude towards cooperation with the EU remained positive during the 1990s. In 1994, after three years of negotiations, Russia and the EU signed the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement (PCA), which entered into force in December 1997. Its overall purpose was to integrate Russia gradually into European cooperative structures.32 The 1995 Madrid European Council adopted a strategy for relations with Russia, and this was followed by a 1996 Action Plan to integrate the country into the

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community of democratic nations. In addition, negotiations between Russia and the EU on a free trade agreement started in 1998. At the European Council in Cologne in June 1999, the EU Common Strategy on Russia was adopted. In a Baltic Sea context, an EU regional initiative was elaborated and the EU Northern Dimension also offered great prospects for Russian cooperation with the Union. Following the EU’s 1994 Pact on Stability in Europe, a Baltic Sea regional table was formed for the EU applicants Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. EU members as well as non-member states, including Russia, were affiliated to it. By multilateralizing regional issues, Russia’s negotiating weight was weakened.34 Subsequently, when responsibility for the Stability Pact was turned over to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, the successor to the CSCE), Russia’s interest in participating in a Baltic regional table waned. Participation in an OSCE regional table may have been less attractive to Russia since it would lose the benefits of being a non-member observer. In the 1994–5 period, Poland advocated setting up a regional table to deal with confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs).35 Moscow gave little or no official reaction. Seemingly, Russia wanted to avoid formalizing a multilateral regional dialogue, fearing that it might bring the Baltic states closer to the processes of European and regional integration. Such a development, at this time, might have given Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania a greater safeguard against Russian bilateral pressure. The founding of the CBSS in 1992 offered Russia a regional forum where it was recognized as an equal of the NATO and EU states. The Council was perceived as ‘an overall regional forum to focus on needs for intensified cooperation and coordination among the Baltic Sea States’, and set as its goal to ‘strengthen the cohesion among these countries, leading to greater political and economic stability as well as a regional identity’.36 With the CBSS at the centre, a number of organizations formed a subset of regional and issue-specific cooperation, among which the CBSS Commissioner on Human Rights and Minorities Questions deserves special mention. The CBSS stayed clear of hard security issues and focused on regional integration, although Poland initially suggested it might deal with hard security issues.37 However, the CBSS did at times touch on soft security issues: in 1992, for example, Russia welcomed its support for improvements to the living conditions of military personnel withdrawn from Central Europe.38 The CBSS also assisted in decommissioning the Russian military nuclear facilities in Paldiski in Estonia. Estonia suggested in 1992 that the CBSS should deal with security issues, but Denmark and Germany opposed this.39 As part of its 1995 OSCE regional table initiative, Poland proposed that the CBSS should handle regional CSBMs.40 In 1996, Russian prime minister Chernomyrdin proposed that the CBSS should deal with a limited number of regional soft security issues such as the fight against organized crime, customs control and conversion of

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defence industries,41 signalling that the status of the CBSS had been raised in Russian foreign policy and that the agenda might be broadened. The proposal appeared to somewhat alter Russia’s previous negative position on multilateral regional cooperation. Nevertheless, it was felt that the CBSS’s potential for Russia was not being used to the full.42 In 1998, Chernomyrdin stated that ‘the Baltic Sea cooperation is an important independent element of creating a new, democratic, stable, genuinely united Europe without dividing lines or exclusions on whatever ground’, and proposed the setting up of a common regional visa regime.43 Nevertheless, from a peak in the 1996–7 period, Baltic Sea cooperation gradually declined in importance for the other states in the region. When Russia assumed the presidency of the CBSS in June 2001 it was the last of the member states (except Iceland) to hold this position. Russian proposals to focus on Kaliningrad and extend cooperation to the security field44 seemed out of phase with regional processes and got no support among the member states. Russia’s failure to use its presidency came as no surprise and cannot be attributed simply to the events of 11 September and its subsequent foreign policy reorientation: it appears rather that the other states of the region had realized that there was less to gain from cooperation with Russia than had been expected. By pursuing a policy towards the Baltic states which would leave all options open, Russia had focused for too long on its lost empire and neglected important developments towards regional integration. By standing aside, it rendered itself irrelevant. The long-term consequences of this still remain to be seen. In the 1990s Russia seemed unable to abandon an old imperial game and turn to a game of integration instead. The rules of the new game may well have been understood and partly adopted, but as long as Moscow kept to the inertia of the old game, little was to be gained. Despite Russia’s positive position on EU enlargement, some doubt remained. Having lost major harbours on the Baltic Sea, Russia’s construction of new ports on the Gulf of Finland indicated that it was hesitant as to whether it could reap the benefits of European integration. Funding expensive new infrastructure when the use of facilities in the Baltic states would be more cost-effective was rational only if Russia saw a need for self-sufficiency or wanted to punish the Baltic states.45 In Russian eyes, paying transit fees to the Baltic states was tantamount to investment in these countries’ infrastructure, and dependence on the Baltic states for an outlet to European markets was unacceptable.46 Friendly and peaceful relations were important, since Russia needed to preserve unhindered access to the Baltic Sea. Fear of the regional integration process, however, seemed to be a constant feature of Russia’s perceptions of the Baltic Sea region.47 This fear was especially acute in the case of the Kaliningrad exclave, which was seen as an extremely important asset.48 Baltic and Danish proposals that Kaliningrad should be demilitarized were regarded as challenges to Russian

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sovereignty over the area. Consequently, Russia has tried to mark its presence in the region and even considered the exclave a trump card in its relations with NATO. Thus, the alleged detection of tactical nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad in January 200150 coincided with speculation about a possible trade-off whereby the USA would give up support for the Baltic states’ accession to NATO in return for Russian acceptance of the US National Missile Defense (NMD) programme.51 The issue of the Russian minorities in the Baltic states was a constant cause of disagreement between Russia and (primarily) Latvia and Estonia during the 1990s. However, it appears that Russia was as much using the issue for domestic political purposes as expressing sincere concern for compatriots abroad. Latvia and Estonia may have been far from exemplary in dealing with Russian-speakers in their countries, but the situation gradually improved. However, following a police crackdown on a demonstration of Russian pensioners in Riga in March 1998, feelings in Russia again ran high. A variety of punitive measures, even sanctions, against Latvia were discussed, and relations with Riga were at a low ebb. The crackdown coincided with Gazprom’s losing a battle over harbour facilities in Ventspils. There is therefore room for speculation as to whether this was one reason why the crisis arose. That oil took precedence over people is not surprising, given Russia’s reliance on former Soviet export routes at the time. All the same, after the 1999 US intervention in Kosovo, Russia’s 2000 National Security Concept once more brought the issue of intervention to assist compatriots in the ‘near abroad’ to the fore. Presumably, such action might have been considered in relation to Latvia and Estonia. Above all, declarations of support to Russian-speaking minorities seem to represent a reactionary fallback position to the well-known formula of safeguarding the interests of ‘maltreated’ ethnic Russians in the Baltic states.

Countering NATO enlargement The admission of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to NATO in 2004 left Russia, Finland and Sweden as the only non-NATO members around the Baltic Sea. Currently, membership of NATO for Finland and Sweden is not on the agenda, although in the long term this may change. It is a historical paradox that Russia’s relations with NATO are formally closer than Finland’s and Sweden’s. Putin visited Finland just before 11 September 2001 and declared his respect for the sovereign right of the Baltic states to choose the security arrangement they preferred. However, he added that there was no threat to them emanating from Russia, and said: ‘Only in a sick imagination could one think that some aggressive elements could . . . emerge from Russia.’ There simply was no need for the Baltic states to join NATO, and it would only move barriers further east. Furthermore, Putin pointed to

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the ‘splendid example of Finland’ in its post-war non-alignment policy, and saw this as an important factor for the benign development of its relations with Russia.52 This was a reiteration of Russia’s previous argument for neutral status for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. However, what Putin admitted was that Russia realized that it could and would do nothing about the Baltic states joining NATO. To what extent did this change after 11 September 2001? That Putin seized the opportunity is evident. A qualitatively new US–Russian relationship evolved. What Moscow said and did was suddenly more important than it had been at any time since 1992. The fight against global terrorism formed a common ideological ground between Russia and the USA. All the same, in March 2002 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov underlined that Russian membership of either NATO or the EU was not being considered for the foreseeable future.53 Less than half a year later, Russian political scientist Sergei Markov noted that relations with NATO were developing faster than public opinion could digest, given its negative view of the organization. He argued that NATO could not manage without Russia and that close cooperation was necessary. Expansion had been replaced by the fight against terrorism as NATO’s raison d’être. If NATO epitomized the political and military expression of Western civilization, democracy should be at the centre of Russia’s future relations with the organization. Russia should cooperate over and influence the direction of NATO enlargement. Instead of opposing NATO, it should aim to influence the organization’s policy in the right direction. According to Markov, putting democracy first would exclude the ‘non-democratic’ Baltic states from membership of the alliance. Pursuing a cooperative policy on NATO enlargement, Russia would be able to exert influence on its development, instead of displaying obsolete ‘imperial ambitions’. One sure lesson from history was that new threats needed new organizational solutions. NATO was in crisis. The prospects for Russian influence were therefore great; who could oppose joint NATO–Russia positions in world politics?54 Although simplistic, Markov’s arguments should not be rejected out of hand. What is the nature of NATO in European and American eyes? Is NATO about democracy or about power? This question is beyond the scope of this study, but it should be noted that Russia seems to have been in greater agreement with the USA than with Europe on issues of democracy over recent years. If the paradoxical US notion of supporting ‘democracy’ internationally is the central motive for the US exercise of global power, there may be a case for asking whether there would also be greater correspondence between Russian and US views on a democracy–power relationship than between the USA and Europe. If so, a ‘democracy’ argument might prove more interesting, as Russian and US interests would coincide in setting the rules of the game aside in fighting terrorism or whatever other threat would justify traditional power conduct. There

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 119 might be more to the ‘making the world safe for democracy’ argument than is initially apparent. If Russia were to align itself paradigmatically with the USA in foreign policy it might possibly succeed in changing not only the rules of the game but also the game itself. If that were to happen, however, Russia would enter a game that it could not sustain in the long run, thus reducing it to a symbolic quasi-game of no benefit to itself. Furthermore, it would complicate the more relevant game of integration, hampering economic growth. Regardless of the probability of its adopting such a policy, Russia gained an unprecedented opportunity to influence world politics after 11 September 2001. It has manoeuvred well in forming temporary alliances to its own benefit, whether with the USA or with different European powers. Becoming a global player again, Russia has rendered the Baltic Sea region less important strategically, for itself as well as for the West. Consequently, NATO may direct less attention and finance to integrating the Baltic states into the organization as the fight against terrorism and similar needs take precedence. The bang of NATO enlargement appears to have become a mere whimper as far as Russia is concerned. At the same time, Russian domestic politics is becoming increasingly de-regionalized, and this has dispelled long-felt fears that some of the Russian regions might become semi-independent of Moscow in foreign affairs. Despite Russia’s immense loss of geostrategic position of the early 1990s, things are looking rather good in the Baltic Sea region. Russia’s fears of NATO and about preserving its own sovereignty are no longer at the top of the agenda.

Taking Europe for granted Russia has characterized NATO enlargement as ‘the West’s biggest strategic mistake since the end of the Cold War’.55 It can be argued that Russia’s biggest strategic mistake has been its starry-eyed optimism about the EU’s eastward expansion. Russia’s leadership long failed to realize the complex nature of the Union, while its best foreign policy minds were preoccupied with preventing the unavoidable enlargement of NATO. Unlike Ukraine, Russia has no ministry for European integration. While NATO was regarded as being headstrong in its efforts for expansion eastwards, the general sense was that one could do business with the EU. There was room for compromise such as was never felt in relations with NATO. This, however, is mistaken, for obvious reasons. With 15 members, reaching unanimity in EU decisions was already difficult. With 25 members, it may become a nightmare. Once a common position is reached, the room for further manoeuvre is limited. What prospect will there be for Russia to compromise with the EU if the latter has little to negotiate about? Now that enlargement has been accomplished, the integration of new members will most likely top the agenda, and little regard will be paid to nonmember states which are unwilling to take appropriate steps towards

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European integration. EU policies towards Russia may therefore well become a case of ‘take it or leave it’ for a long time to come, giving Russia little choice between adapting or opting out completely. Reviewing requirements for Russian reforms, it seems unlikely that Moscow will bring its policies into line with Brussels. Russia may thus well be in for a rude awakening in its relations with the EU. In years to come, the Baltic Sea region may implicitly become a cause of disagreement in EU–Russian relations. Difficulties with transit and visa regulations concerning the Kaliningrad exclave have already been seen. Russia’s demands that an exception from the Schengen Treaty be allowed for its citizens travelling between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia resulted in a compromise in November 2002, allowing Russians transit by ‘facilitated travel documents’ – essentially the same as the visa model Russia so detested. Critical voices have also been raised in Moscow, despite the official declarations that the agreement was a success for Russia.56 The main country of transit, Lithuania, also questioned whether a model with facilitated travel documents would actually work once the EU expanded to the Baltic states.57 The greatest change for Russia in the Baltic Sea region, however, is that relations that were formally bilateral will be multilateralized. Thus, bilateral treaties regulating trade, transport, visa regimes, and so on, are being cancelled or renegotiated to suit European Community law. Russia is faced with new standards and regulations that will impede its exports to the new member states. With the EU as centre of gravity, enlargement is likely to further reduce the new member states’ trade with Russia, thus deepening the geo-economic divide between Russia and the EU.58 Even if trade were to increase, it is unlikely that the profits will significantly improve Russian growth in comparison to that of the EU. Furthermore, major investments in infrastructure are needed if Russia is to maintain long-term transport capacity. As the EU is assessing the need to develop transport infrastructure in the new members of the Union,59 Russia runs the risk of being left out of such processes or of lacking resources to participate in large-scale infrastructural development. What resources the country has may instead be invested in projects that generate absolute gains. In order to diversify transport channels for its exports to European and international markets, Russia is gradually enlarging its harbour facilities in the Gulf of Finland, for instance, in Ust-Luga, Batareinaia, Primorsk and Vysotsk, with transit via Ventspils in Latvia being redirected to Russian ports. At the same time, the EU has stepped up its phasing out of single-hull oil tankers, which make up a large percentage of the Russian tonnage that traffics the Baltic Sea.60 Furthermore, the development of pipeline systems, to encompass all of north-west Russia, may strengthen a trend towards investing in self-sufficiency rather than seeking international cooperation in solving common infrastructural concerns. It seems that Russia’s alternative to bilateralism may be isolation. This is best described

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 121 in the vocabulary of economics as ‘alternative costs’; that is, the cost of choosing. By selecting one alternative you lose any benefits of the alternative you did not select. In Russia’s case this might involve continued reliance on natural resources instead of developing favourable conditions for greater diversity of production. As Roland Götz points out in Chapter 10 of this book, this may lead to Dutch disease and uneven economic development. This would be a further reason for self-isolation, as Russia would become increasingly dissimilar to its European trading partners, and this would further impede its ability to participate on equal terms in economic and political integration, thus reinforcing a vicious circle. As for the Baltic states, multilateralization will include the fraught issue of the Russian minorities, and Russia will find it difficult to exert bilateral pressure on this issue with the Baltic states under the EU umbrella. In fact, the more Russia quarrels with, for instance, Estonia and Latvia, the greater the counterproductive effect will be. What Russia might achieve would be even more suboptimal to the effort put in than it was before the Baltic countries joined the EU. Instead, valuable political resources and capital that could be used in expanding regional relations would be wasted. Russia might, however, play the minority card, especially if the EU were to level criticism against Russian action in Chechnya, for example, or elsewhere. In any case, the Baltic states would not stand alone in a dispute with Russia. Instead it would be a dispute between Russia and the EU. One of the greatest obstacles in Russian relations with an enlarged Union is the Schengen Treaty, limiting the freedom of movement for nonEU citizens. The Baltic Sea region has long been regarded as a route for illegal trade and trafficking in people, drugs and contraband. The spread of transnational crime may well motivate strict visa regulations and border controls. Much regional effort has been put into fighting organized crime. The effect of Schengen is to complicate the mobility of people and ideas. In contrast to the citizens of the new EU member states, Russians may find it increasingly complicated to travel. This may create a mental divide between Russia and the EU that will be felt most in the Baltic Sea region. Despite Putin’s 2002 proposal for a visa-free regime between Russia and the EU, European promises to consider the matter are most likely to remain promises. A step in this direction would counter the international trend towards greater control of travel and migration. What then of prospects for Russian regional integration? Evidently, integration is becoming rather a matter of Russia and the EU than of Russia in the Baltic Sea region. Enlargement of the EU will, most probably, keep Russia out of the regional dynamics. Regionalism may be an instrument among members of a community, but with little room for free riders. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the EU will be able to engage Russia as a partner while the strain of enlargement – and opposition to it among the big EU member states – has been so great. Enlargement may

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thus be replaced by integration as the Union’s top priority in years to come. Russia will, most likely, have little place in such a process. European leaders’ dreams and visions of integrating Russia into ‘Europe’ may prove mirages. Steps towards a common European economic space, including Russia, are positive, but there is a long road ahead. The process of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been protracted. Because of the complexity of the EU, a European economic space might prove too difficult for Russia or become so watered down that it will be of no great consequence for either party. As an enlarged Union integrates, Russia’s economic structure may prove an obstacle to integration as it is likely to diverge further from that of the EU. The gap may simply be too great, making the socio-economic rift between the neighbours in the Baltic Sea region permanent. The prospects for Russia in the Baltic Sea region seem poor. Having taken Europe for granted, Russia may have to ‘take it or leave it’. It appears that it will either be left out or choose to stand aside. It is simply too big for the EU to accept in a European perspective. Its size has also been the biggest impediment to Russia’s involvement in regional cooperation. For long, Moscow neglected to cooperate seriously multilaterally with the small states of the Baltic Sea region. Consequently, today Russia seems bound for regional isolation. It would take strong political will and massive economic resources to change direction towards renewed cooperation in the pursuit of a common future for the region.

Breaking away from the past or returning to it? After 11 September 2001 there was renewed importance in what Russia said and how it acted in world politics. It was a player, but was it playing the right game? The global fight against terrorism allowed Russia to reinforce its position as a ‘great power’ – at least, it was recognized as such. Consequently, Russia globally succeeded in achieving apparent absolute gains by concurrently siding with the USA and playing the country and its partners off against each other. Regionally, the price was granting foreign troops access to territory of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and acquiescing in NATO enlargement. Gaining international influence, obviously, appeared more important than maintaining a faltering sphere of influence or preventing unavoidable alignments. Now, beside a common strategic goal of fighting terrorism, Russian and US economic interests also coincided in the wish for greater diversity of trade. Russia wanted to rid itself of its great reliance on exports to the European Union. Diversity would grant Russia greater liberty to make strategic decisions on how to use its own potential and tactical decisions on how to reap benefits by playing off external powers. The country embarked on a strategy for a gradual comeback to the world stage.

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 123 Because of the war on terrorism, the Baltic Sea region lost its last remnants of strategic significance. Until shortly before 11 September 2001, Russia resisted NATO enlargement eastward. It chose to focus on a power game that must, rationally, have been lost already. In order to maintain an apparent regional status quo ante, Russia gave precedence to bilateral over multilateral relations. This resulted in a dead-end policy and to Russia being a constant loser in the region. In opposition to NATO enlargement, the Kremlin continued to ‘walk and talk’ like a great power in its practical policy in the region. It was also a policy of symbols, of holding on to a lost empire’s last vestiges of power, thus crowding out prospects for more advantageous relations. What the war on terrorism allowed Russia to do was to detach a power game from regional realities to an abstract international arena. This was a game Russia knew, and it promised to be fruitful. Instead of continuing a losing enlargement game, the new game of counter-terrorism – with fewer real stakes – was offered. By ignoring a multilateral option in the Baltic Sea region during the 1990s, Russia has isolated itself from the larger process of integration among the other states. Its positive attitude towards the CBSS was never made concrete in long-term practical policy. As the process of integration went on, Russia gave precedence to bilateral solutions, primarily with the Baltic states. Starting from a strong bilateral position, through being ignored in multilateral cooperation, Russia now ends up in a weak bilateral position in relation to the EU. It appears that isolation is preferred to integration. Why seek cooperation on the EU’s terms? It is easier to cooperate on a moderate scale and put one’s efforts into one’s own development. The view seems to be that the EU may be used to a certain degree, but Russia must manage on its own. Hence the focus on diversifying trade and constructing independent export infrastructure. Russia has been slow and hesitant about embracing integration, and seems to be turning back to unproductive power conduct. If integration is in fact the most relevant game, the consequence may be that Russia loses in transformative capacity – that is, power – by losing the prospective gains of integration that would form the basis of long-term power. Russia’s elevation of the power game to the international arena also seems to have come too late to influence the regional game as it has turned into one of integration. Instead, Russia seems path-dependent on reproducing the norms and values which form its great-power identity, and intent to stay in the power game where it can still have some say. Even if Russia no longer is a really great power in all respects, it acts as one. The precedence Russia gives to power would thus seem constitutively to exclude integration, even if there may be an overlap in the rules that regulate power and those that regulate integration that could prove fruitful in the short term. This overlap may open the option of balancing the games, perhaps by compartmentalizing the power and integration arenas. Russia may well learn the simple rules of integration, but applying them in

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long-term integration would seem to require a learning process that would be too complex for it to undertake in parallel with the pursuit of power policy. Putinist pragmatism would possibly allow the country to bend the rules of the game, but it cannot change the game itself from an integration game to a power game. In contrast, if Russia were to switch from pursuing a power game to pursuing an integration game, this would mean losing the stakes it has already won, and giving up the chance of winning back some of what has already been lost. Turning to a game of integration would also mean entering at a late stage with few chips to throw in. There would be little to lose and much to win, but playing on unequal terms with greater economic powers may be too big a loss of prestige for Russia, unless its leaders realize that they need to cut their losses and move on. To what extent Russia’s great-power conduct in the Baltic Sea region is influenced by the geo-historical conditions for interaction is difficult to determine. In geopolitical terms, hopes that Russia could be transformed into a dynamic and proactive thalassocracy would thus be discerned in the liberal and Atlanticist policies of the early 1990s and the chaotic foreign policy of those times, followed by a return to static tellurocracy in order to achieve a stability that would correspond to the reactive character of Russian policy ever since. The message appears to be that a dynamic policy leads to chaos whereas a static policy leads to stability. If the lesson learnt is that domination is the prerequisite for stability, this might give an additional perspective on Russia’s conduct in the Baltic Sea region. Being unable to dominate, Russia has lost ground in the region. Its role has been hesitant and incoherent, resulting in reactive instead of proactive policy. Bilateral asymmetric relations have been preferred to equal multilateral ones in order to keep an irrational and irrelevant regional droit de regard, in strong contrast to the general process of Baltic transformation and integration. It thus appears that Russia’s ambition for domination is increasingly leading to isolation. That Russia could become isolated seems to be impossible for it to imagine. This raises the question of what is important to Russia: being a player or playing the right game? As Neumann argues, it is crucial for Russia to be a player and be recognized on a par with European and international powers. What seems equally important, however, is to play the right game. The problem is that for Russia, in the long run, regardless of its temporary pragmatism, there only seems to be the power game. Hence, it may be clear to others that the country is no longer a dominant power in world affairs, but still Russia is unable or refuses to learn. Finally, is regional cooperation of real interest for a ‘great power’? In the case of the Baltic Sea region and Russia, the answer appears to be negative. Russia seems to be inherently unable to achieve relative instead of absolute gains of cooperation, partly because of the real or imagined disparities of power or status. The prospects for integration are therefore

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 125 poor, as a great power hesitates to cooperate with countries of a lower status. It appears that Russia has yet to learn what happens when power is preferred to profit, and being ‘Great’ is a state of mind and not a recipe for success.

Notes 1 See, for example, Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, London: Routledge, 1996. 2 Heikki Patomäki, After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re)construction of World Politics, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 199. 3 Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control, New York: The Free Press, 1963, p. 111. 4 John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, New York: The Free Press, 1995, pp. 27–9. 5 The Baltic Sea region refers to north-west Russia, Poland, Germany, the Nordic countries and the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 6 Indeed, if transnational threats were to dominate in the future, this would constitute a new type of game with rules yet to be determined. 7 Olav F. Knudsen and Iver B. Neumann, Subregional Security Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Area: An Exploratory Study, Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1995, p. 1. 8 Patomäki, After International Relations, pp. 137ff. 9 Ibid., p. 200. 10 Jakub M. Godzimirski, Russian Security Policy Objectives in the Baltic Sea and the Barents Area, Oslo: Norwegian Atlantic Committee, 1998, pp. 6ff. 11 The CBSS consists of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, plus the European Commission as an observer. 12 Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii [Fundamentals of geopolitics: Russia’s geopolitical future], Moscow: Arktogeia, 1997, pp. 15ff. 13 Matti Klinge, ‘Mot geografin kan vi intet, och inte ni heller’ [Against geography we are helpless, and so are you], in Max Engman (ed.), Väst möter öst [West meets East], Stockholm: Carlssons, 1996, p. 138. 14 Boris N. Yeltsin, ‘Politika natsional’noi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1996–2000)’ [The national security policy of the Russian Federation 1996–2000], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 23 May 1996. 15 Pact of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, concluded by Finland and the USSR in 1948. 16 Arne Olav Brundtland, ‘The Nordic balance’, Cooperation and Conflict, 1(2), 1966, pp. 30–63. 17 Örjan Berner, Soviet Policies Toward the Nordic Countries, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986, p. 2. 18 Alexander A. Sergounin, ‘Russia’s security policies in the Baltic Sea area’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin: Springer, 1998, p. 466. 19 Vladimir Baranovsky, ‘Russia’, in Axel Krohn (ed.), The Baltic Sea Region: National and International Security Perspectives, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996, p. 174. 20 Ibid., p. 168. 21 Malgorzata Pacuk and Tadeusz Palmowski, ‘The development of Kaliningrad

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24 25 26 27 28

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in the light of Baltic co-operation’, in NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin: Springer, 1998, p. 276. Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (CFDP), ‘Russia and the Baltic states’, in Joseph P. Kruzich and Anna W. E. Fahraeus (eds), 2nd Annual Stockholm Conference on Baltic Sea Security and Cooperation, Stockholm: Swedish Institute of International Affairs, 1998, pp. 151–2. Igor Leshoukov, ‘Russlands Politik gegenüber den Baltischen Staaten: Eine Russische Ansicht’ [Russia’s policy towards the Baltic states: A Russian view], Internationale Politik, 53(10), 1998, p. 42; for a more nuanced view see Ingmar Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement: Russia and the Baltic States in the Context of NATO and EU Enlargements, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2003, pp. 51–68. ‘Perspektivy rasshireniia NATO’ [Perspectives of NATO enlargement], Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 1, 15 January 1992. Yevgenii Primakov, Perspektivy Rasshireniia NATO i Interesy Rossii [Perspectives of NATO enlargement and Russia’s interests], Moscow: Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, 1993. Kontseptsiia vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, [Foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation, 28 June 2000], Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 8, August 2000. Kari Möttölä, ‘Security around the Baltic Rim: Concepts, actors and processes’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin, Springer, 1998, p. 386. Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 28 March 1996. Hurd stated: ‘It should not be impossible to construct some form of Baltic security system to which these two states [Sweden and Finland] and the three Baltic States would belong. They would have direct collective dealing with both NATO and Russia.’ Peter van Ham, ‘The Baltic states and Europe: The quest for security’, in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds), The Baltic States in World Politics, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998, p. 38. Möttölä, ‘Security’, p. 377. RIA-Novosti, 6 September 1997. Boris Pichugin, ‘Russia and the European Union’s eastward expansion’, International Affairs, 42(1), 1996, pp. 92ff. Möttölä, ‘Security’, p. 379. Knudsen and Neumann, Subregional Security Cooperation, p. 19. Wojciech Kostecki, ‘Poland’s security policies in the Baltic Sea area’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin, Springer, 1998, pp. 487ff. Copenhagen Declaration, Copenhagen, 5–6 March 1992. Knudsen and Neumann, Subregional Security Cooperation, p. 18. Nordic Council, ‘Discussion 1’, Co-operation in the Baltic Sea Area, Copenhagen: Nordic Council, 1992, pp. 32ff. Knudsen and Neumann, Subregional Security Cooperation, pp. 14ff. Kostecki, ‘Poland’s security policies’, pp. 489ff. Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 8, August 1996, pp. 9ff. Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, ‘Russia and the Baltic States’, p. 151. Viktor Chernomyrdin, Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 2, 1998, p. 22. Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement, pp. 19–20. Ibid., pp. 51–4. Leshoukov, ‘Russlands Politik’, p. 43. Birthe Hansen, ‘The Baltic states and security strategies available’, in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds), The Baltic States in World Politics, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998, p. 97.

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 127 48 Baranovsky, ‘Russia’, p. 174. 49 Sergounin, ‘Russia’s security policies’, p. 471. 50 Bill Gertz, ‘Russia transfers nuclear arms to Baltics’, Washington Times, 3 January 2001. 51 Frederic Labarre, ‘NATO–Russia relations and NATO enlargement in the Baltic Sea region’, Baltic Defence Review, 6, 2001, p. 59; and Oldberg, Reluctant Rapprochement, p. 22. 52 ‘Vystuplenie na sovmestnoi press-konferentsii s Prezidentom Finliandskoi Respubliki T. Khalonen’ [Speech at the joint press conference with the President of the Finnish Republic T. Halonen] (http://www.kremlin.ru/text/ appears/2001/09/28620.shtml). 53 ‘Rossiia otkazalas vstupat’ v ES i NATO’ [Russia declined to join either the EU or NATO], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 19 March 2002. 54 Sergei Markov, ‘NATO bez nas ne oboidetsia’ [NATO cannot manage without us], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 2 August 2002. 55 Presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembskii, 19 March 1997, on the eve of the Yeltsin–Clinton Helsinki summit. 56 Gregory Feifer, ‘Russia: Analysts say Moscow spins and loses political game over Kaliningrad’, RFE/RL Weekday Magazine, 15 November 2002 (http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/11/14112002153650.asp). 57 Breffni O’Rourke, ‘EU: Have Kaliningrad’s transit problems been solved?’, RFE/RL Weekday Magazine, 14 November 2002 (http://www.rferl.org/nca/ features/2002/11/14112002153650.asp). 58 Arkady Moshes, EU Enlargement in the Baltic Sea Region and Russia: Obvious Problems, Unclear Solutions, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 171, Washington, DC: Institute of Europe, Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 2000. 59 Transport Infrastructure Needs Assessment (TINA) (http://jpn.cec.eu.int/ english/info-resources/6-6-2-12.htm). 60 Regulation (EC) No. 417/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 February 2002 on the accelerated phasing-in of double-hull or equivalent design requirements for single-hull oil tankers and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No. 2978/94, Official Journal of the European Communities, L64, 7 March 2002.

Bibliography Books and journals Baranovsky, Vladimir, ‘Russia’, in Axel Krohn (ed.), The Baltic Sea Region: National and International Security Perspectives, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996, pp. 164–82. Berner, Örjan, Soviet Policies Toward the Nordic Countries, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986. Brundtland, Arne Olav, ‘The Nordic balance’, Cooperation and Conflict, 1(2), 1966, pp. 30–63. Chernomyrdin, Viktor, Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 2, 1998. Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (CFDP), ‘Russia and the Baltic states’, in Joseph P. Kruzich and Anna W. E. Fahraeus (eds), 2nd Annual Stockholm Conference on Baltic Sea Security and Cooperation, Stockholm: Swedish Institute of International Affairs, 1998, pp. 139–53.

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Deutsch, Karl W., The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control, New York: The Free Press, 1963. Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 8, August 1996, pp. 9–11. Dugin, Aleksandr, Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii [Fundamentals of geopolitics: Russia’s geopolitical future], Moscow: Arktogeia, 1997. Godzimirski, Jakub M., Russian Security Policy Objectives in the Baltic Sea and the Barents Area, Oslo: Norwegian Atlantic Committee, 1998. van Ham, Peter, ‘The Baltic states and Europe: The quest for security’, in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds), The Baltic States in World Politics, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 24–45. Hansen, Birthe, ‘The Baltic states and security strategies available’, in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds), The Baltic States in World Politics, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 86–111. Klinge, Matti, ‘Mot geografin kan vi intet, och inte ni heller’ [Against geography we are helpless, and so are you], in Max Engman, Väst möter öst [West meets east], Stockholm: Carlssons, 1996. Knudsen, Olav F. and Iver B. Neumann, Subregional Security Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Area: An Exploratory Study, Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1995. Kontseptsiia vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation, 28 June 2000], Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 8, August 2000. Kostecki, Wojciech, ‘Poland’s security policies in the Baltic Sea area’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin: Springer, 1998, pp. 485–502. Labarre, Frederic, ‘NATO–Russia relations and NATO enlargement in the Baltic Sea region’, Baltic Defence Review, 6, 2001, pp. 46–69. Leshoukov, Igor, ‘Russlands Politik gegenüber den Baltischen Staaten: Eine Russische Ansicht’ [Russia’s policy towards the Baltic states: A Russian view], Internationale Politik, 53(10), 1998, pp. 39–44. Möttölä, Kari, ‘Security around the Baltic Rim: Concepts, actors and processes’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin: Springer, 1998, pp. 363–404. Neumann, Iver B., Russia and the Idea of Europe, London: Routledge, 1996. Nordic Council, ‘Discussion 1’, Co-operation in the Baltic Sea Area, Copenhagen: Nordic Council, 1992, pp. 25–45. Oldberg, Ingmar, Reluctant Rapprochement: Russia and the Baltic States in the Context of NATO and EU Enlargements, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2003. Pacuk, Malgorzata and Tadeusz Palmowski, ‘The development of Kaliningrad in the light of Baltic co-operation’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin: Springer, 1998, pp. 267–82. Patomäki, Heikki, After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re)construction of World Politics, London: Routledge, 2002. ‘Perspektivy rasshireniia NATO’ [Perspectives of NATO enlargement], Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 1, 15 January 1992. Pichugin, Boris, ‘Russia and the European Union’s eastward expansion’, International Affairs, 42(1), 1996, pp. 90–6. Primakov, Yevgenii, Perspektivy Rasshireniia NATO i Interesy Rossii [Perspectives

Russia in the Baltic Sea region 129 of NATO enlargement and Russia’s interests], Moscow: Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, 1993, mimeo. Regulation (EC) No 417/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 February 2002 on the accelerated phasing-in of double-hull or equivalent design requirements for single-hull oil tankers and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No. 2978/94, Official Journal of the European Communities, L64, 7 March 2002. Searle, John, The Construction of Social Reality, New York: The Free Press, 1995. Sergounin, Alexander A., ‘Russia’s security policies in the Baltic Sea area’, in Lars Hedegaard and Bjarne Lindström (eds), NEBI Yearbook 1998: North European and Baltic Sea Integration, Berlin: Springer, 1998, pp. 465–83.

Media and Internet Copenhagen Declaration, Copenhagen, 5–6 March 1992 (http://www.cbss.st/ documents/foundingdocs/dbaFile751.html). Feifer, Gregory, ‘Russia: Analysts say Moscow spins and loses political game over Kaliningrad’, RFE/RL Weekday Magazine, 15 November 2002 (http://www. rfer l.org/nca/features/2002/11/14112002153650.asp). Gertz, Bill, ‘Russia transfers nuclear arms to Baltics’, Washington Times, 3 January 2001. Hurd, Douglas, ‘Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture’, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 28 March 1996. Markov, Sergei, ‘NATO bez nas ne oboidetsia’ [NATO cannot manage without us], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 2 August 2002. Moshes, Arkady, EU Enlargement in the Baltic Sea Region and Russia: Obvious Problems, Unclear Solutions, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 171, Washington, DC: Institute of Europe, Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 2000, pp. 1–5. O’Rourke, Breffni, ‘EU: Have Kaliningrad’s transit problems been solved?’, RFE/RL Weekday Magazine, 14 November 2002 (http://www.rferl.org/nca/ features/2002/11/14112002153650.asp). RIA-Novosti, 6 September 1997. ‘Rossiia otkazalas vstupat’ v ES i NATO’ [Russia declined to join either the EU or NATO], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 19 March 2002. Transport Infrastructure Needs Assessment (TINA) (http://jpn.cec.eu.int/ english/info-resources/6-6-2-12.htm). ‘Vystuplenie na sovmestnoi press-konferentsii s Prezidentom Finliandskoi Respubliki T. Khalonen’ [Speech at the joint press conference with the President of the Finnish Republic T. Halonen] (http://www.kremlin.ru/text/appears/ 2001/09/ 28620.shtml). Yeltsin, Boris N., ‘Politika natsional’noi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1996–2000)’ [The national security policy of the Russian Federation, 1996–2000], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 23 May 1996.

6

Filling ‘the gap’ Russian security policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova under Putin Jakob Hedenskog

The three East European states Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova have much in common. First and foremost, they all share a common past as former republics of the Soviet Union and, before that, for different periods of time, as part of the Russian Empire. The Soviet heritage has resulted in the presence of substantial Russian minorities in each country, and Russian is the lingua franca among non-Russians.1 Their economic dependence on Russia is also still huge: Russia is both an export market and a provider of goods, particularly energy, for their own markets. However, the three countries also differ in many respects. Slavic Belarus and Ukraine share a similar historical heritage with Poland as well as with Russia, while the Romance Moldova to a great extent shares its language and history with Romania. Their experiences in the past decade of independence also show some differences. While Ukraine and Moldova have suffered on the zigzag road towards self-determination, democracy and economic transition, Belarus has chosen quite the opposite path: reintegration with Russia, a return to an authoritarian political system, and the preservation of a state-run economy. Formally, according to their respective constitutions, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova are all neutral countries. However, on security–political issues they have all chosen different ways of alignment and cooperation with the West and within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Both Ukraine and Moldova long looked with suspicion on the CIS’s intentions regarding cooperation at the state level. They refused to join the 1992 Common Security Treaty (the Tashkent Treaty, which now has its own organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, CSTO), and instead joined the GUUAM2 framework for cooperation as a counterweight to the Russian dominance within the post-Soviet space. Belarus, on the other hand, created with Russia a Union State, of which the emphasis so far has been on military integration. Ukraine and Moldova have both declared membership of the European Union (EU) as their political goal, while Belarus has done its best to hold cooperation with the EU, and Western institutions in general, to a minimum. All three are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Partnership for Peace (PFP) but,

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 131 while Belarus’s and Moldova’s engagement in practice ended with that, Ukraine in 1997 entered into a ‘distinctive partnership’ with the alliance. In 2002, the Ukrainian leadership announced a ‘long-term strategy’ to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russia also differed in its approaches to Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova during the 1990s. While it maintained close contacts with its partner Belarus, relations with Ukraine were often strained. Because of conflicting views on the division of the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet, the transfer of the strategic nuclear weapons based in Ukraine to Russia, the status of Crimea, and cooperation within the CIS, the two states found themselves on the brink of serious conflict on several occasions. However, the signing of the Treaty on Friendship, Co-operation and Partnership in 1997, by which the two sides recognized each other’s territorial integrity, led to a normalization of the relationship. In Moldova, Russia played an active role in the shadows as a supporter of Transnistria, the secessionist republic on the left bank of the Nistru River (Dniestr in Russian), mainly inhabited by a Slavic population (Ukrainians and Russians). With the assistance of the Russian 14th Army, in 1992 the separatists managed to defend Transnistria’s independence and force Moldova to accept a ceasefire. Since then Russia has been acting as peacekeeper, mediator and guarantor in a conflict which so far has remained unresolved. Russia’s relations with the Moldovan central government were particularly strained until 1994, when the Moldovan national democrats lost influence to the centrists, who advocated closer relations with Moscow. When Vladimir Putin became president of the Russian Federation at the end of December 1999, Russian foreign policy towards these three former Soviet republics became more active. Particularly after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Russia’s earlier efforts for ‘multipolarity’ in the world order, which included rather anti-US elements, were largely abandoned in favour of a pragmatic approach to the ‘near abroad’. Behind this shift of foreign policy priorities lay both economic and security reasons. By working for a closer partnership with the West, Putin saw the chance for more Western investment, which Russia needed to help its economic reforms and to raise living standards. Better relations with the West, and particularly with the USA, also served Russia’s security interests. By accepting Russia as a strategic partner in the global war against terrorism, the USA softened its criticism of the Russian war in Chechnya, which Russia always had called an ‘anti-terrorist’ operation. The economic and power-political necessity of cooperation with the USA did not, however, mean that Russia had to decide to give up its goal of being an independent pole of world politics. Russia seeks no integration into a US-controlled world, nor does it see itself as part of a future enlarged EU. Russia therefore sided with France and Germany in opposing the US military intervention in Iraq in 2003, and continues to cultivate close relations with China and Iran.

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The Russian Federation considers the western CIS countries (Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova) important for economic as well as for security reasons. In security matters, the three countries could, after NATO’s two rounds of enlargement, be considered a ‘grey zone’ or a ‘gap’ of more than 60 million people between the spheres of Russia to the east and an expanding NATO to the west. This makes it important for Russia to maintain stability and control the political and economic developments in these countries. According to the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, approved by Putin on 28 June 2000, one of Russia’s main objectives was to ‘form a good-neighbourly belt along the perimeter of Russia’s borders’.3 The EU’s Schengen laws further contribute to the impression that new borders are being erected, dividing Europe. Russia’s closer cooperation with the EU and NATO has not changed its assessment of the strategic importance of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Despite its improved relations with the West, Russia still has not abandoned its scepticism about NATO’s expansion, and therefore sees good strategic reasons for keeping these former Soviet republics in its orbit. To achieve this, Russia is using different means of influence on them: (a) their dependence on Russian energy supplies, (b) its relative economic might compared to theirs, (c) the existence of Russian military bases and Russian minorities, and (d) the rather dominant Russian position in the information space. This chapter discusses Russia’s foreign policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova under Putin. First, relations with each of the countries in turn are discussed, and, in the concluding remarks, similarities and differences in the Russian approach are examined.

Relations with Belarus After coming to power, Putin showed much less interest in the Belarus–Russia Union than his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, had done. The Union Treaty, signed on 8 December 1999 when Putin was Russian prime minister, had foreseen the creation of a tightly integrated union state. However, the treaty was vague about which competences would be handled by the union agencies and which would be handled by the two states’ own agencies.4 From the very beginning, it was clear that the personal chemistry between Putin and his Belarusian colleague Aleksandr Lukashenko was not of the best. A preliminary schedule for the creation of joint political institutions and continued economic integration was set up. It was decided that the Russian rouble would be introduced as the currency in Belarus in 2005. The union would be governed by a council, consisting of the leaders of the two countries, and there would be a joint two-chamber parliament, where the lower house would be directly elected. According to the treaty, the union would be mainly engaged in defence cooperation, the coordination

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 133 of economic and foreign policies, and the management of the joint currency. A working commission was set up to work out a joint constitution. During the Yeltsin era, the integration process with Belarus was often used in internal Russia propaganda to take the sting out of criticism from the nationalistic opposition and those who were nostalgic for Soviet times. However, under President Putin the rhetoric and propaganda were downgraded in importance and set aside in favour of a more pragmatic attitude to integration. The Russian tactic became to prioritize integration in the areas that were most favourable for Russia – that is, the military and security-related areas – and to try to get as much as possible out of the economic cooperation without too many costs. At the same time, an attempt was made to slow down the political integration. Russia’s motives in the integration with Belarus could be divided into three categories: economic, political and geostrategic. Economically, the integration with Belarus and its unreformed economy will probably involve more costs than profit for Russia in the short term. In the long run, however, Belarus also has some economic advantages to offer Russia in the form of a larger domestic market for Russian products and improved possibilities for trade and transport. In a political perspective, a closer connection to Belarus satisfies a still large section of public opinion in Russia, which mourns the breakdown of the Soviet Union and seeks closer connections between the Slavic brother countries. But, for Russia, Belarus is most of all important militarily and strategically. Belarus has a well-developed military infrastructure. As the former Belorussian Military District (MD) – part of the USSR’s first echelon – it inherited some of the best units and equipment available to the Soviet armed forces.5 Belarus has an important geostrategic position today as well, and can give Russia a stronger position in Central Europe as it borders on three NATO countries – Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. According to a set of theses from the influential Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike, SVOP), the cooperation with Belarus also puts Russia in a better position to put pressure on Ukraine, as well as certain advantages with regard to the Kaliningrad exclave and greater manoeuvring room within the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (the CFE Treaty).6 Belarus also has a strategically important position as a transit country since the shortest and cheapest transport routes for Russian raw materials, particularly oil and gas, to Western Europe and the Kaliningrad oblast pass through its territory. Integration has gone the furthest in the military area and in the common defence policy. Russia has always regarded the military aspect of the integration as important, since it has no desire to lose yet further influence over the former Soviet republics. According to the Union Treaty, the two countries are to prevent threats against each other’s sovereignty and

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independence, coordinate their arms acquisitions and defence industries, use a joint military infrastructure, and cooperate on border issues. Belarus has adapted its security policy doctrines to Russia’s. The Belarusian military doctrine, signed by Lukashenko in February 2002, is largely based on the Russian equivalent from 2000. The doctrine separates external and internal threats. Among the external threats it mentions the enlargement of military blocs into the vicinity of Belarus, and opposition to the creation of collective security systems which include Belarus.7 The first of these external threats probably means NATO’s enlargement to the Baltic states; the second may be interpreted as continued military integration within the Union State and possible future closer security cooperation with Ukraine. The joint air defence system within the CIS, supplemented by bilateral agreements with Belarus, considerably improves Russia’s defence potential in the western direction. Russia has developed a radar station for early warning near the Belarusian town of Baranovichi to replace the one in Skrunda, which was lost after Latvia became independent. Although the station in Baranovichi became operational during 2002, it will not have the capacity to compensate completely for Skrunda.8 The integration between Russia and Belarus in the military–industrial area has been intense. It has resulted among other things in an agreement on the coordination of arms exports, forms of specialization, and principles for cooperation and investment plans. The cooperation is favourable and necessary for both parties, which were severely affected by the splitting up of the integrated Soviet military industry. Around 90 per cent of the products and spare parts that the Belarusian defence industry produces are used in the Russian armed forces. In exchange for this Belarus gets raw materials and inexpensive energy from Russia, as well as substantial revenues from maintaining contacts with Russian arms exports. At the same time, Russia is also dependent on deliveries from the Belarusian defence industry for certain specific products such as military electronics, optics and navigation systems. Russia has used Belarus as a middleman for arms exports which for political reasons it does not intend to carry out itself – for example, to countries under embargo. Belarus is already isolated on the international arena in any case, is indifferent to world opinion, and can afford contacts with such states. Belarus helped to modernize the Iraqi air defence system during Saddam Hussein’s reign and has exported tanks, engines and spare parts to North Korea and Iran. The cooperation with Russia in the area of arms exports is very important to Belarus, and most of its activities in this area are believed to be carried out in cooperation with Russia. Since Belarus does not manufacture any complete arms systems, but is a prominent manufacturer of single components for Russian arms systems, close cooperation with Russia is necessary. This is probably why Belarus is the biggest importer of Russian military equipment within the CIS.9 Until the summer of 2002, the political part of the integration within the

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 135 union state consisted to a great degree of Lukashenko’s political rhetoric. For the president of Belarus, the project had always had the highest foreign policy priority. Russia, on the other hand, was less concerned and did not take much interest in the integration process except for its military aspects. In the summer of 2002, however, the framework for the Belarus–Russia Union State changed dramatically. At a summit meeting in St Petersburg on 11 June, Putin sharply criticized a union act proposed by Belarus in which the guiding principles were based on a union with superior authorities but with two completely independent states. Putin called the proposal ‘too Soviet’, fearing that there was a risk that the planned union parliament would decide on laws and regulations that neither of the countries would follow, which would discredit the whole idea of the union. Instead, Putin wished to see clearer regulations on how the union would work and, not least, how decision-making would be carried out.10 Putin also demanded the implementation of important economic reforms in Belarus before Russia would take the next step in the integration process. The two presidents met again in Moscow on 14 August 2002, when Putin showed two models for the continued political integration. The first model meant a complete integration of Belarus in the Russian Federation. The second was that of a union with a looser structure, or ‘something similar to the EU’, according to Putin. Putin did not allow room for a ‘third way’ between these alternatives. Nor did he leave anyone in any doubt that he favoured the first model. To make his preferences clearer he suggested that the Russian rouble be introduced in Belarus as early as 1 January 2004, not 2005, which the union agreement dictates.11 After the meeting, Lukashenko, who up to this point had been the more eager of the two in promoting increased integration with Russia, was shocked. He was forced to retreat and to advocate instead maintaining Belarus’s independence within the scope of the existing union agreement from 1999. With Putin’s integration move of 2002, Russia seemed to be prepared to increase its efforts for integration within the political and economic spheres. However, there was one big obstacle – namely, President Lukashenko himself. The relationship between him and Putin had never been good and, at this point, Russia was increasingly losing patience with Lukashenko. This was explained by two factors. The first factor was the improved relations between Russia and the West after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Russia’s dealings with the authoritarian Lukashenko, who was previously seen as a guarantor for continued Russian influence in Belarus and a loyal ally in the opposition to NATO enlargement, were now seen as a hindrance for Russia in its relations with the West. The second factor was Russia’s growing irritation over the absence of economic reforms in Belarus, which was hampering important Russian business interests in the country. Belarus’s dependence on the Russian economy is considerable. Since

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Belarus is, to a great extent, self-isolated from the surrounding world, it is dependent on subsidized Russian energy and continued stability loans to the Belarusian central bank. This dependence has increased as a result of the ongoing economic crisis in the country and will probably continue to grow further as the Belarusian economy becomes more incorporated into the Russian economy. Belarusian companies are formally or informally dependent on Russian capital. The Russian corporate interests in Belarus, which increased during Lukashenko’s last term of office, have counted on economic advantages in return for the political and financial support they have given Lukashenko so far. When Lukashenko sought Russian support for his election campaign in 2001 he promised far-reaching concessions for Russian interests in the economic field. However, after the election he withdrew these promises, for instance, regarding the exclusive rights assigned to the Russian Central Bank as the union’s emission centre. Most of the promises that were not delivered, however, concerned the privatization of large Belarusian companies that are of great interest to Russia. Belarus’s dependence on Russian energy makes it possible for Russia to put pressure on the country. On the other hand, sanctions would affect not only Belarus but also the transport of Russian energy resources to the West via Belarus. Here Russia’s position has been strengthened by discussions with Ukraine to create a gas consortium for exports to Western Europe, which would reduce the dependence on Belarusian pipelines somewhat. In November 2002, the Russian company Gazprom temporarily reduced its gas supply to Belarus because Belarus had already received its ration for 2002. Belarus had also had difficulty in paying its debt for Russian gas, which had accumulated to more than US$200 million.12 Another underlying factor behind Gazprom’s reaction was probably dissatisfaction with the Belarusian privatization process. After the hot summer months of 2002, the integration process soon cooled down to its ‘pre-war’ level. Already by November 2002 the summit meeting between Putin and Lukashenko in Moscow went more smoothly than the previous ones, seemingly without spectacular moves or fierce argument. At the meeting, Putin even seemed ready to accept integration on the basis of the Union Treaty from 1999. This uncertainty concerning the Russian standpoint on the integration issue could be due to several factors: Putin might want to keep Lukashenko uninformed or, possibly, he had not yet decided how he wished to see integration proceed and he simply had no long-term plan for Belarus. In September 2003, tensions ran high again as Gazprom threatened to raise the price of gas deliveries to Belarus to world market level. The reason for this was to press Lukashenko (a) to accept the introduction of the Russian rouble in Belarus and (b) to stop hindering the process of creating a joint venture of Gazprom and Beltranshaz, the Belarusian monopoly gas carrier. According to the new Russian demands, Belarus would have to pay US$80 per thousand cubic metres of Russian gas in 2004, com-

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 137 pared to US$30 in 2003. In response to this price rise, Belarus threatened to raise duties on the transit of Russian gas across Belarus.13 Paradoxically, this ‘gas war’ proceeded at the same time as Belarus and Russia were to sign an agreement on creating a free trade and customs zone, together with Ukraine and Kazakhstan. On 18 February 2004, Gazprom moved to halt supplies completely to Belarus, including gas transit via Belarus to Poland and Germany – a move which Lukashenko dubbed an ‘act of terrorism’.14 The ‘gas war’, which marked the lowest point in Belarusian– Russian relations during Lukashenko’s ten years in office, seemed to have come to an end on 8 June 2004, when the two countries signed a contract for the supply of natural gas to Belarus and gas transit via the country in 2004.15 The events show that the union integration will probably continue to waver between periods of increased pressure from Russia and periods of a temporary easing of tensions while the Kremlin waits out Lukashenko’s second and, most probably, final term in office. The future of the Union integration is shrouded in mystery, although it seems clear that Putin’s controversial integration proposal of 2002 will not be realized, and definitely not within the short time limits given. Russia already has strong political influence over Belarus, especially its foreign policy, but incorporating the country into the Russian Federation within the time limit Putin demanded appeared unrealistic from the very beginning, for purely technical reasons. First, the differences between the countries’ economic and political systems are too great. Second, such an operation seems difficult to carry out within the scope of international law. In addition, the costs and the likely protests from the West when Belarus’s independence is abolished are believed to be deterring Russia from such actions. The real purpose of Putin’s integration move, it now seems, was to put increased pressure on the Belarusian president to adapt over controversial issues and gradually to take over the Belarusian economy. This will involve full control of the Republic of Belarus and enable Russia to control the government while at the same time maintaining the impression that Belarus is a sovereign state on the international scene. Russia’s temporarily tougher measures against Belarus must also be seen in the light of the future enlargement of the EU and the high priority Russia gives to its relationship with the EU. Putin’s proposal could be considered a signal to the West of the renewed vitality of Russian foreign policy. With Poland and the Baltic states now as members of the EU, a Soviet-like Lukashenko regime in Belarus would constitute a major problem, practically and economically, for Russia’s relations with the EU. A reformed Belarus, on the other hand, potentially in line with Putin’s proposal of integration, would be an asset for Russia as it would give it, in effect, another direct border with an enlarged EU. This perspective does not change the fact that Russia still regards Belarus as a security–political and military–strategic card to play against

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NATO. The military integration between Russia and Belarus will therefore probably continue independently of the political and economic aspects of the integration process.

Relations with Ukraine Even if a certain normalization in the relations between Russia and Ukraine had been apparent during Yeltsin’s second term, by the time Putin became president of Russia in March 2000 it had become obvious that the relationship was again drifting towards stagnation. The main subject of contention was Russia’s growing concerns over Ukraine’s aspirations to join the Euro-Atlantic security structures and pursue an ‘alternative leadership’ in the CIS as a leading member of GUUAM. Ukraine’s unpaid energy bills were also piling up, reaching billions of dollars, and, parallel to that, Ukraine was showing no will to stop the practice of siphoning off Russian gas from transit pipelines. According to Russian sources, ten billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas, worth between US$0.8 billion and one billion, were disappearing in Ukraine annually.16 During Putin’s first two years as president, four main factors cooperated to substantially improve Russia’s relations with Ukraine. The first was the dynamic and pragmatic style of the new Russian leadership. Compared to his predecessor, Putin gave the impression of being a young, healthy and energetic politician of a new generation. Perhaps more important was the fact that he seemed to have no nostalgic ties with Ukraine. He was not emotional about Ukraine in the way Yeltsin was, and he also seemed to have accepted the fact that Ukraine really is an independent state, something Yeltsin had never at heart done. The second factor was the contradictory trends in Ukrainian domestic politics, which worked in Russia’s favour. After Leonid Kuchma’s re-election as president in November 1999, a centre–right parliamentary majority was formed in the Verkhovna Rada and the liberal Viktor Yushchenko was appointed prime minister. This was immediately followed by the ‘tape scandal’ or ‘Kuchmagate’,17 which damaged relations with the West and moved the weakened Kuchma closer to Russia. The third factor was economic growth in Ukraine – by 6 per cent in 2000, 9 per cent in 2001 and 4 per cent in 2002 – the result partly of the success of the Yushchenko government, but also partly of increased exports to Russia. This strengthened the Ukrainians’ awareness of their economic dependence on Russia. The fourth and final factor was Russia’s rapprochement with the West after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the USA, which introduced a quite new geopolitical situation.18 The West concentrated on dealing with Putin and no longer needed Ukraine as a Western-friendly ‘buffer zone’ between itself and Russia. The events of 11 September 2001 therefore signalled a return to the Western ‘Russia first’ policy of the early 1990s.19

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 139 Ukraine’s increasing importance on Russia’s list of political priorities under Putin was shown in the number of bilateral summit meetings between the two presidents. Under Yeltsin these were very rare, but, since Putin came to power, there have been around ten every year. Of these, the meeting in Dnipropetrovsk in February 2001 was particularly noteworthy, for two reasons. First, the two leaders signed 16 bilateral agreements on cooperation in different fields, including the decision to reunify the Ukrainian and Russian power distribution systems and increased cooperation in the aerospace industry. Second, and probably more importantly, the meeting gave Putin an excellent opportunity to use the ongoing crises in Ukraine to encourage rapprochement. In contrast to the Western leaders, Putin did not criticize Kuchma, stating that the political crises in Ukraine were Ukraine’s internal affair, but de facto he provided support to Kuchma and intensified contacts with Kyiv. During these summit meetings, Putin, perhaps more than Yeltsin, seemed not to hesitate to tie economic concessions to the resolution of political disputes, and vice versa. Already during the first Putin–Kuchma summit in April 2000, Putin openly linked the resolution of Ukraine’s debt problems to a modification of its geopolitical course. It is also an open secret that Moscow regarded Ukrainian foreign minister Borys Tarasiuk, widely viewed as a symbol of Ukraine’s Western orientation, as an impediment to ‘good neighbourliness’ with Russia.20 Tarasiuk was unexpectedly dismissed by Kuchma on 29 September 2000, the day before the fourth round of Ukrainian–Russian gas talks, in which, according to then prime minister Yushchenko, ‘the Russian side changed a number of its principles or at least . . . softened them’.21 Another sign of the growing role of Ukraine in Russian foreign policy came when Putin, in May 2001, appointed former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, a political ‘heavyweight’, as ambassador to Kyiv and special presidential representative on trade and economic relations with Ukraine. A further important sign came in November 2001 when, simultaneously, a Russian press centre was opened in Kyiv and Russia declared the year 2002 ‘Ukraine’s Year in Russia’ – a move which led Kuchma immediately to declare 2003 ‘Russia’s Year in Ukraine’. The Russian media’s interest in Ukraine showed a spectacular rise during the 2002 parliamentary election in Ukraine. Allegations of a Western conspiracy to unseat Kuchma and turn Ukraine into an ‘antiRussian’, pro-US buffer state were actively fuelled and encouraged by media and public relations sources close to the Kremlin. The main source of this KGB-style disinformation was the Fund for Effective Politics (FEP) and its Internet site,22 both of which are controlled by Putin’s image-maker Gleb Pavlovsky, who is originally from Odesa in Ukraine. Pavlovsky began operating on the Ukrainian scene in 1999 and 2000, and has expanded his political activities since then in alliance with Ukraine’s Russophile business oligarchs. The main group with which Pavlovsky works in

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Ukraine is the Social Democratic Party-united (SDPU-o), led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who after the elections became chief of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration.23 The ‘black’ methods used by the FEP in the Ukrainian elections, such as the use of ‘clones’ and spoof websites to discredit the opponents of Kuchma, were well known from earlier FEP campaigns in Russia.24 During the election campaign, Russian officials, such as Ambassador Chernomyrdin and Dmitrii Rogozin, head of the State Duma International Relations Committee, openly declared their hostility to Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party as an anti-Russian, pro-Western and nationalistic bloc. Aleksandr Voloshin, then head of the Russian Presidential Administration, even specified that Moscow backed the communists, the SDPU-o and the pro-presidential bloc For a United Ukraine, and was hostile to Our Ukraine.25 In economic relations, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine which characterized the second half of the 1990s gave way to more constructive cooperation efforts after Putin came to power. The dominance of national interests was replaced by intentions to improve relations on the basis of mutual economic advantage. Although closer relations are increasing Ukraine’s economic dependence on Russia, they have also proved favourable for Ukraine as they have halted the economic recession. The Ukrainian leadership realized that the weakness of the country’s economic potential was a significant obstacle to its independence efforts. Despite more than ten years of separation, Ukraine has not been able to cut itself free from its dependence on the Russian economy. For a number of reasons, the economic relations between the countries are still heavily influenced, if not dominated, by legacies of the common Soviet past.26 First, the degree of trade integration is still high and means that Ukraine is highly dependent on Russia. Russia is Ukraine’s most important export market, while Ukraine is still only the fifth-biggest export market for Russia.27 Second, Ukraine’s imports are traditionally dominated by energy. By 2000, around 70 per cent of its natural gas and 90 per cent of its oil came from Russia (or Turkmenistan, which uses Russia’s pipeline system, so that the flow of its exports is still controlled by Russia). By restricting oil supplies, Russia has the capacity to bring Ukraine’s economy to a virtual standstill – a threat that has been used repeatedly to force Ukraine to cooperate on other issues. However, energy is a two-sided weapon. Russia’s pipelines to Western Europe run through Ukraine, which has retaliated against Russia’s threats by threatening to cut Russia off from its West European profits.28 Both Russia and Ukraine have worked fairly intensively to end this mutual energy dependence. In August 2001, Ukraine completed the new Pivdenny oil terminal in Odesa and the Odesa–Brody pipeline, which connects to the Druzhba pipeline, with the purpose of delivering oil from the

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 141 Caspian region to Central Europe. The extension of the Odesa–Brody pipeline to the Polish city of Plock and the port of Gdansk would open new markets in Poland, Germany and the Baltic states.29 For two years, however, Ukraine was unable to reach any agreement with the exporters of Caspian oil. Russia, meanwhile, tried to prevent Ukraine from opening a new, independent oil transport route and to tie Ukraine’s oil transport system even more tightly to itself instead. Russia, therefore, offered to use the Odesa–Brody pipeline in reverse – to pump Russian oil to Odesa in order to ship it on across the Black Sea and further through the Bosporus. At the same time, in September 2001, Russia completed the new Sukhodolnaia-Rodionovka oil pipeline to Novorossiisk in order to bypass Ukraine and pressure Ukraine to lower the tariffs it levies on the transit of oil to Western Europe. The third factor which ties Ukraine’s economy to Russia’s is that Ukraine’s economy is not sufficiently competitive to find new export markets and reduce its dependence on the Russian market. Western capital investment could have been the way out of this situation, but chaotic regulations, rampant corruption, the incompetence of the Ukrainian parliament and the conflicts between the legislative and executive powers have discouraged Western investors. As the Western countries were not willing to meet the immense costs of Ukraine’s economic recovery, Ukraine opted for a spectacular opening up towards Russia as the only solution. Russia positively supported this policy of rapprochement, the more so as it coincided with its own efforts to strengthen the ties with the CIS countries. Russian investment in Ukraine since 2000/1 has been concentrated on strategic branches such as oil refining, the aluminium industry and the defence industry. It has been estimated that, by 2002, 40–50 per cent of Ukrainian industry was in Russian hands.30 The Ukrainian policy of opening up towards Russia was substantially facilitated by the fact that, following the ‘Kuchmagate’ scandal, Western politicians isolated the Ukrainian president. Kuchma had no choice but to rely on the Russian leadership, which was willing to act as guarantor of his political survival and spectacularly demonstrated that it was willing to support him. Moscow, knowing that Kyiv had partly given up its pro-Western orientation, was therefore willing to ease some of the economic pressure on Ukraine. In October 2001, a seemingly viable solution was found to the problem of Ukraine’s gas debt. The debt was first estimated by Gazprom to be US$2.9 billion, but later Russia agreed to fix it at US$1.4 billion; that is, US$1.5 billion less than the original estimation. The deal was made possible after Russia received guarantees that Ukraine would not resume the practice of gas theft and that for this purpose the two sides would agree annually on how much gas the Ukrainian economy would need.31 In October 2002, an agreement was reached on the creation of an operational gas consortium with the task of managing the transit of Russian gas

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through Ukraine.32 Also, by signing an agreement in January 2003 on the delimitation of the land border between the countries, Russia also conceded a long-standing Ukrainian demand. Although relations between Russia and Ukraine under Putin have improved in almost every sphere, disputes and controversies continue to arise In the autumn of 2003, the construction of a Russian dam linking the Krasnodar region with the Ukrainian islet of Tuzla, located in the Kerch Strait, took relations between Ukraine and Russia back to what they had been ten years before; relations remained strained for some weeks. Russian officials first indirectly and then directly challenged the legitimacy of Ukraine’s border and the possession of Tuzla and, by extension, the whole Crimean Peninsula.33 Another conflict between Ukraine and Russia has been related to trade. Particularly in the period 2001–2, protectionism on both sides caused a setback in the trade relations between them. During the first half of 2002 alone, bilateral trade fell by 12.8 per cent.34 This protectionism would end if both countries joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) simultaneously. However, if Russia joins the WTO before Ukraine, the pressure on Ukraine could become even greater. Since decisions in the WTO are taken on a consensus basis, the one who gets membership first can put pressure on the other when, for instance, resolving trade disputes. However, since Ukraine in fact seems to have a good chance of joining the WTO before Russia, the Kremlin is doing everything in its power to link the two countries’ WTO negotiations with each other. The ‘trade war’ would also end if the two countries signed a bilateral free trade agreement, but the Russian leadership does not see any point in such an agreement, since it prefers this problem to be solved as part of a bigger free trade solution in the post-Soviet area. During 2002, Russia gradually gave the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) higher priority. EurAsEC’s membership consists of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and its stated aims are a common market, a customs union and free trade, and the coordination of the respective countries’ negotiations to join the WTO. In May 2002, Ukraine (together with Moldova) joined EurAsEC as an observer but insisted on not applying for full membership since that would contradict its decision to seek membership of the EU. When Kuchma took over the chair of the CIS in January 2003 – the first non-Russian to do so35 – he stated that one of his main tasks would be to reintroduce the idea of a CIS free trade zone. In February 2003, the leaders of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan unexpectedly decided that they would create a ‘single economic space’ with the purpose of forming a joint free trade zone and a customs union, and coordinate their WTO negotiations.36 This was, presumably, the price Kuchma had to pay back to Russia for the honourable position as chairman of the CIS. The agreement on creating the Single Economic Space (SES) was

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 143 signed by the four presidents at the CIS summit in Yalta in September 2003 and ratified by Russia and Ukraine in April 2004. If the agreement is fully implemented, the SES will severely hamper, if not put an end to, Ukraine’s EU integration process as it is impossible to integrate into two different customs unions at the same time. However, it is still too early to judge whether this new reintegration initiative will be any more long-lived than similar, earlier attempts within the CIS. Moreover, the Verkhovna Rada ratified the agreement with the reservation that it would not be in contradiction with the Ukrainian constitution, which theoretically gives Ukraine a chance to withdraw if necessary. Furthermore, the state-run character of the Belarusian economy makes closer interconnection between the four economies, including joint WTO negotiations, unlikely for a long time. The level of Ukraine’s engagement also depends on the outcome of the presidential elections in Ukraine in late 2004.

Relations with Moldova Immediately after coming to power, Putin showed some interest in giving impetus to relations with Moldova and in reaching a settlement of the Transnistria issue. In June 2000, the newly elected Russian president visited Moldova for the first time. Besides discussing the issue of gas payments with the Moldovan president, Petru Lucinschi, Putin also affirmed Russia’s acceptance of Moldova’s territorial integrity and announced the creation of a special state commission, headed by former prime minister Yevgenii Primakov, to find a resolution to the Transnistria problem.37 When the Party of Moldovan Communists (PCM) came to power in Chisinau following elections in February 2001, the pro-Russian bent of Moldovan foreign policy strengthened substantially. During the election campaign, the PCM leader, Vladimir Voronin, had made far-reaching promises of future reintegration for Moldova within the post-Soviet space – for instance, by joining the Belarus–Russia union.38 Shortly after being appointed president in April 2001, Voronin announced that Moldova no longer intended to participate in the GUUAM military cooperation, let alone stay in its political cooperation framework. In May 2002, Moldova joined EurAsEC as an observer. However, Voronin quickly changed his mind regarding membership in the Belarus–Russia union, which he dismissed as ‘more words than deeds’.39 In November 2001, the presidents of Russia and Moldova signed a treaty on friendship and cooperation, in which the most important elements were the definition of the strategic nature of their relations and the need to create a new framework for present and future cooperation.40 On the basis of this treaty, in December 2001 the Moldovan government introduced Russian as a compulsory subject in Moldovan schools as early as from the second grade, and decided to introduce a new Moldovan history textbook to replace the previous Romanian history textbook. These

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measures met resistance from the nationalist opposition, which interpreted them as signs of Russification in Moldovan society and a step towards the government’s pronounced intention of making Russian the second official language. Today, there are three main issues in the relations between Russia and Moldova: (a) the extensive Russian supplies of energy and Moldova’s gas debts; (b) the status of the separatist Transnistrian Republic; and (c) the related question of the withdrawal of Russian military forces. Russian energy constitutes a third of Moldova’s total imports, and, like Ukraine, Moldova is one of Gazprom’s major debtors. In early 2003, the country’s debt for gas consumed was US$280 million (Transnistria’s debt of about US$400 million not included). In March 2003, Gazprom stated that it was prepared to reduce the price of gas to Moldova from US$80 per thousand cubic metres to US$50,41 possibly because the Moldovan leadership, in response, is allowing Russian business to buy up assets in Moldova. Negotiations with a view to settling the conflict between the Moldovan central government and Transnistria by political means have been continuing since 1992, with Russia acting as mediator (since 1993 together with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and since 1995 also together with Ukraine). So far, the most important steps forward have been the Moscow memorandum of May 1997 and the Kyiv agreement of July 2002. The first outlined the basic principles for a settlement in Moldova and affirmed that Transnistria will have a special status within a ‘common state’; the second stipulated that the solution to the conflict lies in the federalization of Moldova.42 In November 2003, Voronin rejected a third plan for settlement of the Transnistrian conflict worked out by Dmitrii Kozak, first deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration. The ‘Kozak memorandum’ was different from the two earlier agreements in that the OSCE and Ukraine were not mentioned alongside Russia as guarantors and mediators in the conflict.43 Various factors have led to increased attention to the Transnistrian conflict over the past few years. The change of regime in Chisinau in 2001 caused a change in the Russian preferences in favour of the Moldovan central government, and this put pressure on the separatists to accept some sort of compromise solution. Chisinau, on the one hand, was forced to redefine its previous demand for an unconditional withdrawal of the Russian troops in order to bring about a permanent agreement on a solution to the conflict. The NATO and EU enlargement processes brought the problem closer to the West, which was forced to show increased commitment. Finally, the common interests of Russia and the USA in the war against terrorism led to a common understanding about the need for a permanent solution to the situation of the illegal separatist state of Transnistria. Of all countries, Russia has the biggest influence on Moldova and on the resolution of the Transnistrian conflict. Even if Russia has been very

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 145 careful to describe its interests in Transnistria as being of a peacekeeping nature, the West has mostly seen Russia as an involved party supporting an illegal regime of which the leaders are Russian citizens. Russia’s official standpoint has always been that the final solution to Moldova’s problems is in the hands of the leaders in Moldova and Transnistria, but that Russia is willing to offer help to the parties in the process. Even apprehension about corruption and the spread of weapons from the separatist region to conflict areas close to Russia, and even to Chechnya, has not been reason enough for Russia to abandon the separatists completely. However, the official Russian standpoint on the separatists has gradually shifted during Putin’s period in office. Even if support for the separatists is still strong among nationalist groups in Russia, the idea that the existence of the Transnistrian secessionist state, held together by Russian nationalism and nostalgia for the Soviet period, only serves the economic interests of the separatists’ leaders seems to have started to gain ground in the Kremlin. The separatists’ support for the Moscow coup in 1991 and for the rebellious Russian parliament which Yeltsin crushed two years later, and their continued and persistent support for ultra-nationalists such as Vladimir Zhirinovskii and the Russian Communist Party, has meant that the Russian leadership has fewer and fewer reasons to support them.44 Russia’s gradual turn towards support for the central government in Chisinau is also based on the fact that Transnistria, despite its rich industrial resources and economic potential, lacks a future. There is more reason for Russia not to lose influence over a friendly Moldova than to stick to an isolated and internationally unrecognized secessionist republic. The issue of a permanent solution to the Transnistrian conflict is closely tied to the issue of the withdrawal of Russian troops and military equipment from Moldova. The presence of the Russian military in Moldova has decreased since the early 1990s and is now estimated at approximately 1,500 men. In addition to the military units there is a large ammunition storage facility in Colbasna, which is estimated to have held over 40,000 tons initially. This includes heavy armament, ammunition and equipment from the former Russian 14th Army, and ammunition from the Russian troops that were withdrawn from Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. Some of the ammunition has been destroyed in facilities provided by the OSCE, but because this has caused some environmental damage, and led to complaints from the local population, the process has been interrupted. The remaining movable ammunition is to be loaded onto railway carriages and removed to Russia. The Transnistrian authorities, however, have repeatedly blocked the withdrawal and asked for economic compensation, since they consider the ammunition their property. At the OSCE summit in Istanbul in November 1999 it was decided that the Russian armed forces remaining in Moldova should be withdrawn before the end of 2002.45 During the OSCE summit in Porto in December 2002 the time limit was extended to the end of 2003, with the crucial addition ‘provided the

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necessary conditions are in place’.46 The ‘Kozak memorandum’ does not mention any withdrawal of Russian troops. The Russian strategy involves linking the withdrawal to a permanent solution to the question of the status of Transnistria, and as long as the negotiations make no breakthrough there are likely to be delays in the withdrawal as well. Russia’s intention is probably to keep troops as a peacekeeping force in the region in order to secure the observance of a potential agreement on federalizing Moldova. The West could probably accept this on the condition that the force is multinational and includes Western participation. The separatists share Russia’s interest in keeping Russian troops in the area, regarding them as a guarantee for their security and survival. Although the military value of Moldova as a ‘bridgehead’ for Russian interests in the Balkans is regarded as rather limited, its symbolic value should not be underestimated. To a great extent, in the early 1990s Russia allowed the conflict in Transnistria to develop, but today it has no interest in its renewal. Instead, Russia would rather keep the influence it has already gained in Moldova. Even if Moldova’s strategic importance in the border region between the Slavic countries, the Black Sea and the Balkans is not unimportant, the main Russian objectives in Moldova seem to be of an economic character. The Russian business elite is attracted by the possibilities of exporting goods and investing in a market of which Russia has a great deal of knowledge and where the involvement of and competition from Western competitors are minimal.

Conclusions Russia’s policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova has been fairly active during Putin’s presidency. Specifically, Ukraine has been substantially upgraded in Russia’s foreign policy priorities, to a certain extent at the expense of relations with Belarus. In the Russian Foreign Policy Concept of 2000, which basically still reflected the foreign policy priorities under Yeltsin, Ukraine was not mentioned specifically. Strengthening the union with Belarus, on the other hand, was considered a priority task as ‘the highest, at this stage, form of integration of two sovereign states’.47 Three years later it seems clear that Russia gives a higher priority to other forms of reintegration within the CIS than the union with Belarus. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan have together crystallized as the essential CIS countries for Russia. Ukraine and Belarus are both Slavic, and Kazakhstan has a large Russian minority. More importantly, they all have greater security–political and economic significance for Russia than the other CIS states. The economic progress Russia has experienced over recent years has provided it with the opportunity to consolidate and expand its leadership

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 147 within the former Soviet area. While the southern Central Asian and the Transcaucasian states are areas where influence is desirable for strategic reasons, they are of little significance to Russia economically, but in the western CIS, and particularly in Ukraine and Belarus, as well as in Kazakhstan, Russia has considerable economic interests and is trying to bring these interests under closer Russian control. They include not least Russia’s role as the distributor of Kazakhstan’s oil and access to gas and oil pipelines in Ukraine and Belarus, which are significant elements in Russia’s efforts to become an important supplier of energy to Western Europe. The fact that the recently created Single Economic Space includes Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan is an expression of the importance Russia attaches to these three countries. Russia’s long-term ambitions regarding the SES tend towards the creation of a counterpart to the EU single market with free movement of goods, services, labour and capital. If the SES is implemented, the relatively developed Russian business community has a fair chance of penetrating the markets of the EU, and Russia’s role as the economic engine of the post-Soviet area will be further strengthened. The higher priority given to economic reintegration within a prioritized group of the CIS could, therefore, be interpreted as a reaction to the EU’s enlargement plans, as the Russian administration fears losing economic and political influence, especially in the western part of the CIS. Regarding the different means of policy (mentioned at the beginning of this chapter) to strengthen Russian influence over the western CIS states, they have all, in some way, been used under Putin. The energy means has been used to some extent in Russia’s relations with all three states, particularly Ukraine and Belarus as the most important countries for the transit of Russian energy to Western Europe. By keeping the gas debt question alive, Russia has tried to pressure Belarus to speed up the privatization process or to pressure Ukraine to modify its geopolitical course. As is often admitted, however, Russia cannot make full use of the energy weapon as long as the greater part of its energy exports to the West goes through these countries.48 That explains why Russia, under Putin, has put major effort into extending the pipeline system to provide Russia with alternatives to transporting its gas through Ukraine. The means of economic power has been used largely in Russia’s relations with Ukraine, although the main motive behind the increase in purchases of Ukrainian industry by the Russian business elite under Putin is believed to be economic rather than political. It is also impossible to see Russia as one homogeneous actor in this case. Even so, the extent of Russian economic influence over Ukraine is close to a point of no return, beyond which it is legitimate to ask whether Ukraine takes its decisions independently and whether its policy of European integration is losing all credibility. Russia’s economic influence over Moldova is also very strong,

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although the prospects for Moldova’s agrarian-based economy are much poorer than the prospects for Ukraine’s economy. Russia’s influence over the Belarusian economy is still hampered by Lukashenko’s lack of will to reform the state-run economy, which is a matter of frustration for both the Russian economic elite and the political leadership of Russia. The use of the means of Russian military bases in the western CIS is particularly visible in Moldova, even if the Russian forces still deployed in the country are rather small in numbers. However, the combination of the existence of the armed forces of Transnistria and the large amount of Russian ammunition that still exists in the area is considered a problem not only by Moldova but also by the neighbours Romania and Ukraine, as well as by the West. The military bases in Belarus and Ukraine, as mentioned, do play a strategic role in the defence of the Russian Federation, but as means of influence on the states themselves they play a rather limited role. Russia’s effort to maintain control over the Black Sea Fleet is pointless in military terms because the fleet itself has deteriorated so badly that it does not provide for Russian security. But, as one analyst writes, maintaining the fleet on Ukrainian territory achieves an important symbolic goal for Russia: maintaining the position that Russia still extends to the Crimea and that Ukraine is not completely distinct and separate.49 The policy means of using the Russian minorities in the western CIS countries is basically visible in Moldova, where the mostly Russianspeaking Slavic minority of Transnistria has received moral as well as financial and to some extent political support from Russia over the years. Here, however, it must be said that under Putin this support has partly been abandoned in the interests of an improvement of relations with Chisinau. Regarding Ukraine, on the other hand, Russia under Yeltsin never officially promoted any separatist tendencies in Crimea or among the large Russian-speaking population in eastern and southern Ukraine, even if certain politicians (most notably the mayor of Moscow, Yurii Luzhkov) did. The most important reason for this was probably a fear that the political chaos a strong Russian separatist movement in Ukraine could cause would in all probability spill over into Russian territory. Also, to support Russian separatism in Ukraine would entail official recognition of the separation of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples – a recognition few in the Russian political leadership were ready to make.50 Naturally, none of these factors were operative in the Moldovan case. Under Putin, no official change in policies towards the Russianspeaking minority has been noticed. In Ukraine the social–ethnic preconditions for an ethnic conflict, east against west, have decreased substantially during the past decade. According to the census of 2001, the proportion of the population that identify themselves as Russian had dropped to 17.3 per cent, compared to 22.1 per cent in the 1989 census. Ethnic Ukrainians now make up 77.8 per cent of the population and constitute a majority in all regions except for Crimea.51

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 149 In Belarus, finally, national self-awareness among the ethnic Belarusian majority has been on such a low level that using the ethnic Russian minority as means to influence Belarus would be practically impossible (and also meaningless, since Belarus has not opposed Russian influence anyway). The last of the means of influence analysed in this chapter is the dominant Russian position in the information space in the western CIS countries. The Russian state television channels ORT, RTR and NTV can be watched in all urban areas of the former Soviet Union. As the Russian channels are generally more professional than the national channels, they are largely preferred by the audiences in the western CIS countries, particularly in Belarus and Moldova.52 Russian newspapers, magazines and books are also widely available all around the CIS. In 2000, according to Ivan Drach, then chairman of the State Committee of Ukraine for Information Policy, Television and Radio, the third-largest commodity imported into Ukraine from Russia, after gas and oil, was books.53 Given these facts, it is still difficult to estimate the real influence of Russia over the western CIS countries, using its outstanding position in the information space – not least because the Kremlin officially supports the present leaderships in the countries and the information coming out of Russia to a large extent coincides with that provided by the national state information sources. In this respect, however, Belarus may be something of an exception when compared with Ukraine and Moldova. In Belarus, the lack of strong and influential opposition media has in some sense been compensated for by the Russian media. For many Belarusians, Russian television has become a window on the world as well as, most importantly, the source of more objective reporting about what is going on in their own country (although, obviously, this information reflects Moscow’s perspective and interests).54 On several occasions the Belarusian authorities have temporarily switched off the Russian television channels and replaced them with the only Belarusian channel. This happened particularly during the 2001 presidential election campaign, when Russian television, for instance, gave air time to candidates from the opposition. In the summer of 2003, after a Russian NTV journalist had been deported from Belarus because of a report from the funeral of dissident author Vasil Bykau, Lukashenko threatened to close NTV’s Belarusian bureau and called the mass media ‘weapons of mass destruction’ involved in a plot against Belarus.55 Such words and measures give an indication that at least the Belarusian presidential administration estimates the potential influence of the Russian media over the country as substantial. As has been shown in this chapter, the means of Russian influence over the western CIS states have not changed much with the transition from Yeltsin to Putin. In some ways all these means are in fact part of the heritage from decades of Soviet rule, or even before that, and cannot be changed overnight. But, even if the means are the same, the ways in which they have been used have, in some ways, changed under Putin. The fact

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that Putin, unlike Yeltsin, was not responsible at home for the dissolution of the Soviet Union has made him more flexible towards the members of the CIS. He can therefore temporarily afford to manage a politically tougher line in relations within the CIS, as has been done at different times towards Kuchma and Lukashenko, without losing prestige and support at home. Less important, but still worth mentioning, is the way the new result-oriented Russian pragmatism is shown: Putin apparently prefers formal meetings around a negotiating table instead of the informal meetings that dominated the late Yeltsin era. Russia’s influence on Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova will continue to be considerable. Despite the growing partnership with the EU and the growing importance of the EU in Russia’s foreign trade, Russia has still not declared any serious intention to join the West. Also, despite the enhanced partnership with NATO, Russia has not changed its fundamentally negative view of the alliance’s enlargement in Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, for economic as well as for strategic reasons, it will be important for Russia to continue to fill the ‘gap’ between itself and the West.

Notes 1 The proportions of ethnic Russians in their populations, according to the latest official censuses, were 11 per cent in Belarus (1999), 17.3 per cent in Ukraine (2001) and 13 per cent in Moldova (1989). 2 GUUAM consists of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Since 2002, Uzbekistan has only had observer status. 3 ‘The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, 28 June 2000 (http://fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/doctrine/econcept.htm, last accessed 3 August 2003). 4 Agata Wierzbowska-Miazga, The Republic of Belarus or the Belarussian Republic?, Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies, November 2001 (http://www.osw.waw.pl/english/earc/2001/0111/0111analiz.htm, last accessed 13 March 2002). 5 Steven J. Main, Belarus’ and Russia Military Cooperation 1991–2002, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, April 2002, p. 3. 6 Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike (SVOP), ‘O Rossiisko-Belorusskoi integratsii: Tezisy Soveta po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike’ [Russian–Belarusian military integration: Theses of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1 October 1999. 7 Belarusian Ministry of Defence, ‘Voennaia doktrina Respubliki Belarusi’ [Military doctrine of the Republic of Belarus], available on the Ministry of Defence website (http://www.mod.mil.by/dohtrina.html, last accessed 15 August 2003). 8 Pavel Podvig, ‘History and the current status of the Russian early-warning system’, Science and Global Security, 10, 2002, p. 32. 9 Agata Wierzbowska-Miazga and Rafal Sadowski, Belarus in the World Arms Market, Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies, 29 November 2001 (http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/epub/ekoment/2001/0111/011129b.htm, last accessed 11 December 2002). 10 Boris Volchonskii and Gennadii Sysoev, ‘Vladimir Putin otvernul’sia ot Alek-

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 151

11 12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29

sandra Lukashenko’ [Vladimir Putin turns his back on Aleksandr Lukashenko], Kommersant-Daily, 14 June 2002. Petr Akapov, Svetlana Popova and Natalia Ratiani, ‘Tovarishch, “net”!’ [No, comrade!], Izvestiia, 18 August 2002. Jan Maksymiuk, ‘Lukashenka subdued’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report, 4(47), 10 December 2002. Olga Mazaeva, ‘Belorusy pochuvstvovali sebia chechentsami’ [Belarusians feel like Chechens], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 10 September 2003. RFE/RL Newsline, 19 February 2004. RFE/RL Newsline, 9 June 2004. Arkady Moshes, ‘The evolution of relations within the Slavic Triangle: A view from Russia’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, p. 61. In 2000 and 2001, President Kuchma was accused of being involved in the murder of the Internet journalist Georgii Gongadze in September 2000. The accusations were based on tapes secretly recorded in Kuchma’s office by a member of his personal bodyguard. Olexiy Haran’ and Serhiy Tolstov, ‘The Slavic Triangle: Ukraine’s relations with Russia and Belarus: A Ukrainian view’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, p. 79. Hedenskog, Jakob, ‘The evolution of relations between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in the light of the NATO and EU enlargements’, in Moshes and Nygren, op. cit., p. 39. James Sherr, The Dismissal of Borys Tarasyuk, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, 5 October 2000, p. 3. UNIAN, 2 October 2000, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, SU/3960 D1. See http://www.strana.ru. Taras Kuzio, ‘Russia and Ukraine’s elections’, Jane’s Intelligence Digest, 18 January 2002. Andrew Wilson, ‘Ukraine’s 2002 elections: Less fraud, more virtuality’, East European Constitutional Review, 11(3), 2002 (http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr/ vol11num3/focus/wilson.html, last accessed 26 August 2003). Nigel Pemberton, ‘End note: Russia and the West compete over Ukraine’s foreign orientation in the post-Kuchma era’, RFE/RL Newsline, 29 March 2002. Hermann Clement, ‘Economic aspects of Ukrainian–Russian relations’, in Kurt R. Spillman, Andreas Wenger and Derek Muller (eds), Between Russia and the West: Foreign and Security Policy of Independent Ukraine, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, p. 281. By the year 2000, 24.12 per cent of Ukraine’s total exports by value went to Russia. Although this was in fact a substantial reduction from 43.4 per cent in 1995, Ukraine’s exports to Russia still amounted to almost five times more than its exports to any other country, and in 2000 they started to grow again. See WIIW Handbook of Statistics, Countries in Transition 2002, Vienna: Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, 2002, pp. 375, 378. Marta Dyczok, Ukraine: Movement Without Change, Change Without Movement, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, p. 127. Aleksandr Levchenko, ‘Ukraine in the Black Sea and Caspian regions’, in Kurt R. Spillman, Andreas Wenger and Derek Muller (eds), Between Russia and the West: Foreign and Security Policy of Independent Ukraine, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, p. 218.

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30 Arkady Moshes, Ukraine in Tomorrow’s Europe, Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2003, p. 22. 31 Moshes, ‘The evolution of relations within the Slavic Triangle’, p. 64. 32 Nezavisimaia gazeta, 7 February 2003. 33 Jakob Hedenskog, The Ukrainian Dilemma: Relations with Russia and the West in the Context of the 2004 Presidential Elections, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2004, p. 22. 34 Vitalii Kniazhanskii, ‘Velikii namiry’ [Great intentions], Den’, 20 August 2002. 35 The Ukrainian chairmanship of the CIS is remarkable in that Ukraine is formally not a member of the CIS, since the Verkhovna Rada has never ratified the 1994 CIS Charter. Ukraine has all the time described itself as an associate member of the CIS, although no such status officially exists. 36 Tetiana Sylina, ‘Tlinnyi vplyv skhodu’ [Nasty wind from the east], Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 8, 1–7 March 2003 (http://www.zn.kiev.ua/ie/print/37801, last accessed 10 March 2003). 37 Ella Akerman, ‘Implications of Russia’s foreign and security policy on Moldova’, 2002, p. 2, on the website of the Moldovan Institutul de Politici Publice (Institute for Public Policy) (http://www.ipp.md/publications/Implications_Russia_policy.doc, last accessed 6 August 2003). 38 RFE/RL Newsline, 26 February and 28 February 2001. 39 RFE/RL Newsline, 11 October 2001. 40 Akerman, ‘Implications of Russia’s foreign and security policy on Moldova’, p. 8. 41 Igor Plugatarev and Natalia Prikhodko, ‘Gazprom spasaet Voronina’ [Gazprom rescues Voronin], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 17 March 2003. 42 International Crisis Group (ICG), Moldova: No Quick Fix, ICG Europe Report no. 147, Chisinau/Brussels: ICG, 12 August 2003, pp. 8, 13. 43 RFE/RL Newsline, 24 November 2003. 44 Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and Politics of Culture, Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1999, p. 205. 45 M. A. Smith, Russian Foreign Policy 2000: The Near Abroad, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, December 2000, p. 7. 46 International Crisis Group (ICG), Moldova: No Quick Fix, p. 4. 47 ‘The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation.’ 48 Tor Bukkvoll and Anders Kjølberg, Liaisons Dangereuses: Political Relationships in the NATO, Russia and Ukraine Triangle, Kjeller, Norway: Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, 2001, p. 36. 49 Paul J. d’Anieri, ‘Constructivist theory and Ukrainian foreign policy’, in Jennifer D. P. Moroney, Taras Kuzio and Michail Molchanov (eds), Ukrainian Foreign and Security Policy: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002, p. 45. 50 Bukkvoll and Kjølberg, Liaisons Dangereuses, p. 37. 51 Tadeusz A. Olszanski, Results of the 2001 Census in Ukraine, Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies, 9 January 2003 (http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/epub/ ekoment/2003/01/030109.htm, last accessed 14 January 2003). 52 According to a survey in Belarus in 2001, for instance, less than 10 per cent preferred the only Belarusian channel (BT), while 50.8 per cent preferred ORT, 27.05 per cent RTR and 12.8 per cent NTV. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Advisory and Monitoring Group (AMG), ‘Background report: The media in Belarus’, 18 April 2001, p. 2. 53 Drach was interviewed by Ianina Sokolovskaia in ‘U nas pisatel’ obiazan imet’ epolety’ [Here the writer has to have epaulettes], Izvestiia, 13 April 2000. 54 Marek Karp, ‘State and media in Belarus’, 1997 (http://members.aol. com/ informacja/karp.html, last accessed 26 August 2003).

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 153 55 Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘Belarus: Russian television journalist expelled’, 30 June 2003 (http://www.cpj.org/news/2003/Belarus30june03 na.html); and East–West Development Group, ‘Belarus leader accuses Russian oligarchs of plotting’, 2003 (http://www.eastwestdevelopment.net/news/ 2003/ 07/03/prins/society01.shtml), both last accessed 22 September 2003.

Bibliography Books and journals d’Anieri, Paul J., ‘Constructivist theory and Ukrainian foreign policy’, in Jennifer D. P. Moroney, Taras Kuzio and Michail Molchanov (eds), Ukrainian Foreign and Security Policy: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002. Bukkvoll, Tor and Anders Kjølberg, Liaisons Dangereuses: Political Relationships in the NATO, Russia and Ukraine Triangle, Kjeller, Norway: Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, 2001. Clement, Hermann, ‘Economic aspects of Ukrainian–Russian relations’, in Kurt R. Spillman, Andreas Wenger and Derek Muller (eds), Between Russia and the West: Foreign and Security Policy of Independent Ukraine, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Dyczok, Marta, Ukraine: Movement Without Change, Change Without Movement, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. Haran’, Olexiy and Serhiy Tolstov, ‘The Slavic triangle: Ukraine’s relations with Russia and Belarus: A Ukrainian view’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002. Hedenskog, Jakob, ‘The evolution of relations between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in the light of the NATO and EU enlargements’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002. ——, The Ukrainian Dilemma: Relations with Russia and the West in the Context of the 2004 Presidential Elections, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2004. International Crisis Group (ICG), Moldova: No Quick Fix, ICG Europe Report no. 147, Chisinau/Brussels: ICG, 12 August 2003. King, Charles, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and Politics of Culture, Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1999. Kuzio, Taras, ‘Russia and Ukraine’s elections’, Jane’s Intelligence Digest, 18 January 2002. Levchenko, Aleksandr, ‘Ukraine in the Black Sea and Caspian regions’, in Kurt R. Spillmann, Andreas Wenger and Derek Muller (eds), Between Russia and the West: Foreign and Security Policy of Independent Ukraine, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Main, Steven J., Belarus’ and Russia Military Cooperation 1991–2002, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, April 2002. Maksymiuk, Jan, ‘Lukashenka subdued’, Radio Free Europe/Radio liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report, 4(47), 10 December 2002.

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Moshes, Arkady, ‘The evolution of relations within the Slavic Triangle: A view from Russia’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, p. 61. ——, Ukraine in Tomorrow’s Europe, Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2003. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Advisory and Monitoring Group (AMG), ‘Background report: The media in Belarus’, 18 April 2001. Pemberton, Nigel, ‘End note: Russia and the West compete over Ukraine’s foreign orientation in the post-Kuchma era’, RFE/RL Newsline, 29 March 2002. Podvig, Pavel, ‘History and the current status of the Russian early-warning system’, Science and Global Security, 10, 2002. Sherr, James, The Dismissal of Borys Tarasyuk, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, 5 October 2000. Smith, M. A., Russian Foreign Policy 2000: The Near Abroad, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, December 2000. Spillmann, Kurt R., Andreas Wenger and Derek Muller (eds), Between Russia and the West: Foreign and Security Policy of Independent Ukraine, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, WIIW Handbook of Statistics, Countries in Transition 2002, Vienna: Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, 2002.

Media and Internet Akapov, Petr, Svetlana Popova and Natalia Ratiani, ‘Tovarishch, “net”!’ [No, comrade!], Izvestiia, 18 August 2002. Akerman, Ella, ‘Implications of Russia’s foreign and security policy on Moldova’, 2002, p. 2, on the website of the Moldovan Institutul de Politic Publice (Institute for Public Policy) (http://www.ipp.md/publications/Implications_Russia_policy. doc, last accessed 6 August 2003). Belarusian Ministry of Defence, ‘Voennaia Doktrina Respubliki Belarusi’ [Military doctrine of the Republic of Belarus], Belarusian Ministry of Defence website (http://www.mod.mil.by/dohtrina.html, last accessed 15 August 2003). Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘Belarus: Russian television journalist expelled’, 30 June 2003 (http://www.cpj.org/news/2003/Belarus30june03 na.html). ‘The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation’, 28 June 2000 (http://fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/doctrine/econcept.htm, last accessed on 3 August 2003). East–West Development Group, ‘Belarus leader accuses Russian oligarchs of plotting’, 2003 (http://www.eastwestdevelopment.net/news/2003/07/03/prins/society 01.shtml). Karp, Marek, ‘State and media in Belarus’, 1997 (http://members. aol.com/informacja/karp.html, last accessed 26 August 2003). Kniazhanskii, Vitalii, ‘Velikii namiry’ [Great intentions], Den’, 20 August 2002. Mazaeva, Olga, ‘Belorusy pochuvstvovali sebia chechentsami’ [Belarusians feel like Chechens], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 10 September 2003. Nezavisimaia gazeta, 7 February 2003.

Policy towards Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova 155 Olszanski, Tadeusz A., Results of the 2001 Census in Ukraine, Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies, 9 January 2003 (http://www.osw. waw.pl/en/epub/ekoment/ 2003/01/030109. htm, last accessed 14 January 2003). Plugatarev, Igor and Natalia Prikhodko, ‘Gazprom spasaet Voronina’ [Gazprom rescues Voronin], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 17 March 2003. RFE/RL Newsline, 26 and 28 February, 11 October 2001, 24 November 2003, 19 February 2004. Sokolovskaia, Ianina, ‘U nas pisatel’ obiazan imet’ epolety’ [Here the writer has to have epaulettes], Izvestiia, 13 April 2000. Sovet po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike (SVOP), ‘O Rossiisko-Belorusskoi integratsii: Tezisy Soveta po vneshnei i oboronnoi politike’ [Russian–Belarusian integration: Theses of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1 October 1999. Sylina, Tetiana, ‘Tlinnyi vplyv skhodu’ [Nasty wind from the east], Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 8, 1–7 March 2003 (http://www.zn.kiev.ua/ie/print/ 37801, last accessed 10 March 2003). UNIAN, 2 October 2000, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, SU/3960 D1. Volchonskii, Boris and Gennadii Sysoev, ‘Vladimir Putin otvernul’sia ot Aleksandra Lukashenko’ [Vladimir Putin turns his back on Aleksandr Lukashenko], Kommersant-Daily, 14 June 2002. Wierzbowska-Miazga, Agata, The Republic of Belarus or the Belarussian Republic?, Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies, November 2001 (http://www.osw. waw.pl/english/earc/2001/0111/0111analiz.htm, last accessed 13 March 2002). —— and Rafal Sadowski, Belarus in the World Arms Market, Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies, 29 November 2001 (http://www.osw. waw.pl/en/epub/ekoment/ 2001/0111/011129b.htm, last accessed 11 December 2002). Wilson, Andrew, ‘Ukraine’s 2002 elections: Less fraud, more virtuality’, East European Constitutional Review, 11(3), 2002 (http://www.law. nyu.edu/eecr/ vol11num3/focus/wilson.html, last accessed 26 August 2003).

7

Russia’s relations with Georgia under Putin The impact of 11 September Bertil Nygren

Introduction The South Caucasus is by far the most unstable and insecure part of Russia’s immediate neighbourhood, and Georgia is the most unstable of the ‘weak states’ of the region. Conflicts in the Caucasus abound, with both pre-Soviet and Soviet-created conflicts. The Caucasus matches Dmitri Trenin’s definition of a buffer state in his scheme of ‘border models’, and it was annexed largely as a buffer against Turkey and Persia in the early nineteenth century.1 The South Caucasus belongs to the middle layer of territories around Russia, the outer layer of which is Turkey and Iran, and the inner layer Chechnya, North Ossetia and Dagestan. This chapter deals with the most threat-ridden part of the Caucasian regional security complex, with Russia’s perforated borders with Georgia, and with its reluctance to leave its military bases in Georgia. The emphasis is on Russia’s policy towards Georgia since Vladimir Putin was elected president in March 2000. The more analytical focus of the chapter is on Russia’s policies towards Georgia in the aftermath of Putin’s 11 September 2001 foreign policy volte-face vis-à-vis the United States in siding with the USA in the ‘war against terror’, and on the ‘new wars’ phenomena (in the sense of Mary Kaldor); that is, the type of war that occurred in Chechnya and in the many other hot spots in the South Caucasus (e.g., NagornoKarabakh in Azerbaijan and Abkhazia in Georgia).2 The underlying question is whether or not Russia is trying to reassert itself in the Caucasus and to take greater control of security developments in the area, and, if so, whether or not military means are really considered an effective alternative to the economic means Putin seems to be using elsewhere in the former Soviet space.3 Putin’s foreign policies in the South Caucasus are part of his more general foreign policy approach. His coming to power brought not only an activation and revitalization of Russian foreign policy (as compared to the late Yeltsin era) but also an ‘economization’ of Russia’s international behaviour – a much stronger focus on foreign economic policy and geoeconomics than on foreign security policy and geopolitics. This is perhaps

Russia’s relations with Georgia 157 most evident in Putin’s attempt to revitalize relations with Europe and Asia in 2000 and 2001, and after 11 September in the warming-up of relations with the United States after two years during which they had been frozen (since the spring of 1999).4 A corresponding revitalization has also taken place with respect to Russia’s ‘near abroad’, where the Yeltsin-era and ‘Soviet-like’ self-assertion has been exchanged for a concerted attempt to resolve some of the remaining issues from the 1991 dissolution of the USSR. In certain respects this can be seen in the context of economic (re)integration and/or (re)imperialization of the former Soviet space. This change is also evident in the Caucasus, and most evident in Putin’s immediate policy changes towards Azerbaijan in 2000 (which changed the relationship quite substantially without impairing Russia’s friendly relations with Armenia) and with his renewed attempts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The background of this policy change is not altogether altruistic, of course; the ‘Great Game’ is looming in the background – the future oil production in and transport of oil from and through the Caspian Sea area are at stake. Russia and Georgia are players in this game, as is the United States.5 Putin’s policies towards Georgia have been much more ambivalent than his policies towards Azerbaijan and Armenia. In fact, the relationship with Georgia is the one Russian bilateral relationship that has seriously deteriorated since Putin came to power, and that has deteriorated even further since 11 September. The second Chechnya war, which started in the autumn of 1999, and its spillover effects (literally and figuratively) into Georgia are partly to blame for this deterioration. Although the more serious conflict between Russia and Georgia largely developed only after 11 September, the conflict issues as such were inherited from the Yeltsin presidency – in particular (a) the issue of the Russian military bases in Georgia, (b) the status of Abkhazia, and (c) the Chechnya wars. In addition, the spectre of a more substantial US military involvement in Georgia after 11 September has further fanned the flames. In fact, in its policies towards Georgia – at least, in its verbal assaults – Russia did come closer to becoming engaged in an international war than it had been at any point since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia seemed to be prepared actually to use military force in the Georgian Pankisi Gorge, and for this reason alone its policies deserve our attention. But Russia’s policies also deserve our attention because they reveal an attempt by Russia to show its teeth in a way that is comparable to what the USA did in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. At least on the surface, with its attempts to hunt down Chechen warriors on the Georgian side of the Russian–Georgian border, Russia tried to copy the US strategy of ‘smoking out international terrorists’ (the Taliban in Afghanistan). More generally, in the Russian view, 11 September and the ensuing ‘war on terror’ were a confirmation that the ‘old’ world had now joined Russia in the fight against this new type of enemy.6

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The main thrust of the argument here is thus that 11 September made it logically possible for Russia, as an ally in the same war, also to use force – in this instance in a neighbouring country – and that 11 September for this reason had a catalysing effect on Russia’s relations with other parts of the post-Soviet space, especially its relations with Central Asia and the narrower Caucasian regional security complex. The 11 September volte-face vis-à-vis the United States thus constituted a turning point in Russian foreign policy towards its closest neighbours, as well as towards the USA; Russia finally seemed to have a new freedom of action in its relations with the South Caucasus.7 The story below may seem rather pessimistic in tone, but there are positive aspects – in the sense that many things have not happened that could have happened. There have not been any clashes between the regular armed forces of the two countries; Georgia’s membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has not been cut short; Russian peacekeepers have not left Abkhazia or allowed it to reopen the civil war; the Chechen warriors have not found permanent shelter in the Pankisi Gorge; the efforts of Putin and former president Eduard Shevardnadze to conclude a new friendship treaty have not been ended; and the new Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, does seem to insist on bringing order to the conflict-ridden state. The analysis below concentrates on ‘hard’ security issues; that is, issues directly related to the military and defence sphere. Doing so means playing down some not-so-hard issues, such as the visa regime imposed on Georgian citizens wishing to enter Russia, oil pipelines and the transport of oil. In addition, some of the issues dealt with here have been obvious in South Ossetia (the other hot spot inside Georgia where Russia is heavily involved) as well, but they are secondary to the issues dealt with here and are not included in this analysis. There is also a focus on Russian (rather than Georgian) foreign policy, and a focus rather on Putin as president than on his government.8 Three themes prevail: the general bilateral relationship, the Russian military bases and Russian peacekeeping forces in Georgia, and the Chechen warriors operating from Georgia.

The Yeltsin inheritance and Putin’s early policies towards Georgia: from bad to worse? The general story of the relationship between Russia and Georgia is as follows. Georgia joined the CIS reluctantly in the autumn of 1993 at a moment when its position and that of President Shevardnadze were extremely weak. Forces of the breakaway Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia had attacked the regular Georgian forces and driven them out of Abkhazia, and the forces of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the ousted president, had re-entered western Georgia to overthrow Shevardnadze. At this dangerous moment, Shevardnadze asked Russia for assistance. Russian forces

Russia’s relations with Georgia 159 finally expelled Gamsakhurdia and have remained a stabilizing force in Abkhazia since (mostly supporting the Abkhazian separatist government). In February 1994, Russia and Georgia signed a Friendship Treaty which guaranteed Georgia’s territorial integrity. The treaty provided for extensive political, military and economic cooperation, but left the constitutional framework for relations between Georgia and Abkhazia open. From then on, President Shevardnadze was dependent on Russia. He had to fight a strong domestic opposition and, despite frequent proposals in the Georgian parliament that Georgia should leave the CIS and free itself of Russian influence (these proposals have never been passed by a majority), he managed to balance between the forces opposed to Russia and pro-Russia forces. Georgia’s relations with the CIS have remained tense since Putin became president (as is seen, for example, in its refusal to sign several documents prepared for the CIS meeting in Moscow in September 2001). Russia’s verbal policies towards Georgia have generally been consistent; for example, with respect to Abkhazia, Russian political rhetoric continued all through the Yeltsin era to the effect that Georgia’s territorial integrity should be guaranteed and Abkhazia should be denied formal independence. At the ‘implementation level’, however, or the level of on-the-spot decision-making, Russian support for Abkhazia’s independence has been obvious ever since the civil war in 1992 and 1993. Much the same goes for the other conflict issues dealt with here, including the issue of the Russian military bases and military forces in Georgia, Russia’s handling of its peacekeeping role, and, from the beginning of the first Chechnya war, the issue of Chechens in Georgia.9 The most positive feature in the relationship since Putin became president in March 2000 has been the reopened discussions on a new friendship treaty to supersede the February 1994 treaty (which had never been ratified by the Georgian parliament). In April 2001, at a time when relations with Azerbaijan had been greatly improved, Putin announced that there would be a new bilateral friendship treaty with Georgia, and by late summer a framework treaty was just about to be signed; but the tensions that followed from developments in Abkhazia, Chechnya and the Georgian Pankisi Gorge could not but affect the possibility of its being finalized. Even worse, the post-11 September international anti-terrorist struggle provided fresh ammunition for old arguments among the many parties involved in conflict on Georgia’s territory. Rather than uniting Russia and Georgia in a common struggle against terrorism, all sides have rather used ‘the other’s’ use of or support for terrorism to back up their own standpoints.10 The idea of a new friendship treaty has not died: talks did actually continue even during periods of high tension in the spring and summer of 2002, and they were only put on ice during the most tense period in the autumn of 2002. However, despite two summit meetings between Putin and Shevardnadze in early 2003, nothing came of the talks. With the advent of the new political leadership in Georgia after the fall of

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Shevardnadze in November 2003, a new phase in the relationship between Russia and Georgia may well have opened. In any event, during his state visit to Moscow in February 2004, the new Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, suggested that the bad state of the relationship was partly the fault of the previous Georgian leadership, and both presidents suggested that better relations were in the making, which indeed seems to be the case in early summer 2004. The conflict in Ajaria in late spring 2004 put this new positive Russian–Georgian relationship to the test. The Ajarian leader, Aslan Abashidze, had ruled the fairly autonomous Ajarian republic since 1991 as his own feudal estate (e.g., with his own, rather than Georgian, state customs control) and, when the new Georgian president threatened to use force to subjugate the defiant Abashidze, Putin hesitated to support the regional head (as he had done in Abkhazia). The situation deteriorated when Ajarian demonstrators took to the streets and a Georgian general took the side of Abashidze instead of obeying the Georgian president. A Georgian ultimatum to Abashidze to step down was followed by military exercises on the internal border to Ajaria and by bridges being blown up by troops loyal to Abashidze. At this juncture, Putin sent his national security adviser (and former foreign minister Igor Ivanov) to persuade Abashidze to resign and to offer him a safe haven in Moscow – an offer that was accepted. This Russian assistance in resolving a situation that was very dangerous for the Georgian statehood did not pass unnoticed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the other two breakaway regions threatening Georgia’s statehood, and by early summer 2004 the more than decadelong decay of the Georgian state might have been broken with Putin’s assistance. So much for the positive signs: the rest is a much sadder story.

The Russian military bases in Georgia: leave and/or continue peacekeeping? In May 1992, Russian minister of defence Pavel Grachev signed an agreement for the transfer of the former Soviet military bases, arms depots and military equipment to Georgia. Later, however, Russia linked this agreement to the resolution of the Abkhazia conflict and to Georgia joining the CIS (which it did in late 1993). The issue of the remaining Russian military troops and bases on Georgian territory has continued to mar Russian–Georgian relations since then. A follow-up to the 1994 Friendship Treaty signed by Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Shevardnadze in September 1995 suggested that the Russian military should keep troops and maintain bases in Akhalkalaki and Vaziani in the part of Georgia that is still under the control of the central authorities, and at Batumi in Ajaria and at Gudauta in Abkhazia, for a period of 25 years. It was, however, assumed (at least in Georgia) that the agreement was

Russia’s relations with Georgia 161 contingent on a resolution to the Abkhazian problem. This follow-up agreement was never ratified by the Georgian parliament.11 Georgian concern about the issue of the Russian bases has continued over the years, but became particularly acute in 1998: Russia was accused in February of that year of military involvement in an attempted assassination of President Shevardnadze, in May of military involvement in forcing about 30,000 returning Georgian refugees from Abkhazia to flee once again to Georgia, and in October of involvement in an attempted coup d’état. However, in November 1999, at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Istanbul, Russia suddenly conceded demands that it close the four remaining Russian military bases in Georgia – two in the immediate future (Vaziani and Gudauta, to be closed by 1 July 2001), and the other two (Akhalkalaki and Batumi) at a later date, to be agreed in negotiations. The issue of the Russian military bases was thus (nominally) solved by late 1999, before Putin became president. But it was to prove that much more was needed than just a general agreement, since Putin obviously then had second thoughts about leaving the bases in Georgia.12 Putin’s rethinking on the issue suggested that the base in Gudauta was to be transformed into a training centre for the Russian (CIS) peacekeeping force deployed in Abkhazia. During several rounds of negotiations in the autumn of 2000, Shevardnadze at first seemed willing to agree to this, but the Abkhazian government instead requested that the weapons at the base be turned over to Abkhazian forces. A new situation developed in the summer of 2001, when the withdrawal of troops from the Gudauta base was blockaded by local Abkhazians and Russians who wanted Russia to keep the base. Because of the Abkhazian resistance, the Russian troops failed to leave the base by the agreed deadline of 1 July 2001. A diplomatic crisis seemed inevitable: each side accused the other of not complying with the withdrawal deadline (of ‘not withdrawing’ and of ‘not ensuring the safe withdrawal’, as their respective arguments ran). After further talks, a compromise was reached and Georgia allowed Russia to leave some 100 troops to guard the equipment at the base. The base in Vaziani (near Tbilisi) was emptied of weaponry ahead of time and the Russian troops left it in June 2001, turning it over to the Georgian military authorities. There was, however, still no agreement on a withdrawal from the other two bases at Akhalkalaki and Batumi: Russia wanted to keep them for another 15 years, while Georgia offered only a three-year extension. In May 2001, new high-level discussions on the closure of the remaining two Russian bases followed, and the USA offered to contribute financially to the costs involved. While the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September had no direct bearing on the issue of the Russian military bases, it is equally evident that they influenced Putin’s doubts on the wisdom of leaving Georgia. The very timing of Putin’s second thoughts on leaving the bases suggests that he was

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already listening to the demands of his own military advisers and that he tried to use the issue as a bargaining chip in other conflict areas of the relationship with Georgia. To the extent that 11 September did have an influence on the base issue, it was more as a strategy of denial (of ‘not letting the United States in’) than anything else. The Russian military convinced Putin that leaving Georgia would mean accepting the United States into the Caucasus: it would be more difficult for the United States to establish a military presence in Georgia while Russian bases were still in operation. Putin seemed not to hold Shevardnadze in high esteem, which in itself might have influenced Russia’s policy choices on practical issues; in any event, Shevardnadze was an obvious ‘weak card’ in Georgia, and Russia may have been hoping for his dismissal.13 Structural factors (e.g., the changing strategic, political and economic landscape in and around the Caucasus) certainly also influenced Russia’s reconsiderations. Whatever the reason, the base issue has been deadlocked since the summer of 2001, and it remains to be seen whether Russia will withdraw from the remaining three bases; the US military engagement in Georgia in 2003 has certainly not helped the resolution of the base issue.14 In late autumn 2003 and in spring 2004 there were several indications that Russia might withdraw at an earlier date, especially if the USA were to cover part of the costs of the withdrawal, which it had promised to do. Russian peacekeeping in Abkhazia (under the aegis of the CIS since 1994) has been another bone of contention in the Russian–Georgian relationship ever since the Abkhazian civil war of 1992–3. The Russian forces in Georgia used (in Dov Lynch’s words) a ‘coercive strategy’ in exploiting the civil war to Russia’s own ends, in order to force Georgia to accede to Russian security demands (that Georgia should join the CIS). Russian troops and aircraft took part in the civil war, probably on local initiative.15 After the Georgian concessions, Russia changed its policy vis-à-vis Abkhazia, and from October 1993 to early 1997 Russia forced Abkhazia to compromise with Georgia. In 1997, then Russian foreign minister Yevgenii Primakov organized direct negotiations between Abkhazia and Georgia. The Abkhazians obstructed negotiations, and illegal Georgian guerrillas calling themselves the Forest Brotherhood conducted sabotage activities inside Abkhazia. A ceasefire agreement between Georgia and Abkhazia on ending hostilities was drafted in the autumn of 1998, but never signed. The CIS peacekeeping mandate has been renewed at sixmonthly intervals. This was the situation Putin inherited. The peacekeeping issue became even more contentious in the early Putin period after 15 Abkhazian policemen were killed, it was presumed by Georgian Forest Brotherhood fighters, in 2000, and the OSCE suggested that the United Nations should become involved in resolving the Abkhazian conflict. Russia did not want competition, however, and stalled the UN Security Council’s treatment of the Abkhazian problem both in the autumn of 2000 and in the spring of 2001. Russia refused to accept that

Russia’s relations with Georgia 163 UN forces should replace its own (CIS) peacekeeping forces.16 Talks on a UN peacekeeping engagement were never resumed. From 11 September onward, the issue of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia was closely intertwined with the resumption of fighting between the Forest Brotherhood and Abkhazian forces. The participation of Chechen fighters in the fighting in Abkhazia on the side of the Georgian irregulars blurred the issue still further. The situation became tense, and in the autumn of 2001 the Georgian parliament asked the Russian peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia to leave. Shevardnadze threatened that Georgia would resort to war in order to keep Abkhazia inside Georgia. He wanted a multilateral force to replace the Russian peacekeepers. After a UN helicopter was shot down in Abkhazia, however, UN observers withdrew in late October 2001, and the situation deteriorated further when there was renewed fighting between Georgian irregulars and Abkhazian forces in the Kodori Gorge – a part of Abkhazia close to the border with Russia which was only partly controlled by Abkhazian forces. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan called on the Abkhazians and Georgians to resume talks and criticized Georgia for not restraining the Georgian guerrilla fighters’ activities in Abkhazia. There were other problems as well in the Kodori Gorge in the autumn of 2001. In October, new troop deployments there by Georgia caused a conflict with Abkhazia and Russia. Georgia refused to withdraw its troops, despite UN demands. Official talks on the withdrawal of the troops followed in February 2002, and they were later replaced by some 900 Georgian border guards. This was not the end of the story, however. When the Georgian troops had been withdrawn, some 200 Russian peacekeeping troops set up control posts, and Georgia interpreted this as provocation. After official UN criticism, Russia withdrew these posts.17 In August 2002, when the focus of the Russian–Georgian conflict had moved to the Pankisi Gorge, the Russian peacekeeping force wanted to open a permanent post in the upper reaches of the Kodori Gorge (to prevent Chechen fighters from entering Russia via Kodori). Georgia immediately claimed that ‘we are on the verge of large-scale military operations’.18 Obviously, there was more than peacekeeping and border control issues at stake here. By the end of 2001, the general Abkhazian situation seemed somewhat defused. The UN had concluded that the Russian peacekeepers could not be withdrawn from Abkhazia, and in December 2001, in a major concession to Russia, Shevardnadze accepted that the CIS peacekeeping force should remain in Abkhazia as long as necessary (thus defying the Georgian parliament’s demand that they be withdrawn immediately).19 In March, Shevardnadze and Putin agreed that the mandate of the Russian peacekeeping force should include police duties as well, and also agreed to station permanent CIS peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia (the mandate would be automatically renewed unless cancelled and did not need renewed extensions every six months).

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In conclusion, there is only one tangible result of the many years of negotiations on the Russian military bases in Georgia – the completed withdrawal from the Vaziani base and the agreed but not completed withdrawal from Gudauta in Abkhazia. The withdrawal from the two other Russian bases in Georgia has not been conclusively agreed yet and, although the problem today is nominally one of timing only, the withdrawal issue may very well change in nature in the future, especially since the positive summit meeting between Putin and Saakashvili in February 2004 and the general improvement of relations under the new Georgian regime. With respect to Russian peacekeeping in Abkhazia, the dust from the turmoil after 11 September has not yet settled, and it is doubtful if the present Russian and Georgian leaderships are really interested in anything but a continuation of Russian peacekeeping.

A military return to fight Chechen warriors in the Pankisi Gorge and Kodori Gorge? Although Putin himself is only partly to blame, it is indisputable that the relationship between Russia and Georgia has continued to deteriorate since he came to power, and especially since 11 September. One of the major reasons is the spillover effects of the second Chechnya war into Georgia and the way this war has been used by the parties. To Russia, the general problem has been the Chechen warriors hiding out among the Chechen refugees in the Pankisi Gorge in northern Georgia, close to Georgia’s border with Chechnya (Russia). To Georgia, the problem has been to withstand Russia’s demands to take unilateral action. There has been a population of ethnic Chechens – the Kists – in the Pankisi Gorge since the early nineteenth century. The gorge is not really a valley, but it is the only habitable place along the Georgian–Chechen border, situated about 50 km from Chechnya, and reachable through several mountain passes into Chechnya. The border itself is 82 km long. Chechnya had figured seriously in relations between Russia and Georgia on at least four occasions before the outbreak of the second Chechnya war: first, when the first Georgian president, Gamsakhurdia, after he was ousted in 1992, used Chechnya as a safe haven and then launched an attempt to regain power in Georgia in 1993; second, when the Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev and his men sided with Abkhazian forces against the Georgian military forces during the civil war; third, during the first Chechnya war from 1994 to 1996 when Georgia officially supported the Russian effort to suppress the separatist Chechen warriors; and, fourth, when the Chechen chief of staff, Aslan Maskhadov, went to Tbilisi in 1997 and met Shevardnadze in an attempt to revive good relations, to Russia’s dismay. In 1999, at the start of the second Chechnya war, the Kists welcomed Chechen refugees. Altogether some 7,000 refugees gathered in the Pankisi

Russia’s relations with Georgia 165 Gorge, as well as 1,500 Chechen fighters. The gorge was soon riddled with organized crime, quite apart from the presence of the Chechen fighters.20 As soon as the second Chechnya war began in August 1999 (after the Chechen intrusions into Dagestan), Russia issued warnings to Georgia and Azerbaijan not to support the Chechen fighters or allow them to transit through Azerbaijan or Georgia to Chechnya.21 The typical Russian catalogue of arguments from the very outset of the second Chechnya war includes the accusation that Georgia has allowed Chechen warriors safe havens for recuperation and ‘springboards’ for military action into Chechnya in the Pankisi Gorge, and has allowed some 20 Chechen military bases there. Shevardnadze at times (the first being in summer 2000) admitted that there were indeed Chechen fighters among the Chechen refugees and that some had received medical treatment. He tried to calm the situation, mainly out of fear that the Russian military would actually try to draw Georgia into the Chechnya war. Officially, Georgia has generally denied all accusations of involvement. The Russian military and the Russian media have frequently levied accusations that Georgia was assisting the Chechen warriors and harbouring some 1,500 Arab mercenaries and 200 Taliban in the Pankisi Gorge. Several local events at the beginning of the second Chechnya war undoubtedly emanated from the fact that Chechen warriors were indeed operating from Georgian territory. Air incursions were among the most common Russian military responses from early on: combat helicopters entered Georgian airspace twice in the autumn of 1999 and again in early 2000. Georgia’s protests at such intrusions were of course strong, but Russia officially denied responsibility. There was never any question as to whether or not there were Chechen refugees in the Pankisi Gorge, and Russia used the repatriation issue as an example of Georgia’s inability to guard its borders. In 2000 there were some obvious border crossings by Chechen fighters, and the Russian military pressed for permission to carry out ‘mopping-up operations’ in the Pankisi Gorge, but Georgia obviously feared that Russian troops would stay on there or that Georgia itself would be drawn into the Chechnya war. In early 2001, Georgia tried to defuse the tense situation in several ways – first, by re-registering the 7,000 Chechen refugees in the Pankisi Gorge (in order to identify Chechen warriors), and second by increasing the number of border posts along the Georgian–Chechen border. Furthermore, several top-level official meetings on the issue of the Chechens in the Pankisi Gorge took place and kept the bilateral Russian–Georgian dialogue alive. In the summer of 2001, however, Russian accusations of Georgian support to the Chechen warriors intensified once again, together with accusations of links between foreign Islamic organizations and the Wahhabis in the Russian republics of the North Caucasus. In this way, the ‘international terrorism’ dimension was established long before 11 September.

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In the immediate post-11 September environment, Georgia seemed to fear direct Russian military action against the Chechen fighters on Georgian territory, and it also seemed that the United States would allow it. Such action was indeed being demanded by several Russian parliamentarians. The Russian government officially linked the terrorist attacks in the United States with actions by Chechen militants: they were ‘links in one chain’. Arab mercenaries were involved in Chechnya (as elsewhere), it was argued, and therefore coordination with the United States in the fight against ‘international terrorism’ was needed. Putin himself openly linked developments in Chechnya with international terrorism: ‘The events in Chechnya cannot be considered outside of the context of the struggle with international terrorism’, he said. When Russia officially thanked the United States for its ‘new stand’ on Chechnya – for seeing the Chechen fighters as terrorists – Georgia had all the more reason to fear action by Russia.22 In December 2001, Russia’s demands on Georgia became more ominous when it claimed that the Chechen problem posed ‘an acute threat to the national security of Russia’, that the Pankisi Gorge was ‘practically occupied’ by Chechens, and that Georgia’s inaction constituted ‘an unfriendly act’ against Russia.23 Despite some Georgian concessions in early 2002, and perhaps because the US involvement in the Pankisi Gorge situation was beginning to be strongly felt (the US embassy in Georgia had announced that several dozen escaped mujahedin from Afghanistan had settled in the Pankisi Gorge, and that Osama bin Laden maintained contact with Chechen field commander Khattab), Russia was encouraged to press for more. Georgia was obviously shaken by the US position, and the Russian verbal assault continued. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov claimed that the Pankisi Gorge had become a ‘stronghold of . . . international terrorists’, and Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov suggested that Georgia was unable to control the Pankisi Gorge on its own.24 Russia had also been encouraged by another development out of its own control. When Chechen fighters – who were not at all ideologically involved in the Abkhaz conflict – entered Abkhazia in September 2001 to help the Forest Brotherhood fighters, their aim was to engage the Russians in order to alleviate Russia’s military pressure on Chechnya. Some 450 of them entered Abkhazia’s Kodori Gorge, which is an enclave within Abkhazia adjacent to the border with the Russian Republic of KarachaevoCherkessia and is controlled largely by Georgia, while several hundred more gathered on the Georgian side of the border with Abkhazia. Abkhazia urged that UN patrols be resumed, and Russia urged Georgia to prevent the guerrilla operations. The rhetoric increased on both the Russian and Georgian sides. Russia threatened to send troops to the entire length of the Russian–Georgian border and officially called on Georgia to withdraw its army units from the Kodori Gorge in order to help ease the tensions created by the incursion of Georgian and Chechen fighters. This

Russia’s relations with Georgia 167 was evidently a problem for the Georgian government as well: it had no real control over the Georgian guerrillas and had been trying desperately to stay out of the Chechnya war.25 Russia did not use only verbal guns. It soon imitated the US air strikes on foreign territory in the hunt for terrorists. Just after 11 September, Russian air intrusions and bombings by unmarked aircraft and helicopters began in the Kodori Gorge. Georgia considered this ‘large-scale provocation’, and Shevardnadze threatened a severe response (which the Georgian defence minister clarified as shooting down the intruders). When the intrusions continued, Georgia sent official protest notes. Further air raids followed in early 2002, and they too were characterized as ‘open aggression against a sovereign neighbour state’. The Russian military denied responsibility.26 These intrusions and bombings had no direct link to 11 September, but it is quite likely that they were inspired by the US air raids in Afghanistan. In 2002, the stakes were to increase even further. In early 2002, the Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelaev again entered Abkhazia, which (according to Russia) he could not have done without the assistance of the Georgian military and security agencies. Russia characterized the situation in the Kodori Gorge as ‘explosive’ because of the presence of Georgian troops and Chechen warriors. A hostage crisis in January, when the Georgian Forest Brotherhood seized four members of the Russian peacekeeping force, resulted in immediate emergency talks between Georgian, UN and Russian representatives. Russia stepped up its accusations that Georgia was assisting Gelaev and his warriors, despite UN demands that they be disarmed. Fierce accusations and counter-accusations were exchanged among the many parties to the conflict.27 In February and March 2002, Russia’s relations with the United States over Georgia began to change. A US initiative to train and equip a Georgian battalion for security operations (involving some 150 instructors) was seen by some top Russian officials as ‘further aggravating the situation in the region’. Although Putin seemed to take a different view, arguing that Georgia, like the Central Asian states, should allow US troops on its territory and that a US military presence in Georgia was ‘no tragedy’, the issue was controversial in Russia. Or, as Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov put it: ‘The Caucasus is an area of special importance as far as Russian national interests are concerned, so any activities in the region cannot pass unnoticed by Russia.’28 US President George W. Bush offered some verbal support to Russia in confirming that ‘terrorists working closely with AlQaida operate in the Pankisi Gorge near the Russian border’. And, after talks with US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov disclosed that ‘the connection between the militants who trained on the territory of Afghanistan and those who are still fighting in Chechnya is unquestionable’, claiming that those fighters were planning new terrorist attacks: ‘the closest co-operation’ between Russia and the

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USA was necessary to enable Georgia to mount a successful operation against them.29 In this author’s view, the uncertainty about what the final position of the United States would be on how to treat the Chechen warriors in the Pankisi Gorge (not to mention what its position would be if there were an actual showdown between Russia and Georgia over the issue) in fact helped to defuse the Pankisi Gorge crisis for some time in the spring of 2002. However, it also showed the conflict between the assessments of the Russian presidential administration and those of the military. The issue was by no means dead, and the USA’s verbal support did not really help Russia much in the end. In early summer, some other developments with respect to the Chechen warriors in Georgia (for example, Georgia’s official admissions that Chechen rebels were indeed operating in Georgia30) also seemed to have eased the situation. In the late spring of 2002, renewed Russian air incursions into the Pankisi Gorge poisoned the relationship once more, and fresh accusations were made that one particularly wanted Chechen leader, Rappani Khalilov, had gone into hiding in Georgia. Chechen claims that warriors were indeed re-entering Chechnya from Georgia also contributed to increase the tension.31 Then the May 2002 summit between presidents Bush and Putin seemed to have defused the issue of the US instructors in Georgia for some time, and when a group of Russian and Georgian experts was set up to address all conflict issues (including the Pankisi Gorge problem) the situation seemed to calm down once again. In fact, during the summer of 2002, a rather persistent theme developed on the Russian side, possibly raised in the earlier Russian–US talks – that of joint Russian–Georgian military operations in the Pankisi Gorge. This was not easily accepted in Georgia, of course, and Shevardnadze regarded the statement as offensive: he repeated that Georgia was capable of establishing order in the Pankisi Gorge without Russian assistance. After several meetings with Putin’s envoy (the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Rushailo), it was agreed that there would be no joint military operations. The month of August 2002 was to be the most dangerous month in the relationship. New fighting erupted along the Chechen–Georgian border when Chechen warriors again crossed into and out of Chechnya, and Russian troops inflicted severe damage on a group of some 100 Chechen warriors using aircraft and combat helicopters. Putin rebuked Georgia for not preventing the Chechen incursions, and the Russian Foreign Ministry deplored Georgia’s ‘reluctance to take practical steps against terrorism’ and advocated ‘targeted retaliatory operations’ by Russian military forces. Official Georgian sources described this as ‘a call for war’.32 This was a serious warning of Russian unilateral action. Exchanges of fiery official statements continued for several months. To the extent that this was a more serious attempt to warn Georgia, it at least seemed evident to the

Russia’s relations with Georgia 169 United States that it was walking a tightrope in keeping good relations with both Russia and Georgia. In mid-August, new air intrusions (by unmarked aircraft presumed to be Russian) participated in a bombing raid in the Pankisi Gorge, with some casualties on the ground. This time, however, to Putin’s surprise, the United States became ‘deeply concerned’, and offered ‘strong support’ for Georgia’s independence. Perhaps encouraged by this, Georgia sent an official protest note to Russia with several serious accusations. The Russian defence minister denied responsibility. Georgian public opinion demanded that the aircraft be shot down, but Shevardnadze tried to calm things, suggesting that Putin himself had probably not ordered the bombings. The bombing kept tension high for several days not only increasing the tension between Russia and Georgia but also that between Russia and the United States, when Russia was making its interest felt in the region in this way.33 At the same time (August 2002), Georgian troops entered the Pankisi Gorge for the first time. This was not enough for Russia, however, and when another 500 Russian forces were dispatched to the Chechen– Georgian frontier Shevardnadze predicted that Russia was about to launch a military operation in the Pankisi Gorge.34 Russia’s mistrust of Georgia’s few attempts to do something about the situation in the gorge was evident, and when some 1,000 heavily armed Georgian Interior and National Security Ministry troops did enter the gorge, the Chechen fighters had already left. This infuriated Putin. He sent Shevardnadze a letter complaining about this ‘tactic of peacefully squeezing out the terrorists from the Pankisi Gorge’ and insisted instead on ‘decisive, concrete, and purposeful actions for the destruction of bandit formations’. The official Russian military response to the Georgian operations was no less sinister; these were seen as ‘buffoonery and an imitation of a fight against terrorism’.35 The situation grew rapidly worse. Putin warned that Russia would take appropriate action in self-defence: ‘Nobody can deny . . . that those who had a hand in the terrorist attacks in the United States one year ago and the perpetrator of [the 1999] apartment bombings in Russia have taken refuge in Georgia’. In a note to the UN and the OSCE, Putin claimed that Russia had largely succeeded in destroying the ‘terrorist infrastructure’ created in Chechnya, but some Chechen militants had taken refuge in Georgia with support from the Georgian political leadership. Putin also complained that Shevardnadze had not reacted ‘constructively’ to Putin’s proposal for joint military action, and threatened that Russia would act ‘in strict accordance with international law’ to neutralize the ‘terrorist threat’ if Georgia failed to do so. Inevitably, there was a war scare on the Georgian side, which regarded the situation as the prelude to armed conflict: Shevardnadze chaired a four-hour meeting of his National Security Council to discuss the response to Putin’s threat, and the Georgian parliament appealed to the UN, the OSCE, the European Union (EU), the

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Council of Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for protection from anticipated ‘Russian military aggression’. There were also some offers of mediation, for example from Armenia and Ukraine, which reinforced the perceived seriousness of the situation still further.36 The harsh Russian wording was obviously inspired by the US position on terrorism, and this in turn caused a dilemma for the USA in reacting to Russia’s threatening position towards Georgia.37 Worrying about a possible showdown, the United States came out in strong support of Georgia, opposing ‘any unilateral military action by Russia inside Georgia’, and adding that the United States ‘takes strong exception’ to Putin’s statements. Bush urged Putin to give Georgia time to clear the Pankisi Gorge, and the EU external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, advised Russia against unilateral military action.38 During a meeting between the Russian and US defence ministers, Sergei Ivanov repeated his uncompromising position on the Pankisi Gorge situation, arguing that Russia had ‘tons of evidence’ that terrorists from Chechnya and from Arab and Muslim countries were operating in the Pankisi Gorge, and that some of them had links to al-Qaida.39 When the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution warning Russia not to interfere in Georgia’s internal affairs, Sergei Ivanov commented that ‘Russia reserves the right to use any method of action approved by the UN Charter to repel possible aggression from Georgian territory’, and that Russia as a victim of international terrorism originating from Georgian territory would ‘use military force to resist them, with all the consequences that might bring’. He further warned that Russia would ‘use all the avenues accepted by international law and United Nations resolutions on combating international terrorism’.40 The war scare did grip Georgia by the throat, and rightly so. Just before the CIS summit in Chisinau, Moldova, in October 2002, Putin and Shevardnadze met and agreed to appoint permanent special envoys. Putin seemed satisfied with the talks, which Shevardnadze called a ‘turning point’ in the relationship. Coordination of border patrols was agreed upon, although not joint military action on Georgian territory. A ‘hot line’ was also to be set up.41 This positive turn of events may have been seriously meant, but it did not really resolve anything, and very soon these joint patrols proved a disappointment to Russia. When the Georgian police operation in the Pankisi Gorge (already deemed ineffective by Russia) was scaled down in mid-October, Russia was seriously disappointed.42 The planned joint border operations had not yielded any real cooperation, Russia said, since there was ‘no political will’ on the part of Georgia.43 Perhaps Russia did not want the cooperation to work; perhaps Putin (and/or the Russian military) needed the conflict with Georgia to keep a bargaining chip for the future: in any event, the relatively small number of Chechen fighters still left in the Pankisi Gorge was not enough to generate such a high degree of tension. The most interesting con-

Russia’s relations with Georgia 171 sequence of the many Russian threats was precisely that nothing really happened: the threats were never carried out. Why they were never carried out remains something of a mystery. In the end, perhaps Russia simply gave in to US pressure to leave Georgia alone. In early 2003, Georgia made even more confessions to the effect that Chechen fighters and Arab mercenaries had indeed operated in the Pankisi Gorge (but only up until February 2002). Russia continued to complain about the Pankisi Gorge problem, however. Shevardnadze was obviously seeking a truce or even détente, and urged Russia to help to seal the border, while the United States did its best to force Georgia to expel the remaining fighters to Russia.44 Georgia undertook fresh efforts to clean up the Pankisi Gorge, and the two presidents, Putin and Shevardnadze, tried to turn the tide, but with no obvious success.45 Again, it seems that the issue has been frozen: regardless of the measures Georgia has taken, Russia seems to have needed the conflict issue. Quite likely, this Russian tactic is part of a strategy to keep the USA from getting too deeply bedded down in this most unruly part of the former Soviet Union. Of course, the bilateral security pact between Georgia and the United States (signed in April 2003) further enraged Russia, even if it is difficult to see any concrete consequences for relations between Russia and Georgia.46 In early 2004, the new Georgian president again suggested joint border patrols, and border controls were strengthened around Georgia by early summer 2004, although it remains to be seen whether the proposals for joint patrols will yield any substantial results.

Summary and conclusions: Putin and Georgia – the catalysing effect of 11 September By the time Putin entered the Kremlin, relations between Russia and Georgia were still afflicted by some of the problems of the break-up of the USSR, the most important of which were the Russian peacekeeping forces and military bases, and the Abkhazia problem. At the same time, the race for the Caspian Sea oil, the second Chechnya war, and the political, social and economic instability of the area more generally also affected bilateral relations greatly. In this setting, at least a serious attempt to turn the tide and improve relations with Georgia (as Putin did with Azerbaijan) might have been expected, especially since Putin’s world-view is different from Yeltsin’s and it would fit into his general foreign policy scheme and his general ‘charm offensive’ towards the CIS states in 2000 (most evident in relations with Ukraine). Traditionally, Russia’s role in the South Caucasus region has been that of at least a regional great power with a perceived responsibility for the domestic and external security of its closest neighbours (often without their express consent). But Russia largely lacks the required resources to play such a role, and, even though it is desperately

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trying to make its voice heard, its present weakness in trying to preserve its traditional role in the region is all too obvious. Instead, the Russian–Georgian bilateral relationship has developed into a downward spiral, almost leading to armed confrontation in the autumn of 2002. There are many sore spots in the relationship, but the sorest of all (during the Putin presidency) has been the fact that Chechen fighters have continued to cross the border to and from Georgia to hide from Russian troops in Chechnya. Georgia has not been able to handle them. This was already evident during the first Chechnya war, and became an issue of contention from the very beginning of the second Chechnya war. Later, Chechen warriors also became involved in Abkhazia. All this, of course, only shows Georgia’s utter weakness as a state. The downward spiral in relations reached a definite low in September 2002 when a military confrontation on Georgian territory seemed highly likely. Ammunition was provided by Putin’s disappointment at Georgia’s inability to remove the Chechen fighters, and perhaps also its indifference to Russian demands. His disappointment has been exceeded only by his disappointment with the Russian military effort in Chechnya itself. And this, indeed, might be the most painful lesson to Putin – that Russia too, in many respects, is a weak state, and that Russia too does not control the Chechen warriors inside and outside Chechnya. After all, there are two sides to the Russian–Georgian border, and, however true it is that Georgia has not been able to defend its side of the border from armed Chechen incursions, it is also true that Russia has not been able to stop Chechen warriors from leaving and re-entering Russia at will. There is a difference between the ‘fresh’ Putin (before 11 September) and the ‘mature’ Putin (after 11 September). The post-11 September world situation has highlighted one particular parameter in Russian foreign policy towards the South Caucasus that was more implicit before – the physical presence of the United States. To Russia’s great disappointment, the US presence in the Caucasus means not only an increase in the resources available to solve the problems of the region (which Putin could have accepted) but also direct economic and political, and perhaps in the end also military, interference in those same regional affairs that Russia for centuries has considered itself the only legitimate great power to handle. Although Putin’s own foreign policy thinking has been more geared to ‘geo-economics’, the traditional Russian geopolitical thinking on international relations has not been entirely lost (and certainly not among the military, where geopolitics is still the major parameter in world affairs), and it is difficult to underestimate the geostrategic dimension of the US presence in the Caucasus. Consequently, the Russian military establishment has largely held Putin responsible for the increasing US influence in the post-11 September post-Soviet space. On the issues dealt with in this chapter (the Russian military bases and Chechen fighters in Georgia), the effect of the post-11 September funda-

Russia’s relations with Georgia 173 mental change in Russian foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States has been somewhat unexpected. First, 11 September has not had any direct effect on the issue of the bases, only some indirect effects: Russia had left one base before 11 September and agreed in principle on leaving a second. True, Russia has postponed talks on the withdrawal from the remaining two bases (Akhalkalaki and Batumi) because of the perceived Georgian ‘unfriendly policy’. But there were other reasons as well – for example, the rising tension in Abkhazia, which in the spring of 2002 became the Russian excuse for further delays in closing the bases. The timetable for leaving the other two bases remains a stumbling block in early summer 2004, despite some minor concessions on both sides. What is more, the development of the post-11 September world has further increased Russia’s reluctance to withdraw its troops and bases from Georgia for fear that such a withdrawal would open up for a more potent US military presence in Georgia. As long as the Russian bases are still there, the argument goes, the United States will probably think twice about entering Georgia on a massive scale. Although the larger issues of the post-11 September world (e.g., the US military advance in Asia and the Middle East) may have affected Russia’s relations with Georgia, they have not been dealt with in this chapter. Indirectly, however, it is obvious that 11 September has also influenced Russian policies. Russia has taken a much more aggressive approach to the Pankisi Gorge problem since 11 September, probably inspired by the new post-11 September relationship with the United States and by US methods in fighting terrorism. Putin’s disappointment was therefore the greater when he realized that Russia does not have the capacity to pursue such an aggressive policy and, even worse, that the United States, Russia’s closest ally in the war against terrorism, did not in fact support Russia’s military antiterrorist operations on Georgian territory, despite the similarity between this situation and that of the USA in fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. This (as so many small states have experienced during the Cold War) is the very evident problem of being allied to a political, economic and military giant: the closer an ally you are, the greater its influence over you. To speculate about the future is notoriously difficult, but with respect to Central Asia and the South Caucasus the US military presence will probably continue for quite some time, and to the detriment of Russia. As a response, Russia will become much more concerned with its immediate neighbourhood. With intelligent handling it might indeed increase its influence in the region simply by showing some real interest in its many problems. Such a development might have been inescapable anyway, given Putin’s pragmatic foreign policy approach and his preoccupation with ‘economizing’ foreign policy, but 11 September helped to catalyse Russian interests. For the years to come, Russia will have to add the United States to the picture in calculating its own moves in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In Russia’s policy vis-à-vis Georgia, therefore, there are all the ingredients of a drama that will develop in the decade to come.

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Notes 1 See Dmitri Trenin, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border between Geopolitics and Globalization, Washington, DC and Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002, pp. 47, 169 and 179–80. 2 See Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. 3 On the case of Central Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), see Bertil Nygren, ‘Putin’s September 11th foreign policy volte-face and its effects on Russia’s relations to the “near abroad” ’, in Jan Hallenberg, Bertil Nygren and Alexa Robertson (eds), Transitions, Stockholm: Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, 2003. 4 Russia’s fundamental foreign policy objectives in the Foreign Policy Concept of June 2000 include ‘to form a good-neighbourly belt along the perimeter of Russia’s borders, and to promote the elimination of existing and prevent the emergence of potential hotbeds of tension and conflicts in regions adjacent to the Russian Federation’. Under the heading ‘regional priorities’, the CIS is mentioned first, as a ‘priority area in Russia’s foreign policy’. The geographical priorities are also graded according to their importance: the ‘innermost geographical circle’ of interests – the ‘near abroad’ (CIS) countries first, Europe second, Asia third, and the rest of the world fourth. There are, figuratively speaking, concentric security circles or a ‘security belt’ around Russia, which constitutes what in Russia is referred to as its ‘sphere of influence’. Relations with the United States were described only in terms of problems in the Foreign Policy Concept. The Foreign Policy Concept is reproduced in Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 8, August 2000. A more thorough account of the document is offered in Bertil Nygren, ‘Russia and Europe, or Russia in Europe?’, in Yuri Fedorov and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russia and Europe: Putin’s Foreign Policy, ACTA B23, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, pp. 9–36. This Foreign Policy Concept was fairly clear-cut and broadly accepted in the foreign policy elite: it was frequently used by Putin and his foreign and defence ministers, and it lasted up to 11 September 2001. For a general account of Yeltsin’s foreign policy, see Robert Donaldson and Joseph Nogee, The Foreign Policy of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. 5 See Sergei Chugaev, ‘Russia being pushed away from Big Oil’, Komsomol’skaia pravda, 28 February 2002, in CDI Russia Weekly (Center for Defense Information), 195, 1 March 2002 (http://www.cdi.org/russia, last accessed 20 September 2003). For more general descriptions of the ‘Great Game’, see Stephen Blank, ‘New trends in Caucasian security’, Eurasian Studies, 3, Spring 1998. 6 The new types of threat, seen most clearly in the house bombings in Moscow in August 1999, and the many Chechnya-related terror attacks (e.g., on the Dubrovka Theatre in October 2002 and the Muzorka military hospital in July 2003), as well as in the 11 September terrorist acts, were thus much more evident in Russia than in the West, and were already included in the legal framework (in the Law on Terrorism adopted in 1998). 7 For an account of the Russian–US rapprochement after 11 September see Jakub M. Godzimirski, 11th September 2001 and the Shift in Russia’s Policy Towards NATO, Security Policy Library 7–2002, Oslo: Den norske Atlanterhavskomité, 2002. On this Russian foreign policy change towards the United States in just one English-language Russian newspaper in the 12 months following 11 September, see, for example, Andrei Zolotov, ‘Putin says terrorists got it wrong’, Moscow Times, 9 October 2001, p. 3; Editorial, Moscow Times, 10 October 2001, p. 10; Peter Rutland, ‘A turning point in US–Russian relations’,

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Moscow Times, 15 October 2001, p. 10; Pavel Podlesny, ‘Landmark in US–Russian relations’, Moscow Times, 19 October 2001, p. 8; Curt Weldon, ‘A new beginning’, Moscow Times, 21 January 2002, p. 10; Vladimir Frolov, ‘. . . Or just irrational exuberance’, Moscow Times, 21 January 2002, p. 10; Grigory Yavlinsky, ‘Opening the doors to Europe’, Moscow Times, 22 May 2002, p. 10; Dimitri Trenin, ‘Sealing a new era in US–Russian relations’, Moscow Times, 27 May 2002, p. 10; and Alexander Vershbow, ‘One year after’, Moscow Times, 11 September 2002, p. 9. The analysis also concentrates on the available electronic media sources, mainly on the daily reporting of current events of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Newsline (http://www.rferl.org/newsline). See the same conclusions in Per Normark, Russia’s Policy Vis-à-Vis Georgia: Continuity and Change, FOI-R-0168-SE, User report, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, August 2001. Normark’s analysis of Russian foreign policy towards Georgia is part of his dissertation on Russian policies in the Caucasus. His report ends by the summer of 2001, and this chapter may in that respect be seen as a follow-up. Shevardnadze generally attributed the tensions between Russia and Georgia to the 1992–3 conflict in Abkhazia. More recently, he also accused Russia of double standards in offering refuge to those accused of masterminding a 1995 car bomb attack on himself. After 11 September, he accused Russia of taking advantage of the world situation to further its own interests, while Putin has affirmed that Georgia constitutes a ‘weak link’ in the struggle against international terrorism. For an analysis of the arguments, see, for example, WPS Monitoring Agency, CDI Russia Weekly, 223, 20 September 2002; Blanka Hancilova, ‘Russia’s grab for Pankisi: Domestic diversion of oil politics?’, CDI Russia Weekly, 224, 27 September 2002; and Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Brinkmanship in Georgia’, Moscow Times, 10 October 2002, CDI Russia Weekly, 226, 11 October 2002 (all at http://www.cdi.org/russia, last accessed 20 September 2003). On the early Putin era, see also Normark, Russia’s Policy Vis-à-Vis Georgia. Normark, Russia’s Policy Vis-à-Vis Georgia, pp. 28 and 30. Closely related to the issue of the Russian bases was another issue left over from the early 1990s – the actual ownership of military property at the bases, which also marred negotiations in 2000 (despite the US promise to pay some of the costs involved in exchange for a speedy Russian withdrawal of troops and hardware from its base at Vaziani, and despite the Georgian promise not to hand over the base to the United States). In the end, the base in Vaziani (near Tbilisi) was emptied of its weaponry ahead of time (in December 2000). The general criticism of Shevardnadze holds that he did not act in the interests of the USSR during the reign of President Mikhail Gorbachev. See Sergey Blagov, ‘Moscow personally targets Shevardnadze amidst ongoing Georgian– Russian row!’, Eurasia Insight, 14 November 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). For an analysis of the base situation by mid-summer 2001, see Dimitri BitSuleiman, ‘Russia sends mixed signals as base withdrawal deadline looms in Georgia’, Eurasia Insight, 26 June 2001; and Dimitri Bit-Suleiman, ‘Russia avoids commitment to withdraw from military base’, Eurasia Insight, 5 July 2001, both at http://www.eurasianet.org, (last accessed 19 September 2003). See Dov Lynch, Russian Peacekeeping Strategies in the CIS: The Cases of Moldova, Georgia and Tajikistan, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 28, 30, 128–30, 137. The fighting (in August–October 1992) resulted in a front being opened between Sukhumi and Gudauta.

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16 The settlement drafted by the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for Abkhazia, Dieter Boden, on the division of authorities within a single Georgian state had been rejected by Abkhazia (with the formal and standard argument that the Abkhazian population had approved the region’s independence in a referendum in October 1999). Abkhazia, as opposed to Georgia, of course acknowledged that Russia plays ‘a stabilizing role’ in the region. 17 Shevardnadze credited the Russian withdrawal to a telephone conversation he had had with Putin, without which, Shevardnadze said, ‘wide-scale military actions would probably have begun’. RFE/RL Newsline, 15 April 2002. 18 See RFE/RL Newsline, 2, 7, 8 and 12 August 2002. 19 Shevardnadze regretted that no other international contingent was available. See also interview with the speaker of the Georgian parliament, Nino Burdjanadze, in Nezavisimaia gazeta, 4 December 2001, pp. 7, 9. 20 See Felgenhauer, ‘Brinkmanship in Georgia’. 21 Severe punishments were threatened, for instance, preventing the construction of an oil pipeline or raising the blockade against Abkhazia. See RFE/RL Caucasus Report, 2(38), 24 September 1999. 22 For Putin’s remark, see RFE/RL Newsline, 25 September 2001. On Russia’s gratefulness for the shift in the US stand on the Chechnya war, see RFE/RL Newsline, 1 October 2001. Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov argued that Afghanistan and Chechnya were ‘two branches of one tree . . . the roots of [which] are in Afghanistan’. RFE/RL Newsline, 4 October 2001. In an interview, the US ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, said that ‘Chechen separatists receive enormous help from abroad’ and that several field commanders were ‘foreigners’. See Argumenty i fakty, 40(1093), September 2001, p. 3. In an interview, Putin’s aide Sergei Yastrzhembskii said that Osama bin Laden was directly involved in sending terrorists to Chechnya, although they were rather few at the time. Izvestiia, 11 October 2001, pp. 1–2. 23 See RFE/RL Newsline, 10 and 21 December 2001, respectively, for these two quotations. 24 For the foreign and defence ministers’ comments, see RFE/RL Newsline, 20 February 2002. 25 For the sequence of events see RFE/RL Newsline, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 October 2001. Abkhazia insisted that the 350 Georgian troops ‘illegally’ deployed in the Abkhazian sector of the Kodori Gorge should be withdrawn, together with the Forest Brotherhood guerrilla formation. Georgia said that Georgian troops were needed to defend the local 5,000-strong Georgian population. The UN representative for Abkhazia, Dieter Boden, repeatedly called for their withdrawal. 26 Six helicopters bombed villages in the Kodori Gorge and several Su-25 aircraft overflew the gorge. Shevardnadze did not believe that Putin knew of the decision to bomb Georgian territory; he believed that the decision had been taken at a lower level. He also stressed that Georgia would not risk starting a war by shooting down aircraft, as his defence minister had threatened to do. See RFE/RL Newsline, 29 and 30 November 2001. 27 See RFE/RL Newsline, 13, 19, 20 and 21 March 2002. Dieter Boden appealed to both Georgia and Russia to refrain from militant rhetoric. 28 The USA had been engaged in military cooperation with Georgia since 1996, and the new US counter-terrorism aid programme was intended to strengthen Georgia’s internal security. The Russian Duma adopted an almost unanimous resolution stating that the presence of US troops ‘may complicate the already difficult situation in the region’ and expressing the hope that US military aid to Tbilisi ‘[would] not lead the Georgian leadership into seeking a military solution to armed conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia’. When it became

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evident that neither US nor Russian troops would participate directly in antiterrorist operations, the speaker of the Duma, Gennadii Seleznev, explained that Duma deputies had reacted in an ‘emotional’ manner. The Georgian Foreign Ministry condemned the Duma resolution as ‘a gross violation of international law’, but Shevardnadze tried to play down its significance by pointing to the pronouncements by Putin (RFE/RL Newsline, 5 and 7 March 2002). For Ivanov’s reaction, see Jaba Devdariani, ‘US and Georgian officials move to next phase of military deployment’, Eurasia Insight, 4 March 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). RFE/RL Newsline, 12, 13 and 14 March 2002. The speaker of the Georgian parliament recognized that it had been a mistake to deny the presence of Chechen rebels in Georgia, and that an ‘objective picture’ of their presence should have been provided instead of the numerous government denials. The Georgian minister of national security also confessed that there were an estimated 700 Chechen fighters and 100 Arab mercenaries in the Pankisi Gorge. RFE/RL Newsline, 19 April and 22 May 2002, respectively. Nikolai Patrushev, director of the Russian Federal Security Service (Federal’naia Pogranichnaia Sluzhba, FPS), later said that all those involved in the bombing were close to field commander Khalilov and that some had been trained in the Pankisi Gorge. RFE/RL Newsline, 23 May 2002. RFE/RL Newsline, 1 and 2 August 2002. For an analysis of the Georgian reaction, see Irakly Areshidze, ‘Georgian parliament calls for Tbilisi’s withdrawal from CIS in response to Russian raid’, Eurasia Insight, 27 August 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). For the sequence of events, see RFE/RL Newsline, 23, 26 and 27 August 2002. The main question (who was flying the aircraft and dropping the bombs) was not really clarified. Intrusions by unmarked aircraft had occurred in the early 1990s, and Russia only admitted responsibility for them several years later. There were also accusations and counter-accusations about the nature of the aircraft and who flew them, including one that they were flown by Georgian pilots. RFE/RL Newsline, 29 August 2002. The bombs themselves also became objects for closer investigation, without any definite conclusions being reached. RFE/RL Newsline, 3, 5 and 6 September 2002. Later, there were intelligence reports that the 23 August bombings had been carried out by Russia and that the target was a convoy of 70 trucks transporting some 600 Chechen guerrillas. See Argumenty i fakty, 36, 2002, p. 7. For the severity of the US accusations, suffice it to say that a White House spokesman (Ari Fleischer) officially called the Russian military liars. See Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Alliance hangs in balance’, Moscow Times, 29 August 2002, as cited in CDI Russia Weekly, 220, 30 August 2002 (http://www.cdi.org/russia, last accessed 20 September 2003). For an analysis of the situation in July and August, see also Irakly Areshidze, ‘Chechen incursions prompt flare-up of Georgian–Russian tension’, Eurasia Insight, 7 August 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). See RFE/RL Newsline, 12 and 13 August 2002. See RFE/RL Newsline, 5 and 6 September 2002. For an analysis, see Jaba Devdariani, ‘Georgian security operation proceeds in the Pankisi Gorge’, Eurasia Insight, 3 September 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). RFE/RL Newsline, 9, 12 and 13 September 2002. Rogozin called this ‘the final warning to the Georgian leadership’. RFE/RL Newsline, 12 September 2002. Russian chief of staff General Anatolii Kvashnin compared the Shevardnadze administration to the former Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. RFE/RL Newsline, 18 September 2002. See also Jaba Devdariani, ‘Putin ultimatum raises stakes in Georgia’, Eurasia Insight, 12 September 2002

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(http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). The analyst Pavel Felgenhauer warned that war might be the result. See Felgenhauer, ‘Brinkmanship in Georgia’. See Igor Torbakov, ‘Russia’s ultimatum to Georgia appears addressed more to Washington than to Tbilisi’, Eurasia Insight, 17 September 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). RFE/RL Newsline, 12 September 2002. RFE/RL Newsline, 20 September 2002. The Georgian foreign minister addressed the UN General Assembly, calling Putin’s statement an open threat of aggression against Georgia and a ‘smokescreen’ to conceal Russia’s inability to end the Chechnya war. There were also some high-level bilateral talks on the situation between Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov, Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Ibid. RFE/RL Newsline, 26 September 2002. The Russian Foreign Ministry presented Georgia with a formal written protest that Georgia was chasing illegal armed groups from its territory back into Russia, thus demonstrating Georgia’s ‘unwillingness to co-operate with the international community’s fight against terrorists’ which amounted to ‘aiding and abetting bandits’. RFE/RL Newsline, 30 September 2002. On the summit, see RFE/RL Newsline, 7 and 8 October 2002. The summit provoked severe opposition in Georgia. See Giorgi Kandelaki, ‘Shevardnadze’s Chisinau concessions shatter Georgia’s political unity’, Eurasia Insight, 9 October 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Shevardnadze confessed that Georgia had not succeeded in expelling all the Chechen fighters in the Pankisi Gorge, although it claimed to have expelled the ‘absolute majority’. Some 60 fighters were said to remain. See RFE/RL Newsline, 18, 21 and 22 October 2002. Even the Dubrovka Theatre hostagetaking in Moscow caused concern in Georgia. See Sergei Blagov, ‘Moscow hostage crisis causes Georgia to worry about Russian wrath’, Eurasia Insight, 28 October 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). RFE/RL Newsline, 15 November 2002.. See RFE/RL Newsline, 15, 17 and 28 January 2003, and 3 February 2003; and Sergei Blagov, ‘Military issues block Russia–Georgia détente’, Eurasia Insight, 6 January 2003 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Georgia also admitted that some al-Qaida members found in Pankisi had been handed over to the United States, but that only some 60 ‘criminals’ were left in the Pankisi Gorge. Putin promised Shevardnadze financial and administrative help to fight terrorism, which Shevardnadze welcomed. Georgia also invited Russia to the Pankisi Gorge to convince itself that there were no fighters left. Putin insisted, however, that terrorists close to al-Qaida were still in the Pankisi Gorge. For an analysis of the rumours about the presence of Chechen warriors, see Jaba Devdariani, ‘Rumors of terrorists prevail in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge’, Eurasia Insight, 29 May 2003 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). See Sergei Blagov, ‘US–Georgian security cooperation agreement provokes outcry in Russia’, Eurasia Insight, 16 April 2003 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003).

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wrath’, Eurasia Insight, 28 October 2002 (http://www. eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). ——, ‘Moscow personally targets Shevardnadze amidst ongoing Georgian–Russian row!’, Eurasia Insight, 14 November 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). ——, ‘Military issues block Russia–Georgia détente’, Eurasia Insight, 6 January 2003 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). ——, ‘US–Georgian security cooperation agreement provokes outcry in Russia’, Eurasia Insight, 16 April 2003 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Chugaev, Sergei, ‘Russia being pushed away from Big Oil’, Komsomol’skaia pravda, 28 February 2002, in CDI Russia Weekly (Center for Defense Information), 195, 1 March 2002 (http://www.cdi.org/russia, last accessed 20 September 2003). Devdariani, Jaba, ‘US and Georgian officials move to the next phase of military deployment’, Eurasia Insight, 4 March 2002 (http//www. eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). ——, ‘Georgian security operation proceeds in the Pankisi Gorge’, Eurasia Insight, 3 September 2002 (http//www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). ——, ‘Putin ultimatum raises stakes in Georgia’, Eurasia Insight, 12 September 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). ——, ‘Rumors of terrorists prevail in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge’, Eurasia Insight, 29 May 2003 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Eurasia Insight, 4 March 2002, 27 August 2002 and 3 September 2002 (http://www.eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Felgenhauer, Pavel, ‘Alliance hangs in balance’, Moscow Times, 29 August 2002, as cited in CDI Russia Weekly, 220, 30 August 2002 (http://www.cdi. org/russia, last accessed 20 September 2003). ——, ‘Brinkmanship in Georgia’, Moscow Times, 10 October 2002, in CDI Russia Weekly, 226, 11 October 2002 (http://www.cdi.org/russia, last accessed 20 September 2003). Frolov, Vladimir, ‘. . . Or just irrational exuberance’, Moscow Times, 21 January 2002, p. 10. Hancilova, Blanka, ‘Russia’s grab for Pankisi: Domestic diversion of oil politics?’, CDI Russia Weekly, 224, 27 September 2002 (http://www.cdi.org/russia). Izvestiia, 11 October 2001, pp. 1–2. Kandelaki, Giorgi, ‘Shevarnadze’s Chisinau concessions shatter Georgia’s political unity’, Eurasia Insight, 9 October 2002 (http://www.eurasianet. org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Moscow Times, 10 October 2001 (editorial). Nezavisimaia gazeta, 4 December 2001, pp. 7, 9 (interview with the speaker of the Georgian parliament Nino Burdjanadze). Podlesny, Pavel, ‘Landmark in US–Russian relations’, Moscow Times, 19 October 2001, p. 8. RFE/RL Caucasus Report, 2(38), 24 September 1999. RFE/RL Newsline, 25 September 2001; 4 October 2001; 15 October 2001; 16 October 2001; 17 October 2001; 18 October 2001; 19 October 2001; 26 October 2001; 29 October 2001; 29 November 2001; 30 November 2001; 10 December 2001; 21 December 2001; 20 February 2002; 1 March 2002; 4 March 2002; 5

Russia’s relations with Georgia 181 March 2002; 7 March 2002; 12 March 2002; 13 March 2002; 14 March 2002; 19 March 2002; 20 March 2002; 21 March 2002; 15 April 2002; 19 April 2002; 30 April 2002; 14 May 2002; 22 May 2002; 23 May 2002; 25 June 2002; 1 August 2002; 2 August 2002; 7 August 2002; 8 August 2002; 12 August 2002; 13 August 2002; 20 August 2002; 21 August 2002; 23 August 2002; 26 August 2002; 27 August 2002; 29 August 2002; 3 September 2002; 5 September 2002; 6 September 2002; 9 September 2002; 12 September 2002; 13 September 2002; 18 September 2002; 20 September 2002; 24 September 2002; 26 September 2002; 30 September 2002; 7 October 2002; 8 October 2002; 18 October 2002; 21 October 2002; 22 October 2002; 15 November 2002; 20 November 2002; 15 January 2003; 17 January 2003; 28 January 2003; 3 February 2003. Rutland, Peter, ‘A turning point in US–Russian relations’, Moscow Times, 15 October 2001, p. 10. Torbakov, Igor, ‘Russia’s ultimatum to Georgia appears addressed more to Washington than to Tbilisi’, Eurasia Insight, 17 September 2002 (http://www. eurasianet.org, last accessed 19 September 2003). Trenin, Dmitri, ‘Sealing a new era in US–Russian relations’, Moscow Times, 27 May 2002, p. 10. Vershbow, Alexander, ‘One year after’, Moscow Times, 11 September 2002, p. 9. Weldon, Curt, ‘A new beginning’, Moscow Times, 21 January 2002, p. 10. WPS Monitoring Agency, CDI Russia Weekly, 223, 20 September 2002 (http://www.cdi.org/russia). Yavlinsky, Grigory, ‘Opening the doors to Europe’, Moscow Times, 22 May 2002, p. 10. Zolotov, Andrei, ‘Putin says terrorists got it wrong’, Moscow Times, 9 October 2001, p. 3.

8

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change The cases of Central Asia1 and Iraq Lena Jonson

Introduction Vladimir Putin’s consent to a US military presence in Central Asia after the 11 September terrorist attacks on New York and Washington was logical against the background of the anti-terrorist emphasis he had given Russian policy in the region in autumn 1999. Before 2001, however, Putin’s policy had had a clear anti-US slant in an effort to deny the USA influence on Central Asian security issues. His consent in September 2001 therefore turned around his previous policy. Russia gave its consent under the premise that the US presence would last only as long as the US-led military operations against Afghanistan continued, yet two years later Russia still accepted the military presence of soldiers from the USA and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries in Central Asia. How can this change of policy in 2001 be understood? The question is not so much why policy changed at this point as why policy was given this specific direction. Without diving deeply into theories of foreign policy change or international relations theory, and without attempting to test alternative hypotheses, four explanations will be offered here to shed light on the Russian policy change: (a) the international structure explanation; (b) the instrumental explanation; (c) the institutional rivalry explanation; and finally (d) the socializing explanation. They all see the state as the major actor in foreign policy, but explain policy change differently as their basic theoretical premises vary with regard to the power of the state as an agent on the international scene.2 The first explanation (international structure) sees international conditions (international structure) as having the greatest explanatory power. Here, realist theories are used as an inspiration for explaining the policy change of one single state – Russia. According to the basic premises of classical realism and neo-realism theories, a state’s policy and position in the international system are determined by its powers and capabilities compared with those of other states. Kenneth Waltz wrote that the economic and technological basis of the state will define its military power

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 183 and its place among other states.3 In a study of Soviet foreign policy, he called for attention to focus more ‘on the Soviet Union’s situation rather than on her motives’ or ‘on the outcomes of her action rather than her often disturbing behaviour’.4 The first explanation thus emphasizes the international structure, which is characterized as anarchic and one in which questions of power, capacity and the balance between states set the conditions for individual states and define the limits of government policy. The comparatively weak position of Russia in the present international balance of states and in Central Asia sets the limits to Russian foreign policy. International conditions push such a weak state to react to events in the international environment rather than allowing it to change or influence the system. The second explanation (instrumental) regards the state as an autonomous and unitary actor. Policy is an instrument of the state for international change and influence. It also ascribes a certain rationality to that actor as a basic characteristic, and the state is assumed to have a fixed set of preferences and to behave instrumentally so as to maximize the attainment of these preferences. In accordance with realist theory, the state is expected to follow its self-interest in an effort to increase gains (absolute or relative). In order for the government to evaluate gains and losses, a general understanding can be assumed to exist of what the strategic values and goals of the state are. This approach explains policy change as the reformulation by the state’s leadership of the strategic goals, tactics and instruments. Although the third explanation (institutional rivalry) accepts that the state is the major actor, it explains policy as the outcome of a contest between different vested interest groups. The explanation indicates institutional rivalry and has its roots in the bureaucratic model, which Graham Allison formulated elegantly in 1971.5 The state is not a unitary actor, but policy is the outcome of the dominance of those institutions or groups that prevail at a particular time. The fourth explanation (socializing) refers to a process whereby Russia finds it to be in its own interests to be drawn into an international and institutional framework of accepted norms and rules of behaviour. Structures are to be understood here as social institutions in the form of international regimes and norms and rules instead of material values such as ‘military power’. In the late 1980s, Joseph Nye introduced the idea of ‘learning’ as an important factor, and Robert Keohane later wrote that international regimes can affect both the capabilities and the interests of states. They can alter bureaucratic practices or habits; promote an understanding of cause-and-effect relations; alter ideas about the legitimacy and value of particular practices; become embedded in higher-level normative networks; increase the political salience of certain issues; change the balance of political influence in domestic politics; or enhance the political or administrative capacity of government or non-governmental

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organizations in countries.6 This explanation has its roots in both neoliberal institutionalist and constructivist theories. States change their values and norms by participating in international cooperation and multilateral institutions. Thus, states find that there are potential gains to be had from cooperation as well as possible costs if norms, rules and commitments are violated. On top of that, these specific norms, rules and commitments also influence state behaviour. A state like Russia makes cost–benefit calculations but may also take into consideration the wider implications or longer-term costs of non-compliance.7 Once states accept the long-term benefits from participating in an international legal system, the idea of obligation and the normative nature of rules can be given tangible form. It is the existence of shared interests, common values and expectations that matters.8 Constructivists stress that the behaviour of states changes with their practice of normative structures. The practice of actors is therefore a most important source of change. As Alexander Wendt writes, the first steps may be motivated by egoistic reasons, but cooperation and the practice of actors may, in the best case, transform essentially egoistic reasoning into collective identity.9 The socializing explanation thus suggests that a state makes decisions in order to fall in line with what could be expected from a state – in this instance Russia – which wants to be on a par with and cooperate with Western states and participate as an equal in the international community. These four explanations are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. Yet the explanatory force of one or another may vary over time, as the following discussion shows. The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington created a ‘policy window’ for the Russian government, which Putin used in trying to improve relations with the West. As in 1999, this was a ‘crisis situation’ in the sense that something extraordinary had happened which was perceived as a crisis or defined as a crisis in order to justify policy change. In 1999, the crisis was the intrusion of Uzbek Islamist extremists into southern Kyrgyzstan, which took place against the background of the intensified crisis in Chechnya after Chechen rebels entered Dagestan. Putin seized the moment to give the fight against terrorism top priority on Russia’s agenda in Central Asia. Putin demonstrated his skills as a ‘policy entrepreneur’ in 1999 as well as 2001.10 However, the concept of a ‘policy window’ contributes to an understanding of when a foreign policy change took place but it does not explain why the change was given its specific direction. A discussion of these four explanations will shed light on the question Why this specific change?

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 185 The international structure explanation The Russian government was forced to adapt its policy in Central Asia by the waning of Russia’s economic and military power in the region and by the efforts of the independent states of Central Asia to ‘diversify’ their foreign policies and reduce their dependence on Russia, while at the same time exploiting the new interest of other large powers. The ‘overlay’ of Russia’s dominance of Central Asia, which it inherited from the Soviet Union, gradually disappeared. Although the Russian proverb has it that ‘a sacred place never remains empty’, the USA did not replace Russia in Central Asia. The change in Central Asia cannot be described in terms of one power replacing another. Instead, there has been an increase in the number of foreign governments and international organizations willing to engage in the region. Without doubt, the US engagement, especially since 2001, has been a magnet drawing these other players into the region as well as attracting the governments of the region into cooperation with the USA. To Russia the effect of its waning role and influence in Central Asia was felt on two different levels: (a) in the Russian–US balance in the region, and (b) with regard to Russia’s influence on the local dynamics in Central Asia. Although the USA had already started to engage in Central Asia in the late 1990s, after 11 September there was a qualitative increase in that engagement. The USA had cast its eyes on Central Asia initially because of its energy resources in the Caspian Sea Basin but also as part of its strategic thinking of containing Russia in Asia. Bilateral and multilateral cooperation on security issues started to develop within the framework of the NATO Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme. Before 11 September, several American experts questioned the seriousness of the US policy in Central Asia if a serious security threat were to develop.11 Against this background of the ‘correlation of forces’ between Russia and the USA, Putin’s consent in 2001 to the US military using Central Asian airbases becomes logical. The discrepancy between the USA’s ascendancy and Russia’s decline was too great to be ignored. Moreover, the correlation of forces on the ground in Central Asia gave Putin no choice. All the Central Asian governments expected benefits from participation in one form or another in the US-led anti-terrorist coalition. Russia would not have received any support from the region if it had tried to prevent or counter security cooperation between the USA and the Central Asian states under the anti-terrorist banner. To this may be added Russia’s loss of control over the local dynamics in Central Asia. While Russia in 1999 still seemed to hold certain levers of influence – it was successful in bringing the civil war in Tajikistan to an end in 1997 and managed to engage Uzbekistan in bilateral anti-terrorist cooperation in autumn 1999 – this had changed by 2001. The situation in

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Afghanistan, where the Russian-supported anti-Taliban Northern Alliance was almost wiped out in the spring of 2000, spread instability into Central Asia as the Taliban gave shelter to Uzbek Islamist extremists. Russia’s inability to turn the tide of events emanating from Taliban Afghanistan had been demonstrated, in spite of its anti-terrorist focus in the region after 1999. Russia’s economic, political, cultural and military exchanges with the Central Asian countries were reduced and the levers with which it could influence relations between those countries were weakened as a result. The fear of Islamist tendencies and groups developing in Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan demonstrated that Russia had lost control over the local dynamics in these societies. Thus, Putin’s policy of 1999 and of 2001 can be viewed as a reaction to the structural conditions in Central Asia. While in 1999 he intensified the efforts to rally the Central Asian states against the common threat of terrorism and to counter US influence, the 2001 policy turn was a necessary retreat in the face of the US presence and influence in Central Asia. Thus, the international conditions provide the reason for Putin’s 2001 policy shift. The instrumental explanation This alternative views Putin’s policy after 11 September 2001 as an instrument to improve Russia’s international position. If we hypothesize that Putin gave his consent to a US military presence in Central Asia in a conscious effort to make his policy an instrument for change, a strategic frame of mind can be assumed to exist into which his extraordinary step fits. Robert Gilpin’s War and Change in World Politics provides a helpful lead into the possible strategic thinking of Vladimir Putin.12 He discusses different possible courses of action for a state in decline. The state will try its best to maintain the status quo as long as possible, but the principal problem is the gap between high ambitions and low power (capabilities). When this gap proves irreconcilable, policy must be revised. Gilpin writes that a state in decline does its utmost to maintain its previous position. The references in Russian official statements and doctrine to Alexander Gorchakov, Russian foreign minister in the late nineteenth century (1856–82), indicate the contemporary desire to take Russia back to international influence and great-power status. The great-power dream is alive. For such a state two possible and analytically different courses of action are available: (1) to devote more resources to maintaining its commitments and position in the international system, and (2) to reduce its commitments (and associated costs) while trying not to jeopardize its international position. The first involves mobilizing resources within the country through increasing efficiency or by innovation and reform. The second type of response – to reduce costs – can be attempted in different ways. Most relevant here are (a) expansion into more secure and less

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 187 costly defensive perimeters13 and (b) political, territorial or economic retrenchment. Since Gorbachev the Russian leadership has had a general strategy of increasing efficiency through domestic reform while trying to reduce costs. With regard to retrenchment Gilpin mentions three possible directions: (1) unilaterally abandoning certain of its economic, political or military commitments; (2) entering into alliances with or seeking rapprochement with less threatening powers; and (3) making concessions to the rising power and thereby seeking to appease its ambitions. While retrenchment was a characteristic of Russian policy in Central Asia during the 1990s, Russia tried to seek rapprochement with China, a less threatening power in the wider Central Asian region. Between 1999 and 2001 the Shanghai Five framework (later to become the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] of four Central Asian states plus Russia and China) was given an anti-US direction as both Russia and China tried to prevent the USA from getting a foothold in Central Asia. Yet neither Russia nor China was prepared to seriously harm its relations with the USA. Gilpin’s third option – an appeasement policy – seems more appropriate for characterizing Russian US policy after September 2001. It might seem strange to a Western reader to think of Russian–US relations in terms of Russian appeasement of the rising USA as the one and only global power, yet the comparison provides insights. Gilpin gives historical examples of successful appeasement: Contending states have not only avoided conflict but also achieved a relationship satisfactory to both. A notable example was British appeasement of the rising US in the decades prior to World War I. The two countries ended a century-long hostility and laid the basis for what has come to be known as the ‘special relationship’ of the two Anglo-Saxon powers.14 The policy of appeasement is politically difficult and delicate, Gilpin says, and the fundamental problem of appeasement ‘is to find a way to pursue it that does not lead to continuing deterioration in a state’s prestige and international position’.15 In general, retrenchment may have a damaging effect on relations with allies, which sense the decline of their protector and try to obtain the best deal from the rising power, and in generating new pressure from rivals, which are encouraged to ‘close in’. The success of retrenchment therefore depends greatly on timing and circumstances. In September 2001 Putin seized the moment and accepted further retrenchment in order to improve relations with the West and create more favourable conditions for domestic reform as part of a long-term strategy to prepare for a comeback on the international stage. The policy turn of 2001 has to be understood in the context of Russia’s search for a strategy in order to make such a comeback. Observers have characterized Putin as

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pragmatic and a realist who is well aware of Russia’s weakness. Yet this does not exclude his keeping the strategic vision of Russia as a great power and making it his task to create the conditions that will make this vision possible in the future. Since Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia has been in constant search for an appropriate balance between trying to maintain its international influence, on the one hand, and concentrating on domestic reform and creating favourable external conditions for this on the other. Gorbachev took the radical decision to reduce the international role of the Soviet Union from that of a superpower to that of a great power. Both Boris Yeltsin and Putin have tried to maintain Russia’s status as a great power and to prevent it from slipping into the position of a second-rate country. While the long-term strategic goal of a Russian international comeback was important to Putin, he had to adapt his tactics to what the international situation allowed at the time. In autumn 1999 relations between Russia and the USA were chilly after the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo from March to June and the Western reaction to the Russian military campaign in Chechnya in September 1999. In 1999, Putin paid far greater attention to Central Asian affairs than previous prime ministers under Yeltsin. When he made the anti-terrorist struggle ‘The Issue’ in Russia’s Central Asian policy in 1999, his priority was to keep the USA out as much as possible. The change of 1999 also fits into this explanation. The attention paid to Central Asia after 1999 can be regarded as an expansion into a ‘more secure and less costly defensive perimeter’ (Gilpin) as a possible option to reduce costs. The instrumental explanation can thus be used to explain the direction of the foreign policy changes of 1999 and 2001 in the context of Russian strategic goals and tactics. The institutional rivalry explanation Throughout the 1990s, Russian foreign policy suffered from institutional rivalry and infighting between different interests. This was especially so in the early 1990s, when the stalemate in the intense power struggle between the president and parliament paralysed Russia. Although the 1993 constitution gave the president the prerogative of making foreign policy, institutional rivalry continued. While the Foreign Ministry had problems with the new post-Soviet situation in Central Asia, it was the Defence Ministry that was able to formulate a policy in response to the civil war in Tajikistan. The 1999 anti-terrorist focus in Central Asia can be explained as the result of the security sector strengthening its influence within Russian governmental structures during the second half of the 1990s. Yevgenii Primakov, foreign minister from 1996 to September 1998 and then prime minister, was a scholar with a background in Oriental studies but also a

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 189 former head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, SVR). His appointment was part of a trend under Yeltsin for security people to be brought into the government and the presidential administration. Vladimir Putin was appointed secretary of the Russian Security Council in March 1999. With his professional background in the KGB (the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, Committee of State Security) and the Federal Security Service (Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, FSB), he was regarded as well prepared to take on the task of handling the Chechnya conflict. His understanding of the Chechnya conflict also influenced the way events in Central Asia were conceived. The FSB does not deal directly with Russian external security, but its focus on Chechnya led it early on to frame threats and conflicts in terms of terrorism and international terrorism. Even if the FSB did not participate directly in Central Asian policy-making, it influenced the way in which the problems of the region were defined.16 Other institutions and people contributed to the process of ‘securitization’ of Russia’s Central Asia policy.17 Some of them, such as the SVR, the Federal Border Service (Federal’naia Pogranichnaia Sluzhba, FPS), the FSB and the General Staff, directed their attention to the Central Asian region at an early stage. The military and security services acted as an important lobby group in pushing forward a security-dominated agenda for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). For them, Central Asia had a strategic position. Furthermore, people with a professional security background became important as a result of the appointment of Primakov as prime minister in September 1998. He appointed many former colleagues from the intelligence and security services and placed them in key positions in the media and revenue-generating companies, such as the arms exporter Rosvooruzhenie, as well as in the executive branch.18 Appointed prime minister in August 1999, Putin introduced the anti-terrorist agenda, thereby also strengthening his own power position. After he was elected president in March 2000, he pursued the anti-terrorist issue on a large scale. His behaviour from 1999 may be described as a case of ‘securitization’ as Western scholars defined this concept.19 Institutional rivalry explains Russia’s shift of policy towards Central Asia in 1999. By September 2001, President Putin had more or less full control over the foreign policy-making mechanisms. The post-September foreign policy was formulated by a narrow group of people around him. Institutional rivalry therefore does not explain Russian foreign policy decision-making at the time of the 11 September terrorist attacks. On 14 September 2001, Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov stated that: ‘Central Asia is within the zone of competence of the CIS Collective Security Treaty. I see no reasons whatsoever, even hypothetical, for any suppositions about NATO operations being conducted from the territories

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of Central Asian countries which are members of the CIS.’20 Yet Putin managed to coordinate a basic common view on what would be Central Asian support for US operations in Afghanistan. Here he relied on the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Rushailo, and the chief of the General Staff, Anatolii Kvashnin, whom he sent to consult with the Central Asian leaders. Disagreement prevailed within the Russian leadership until the last moment before Putin made public his consent to a US military presence on 24 September. On 22 September, before his consultations with Central Asian leaders, an extended meeting of the Russian Security Council took place in Sochi, and it took Putin six hours to convince its members.21 When Putin announced on 24 September that Russia and the Central Asian allies would allow the USA and its allies access to their air corridors and airfields – for humanitarian, rescue and intelligence missions but not for military operations – he could rely on the loyalty but not the support of the military and security services. No change of personnel took place among the top posts in the government, the presidential administration or the power structures. No new adviser or other person can be identified as having special influence in decision-making. After September 2001, control of foreign policy-making remained with the president and his apparatus, and his command consisted of the same people – Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov; Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov; the head of the Presidential Administration, Alexander Voloshin, and his deputy Dmitrii Medvedev; presidential foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko; the secretary of the Security Council, Rushailo, and Oleg Chernov, responsible for international affairs within the Security Council; the head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev; the head of the SVR, Sergei Lebedev; the chief of the General Staff, Anatolii Kvashnin; the head of the Military Intelligence Service (GRU), Valentin Korabelnikov; and the director of the FPS, Colonel General Konstantin Totskii. Around Putin three groupings were usually identified: (a) people with a background in the security sector, mainly from St Petersburg; (b) liberal economists, also from St Petersburg; and (c) people representing the ‘Family’ – the ‘court’ of Boris Yeltsin. Sergei Ivanov, representing the first category, was critical of the US military deployment in Central Asia. The two latter groups were in favour. Voloshin, already head of the Presidential Administration at the time of Yeltsin and a representative of the Family, was later reported by the media to be one possible architect behind Putin’s turn of policy after 11 September.22 Thus, the policy change in 2001 was not the result of any shift in the balance of power in Moscow. It was made under criticism, but Putin was in control of the policy-making structures. Putin as a leader acted to make sure of the support of influential interest groups. In an analysis in October 2002, Peter Reddaway characterized Putin as a ‘balancer and principal implementer of the lowest common denominator of the interests of Russia’s elite groups’.23 His Western agenda had strong support among the

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 191 Russian financial magnates, and his anti-terrorist agenda had strong support among the power structures. Thus, neither of Putin’s strong constituencies could abandon him: the military and the security sectors supported him because of his anti-terrorist agenda and his Chechnya policy, and the oligarchs because of his pro-Western policy. Putin’s post-11 September foreign policy favoured the interests of economic and financial groups oriented towards the West. These groups wanted economic cooperation with Western partners and their interests overlapped with those of the government. In his speech of 26 January 2001 Putin had already stated the common interests of Russian big business and the state. He called for a foreign policy which would take Russian business interests into consideration, and he asked business to pursue the country’s foreign policy interests, declaring this a task for the energy sector in particular because of its far-reaching interests abroad.24 When in November 2002 the director of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, spoke at a meeting at the Academy of the General Staff, he emphasized the common interests of the armed forces and the oil and gas companies, and claimed that the economic expansion of Russian companies promotes Russia’s state interests.25 Thus, institutional rivalry did contribute to explain Putin’s policy in 1999 but not in 2001. It does not explain Russian foreign policy decisionmaking at the time of the 11 September terrorist attacks. There was strong opposition, especially from among the military and the security sector, to Putin allowing the US military access to Central Asia. Disagreement prevailed within the Russian leadership, yet Putin pursued his policy. The socializing explanation The last explanation refers to relations between the state and international structures identified as ‘related complexes of rules and norms’.26 As Martha Finnemore writes: Structures of shared knowledge and inter-subjective understandings may also shape and motivate actors. Socially constructed rules, principles, norms of behaviour, and shared beliefs may provide states, individuals, and other actors with understandings of what is important or valuable and what are effective and/or legitimate means of obtaining those valued goods.27 This is basically the constructivist perspective on international relations. Putin’s policy turn in September 2001 can be interpreted as a socialization process; that is, Russia’s entry into a common value system with the West and a desire for joint efforts to combat common threats. Since Gorbachev introduced perestroika and Yeltsin allowed the Soviet system to break down, Russian leaders have tried to introduce Western-oriented values of a market economy and democratic reform and to adhere to

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international norms and standards. Russia submitted to the values of the Council of Europe on democratic and human rights issues (although violating them in specific cases, as in Chechnya) and to the demands of global economic organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Group of Eight industrialized countries (G8). In his ‘Internet speech’ of December 1999, Putin declared his ambition to have Russia integrated into the world economy.28 The anti-terrorist issue opened the door to intensified cooperation between Russia and NATO, and in May 2002 the NATO–Russia Council was created. Efforts by Putin to embed Russia in an international institutional framework of organizations and in cooperation with the West continue Gorbachev’s ambitions but also reflect a more determined mind in this regard than was apparent under Yeltsin. The 2001 turn of policy can thus be viewed as reflecting Russia’s efforts to utilize international cooperation and the support of common values and norms in solving its problems. This does not exclude Russia’s trying at the same time to increase its own visibility and influence in international politics by joining the USA after 11 September. Several Russian experts commented that the joint anti-terrorist struggle together with the USA created a golden opportunity for Russia to play the role of a great power, if as yet within the very narrow sector of anti-terrorism.29 None of these explanations fully explains Russia’s foreign policy turn 2001. They complement rather than exclude each other. Yet which of them have the greatest explanatory strength? In the final evaluation, the international structure – on the global scene and in the Central Asian region – was decisive in the sense that changed international structural conditions forced the Russian government to pursue the process of reconsidering its foreign policy. Russia’s reduced influence on the global scene in general, and in Central Asia in particular, forced the government to rethink and set the limits for its policy. Yet, in order to understand the specific direction of policy, the instrumental explanation has to be added. Putin’s understanding of Russia’s long-term state interests defined the strategic vision behind his policy response and determined the direction of that response. The composition of the decision-makers – the domestic ‘correlation of forces’ between institutions and interests – was also relevant. Another president might not have acted in the way Putin did. With another power constellation behind the Russian president, the government might in 2001 have taken a more neutral stand (and thereby lost the opportunity to improve relations with the USA). Still, institutional rivalry does not contribute to explain the policy shift of 2001. By 2001, Putin was in control of foreign policy-making. The Russian government’s desire for integration into Western structures and its desire to form common values and norms with the West should not be ignored. Yet the socializing explanation has limited value to explain the shift of 2001.

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 193 An analysis of Russia’s policy response in the international disagreement over how to handle Iraq in 2002 and 2003 confirms this conclusion.

Russia and the Iraq issue Putin’s turn of policy in September 2001 led Russia to give priority to good relations with the West in general and with the USA first of all. Russia’s response to the escalating conflict over how to handle Saddam Hussein and the issue of Iraq’s access to weapons of mass destruction in spring 2003 demonstrated that Russia was trying to continue its US-centric policy. The conflict over Iraq was a decisive event in 2003, demonstrating not only the USA’s political and military superiority as the strongest power in the world but also the new and activist US foreign and security policy after 11 September 2001. International disagreement over how to handle the Iraq issue deepened in autumn 2002. Russia sided with France and Germany as all three countries emphasized the supreme authority of the United Nations Security Council to decide on the use of force against Iraq, and at the same time were reluctant to have the UN Security Council legitimize the use of force before the weapons inspectors had presented their final report. When the US–British military invasion of Iraq was launched on 17 March, Putin’s reaction, on 20 March, was harsh. His strong words – that military action could ‘not be justified’, that there was no need for military action, that Iraq did not constitute a threat to its neighbours or other states, and finally that ‘military action against Iraq was a great political mistake’30 – were met with international surprise. It had been expected that Putin would avoid using strong words against the US administration. As a result of Putin’s criticism, Russian–US relations soured. The US administration accused Russia of delivering arms and military equipment to Iraq – anti-tank rockets, night-vision devices and electronic systems for jamming radio signals. On 27 March secretary of state Colin Powell warned that if the Russian government could not stop Russian firms exporting to Iraq the issue would become a ‘major problem’ in Russian–US relations and that Russia would have no chance of participating in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. The increased tensions in relations with the USA during the first two weeks of the military intervention in Iraq set off a wave of anti-Americanism in Russia. In an election year, with parliamentary elections coming up at the end of the year, many in Russia could be expected to exploit the new international situation surrounding Iraq, as well as criticizing Putin for domestic reasons. However, the Russian government wanted to avoid serious long-term damage to relations with the USA. Although Putin had criticized the invasion of Iraq, he now tried to save the previously good relations with the USA and to act as a ‘bridge’ between the USA and its European allies. In early April, he said in reply to questions from journalists in Tambov that

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Russia had always sought a peaceful solution to the Iraq conflict, but ‘I have to say that for political and economic considerations Russia is not interested in a US defeat’, and this was perceived as a clear signal to the world and to the US administration in particular.31 Thus, while Putin played the ‘European card’ with France and Germany in relation to the USA during early 2003, at the end of the day his concern for good relations with the USA led him to put an end to the rising wave of anti-Americanism in the Russian media. On 12 May 2003 foreign minister Igor Ivanov declared that relations with the USA could be restored to the level they were at before the Iraqi crisis ‘since the dialogue never stopped even when the Iraqi crisis reached its climax’.32 The diplomatic game around Iraq demonstrated that the Russian government maintained its strong US focus and was giving priority to its relations with the USA. Examining the applicability of the four alternative explanations to Russia’s behaviour in the Iraq conflict in March and April 2003, the international structure explanation is very relevant. In Central Asia, the USA was intensifying its security cooperation with the regional states. After 2001, US foreign policy had become highly activist and oriented towards changing the status quo in Western Asia and the Middle East. The US military build-up around Iraq in preparation for war on Iraq changed the balance in favour of the USA in the whole of Western and Central Asia. Uzbekistan explicitly supported the US-led invasion of Iraq; Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan did not declare support, but neither did they directly condemn the USA. Central Asian leaders did not follow up on Putin’s harsh words prior to the fall of Baghdad. The low profile of Russia on the Iraq issue opened the possibility that Russia would be able to exploit the US–Russian common interest in fighting international terrorism and – at least temporarily and in one specific issue area – be regarded as a great power. Moreover, a low profile on US policy in Iraq would give Russia an entrance ticket to the US oil market while also facilitating US support for Russian membership in international organizations and a greater US understanding of Russia’s problems in Chechnya. Thus, the government acted out of its strategic vision in trying to make the best of the situation. Different institutions and interests tried to influence Putin’s position on the Iraq crisis. Putin did follow a ‘double track’ up to the fall of Baghdad, trying to satisfy domestic critics of his foreign policy by siding with France and Germany. The Russian state had given large credits to Iraq, and Russian oil companies had acquired concessions to oilfields in Iraq and were selling part of Iraqi oil within the UN food-for-oil programme. Thus, there was a direct interest in not abandoning Saddam Hussein. As the fall of Baghdad approached, Russian oil companies oriented towards the West and the US market above all had a definite influence over Russian government policy. They played an important role behind the scenes in preserv-

Understanding Russia’s foreign policy change 195 ing cooperation with the USA during the Iraq war (among them, Mikhail Khodorkovsky of the Yukos oil company). The communist newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiia thus wrote: To the overwhelming majority of Russians it is clear who the Russian President is singing with at present. He is singing with the voice of the oligarchs, who are connected by many bonds to American and British oil companies – of Khodorkovskys, Alekperovs, Abramovichs and others. But they are only small partners of the American oil barons.33 Although Sovetskaia Rossiia had its own interest in exaggerating the influence of the oil oligarchs, most of the latter had clear interests in trying to influence the government. Finally, applying the ‘socializing’ explanation, it can be argued that Russia’s support for the norms and values of the UN system has increased over the years and did play a role in the Iraq conflict. Russia defends the traditional values of the UN system such as state sovereignty and the supreme authority of the UN Security Council. Russia called for UN involvement during the Iraq crisis and was an uncompromising supporter of the UN Security Council, while the USA selectively brushed the Security Council aside when it expected vetoes. On issues of multilateralism and the role of the UN, the Russian government and the Bush administration are far from each other. Yet Russia behaved over the Iraq issue as a member of a transatlantic community, where disagreement runs high but it all takes place within ‘a family of states’.

Conclusion Four possible explanations of the change of Russia’s policy towards Central Asia in 2001 have been discussed here. Putin’s consent in 2001 to a US military presence in Central Asia during the US-led operations in Afghanistan stands out in sharp contrast to his Central Asia policy of 1999 when he emphasized the anti-terrorist struggle in the region while at the same time trying to counter a growing US presence. The first explanation (the international structure) points to Russia’s weak position in the international system, on the global level and in Central Asia. International structural conditions were determining factors in the sense that they forced Russia to reconsider its foreign policy. Russia’s reduced international influence was a precondition for Putin’s acceptance of a US military presence in Central Asia. Yet the direction of policy is best accounted for by the second explanation (the instrumental explanation). The 2001 change of policy was determined by Russia’s strategic goal of returning to a great-power position. Putin’s support for the USA in the post-11 September situation secured a breakthrough in relations with the West after years of chilly relations since the mid-1990s.

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Cooperation with the USA was also thought to offer the best way to international influence. The third explanation, institutional rivalry, which does contribute to an understanding of the 1999 policy change, does not help to elucidate the 2001 decision. By 2001 Putin was in control of foreign policymaking and a narrow group around him took the decision, although there was strong opposition from groups within his own power base. Putin had, however, the support of oligarchs and economic interests which wanted to develop cooperation with the USA. He was thus able to balance different groups against each other by his policy. While his Chechnya policy maintained the support of the security sector, his US policy increased support for him among the economic interest groups. The fourth explanation (socialization) contributes the least. Although it cannot be excluded that the developing cooperation and exchange with the West over the years had resulted in Russia becoming socialized into common values with the West, this cannot explain Putin’s 2001 turn of policy. Socialization is a long-term process which may have impact on Russian policy-making only in the future. Putin’s turn in his Central Asian policy in 2001 created a new link between Russia’s Central Asia policy and its policy towards the West. Russia gave its consent to a US military presence in the region in exchange for improved relations with the West. Moreover, it made Russian policy extremely US-centric. Thus, as long as the Russian government wants to maintain good relations with the USA, and the US administration is prepared to continue its engagement in Central Asia, Russia will accept a US military presence and engagement in the region. This situation of ‘forced acceptance’ is the crucial component of Russia’s revised foreign policy in the modern post-Soviet era. In the long-term perspective, this is part of Russia’s adaptation to the new conditions in the post-Soviet and post-11 September world. In the short-term perspective, an interesting question follows. What would be the consequences if these two determinants were to change – if Russia were to turn away from cooperation with the USA or the USA were to withdraw from Central Asia?

Notes 1 For a more in-depth analysis of the Central Asian topic, see Lena Jonson, Vladimir Putin and Central Asia: The Shaping of Russian Foreign Policy, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. 2 John Hobson uses the term ‘the international agential power’ of a state. See John M. Hobson, The State and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 217–35. 3 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: Random House, 1979. 4 Kenneth Waltz, ‘Another gap’, in Robert Osgood et al., Containment, Soviet Behavior and Grand Strategy, Policy Papers in International Affairs no. 16, Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, University of California at

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5 6

7 8 9 10

11

12

13

14 15 16 17 18

19

Berkeley, 1981, pp. 74–86. Quoted by Christer Pursiainen, Russian Foreign Policy and International Relations Theory, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, p. 118. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1971. Robert O. Keohane, ‘The analysis of international regimes: Towards a European–American research programme’, in Volker Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory and International Relations, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 29, 30. Quoted by Christer Pursiainen, Russian Foreign Policy and International Relations Theory, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, p. 120. See also Christer Pursiainen on the discussion of Russian studies and international relations’ theory in his study, Beyond Sovietology: International Relations Theory and the Study of Soviet/Russian Foreign and Security Policy, Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 1998. Christer Pursiainen, ‘The impact of international security regimes on Russia’s behavior’, in Ted Hopf (ed.), Understandings of Russian Foreign Policy, University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, pp. 126–7. Andrew Hurrell, ‘International society and the study of regimes: A reflective approach’, in Volker Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory and International Relations, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, American Political Science Review, 88 (June 1994), pp. 384–96. On the concept of the ‘policy entrepreneur’ see R. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, Boston: Mass., Little, Brown & Co., 1984; and Jakob Gustavsson, The Politics of Foreign Policy Change: Explaining the Swedish Reorientation on EC Membership, Lund: Lund University Press, 1998. See e.g. Stephen Blank, ‘The United States and Central Asia’, in Roy Allison and Lena Jonson (eds), Central Asian Security: The New International Context, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge, London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 187. See also the references to Gilpin in Flemming Splidsboel-Hansen, ‘Past and future meet: Aleksandr Gorchakov and Russian foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 54(3), 2002, pp. 377–8. According to Gilpin, this often explains the use of the ‘turbulent frontier’ argument, for example, by Britain in India in the nineteenth century. There is a serious risk of further overextension of commitments, however. Gilpin, War and Change, p. 191. Gilpin, War and Change, pp. 193ff. Ibid., p. 194. Its present director, Nikolai Patrushev, is a close ally of Putin, a member of the Russian Security Council, and the director of the CIS Anti-Terrorist Centre. He thus has an influence over Russian CIS policy. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework For Analysis, London: Lynn Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1998. On the securitization of Russian foreign policy, see also the chapter by Nikita Lomagin in this book. Strategic Survey 1998/99, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1999, pp. 132–3. Primakov was replaced as prime minister by Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin, who had a background in the Ministry of Interior Affairs and as director of domestic security (FSB), and as such was one of those responsible for the first Chechnya war of 1994–6. Strategic Survey 1999/2000, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2000, p. 120. Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, Security.

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20 ORT Vremya programme, 14 September 2001/ITAR–TASS, 14 September 2001; and Jamestown Monitor, 170, 18 September 2001. 21 BBC Inside Central Asia, no. 393, 17–23 September 2001. 22 As a Moscow Times editorial said, when Voloshin went to Washington as the war against Iraq came closer: ‘A reassuring sign that Putin may know what he is doing after all is the presence in Washington this week of presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, as odd as that may sound. Voloshin may not have the nicest reputation in Moscow, but he is said to have been an architect of the post-Sept. 11, pro-US line, and if anyone in the Kremlin knows how to drive a bargain it is Voloshin.’ ‘Walking a fine line to drive a hard bargain’, Moscow Times, 27 February 2003. 23 Peter Reddaway, ‘Russia–Putin: formal or real power?’, The Banker, 1 October 2002. 24 [Meeting of the President of the Russian Federation with senior officials of the Diplomatic Service of the Russian Foreign Ministry], Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 2, February 2001. 25 Vagit Alekperov, ‘U biznesa i armii odni tseli: vozrozhdenie Rossii’ [Business and the army have a single goal – the revival of Russia], Krasnaia zvezda, 6 December 2002. 26 Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989, pp. 162ff. 27 Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 15. 28 See www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru/data/news_print.html?he_id⫽15&news_id⫽53. 29 A report by the Foundation for Prospective Studies and Initiatives, with Primakov, Alexei Arbatov and former prime minister Yegor Gaidar among the authors, stated in early 2003: ‘There are no insurmountable barriers between Russia and the US today for forming a coalition aimed at a future victory over international terrorism. It may also predetermine the progress of relations between them. For Russia, the interest in that coalition is much bigger than for the US, and the reason is not because Russia is weaker. The format of an antiterrorist coalition provides this country with the opportunity for speeding up its integration into the community of democratic and highly developed nations.’ ‘Russia in 2003 and its foreign policy: Excerpts from the Report by the Foundation for Prospective Studies and Initiatives’, Russia in Global Affairs, 1(1), January–March 2003, pp. 96–7. Anti-terrorism was seen as giving Russia the chance to proceed with its domestic economic agenda while still playing a role on the international scene. Russia’s support for anti-terrorist efforts provided it with an ‘important foreign policy resource’. 30 Vladimir Putin, ‘Zaiavlenie na soveshchanii v Kremle’ [Declaration at the conference in the Kremlin], 20 March 2003 (http://www.gov.ru). 31 ‘Prezident vstretilsia s regional’nymi zhurnalistami’ [The president met regional journalists], Izvestiia, 4 April 2003, p. 2. 32 Interfax, 12 May 2003. 33 Vasilii Safronchuk, ‘Putin ne khochet porazheniia SshA’ [Putin does not want a US defeat], Sovetskaia Rossiia, 8 April 2003, p. 3.

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Bibliography Books and journals Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1971. Blank, Stephen, ‘The United States and Central Asia’, in Roy Allison and Lena Jonson (eds), Central Asian Security: The New International Context, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001. Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework For Analysis, London: Lynn Rienner, 1998. Finnemore, Martha, National Interests in International Society, Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. Gilpin, Robert, War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge, London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Gustavsson, Jakob, The Politics of Foreign Policy Change: Explaining the Swedish Reorientation on EC Membership, Lund: Lund University Press, 1998. Hobson, John M., The State and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hurrell, Andrew, ‘International society and the study of regimes: A reflective approach’, in Volker Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory and International Relations, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Keohane, Robert O., International Institutions and State Power, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989. ——, ‘The analysis of international regimes: Towards a European–American research programme’, in Volker Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory and International Relations, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Kingdon, R., Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1984. Primakov, Yevgenii et al., ‘Russia in 2003 and its foreign policy: Excerpts from the report by the Foundation for Prospective Studies and Initiatives’, Russia in Global Affairs, 1(1), January–March 2003. Pursiainen, Christer, Beyond Sovietology: International Relations Theory and the Study of Soviet/Russian Foreign and Security Policy, Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 1998. ——, ‘The impact of international security regimes on Russia’s behavior’, in Ted Hopf (ed.), Understandings of Russian Foreign Policy, University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. ——, Russian Foreign Policy and International Relations Theory, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Putin, Vladimir, ‘Zaiavlenie na soveshchanii v Kremle’ [Declaration at the conference in the Kremlin], 20 March 2003 (http://www.gov.ru). Reddaway, Peter, ‘Russia–Putin: formal or real power?’, The Banker, 1 October 2002. Splidsboel-Hansen, Flemming, ‘Past and future meet: Aleksandr Gorchakov and Russian foreign policy’, Europe–Asia Studies, 54(3), 2002. Strategic Survey 1998/99, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1999.

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Strategic Survey 1999/2000, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2000. Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics, New York: Random House, 1979. ——, ‘Another gap’, in Robert Osgood et al., Containment, Soviet Behavior and Grand Strategy, Policy Papers in International Affairs no. 16, Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1981. Wendt, Alexander, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, American Political Science Review, 88, June 1994, pp. 384–96.

Media and Internet Alekperov, Vagit, ‘U biznesa i armii odni tseli: vozrozhdenie Rossii’ [Business and the army have a single goal – the revival of Russia], Krasnaia zvezda, 6 December 2002. BBC Inside Central Asia, 393, 17–23 September 2001. Interfax, 12 May 2003. ITAR–TASS, 14 September 2001. Jamestown Monitor, 170, 18 September 2001. [Meeting of the President of the Russian Federation with senior officials of the Diplomatic Service of the Russian Foreign Ministry], Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 2, February 2001. ORT Vremya programme, 14 September 2001. ‘President vstretilsia s regional’nymi zhurnalistami’ [The president meets regional journalists], Izvestiia, 4 April 2003. Putin, Vladimir, ‘Internet speech’, December 1999 (http://www.pravitelstvo.gov. ru/data/news_print.html?he_id⫽15&news_id⫽53). Safronchuk, Vasilii, ‘Putin ne khochet porazheniya SshA’ [Putin does not want a US defeat], Sovetskaia Rossiia, 8 April 2003, p. 3. ‘Walking a fine line to drive a hard bargain’, Moscow Times, 27 February 2003.

Part III

Internal dimensions of security

9

Putin, the army and military reform Isabelle Facon

Thinking about what kind of military Russia should have is akin to thinking about what kind of country Russia should be.1

Introduction ‘In military reform the key problems are substantial re-equipment, modernization of the principles for manning the armed forces and improvement of their very structure. We need a strong, professional and well-equipped army for the successful and peaceful development of the country’. In his May 2003 annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin declared military reform and modernization of the armed forces one of his top priorities. He stressed that the process of formation of entirely professional permanent-readiness units should be completed by 2007 and that it would mean that over time only professional soldiers would be sent to ‘hot spots’ and to fight in local conflicts.2 In the opinion of many observers, the fact that Putin’s address devoted a good deal of attention to military reform was a clear reflection of the importance of this issue in the pre-electoral context (Duma elections were due in December 2003, and presidential elections in the spring of 2004). And indeed, according to the results of recent VTsIOM surveys, 86 per cent of the Russian population and 83 per cent of servicemen consider military reform and the transition to a contract-based system of manning the armed forces necessities. Roughly two-thirds of both categories (63 per cent and 64 per cent, respectively) agree that military reform should start ‘immediately’.3 President Putin’s speech was probably not aimed only at pleasing the numerous Russian voters who want the abolition of conscription and the eradication of the whole range of abuses that go with it, or those who may remember that Putin came to power with promises that he would make the Russian military more efficient and enable them to command more respect abroad. It also demonstrated the president’s awareness that real action had to be taken now to prevent the complete collapse of the armed forces. More than ten years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Russian

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press still produces almost daily reports about the army’s ills, from low morale to problems with professionalism and discipline, ageing equipment, insufficient combat training and chronic underfunding. In its noticeable, though relatively cautious, efforts to work out a serious plan for military reform, the ‘new Kremlin’ may have been motivated also by the perceived need to strengthen its control over the military, especially as Russian generals appear not to be supportive of Vladimir Putin’s international project – a project which may, over the longer term, establish the conditions for more concrete and systematic interaction between the Russian army and Western militaries. However, the recent steps taken by the Russian government in the military field are sending ambiguous signals about the real prospects of military reform and the state of civil–military relations.

Reform of the armed forces: an operational necessity At least in its first phase (that is, until the capture of Grozny in February 2000), the second Chechnya war showed that the Russian army is not in total disrepair. In comparison to the first Chechnya campaign (1994–6), planning, implementation, coordination between Ministry of Defence (MoD) units and the troops of other ‘power ministries’, and command and control had improved significantly. The land forces’ readiness was shown to have improved, and the military operations demonstrated that the Russian army was capable of effectively deploying and supplying a sizeable force in a local conflict and had succeeded in building a few higherreadiness units.4 However, these positive (from a purely military point of view) signs should not be taken as illustrating that the capabilities of the Russian military as a whole have improved. First of all, it should not be forgotten that immediately after the end of the first Chechnya war special preparation had been organized for the North Caucasus Military District (MD) forces.5 Besides, as the second war has become protracted, problems encountered in the first war – coordination between the power ministries, coordination between air and land forces, discipline, the funding of servicemen’s pay, and so on – have reappeared. This is only one of the numerous symptoms of the superficial nature of the military reform process as it has developed over the past decade. The Russian armed forces: a grim picture The general picture of the Russian army remains, indeed, very grim: lowquality personnel, poor equipment, and shortfalls in combat training and force coordination. A recent survey indicates that only half of the Russian population has complete or partial confidence in the army, with 40 per cent having little or no confidence in it and 10 per cent finding it hard to say.6 According to Colonel-General Valerii Manilov, first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defence and Security (formerly

Putin, the army and military reform 205 first deputy chief of the General Staff), 56 per cent of officers are living below the poverty line, despite the increase in wages in 2002 and early 2003.7 This situation has made a career in the military unattractive. As a result, the armed forces suffer from a shortage of junior officers. A significant number of them leave the armed forces before reaching the age of 30. An increasing proportion of the weapon systems in use in the Russian military are out-of-date or will soon be so. According to most of the available data, only 30 per cent of the Russian army’s armaments and military hardware are up to date. Many of these systems lack modern components. This is because of the imbalance in the MoD’s budget, 65–70 per cent of which, since the early 1990s, has been devoted to operations and maintenance, to the detriment of investment.8 The MoD has tried to compensate for this situation by a policy aimed at modernizing existing systems and at focusing military investment spending on research and development (R&D) so that when the Russian state’s budget situation improves appreciably, the Russian defence industry will be able to start serial production of new-generation systems (‘prototype policy’). The success of this approach is, however, questionable. Naturally, the equipment problem has a direct and negative impact on the armed forces’ ability to train and exercise. Shortages of fuel, spare parts, lubricants and ammunition mean that exercises are not held sufficiently frequently, which directly threatens the MoD’s ability to maintain troops’ combat skills. In the air force, pilots do not fly more than 20–30 hours a year. In the navy, ships seldom go to sea, and the training level in the land forces remains far from satisfactory.9 There are very few higherreadiness units, and their resources are stretched; this was obvious when, before the recent decision by the Kremlin to withdraw Russia’s peacekeeping contingent from the Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Kosovo Force (KFOR), such units were rotating between Chechnya and the Balkans.10 As is well known, a consequence of the general decay in Russia’s military capabilities has been the growing emphasis that official military-related documents have put on nuclear forces to compensate for the weakness in conventional capabilities.11 Obstacles to reform Indeed, although the issue of military reform has been the subject of frequent and lively debate in Russia since the late 1980s as one of the fundamental elements of the general transition to a more modern state and a more democratic society, not much progress has been accomplished over the past decade in this field. Clearly, the results are still far from the goal which has been emphasized in the successive official plans for reforming the armed forces since the break-up of the Soviet Union – a leaner, more mobile and modernized force (‘modernization’ meaning the qualitative enhancement of both the personnel and the equipment). Such a new, more

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compact force is supposed to be based on a core of rapid deployment units and to be able to respond quickly to emerging threats, with possible reinforcements in case of need in all strategic directions. Recently, Sergei Ivanov, the defence minister, declared that the Russian army should ‘be able to successfully perform its duties simultaneously in two armed conflicts of any type, without carrying out additional mobilization, and conduct peacekeeping operations both independently and as part of multinational contingents’.12 For the time being, however, only the ‘make it leaner’ goal seems to have been achieved as, all in all, the Russian army has essentially kept the structure of the Soviet conscript-based army, though on a much smaller scale. The number of personnel has been reduced from 2.7 million in the early 1990s to roughly 1.2 million,13 although it is also true that, starting in 1997/8, efforts have been made to streamline the administrative and command structure, which was meant to allow the military leadership to make more optimal use of the meagre budgets they have at their disposal. The lack of adequate financial support is, of course, a key factor in the Russian armed forces’ difficult situation and in the slow progress of reform. As Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee, notes, a consensus has been reached that the ‘acceptable level of defence spending’ should be approximately 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). As he underlines, this level has actually never been attained, even in the recent period since 1999 which has been marked by noticeable improvements in Russia’s economic performance.14 However, there is another, very important factor behind the failure of military reform – the absence of any coherent, long-term approach to this reform, which has suffered seriously from Russia’s domestic political instability and competition, especially in the Yeltsin era. First, the civilian leadership, faced with many other priorities (especially on the economic and social front) and anxious that the military leadership might express their discontent with the fate of the army more and more openly, has tended to try to soften that discontent by, among other things, leaving the military with a quasi-monopoly over the decision-making related to military reform. This has obviously not been conducive to either serious civilian oversight of the armed forces or radical and substantial reform measures.15 Second, many of the reform-related decisions that have been taken so far have largely been a reflection of inter-agency or inter-branch rivalries; some steps have been reversed a few years after they were decided for the same kind of political reasons. Examples of this are the change in the subordination of the space troops and the disbanding of the land forces central command. Both moves were undertaken in 1997, only to be cancelled later on. A third explanation for the lack of consistency in devising military reform plans has been the volatility of the domestic debate on threat assessment. In 2000, when Vladimir Putin was elected president of the Russian Federation, many options were still being considered, with offi-

Putin, the army and military reform 207 cials and experts advocating different hierarchies of threats and thus different military reform options. The threats ranged from the re-militarization of international relations led by the ‘NATO–US connection’ and the Chinese peril to local and regional conflicts, especially on Russia’s volatile southern periphery (in the Caucasus and Central Asia), international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Such volatility, which still characterizes the domestic security debate in Russia, is both a consequence of the country’s geopolitical confusion and disorientation after the break-up of the Soviet Union and a reflection of the conflicts of interest and rivalries between various groups within the civilian and military leaderships. This has greatly affected the ability of the Russian government to impose and a fortiori implement a military development and reform programme based on an articulate and solid set of priorities. A new starting point? Quite recently, Russia has apparently moved forward towards professionalization of the armed forces, which has always been a very controversial – and fundamental – element of the military reform debate. In 2001 it was decided to switch, in a first stage, permanent combat units to allprofessional service. In November 2001, the government tasked an interagency working group with assessing the cost of switching the manning of these units to contract service,16 and in September 2002 a first pilot experiment in contract manning was launched with the 76th Airborne Division, headquartered in Pskov, which should be manned 100 per cent by professionals before the end of 2003 (according to MoD sources).17 In 2003, a plan was devised under which, over the period 2004–7, 80 military formations will be manned on a contract basis: 72 from the MoD, three from the Federal Border Service (Federal’naia Pogranichnaia Sluzhba, FPS) and five from the Interior Ministry (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del, MVD) – in all 147,500 men.18 This is because the problem of the quality of personnel is threatening to become increasingly acute. Much has already been written about the escalating decline in discipline and morale in the armed forces and the persistence of the problem of dedovshchina (bullying and physical abuse of conscripts, which has plagued the military for decades and which, according to some sources, led to the deaths of 1,200 soldiers in 2002).19 Because of bullying, poor pay and the declining prestige of the military, an everincreasing number of young people pay bribes to avoid conscription or to get false medical certificates indicating that they are unfit for service.20 According to the MoD press service, only 10.3 per cent of Russian citizens eligible for the draft were likely to be conscripted for military service in 2003, the rest being exempted or legally entitled to a postponement. This means a reduction compared with 2002, when the figure was 11.2 per cent. In 1994 it was 27 per cent.21 Combined with the deferments offered to

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students in higher education, these factors have meant that the quality of the young men drafted into the military is increasingly poor. Many of them have medical problems, a low educational level, no professional experience and/or previous contact with illegal activity; others suffer from drug addiction, alcoholism and mental illness.22 The combination of these trends has aggravated disorder and indiscipline in military units. Another major factor behind the decision to move towards professional armed forces has been the deteriorating demographic trends in Russia, which are not likely to be reversed quickly or easily. According to one MoD source, from 2005 to 2007 the number of young men eligible to be drafted (that is, aged 18–27 years) will allow the armed forces to draft only 40–50 per cent of the personnel they need.23 This has prompted the civilian and military leaderships to consider changes in the manning system more seriously and in a more systemic way. Among the changes envisioned, as mentioned above, are a (partial or total) switch to professional armed forces, and the recruitment of volunteers from Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, who would be granted Russian citizenship after three years of satisfactory service.24 This evolution in thinking is driven by the idea that it is much more rational to spend the scarce money that is available for defence not on poor-quality conscripts who in the end will not remain in the armed forces but rather on better-paid professional officers who are more disciplined, better qualified and more able to use modern, high-technology equipment – for whom it will therefore be necessary to ‘ensure a respectable financial and social status’.25 Discussions have been under way in recent years about managing different balances in the military budget in order to make optimal use of the limited financial resources available for defence. The following options should be mentioned as they will probably remain long-term guidelines for the future general development of the Russian armed forces: 1

Modifying the distribution of the defence budget between maintenance and investment (procurement, R&D, capital construction, and armaments and equipment repair) items. It seems that the Kremlin has become increasingly preoccupied with the state of the army’s equipment and military hardware. An MoD source recently stressed that the combat potential of the army will deteriorate drastically by 2011 unless there is a substantial and rapid increase in the state orders for military equipment, as new armament is not coming in to the armed forces in quantities sufficient to compensate for the rate at which the equipment currently available is being decommissioned.26 The aim for the longer term is to devote 40 per cent of the national defence budget to investment items (instead of the current share of roughly 30 per cent). However, experts note that this ‘balancing act’ is unlikely to be implemented quickly if further personnel cuts and a switch to professional armed forces are to take place. Indeed, person-

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nel cuts mean increases in the costs of military pensions, and the effects of savings on maintenance obtained as a result of a reduction in the numbers of the armed forces will be felt only later. And professionalization requires higher pay for contract servicemen. According to Vladislav Reznik, deputy chairman of the Duma Budget and Taxation Committee, the state budget planned for 2004 will allow the military to fund only 70 per cent of the state armaments programme.27 Devoting more resources to the development of and procurement for conventional forces: in the 1990s the strategic nuclear forces received preferential treatment as the least expensive way of compensating for the weakness of Russia’s conventional forces and of strengthening its international stature. Following the signing in May 2002 of a new treaty on strategic nuclear forces with the USA (the SORT Treaty), decisions have been taken that imply extra funding for prolonging the service life of a number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); however, the new plans for developing the strategic nuclear forces do not include substantial increases in their funding that would allow, for example, for a speeding-up of the pace of production of new missiles (the SS-27 and Topol-M), which remains very modest.

Military reform does seem to have support in policy-making circles, and, importantly, partisans of reform are not lacking among the military leadership itself. The military leadership is not inherently and unconditionally hostile to structural changes. Since the late 1970s, a number of senior officers have expressed their concern about the growing qualitative and technological gap between the Soviet/Russian army and its Western (especially US) counterparts. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, this ‘group’ has grown both bigger and more assertive in stressing that the national army is ill-adapted to the threats Russia now faces, and should not only become more mobile but also get high-precision weapons and personnel that are able to use such equipment. However, it is not clear yet whether the Kremlin and these ‘military allies’ have sufficient political and financial room for manoeuvre to bypass the still powerful anti-reform lobby within the High Command.

Reform of the armed forces: a political necessity? Vladimir Putin did not address the military reform problem immediately after his election to the presidency. In the first place, he had other priorities, among them Chechnya, the strengthening of the federal state’s authority over the subjects of the federation, and the redefinition of foreign policy. Second, in his first year in office, he needed good relations with the High Command as the military were a key player in the so-called ‘anti-terrorist campaign’ in Chechnya. The funding problem may have contributed to the new president’s caution in tackling the sensitive issue of

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military reform. Indeed, establishing professional armed forces and equipping them with state-of-the art weapons is expensive (as the enemies of military reform have always pointed out). As the future of the economic recovery remains problematic despite the recent improvements (as emphasized repeatedly by Putin himself), and as the Kremlin under Putin has shown no willingness to increase the defence budget substantially, the head of state has certainly hesitated before engaging the High Command on the military reform front, despite his awareness of the urgency of the problem. Putin and his generals: the honeymoon that never was After one year in office, the new president decided to take more radical steps in this direction. Political reasons were an important factor in his determination, together with the increasing deterioration of the armed forces’ capabilities, as described in the first part of this chapter. Indeed, Putin felt that he had to assert his authority over the armed forces more decisively. In 2001, the atmosphere in civil–military relations began to change in comparison with the atmosphere that had prevailed during the first months of Putin’s presidency. In that period, many experts had predicted that under Putin there would be, if not a remilitarization of the Russian society and economy, then at least the emergence of a positive climate in civil–military relations, in contrast to what happened in the Yeltsin years. Indeed, Putin initially repeatedly stressed the importance of the military in his project of restoring the authority of the state both within the country and abroad. He also promised higher defence spending, including higher pay.28 The fact that Putin needed the army for the war in Chechnya, which was so instrumental in consolidating his political position, led many specialists to predict that a sort of bargain would be struck that would preserve the military from being challenged by the civilian leadership on the subject of reform. It seems that the military – at least the generals in charge of planning and implementing the military operations in Chechnya – believed that the war in the North Caucasus would give them a freer hand and greater influence in decision-making. As experts have stressed, this war has ‘[served] the personal interests of a small but entrenched group of officers at the expense of the rest of the military and the country’. This group has made it quite clear that it is prepared to do its utmost to preserve these interests.29 This is precisely what has made Putin more wary of the higher military hierarchy, especially as he has grown increasingly confident that he has been deliberately ill-informed or disinformed by the generals in charge of the operations in Chechnya, and that his personal control over the army has diminished in connection with this war.30 In Putin’s eyes, all this directly contradicts his project of restoring the authority of the Russian state and the credibility of its institutions.31

Putin, the army and military reform 211 Civil–military relations began to become more tense, even if not as openly as under Yeltsin, when key representatives of the military leadership publicly castigated the government’s inept policy on military reform and predicted the collapse of the Russian army. In March 2001, Vladimir Putin designated one of his closest political allies, Sergei Ivanov, to head the MoD. The High Command resented this choice, especially as Ivanov, a former general in the Committee on State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, the KGB), is not from the military seraglio. This goes directly against the tradition of the Russian military, and appears to have been a first attempt at breaking the relative control that the military leadership has traditionally exerted over military-related issues (military development and reform). Since taking office, Sergei Ivanov has quite often expressed his discontent with the military’s lack of professionalism, and many experts consider that he does so on Putin’s instructions. For example, mentioning the growing number of desertions, he said that these are ‘usually caused by the commanders’ inability to work with their subordinates, their lack of interest in what happens among soldiers, and wilful abandonment of direct duties they are paid to fulfil’.32 He has also repeatedly criticized the top generals in charge of the operations in Chechnya.33 As concerns reform per se, President Putin has indicated that he intends to re-launch the military reform debate on a new basis; that is, with input from political and social groups – not only from the military, who have traditionally been the main provider of expertise to support decisionmaking on military development and reform. In November 2001, the government decided to include members of Yegor Gaidar’s Institute of Transition Economies (IEPP) in the working group tasked with devising a federal programme for transition to contract-based service34 under the supervision of the MoD and the Ministry for Economic Development.35 The idea of recruiting citizens from other CIS countries was originally devised by the Union of Right Forces party (Soiuz Pravykh Sil, SPS); it was apparently formulated by Boris Nemtsov, leader of the SPS and of the Duma SPS faction, during a governmental meeting on military reform on 21 November 2002, and initially did not elicit much enthusiasm on the part of the military leadership.36 General Eduard Vorobev, deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee, recalls that this approach – diversifying the sources of ideas and expertise – was also applied in the preparation of the draft law on alternative military service, for which there were several variants, in addition to the plan defended by the General Staff, which the government rejected in its initial form.37 Obviously, the military establishment did not greatly like this. The generals apparently attempted to hamper the work done by the ‘outsiders’ in the governmental working group on military reform in various ways – for instance, by not delivering a number of ad hoc documents, including non-confidential ones.38 Another motive that should not be overlooked in Vladimir Putin’s

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getting more actively involved in dealing with the military is the negative attitude of people within the High Command to the president’s ‘international project’.

The army and Putin’s international project [T]he political leaders . . . must instruct the military, in a firm and unequivocal way, to exclude from its present military doctrine, strategy and basic operational plans, the armed forces’ deployment, combat training and procurement programs all scenarios for a large-scale conventional war with NATO in Europe, as well as with the United States and Japan in the Far East.39

The Russian military are obviously not supporting the president’s international project unanimously and unconditionally. Many senior officers are wary of Putin’s policy of rapprochement with Western countries and organizations, which the president views as a key element of his plan for promoting domestic economic recovery as well as Russia’s role on the world scene.40 This does not appeal to those military officers who are still motivated by Cold War thinking and by an obsession with the perceived threat from NATO and the USA. These people feel let down by Putin’s policy of building up better relations with the West. They remember, indeed, that the head of state was a key architect of the new National Security Concept and military doctrine that were adopted in the first half of 2000.41 Both documents, the drafting of which had been strongly influenced by NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, stressed the need for Russia to strengthen its military capabilities in order to support its diplomatic activity and embodied an adversarial vision of the West. Against this background, many officers feel that the president has subsequently not acted very coherently.42 The Kremlin, for instance, reacted only moderately to the USA’s unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in December 2001 or to NATO’s decision in November 2002 to go ahead with enlargement, and this time including the Baltic countries. Military leaders view these and other developments as demonstrations that the West is not prepared to give up its antagonistic vision of Russia and to opt for a genuinely cooperative approach in relations with it. Russian officers also resent the decision in 2001 to close the former Soviet bases in Cam Rahn in Vietnam and Lourdes in Cuba, and the fact that Putin did not oppose the deployment of NATO countries’ troops in Central Asian republics after 11 September, as well as the subsequent uncertainty concerning the duration of the stay of these troops in this area of the former Soviet Union and the presence of US military instructors in Georgia.43 Among those officers who still emphasize the perceived security threat from the West and NATO, some do so because they are structurally wary of the West’s future military intentions, or at least because they see

Putin, the army and military reform 213 NATO as challenging Russia’s influence both in Europe and in other areas that Moscow considers as zones of its traditional interest. However, many others find the idea of an adversarial West a useful argument to deploy in order to avoid structural military reform. This internal debate over international issues and relations with the West is a major stake in civil– military relations under Putin and may be a decisive factor in the Kremlin’s ability to break the resistance to reform within the armed forces. Even the moderate Alexei Arbatov drew a connection between recent international developments and the possibility for military reform to move forward. Stressing that it ‘would not be an exaggeration to say that Russia’s armed forces . . . are 70–80 per cent oriented for a war with the West (as well as Turkey and Japan) in terms of a general mobilization strategy, as well as a long-term armament program’, he also underlined that ‘US and NATO approaches to military and disarmament issues and use-of-force policies are not encouraging Russia to pursue a change in its present military policy’ as the Kremlin cannot ‘blindly rely upon the verbal assurances of Western leaders concerning their non-aggressive intentions’ unless NATO transforms its basic structure.44 In this context, one may wonder whether the new quality of relations Moscow is developing with the West may, as some analysts believe, have an impact on military reform in Russia, and whether closer political and military cooperation with NATO, the USA and the European Union (EU) is likely to offer an opportunity to influence the prospects for military reform positively – in a word to ‘reduce . . . threat perceptions and create . . . an external environment that promotes the process of military reform in Russia’.45 Indeed, especially after 11 September, military-tomilitary and defence interaction is officially one of the elements of the new relations of cooperation that Russia is developing with its Western partners. The security and defence dialogue between Russia and the EU has been progressively strengthened over the past three years; the two players are now holding regular discussions on the options for interaction between Russia and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), especially the modalities of Russia’s possible contributions to future EU crisis management operations.46 The agenda of the new NATO–Russia Council that was set up in May 2002 also includes military-related cooperation items such as peacekeeping and dialogue on defence reform.47 All these issues are also part of Russia’s ‘new’ relations with the USA as they have been developing since mid-2001 after the first meeting between Vladimir Putin and President George W. Bush in Ljubljana (Slovenia). Officially, the main goal of these various schemes of dialogue and interaction is to create the conditions, over the longer term, to enable Russia’s armed forces to take part in joint operations with Western militaries in peacekeeping, crisis management and counter-terrorism48 in order to face the common ‘new security threats’, thus making the new Russian–Western ‘strategic partnership’ supposedly under construction more complete.

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Russian officials, including representatives of the military leadership, have expressed their interest in such developments. In his address to the Federal Assembly, President Putin stated that the Russian state’s ambition is to build an army which is ‘able to defend Russia and its allies, but also to interact efficiently with the Armed forces of other countries in the context of the fight against common threats’. Viktor Ozerov, the chairman of the Defence and Security Committee in the Federation Council, deplored that Russia ranks only thirtieth on the United Nations’ list of 88 member countries which contribute troops for UN peacekeeping operations. Colonel-General Valentin Bogdanshikov, first deputy head of the MoD’s Department for International Military Cooperation, regretted the fact that lack of funding prevents Russia from sending troops on the UN missions to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, East Timor, and other trouble spots49 and, stressing that the Russian MoD is drafting a resolution on the formation of regular peacekeeping units, General Nikolai Kormiltsev, the commander-in-chief of the land forces and deputy defence minister, has stated that ‘the process of Russia’s rapprochement with NATO and the EU has been quite active and the need for joint peacekeeping operations in hot spots may arise, and therefore we should be prepared for an effective solution’.50 The Kremlin and the ‘modernists’ within the High Command may hope that they can rely on the new cooperative atmosphere between Russia and its Western partners as an extra and outside impulse to stimulate military reform domestically in the name of the need to reconstruct the army in such a way that it will be able to take part in peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions or low-intensity conflict resolution jointly with NATO troops or European contingents. This means, again, much more compact, highly mobile, well equipped, well trained armed forces. In other words, those people in the civilian and military leaderships who see the generals’ continued antagonistic perception of NATO and the West as a major hurdle to military reform probably hope that the establishment of more comprehensive, long-term military-to-military interaction with the West will allow them to mobilize enough support domestically for a new model of army that is better suited to meeting properly the real security challenges Russia faces, which are coming not from the West but from other, more salient directions (Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Far East). They are willing to exchange concepts and experience in order to fuel the domestic debate with fresh ideas and attitudes. The question is whether the developing dialogue between Russian officials, including those from the military, and their Western counterparts on security, defence and peacekeeping matters is likely to reduce the perception, still very influential within the military, that the West is a major source of threat. Will it in turn contribute to overcoming the military’s conservative attitude to reform by, among other things, creating mutual trust and confidence, thus erasing the Russian officers’ negative reading of the West’s intentions towards Moscow?

Putin, the army and military reform 215 For many reasons it is not possible to give an unconditionally positive answer to these questions. First, as might be expected, not everyone in the Russian General Staff is interested in promoting such developments. Traditionally the Russian military have not been very open to interaction with foreign armies; moreover, such interaction means exposing the weaknesses of the national army to ‘outsiders’, which is unlikely to make Russian officers more enthusiastic about cooperation with Western armed forces. Second, it cannot be assumed that enthusiasm for cooperation is much more developed on the ‘other side’. Given the state of the Russian armed forces, the incentives may not be numerous or strong enough for the West to be willing to invest much in more extensive cooperation with Russia in the military field. Of course, there is experience of rather positive interaction between the Russian military and their Western counterparts for instance, in the Russian contributions to SFOR and KFOR and Russia’s relations with individual European countries. But this experience has been limited in scope, and has also demonstrated the problems involved in working with the decayed Russian armed forces (the culture gap, discipline problems, as demonstrated in the Balkans peacekeeping missions, stretched resources in terms of permanent-readiness and peacekeeping units, and so on). This problem – the limited operational utility of Russia in terms of making contributions to peacekeeping, peacemaking and crisis management operations in Europe or elsewhere – is openly recognized by some Russian officials as a hurdle to international cooperation that should be overcome as a matter of urgency.51 Ironically, the limitations this problem creates in cooperation between the Russian army and its Western counterparts are also used as an argument by the Russian opponents of military interaction with the West as it enables them to say that the absence of any serious cooperative undertakings blatantly shows that neither the EU nor NATO nor the USA really wants to cooperate with Russia militarily and that these players remain ambiguous in their intentions towards Moscow. A third factor lies in the fact that NATO, the USA and the EU are currently busy adjusting their own military structures and postures in order to fight the ‘new threats’. In this context, they may not have energy enough to develop imaginative ways of engaging Russian armed forces which remain largely reluctant to cooperate with their Western counterparts.

Prospects Unfortunately, in the press, leaders from the MoD express doubts about the possibility of moving towards a professional army: they speak about difficulties, complexities. Some references have been made about the USA, saying that the whole process required 13 years while in fact this process for the essential part took two full years. France, very recently, also carried out this transition in two years . . . Yet one knows well: if the leader doubts

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An additional element behind Putin’s apparent determination to speed up the military reform process may have been connected with his awareness that certain dimensions of this reform, such as professionalization and alternatives to military service, are very popular among the society at large. It is unlikely that Putin is indifferent to the society’s attitude to military issues – negative towards maintaining conscription, positive towards civilian alternatives to military service. Theodore P. Gerber, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, and Sarah Mendelson, Senior Fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, conducted a study that illustrates quite clearly this état d’esprit of a large majority of the Russian public. They conclude this study by underlining that military reform is not an insignificant election issue: three-fifths of the Russian population aged 16 and over advocate a professional military; and two-thirds of likely voters view military reform as an important issue in choosing which party to vote for.54 Against this background, it is quite understandable that some Russian experts on military-related issues interpreted Putin’s 2003 address to the Federal Assembly as a ‘re-election manifesto’. In Pavel Felgengauer’s eyes, the president promised things that the majority of voters would like to hear: that after 2008, conscripts would serve one year instead of the present two; that Russia will be a strong, powerful country with a well-armed professional military; that by 2007 all ‘permanent combat readiness units’ will be manned by contract soldiers.55 This ‘programme’ may appeal to the general public, but specialists see in the recent decisions a sign that the generals have arranged a new victory for themselves, and a setback for military reform. In May 2003 an article by Alexander Golts, a respected Russian specialist in military affairs, stated that ‘military reform [was] going nowhere again’.56 A few months earlier he had already expressed his scepticism on this subject. He suggested then that Putin had not resisted the military’s anti-structural reform pressure. Regretting, like many other experts, that the professionalization move will not apply to all units in the armed forces but only, at least in a first stage, to permanent-readiness units, Golts also denounced the mili-

Putin, the army and military reform 217 tary leadership’s efforts to discredit the first ‘professionalisation experiments’ by demanding huge budgets for implementing them.57 Golts is definitely not alone in asserting that the military establishment has again succeeded in postponing any serious military reform plans. Boris Nemtsov regretted that ‘the program of the military bureaucracy was adopted, the result of which will be an army divided into two parts – the elite part and the third-rate part’. Calling such a tendency ‘dangerous and mistaken’, he stated that it would mean the continuation of bullying and brutality in the military.58 Nemtsov was also quoted as saying that Putin ‘chose the wrong variant of military reform’; that is, a wrong mechanism for implementing a good decision (switching to a contract-based manning system).59 To many analysts who are less personally involved in the whole business than Nemtsov, it is indeed regrettable that the transition to professionalization is likely to remain limited to higher-readiness units and that the plan is not more comprehensive. A number of experts and officials consider that this plan, which constitutes the core of the ‘transition of the army to predominantly contractual principles’ approved in July 2003 by the Cabinet of Ministers,60 is a minimalist option. Defence Minister Ivanov has confirmed that the army will be based on a mixed system, both contract service and conscription, ‘for many years’. This seems to mean that the liberal advisers of the government on military reform may have to wait indefinitely for their proposal to professionalize all regular units to be realized. Ivanov’s argument is that conscription remains necessary for building the reserves. The liberals’ proposals included a similar idea. However, they diverged from the military leadership’s proposals on the issue of the duration of the service: while the SPS and the IEPP proposed a six- to eight-month period,61 the MoD people opposed it, stressing that it was impossible to train reservists properly in such a short time.62 Vorobev, for his part, regretted that the Russian leadership, starting with the defence minister, now publicly doubts even the feasibility of the plan for switching permanent combat units to allprofessional manning over a four-year period. To many observers, there is no ground to consider the decision to reduce the term of conscription from two years to one year, starting in 2008,63 as a real concession to the ‘liberal’ contributors to the military reform plans (even though the MoD’s proposals did not envision any reduction in the duration of military service before 2010). Those who think that the government’s recent military-related choices mean that once again the generals have been successful in imposing their conservative views see additional evidence of that in the fact that the downsizing of the armed forces is obviously not going to go as far as advocated by Gaidar and the SPS. President Putin, attending a conference of top MoD officials, has confirmed that the personnel reduction process is mainly completed and that no further significant reductions are being planned.64 Sergei Ivanov described the current size of the armed forces (1.13 million in late

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2003, according to MoD sources) as the ‘level of defence sufficiency’ (the plan is to end the reduction process by the beginning of 2005, at a level of one million65). This is far from the levels advocated by the most liberal proponents of reform (750,000–800,000).66 In this context, one may wonder whether President Putin’s declared willingness to implement the modernization of the armed forces is more than just pre-electoral declarations. Of course, everything should not be painted in black and white. The military, as was suggested above, are not all conservative hardliners. To some analysts all these recent militaryreform decisions, most of which appear in the MoD’s ‘doctrine’ of the Russian armed forces’ development (published in early October 2003),67 should not be regarded as half-measures only but as the first serious reform steps in more than a decade. Putin and the government may have been willing to water down the most radical proposals out of apprehension that they might be dangerous in view of the still uncertain budgetary context.68 The government may have considered that the budget situation is not conducive to the successful management of a rapid, fully fledged transition to professional armed forces. It is very possible that the Kremlin has feared that the failure of a bold reform programme, such as the one proposed by the SPS, would have discredited the very idea of professionalization. At the same time, it is difficult not to interpret the bill on alternative military service that was signed into law by President Putin in July 2002 as a real victory for the conservative circles in the armed forces: the law is tough, draconian, and introduces so many constraints for the candidates for alternative service that they will probably simply forget about it. Also worrying is the fact that the military hardliners emphasize that, since this law has been passed, it is necessary to toughen the modalities of conscription – meaning the reduction, if not the abolition, of deferments for students in higher education – as a way of overcoming the problem of the low quality of conscripts. In fact, it appears that keeping the military’s actions and ambitions in check, on the one hand, and reforming the armed forces on the other are two separate goals that are not necessarily compatible. In a word, the civilian leadership may have found it difficult to counteract simultaneously the adverse effect of the Chechnya war on civil–military relations and impose radical reform measures on the military. In opting for moderately ambitious reform plans, the government may also have hoped to avoid the military’s expressing too loudly and explicitly their hostility to Putin’s international project. This is, in any case, only one of the pieces of evidence that Vladimir Putin is not the all-powerful leader that some have seen him to be. Many experts believe that a strong political will on the part of the Supreme Commander is a necessary condition for military reform to take off. The problem, in this connection, is also probably who within the military is going to support and promote the Supreme Commander’s line. It is

Putin, the army and military reform 219 difficult to evaluate the weight of the ‘modernists’ within the High Command, but it seems clear that a generational change within the higher military leadership is needed before any civilian leader will be able to succeed in bringing in more structural changes and enforcing tighter control over military matters. This generational change is also a condition for a serious evolution in the senior officers’ world-view. Some experts have interpreted the designation, in May 2003, of General Konstantin Totskii, the former director of the FPS, as Russia’s permanent representative to NATO as a sign that there was simply no senior member of the military who was progressive enough to fill the post satisfactorily. To many senior officers it is probably much easier to maintain a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the West, especially NATO and the USA, than to develop ties with Western counterparts that might expose all the weaknesses of the national military. As Alexei Arbatov has stressed, some of the West’s initiatives, and above all the US initiatives, on the world scene have done nothing to make this attitude on the part of the Russian generals more flexible.69 In any case, it is not obvious that closer interaction between the Russian military and their Western counterparts, structurally limited as it is, will give an impulse strong enough to become an engine of future military reform.

Notes 1 Part of the summary in Carnegie Moscow Center, ‘Sources and limits of Russian power: Options for the Russian military in the next decade’, discussion at the Sources and Limits of Russian Power Seminar, led by Dmitri Trenin (deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center), CSIS/INSS-NDU, October 2002–April 2003 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/seminars.htm). 2 Russian President, ‘Address to the Federal Assembly’, 16 May 2003, available on the Russian President’s website (http://president.kremlin.ru/text/docs/ 2003/05/44716.shtml). 3 These data are taken from two opinion polls, one conducted over the period 16–22 May 2003 with 300 officers, and one on 23–24 April 2003 with 685 residents of Moscow. They are presented in a comparative perspective in Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 27 June 2003. (Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie is referred to hereinafter as NVO.) VTsIOM is the Vserossiiskii Tsentr po izucheniiu obshchestvennogo mneniia (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Institute). 4 For more on this issue, see Charles W. Blandy, ‘Chechnya: Two federal interventions, an interim comparison and assessment’, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, P29, January 2000; and Timothy L. Thomas, ‘A tale of two theaters: Russian actions in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999’, Analysis of Current Events, 12(5–6), September 2000. 5 See Steven J. Main, ‘North Caucasus Military District: Defending Russia’s interests in the Caucasus (1996–August 1999)’, Camberley: A101, Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, June 2000. 6 Theodore P. Gerber and Sarah Mendelson, ‘Strong public support for military reform in Russia’, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo.

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288, Washington, DC: CSIS, May 2003, p. 3. In another poll, 55 per cent of respondents said they believed the army can protect Russia in case of a real military threat from other countries while 37 per cent said ‘No’ to this and 8 per cent were undecided (Interfax-AVN, 20 February 2003). This is due to the parallel rises in electricity prices, the costs of apartments, etc., and to the abolition of a number of benefits that officers used to enjoy. See ‘Russia saves money on defense’, Russian Military Analysis, 128, 2 November 2001. Most analysts agree that 160,000–170,000 officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned, have no proper housing or no housing at all (RIA Novosti, 28 August 2002). As a result, the greater part of the production of the Russian defence industry is oriented towards international arms markets. For more detail see Alexei Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need? The contours of the Russian military reform’, Russia in Global Affairs, January–March 2003, available on the Russia in Global Affairs website (http://eng.globalisation.ru). For more on this, see ‘Prezident sdvigaet voennuiu reformu s mertvoi tochki’ [The president gets military reform moving], NVO, 23 May 2003. See Interfax-AVN, ‘NATO and Russia: Partners in peacekeeping’, 18 April 2003 (http://www.nato.int/docu/presskit/010219/brocheng.pdf). One of the official explanations for the decision to withdraw the Russian peacekeepers from the Balkans is that the US$26 million or so that Russia was spending annually on these forces are badly needed for funding military reform (NVO, 16 May 2003). Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov has described the increase in the number of permanent alert units as one of the priorities of Russia’s military policy (Interfax-AVN, 2 October 2003). For a more comprehensive overview of the general situation in the Russian army see, among others, Frank Umbach, ‘Future military reform: Russia’s nuclear and conventional forces’, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, D65, August 2002; Anne C. Aldis (ed.), Russian Military Reform, 1992–2002, London: Frank Cass & Co., October 2003; and the Post-Soviet Armies Newsletter website (http://www.psan.org). Sergei Ivanov, at an expanded session of the Russian military leadership, quoted by Interfax-AVN, 2 October 2003. The figure is 1,262,000, according to Yurii Baluevskii, first deputy chief of the General Staff (quoted in NVO, 11 July 2003). According to Arbatov, from 1998 to 2003 the level of the national defence budgets has remained between 2.4 per cent and 2.7 per cent (in 2003) of GDP. His conclusion is that the maximum level of the defence budget that the Russian state can afford is 3 per cent of GDP. For a view of what kind of reform such a budget level allows for, see Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’ For more details, see Isabelle Facon, ‘Évolution des doctrines et des discours militaires de Moscou depuis 1989: continuité, discontinuité’ [The evolution of Moscow’s military doctrine and discourse since 1989: continuity, discontinuity], Recherches et Documents, Paris: Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, November 2001, pp. 31–44. ‘V rossiiskuiu armiiu priglashaiut grazhdan SNG’ [CIS citizens invited into the Russian army], NVO, 18 April 2003. The 7th Airborne Division (Novorossiisk, North Caucasus MD) should be the second unit to undergo the experiment, starting in early 2004 (according to then airborne commander Georgii Shpak, quoted by Interfax-AVN, 10 February 2003). Where the land forces are concerned, as Colonel-General Kormiltsev, deputy defence minister and commander of the land forces, has stressed, units of the North Caucasus MD will be the first to transfer to contract service

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(Interfax-AVN, 18 February 2003). The 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (MRD), stationed in Chechnya on a permanent basis, will switch to professional service in 2004 (Interfax-AVN, 1 October 2003). Mentioned in Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’ [Immediate tasks of development of the armed forces of the Russian Federation], document unveiled by Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov during a 2 October 2003 meeting at the MoD in the presence of President Putin, detailing the future missions and restructuring steps for the Russian armed forces (pp. 56–7). Parts of the text are available on the MoD website (http://www.mil.ru). This figure was quoted in a joint press release issued by the Union of Right Forces (SPS) party and the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers committees. More recent data indicate that the figures may be higher (Interfax-AVN, 21 February 2003; and 1 October 2003). The dedovshchina phenomenon, made worse by the crisis of morale in the Russian military after the break-up of the USSR, is connected with a traditional feature of the Russian armed forces – the lack of a professional corps of sergeants. Defence Minister Ivanov mentioned a plan to introduce 40,000–60,000 professional sergeants in all units, not just in the ones made up of contract soldiers, in order to ensure better discipline in the barracks and stem dedovshchina. The October 2003 MoD document on the future development of the armed forces also mentions a programme, approved by Putin, for the partial transition of the sergeants’ corps to contract service (Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’, pp. 9–10). It remains to be seen whether this project will be implemented. According to MoD sources, about 22,000 men evaded conscription in 2002 (Interfax-AVN, 1 October 2003). Interfax-AVN, 1 October 2003. According to Boris Nemtsov, leader of the SPS party, one in every four conscripts has not finished secondary school, 5 per cent cannot read or write, onequarter have tried drugs, and 5 per cent have previous criminal convictions (quoted by AVN, 1 October 2003). These problems are mentioned in the October 2003 document, Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’, p. 54. According to Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov (Associated Press, 2 April 2003). Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’ Hoover’s, 23 June 2003. See also Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’, pp. 58–60. Interfax-AVN, 2 October 2003. Eighty per cent of the servicemen voted for Putin in the 2000 presidential election. Theodore Gerber and Sarah Mendelson, ‘Moscow’s military malaise’, Financial Times, 11 September 2002; and Isabelle Facon, ‘Le Kremlin, l’armée et la guerre’ [The Kremlin, the army and the war], Le Figaro (‘Débats et opinions’), 28 October 2002. For more details, see Alexander Golts, ‘Soldiers deserting, Putin is displeased with his generals and the situation in the military’, Ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal, 36, September 2002, translated by WPS Monitoring Agency (http://www.wps.ru). This author suggested at the time that ‘Putin distrusts the military’s reports so much that he even sent officials of his own administration to Chechnya’ to check the situation on the spot. For this very same reason, the Kremlin decided to demonstrate firmness in addressing the rampant corruption and criminality within the armed forces. The presidential administration’s auditing directorate put the MoD on a list of government agencies that have misused extra-budgetary funds. The accusation

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33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

41

42

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is related to the ministry’s fund for helping servicemen and their families, as well as veterans, with housing and health care expenses. According to the source, only 5.4 per cent of the fund’s resources were used for these purposes. Some of the remaining sums were misspent, and the rest went into the managers’ pockets (‘Kremlin audit: millions misspent’, Moscow Times, 19 February 2003). In recent months, several senior officers have been taken to court for embezzlement and corruption. AFP, 6 January 2003. Only 46 per cent of officers approve of Ivanov’s performance as defence minister, according to a poll conducted over the period 16–22 May 2003 with 300 officers, while 83 per cent approve of Putin’s actions as president; 54 per cent are not satisfied with the government’s work. NVO, 27 June 2003. For more details, see Golts, ‘Soldiers deserting ’. ‘Voennoi reformy “po-minoboronovski” ne budet’ [There will be no military reform à la Defence Ministry], interview with Vitalii Tsymbal, the director of the Laboratory of Military Economics of the IEPP, NVO, 16 May 2003. ‘V rossiiskuiu armiiu priglashaiut grazhdan SNG’, Members of the IEPP worked hand in hand with the SPS. (Yegor Gaidar is one of the most prominent members of the SPS.) ‘Zagovor chinovnikov protiv kontraktnika’ [Conspiracy of the bureaucrats against the contract soldier. Interview with General Eduard Vorobev, member of the Duma SPS faction], NVO, 25 April 2003. For more information on Nemtsov’s and the SPS’s approaches to military reform, see the military reform page of Nemtsov’s website (http://www.nemtsov.ru/project/armyreform). ‘Zagovor chinovnikov protiv kontraktnika’. ‘Voennoi reformy “po-minoboronovski” ne budet’. Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’ Admittedly, one sometimes gets the feeling that the civilian leadership is inclined to play the ‘we cannot upset the military’ card in relations with Western partners: for instance, the Kremlin tends to leave the floor to senior military representatives when it is willing to make its discontent known, the aim being not to harm the relationship with the West too directly. This was the case when the US decided to withdraw from the ABM treaty or with the NATO enlargement issues and, more recently, with Iraq. In these contexts, Sergei Ivanov was often the one who expressed the strongest criticism of the West’s actions. National Security Concept, Presidential Decree no. 24, 10 January 2000 (text available on the Russian Security Council website, http://www.scrf.gov.ru/ Documents/Decree/2000/24-1.html); and Military Doctrine, Presidential Decree no. 706, 21 April 2000 (available on the Russian Security Council website, http://www.scrf.gov.ru/Documents/Decree/2000/706-1.html). The president, incidentally, ordered a reformulation of these documents just a few days after 11 September, which observers interpreted as a signal that he wanted these texts to reflect the improvement that had taken place in relations with the Euro-Atlantic community in the previous months. For more on the grievances of senior representatives of the military leadership, see Isabelle Facon, ‘Les relations civilo-militaires dans la Russie de Poutine: le facteur international’ [Civil–military relations in Putin’s Russia: the international factor], Dossier ‘La Russie’, Cahiers de Mars, 173, 2ème trimestre 2002, pp. 71–82. Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’ Arbatov is a member of the Yabloko political party. Jeremy Gray (US Navy), ‘Russian relationship with the West: The implications for military reform’, Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., December 2002, p. 5.

Putin, the army and military reform 223 46 For more on this, see Tuomas Forsberg, ‘Russia’s role in the ESDP’, in Esther Brimmer (ed.), The EU’s Search for a Strategic Role: ESDP and Its Implications for Transatlantic Relations, Washington, DC: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2002, pp. 85–99; and Clelia Rontoyanni, ‘So far, so good? Russia and the ESDP’, International Affairs, 78(4), 2002, pp. 813–30. 47 See North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘NATO–Russia relations: A new quality’, Declaration by the heads of state and government of NATO member states and the Russian Federation, Rome, 28 May 2002 (http://www.nato.int/ docu/basictxt/b020528e.htm). 48 Several international conferences on the role of the armed forces in the fight against terrorism (notably in February 2002 in Rome, then in Moscow in December of the same year) brought together high-ranking military, political and scientific officials from the NATO governing bodies, individual NATO member countries, and Russia. Among the subjects discussed were crisis management, exercises for training in the fight against terrorism, and information exchange. 49 Interfax-AVN, 11 February 2003; 25 February 2003. 50 Interfax-AVN, 30 July 2003. 51 For example, Alexei Arbatov started an article he wrote about the ‘possible and needed’ military cooperation between Russia and Western Europe by stressing that the ‘poor state of the Russian military and defence industrial complex’ is a serious limitation for such cooperation projects. Alexei Arbatov, ‘Pod odnim zontikom’ [Under the same umbrella], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 7 April 2003. 52 ‘Zagovor chinovnikov protiv kontraktnika’. 53 Evgenii Moskvin, Comment in NVO, 11 July 2003. 54 Gerber and Mendelson, ‘Strong public support for military reform in Russia’. 55 Pavel Felgengauer, ‘The military reform card’, Moscow Times, 22 May 2003. Felgengauer is a Russian independent expert on military affairs. 56 Alexander Golts, ‘Military reform going nowhere again’, Moscow Times, 7 May 2003. 57 By that time, Golts, mentioning the case of the Pskov 76th Airborne Division, stressed that ‘everything possible is being done to enable generals to report to the president . . . that the experiment has failed and contract army in Russia is impossible’ (Golts, ‘Soldiers deserting’). Vitalii Tsymbal is thus not alone in accusing the military leadership of deliberately inflating the prospective level of spending required for implementing the transition to professional armed forces (‘Voennoi reformy “po-minoboronovski” ne budet’). 58 NVO, 25 April 2003. 59 NVO, 23 May 2003. In Nemtsov’s view the path chosen by the Kremlin is ‘antiarmy and anti-Russian’. 60 ‘O perekhode armii preimushchestvenno na kontraktnye principy formirovaniia’ [On the army’s transition to a mainly contractual basis], mentioned in Nezavisimaia gazeta, 11 July 2003. 61 According to these proposals, service was meant to be carried out only in training units, both for preparation for contract service and to fill the reserve; and conscripts should get a specialization during this period of time. 62 ‘Zagovor chinovnikov protiv kontraktnika’. Citing his own experience as former deputy commander-in-chief of the land forces for combat training, General Vorobev asserts that six months are sufficient for a soldier or a sergeant to get a good qualification and training if he is under the supervision of real professional officers. Arbatov underscores how difficult it is for the High Command to accept the reality that having strong mobilization capabilities is useless in view of the current possible military threats and/or missions

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(a hypothetical conflict with NATO or war with China, the more urgent regional and local conflicts, peacekeeping missions and anti-terrorist operations) and therefore actual military needs (structure of the armed forces, doctrine). Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’ Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’, p. 58. Interfax-AVN, 2 October 2003. Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’, p. 8. NVO, 11 July 2003. According to Arbatov, if the defence budget is limited to 3 per cent of GDP, then the strength of the armed forces can vary within a range of 550,000 and 700,000 servicemen, depending on whether the army remains conscript-based or becomes contract-based. Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’ Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’. Recently, Vladislav Reznik, deputy chairman of the Duma Budget and Taxation Committee, confirmed the military’s financial problems by stating that in the future it would be difficult to provide funds for military reform and for rearmament simultaneously. Interfax-AVN, 2 October 2003. Arbatov, ‘What kind of army does Russia need?’

Bibliography Books and journals Aldis, Anne C. (ed.), Russian Military Reform, 1992–2002, London: Frank Cass & Co, October 2003. Blandy, Charles W., ‘Chechnya: Two federal interventions, an interim comparison and assessment’, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, P29, January 2000. Facon, Isabelle, ‘Évolution des doctrines et des discours militaires de Moscou depuis 1989: continuité, discontinuité’ [The evolution of Moscow’s military doctrine and discourse since 1989: continuity, discontinuity], Recherches et Documents, Paris: Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, November 2001. ——, ‘Les relations civilo-militaires dans la Russie de Poutine: le facteur international’ [Civil–military relations in Putin’s Russia: the international factor], Dossier ‘La Russie’, Cahiers de Mars, no. 173, 2ème trimestre 2002, pp. 71–82. Forsberg, Tuomas, ‘Russia’s role in the ESDP’, in Esther Brimmer (ed.), The EU’s Search for a Strategic Role: ESDP and Its Implications for Transatlantic Relations, Washington, DC: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2002. Gerber, Theodore P. and Sarah Mendelson, ‘Strong public support for military reform in Russia’, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 288, Washington, DC: CSIS, May 2003. Gray, Jeremy (US Navy), ‘Russian relationship with the West: The implications for military reform’, Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., December 2002. Main, Steven J., ‘North Caucasus Military District: Defending Russia’s interests in the Caucasus (1996–August 1999)’, A101, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, June 2000.

Putin, the army and military reform 225 Rontoyanni, Clelia, ‘So far, so good? Russia and the ESDP’, International Affairs, 78(4), 2002, pp. 813–30. ‘Russia saves money on defense’, Russian Military Analysis, 128, 2 November 2001. Thomas, Timothy L., ‘A tale of two theaters: Russian actions in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999’, Analysis of Current Events, 12(5–6), September 2000. Umbach, Frank, ‘Future military reform: Russia’s nuclear and conventional forces’, Camberley: Royal Military Academy, Conflict Studies Research Centre, D65, August 2002.

Media and Internet AFP, 6 January 2003. Arbatov, Alexei, ‘What kind of army does Russia need? The contours of the Russian military reform’, Russia in Global Affairs, January–March 2003, available on the Russia in Global Affairs website (http://eng.globalisation.ru). ——, ‘Pod odnim zontikom’ [Under the same umbrella], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 7 April 2003. Associated Press, 2 April 2003. Carnegie Moscow Center, ‘Sources and limits of Russian power: Options for the Russian military in the next decade’, part of the discussion at the Sources and Limits of Russian Power Seminar, led by Dmitri Trenin (deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center), CSIS/INSS-NDU, October 2002–April 2003 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/seminars.htm). Facon, Isabelle, ‘Le Kremlin, l’armée et la guerre’ [The Kremlin, the army and the war], Le Figaro (‘Débats et opinions’), 28 October 2002. Felgengauer, Pavel, ‘The military reform card’, Moscow Times, 22 May 2003. Gerber, Theodore and Sarah Mendelson, ‘Moscow’s military malaise’, Financial Times, 11 September 2002. Golts, Alexander, ‘Soldiers deserting, Putin is displeased with his generals and the situation in the military’, Ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal, 36, September 2002, translated by WPS Monitoring Agency (http://www.wps.ru). ——, ‘Military reform going nowhere again’, Moscow Times, 7 May 2003. Hoover’s, 23 June 2003. Interfax-AVN, 10 February 2003, 11 February 2003, 18 February 2003, 20 February 2003, 21 February 2003, 25 February 2003, 18 April 2003, 30 July 2003, 1 October 2003, 2 October 2003. ‘Kremlin audit: Millions misspent’, Moscow Times, 19 February 2003. Military Doctrine, Presidential Decree no. 706, 21 April 2000 (available on the Russian Security Council website, http://www.scrf.gov.ru/Documents/Decree/ 2000/706-1.html). Moskvin, Evgenii, Comment in Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 11 July 2003. National Security Concept, Presidential Decree no. 24, 10 January 2000 (text available on the Russian Security Council website, http://www.scrf.gov.ru/ Documents/Decree/2000/24-1.html). Nemtsov, Boris, website page on military reform (http://www.nemtsov.ru/project/ armyreform). Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 16 May 2003, 27 June 2003, 11 July 2003. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘NATO–Russia relations: A new quality’, Declaration by heads of state and government of NATO member states and the

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Russian Federation, Rome, 28 May 2002 (http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/ b020528e.htm). ——, ‘NATO and Russia: Partners in peacekeeping’, 18 April 2003 (http://www.nato.int/docu/presskit/010219/brocheng.pdf). ‘O perekhode armii preimushchestvenno na kontraktnye principy formirovaniia’ [On the army’s transition to a mainly contractual basis], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 11 July 2003. Post-Soviet Armies Newsletter website (http://www.psan.org). ‘Prezident sdvigaet voennuiu reformu s mertvoi tochki’ [The president gets military reform moving], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 23 May 2003. RIA Novosti, 28 August 2002. Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil RF’ [Immediate tasks of development of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, MoD document unveiled by Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov at a meeting at the MoD, 2 October 2003]. Parts of the text are available on the MoD website (http://www.mil.ru). Russian President, ‘Address to the Federal Assembly’, 16 May 2003 (http://president.kremlin.ru/text/docs/2003/05/44716.shtml). ‘V rossiiskuiu armiiu priglashaiut grazhdan SNG’ [CIS citizens invited into the Russian army], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 18 April 2003. ‘Voennoi reformy “po-minoboronovski” ne budet’ [There will be no military reform à la Defence Ministry], interview with Vitalii Tsymbal, the director of the Laboratory of Military Economics of the IEPP, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 16 May 2003. ‘Zagovor chinovnikov protiv kontraktnika’ [Conspiracy of the bureaucrats against the contract soldier: Interview with General Eduard Vorobev, member of the Duma SPS faction], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 25 April 2003.

10 Russian economic security in a medium-term perspective Roland Götz

Introduction This chapter discusses the main economic problems and challenges facing the Russian economy – that is, the problems of Russian economic security – in a medium-term perspective. In the medium term – approximately in the period 2005–20 – some fundamental shortcomings of the present Russian economy are likely to lead either to economic crises or at the very least to disappointment with the course of economic development among large sections of Russian society. The chapter begins with a discussion of the actual situation in the Russian economy, followed by an overview of some long-term problems. The possible range of economic growth in a medium-term perspective is then examined. The next section discusses the structure of the Russian economy and its impact on economic growth, and the final section evaluates the prospects of the energy sector.

The short-term outlook The situation of the Russian economy in the first three or four years of the millennium can be characterized as rather good, as the statistical data demonstrate. Above all, the so-called ‘2003 problem’ did not materialize. Thanks to external factors such as the high price of oil, the burden of debt service was not unbearable. There was also no sudden breakdown of the infrastructure and no intensification of the demographic crisis, as many both inside and outside Russia had predicted. The data can be interpreted as follows: •

• •

Economic growth is relatively high and continuing. It is driven by high export revenues thanks to the high oil price and the aftermath of the devaluation of the rouble in 1998. Registered unemployment is decreasing, although hidden unemployment remains. Inflation is slowly falling.

228 • • • •

Roland Götz External debt is expected to diminish further. The federal budget surplus will remain. The exchange rate is relatively stable. The international currency reserves are high and, if the oil price remains high, will grow.

However, closer inspection of economic developments in Russia since 1998 shows that the present apparently favourable economic conditions may be only transient. 1998–2002: A business cycle? When in 2000 Russian economic growth amounted to 9 per cent for that year, it looked as if the country had started on a path of permanent high growth, but the period 1998–2002 is better considered as a business cycle, launched by the economic recovery after the 1998 currency crisis. First, in 1998 imports fell, so that net exports grew considerably. Then, in 1999, investment (capital accumulation) expanded. Only in 2000 did private consumption begin to grow; state consumption acted as a stabilizer. Since 2001, gross domestic product (GDP) growth has been driven first by private consumption demand and then by investment demand (see Figure 10.1). The linear average rate of growth of GDP in the period 1998–2002 was 3.8 per cent. The growth forecast for 2003–4 is slightly higher. This will represent fairly solid, but not high, growth. The oil price, rouble appreciation and growth The fluctuations of the oil price are possibly the most important determinant of the short-term behaviour of the Russian economy, whereas in the medium term it is the level of the oil price that is of interest. An econometric analysis by Jouko Rautava, using quarterly data from the first quarter of 1994 to the third quarter of 2002, assumes that the impact of a permanent increase (decrease) of the oil price on the growth rate of the Russian economy is as follows:1 a

b c

A permanent 10 per cent increase (decrease) in the level of international oil prices is associated with a 2 per cent increase (decrease) in GDP. A permanent 10 per cent appreciation (depreciation) of the real exchange rate is associated with a 2.2 per cent drop (increase) in GDP. A permanent 10 per cent increase (decrease) in the level of the oil price is associated with a 3.6 per cent increase (decrease) of federal budget revenues.

If an increase (decrease) of the oil price is associated with a real apprecia-

Russian economic security 229 150

140

Percentage of previous year

130

120

110

100

90

80

70

1998

1999

2000 Year

Household consumption Gross accumulation

2001

2002

Government spending Net exports

Figure 10.1 The components of Russian GDP (source: Interfax Statistical Report, 9, 2003, 28 February 2003).

tion (depreciation) of the rouble, the combined impact on GDP will be small because the two factors work in opposite directions. But, as Rautava remarks, this counterbalancing effect is, not necessarily mechanical and does not allow us to conclude that fluctuations of the oil price will have no effect on GDP growth.

Long-term economic problems There are some problems which will threaten Russia’s economic security in the long run. The three most serious are ecological problems, the depletion of energy resources and negative demographic development.

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Ecological problems Environmental problems are one of the painful legacies of the Soviet era, when the ideology of economic growth dominated ecological considerations. Since 1990 economic decline and the closing down of most of the heavy industries have reduced pollution, but the same fundamental disregard of environmental concerns persists. Approximately 60 million Russians live in environmentally hazardous conditions, and 250,000 people die prematurely every year from health problems caused by environmental conditions. In 1999, air quality in 120 cities was over 80 per cent below the Russian standard.2 The fuel and energy sector is the main source of environmental degradation in Russia. It releases 70 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Pipeline leaks alone generate some 35 million metric tonnes of methane emissions each year. Over 3.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas are burned annually on the oilfields. Untreated waste water with oil and other contaminants is discharged into natural depressions in the landscape rather than into dumps. The negative environmental impacts that are typical for oil and gas extraction are multiplied in Russia by the use of outdated equipment, bad operational practices, and lack of control over activities in remote oil- and gas-producing regions.3 Economic security is affected indirectly by the repercussions of a deterioration in health on the numbers and quality of the labour force. On the other hand, concern about the environmental impact of industrial projects can obviously hinder growth in these sectors. A reorientation of economic policy in favour of ecological concerns will demand a longer process of rethinking and therefore cannot be expected to occur in the short or medium term. Depletion of energy resources The question of depletion will be treated here only with regard to energy resources. At first sight, Russia’s energy resources are vast and the possibility of their running out should be a question of the very distant future. The huge and scarcely touched coal reserves of Siberia will last for hundreds of years. Russia’s remaining oil reserves are in the range of 100–150 gigabarrels (Gb) and are larger than those of Iraq or Iran.4 Its gas reserves are 47 trillion cubic metres (tcm) by official calculations, or 18–20 tcm if only the economically feasible reserves are counted.5 They are on the same scale as the gas reserves of Iran. However, even in Soviet times energy was ‘the story of a paradox’ and a synonym for ‘crisis amid plenty’.6 The Soviet Union was the only major industrial country to be fully selfsufficient in energy while at the same time being constantly threatened with shortages and bottlenecks, which it could only prevent through massive capital investment in the energy sector. The fall in industrial production after the beginning of economic transformation and the corre-

Russian economic security 231 sponding fall in demand for energy for some time only disguised the inherent problems of the energy sector. Following a Russian long-term forecast, oil and gas production will increase until 2020–30 and then decrease because of deterioration of the reserves. According to these projections (see Figure 10.2), Russian oil production will peak at 370–375 million tonnes per year in the period 2010–20 and then fall to about 310 million tonnes per year in 2030.7 In 2060 it will reach 210–215 million tonnes per year and by then will therefore hardly meet internal demand. This means that in the second half of the century Russia will become an oil-importing country if the current structure of energy demand and economic growth persists. The maintenance of gas production and any increase in production during the period up to 2030 will depend on major investments being 900

800

700

mln t/bcm

600

500

400

300

200

100

0

1985

2000

2015

2030

2045

2060

2075

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Oil

Figure 10.2 Oil and gas production forecast for Russia to 2090 (source: Aleksandr Gritsenko, Nikolai Krylov, Victor Alenin and Vasily Stupakov, ‘Oil and gas of Russia in the XXI century: Forecast of production and development of the resource base’, Mineral Resources of Russia, 3, 2001 (http://www.geoinform.ru/english/mrr.files/issues/ 3-2001.html)).

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made in the development of infrastructure and the transport network from remote fields. Under the most optimistic scenario, in 2030 gas production will peak at a level of 830–840 bcm per year, including 650–660 bcm of onshore gas and 180 bcm of offshore gas. After 2030 it will decrease. Following this forecast, in 2075 gas production will reach about 550 bcm per year – hardly sufficient to meet internal demand, if the present structure of energy consumption persists. Unless internal energy consumption falls sharply, Russia will have to stop oil and gas exports in the second half of the century, and later it will have to switch to renewable energy sources to satisfy its energy demand. Demographic development Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the population of the Russian Federation has declined from 148 million in 1992 to 143 million in 2003.8 Most demographers agree, taking into account the current size of the population of child-bearing age, the fertility rate and child death rate, that Russia’s population will fall further, as Table 10.1 shows. For the more distant future, the projections disagree. The US Census Bureau calculates a population of 118 million by 2050.9 A leading American demographer, Murray Feshbach, forecasts 80 million by 2050, whereas a leading Russian demographic expert, Natalia Rimashevskaya, expects 87 million in 2025 and only 55 million in 2050. However, such longer-term forecasts cover too long a period to be reliable because they are based on insecure assumptions and fail to take into account future state policy that could encourage population growth. The causes of the decline of Russia’s population are a complex mixture of Soviet legacies and post-Soviet economic and social difficulties.10 An ‘abortion culture’ and a high proportion of women in employment were part of the Soviet industrialization paradigm. The political and economic changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union, including economic and social distress and the deterioration of the health system, produced growing mortality rates together with declining birth rates that were specific to particular age groups of the population (see Table 10.2). Table 10.1 The population of Russia Year

Population (million)

2003 2010 2015

143 138 134

Source: Graeme P. Herd, Foreign and Security Policy Implications of Russia’s Demographic Crisis, Working Paper 20, March 2002, Project on the Regionalization of Russian Foreign and Security Policy, Zurich: Forschungsstelle für Sicherheitspolitik, ETH (http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/documents/WorkingPapers/wp20.pdf).

Russian economic security 233 Table 10.2 Determinants of population development

1980 1990 2000 2002

Population at the beginning of the year (mln)

Births (mln) Deaths (mln)

Births per 1,000 inhabitants

Deaths per 1,000 inhabitants

140.1 147.7 145.6 143.9

2.2 2.0 1.3 1.4

15.9 13.4 8.7 9.8

11.0 11.2 15.4 16.3

1.5 1.7 2.2 2.3

Source: Statistical Yearbook of Russia, 2001, Part 5; and Interfax Statistical Report, 13, 2003, p. 19.

The implications of the demographic problems are widespread. Above all, the fall in the proportion of the population that is working cannot but have repercussions on economic growth. Thus, in the long run the labour supply will be one of the factors limiting Russia’s economic development, while in the short- and medium-term perspective the labour force of Russia is a reservoir of growth and development. The population decline is also important in a geopolitical context, and it affects military security. As data of the US Census Bureau also show, Russia will gradually lose its place in the first dozen population-rich countries (see Tables 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5). HIV/AIDS: A medium-term or long-term problem? The AIDS/HIV pandemic began in Russia in the late 1980s. Until the mid1990s, only up to 200 new cases were registered. In 1995, when the virus was beginning to be transmitted by intravenous drug use, HIV began to spread rapidly. The number of HIV-positive persons, according to data of the Russian Federal AIDS Centre, reached 86,000 by the end of 2000, 177,000 by 2001 and 240,000 by the end of 2002.11 Russia thus has the Table 10.3 Countries of the world ranked by population, 2003 Rank

Country

Population (mln)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

China India United States Indonesia Brazil Pakistan Russia

1,287 1,050 290 235 182 150 143

Source: US Census Bureau, International Data Base (http://blue.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbrank.pl).

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Table 10.4 Countries of the world ranked by population, 2020 Rank

Country

Population (mln)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

China India United States Indonesia Brazil Pakistan Bangladesh Nigeria Russia

1,424 1,297 336 288 212 200 190 189 139

Source: US Census Bureau, International Data Base (http://blue.census.gov/cgi-bin/ ipc/idbrank.pl).

Table 10.5 Countries of the world ranked by population, 2050 Rank

Country

Population (mln)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

India China United States Indonesia Nigeria Bangladesh Pakistan Brazil Congo Mexico Philippines Egypt Ethiopia Russia

1,601 1,418 420 336 307 280 268 228 181 153 148 127 121 118

Source: US Census Bureau, International Data Base (http://blue.census.gov/cgi-bin/ ipc/idbrank.pl).

second-highest HIV infection growth rate in the world after Ukraine. The real number of infected persons may be much larger, depending on the multiplier used to translate registered into actual cases. The main HIV centres in Russia are the cities of Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Samara. The World Bank, in a pessimistic scenario, estimates the number of HIV patients at approximately one million in 2002, 2.2 million in 2005, 5.3 million in 2010, 9.6 million in 2015, and 14.5 million in 2020. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) expects 5–8 million in 2010.12 The Russian expert Vadim Pokrovsky forecasts that ten million people will be infected by 2010.13 Such figures mean that as early as 2010, or at the latest 2020, 5–10 per cent of the population of Russia may be HIVinfected.

Russian economic security 235 However, the impact of HIV will not, as in the African countries or India, be counterbalanced by positive population growth. The negative population growth predicted for Russia itself impedes economic growth by directing resource flows toward consumption and the maintenance of the social systems. HIV/AIDS aggravates these effects significantly. The supply of labour will decline when people die from AIDS, and labour productivity is affected as soon as the HIV virus becomes active. The need to maintain support systems and the need for home care also have negative effects on labour productivity,14 while the need to combat HIV affects the resources available for investment. According to the Russian Federal AIDS Centre, a realistic cost estimate for mass AIDS treatment in Russia would be US$3,000–9,000 per annum per person. Multiplied by the number of HIV patients, this would mean a financial burden of up to US$50 billion per year in 2010 and up to $130 billion per year in 2020. Whether this is financed by the budget or by private sources, the effect on investment and growth will be negative and extreme. The World Bank has calculated the economic consequences of HIV in Russia up until 2020, under the assumption that no preventive policies are put into place.15 In a pessimistic scenario, GDP growth will be half a percentage point lower by 2010 and a full percentage point lower by 2020 than in the baseline scenario; and if preventive measures are taken the picture will be almost the same. The costs of preventive measures would be considerable and would have a negative impact on economic growth. In the pessimistic scenario, if the costs for treatment remain at the current international level of US$9,000 per person per year, the negative impact of HIV on GDP will be more pronounced if HIV-positive individuals receive preventive treatment than if they do not. Only at hypothetically low cost levels of US$3,000 per annum per person would the economic benefits of AIDS treatment outweigh the costs. The most effective way to avoid the long-term repercussions of the disease on economic growth, as the calculations of the World Bank study show, would be to limit the growth in numbers of drug users; that is, fight drug use in Russia. When HIV starts to spread to the non-drug-using part of the population – and there is already preliminary evidence that this is happening – it will be more difficult to dislodge and the economic consequences will be more severe because the more productive sections of the population will be affected.

Medium-term economic problems I: growth Starting position and aim No one disputes the necessity of fairly high growth in Russia as a precondition for an increase in the standard of living and the solution of urgent social problems. But there is less agreement about the dimension of the

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rate of growth that can be expected and the crucial factors contributing to economic growth in Russia. First, however, some analytical ambiguities concerning the starting position – the size of Russia’s GDP – must be tackled. The Russian gross national income (GNI) and GDP are not as small as is often believed. Using the market exchange rate to calculate the size of the Russian economy, it would be about the same size as that of the Netherlands, which obviously cannot be true. If purchasing power parity (PPP) is used, however – by which the value of the rouble is about four times as much as the market exchange rate would suggest16 – Russia’s GDP is comparable to that of some medium-size economic powers like Italy, Brazil and Mexico (see Tables 10.6 and 10.7).17 The general requirement of growth has been formulated by President Putin as the problem of overtaking Portugal.18 Russia is seen by its leadership as being economically inferior to West European countries if its gross domestic product per capita is taken as a benchmark. Just to catch up with Portugal, in fact, Russia would have to achieve a growth rate of 8 per cent per annum over a period of about 15 years. Can this be a realistic aim? Doubts arise if Russia is compared to other countries which have exhibited very rapid growth in recent years; and they, unlike Russia, have dedicated a large share of GDP to capital accumulation. Investment and growth Russian presidential adviser Andrei Illarionov seems to believe in the ‘miracle’ of high growth rates in Russia.19 Having analysed data from 150 Table 10.6 Russian gross national income 2000 calculated in purchasing power parity, compared with that of other powers Country

US$ bn

USA China Japan India Germany France UK Italy Brazil Russia Mexico Canada Korea Netherlands

9,601 4,951 3,436 2,375 2,047 1,438 1,407 1,354 1,243 1,165 861 836 818 282

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators 2002 (http://www.worldbank.org/data/ wdi2002/tables/table1-1.pdf).

Russian economic security 237 Table 10.7 The economic position of Russia in 2000 by purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP per capita Russia Portugal Leading industrialized countries

8,000 17,000 25,000–35,000

Source: World Bank, ‘World view’, World Development Indicators 2002 (http://www.worldbank.org/data/wdi2002/tables/table1-1.pdf).

countries in the period 1991–2001, he found that only the size of the public sector was responsible for high or low growth. At the same time, Illarionov failed to discover any consistent statistical linkage between economic growth and factors such as capital investment. By contrast, most students of the Russian economy believe that capital accumulation and the institutional setting are very important, if not the most important, determinants of growth in the country’s production potential. This point of view is corroborated by recent studies of the medium-term prospects of the Russian economy. Some of them are overly optimistic, but all underline the crucial role of capital accumulation. Thus, the Moscow branch of the World Bank, in its positive scenario of Russian economic development, expects an average growth rate of the Russian economy of 5.2 per cent per year in the period 2002–10.20 This positive scenario assumes an oil price of US$23 per barrel, continued implementation of reforms and a phenomenal 17 per cent increase in annual investment. At least the latter assumption seems to be highly unrealistic. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a publication of April 2002, tried to show that Russia could achieve GDP growth of 5–6 per cent per year in the period 2005–20 provided it could achieve an investment rate of 26 per cent of GDP and a fairly high growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP).21 However, the assumptions underlying these calculations are doubtful. Above all the assumption concerning the contribution of technological progress to growth – a growth rate of TFP in the range of 4 per cent per year – seems to be over-optimistic. Because this factor alone determines the result of the growth calculations by 70 per cent, the IMF calculations have a rather arbitrary character. Apart from this, the second assumption – an investment rate of 26 per cent – is just as optimistic (see Table 10.8). A team at the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT) has calculated Russia’s expected long-term per capita GDP growth rate by using parameter values of econometric research and applying them to Russia.22 In accordance with the literature on growth they took into account as independent variables (a) initial per capita GDP,

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Table 10.8 Rates of growth of the Russian economy at different rates of investment Per capita GDP growth (%)

Share of investment in GDP (%)

2.0 3.0 4.7

Pessimistic assumption: 15 Baseline assumption: 21 Optimistic assumption: 30

Source: Tuomas Komulainen et al., ‘Russia: Growth prospects and policy debates’, Bofit Online, 3, March 2003 (http://www.bof.fi/bofit/fin/7online/03abs/03pdf/bon0303.pdf).

which is negatively correlated with growth, as initially poorer countries tend to grow faster; (b) the secondary school enrolment rate, which is positively correlated with growth; and (c) the capital investment ratio, which is also positively correlated with growth. Thus, the growth rate per capita can be estimated for different assumed investment ratios, which according to the study will depend on economic reforms, protection of property rights, political stability and attitudes to foreign investment. The conclusion of the Finnish study is that ‘Russia can only achieve high growth if investment picks up considerably from its present level.’23 Using a similar econometric approach, a team from Deutsche Bank Research supplemented the factors affecting the growth potential by an explicit indicator for the quality of institutional conditions.24 This approach captures an important aspect of the Russian reality: since 2000 some institutional reforms have been implemented – for instance, tax reform and land reform – but other important reforms are still lacking, in particular in the energy, housing and municipal sectors. The Deutsche Bank study, using an econometric specification by Ali and Crain as well as data of the Fraser Institute, yielded the following estimates for 2010, as shown in Table 10.9.25 Both the Finnish and the German research arrive at nearly identical results for the baseline and the optimistic scenario, whereas for the pessimistic case the German research finds an even lower result for GDP growth, presumably influenced by the low institutional quality factor. It is interesting to note that the assumptions of the pessimistic cases of both studies – but not the resulting growth rate – coincide with the Russian reality in 2002 if the investment share is calculated in PPP terms. This brings us to the peculiarities of the distribution of the Russian GDP. The real investment share The relative sizes of the components of the Russian GDP are determined by prices, which differ considerably from world market prices. Goods and services destined for state consumption are valued low, whereas investment goods are overvalued compared to world market prices. In such cases the calculation of GDP aggregates in terms of PPPs instead of

1.2 2.5 4.6

Source: Deutsche Bank Research, 31 March 2003.

Nationalist U-turn Baseline scenario Liberal ‘upside’ scenario

GDP growth per capita (%)

Table 10.9 Russia in 2010 under different scenarios

15 20 30

Investment/GDP (%)

5 (Russia 2002) 6 (Poland 2002) 7 (Hungary, Czech Republic 2002)

Institutional quality (Fraser index of economic freedom)

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Table 10.10 Investment in Russia (gross capital accumulation) as a share of GDP

1999 2000 2001 2002

Calculated in market price (%)

Calculated in PPPs (%)

14.4 16.9 18.7 17.9

10.1 11.9 13.1 12.6

Sources: Share of gross capital accumulation in market prices, 2000–2: Gosudarstvennyi komitet statistiki (State Committee on Statistics, Goskomstat), 2002 (http//www.gks.ru/scripts/free); benchmark share, 1999, in PPP terms: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Purchasing Power Parities and Real Expenditures, 1999 Benchmark Year, Paris: OECD, 2002; PPP shares 2000–2 are calculated assuming the same ratio of PPP to market prices as in 1999.

market exchange rates seems to be adequate.26 If calculated on the basis of PPP, the structure of Russian GDP expenditure differs considerably from that of other industrialized countries. Most importantly, the share of investment is smaller and the share of government expenditure is higher than in most countries of the world. In Russia in the four-year period 1999–2002, the investment rate, calculated in national prices and at market prices, was in the range of 15–19 per cent (see Table 10.10). Calculated in PPP terms the investment rate was in the range of 10–13 per cent. Capital accumulation (investment) contributes to growth only if investment is greater than capital consumption (depreciation), which is in the range of 4–5 per cent of the capital stock or 12–15 per cent of GDP.27 In Russia, therefore, the share of investment in GDP is far below the amount necessary to enlarge the capital stock. But without an enlarged capital stock economic growth cannot be long-lasting. Growth potential under different assumptions As country studies and econometric studies show, high rates of economic growth are often correlated with high rates of investment, although these studies cannot answer the questions of causality.28 It is not at all clear whether high investment induces high economic growth or whether high growth induces high investment, or which other factors affect both. Under these restrictions, the method of ‘growth accounting’ makes it possible to calculate the contributions of capital accumulation, labour input and technological progress to economic growth.29 Capital accumulation alone can only explain less than half of economic growth, which is founded significantly on technological progress or the growth of TFP. What creates TFP growth and how big it can be expected to be in the future are unresolved questions. Growth accounting depicts the growth rate of production as a function of the growth rates of:

Russian economic security 241 • • •

technological progress; capital stock; and labour input.

Capital stock growth can be formulated as a function of investment or the share of investment in GDP, which in the Russian case is actually very modest and will probably remain below 20 per cent in the next few years. Labour growth in Russia will probably become negative as a result of the declining population, and will therefore not be a driving force of economic growth in the medium-term future if only quantities are taken into account. The possible improvement in labour quality can be captured by the productivity or technological progress component. Technological progress in the sense of improvements in TFP is a very artificial concept.30 It is difficult to predict the future increase of TFP in Russia and any predictions will be highly uncertain. In the past, in different countries very different values of TFP have been observed, varying from 1 per cent to 6 per cent per year. A realistic estimate of the growth rate of technological progress in Russia will possibly be in the range of 2–3 per cent per year. Only if a very high growth rate of TFP and a relatively high rate of investment (26 per cent) are assumed will the growth rate of the production potential be 5.6 per cent per year, as the IMF in its study assumed. Less optimistic assumptions, which are founded on international experience, produce a very different picture. Technological progress in the sense of growth in TFP is normally 1–2 per cent per year, and the share of investment in most cases lies not far from 20 per cent. Only in exceptional cases is it in the range of 25–30 per cent. A growth rate of the production potential of 5 per cent per year can only be achieved with an investment rate of 40 per cent of GDP, which is not likely to happen in Russia. The different calculations for Russia uniformly give the following result. The prospects for long-term growth are modest – about 3–4 per cent per year. This is far below the expectations of the Russian leadership. The aim of overtaking Portugal will be reached only in the very distant future, if at all. The over-ambitious growth plans had therefore better be dropped in order to avoid further frustration.

Medium-term economic problems II: structure There are three spheres or levels of the economy where distortions are evident: • • •

organizational structure; sectoral structure; and regional structure.

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Organizational structure There are two dominant features. First, there exists a large shadow economy. Second, the bulk of the enterprise sector consists of very large and inflexible units. The sector of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the official economy is relatively small and undercapitalized. The shadow economy The shadow economy in Russia had its roots (and precursors) in the underground economy of Soviet times and in the cooperatives of the perestroika period when private enterprises were not allowed. In the 1990s, when private entrepreneurship had been legalized, tax evasion and avoidance of company registration became the main reasons for non-official production. The official statistical authorities distinguish the ‘observed economy’ from the ‘non-observed economy’ (NOE), both being part of production in the sense of the system of national accounts (SNA). Illegal activities partly belong to the non-observed productive economy and in part are not regarded as productive activities at all. The non-observed economy (or the shadow economy) comprises: • • •

the underground economy, motivated by evasion of taxes and other duties; the informal economy (small household enterprises operating as a subsistence economy); and the illegal economy (the production and distribution of drugs and nonlicensed alcohol, smuggling, income from prostitution and bribes, etc.).31

In Russia, the informal economy of small household enterprises is not as important as it is in some developing countries. By contrast, the underground and illegal economies are extensive. The Russian statistical authority Goskomstat (Gosudarstvennyi komitet statistiki, State Committee on Statistics) includes the underground economy, but not the illegal economy, in its calculations of GDP: the underground economy has a modest share of 23 per cent of GDP. Other experts believe that the shadow economy comprises up to 50 per cent of GDP. A study of the Russian consumer market indicates that official statistics heavily underestimate private consumption spending and the corresponding income, and concludes that the share of the shadow economy is 45–50 per cent of GDP and that the figures for GDP have to be increased by 40–45 per cent to reflect its full extent.32 Further clarification is expected to result from a joint research project of the World Bank and the Moscow Bureau of Economic Analysis.33

Russian economic security 243 There is no question that the extent of the shadow sector has negative effects on the Russian economy. In a sense the shadow economy reflects market incentives as the drive to the service sector. On the other hand, the underground economy is a barrier to the evolution of efficient companies because the companies in it have to invest resources in good relations with the state bureaucracy instead of investing in technology or training. Because they fear detection they are not interested in growing over a certain limit – and for this reason, too, economic growth is hampered. Moreover, the shadow economy uses public infrastructure without paying for it and in this way increases the tax burden for the official economy. The network of informal relations between the enterprises of the shadow economy and the state bureaucracy is also a stumbling block to the successful implementation of the government’s reforms.34 Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) In Russia the share of SMEs in total employment35 is stagnant at less than 20 per cent. This is far less than in Western market economies, where SMEs form the basis of economic activity (see Table 10.11).36 In Russia SMEs are not the main driving forces of economic growth, as they have proved to be in the other transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe. In Russia, in contrast to other transition countries, SMEs have not been growing as fast as larger businesses.37 Surveys reveal the causes of their poor performance. Previously corruption and criminal rackets were the main obstacles to their business; currently excessive paperwork, taxes and government regulations are the greatest obstacles to their growth. A table published by the World Bank indicates that, it order of importance, the general problems of SMEs are levels of taxes, tax administration, macroeconomic instability, regulation, level of competition, access to credit, anti-competitive barriers, corruption, and criminal rackets.38 In 2001, the SMEs surveyed reported arbitrary harassment by individual government agencies. Efforts at deregulation therefore had to be targeted at reducing the discretionary authority of bureaucrats to harass firms. The Russian government began to implement a set of new legal acts (a ‘deregulation package’) which is designed to set clearer boundaries for bureaucratic intervention. The main target areas of the measures are registration, licensing, certification and inspections of companies. When the new acts came into effect, there existed a huge gap between existing regulatory practices and the benchmarks set out in the new law.39 Only time will show how far the new legislation will help the situation. The survey data revealed a positive linkage between company size and the costs of regulatory burdens: the larger the firm, the more it has to pay and the more time its management has to spend on meeting the regulatory requirements. This would suggest that there are strong regulatory

15,770 19,300 844

45 74 6

Number per 1,000 inhabitants

Source: Russian SME Resource Centre (http://www.rcsme.ru/stat).

EU countries USA Russia

Total number

Table 10.11 Small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia, 2000

68 70 8

Employees (millions) 72 54 13

Share in total employment (%)

63–67 50–52 10–11

Share in GDP (%)

Russian economic security 245 obstacles preventing small firms from growing to medium size. In some municipalities the local administrations try to block the entry of new firms to the market and to create protected positions for such incumbent firms as have close ties to the political elites, occupy dominant positions in the local labour market or enjoy other monopolistic positions. Nor do Russia’s more than 1,300 banks support the creation of SMEs effectively. Regional banks are small and can give only small loans to SMEs, if at all. Because the deposits in the banking system are mostly for one year or less, banks prefer to give only short-term loans, which are unsuited for investment projects. Where the banks have capital to lend to SMEs, they are reluctant to make loans because of lack of security. Thus at present the main sources of SME finance are the international financing institutions or private donors. Capital flows from Russian commercial banks depend on investment guarantees for small firms extended by the Russian government that would compensate them in the event of default. These so-called credit guarantee schemes are being developed under the auspices of the European Union (EU) Tacis (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States) programme. Sectoral structure: the ‘Dutch disease’ and other consequences of resource abundance Only a limited range of Russian goods, such as energy, metals and timber, are competitive on world markets and are therefore the main export products. The reverse side of this ‘resource bias’ is an underdeveloped manufacturing sector. There is the danger that this one-sided structure of the Russian economy will be permanently preserved. The currency tends to appreciate, and financial resources as well as qualified manpower tend to be concentrated in the raw materials sector. In the theoretical economics literature this constellation is discussed as the ‘Dutch disease’. The remedy may be an intelligent industrial policy, perhaps following the Norwegian example. In the long run, the resource bias – the bias towards the raw materials sector – will become less severe as resources become depleted. If there is an inverse relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth, this will be true for Russia as well as for other countries. It is therefore worth while to study the theoretical insights and empirical results of research in the field. The term ‘Dutch disease’ refers to the symptoms of deindustrialization as a result of the appreciation of the Dutch currency that followed the discovery of large natural gas deposits in the North Sea in the late 1950s. As a consequence, manufacturing and service exports were reduced, although only for a short time.40 The first symptom associated with the Dutch disease was an overvalued currency. Other symptoms are big fluctuations of world market prices for raw materials, creating exchange rate volatility and instability of export earnings.

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Usually the raw materials sector can pay higher wages than other industries. For that reason it attracts the best-qualified manpower and sets the tone for wage negotiations in other industries as well. As a result, the manufacturing sector can become (or remain, as in the Russian case) uncompetitive because of high wages and/or an overvalued currency and will not attract enough investment. In sum, the lagging performance of the manufacturing sector can hurt economic growth in the medium and long run. There are other ways in which natural resource abundance can hinder economic growth.41 The resource abundance may lead to rent-seeking behaviour on the part of politically powerful interest groups in and around the resource industries. These groups may try, often with great success, to acquire ownership of state-owned property at a low price. Rent-seeking can take the forms of import protection, corruption and cronyism, all of which tend to impede economic growth and efficiency. The struggle for resource rents may lead to economic and political power becoming concentrated in the hands of elites, resulting in a weakening of the political system and slow economic growth.42 In primary production the demands on the quality of labour, with the exception of certain high-technology jobs – for example, in oil drilling – are generally lower than in other branches of industry. As empirical studies show, public expenditure on education and training relative to national income is inversely related to natural resource abundance. Resource abundance may also weaken the attention of governments to business-friendly policies and bureaucratic efficiency. In general, incentives to create wealth through good policies and good institutions may be reduced because it is apparently possible to extract wealth from the soil effortlessly.43 In the last instance, resource abundance may, as Gylfason and Zoega have tried to show, weaken private (and public) incentives to save and invest, thus reducing future economic growth.44 Under the strong assumptions of a neo-classical growth model it can also be shown that the greater the income share of the raw materials sector, the lower the saving and investment rate,45 although a more disaggregated analysis may cast doubt on this conclusion. As Russian statistical data show, the ratio between investment and production in the energy sector is far higher than it is in other industries, so that an increase in the scope of the raw materials sector tends to increase capital investment in the economy.46 However, a rich natural endowment does not inevitably prevent economic development, for the problem is not the existence of natural wealth but rather the failure to avert the dangers of resource abundance. The Netherlands recovered fairly quickly from the Dutch disease, and Norway has not yet shown any symptoms of it. One explanation for this may be that the Netherlands and Norway were both already well-developed countries with mature political, financial and social systems at the time of their big oil and gas discoveries. In Norway, which became the world’s second-largest oil exporter (after Saudi Arabia and recently Russia), the state absorbs up

Russian economic security 247 to 80 per cent of the oil revenues by a corporate tax, several resource taxes, royalties, area fees and a carbon dioxide tax. A government-owned oil fund (the Norwegian Petroleum Fund) has been created where a large part of the oil revenue is invested for the benefit of the older population as well as future generations. The examples of the Netherlands and Norway clearly show the way out of the resource curse dilemma. Regional structure In the context of distorted economic structures, the regional structure of the Russian economy also deserves attention. Russia is characterized by many large settlements in northern areas with a cold climate and by the great distances between settlements in all parts of the country. Furthermore, Russia also has an ‘inner’ hinterland, the glubinka, beyond the metropolitan centres.47 Both these facts result in high energy and transport costs, which make production there uncompetitive. The ‘dead space’ as well as the ‘burden of the cold’ are not the consequences of geography alone; to a certain extent they are also the legacy of Soviet policy, which moved industry and people from the west to the east of the country. Exorbitant transport, distribution and communication costs, on the one hand, and excessive heating and other ‘consumption costs’ on the other, account for ‘spatial inefficiency’, which constitutes a permanent loss of welfare. One researcher has formulated a hypothetical allocation of industry and population in Russia which is free of spatial inefficiency, and calculated the corresponding welfare gain.48 A population-weighted temperature index (temperature per capita, TPC) reveals that as a result of Soviet settlement policy Russia has become about 1.5ºC colder in comparison with what it would have been with a different distribution of the population. This means extra energy use, a deterioration in health and lower productivity. The TCP difference translates into a 4.5 per cent increase in electricity consumption and at least a 0.2 per cent loss of GDP. The only way out of this situation seems to be to give up some of those northern settlements and resettle people to other areas.

Medium-term economic problems III: energy Are Russia’s energy reserves sufficient for domestic consumption and export obligations in the medium term? This question can be answered as follows. •

•

Coal. There are ample reserves; coal production and the domestic consumption of coal are rapidly rising, and pollution will rise, too. There are only modest export possibilities. (See Figure 10.3.) Gas. Russian domestic gas consumption is extremely high compared with that of other gas-producing countries (about 70 per cent of gas

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•

Roland Götz production). The expansion of gas production will depend on very expensive investment projects (for instance, on the Yamal Peninsula and in the Barents Sea), with an overall investment requirement of about US$200 billion and with unclear profitability prospects. As long as the pipeline network and gas transport tariffs are controlled by the quasi-state company Gazprom, independent gas producers will hardly feel encouraged to compete. All these factors result in a relatively small export volume compared to the import needs of European countries. (See Figure 10.4.) Oil. The domestic consumption ratio is low (about 50 per cent) and the volume of exports is correspondingly high. The future development of production will be dependent on an influx of foreign direct investment (FDI). The export outlook is good, with China and the 500

400

mln t

300

200

100

0

2000

2005

Export to CIS Export without CIS

2010 Year Import Production

2015

2020 Internal consumption

Figure 10.3 Russian coal production, consumption, imports and exports: forecasts to 2020 (source: Draft Russian Energy Strategy, October 2002 (http://www.mte.gov.ru./oficial/ strateg.htm).)

Russian economic security 249 800

700

600

bcm

500

400

300

200

100

0

2000

2005

Export to CIS Export without CIS

2010 Year Import Production

2015

2020 Internal consumption

Figure 10.4 Russian gas production, consumption, imports and exports: forecasts to 2020 (source: Draft Russian Energy Strategy, October 2002 (http://www.mte.gov.ru./oficial/ strateg.htm).)

•

USA as potential new export areas. Because the pipeline network is in the hands of the state company Transneft, the future of some pipeline projects, such as the Murmansk pipeline, cannot be predicted. Nuclear energy. Uranium reserves are sufficient for 50 years at present levels of electricity production, using customary thermal nuclear reactors. The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) is pleading for a switch to fast neutron reactors, which would need almost no uranium input, beginning in 2020. (See Figure 10.5.)

The main current problem of the Russian energy sector can be defined as follows. Gas production will relatively soon become insufficient to meet domestic consumption requirements and Russia’s export obligations at the

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400

mln t

300

200

100

0

2000

2005

Export to CIS Export without CIS

2010 Year Import Production

2015

2020 Internal consumption

Figure 10.5 Russian oil production, consumption, imports and exports: forecasts to 2020 (source: Draft Russian Energy Strategy, October 2002 (http://www.mte.gov.ru./oficial/ strateg.htm).)

same time. The gas problem is a direct consequence of an improper price policy. The structure of internal energy demand is distorted as a result of the distorted structure of energy prices. Gas is far too cheap on the domestic market at US$20 per 1,000 cubic metres instead of the market price of $50–100 per 1,000 cubic metres, because the price is regulated by the state commission for tariffs and the parliament. If the price of gas were set in accordance with production costs and investment needs, domestic demand would be considerably reduced.

Conclusions Important parameters of the Russian economy, such as the rate of capital accumulation, the rate of technological progress and the improvement of

Russian economic security 251 institutional design, suggest modest economic growth in the medium term. As long as the Russian economy is characterized by the many structural distortions, such as a large shadow economy, the small size of the SME sector, the resource bias and spatial inefficiency, there will be no quick breakthrough to a genuinely modern economy and society. The important energy sector is hampered by state intervention into the price structure on the domestic market. The expansion and use of the pipeline network are also negatively affected by state intervention. Environmental problems, the decreasing population, the spread of HIV/AIDS and finally the depletion of energy resources will burden Russia’s economic development, particularly in the long run. Today Russia may play the role of a great power in world politics, but it will rest on very weak economic foundations for some time to come.

Notes 1 Jouko Rautava, ‘The role of oil prices and the real exchange rate in Russia’s economy’, Helsinki: Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT), 2003 (http://www.bof.fi/bofit/fin/6dp/abs/pdf/dp0302.pdf). 2 Data of the former Russian State Committee for Environmental Protection (Goskomekologii), cited in US Energy Information Administration, ‘Country analysis briefs: Russia, environmental issues’, August 2001 (http://www.eia.doe. gov/emeu/cabs/russia.html). 3 Irina Baranova, ‘Leaking operations’, CEE Bankwatch Network, 2001 (http://www.bankwatch.org/downloads/leakingoperations.pdf). 4 Colin J. Campbell et al., Ölwechsel! Das Ende des Erdölzeitalters und die Weichenstellung für die Zukunft [The end of the oil age and the position of points for the future], Munich: DTV, 2002. Here the official Russian data concerning oil reserves are corrected upwards. 5 Christian von Hirschhausen, Modernising Infrastructure in Transition Economies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002. 6 Thane Gustafson, Crisis Amid Plenty: The Politics of Soviet Energy Under Brezhnev and Gorbachev, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. 7 The Russian Energy Strategy to 2020 forecasts oil production in the range of 410–60 million tonnes in the period 2010–20. Alexei Mastepanov, ‘Energy strategy of the Russian Federation to the year 2020’, undated (http://europa.eu.int/ comm/energy_transport/russia/energy-strategy2020_en.pdf). 8 According to estimates by the Russian State Statistics Committee (Goskomstat), which have not yet been adjusted for the results of the national census in 2002, the population of Russia by 1 January 2003 was 143.1 million. See Interfax Statistical Report, 13, 2003, p. 19. 9 US Census Bureau, International Data Base (IDB), ‘Summary demographic data for Russia’ (http://blue.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum?cty⫽RS). 10 Graeme P. Herd, Foreign and Security Policy Implications of Russia’s Demographic Crisis, Working Paper 20, Project on the Regionalization of Russian Foreign and Security Policy, Zürich: Forschungsstelle für Sicherheitspolitik, ETH, March 2002, pp. 14–18 (http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/documents/WorkingPapers/wp20.pdf). See also Julie DaVanzo and Clifford Grammich, ‘Dire demographics: Population trends in the Russian Federation’, 2001 (http://www.rand. org/publications/MR/MR1273). 11 World Bank, The Economic Consequences of HIV in Russia, 2002

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27 28 29 30 31 32

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(http://www.worldbank.org.ru/eng/statistics/hiv/default.htm); and Roman Ukolov, ‘SPID meniaet orientatsiiu’ [AIDS changes orientation], Izvestiia, 31 March 2003. US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Intelligence Council, ‘CIA: Russia, China, India face HIV crisis’, September 2002 (http://www.mindfully. org/Health/2002/AIDS-HIV-Next-WaveCIASep02.htm). Meditsinskii vestnik, 20 January 2003. World Bank, Russian Economic Report, October 2002, Part III (http://www. worldbank.org.ru/eng/statistics/ereports/10_02/rer4-eng-oct29-10_final.pdf). World Bank, The Economic Consequences of HIV in Russia, table 1. Purchasing power parities are the rates of currency conversion that eliminate the differences in price levels between countries (see http://www.oecd. org/pdf/M00009000/M00009294.pdf). Taking into account that the large shadow economy is only partially included in the official GDP figures, Russia’s GDP may well be comparable to that of Italy. For a discussion of the Russian shadow economy see pp. 242–3. Vladimir Putin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii’ [Russia on the threshold of the millennium], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 1999. Georgy Bovt and Yelena Korop, ‘Economic miracle for Russia, as Vladimir Putin’s adviser sees it’, Johnson’s Russia List, 7005, 5 January 2003 (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7005-5.cfm). World Bank Group in Russia, Russian Economic Report, May 2002 (http://www. worldbank.org.ru/eng/statistics/ereports/05_02/RER3-English-05-30-02.pdf). International Monetary Fund (IMF), ‘Russian Federation: Selected issues and statistical appendix’, IMF Country Report 02/75, April 2002 (http://www.imf. org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2002/cr0275.pdf), pp. 82–6. Tuomas Komulainen et al., ‘Russia: Growth prospects and policy debates’, Bofit online, 3, 2003 (http://www.bof.fi/bofit/fin/7online/03abs/03pdf/bon0303. pdf). The source of the parameter values was Ross Levine and David Renelt, ‘A sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions’, American Economic Review, 1992. Kumolainen et al., ‘Russia’, p. 6. Deutsche Bank Research, ‘Russia 2010: It’s a bear, not a bull!’ (http://www. dbresearch.de/PROD/999/PROD0000000000053432.pdf). The Deutsche Bank group also calculated a ‘chaos scenario’, which is omitted here. By establishing purchasing power equivalence, where one dollar purchases the same quantity of goods and services in all countries, PPP conversions allow cross-country comparisons of economic aggregates on the basis of physical levels of output, free of price and exchange rate distortions. For furtherinformation on the technical aspects of the calculation of PPPs, see http://web. worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/ICPEXT/. Assuming a capital coefficient (capital/GDP) of 3. On economies in transition, see United Nations, Economic Survey of Europe, 1, 2001, pp. 167ff. Growth accounting emanated from Robert Solow’s neo-classical growth model. Robert Solow, ‘Technical change and the aggregate production function’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 39, 1957, pp. 312–20. TFP is an efficiency parameter measuring the growth of the production potential which cannot be explained by the growth of capital and labour inputs. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Measuring the Non-Observed Economy: A Handbook, Paris: OECD, 2002 (http://www.oecd.org/pdf/M00035000/M00035196.pdf). Interactive Research Group, ‘Top 100 emerging companies of the Russian con-

Russian economic security 253

33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

45 46

47 48

sumer market’, Moscow, 2003 (http://www.intrg.com/pdf/Top_100_eng_final. pdf). See also the Russian version where the higher values of the shadow economy are given (http://www.intrg.com/pdf/Top_100_rus_final.pdf). World Bank, Russia Country Office, ‘Interview with Christof Rühl’, August 2003 (http://www.worldbank.org.ru/eng/news/speeches). Ibid. Small and medium-size enterprises in Russia are defined as follows: the number of employees does not exceed 100 in industry, transport and the construction industry, 60 in agriculture, 30 in wholesale trade and services, and 50 in other branches. Russian SME Resource Centre (http://www.rcsme.ru/stat). World Bank, Russian Economic Report. Ibid. Ibid. Thorvaldur Gylfason, Lessons from the Dutch Disease: Causes, Treatment, and Cures, Working Paper, Reykjavik: Institute of Economic Studies, August 2001 (http://www.ioes.hi.is/publications/wp/w0106.pdf), p. 2. See also the many other works of the same author, e.g., ‘Resources, agriculture, and economic growth in transition economies’, Kyklos, 4, 2000 (http://www.hi.is/~gylfason/pdf/ kyklos3.pdf). Gylfason, Lessons from the Dutch Disease, pp. 5–8. Richard M. Auty (ed.), Resource Abundance and Economic Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. See Gylfason, Lessons from the Dutch Disease, p. 7, and the sources cited there. Thorvaldur Gylfason and Gylfi Zoega, Natural Resources and Economic Growth: The Role of Investment, CEPR Discussion Paper 2743, London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, March 2001 (http://www.hi.is/~gylfason/pdf/natinvest45.pdf). Gylfason and Zoega show this corollary for the optimal (consumption maximizing) saving rate on the transition to a Solovian steady state (ibid., pp. 15–17). In 2001 the ratio of investment to gross production was 32 per cent in the fuel sector as compared to 10 per cent in industry in general (including the fuel sector). See V. Starodubrovskii, ‘Krivaia doroga priamykh investitsii’ [The crooked path of direct investment], Voprosy ekonomiki, 1, 2003, pp. 73–95 (here table 2, p. 93). Leslie Dienes, ‘Reflections on a geographic dichotomy: Archipelago Russia’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 6, 2002, pp. 443–58. Tatiana Mikhailova, ‘Where Russians should live: A counterfactual alternative to Soviet location policy’, undated (http://econ.la.psu.edu/JobMarket/20022003/mikhailova_candidate.html); and ‘The cost of the cold’, Brookings Policy Brief, 99, May 2002 (http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/comm/policybriefs/ pb99.pdf).

Bibliography Books and journals Auty, Richard M. (ed.), Resource Abundance and Economic Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Campbell, Colin J. et al., Ölwechsel! Das Ende des Erdölzeitalters und die Weichenstellung für die Zukunft [The end of the oil age and the position of points for the future], Munich: DTV, 2002.

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Dienes, Leslie, ‘Reflections on a geographic dichotomy: Archipelago Russia’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 6, 2002, pp. 443–58. Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Country Report Russia, London: EIU, March 2003. Gustafson, Thane, Crisis Amid Plenty: The Politics of Soviet Energy Under Brezhnev and Gorbachev, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. von Hirschhausen, Christian, Modernising Infrastructure in Transition Economies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002. Interfax Statistical Report, 9, 2003, 28 February 2003. Interfax Statistical Report, 13, 2003. Levine, Ross and David Renelt, ‘A sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions’, American Economic Review, 1992. Meditsinskii vestnik, 20 January 2003. Putin, Vladimir, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe tysyacheletii’ [Russia on the threshold of the millennium], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 1999. Solow, Robert, ‘Technical change and the aggregate production function’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 39, 1957, pp. 312–20. Starodubrovskii, V., ‘Krivaia doroga priamykh investitsii’ [The crooked path of direct investment], Voprosy ekonomiki, 1, 2003, pp. 73–95. Statistical Yearbook of Russia, 2001, Part 5. Ukolov, Roman, ‘SPID meniaet orientatsiiu’ [AIDS changes orientation], Izvestiia, 31 March 2003. United Nations, Economic Survey of Europe, 1, 2001.

Media and Internet Baranova, Irina, ‘Leaking operations’, CEE Bankwatch Network, 2001 (http://www.bankwatch.org/downloads/leakingoperations.pdf). Bovt, Georgy and Yelena Korop, ‘Economic miracle for Russia, as Vladimir Putin’s adviser sees it’, Johnson’s Russia List, 7005, 5 January 2003 (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7005-5.cfm). DaVanzo, Julie and Clifford Grammich, ‘Dire demographics: Population trends in the Russian Federation’, 2001 (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/ MR1273/). Deutsche Bank Research, ‘Russia 2010: It’s a bear, not a bull!’ (http://www.dbresearch.de/PROD/999/PROD0000000000053432.pdf). Gritsenko, Aleksandr, Nikolai Krylov, Victor Alenin and Vasily Stupakov, ‘Oil and gas of Russia in the XXI century: Forecast of production and development of the resource base’, Mineral Resources of Russia, 3, 2001 (http://www.geoinform.ru/english/mrr.files/issues/3-2001.html). Gylfason, Thorvaldur, Lessons from the Dutch Disease: Causes, Treatment and Cures, Working Paper, Reykjavik: Institute of Economic Studies, August 2001 (http://www.ioes.hi.is/publications/wp/w0106.pdf). ——, ‘Resources, agriculture, and economic growth in transition economies’, Kyklos, 4, 2000 (http://www.hi.is/~gylfason/pdf/kyklos3.pdf). —— and Gylfi Zoega, Natural Resources and Economic Growth: The Role of Investment, CEPR Discussion Paper 2743, London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, March 2001 (http://www.hi.is/~gylfason/pdf/natinvest45.pdf).

Russian economic security 255 Herd, Graeme P., Foreign and Security Policy Implications of Russia’s Demographic Crisis, Working Paper 20, Project on the Regionalisation of Russian Foreign and Security Policy, Zürich: Forschungsstelle für Sicherheitspolitik, ETH, March 2002, (http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/documents/WorkingPapers/ wp20.pdf). Interactive Research Group, ‘Top 100 emerging companies of the Russian consumer market’, Moscow, 2003 (http://www.intrg.com/pdf/Top_100_eng_ final.pdf). International Monetary Fund (IMF), ‘Russian Federation: Selected issues and statistical appendix’, IMF Country Report 02/75, April 2002 (http://www.imf.org/ external/pubs/ft/scr/2002/cr0275.pdf). Komulainen, Tuomas et al., ‘Russia: Growth prospects and policy debates’, Bofit Online, 3, 2003 (http://www.bof.fi/bofit/fin/7online/03abs/03pdf/bon0303. pdf). Mastepanov, Alexei, ‘Energy strategy of the Russian Federation to the year 2020’, undated (http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/russia/energy-strategy 2020_en.pdf). Mikhailova, Tatiana, ‘Where Russians should live: A counterfactual alternative to Soviet location policy’ (http://econ.la.psu.edu/JobMarket/2002-2003/mikhailova_ candidate.html). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (http://www.oecd.org/ pdf/M00009000/M00009294.pdf). ——, ‘The cost of the cold’, Brookings Policy Brief, 99, May 2002 (http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/comm/policybriefs/pb99.pdf). ——, Measuring the Non-Observed Economy: A Handbook, Paris: OECD, 2002 (http://www.oecd.org/pdf/M00035000/M00035196.pdf). ——, Purchasing Power Parities and Real Expenditures, 1999 Benchmark Year, Paris: OECD, 2002. Rautava, Jouko, ‘The role of oil prices and the real exchange rate in Russia’s economy’, Helsinki: Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT), 2003 (http://www.bof.fi/bofit/fin/6dp/abs/pdf/dp0302.pdf). Russian SME Resource Centre (http://www.rcsme.ru/stat). Russian State Committee on Statistics (Goskomstat) (http://www.gks.ru). US Census Bureau, International Data Base (IDB), ‘Summary demographic data for Russia’ (http://blue.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum?cty⫽RS). ——, International Data Base (http://blue.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbrank.pl). US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Intelligence Council, ‘CIA: Russia, China, India face HIV crisis’, September 2002 (http://www.mindfully. org/Health/2002/AIDS-HIV-Next-WaveCIASep02.htm). US Energy Information Administration, ‘Country analysis briefs: Russia, environmental issues’, August 2001 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/russia.html). World Bank, The Economic Consequences of HIV in Russia, 2002 (http://www.worldbank.org.ru/eng/statistics/hiv/default.htm). ——, Russian Economic Report, October 2002, Part III (http://www.worldbank. org.ru/eng/statistics/ereports/10_02/rer4-eng-oct29-10_final.pdf). ——, ‘Country assistance strategy’, March 2003 (http://www.worldbank.org.ru/eng/ group/strategy3/Annex_B7.pdf). ——, World Development Indicators 2002 (http://www.worldbank.org/data/ wdi2002/tables/table1-1.pdf).

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World Bank Group in Russia, Russian Economic Report, May 2002 (http://www. worldbank.org.ru/eng/statistics/ereports/05_02/RER3-English-05-30-02.pdf). World Bank, Russia Country Office, ‘Interview with Christof Rühl’, August 2003 (http://www.worldbank.org.ru/eng/news/speeches).

11 Forming a new security identity in modern Russia Nikita Lomagin

This chapter aims to analyse the key issues in the formation of a new security identity in contemporary Russia. In contrast to the realist and neo-realist schools of thought, which assume that states act in terms of an unvarying and universal self-interest understood as enhancing their power and security in the context of an anarchic political setting, it looks at Russia from a constructivist approach. Constructivism assumes that the identity of a state is a dependent variable determined by the historical, cultural, social and political context. State action flows from a particular ‘state actor’ identity which is shared by a policy elite and from an understanding of the international context, both of which are viewed as socially constructed and historically contingent. Constructivism focuses not only on the policy elites’ construction of the identity of the state as an actor, but also on the construction of national identities by elites, as well as the selfconstruction of individual political identities.1 The contemporary Russian political elite may embrace and act to sustain a variety of Russian identities as an international political actor (Russia as a great power, Russia as regional hegemon, Russia as a modern, European-style democracy, and so on). The question of which form of identity is the dominant one must be tested empirically. To a great extent, the construction of a new security identity of Russia was anticipated by the authors of the new (1993) constitution and of the new partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU). The constitution stipulated that the key priority of Russian foreign policy must be the integration of Russia into the ‘civilized world’. By this, it clearly meant first of all support for the values of Western civilization. Since the era of Peter the Great (1689–1725), Russian diplomacy has without question looked towards Europe first and foremost.2 Geographic proximity, the long-term cultural ties between Russia and Europe, and the fact that today’s Europe is Russia’s major trading partner have made Europe a major partner of Russia in the international arena. And integration into the civilized world – first of all Europe – means inter alia sharing some basic values, including those related to security.

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Introduction More than ten years after the end of the Cold War, the traditional security dilemma based on the perception of a military threat between Russia and the West has largely given way to a variety of new challenges related to non-military security, so-called soft-security threats. These threats are not merely problems internal to Russia, but constitute existing or potential problems for other countries as well. Soft-security threats in north-west Russia are of particular significance to Finland, the other Nordic countries and the Baltic states because of their geographical proximity. Ultimately, these threats pose a challenge for the whole of the EU and the wider international community. The Common Strategy of the EU towards Russia stipulated the crucial importance of soft-security issues for relations between Russia and the EU: Nuclear safety is an essential issue . . . the sustainable use of natural resources, management of nuclear waste and the fight against air and water pollution, particularly across frontiers, are priorities . . . Russia and the Union have a common interest in stepping up their cooperation in the fight against common scourges, such as organised crime, money-laundering, illegal trafficking in human beings and drug trafficking. The fight against illegal immigration is also a major preoccupation. The Union proposes to put increased cooperation in place in these areas by creating the necessary tools and forms of cooperation between the competent bodies and by developing exchanges of experts . . .3 However, much depends on whether the gap between declaratory and operational policy can be closed.4 The ending of the Cold War has transformed the two security dilemmas that confronted states historically. The first locates the security dilemma in the unhappy circumstance that ‘many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others’.5 The second is the allocation of national resources between economic welfare and military security. The division of resources between guns and butter and the actual level of consumption of both goods are determined by two factors: the productive capacity of a society and its preferences.6 The first security dilemma has been largely resolved with the end of the Cold War which removed the once intractable barriers to security cooperation between the West and the East of Europe. Instead, a new dilemma has arisen, namely the need to devote scarce resources to resolving a number of soft-security issues which dominate the stage in relations between the West (primarily the EU) and Russia. Addressing soft-security problems is not only a challenge to the EU’s interests. These threats transcend boundaries and will either be dealt with through joint action or not at all.

Forming a new security identity 259 Ten years of political and economic reforms in Russia have laid the ground for a market economy and substantial democratization of the political regime. Steady economic growth over the past three years, mostly thanks to extremely high oil prices and rapprochement with the West after 11 September, has forced Russia to face a fundamental question of policy: will it continue in fact to ignore the demands of a changed and changing world in the field of non-traditional security, or will it construct and implement a proactive and even preventive soft-security policy? In the end, the fate of democracy in Russia may depend on its ability to offer the Russian people better (and safer) living standards and to reverse the shocking decline in life expectancy.

The definition of soft security The broadening of the concept of national security to include non-military issues has been under way for some time. The recognition that the stability and security of nations is shaped by multidimensional factors has led political scientists to argue for an expanded definition of security. According to the American political scientist Richard H. Ullman, a threat to national security is an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state (states) or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the range of policy choices available to the government of a state (states) or to private, non-governmental entities (persons, groups, corporations) within a state (states).7 Many issues, such as nuclear safety, environmental degradation, organized crime and illegal migration, affect the relationships between states, but only when these issues seriously limit a country’s freedom of action over a recognizable time-span do they become security issues. Under this definition, the vast majority of environmental issues are not security issues because they do not fall into the appropriate time-frame or they do not often limit the ability of a government to respond. For example, the effects from many significant environmental problems – global climate change, ozone depletion and population growth – occur over an extended period of time and are rarely perceived to impact on the traditional concerns of the security community. But HIV/AIDS, epidemics such as the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic, and nuclear safety issues with the potential for hundreds of incidents like that at Chernobyl must be defined as security problems.

Public opinion in Russia Russians are now much more concerned about soft security than about traditional (or hard) security. According to a study carried out in 2000 for

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Table 11.1 Public opinion on the hierarchy of environmental threats in north-west Russia Environmental threat

Percentage of respondents

Accidents at nuclear plants Water pollution Degradation of the environment as a result of industrial activity Air pollution Degradation of the ozone layer Disappearance of woods, biological species, etc. Global warming Others

30.7 21.6 16.7 9.9 9.1 5.9 3.5 2.7

Source: Rossiiskoe Obshschestvennoe Mnenie i Issledovanie Rynka (ROMIR) (http://www. romir.ru).

New Russia Barometer, only 4 per cent of people believed that in the next five years Russia might fall victim to an attack by some other country, while 75 per cent assessed this as ‘not very likely’ or ‘not at all likely’.8 Russians believed that drug addiction, crime, corruption and terrorism are the most dangerous problems and the main curses of their country. Among other problems which troubled them, those interviewed named low living standards, unemployment and the situation in Chechnya (27 per cent each), inflation (14 per cent), uncertainty about the future (13 per cent), environmental problems and the economic crisis (10 per cent).9 A majority of the population assumed that the environment in Russia is a problem. Just 1.3 per cent of respondents were fully satisfied with the state of the environment, another 19.1 per cent were generally content with it, but 75.5 per cent found it unsatisfactory; 39.1 per cent of respondents favoured economic growth above the preservation of the environment, while 32.3 per cent were of the opposite view – the remaining 28.6 per cent could not answer this question. Table 11.1 shows which environmental threats were considered the most serious. Soft-security issues can affect the stability of any region. The ability of the Russian government to respond to a regional stability issue depends on its establishing clear priorities between issues according to the need for a response, the practicality of intervention, and the impact on Russia’s security interests. In order to define the security impact of non-military issues it has to be recognized that contextual factors are interrelated and that preventive measures are needed as well as reactive measures.

Forming a new security identity 261

Hard and soft security in modern Russia: forming a new foreign and security identity Methodology The pioneering German sociologist Max Weber suggested four categories of social action: rational, normative, emotional and habitual. His French contemporary Émile Durkheim also considered habit to be a primary cause of human action, claiming that it is not ‘ideas, sentiments or consciousness’ that ‘most influence our conduct’, but ‘habits are the real forces that govern us’. According to Weber, it makes sense to look at the daily practices of individuals, their customs and habits, rather than to list written laws or explicit normative obligations, although the latter are also significant.10 The most important mechanism for the reproduction of identity is not role and norm but rather habit and practice. An identity can change as part of a slow process of cultural evolution, or more rapidly during such periods as the end of the Cold War. Even when a change of identity is ‘imposed’ from abroad – for instance, after the decision to become a part of the ‘civilized world’ – a key role in the rise of a new identity is played by intellectuals, the ‘secular priesthood’ of the nation.11 Whether in reaction to their personal alienation12 or because of their professional insight into the nature of a crisis,13 it is intellectuals who lead the assault on a hegemonic identity and are the ‘storytellers in the invention of a new identity’. As the American political scientist Robert English states, in many cases where intellectuals have been the agents of large-scale belief change, several factors stand out as critical prerequisites of change.14 The first is an opening up to foreign ideas and information, combined with the emergence of a particular elite congregation in which these ideas are debated and an intellectual ‘critical mass’ can build up. Today’s democratizing Russia is open to new information and ideas, but questions remain about whether a critical mass has yet built up and about the way it has been forming. The mere fact that there are some networks where the diffusion of Western soft-security ideas is encouraged (for instance, ‘security summits’, NATO research programmes, and all the Scandinavian international relations research centres which contribute by arranging opportunities for joint research projects), and even the fact that Russia has signed some international treaties which challenge the traditional security identity in Russia, does not in itself mean that there has been a change of security identity. Second, the process of identity change combines learning on two levels: comparative–interactive learning, whereby foreign ties facilitate a shift in the intellectuals’ essential ‘self-categorization’ of the nation and its security vis-à-vis allies and adversaries, and social learning, in which growing numbers of intellectuals are drawn into an informal domestic community.

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Common aspirations for a reformed society at home and shared beliefs about its place in the international community ‘create the basis of a new identity’ among critically thinking intellectuals.15 Finally, the transformation of a national security identity is rarely a linear process. Periods of gradual change are punctuated by intervals of rapid intellectual upheaval. The new security thinking that dominated the Russian political elite in the early 1990s had to give way to a traditional belief system based on ‘geopolitical pragmatism’. After 11 September it moved one step forward, only to retreat again after the US–British war in Iraq in the spring of 2003. To understand the new Russian security identity we have to look at norms, practices, and interests on both levels of the decision-making structures – federal and regional. Identity formation goes in both directions – from above (which is traditional for Russia) and from below (all soft-security issues belong to very definite locations, for example, big cities, military bases and trans-border regions). It is therefore important to pay special attention to habits that have started to form on the regional level and in the end led to a reshaping of security thinking. Up to 1993 The soft-security concept has not yet developed its own vocabulary and shared assumptions, and the debates among the Russian elite are a totally new field for almost all Russian intellectuals active in the foreign policy and security fields. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that the rational, normative and emotional categories of social action that applied before the practices,16 which only began in 1996/7, should be analysed. They played an important role in changing the Russian security identity. It is noteworthy that Russian non-traditional security thinking has its roots in the writings of some Soviet scholars. One of the pioneers of Soviet environmentalism was G. Khozin, a former military intelligence officer who joined the Institute of the USA and Canada (ISKRAN) in 1969 as a space policy specialist. His In Defense of the Planet, though critical of the West, was probably the first open full-scale analytical work to raise serious questions about Soviet policy. Like many others, Khozin was influenced by contacts with Western scientists, ranging from work such as that of the Club of Rome to personal meetings with American scholars.17 Khozin endorsed the US idea of an international environmental centre, arguing that, since the world was a ‘communal flat’, environmental problems demanded ‘the united efforts of all states’.18 Several other Soviet scholars (for instance, A. Medunin) raised questions about the USSR’s ecological ‘backwardness’. N. Dubinin mentioned the ‘ministerial’ approach to the exploitation of natural resources as the main cause of damage to the environment. N. Fedorenko indicated a need for a ‘value-centred

Forming a new security identity 263 approach’ to progress, while criticizing central planning for its inability to answer questions regarding culture and lifestyle. This work paved the way for a detailed assessment of the environmental soft-security risks in modern Russia.19 The careless handling of radioactive waste in north-west Russia is a source of particular concern, and not only at the regional level. Soviet military and civilian nuclear facilities were responsible for storing their own waste, so that the problem seems to have been handled as expediently and as inexpensively as possible. As records are non-existent or incomplete, no one seems to know exactly how much or what types of radioactive waste were dumped at which sites. An alarming scale of negligence was revealed by the 108-page ‘Yablokov Report’, written by a team of Russian experts headed by the well-known ecologist, Aleksei Yablokov, and released in March 1993.20 The report provides details on the dumping of radioactive waste in the waters around Novaya Zemlya and in the Kara Sea, which began in 1964 and continued until 1990. At least 17,000 barrels of solid radioactive waste were sunk in the waters around Novaya Zemlya, the former Soviet Union’s main nuclear test ground in terms of megatons detonated (94 per cent of the total). Thirteen nuclear reactors from submarines were dumped in the Kara Sea and in the fjords of Novaya Zemlya. In addition, three nuclear reactors from the icebreaker Lenin were disposed of at sea in the mid-1960s after they had been destroyed by a meltdown of the reactor core. In addition, between 11,000 and 17,000 containers of radioactive waste estimated at more that 60,000 curies were dumped in the area. The containers were encased in cement and steel shells, some of which were already leaking when they were submerged. In some instances, sailors shot holes into the containers to make them sink more quickly. While the whole Nordic region seems to be at risk, the concentration of radioactive waste is particularly high in the Kola Peninsula because of its proximity to the nuclear facilities in Murmansk oblast and in particular the activities of the Northern Fleet. The sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk added two more nuclear reactors and possibly nuclear warheads as well. In 1993, Russia warned the international community that plutonium from the nuclear submarine Komsomolets, which sank in the Norwegian Sea in 1989 with two nuclear torpedoes on board, was in danger of leaking and poisoning fishing grounds.21 All this work by Soviet/Russian scholars and the pressure from the West had resulted in a change in the Russian government’s security thinking. Different individuals and groups in Russian society will have different priorities and seek different kinds of internal and external political, economic and social arrangements whereby to pursue their own interests. The definition of Russia’s priorities and opportunities means that there will be winners and losers. Russian policy under President Boris Yeltsin, emphasizing partnership with the West and the need for Russia to become a member of the ‘civilized’ Western international system, reflected the view

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of a very narrow elite around the president. As competition in Russia’s domestic political and economic arenas developed in the period 1993–7, multiple views of Russia’s national security policy based on different sets of political, economic and societal interests emerged. Until about 1993 Russian foreign and security policy unfolded within the framework inherited from Mikhail Gorbachev’s and Eduard Shevardnadze’s ‘new political thinking’ (1987–90). In practice, it meant the rejection of the radical doctrines of Marxism and of the concept of the class struggle, and it resulted in a massive geostrategic retreat and a rhetoric of unlimited goodwill towards the West. This idyll began to unravel in the late spring and early summer of 1992 when the situation in the newly independent states destabilized. Russia’s deep involvement in military conflicts in the Transnistria region of Moldova, Abkhazia and Ossetia seemed to justify the assumption of some analysts that (a) Russia would not be able to ignore conflicts occurring along the perimeter of its own borders without intervening; (b) the international community, burdened with a number of problems in the former Yugoslavia, Africa and other parts of the world, had no great desire to take an active part in resolving those conflicts on the territory of the former USSR; and (c) the conflicts along Russia’s borders had began to exert a serious influence on the domestic political process and on the struggle between the different political forces in Russia itself.22 The 1993 Foreign Policy Concept and the 1997 National Security Concept This sudden realization gave rise to an intense debate within the Russian elite on the objectives, priorities and tactics of their foreign and security policies. The consensus of 1993 resulted in the drafting of the 1993 Foreign Policy Concept which signalled the emergence of a post-perestroika Russian foreign and security policy.23 First, the national tradition of the unchallenged domination of national security and foreign policy priorities over domestic economic, political and social development was reversed. For the Kremlin, economic progress and democratic stabilization emerged as the key objectives by which Russia’s external activity was to be defined. Second, the Russian state, whose emergence had coincided with colonial conquest, was decoupled from the Russian Empire after more than four centuries during which the two were inseparable. Third, also gone was the Messianic component (the ‘Third Rome’, panslavism and ‘world socialism’) which for centuries had been a guiding principle of foreign policy-making. The process of ‘secularization’ of Russian foreign policy, its ‘liberation’ from the ‘special spiritual mission’ of the country, finally seemed to prevail. It was a chance for an effective soft-security policy to be elaborated, but, due to the lack of resources and the general weakness of the state, the chance was missed.

Forming a new security identity 265 According to the new Foreign Policy Concept, at a time of growing uncertainty and unpredictability in the development of the international situation, any actions in the political sphere aimed at undermining the integrity of the Russian Federation and integrative processes within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), violations of human rights and freedoms and armed conflicts in adjacent states, and actions intended to weaken and undermine Russia’s international prestige would be viewed as threats to the security of the country and the vital interests of its citizens. In the economic sphere, the chief danger stems from the fact that the process of ‘opening up’ the Russian economy could be accompanied by a weakening of Russia’s economic independence, the degradation of its technological and industrial potential, and its permanent specialization as a source of fuel and raw materials in the world economy. In the new Foreign Policy Concept, however, the totally new sphere of the environmental threats inherited by Russia from the USSR received special attention. The ‘ecological disaster in Russia’ had to be dealt with first of all through intense international cooperation on all levels. The amendment of Russia’s environmental laws in accordance with international standards was envisaged, as was the development of a ‘rational ecological policy’ on the national level. Russia believed that international support in tackling the most serious environmental problems would be provided and in its turn was going to fulfil all its international obligations in this sphere.24 Russia’s National Security Concept of December 1997 not only repeated the main provisions of the Foreign Policy Concept of 1993 but put even more emphasis on Russia’s internal conditions as the major source of threats to Russia’s security. Since Russia’s internal threats arise from economic decline, instability and societal problems such as poor health and unemployment, they must be addressed through economic reform.25 It is astonishing that the national security policy of such a large and important country considered internal threats to its security more significant than external threats. Traditional international security threats were noted, but these were secondary to the internal threats. Similarly striking, the means for achieving Russian security at the international level was ‘partnership’ with the West and, while Russia’s defence capabilities were mentioned, it was in the context of ‘reasonable expenditures’ rather than the kind of dedicated investment required for any ambitious military reform and restructuring. The National Security Concept and Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 Russia’s National Security Concept of 2000 and its Foreign Policy Concept of the same year are important for understanding Russian security policy because they reflect the priorities, assessments, compromises and negotiations

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within the Russian political and security elite. They are evidence of the government’s assessment of the international system, Russian national interests, the sources of threats to those interests, and the means by which Russia can secure its interests (even though neither is a legally binding document and they can be amended or even ignored, as the American political scientist Celeste Wallander has rightly pointed out26). A quite remarkable shift from traditional realist/liberal thinking to a broader understanding of security took place in Russian security thinking in the 1999–2002 period. The new National Security Concept signed by President Putin on 10 January 2000, as well as the Foreign Policy Concept (of 28 June 2000), embodied this change. Alongside statements about the need to ‘fight for a multipolar world’ that were redolent of the Primakov era,27 the novelties were twofold. First, the cumulative weight of all the threats and risks to Russia’s national security reached its highest point for the whole post-Soviet period. Second, practically all spheres of life were now viewed through the lenses of security. The most important aspect of the new security concept is that it elevates the importance and expands the types of external threats to Russian security, at the same time as devoting a great deal of attention to internal threats. The new security concept no longer states that there are no external threats arising from deliberate actions or aggression: it provides a substantial list of external threats. Given the greater significance that it gives to external threats, it is not surprising that it calls for a greater emphasis on traditional security instruments. The main task of Russia’s security policy in the external realm, it says, is to secure the country’s territorial integrity, especially in preventing terrorism and threats to Russia’s international borders. The process of developing the new security concept was affected by events and problems such as the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the 1999 military action in Kosovo, the second war in Chechnya (since 1999), and disagreements on offensive and defensive nuclear weapons, but its roots lie deep within Russia’s political and security establishment. Were Russia to suffer another leadership reshuffle, the basic outlines of the policy would still remain. However, the partnership with the West was resumed in September 2001. Russia became a fully fledged ally of the USA in the war on international terrorism. A new format of cooperation with NATO, the NATO–Russia Joint Council, was introduced in May 2002, symbolizing a new momentum for real partnership on a number of hard and soft-security issues. Thus, over the past decade the Russian elite has demonstrated varying preferences in its foreign policy/security thinking, but the main trend was in favour of a reassessment of the nature of the threats to Russian security and the adoption of a concept of its security that was closer to that of the EU. Even so, the Russian record of achievement over concrete soft-security issues is not impressive. None of the problems was solved, and some of

Forming a new security identity 267 them even increased. In fact, the two things – hard and soft security – rarely go together, and the institutions in charge of them even compete with each other.28 Despite the changes in security thinking that have taken place in the Kremlin since 2000, most Russian senior security professionals still remain reluctant to accept a broader definition of national security even when the facts cry out for such a definition. Indeed, if Russia is a haven for several million illegal migrants, if one-sixth of the Russian land mass is so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, if HIV/AIDS spreads at the same rate as it is spreading in the poorest states of Africa,29 and if radioactive and nuclear waste poses a risk of a hundred Chernobyls, then the very survival of Russian people is at risk or will soon be at risk. For instance, according to recent World Bank data, Russia, grappling with one of the fastest rates of HIV infection in the world, faces a huge bill that it can ill afford if hundreds of thousands of people develop full-blown AIDS in the years to come. A report prepared by the chief economist of the bank’s Russia office, Christof Ruehl, on the likely economic consequences of Russia’s looming AIDS crisis paints a bleak picture of an economy continuing to grow but struggling to pay for public medical treatment as the epidemic spreads.30 Russia’s biggest challenge will be to offer expensive anti-AIDS drugs free to patients in a country where most people are far too poor to pay for them out of their own pockets. The World Bank estimated that treating the HIV-infected population at a cost of US$900 per person per month would soak up more than 80 per cent of Russia’s current annual federal budget. However, if treatment can be provided for only US$30 per month per patient, the cost would be less than 2.72 per cent of the budget. As far as Russia is concerned, adapting to a new international environment is not as simple as it is for its former allies within the Warsaw Pact. It is too early to say that we are witnessing a historic shift in security thinking within the Russian leadership. The concept of a multipolar world advanced by Primakov and later supported by Vladimir Putin has been keeping the old ‘great power’ habits alive. Facing the US attempts to use military power as a source of hegemony, those habits have started to dominate the stage in Russian security thinking again, leaving rather to one side the whole range of soft-security problems which are essential parts of the EU–Russia dialogue.

Soft-security issues under Putin: an inventory Any debate about foreign/security policy must reflect an objective analysis of the problems that the world faces. Only then will it be possible to identify the tools and methods that will protect our interests and constructively address the root causes of those problems. There is no consensus about the definition of soft-security issues in Russia. As far as the federal level is concerned, the growing insecurity of

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the individual citizen has been attributed to the radical economic reforms which have almost totally ruined the mechanisms of human security in the country. The negative impact of globalization on Russian society is also a commonplace in papers devoted to security issues. For instance, the research department of the Russian parliament has stated that many softsecurity threats are the direct results of globalization. ‘Globalization has paved the way to the emergence and growth of international [organized] crime, international terrorism, international trafficking in drugs and the spread of AIDS/HIV.’31 It may be assumed that the policy toolboxes must include the refocusing of economic reforms onto social issues and the minimizing of the negative impact of globalization. Reformers, for their part, blame the 70-year-long communist rule for the current environmental crisis in Russia. The inventory of the whole Russian economy launched by Putin at the beginning of his term in office as prime minister in 1999 resulted in a number of activities, including an in-depth analysis of the security challenges that Russia faced on the eve of the twenty-first century. The highest authority in reviewing state expenditures – the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation – contributed a great deal to this analysis. Its experts prepared and released dozens of reports on issues ranging from migration to HIV/AIDS, nuclear waste and the dismantling of nuclear submarines. These reports are the most important resources for the analysis here. The mere fact that soft-security problems have become an object of scrutiny for the highest authorities in Russia speaks for itself. In the mid1990s, this was almost unthinkable: Russian officials did not use softsecurity terminology, nor did they pay adequate attention to such issues. As mentioned above, their security lexicon was limited either to the notions of realism (the old guard led by Yevgenii Primakov persisted in referring to Russia as a great power) or to those of liberalism (former foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev and other liberal reformers strongly supported Francis Fukuyama’s idea of the ‘end of history’). Neither school of thought in its Russian interpretation used the new security vocabulary focusing on soft-security threats. The new security thinking in the Kremlin under Putin resulted in a restructuring of the Security Council, the main advisory body in the president’s administration dealing with security issues. Most of the changes within the Security Council took place from 1999 to 2001. Its permanent interdepartmental commissions were designed to correspond to the nature of the threats identified inter alia as soft-security issues. Commissions were set up to cover the whole range of non-military threats – on human security, crime and corruption as well as on ecological security and health. These bureaucratic structures would have been ideal had they not failed to provide full input to the work of the commissions of (a) the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and (b) the Russian regions. The MFA is essential for international cooperation in dealing with trans-

Forming a new security identity 269 32

national soft-security problems. The regions are needed for bridging the gap between the federal perceptions of security and regional strategies adopted not only by the economically depressed regions but also by advanced cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg. The old way of thinking about security in all its forms as the domain of the federal centre is quite understandable and both reflects Soviet-era habits in the security area and the specific nature of the Russian Federation as being built from above. The second important innovation introduced by Putin which had an impact on security policy was the reform (in the year 2000) of the Russian territorial structures and the creation of seven federal districts over and above the 89 subjects of the federation. The main objective behind this reform was the perceived need on the part of the federal government and the president himself to reinforce vertical authority over the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. This centralization followed a decade of spontaneous decentralization based on the personal connections and the leverage of individual governors in their relations with Moscow. The federal reform initiated by Putin rejected Yeltsin’s power-sharing agreements between the federal centre and the regions, and replaced those arrangements with a clear division of powers. As far as soft-security issues were concerned, the reform put responsibility for all security-related problems on the presidential representatives at federal district level. The logic behind this move was threefold. First, there was a wish to improve inter-regional cooperation (many soft-security issues cross the administrative borders of the regions). Second, dealing with soft-security issues requires the coordination of activities by various institutions on the federal and regional levels, and presidential representatives (who are also members of the Security Council) seem to be ideal candidates for this job. Third, almost all the presidential representatives were linked to either the military or the security services by their professional backgrounds. Their qualifications were seen by some analysts as an advantage in comparison with ‘civic’ governors who were unfamiliar with security issues. Thus, the de-regionalization of security in Russia33 was quite a reasonable move. Besides achieving substantial savings, this rationalization of the system of power structures is intended to facilitate the adoption of a new military strategy geared to the challenges of the twenty-first century. This strategy is to rely upon operational task forces which are capable of flexible response to local threats and conflicts involving irregular insurgent forces, separatist movements, criminal groups, bandits and terrorists. A third development in the new security thinking is Putin’s desire to make public a number of activities of the Russian government, including the implementation of federal programmes and the activities of nonbudgetary funds. Both are key actors in tackling soft-security issues. These federal programmes have been developed by the government mainly in accordance with either the federal laws34 or the international obligations of

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the Russian Federation.35 Investigations by the Accounts Chamber have produced greater transparency in once-classified areas of activity of the military and the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom). President Putin, in his annual address to the Russian parliament in 2003, tasked the government to prepare a bill specifying the kinds of information that the departments and ministries of the executive branch must publish on the Internet for popular access. One of the side-effects of enhancing transparency will undoubtedly be the bridging of the enormous gap between the government and ordinary people with regard to sensitive security problems. The order obliging government departments to do this was to come into force by mid-May 2003.36 However, looking at the 2003 federal programmes budget, which forms the main resource for meeting soft-security challenges, one can only conclude that many in the government and in the Russian parliament still believe that new–old threats can be addressed by old methods or, failing that, safely ignored. The structure of the federal programmes to cope with particular security problems37 has not been changed. No additional funds have been allocated for any problem except for a few concerning nuclear safety issues inherited from Soviet times (the Chernobyl nuclear power station, and nuclear pollution in the Chelyabinsk region and in Semipalatinsk).38 At the same time, the Ecology and Natural Resources of Russia programme will lose 38.5 per cent of its 2002 budget; and the situation is made even worse by the fact that in 2002 most federal programmes received just 40 per cent of their planned funding. As a result of such practices, none of federal programmes has achieved its objectives.

The role of the regions So far, this chapter has focused exclusively on the central (federal) level of Russian security policy. But, regarding the implementation of projects in the field of soft security, the role of the regions (the republics, oblasti and autonomous okrugs) in which these projects are carried out must also be considered. A few conclusions can be made on the basis of the data available. The method adopted here is to look at the repeated practices of those who run the regions in the field of soft security. Most federal programmes in soft security started in the mid-1990s. Thus, the regional elites have had fairly extensive experience of dealing with them. In most cases they are among the major actors in carrying out federal programmes, whether they are about nuclear waste and the dismantling of nuclear submarines on the Kola Peninsula or the fulfilment of international obligations under the Baltic Marine Environment Protection programme (of the Helsinki Commission, HELCOM) in the St Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions.

Forming a new security identity 271 The experience of the regions can be reduced to the following five essential features. First, there is a feeling of failure in fighting soft-security problems on the regional level. Because of lack of funds, none of these problems have been solved,39 and in most cases the situation has even deteriorated. Hence, soft-security issues might become a real problem and cannot provide easy political capital. Second, there are no easy victories in this field of action. Quite the contrary: soft-security issues could even create additional problems at elections. What is the worth of the administration if it is unable to provide people with such basics as clean water and clean air? Third, there are no direct economic gains (except when dismantling submarines at Severodvinsk) for those who are involved in tackling softsecurity problems. All soft-security problems are quite costly as well as (so far) politically unrewarding. Thus, there are no motives to tackle them on the economic level either. The psychology of dependence on the federal centre is a common feature among the regional elites. ‘If the EU (or Norway, the USA, Finland, the United Kingdom and others) are concerned about these issues, let them pay for their own security.’ Russia’s predominantly ‘economic’ approach to environmental security can be illustrated not only by its willingness to make money by importing nuclear waste but also by its stance on the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.40 Fourth, since the regions have always played a marginal role in the drafting and financing of soft-security projects, they have felt that they were the objects rather than the masters of this policy. The local academic elites and many research institutions in St Petersburg (especially the biological and medical institutions) have not been involved in monitoring and implementing the programmes that involve their fields of expertise, such as drug abuse or HIV/AIDS. The fact is that current regional policy in Russia, with its practices of financial transfers to the poor regions, in most cases actually encourages the resort to ‘dependence’ strategies in almost half of the Russian regions. Under such circumstances, it is profitable to seem poor in order to get support from the centre. Paradoxically, the regional policy (including soft-security issues) has been applied almost without the involvement of the regions themselves. Almost all the tools of regional policy, starting with federal laws and other normative acts on the federal level and the redistribution of financial resources in favour of the federal centre, and the identification of recipients and forms of support, are the exclusive prerogatives of the federal centre.41 Fifth, the regional elites have done their best to ignore the pressures from below – the result of growing public anxiety in today’s Russia about soft-security issues. The fact that they are ignoring the pressures does not suggest that the regional elites’ anxiety is growing.

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Conclusion Although the bulk of the economic reforms putting Russia on the track of capitalism are complete, and economic efficiency has become the main feature of the elite’s habitus in post-Soviet Russia, a security identity is far from being formed yet. In this respect, Russia is still in the stage of transformation. Since soft security as perceived in the West is almost a new field for the Russian elite, there should be no bad habits. But the practice of the past few years shows a mixed record. On the one hand, an actualization of soft-security thinking both under outside influence (in particular that of the EU, and in some cases Norway, Finland and the USA) and within took place, and new institutions have been formed. The structure of interdepartmental commissions within the Security Council reflects in full the new challenges to Russian security. A realization of the need to coordinate cooperation on the inter-regional level in security-related issues was one of the motives for the federal reform. On the other hand, the pressures of the international system, though powerful, are not decisive, since politics remains a fluid and contingent process. The process of distributing power and resources between the federal centre, the federal districts and the regions is far from over. The federal districts have power but no money; the regions have neither power nor money. The irony of the federal reform is that soft-security problems have too many masters and each of them is incapable of tackling even the simplest of the problems. As far as funding is concerned, soft-security programmes have been badly financed – on average only 40 per cent of funds budgeted have been disbursed – while traditional hard security programmes have been financed according to budget. Thus, hard-security still dominates the stage and will do so in the near future. As for tensions between the federal districts and the regions, the stalemate might be resolved through the allocation of resources of special federal programmes targeted at soft-security threats to the federal districts and enhancing the responsibility of donor regions such as St Petersburg to tackle their soft-security problems themselves. As Robert English has stated: Culture changes only slowly, yet change it does. Identity is not infinitely malleable, but it is significantly so. And within this matrix of forces, particularly in a time of large-scale transformation, the importance of intellectual innovation and enlightened leadership is as great as ever. So far, in the post-Gorbachev era, such leadership has been notably lacking.42 Its continued absence will be critical in determining the fate of Russia for decades to come.

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Notes 1 William D. Jackson, ‘Imagining Russia in Western international relations theory’, undated (http://casnov1.cas.muohio.edu/havighurstcenter/papers/ Jackson.pdf). 2 Igor Ivanov, ‘The new Russian identity: Innovation and continuity in Russian foreign policy’, Washington Quarterly, Summer 2001, p. 10. 3 ‘Common Strategy of the European Union of 4 June 1999 on Russia’, Official Journal of the European Communities, L157, 24 June 1999, p. 3. 4 See, for instance, Geir Hønneland and Anne-Kristin Jørgensen, ‘Implementing Russia’s international environmental commitments: Federal prerogative or regional concern?’, Europe–Asia Studies, 54(8), 2002, pp. 1223–40. 5 Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the security dilemma’, World Politics, January 1978, pp. 167–214. 6 James Sperling and Emil Kirchner, ‘Economic security and the problem of cooperation in post-Cold War Europe’, Review of International Studies, 24(2), 1998, p. 226. 7 Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining security’, International Security, 8(1), Summer 1983, p. 133. 8 New Russia Barometer VIII, Fieldwork 19–29 January 2000. 9 Cf. Johnson’s Russia List (Center for Defense Information), 7028, 22 January 2003 (http://www.cdi.org). 10 Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies. Moscow 1955 and 1999, Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 2002, p. 14. 11 Thomas U. Berger, ‘Norms, identity, and national security in Germany and Japan’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 317–56. 12 Cf. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. 13 As English has pointed out, a crisis of self-definition occurs when intellectuals perceive that the developmental path embodied in a given identity has manifestly failed. The ‘hegemonic’ identity then confronts irresolvable contradictions with reality. Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 243. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 7. 16 Here, ‘practices’ means mainly governmental, official actions stipulated by international accords and by the Russian federal programmes. 17 English, Russia and the Idea of the West, pp. 130–1. 18 Ibid., p. 132. 19 On the change in security thinking in Western Europe and Russia in the 1970s, the 1980s and later, see Olof Palme International Centre, Common Security in Northern Europe After the Cold War, Stockholm: Olof Palme International Centre, 1994; and Visions of European Security, Stockholm: Olof Palme International Centre, 1996; also Lassi Heininen and Gunnar Lassinantti (eds), Security in the European North: From ‘Hard’ to ‘Soft’, Rovaniemi: Arctic Center, University of Lapland and Olof Palme International Centre, 1999. 20 Fakty i problemy (Moscow), 1993. 21 Lloyd J. Dumas, ‘A sunken nuclear graveyard poses threats to human life’, International Herald Tribune, 7 September 2000. 22 Gordon Livermore (ed.), Russia’s Evolving Foreign Policy 1992–1994, Columbus, OH: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 1994, p. 2.

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23 The Basic Provisions of the Russian Federation’s Foreign Policy Concept were approved by order of President Boris Yeltsin on 23 April 1993. See Current Digest of the Soviet Press, xlv(17), 29 April 1993, pp. 13–15. 24 Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 1–2, 1993, Spetsvypusk [special issue] p. 22. 25 Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 2, 1998, pp. 3–18. 26 Celeste A. Wallander, ‘Russian national security policy in 2000’, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. no. 102, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2000. 27 Yevgenii Primakov was foreign minister from January 1996 and prime minister from September 1998 to May 1999. 28 An analysis of official federal budgets for the period of 2001–3 (see the website of the Russian Ministry of Finance, http://www.minfin.ru/budjet/budjet.htm) (in Russian) demonstrates that the annual cost of the whole set of soft-security issues is comparable with the annual military expenditure of Russia. The most expensive soft-security issue relates to the dismantling of Russian nuclear submarines, the overall cost of which will amount to approximately US$1.4 billion, while the average cost of dismantling one submarine is over US$7 million. According to the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation in 2001 (Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Bulletin of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation], 6(42), 2001), costs related to the maintenance of decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines were approaching the funding for nuclear submarines in service. The existing level of international financial support by the USA (through the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme), by Norway (bilaterally and trilaterally with the USA, as part of the Arctic Military Environment Cooperation (AMEC) programme) and by the UK (bilaterally) has led the Russian authorities to believe that the scrapping of the nuclear submarines would be finished in 2007. Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 6(42), 2001. See also the federal programme for 2000–6 entitled Russia’s Nuclear and Radiation Security. 29 According to Russian official data, the number of people infected by HIV/AIDS has been growing very rapidly, from 196 persons in 1996 or one person in every 100,000 tested, to 231.5 infected persons out of 100,000 tested in 2000. About 40 per cent of all those infected are resident in Moscow, St Petersburg, the Moscow region and other big cities. 30 See also the chapter by Roland Götz in this volume. 31 ‘Vyzovy XXI veka i ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii: Proekt analiticheskogo doklada’ [Challenges of the 21st century and economic development of Russia: Blueprint of an analytical report], Moscow: Analiticheskoe upravleniia apparata Soveta Federatsii, 2002, p. 54. 32 Until 2002 the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not have a special department to monitor international cooperation in the non-traditional spheres of security. Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 5, 2002. 33 Irina Isakova, Regionalization of Security in Russia, Whitehall Paper no. 53, London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI), 2001. 34 For instance, the Federal Ecological Fund was created by the Russian government on 29 June 1992 in accordance with the Federal Law On the Protection of the Environment (19 December 1991). The Anti-HIV/AIDS Federal Programme (1996) stemmed from the Federal Law On the Prevention in the Russian Federation of Infectious Diseases Originated by the HIV Virus. 35 The CTR and AMEC programmes mentioned on p. 000, and other international agreements (the Russian–US treaties on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms – the START-I and START-II treaties of 1991 and 1993) have caused Russia to adopt several programmes aimed at the full dismantling of nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered vessels decommis-

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36 37 38

39

40

41

42

sioned by the Russian navy and the Ministry of Transport. See Alexander Gusakov, ‘Regional cooperation in the sphere of nuclear safety: A case study of the dismantling of nuclear submarines at Severodvinsk Shipyard, northwest Russia in the Baltic Sea region’, Russian Regional Perspectives on Foreign and Security Policy (International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS), 1, 2002, pp. 35–7. Vedomosti, 12 February 2003. The Russian tradition is that federal programmes are aimed at resolving one particular issue, for instance, the decommissioning of nuclear submarines, fighting HIV/AIDS, and so on. ‘Zakliuchenie Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii na proekt federal’nogo zakona O Federal’nom Biudzhete na 2003 god’ [The Russian Federation Accounts Chamber’s opinion on the Federal Law on the 2003 Federal Budget], Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 11, 2002. Just two of 19 so-called ‘hot spots’ posing ecological threats to the Baltic Sea listed in the HELCOM Protocol were ticked off the list when the Kaliningrad pulp and paper mill was shut down in 1999. While recommendations to improve ecological monitoring in the basin of the Baltic Sea and to upgrade water-cleaning facilities in St Petersburg have been partly carried out, the most ecologically dangerous objects are still in operation owing to lack of funds. See ‘Otchet o rezul’tatakh proverki Mezhdunarodnii parallel’nyi audit okruzhaiushchei sredy raiona Baltiiskogo moria (na osnove Khel’sinskoi Konventsii) v chasti uchastiia Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ [On international parallel audit of the ecological protection of the Baltic Sea basin], Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Bulletin of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation], 7/8(43/44), 2001. According to an editorial in the Financial Times, 13 August 2003, ‘The world is waiting for Russia to make up its mind about the Kyoto protocol . . . For Russia, the agreement is a one-way bet. The country would need to make no cuts in its emission levels and stands to gain as much as $10 bn (£6 bn) a year from trading emission permits internationally. The more Moscow delays, the longer it denies itself this potential windfall. The explanations appear largely political. One may be in-fighting between warring camps in the Russian government, some of which view the protocol as a threat to their traditional power bases . . . Russia may also hope that, by playing hard to get, it can gain diplomatic leverage – particularly over the European Union, the protocol’s greatest champion. Moscow certainly has a long shopping list of demands. They include early entry into the World Trade Organization, freedom to renegotiate partnership agreements with EU accession countries and visa-free travel by its citizens to the EU.’ A. Kasakov, Pravovye osnovy regional’noi politiki v Rossii: problemy i perspektivy. Sovet Federatsii. Otchet predsedatelia Komiteta po voprosam Federatsii i regional’noi politiki [Legal aspects of regional policy in Russia: Problems and perspectives. Federation Council, Report by the Chairman of the Committee on Federation and Regional Policy], Moscow, 19 November 2002, pp. 3–5. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, p. 240.

Bibliography Books and journals Berger, Thomas U., ‘Norms, identity, and national security in Germany and Japan’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 317–56.

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Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Bulletin of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation], 6(42), 2001. ‘Common Strategy of the European Union of 4 June 1999 on Russia’, Official Journal of the European Communities, L157, 24 June 1999, p. 3. Current Digest of the Soviet Press, xlv(17), 29 April 1993, pp. 13–15. English, Robert D., Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 243. Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Gusakov, Alexander, ‘Regional cooperation in the sphere of nuclear safety: A case study of the dismantling of nuclear submarines at Severodvinsk Shipyard, northwest Russia in the Baltic Sea region’, Russian Regional Perspectives on Foreign and Security Policy (International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS), 1, 2002, pp. 35–7. Heininen, Lassi and Gunnar Lassinantti (eds), Security in the European North: From ‘Hard’ to ‘Soft’, Rovaniemi: Arctic Center, University of Lapland and Olof Palme International Centre, 1999. Hønneland, Geir and Anne-Kristin Jørgensen, ‘Implementing Russia’s international environmental commitments: Federal prerogative or regional concern?’, Europe–Asia Studies, 54(8), 2002, pp. 1223–40. Hopf, Ted, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies. Moscow 1955 and 1999, Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 2002. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2003/2004, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 271–2. Isakova, Irina, Regionalization of Security in Russia, Whitehall Paper no. 53, London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI), 2001. Ivanov, Igor, ‘The New Russian identity: Innovation and continuity in Russian foreign policy’, Washington Quarterly, Summer 2001. Kasakov, A., Pravovye osnovy regional’noi politiki v Rossii: Problemy i perspektivy. Sovet Federatsii. Otchet predsedatelia Komiteta po voprosam Federatsii i regional’noi politiki [Legal aspects of regional policy in Russia: Problems and perspectives. Federation Council, Report by the Chairman of the Committee on Federation and Regional Policy], Moscow, 19 November 2002, pp. 3–5. Jervis, Robert, ‘Cooperation under the security dilemma’, World Politics, January 1978, pp. 167–214. Livermore, Gordon (ed.), Russia’s Evolving Foreign Policy 1992–1994, Columbus, O.: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 1994, p. 2. Olof Palme International Center, Common Security in Northern Europe After the Cold War, Stockholm: Olof Palme International Center, 1994. ——, Visions of European Security, Stockholm: Olof Palme International Centre, 1996. ‘Otchet o rezul’tatakh proverki Mezhdunarodnii parallel’nyi audit okruzhaiushchei sredy raiona Baltiiskogo moria (na osnove Khel’sinskoi Konventsii) v chasti uchastiia Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ [On international parallel audit of the ecological protection of the Baltic Sea basin], Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Bulletin of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation], 7/8(43/44), 2001. Pursiainen, Christer, Beyond Sovietology: International Relations Theory and the

Forming a new security identity 277 Study of Soviet/Russian Foreign and Security Policy, Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 1998. Sperling, James and Emil Kirchner, ‘Economic security and the problem of cooperation in post-Cold War Europe’, Review of International Studies, 24(2), 1998, p. 226. Ullman, Richard H., ‘Redefining security’, International Security, 8(1), Summer 1983, pp. 129–53. ‘Vyzovy XXI veka i ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii: Proekt analiticheskogo doklada’ [Challenges of the 21st century and economic development of Russia: Blueprint of an analytical report], Moscow: Analiticheskoe upravleniia apparata Soveta Federatsii, 2002. Wallander, Celeste A., ‘Russian national security policy in 2000’, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. no. 102, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2000. ‘Zakliuchenie Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii na proekt federal’nogo zakona O Federal’nom Biudzhete na 2003 god’ [The Russian Federation Accounts Chamber’s opinion on the Federal Law on the 2003 Federal Budget], Biulleten’ Schetnoi Palaty Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 11, 2002.

Media and Internet Diplomaticheskii vestnik, 1–2, 1993; 2, 1998; and 5, 2002. Dumas, Lloyd J., ‘A sunken nuclear graveyard poses threats to human life’, International Herald Tribune, 7 September 2000. Fakty i problemy (Moscow), 1993. Jackson, William D., ‘Imagining Russia in Western international relations theory’, undated (http://casnov1.cas.muohio.edu/havighurstcenter/papers/Jackson.pdf). Financial Times, 13 August 2003. Johnson’s Russia List (Center for Defense Information), 7028, 22 January 2003 (http://www.cdi.org). New Russia Barometer VIII, Fieldwork 19–29 January 2000. Rossiiskoe Obshschestvennoe Mnenie i Issledovanie Rynka (ROMIR) (http://www.romir.ru). Russian Ministry of Finance, [Russian military budgets 2001–3] (in Russian) (http://www.minfin.ru/budjet/budjet.htm and http://www.lenta.ru/economy/ 200304/29). Vedomosti, 12 February 2003.

12 Nuclear safety and environmental risks of north-west Russia A source of cooperation and conflict1 Christer Pursiainen

After the end of the Cold War, the focus of security relations between Russia and Europe has shifted from military ‘hard security’ to non-military ‘soft security’ issues. In Northern Europe these developments are especially striking because of the common border between Russia and the European Union (EU). Of these multiple ‘new’ threats, the nuclear safety and environmental risks that exist in north-west Russia are the main focus of this chapter. It discusses the main threat scenarios related to these risks, Russia’s domestic policy-making in this field, and international regimebuilding efforts to solve the most urgent problems. It concludes that, while institutionalized international cooperation around these issues has evolved, many sources of conflict remain.

Waiting for catastrophes? The most serious nuclear safety risk in north-west Russia is the possibility of a malfunction in the operation of the nuclear reactor of a power plant. However, there are considerable risks connected to the overload of nuclear waste as well. Moreover, several environmental hot spots create risks not only for Russia but also for the neighbouring countries. Nuclear power plant malfunction: from alarmism to neglect There are currently ten operational nuclear power plants in Russia, with a total of 30 reactors. For Northern Europe, the two power stations located in north-west Russia are of particular concern. The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) is situated in the town of Sosnovyi Bor, 80 km southwest of St Petersburg, with its population of five million, and close to the borders with Estonia and Finland. The plant currently has four ‘Chernobyl-type’ RBMK-1000 reactors, put into operation in 1973, 1975, 1979 and 1981, respectively. The Kola NPP is located some 15 km west of

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 279 the city of Poliarnye Zori, near the major city of Murmansk, with about 300,000 inhabitants, and close to the borders of both Norway and Finland. There are four VVER-440 type pressurized water reactor blocs which started operation in 1973, 1974, 1981 and 1984, respectively. Nuclear power is particularly important for the gross energy supply of north-west Russia, amounting to about 40 per cent of the total, compared to only 12–14 per cent in Russia as a whole. The region is therefore heavily dependent on nuclear energy and it would be difficult to find other energy sources to compensate. However, Russia faces the major problem of ageing reactors. Originally, the operational age of a reactor was planned to be 30 years. All the 14 Soviet nuclear reactors built in the early 1970s were therefore supposed to be shut down during the early 2000s, but this was not seen to be economically possible, and in 1999 the Russian government made a decision that their lifespan was to be extended by 10–15 years until new reactors could be afforded. As a result, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) plans to extend the maximum operational life of the two oldest reactors at Kola to 2013 and 2014, respectively, and the two oldest at Leningrad to 2015 and 2020, respectively.2 This has aroused considerable concern both among Russian environmentalists and in the neighbouring countries, and, although Russia plans to upgrade the reactors, there are urgent demands for them to be closed down as soon as possible. Russian citizens and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are not the only source of these demands; EU documents also mention that an ‘urgent priority in the region is the early closure and decommissioning of nuclear reactors “at risk” ’.3 The Russian reactors are considered not to meet Western safety standards, largely because of their original design and their age, but there is also widespread mistrust of the Russian nuclear safety culture. How well founded are the threat scenarios of a major catastrophe? Information about the safety of the nuclear power plants is highly contested. Russian official sources, especially Minatom, tend to play down the problems. According to the media and NGO reporting on the condition of Russia’s nuclear power plants, there is good reason to doubt their safety. According to environmental organizations and activists, the situation became increasingly worrying during the 1990s: Today not one of Russia’s nuclear power plants fully meets modern safety requirements, especially in terms of breaches in reactor operations. Serious violations of regulations and technical requirements occur regularly, occasionally resulting in radiation exposure to plant personnel . . . Russia’s brain drain is also cause for concern, as highly qualified personnel have left the country for better jobs and are often replaced by underqualified technicians. This perilous situation is made still worse by wear-and-tear on existing equipment. Financing for replacement equipment is insufficient or even non-existent. Some

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Christer Pursiainen aging reactors lack proper containment vessels, reliable control technology and emergency core-cooling systems, all normal features of modern plants. Perhaps even more than cash, however, these plants need greater regulation and a timetable for the permanent shutdown of first- and second-generation reactor types.4

Western radiological and nuclear monitoring agencies, which have some opportunities for on-site monitoring, do not usually seek to arouse public concern or provide detailed information about the safety problems of Russian nuclear power plants, seemingly because it would damage their efforts to cooperate with Russia in improving nuclear safety there; but, even if Western expert evaluations are usually not so alarmist as the comments of NGOs, they do not give a ‘green light’ to the operation of Russian nuclear power plants. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has inspected the safety systems of Russian nuclear power plants.5 In 1991 it investigated the safety of the Kola nuclear reactors in particular, and considered the risk of a serious emergency to be relatively high, especially in the two oldest reactors. Since then safety upgrading has been done but, according to the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian-based NGO, Western standards have not been met.6 According to the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (Säteilyturvakeskus, STUK), the weakest point has been the unreliable cooling system in emergency situations. This problem has been largely resolved by a Norwegian– Swedish–Finnish–Russian programme, which constructed a new system by 2002,7 but STUK also points out that the two oldest reactors in particular are missing some crucial safety equipment.8 As for the Leningrad NPP, the two older reactors were evaluated between 2001 and 2003 by an international team representing Russia, Finland, Sweden, the UK and the USA, when the first-ever international in-depth safety assessment (ISA) was done. According to the Western representatives, the summary report written by the Russian side somewhat plays down the safety problems: ‘In the opinion of the Western partners, the summary report provides an adequate overview of the work, but it does not represent a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of the plant identified by the project.’ The overall conclusion published leaves some room for interpretation, but seems to accept that the only realistic solution is to upgrade the safety systems: The probabilistic analysis shows that the risk of severe core damage is on the limit of acceptability by international (INSAG-8) standards. Taking into account known uncertainties, it is not possible to make quantitative decisions concerning acceptability. The Western partners see the effective completion of a reconstruction programme, taking into account the results of the ISA, as an urgent necessity.9

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 281 According to STUK, which participated in the evaluation, the analyses that have been made are not enough, and the plant is still vulnerable to different kinds of malfunction.10 The worst-case scenario connected with Russia’s nuclear power plants is a reactor meltdown. It would probably take place as a result of several factors acting in combination. Some real-life incidents illustrate what the chain of events at the site of a major nuclear catastrophe in today’s Russia, with its deteriorating infrastructure, could be. The most recent ‘We were just half an hour from another Chernobyl’ emergency was reported by the Russian and foreign media in September 2000 in the Sverdlovsk region, when a short-circuit in the regional electricity supply caused a sudden blackout in three nuclear reactors. The on-site diesel generators built for just such an emergency situation failed to start automatically because of their poor condition. Consequently, the cooling system at the heart of the plant stopped working and the temperature in the core reactor rose to a dangerous level before the staff managed to start the generators after about half an hour. Contrary to the statements given by the head of the plant, the Minatom representatives denied that this was an emergency, and claimed that everything went according to plan and that the on-site emergency electricity generators had started immediately.11 The Northern nuclear graveyard The spent nuclear fuel produced in the power plants presents another set of problems. In January 2004 Bellona published a report on the Leningrad NPP written by a former operator of the plant. The report documented several safety problems, especially in the storage system, connected both to the plant’s infrastructure problem and to the lack of a proper safety culture, leading to frequent violations of safety regulations.12 Bellona has described the nuclear waste storage situation at the Leningrad power station as follows: There is a storage pond next to the reactor hall, to which the used fuel elements are transferred for interim storage and cooling. There is also a larger storage area that lies only 90 meters from the Gulf of Finland. This storage facility is in an extremely poor state of repair, with large cracks in the walls and roof. Rainwater runs in and contaminated water runs out. All five of the storage buildings are today completely full. It has therefore been decided that the distance between each fuel element in the ponds will be halved, something that entails a further safety risk.13 Much of the most problematic nuclear material is of military origin and inherited from the Cold War period. Starting from the late 1950s, both Russian military structures (up to 1991) and civilian companies (up to

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1986) dumped solid and liquid radioactive waste, as well as nuclear reactors with and without spent nuclear fuel, in the Kara Sea and in the coastal fjords of Novaya Zemlya. Today Russia no longer deliberately dumps nuclear waste at sea, and in this sense it is possible to speak of a growing environmental awareness in the Russian nuclear administration. However, paradoxically, the implications of this are not entirely positive. The result has been an increase in the amount of waste and spent nuclear fuel kept on land, with no proper storage or dismantling and reprocessing procedures. While both minor and more severe accidents of this type have been documented in Russia in recent years, a worst-case scenario is a major accidental radioactive release that could result from fire or accidental chain reactions at the overloaded storage sites, or accidents during the transport and loading of radioactive material. They could lead to serious local and perhaps regional consequences, especially for the local population in the rather large towns and cities in the neighbourhood of many storage sites and during transport. A larger accident might result in longterm health and socio-economic effects, with cross-border effects as well. While sometimes the real threat scenarios connected to the Kola Peninsula nuclear waste problem are questioned – some observers see them as ‘ticking time bomb’ discourses created by (Norwegian) media, environmental NGOs and environmentally oriented politicians14 – the existence of the problem cannot be denied. It is estimated that Russia’s current nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel load is six million curies, which is the equivalent of 120 Chernobyls. The Kola Peninsula is the biggest problem area. It is estimated to be the home of about 18 per cent of the world’s naval nuclear reactors and the highest concentration anywhere. Ten years ago, the Northern Fleet had about 230 large vessels, including 166 submarines. Today, approximately 100 Soviet-built submarines are awaiting decommissioning, each usually equipped with two nuclear reactors.15 Although most of them are officially said to be tied up in ports and guarded, many observers note that they are in fact virtually abandoned and many are at risk of sinking. Most of these abandoned submarines are located near Murmansk near the borders with Finland and Norway. Solid radioactive waste is stored at 11 separate sites around the peninsula, while liquid waste is stored at the five main naval bases on the peninsula. An illustrative example is the storage facility in Andreeva Bay, often called in alarmist scenarios a ‘Chernobyl in slow motion’ – again, located close to the borders of both Norway and Finland. There are reported to be 21,000 spent fuel assemblies, enough for 90 nuclear reactors, and 12,000 cubic metres of solid and liquid radioactive waste in concrete bunkers. Critics note that the concrete is in very poor condition, and that there are cracks and a constant danger of leakage into fishing waters.16 According to the Russian authorities, it would be too expensive to

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 283 transfer all the waste in the region to Siberian reprocessing plants; the necessary infrastructure and transport vehicles are simply not available. Several alternative solutions have been proposed. One could be storage facilities built locally, perhaps in concrete in military tunnels near Ara Bay; another is based on storing the waste in concrete and metal casks. There are also plans for the country’s first-ever regional dumping ground for radioactive waste from the nuclear-powered submarines of Russia’s Northern Fleet. According to this solution, the dumping ground is to be built on Novaya Zemlya, while specialists are also considering an alternative option for locating the dumping ground on the Kola Peninsula. Paradoxically, a Minatom plan launched in the spring of 2000 aimed at legalizing the import of spent nuclear fuel from other countries.17 The spent fuel would be reprocessed to isolate uranium and plutonium for future use, and the remaining waste put into protective storage. Part of the profit would be used for dealing with the existing nuclear waste problem. In June 2001, the State Duma finally passed an amendment to the law On Environment Protection which made this legally possible, and the president signed the law in July 2001. While Minatom continues to pursue the business idea of importing used nuclear fuel,18 there are many voices in Russia who point out not only that Russia has no facilities for recycling and storing spent nuclear fuel on its territory – all current facilities for recycling spent nuclear fuel are located in Ozersk in the Chelyabinsk region at a site belonging to the Maiak company, and are not even adequate for managing Russia’s own nuclear waste – but also that the costs of storing the extracted plutonium would make the business unprofitable in the long run.19 The concern of the neighbouring countries, especially around the Baltic Sea, is that, if these plans were realized, the routes by which the nuclear waste would be transported would involve other countries as well, and the transport of the waste over long distances would add to the risk of a serious catastrophe occurring. Environmental crisis and individual hot spots Beside nuclear safety risks, ‘normal’ environmental problems related to soil, water and air pollution are usually understood as constituting a major problem, basically for the population in Russia but potentially threatening neighbouring countries as well. The general picture of Russia’s environmental situation appears grim. According to the environmental authorities, the air in 120 Russian cities is five times more toxic than acceptable levels. The main sources of pollution are factories that produce paper, metals and chemicals. More than 14 per cent of Russia’s territory is in an extremely poor ecological condition, affecting 61 million of the country’s 147 million people.20 Other sources have maintained that every third child in Russia may be ill because of environmental pollution and that half of Russia’s people

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drink water that does not meet safety guidelines.21 According to Greenpeace, about 5 per cent of the oil extracted in Russia leaks out of its pipelines every year, which amounts to some 15 million tonnes a year.22 An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey from 1999 concluded that Russia is in environmental crisis, that that crisis has broader European and global implications, and that Russia remains a major contributor to regional and global environmental problems such as acid deposition and greenhouse gas emissions.23 Along with the general poor environmental situation, there are several particular environmental hot spots in north-west Russia which have raised cross-border concerns. Some are already the objects of international aid programmes. They include the huge amounts of unprocessed waste water of St Petersburg and the spillage of toxic waste from industry into Lake Ladoga and rivers through which the toxic material could reach the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic. One of the most serious hot spots is the Krasnyi Bor polygon, which has received over 1.5 million cubic metres of hazardous waste since 1969. Most of the waste is left untreated in landfill sites, regardless of its concentration or toxicity, and this has been going on for 30 years. The site constitutes a concentration of hazardous and toxic chemicals whose mixtures and derivatives can be shown to have direct effects on the immediate environment, as well as posing a threat to neighbouring countries, since the streams of the site feed directly to the rivers Tosna and Izorha and thereby to the river Neva and the Gulf of Finland.24 Another concern with cross-border implications has been Russia’s ongoing project to build several new oil terminals on the Gulf of Finland. These ports are connected to the Baltic Pipeline System, and Russia plans to increase its oil exports significantly in the years to come. Although Russia officially declares that the constructors will meet all ecological standards, the environmentalists maintain that environmental legislation has not been properly followed and that the risk of major accidents is therefore high. The Russian environmental NGO Green World has raised the question of leaking oil pipelines: We did not find any waterproofing either on the pipe, nor, which is more important, on the welds. So the pipe corrosion has started even before its coming into use. The pipe’s wall thickness is about 8–10 mm. You can imagine how long it will last in such conditions, and the oil will be pumped through the pipes at 60 atmospheres pressure.25 Neighbouring countries in the Baltic Sea region have been worried that the new oil harbours will bring a considerable increase in oil tanker traffic to the Gulf of Finland and thus inevitably increase the risk of oil spills and major accidents. Russian oil transports are not regarded as safe, since often single-hull oil tankers are used, which are not designed to withstand the hard ice conditions in the Baltic during the winter. However, protests

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 285 demanding the introduction of double-hull oil tankers have had little effect on Russia since oil transport is vital for its economy. Given that Russia has started and plans to increase its oil transport from Murmansk as well, where a new oil port and pipeline will be constructed, concern has grown among decision-makers in Norway as well: ‘The rapid and very substantial increase in the transport of oil from Russia through Norwegian waters to markets in the West has led to environmental concerns in this country.’26 If a major oil catastrophe were to take place as a result of Russian oil transport in the Baltic Sea, for instance, it would impact rather seriously on Russia’s relations with its neighbours. Minor accidents are frequent in the neighbourhood of St Petersburg and, although serious oil spills in the Baltic have been rare, the risk increases with the increase in the volume of traffic. It is usually estimated that 0.02 per cent of tanker-transported oil contaminates the sea as result of accidents. The growing traffic and increasing oil transports have caused Finland to propose a more developed sea traffic control system for the Gulf of Finland. It will be implemented jointly with Russia and Estonia.

The diminishing role of environmental control and critical discussion At first sight, Russia has the necessary administrative and legislative instruments to deal with these problems. A closer look, however, reveals that the gap between words and deeds is often rather wide. Environmentally sustainable development has often been overruled by purely economic calculations, the goal being the country’s economic modernization as quickly as possible. Developing legislation The Russian Federation is a participant in several soft security-related international regimes and has its own legislation concerning all the issues dealt with above. Looking at the area of environmental protection, for instance, the Russian legislation is rather well developed. Although the main law is the 1991 (i.e., Soviet-period) law On Environment Protection of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic, there are many amendments to it and many newer laws, as well as acts and decrees of the executive power in the same field, which do not differ greatly from European provisions. As the Russian Federation and the 89 subjects of the federation (the constituent republics and regions and administrative subdivisions) manage environmental protection activity jointly, there is also corresponding regional legislation.27 Besides binding normative documents such as laws, there are also other documents, usually called strategies, concepts or doctrines, prepared at the

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federal level and intended to function as guidelines for the future development of a particular issue area. For instance, the Ministry of Natural Resources has prepared an Ecological Doctrine of the Russian Federation, adopted by the government in November 2002.28 The doctrine argues the need for a more coordinated and effective normative basis for the environmental sphere at the federal, regional and local levels. Its overall spirit is in accordance with contemporary European ideas of how environmental protection is connected to spatial planning. Similarly, in the nuclear field, Minatom in 2001 put forward a long-term Strategy for the Development of Atomic Energy in Russia,29 based on the commitment to develop the nuclear industry further. The anticipated end of the ‘cheap energy sources’ and the risk of a ‘temporary break in gas supply’ justify the upgrading of the ageing reactors and in the longer run an increase in the share of nuclear energy in Russia’s energy supply, at least for some decades ahead. However, it is emphasized that all necessary safety systems are in place. Despite all this, to judge from sources other than Russian official sources, it is generally felt that Russia’s state policy in ecological questions has failed. According to the results of a survey among Western and Russian decision makers and specialists: The reasons given included shortage of funding, ‘lack of infrastructure and commitment’ . . ., ‘poor intra- and inter-departmental communication’’ . . ., ‘a lot of overlapping within the state structures, with no clear delineation of responsibilities’ . . . and ‘a great lack of a coherent, longterm, officially adopted policy’ . . . Added to these problems is the low importance assigned to environmental issues and one . . . representative stated that ‘the environment is probably considered as a constraint to development rather than as an instrument to improve economic efficiency’ whilst the most pessimistic thought that ‘the environment won’t be a priority until the situation becomes catastrophic’.30 Towards forced harmonization of interests There has been a tendency for state policy on the goal of economic modernization to be better harmonized, and this has affected Russia’s policy on environmental protection and nuclear safety policies and institutions as well. With President Putin in power there seems to be almost complete mutual understanding and cooperation between the federal executive and legislative powers, dominated by the former. The same is true of relations between the centre and the regions. While in the 1990s the hold of the centre was greatly weakened, and in many cases regional constitutions put local laws on an equal footing with federal Russian laws, this process has now been reversed in favour of a clear hierarchical power relationship between the centre and the regions. In practice, therefore, the executive

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 287 can pursue almost whatever policy it chooses, including in the field of nuclear energy and environmental policies. On the other hand, within the executive itself there has been a similar development leading to policy harmonization and more clear-cut institutional solutions. In environmental and nuclear safety issues, this has led to the disappearance or loss of power of those state agents that are supposed to be independent control organizations within the state machinery. The position and status of the environmental administration declined throughout the 1990s and, to conclude this process, one of Putin’s first acts after his election as president, in May 2000, was to abolish the State Environmental Committee. Its responsibilities were transferred to its traditional competitor and object of control, the Ministry for Natural Resources, where the Environmental Protection Agency has the status of one of the eight departments of the ministry. In this framework, the ministry’s ecological doctrine mentioned above emphasizes the need to remove the contradictions between the environmental protection regulations and those focusing on the exploitation of natural resources. A similar development has taken place in the nuclear field, although in a different form. Minatom’s activity is controlled by another Russian governmental body in the same issue area, the Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear and Radiation Safety (Gosatomnadzor, GAN). One of its duties is to issue licences for the prolonged operation of the aged nuclear reactors. GAN has often demanded considerable upgrading of safety systems, which has resulted in bureaucratic struggles between GAN and Minatom, especially concerning how much money Minatom should use to upgrade the safety systems. GAN also opposed Minatom’s plans to import used nuclear fuel to Russia for reprocessing.31 However, Minatom finally won the struggle. In 2003 Putin replaced GAN’s director with the first deputy minister of Minatom, who started to recruit more Minatom personnel to GAN, and consequently a more cooperative relationship was established based on harmonized interests.32 A weak civil society The state authorities are not the only agents in soft-security issues, however. Russian civil society has been especially active in environmental and nuclear safety questions, working as a critical (although mostly powerless) counterweight to the state and regional authorities. The main instruments for the Russian NGOs are lobbying through regional decisionmakers who are sympathetic to a specific issue or NGO, producing or commissioning reports on particular issues and cases, working through the media to draw attention to environmental issues, organizing seminars, bringing decisions of the authorities to the court, collecting signatures for or against specific issues, and demanding referendums. Their efforts have produced both success stories and failures.33

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However, critical public discussion about the environmental and nuclear safety problems has become more difficult in recent years. Sometimes those who have drawn attention to these matters have been accused of treason and espionage.34 Representatives of the Federal Security Service (Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, FSB – the former KGB), other federal authorities and President Putin himself have increasingly and quite openly proclaimed that the environmental NGOs in particular represent foreign interests and that ‘espionage is carried out under cover of ecological organization’.35 Public protests have not been successful, especially where federal-level decisions and the central authority have been at stake. Utilizing an article in the constitution, in the autumn of 2000, in 62 regions out of the 89, Russian environmentalists collected signatures in order to force a nationwide referendum on the import of spent nuclear fuel from abroad and on re-establishing an independent federal agency for environmental protection in Russia.36 Altogether over 2.5 million signatures were collected. However, as it turned out, the Central Election Commission, by citing numerous technical inaccuracies, deleted a considerable number of the signatures collected, which left the environmentalists 200,000 signatures short of the 2 million needed to ensure a referendum. Despite this failure, the experience shows that civil society remains active in environmental questions, can engage public opinion, and may in some cases have real impact on soft-security issues.

Towards a Northern Dimension nuclear and environmental regime In Northern Europe, the shift from hard security to soft security has largely replaced the earlier security dilemma with another kind of dilemma, arising from the perceived new security risks. Having crossborder effects, many of the soft-security issues are such that they cannot properly be addressed without international cooperation. However, softsecurity cooperation also involves conflicts. There is often a general conflict between state sovereignty and international cooperation, and states are sometimes reluctant to let international cooperation limit their freedom of action, especially if significant economic benefits or costs are at stake. With the Kola Peninsula nuclear waste issues, the military secrecy factor adds to these problems. Often the source of conflict (characteristic of donor–recipient relations in environmental aid programmes) is the ‘feeling of failure’ or ‘environmental blackmail’.37 A good example is the cooperation related to north-west Russia’s ageing nuclear power plants. Because the EU and Russia’s neighbours in Northern Europe have no means to force Russia to shut down the reactors, they feel obliged to finance the upgrading of safety systems in order to reduce the risks. This in turn gives Russia an additional motivation to prolong the use of the reac-

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 289 tors, while at the same time it perceives the demands to shut down the reactors as unfair. In international cooperation problems, experience suggests that what is needed is international institutions and regimes; that is, states’ commitment to certain cooperative norms, rules and procedures which may help them overcome the hurdles of international cooperation. Indeed, there is extensive regime-building activity around these questions in Northern Europe. While it is still rather fragmented, several institutionalized solutions and cooperative practices have been developed. In concrete terms, cooperation between Russia and its neighbours to solve at least some of the nuclear safety and environmental problems started mainly bilaterally. Because of their geographical proximity, it is natural that the Nordic countries in particular have spent considerable amounts of money since the mid-1990s in assisting Russia bilaterally. For instance, since 1995 Norway has had a specific Norwegian Plan of Action for Nuclear Safety in Northwest Russia, with its focus on the Kola Peninsula.38 The Swedish ‘soft-security aid’ is coordinated by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).39 In Finland, the soft-security problems of north-west Russia have been addressed as part of its ‘neighbouring area cooperation’ since the early 1990s.40 While these programmes are nationally organized and basically the subject of bilateral cooperation between Russia and the respective country, this cooperation often includes financial and operational coordination with other international agents. In addition to the Nordic countries (and just as Japan is active in the eastern part of Russia), the USA is the major international agent, especially as regards the dismantling of nuclear submarines in north-west Russia and financing the construction of nuclear and radiological material storage facilities. The main US instrument in dealing with Russia’s nuclear safety is the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme,41 which started immediately after the end of the Cold War in 1991. The main impulse behind it was to help the former Soviet republics disarm themselves of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and to make it practically possible for them to implement the disarmament agreements already agreed. A specific feature of this programme is that the USA considers it not as a foreign aid programme but as ‘defence by other means’, and it has been closely linked to non-proliferation issues. However, the trend is towards multilateral soft-security regimes. The Nordic countries (as well as other countries) have especially worked multilaterally through the so-called interregional councils. These councils were explicitly created to develop East–West relations in the aftermath of the Cold War, and Russia was a member from the very beginning. The Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) was established in 1992, the Barents Euro-Atlantic Council (BEAC) in 1993, and the Arctic Council (AC) in 1996. The Nordic Council, established in 1952, and the Nordic

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Council of Ministers (NCM), established in 1971, include only the Nordic countries, but Russia has an information office in the NC/NCM and the NCM has offices in north-west Russia. Soft-security questions, especially relating to nuclear safety, environment and health, are among the main issues on the agendas of these councils. This has also resulted in considerable overlap and coordination problems.42 The main problem in this cooperation, however, is lack of funding. While the NCM has some resources to allocate to dealing with environmental and other problems related to north-west Russia, the other councils suffer from the lack of a financial basis of their own and from weak organization; they have to rely on member states’ resources. Their activity consists more of coordinating national efforts than of running genuine multilateral projects. Even so, even in this ‘discussion club’ role these councils have had a positive effect. They have worked as an arena for dealing with common problems and formulating joint policies in a multilateral context, Russia being one of the participants. After Sweden and Finland joined the EU in 1995, the EU’s role in dealing with north-west Russia’s nuclear safety and environmental problems became increasingly important. The new enlargement in 2004, after which the Baltic has become essentially an EU lake, with Russia as the only littoral state that is not a member of the EU, is bound to increase the EU’s role as a central multilateral agent dealing with Russia in regional soft-security matters as well. The most important EU instruments are the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Russia as the legal foundation for EU–Russia cooperation; the Tacis (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States) programme as the main funding tool; and the Northern Dimension as the EU’s regional policy instrument to facilitate cooperative efforts in order to find practical solutions to common problems. The PCA, signed in 1994 and coming into force in December 1997, hints at soft security-related issues here and there, and for nuclear cooperation it anticipates an EU–Russian agreement on nuclear safety. Regarding the environment, it contains a one-page article which lists the issues, starting from systems for the monitoring of pollution and ending by emphasizing the importance of implementing the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context. Russia has not ratified this treaty, which would give the neighbouring countries some tools with which to influence Russia’s environmental policies in such big projects as the construction of oil terminals on the Gulf of Finland. The EU has funded nuclear safety and environmental programmes in Russia, mainly through Tacis. According to Tacis, of the bilateral and multilateral efforts to provide assistance for safety programmes, the EU’s efforts have been ‘the largest and most important’. Since 1996, environmental protection has been structured as a particular sector of Tacis activ-

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 291 ities, but the resources allocated to it have been much more modest than those spent on the nuclear safety programmes.43 A more recent EU-related development is a multilateral programme connected to the Northern Dimension, which illustrates the rather complicated regime-building process in Northern Europe related to Russia’s nuclear safety and environmental problems. It is called the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP),44 which in turn includes a Support Fund called the Nuclear Safety Window. The programme, which started in 2001, puts its main emphasis on north-west Russia and the complex of nuclear safety problems, focusing on the nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel issues of the Kola Peninsula in particular. The basic idea is to bring together Russia, the donor countries and international organizations, as well as international financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank, the Norwegian Investment Bank and the European Investment Bank. Because this kind of cooperation requires certain norms and rules, the main implementation of the project was to depend on the successful completion of negotiations concerning the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme for Russia (MNEPR). Since 1999 the programme had been the subject of sometimes bitter argument between Russia and the donors concerning liabilities and Russia’s right to tax the nuclear aid.45 Finally, a compromise solution was found: Russia will not tax the aid, but on the other hand the parties agreed on a separate protocol whereby the donors will shoulder the liabilities. The Framework Agreement of the MNEPR46 was finally signed in Stockholm in May 2003 by Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the UK, the USA, the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The USA joined the agreement, rather surprisingly, but did not agree on the liabilities issue, which leaves the question of its participation in the programme open. In Russia, the agreement was welcomed: the parliament ratified it, and after President Putin’s signature it became part of Russian legislation by late 2003. While the EU has clearly been the major multilateral agent dealing with north-west Russia’s soft-security issues, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will potentially play a role in the future too. NATO’s new role encompasses a broad understanding of security, including an active policy on civil emergency planning and soft-security issues such as environmental protection, nuclear safety and the fight against cross-border crime. This new NATO approach is reflected and institutionalized not only in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) in terms of the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre, among other arrangements, but also in the 1997 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation. The ‘areas of consultation and cooperation’ explicitly include ‘nuclear safety issues, across their full spectrum’, ‘developing mutually agreed

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cooperative projects in defence-related economic, environmental and scientific fields’, ‘conducting joint initiatives and exercises in civil emergency preparedness and disaster relief’ and ‘combating terrorism and drug trafficking’. In May 2002, when NATO and Russia established the new NATO–Russia Council, the statement included ‘civil emergencies’ as one of the priority areas in the future cooperation.47

Conclusions This chapter has argued that security relations between Russia and Europe in Northern Europe are today characterized by soft security rather than hard security concerns, and it has analysed the nature of these newly developed relations from three angles in particular. It started by identifying the most serious nuclear safety- or environment-related threat perceptions which either already exist or could potentially arise from north-west Russia and have an impact beyond Russia’s borders. The discussion shows that, although there are several risks, hot spots and identifiable problems, it is often difficult to get unambiguous information about how severe they are. The risk perceptions vary from extreme alarmism to complete public neglect of a problem – the latter especially from the official Russian side. It seems clear that this contributes to mutual suspicions and mistrust between Russia on the one hand and the neighbouring countries and the EU on the other. The second part of the chapter discussed the nature of Russia’s nuclear safety- and environmental protection-related administration. The focus was on the seemingly diminishing role, or total abolition, of the more or less independent control organizations within the Russian environmental and nuclear administration during the Putin era. By following the present line, Russia is going against the practice of most European countries, and by doing so it risks compromising its goals of becoming more integrated into European structures. It was also noted that the Russian state structures have not found democratic ways of dealing with civil society and public opinion in this area; rather, civil society is increasingly either ignored or (sometimes) repressed by the state, especially in nuclear safety and important environmental issues. These developments may be an additional obstacle in relations between Russia and Europe. The third issue dealt with was international cooperation around northwest Russia’s nuclear and environmental risks. Given that the different hot spots and other types of problem threaten other countries as well, it has been seen to be in the self-interest of the Nordic countries and the EU as a whole to help Russia solve at least the most serious of them. However, this cooperation often involves conflicts as well. Nevertheless, an active regime-building process to mitigate the existing perceived nuclear and environmental threats has been started, although not without financial, organizational or attitudinal problems. There are several potential conflict issues ahead in the implementation of the planned projects, and the

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 293 process remains open for different end games. Whether it will contribute in the longer term to genuine region-building, where Russia is one of the fully integrated countries, or whether this donor–recipient relation will instead contribute to perpetuating the traditional We/West–Other/Russia relationship (or the other way round), will depend to a great extent on the practical experiences resulting from this process.

Notes 1 Considerably revised, updated and developed, this chapter is partly based on an earlier article by the same author: Christer Pursiainen, ‘Soft security problems of Northwest Russia’, in Holger Moroff (ed.), European Soft Security Policies: The Northern Dimension, Helsinki and Berlin: Ulkopoliitinen instituutti and Institut für Europäische Politik, 2002, pp. 107–49. 2 Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), ‘Strategiia razvitiia atomnoi energetiki Rossii v pervoi polovine XXI veka’ [The Russian atomic energy strategy in the first half of the 21st century], 2001, p. 14 (http://www. minatom.ru, last accessed February 2004). 3 European Commission, ‘The Second Northern Dimension Action Plan, 2004–06’, Brussels, 2003, Article 3.3.2, p. 10 (http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/north_dim/ndap/ap2.htm, last accessed February 2004). 4 Russian Environmental Digest, 3/15, 9–15 April 2001, article 15 (see http://www.teia.ru/publications/). 5 See the analyses on the website of the IAEA (http://www.iaea.org). 6 Nils Bøhmer et al., The Arctic Nuclear Challenge, Bellona Report Volume 3, 2001, p. 41 (http://www.bellona.no, last accessed February 2004); see also Ronny Bergman and Alexander Baklanov, ‘Radioactive sources of main radiological concern in the Kola–Barents region’, Report FOA-B-98-00343-861, Umeå: Swedish Defence Research Establishment (FOA), July 1998, p. 28. 7 Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), Säteilytyrvakeskuksen lähialueyhteistyö 1992–2002 [STUK’s neighbouring area cooperation 1992–2002], Helsinki: Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, p. 13 (http://www.stuk.fi/julkaisut/katsaukset/pdf/lahialue.pdf, last accessed February 2004). 8 See the STUK web page under ‘Lähialueyhteistyö’ [Introduction] (http://www.stuk.fi/ydinvoimalaitokset/lahialueyhteistyohankkeet.html, last accessed February 2004). 9 Quotations from ‘Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2: In-depth safety assessment. The Western perspective’, an unpublished memorandum, dated 21 December 2001. See also ‘Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1: In-depth safety assessment (LISA-1). Memorandum of the Steering Committee’, an unpublished memorandum, dated 16 October 2003. 10 Available on the STUK web page under ‘Lähialueyhteistyö’ [Introduction], (http://www.stuk.fi/ydinvoimalaitokset/lahialueyhteistyohankkeet.html, last accessed February 2004). 11 Russian Environmental Digest, 2/37, 11–17 September 2000 (see http://www.teia.ru/publications/). The source of the quotation is reported as being Alexei Yablokov, a famous environmentalist and former environmental adviser to President Boris Yeltsin. 12 The complete report (in Russian) can be found on the Bellona website at http://www.bellona.no/ru/international/russia/npps/leningrad/wp_2004/index.ht ml (last accessed February 2004).

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13 Bellona Foundation, ‘Leningrad Power Station’, Fact sheet, 2001 (http://www. bellona.no/imaker?sub⫽1&id⫽12668, last accessed February 2004). 14 Geir Hønneland, ‘East meets West: Environmental discourse in the European Arctic’, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 5(2), 2003, pp. 181–219. 15 Jürg Dedial, ‘Russia’s Northern Fleet in decline: Grave environmental problems at shipyards and naval bases’, 1999 (http://u003sys0.nzz.ch/ online/04_english/background/background1999/background9909/bg990918russi a.htm, last accessed February 2004). 16 See http://www.bellona.no. 17 Russian Environmental Digest, 2/42, 16–22 October 2000 (see http://www.teia. ru/publications). 18 See Minatom’s spent nuclear fuel report motivating the project: Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), Kontseptsiia po obraschscheniiu s otrabotavshim iadernym toplivom Ministerstva Rossiiskoi Federatsii po atomnoi energi [The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy’s concept for the conversion of spent nuclear fuel]; 2003 (http://old.minatom.ru/presscenter/document/norm_ doc/od/od_06.doc, last accessed February 2004). Companies often mentioned in this connection come from countries like India, Iran, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Switzerland. On other occasions it has been said that the first spent nuclear fuel to be imported into Russia would come from reactors built with Soviet assistance. The question has also been linked to the anti-terrorism campaign, referring to spent uranium in Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan, the Baltic republics, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with the argument that this can be of interest to terrorists, and therefore it would be safer to import it to Russia. 19 Russian Environmental Digest, 3/15, 9–15 April 2001, article 16 (see http://www.teia.ru/publications). 20 Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, former chairman of the (later abolished) State Environment Committee, Moscow, 9 February 2000, reported by ITAR–TASS and AP. 21 See, for instance, ‘Russia’s environmental mess’ (undated) (http://www.infomanage.com/environment/russia.html, last accessed February 2004). 22 Russian Environmental Digest, 2/31, 31 July–6 August 2000, article 9 (see http://www.teia.ru/publications). 23 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ‘Russian Federation’ OECD Environmental Performance Review, Paris: OECD, December 1999 (available at http://oecdpublications.gfi-nb.com/cgi-bin/OECD BookShop.storefront/EN/product/971999141P1, last accessed February 2004). 24 See, for instance, Heli Saavalainen, ‘Toxic waste dump near St Petersburg threatens Gulf of Finland’, Helsingin Sanomat (international web edition), 16 November 2001 (http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id⫽20011113IE16, last accessed February 2004). 25 Green World Baltic News, 55, 23 November 2000 (http://www.greenworld. org.ru/eng/gwnews/bn/bngw055.htm#A, last accessed February 2004). 26 Kim Traavik (State Secretary), ‘Russia in Norwegian foreign policy: Strategy and results’, NHO/KS Conference 25 September 2003 (http://odin.dep. no/ud/norsk/aktuelt/taler/taler_politisk_ledelse/032171-090152/index-dok000-bn-a.html, last accessed February 2004). 27 On the role of the regions, see also the chapter by Nikita Lomagin in this volume. 28 Available (in Russian) on the website of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources (http://www.mnr.gov.ru, last accessed February 2004). 29 Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), ‘Strategiia razvitiia atomnoi energetiki Rossii v pervoi polovine XXI veka’, p. 14.

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 295 30 John Massey Stewart (ed.), International Environmental Collaboration. Russia: A Case Study, 1998 (for a summary see http://www.ce-review.org/99/12/ stewart12.html from 13 September 1999, last accessed February 2004). 31 Russian Environmental Digest, 2/51, 18–24 December 2000, article 3 (see http://www.teia.ru/publications). 32 Rashid Alimov, ‘Bellona’s report on safety and legal violations at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant’, 21 January 2004 (http://www.bellona.no/ en/international/russia/nuke_industry/32331.html, last accessed February 2004). 33 See, for instance, Oleg N. Yanitsky, Russian Greens in a Risk Society, Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2000. 34 The most famous case connected to the Northern Fleet’s nuclear waste problems is the so-called Nikitin case; see the link on the web page of the Bellona Foundation (http://www.bellona.no, last accessed February 2004). 35 The head of the FSB in St Petersburg and Leningrad region, Sergei Smirnov, as reported in V. Toropchin, ‘Glavnaia ugroza – terrorizm’ [The main threat is terrorism], Novosti Leningradskoi oblasti, April 2001. 36 Russian Environmental Digest, 2/41, 9–15 October 2000, and subsequent issues of the same electronic journal (see http://www.teia.ru/publications). 37 See, for instance, Geir Hønneland, ‘Industrial pollution discourse in the European Arctic’, Acta Borealia, 201, 2003, pp. 49–73; and Geir Hønneland, Russia and the West: Environmental Co-operation and Conflict, London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 38 Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Evaluation of the Norwegian Plan of Action for Nuclear Safety: Priorities, Organisation, Implementation, Evaluation Report 7/2000, Oslo: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000 (http://odin.dep.no/archive/udvedlegg/01/01/00133012.pdf, last accessed February 2004). See also Geir Hønneland and Arild Moe, ‘Joint Russian–Norwegian nuclear safety initiatives: A research note’, Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, 42(8), 2001, pp. 615–21. 39 See http://www.sida.se. 40 For a summary, see Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Finland’s Strategy for Cooperation in the Neighbouring Areas, Helsinki: Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 26 May 2000 (http://www.formin.fi under ‘Policies, Regional strategies’, last accessed February 2004). This aid is channelled through different ministries and agencies, depending on the issue area. For instance, the nuclear safety aid has been channelled through STUK. For a fairly detailed progress report in English, see Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), Finnish Support Programme for Nuclear Safety: Progress Report. Semiannual Summary 2003 (http://www.stuk.fi/ydinvoimalaitokset/pdf/progress_report2003.pdf, last accessed February 2004). 41 See the website of the US Department of Defense (http://www.defenselink.mil/ pubs/ctr/). 42 Åge Mariussen, Hallgeir Aalbu and Mats Brandt, Regional Organisations in the North, Studies on Foreign Policy Issues, Utenriksdepartement Report 5, Oslo: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000. 43 See the web page of the European Commission’s Delegation to Russia (http://www.eur.ru/eng/tacis, last accessed February 2004). 44 See Zackary Moss, The Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP), Bellona Position Paper, 4 October 2002 (http://www.bellona.no/en/ international/russia/waste-mngment/ipwg/26350.html, last accessed February 2004). 45 See also Charles Digges, ‘MNEPR headed for Duma ratification’, 10 October 2003 (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/co-operation/31458. html, last accessed February 2004); and Charles Digges and Igor Kudrik,

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‘MNEPR accord signed in Stockholm Wednesday’, 21 May 2003 (http://www. bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/co-operation/29654.html, last accessed February 2004). 46 The Framework Agreement can be found on the website of Strengthening the Global Partnership project at http://www.sgpproject.org/resources/biblio/ mnepr_text.html (last accessed February 2004). 47 These documents can be found on the NATO website (http://www.nato.int/ issues/nato-russia/nato-russia.htm, last accessed February 2004).

Bibliography Books and journals Bergman, Ronny and Alexander Baklanov, ‘Radioactive sources of main radiological concern in the Kola–Barents region’, Report FOA-B-98-00343-861, Umeå: Swedish Defence Research Establishment (FOA), July 1998. Hønneland, Geir, ‘East meets West: Environmental discourse in the European Arctic’, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 5(2), 2003. ——, ‘Industrial pollution discourse in the European Arctic’, Acta Borealia, 201, 2003. ——, Russia and the West: Environmental Co-operation and Conflict, London and New York, Routledge, 2003. —— and Arild Moe, ‘Joint Russian–Norwegian nuclear safety initiatives: A research note’, Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, 42(8), 2001, pp. 615–21. ‘Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2: In-depth safety assessment. The Western perspective’, unpublished memorandum, dated 21 December 2001. ‘Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1: In-depth safety assessment (LISA-1). Memorandum of the Steering Committee’, unpublished memorandum, dated 16 October 2003. Mariussen, Åge, Hallgeir Aalbu and Mats Brandt, Regional Organisations in the North, Studies on Foreign Policy Issues, Utenriksdepartement Report 5, Oslo: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000. Yanitsky, Oleg N., Russian Greens in a Risk Society, Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2000.

Media and Internet Alimov, Rashid, ‘Bellona’s report on safety and legal violations at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant’, 21 January 2004 (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/ russia/nuke_industry/32331.html, last accessed February 2004). Bellona Foundation (http://www.bellona.no). ——, [Report on the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant], 2004 (in Russian) (http://www.bellona.no/ru/international/russia/npps/leningrad/wp_2004/index.ht ml, last accessed February 2004). ——, ‘Leningrad Power Station’, Fact sheet, 2001 (http://www.bellona.no/ imaker?sub⫽1&id⫽12668, last accessed February 2004). Bøhmer, Nils et al., The Arctic Nuclear Challenge, Bellona Report Volume 3, 2001 (http://www.bellona.no, last accessed February 2004). Dedial, Jürg, ‘Russia’s Northern Fleet in decline: Grave environmental problems at shipyards and naval bases’, 1999 (http://u003sys0.nzz.ch/online/04_english/

Nuclear safety and environmental risks 297 background/background1999/background9909/bg990918russia.htm, last accessed February 2004). Digges, Charles, ‘MNEPR headed for Duma ratification’, 10 October 2003 (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/co-operation/31458.html, last accessed February 2004). —— and Igor Kudrik, ‘MNEPR accord signed in Stockholm Wednesday’, 21 May 2003 (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/co-operation/29654. html, last accessed February 2004). European Commission (http://www.eur.ru/eng/tacis). European Commission, ‘The Second Northern Dimension Action Plan, 2004-06’, Brussels, 2003 (http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/north_dim/ndap/ ap2.htm, last accessed February 2004). Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Finland’s Strategy for Cooperation in the Neighbouring Areas, Helsinki: Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 26 May 2000 (http://www.formin.fi under ‘Policies, Regional strategies’, last accessed February 2004). Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), Säteilytyrvakeskuksen lähialueyhteistyö 1992–2002 [STUK’s neighbouring area cooperation 1992–2002], Helsinki: Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, 2003 (http://www. stuk.fi/julkaisut/katsaukset/pdf/lahialue.pdf, last accessed February 2004). ——, Finnish Support Programme for Nuclear Safety: Progress Report. Semiannual Summary 2003 (http://www.stuk.fi/ydinvoimalaitokset/pdf/progress_report 2003.pdf, last accessed February 2004). ——, ‘Lähialueyhteistyö’ [‘Neighbouring area cooperation’, Introduction] (http://www.stuk.fi/ydinvoimalaitokset/lahialueyhteistyohankkeet.html, last accessed February 2004). Green World Baltic News, 55, 23 November 2000 (http://www.greenworld.org.ru/ eng/gwnews/bn/bngw055.htm#A, last accessed February 2004). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (http://www.iaea.org). Moss, Zackary, The Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP), Bellona Position Paper, 4 October 2002 (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/ russia/waste-mngment/ipwg/26350.html, last accessed February 2004). NATO (http://www.nato.int/issues/nato-russia/nato-russia.htm). ‘Russia’s environmental mess’ (undated) (http://www.infomanage.com/environment/russia.html, last accessed February 2004). Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Evaluation of the Norwegian Plan of Action for Nuclear Safety: Priorities, Organisation, Implementation, Evaluation Report 7/2000, Oslo: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000 (http://odin. dep.no/archive/udvedlegg/01/01/00133012.pdf, last accessed February 2004). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ‘Russian Federation’ OECD Environmental Performance Review, Paris: OECD, December 1999 (available at http://oecdpublications.gfi-nb.com/cgi-bin/OECDBookShop.storefront/EN/product/971999141P1, last accessed February 2004). Russian Environmental Digest (available on subscription from http://www. teia.ru/publications). Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), ‘Strategiia razvitiia atomnoi energetiki Rossii v pervoi polovine XXI veka’ [The Russian atomic energy strategy in the first half of the 21st century], Minatom, 2001, p. 14 (http://www.minatom. ru, last accessed February 2004).

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——, Kontseptsiia po obraschscheniiu s otrabotavshim iadernym toplivom Ministerstva Rossiiskoi Federatsii po atomnoi energi [The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy’s concept for the conversion of spent nuclear fuel], 2003 (http://old. minatom.ru/presscenter/document/norm_doc/od/od_06.doc, last accessed February 2004). Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, [Ecological Doctrine of the Russian Federation, 2002] (in Russian) (http://www.mnr.gov.ru). Saavalainen, Heli, ‘Toxic waste dump near St Petersburg threatens Gulf of Finland’, Helsingin Sanomat (international web edition), 16 November 2001 (http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id⫽20011113IE16, last accessed February 2004). Stewart, John Massey (ed.), International Environmental Collaboration. Russia: A Case Study, 1998 (for a summary see http://www.ce-review.org/99/12/stewart12. html, last accessed February 2004). Strengthening the Global Partnership project, ‘Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme for Russia’, Framework Agreement, May 2003 (http://www. sgpproject.org/resources/biblio/mnepr_text.html, last accessed February 2004). Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) (http://www. sida.se). Toropchin, V., ‘Glavnaia ugroza – terrorizm’ [The main threat is terrorism], Novosti Leningradskoi oblasti, April 2001. Traavik, Kim (State Secretary), ‘Russia in Norwegian foreign policy: Strategy and results’, NHO/KS Conference 25 September 2003 (http://odin.dep.no/ud/norsk/ aktuelt/taler/taler_politisk_ledelse/032171-090152/index-dok000-b-n-a.html, last accessed February 2004). US Department of State [on the Cooperative Threat Reduction programme] (http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/ctr).

Part IV

Terrorism A new security threat

13 Russia’s approach to the fight against terrorism Ekaterina Stepanova

From the point of view of finding an adequate definition, there can hardly be a more contested phenomenon these days than terrorism. One of the explanations for the highly contested nature of terrorism may be that there is more than one type. The events of 11 September 2001 in the United States and the ‘war on terrorism’ that followed, while adding to the general confusion about the term, have particularly stressed the need to distinguish between at least two types of terrorism: •

•

The so-called terrorism of conflicts, or conflict-related terrorism – a violent tactic or a mode of operation, that is directly and inseparably tied to the concrete agenda of a concrete armed conflict and used by armed groups (non-state actors) in an asymmetrical confrontation with a state (or several states), usually along with other modes of operation (such as guerrilla warfare). These armed actors tend to identify themselves with some political cause in that conflict – a cause that may be quite ambitious (to seize power, create a new state or fight against occupation), but normally does not go beyond the local or regional context and, in this sense, is limited. While these groups’ fund-raising, logistical, propaganda or even planning activities may be internationalized (conducted in and from the territory of several states beyond the conflict area), their goals and agenda, by and large, remain localized. In sum, conflict-related terrorism is employed for limited political goals (i.e. goals that are limited to local or regional context) and by limited technical means. The more recent phenomenon called super-terrorism which was highlighted primarily, but not only, by the 11 September events and may have manifested itself in a number of more recent cases (from Bali to Istanbul). In contrast to conflict-related terrorism, super-terrorism is by definition global or seeks to create a global outreach and, as such, does not have to be tied to any particular armed conflict. The targets of super-terrorism are primarily linked to the developed world: they are either located there, or directly associated with it. Super-terrorism has far more ambitious, even unlimited and non-negotiable goals (to

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Ekaterina Stepanova challenge the world order and the West, as in the case of al-Qaida, or to achieve global dominance, as in the case of Aum Shinrikyo) and is more likely to involve the use of more advanced or even unlimited technical means, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

While they are not the only types of terrorism,1 these two have been most often confused in the course of the post-11 September global antiterrorist campaign. Needless to say, while conflict-related and superterrorism are two functionally different types of terrorism, they do share some common characteristics (which, after all, allow us to call them both terrorism), demonstrate some structural and ideological parallels, and even maintain some direct contacts and links. Al-Qaida’s own origin can be traced to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In the 1990s, al-Qaida’s super-terrorist network was one of the donors to several local groups engaged in conflict-related terrorism. But all the links between conflict-related and super-terrorism still do not make one a mere substitute or outgrowth of the other, or fully dependent or conditional upon the other – each of these two types of terrorism retains a great degree of autonomy and its own logic and dynamics. It is therefore a question not so much of one universal integrated terrorist system spreading from global to local levels, but rather of two (and more) functionally different types of terrorism and the complex and disturbing interrelationship between them. The ‘war on terrorism’ generated by the events of 11 September 2001 has inevitably turned into the fight against all known types of terrorism (which in itself is a very positive process), but it has also led to increasing confusion between different types of terrorism and to attempts to make them all fit one uniform pattern and to bring them all down to a common denominator. In practice, this often results in the same methods and instruments being applied to different types of terrorism, with insufficient attention being paid to their specifics and nuances, despite the fact that the methods and tools used against super-terrorist networks, which have a global outreach or ambitions and unlimited goals, and are ready if necessary to use unlimited means, should at least be modified and refocused when dealing with locally and regionally based groups involved in more traditional conflict-related terrorism, so that these anti-terrorism tools and operations complement and reinforce the longer-term conflict resolution and peace-building tasks.

The nature of the terrorist threat for Russia Against this background, what is the nature of the threat posed by terrorism to Russia’s security? In the Soviet Union terrorist acts carried out in the country or directed against Soviet targets abroad were rare exceptions,2 but post-Soviet Russia has voiced concerns about terrorism as a major security threat for much of its short history, as its citizens have

The fight against terrorism 303 increasingly become targets of terrorist acts, including such large-scale hostage crises as those in Budennovsk in June 1995 (with more than 2,000 people held hostage), in Kizlyar in January 1996 (over 2,000 hostages taken) or in Moscow in October 2002 (over 800 hostages taken at the Dubrovka theatre showing the musical Nord-Ost). It has become commonplace to cite all the difficulties of Russia’s postSoviet transition – the collapse of the political structure which for some years had not been replaced by an effective mechanism of governance, the protracted economic crisis, the marginalization of large segments of the population, the criminalization of society, the revival of inter-ethnic tensions, the growth of political and religious extremism, lack of an ideology and even ‘moral nihilism’ – as causes of terrorism in Russia.3 But, while these basic conditions and processes affect the entire country, they have not proved to be sufficient by themselves to turn political extremism or general social dissatisfaction into terrorism on a massive scale. In fact, many of the problems and grievances seen in Chechnya (including an ethnic minority’s drive for greater independence, coupled with the spread of Islamic extremism) could also be observed to some extent in other parts of the country, such as the other North Caucasian republics or Tatarstan. Even so, in all the problematic regions of Russia that have been torn by a combination of political, socio-economic, ethnic and religious problems and unrest, a peaceful solution has been found to major disagreements – in all, that is, except Chechnya. In Chechnya, it was the armed conflict that motivated the separatist side to resort to terrorism as a mode of operation in an asymmetrical confrontation with the federal centre. And, while all the fundamental socio-economic and political problems of Russia’s postSoviet transition could be seen as ‘root causes’ of the conflict itself, it was the armed confrontation in and around Chechnya that became the main generator of the surge of terrorism in Russia throughout the 1990s. It is no coincidence that Russia’s Criminal Code, inherited from the Soviet period, was first amended to include a special article on terrorism in 1994, the year in which a major armed conflict in Chechnya started. As the conflict became protracted, the number of cases registered as terrorist acts each year in the country as a whole has grown dramatically, from just 18 in 1994 to 216 in 2000, 339 in 2001, and 407 in 2002. Of all terrorist acts committed in 2002, 385 (or 94.5 per cent) took place in and around Chechnya (360 in Chechnya proper, and 25 more in Ingushetia, North Ossetia and Dagestan).4 Overall, as of early 2003, there has been a more than twentyfold increase in terrorist activity since 1994.5 While the number, intensity and scale of terrorist attacks in Russia did not grow in a strictly linear progression, and terrorism had its own peaks (in the mid-1990s and between the late 1990s and the early 2000s), the indicators of terrorist activity kept growing, implying that the Chechen armed opposition has increasingly resorted to terrorist means. What are the possible explanations of this trend?

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When terrorism is used as a mode of operation in an armed conflict it makes sense to start with the central issue of the conflict itself. On the political side, while the two wars have ruled out the independence option for Chechnya, attempts to stabilize the situation in the republic over a number of years have not produced any final legal decision on the issue of the status of Chechnya. It was not before the later stages of the second federal campaign in Chechnya that the political component of the stabilization process became more visible, and the status issue was addressed by the new constitution of the Chechen Republic, adopted in a referendum in March 2003. Despite the widespread scepticism about the viability of the new constitutional regime,6 it creates a framework for a more legal regime and a more structured political process than the one that was in place before. It has to be noted, however, that, while the centrality of the armed conflict in Chechnya as a primary source of terrorism in Russia suggests the need to focus on the causes of the conflict itself and on resolving the underlying political issues as the most direct way to combat conflictgenerated terrorism, this still leaves at least two unresolved questions. First, not all internal armed conflicts lead to terrorism. What then are the factors and conditions that made terrorism a viable alternative mode of operation for the Chechen radicals in an armed confrontation with the federal centre? To answer this question we need to focus not only on the direct expressions of conflict-related terrorism (from a short-term perspective), or on the far more general and fundamental root causes that led to a violent conflict in the first place (from a long-term perspective), but also, from a medium-term perspective, on more specific prerequisites for the emergence of conflict-related terrorism. The fundamental structural causes (root causes) of conflict-related terrorism, by and large, tend to boil down to or are identical to the ‘root causes’ of armed conflict as whole. While the root cause-centred approach may help explain why the conflict becomes violent in the first place, it does not necessarily explain why the violence takes the specific form of terrorism, why not all asymmetrical armed conflicts lead to terrorism, or why not all armed groups operating in the same conflict choose to resort to terrorist means. This suggests that there must also be some more specific prerequisites for conflict-related terrorism, at least some of which are more closely related to the violent non-state actors themselves. Even the particular brutality and bitterness of an asymmetrical armed conflict does not guarantee that terrorist means will be used in that conflict: the state can only be faced with conflict-related terrorism when it is confronted by a sufficiently capable and highly determined opponent. This means an opponent that possesses: •

a specific structural/organizational capability which is even more important than and cannot be merely substituted by access to arms, money and the availability of trained professionals;7 and

The fight against terrorism 305 •

a high level of determination, facilitated by an extremist ideology. In particular, it is a combination of extreme nationalism with religious fundamentalism, supported, in some cases, by certain local social norms and cultural traditions (such as the blood feud in clan-based societies) that has proved to be most conducive to the resort to terrorism.

In sum, the two main prerequisites for the resort to conflict-related terrorism and the main comparative advantages of groups that choose to do so lie in their structural capabilities and ideologies.8 It is important to note that in the Russia–Chechnya context these factors came fully into play after, not before, the conflict had already become violent. At the same time, it is not only their own structural capabilities and ideologies that enable armed resistance groups to switch to terrorist means. This decision is also at least partly shaped by the environment in which they are operating, and particularly by the type and nature of the ‘opponent’ – which, in the case of an internal armed conflict, is the state. Terrorist means used as a mode of operation in a violent conflict tend to be more effective (and the resort to them is most rational) when they are used against a certain type of state – neither too liberal nor excessively authoritarian, neither too weak nor too strong.9 These are in fact among the most typical characteristics of ‘semi-democratic’ transitional states in general and of the Russian state in particular. Second, from the dynamic, rather than strictly causal, perspective, while violent conflict might have played the key role in motivating a weaker side in an asymmetric armed conflict to resort to terrorism in the first place, over time terrorist means may start to be used for purposes other than those initially planned or even, in some cases, develop a momentum of their own and cease to remain just a function of the armed conflict itself. Over the course of the conflict in Chechnya, for instance, both the driving forces behind it and the composition of the armed resistance have undergone significant changes. While the first war (1994–6) was essentially a post-Soviet conflict fought by the former Soviet military and security personnel (including seasoned veterans of the Soviet Afghan war) on both sides, the second (since 1999) has been increasingly fought on the Chechen side by the so-called ‘war generation’ that has been growing up, with some of its most radical elements playing the role of ‘spoilers’ by increasingly tailoring the use of terrorist means to disrupt concrete political developments. For instance, the July 2003 suicide bombings at an open-air rock concert in Tushino (Moscow) were timed to coincide with President Putin’s decree, issued a day earlier, ordering a local presidential election in Chechnya. The growing number of young (including female) Chechen suicide bombers in general, and the group of terrorists led by Movsar Baraev, which took hostages in the Dubrovka theatre in October 2002, in particular, are typical of this part of the resistance. It does not remember

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peace, lacks education, and is not sufficiently constrained by such traditional local social structures and norms as respect for older people and the non-participation of women in armed struggle, which are increasingly being eroded by the violent conflict itself. This leaves an ideological vacuum that is easily filled by a type of Islamic extremism that is contrary to the local tradition of a moderate Sufi Islam. More active use of terrorist means by the Chechen radicals, particularly the upsurge of suicide attacks within and outside Chechnya after October 2002, may also be an indication of the growing need to resort to increasingly asymmetrical forms of violence, as the range of other options for resistance is becoming more limited. This raises the following question: Will the political resolution of the violent conflict then automatically bring about the cessation of terrorist activities, even if initially the prime mover for terrorism was the conflict itself? While a political solution to the violent conflict is critical if the foundation of terrorism is to be undermined, it may not be sufficient to root out terrorism unless the structural capabilities of groups involved in terrorist activities are fully disrupted and their ideologies are successfully countered at all levels.

The impact of 11 September While the main type of terrorism threatening Russian citizens has apparently been generated by the protracted armed conflict in Chechnya, the 11 September 2001 ‘super-terrorist’ attacks in the United States and the USled global anti-terrorist campaign are the most significant international development. Both have had a profound effect on Russia’s general approach to the fight against terrorism and important implications for its broader political, economic and security interests. In contrast to the United States and some other Western states, for Russia less has changed since 11 September in terms of reassessment of the scale of the threat posed by terrorist attacks against the civilian population. By that time, Russia had almost become used to frequent terrorist attacks against its citizens.10 What has changed for Russia’s post-11 September threat assessment is the balance of threats. This is a result of the change in the international environment that was generated by 11 September and led to a shift of international attention towards the ‘new security threats’ and to Russia’s new rapprochement with the West on antiterrorism grounds. Among other things, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was downgraded as a potential source of national security threats for Russia, in contrast to the rise of Islamic extremism. At the same time, Russia’s approach to the fight against international terrorism remained somewhat more subtle and nuanced than the corresponding US approach, and not only verbally. Some real political and theoretical differences can be traced. While the US administration’s

The fight against terrorism 307 emphasis has been on the ‘rogue states’ (particularly on the authoritarian regimes of Iran, Iraq and North Korea) as the primary ‘sponsors of terrorism’, Russia rejected this vision both verbally and by openly cooperating with all three members of President George W. Bush’s ‘axis of evil’. Moreover, Russia increasingly viewed its relations with some of the states that are known to provide assistance or refuge to groups involved in terrorist activities (such as Syria) as a political and economic lever to alter these states’ policies towards such groups. At the same time, Russia, as much of the rest of Europe, increasingly paid attention to the so-called ‘failed states’ or areas as actual or potential breeding grounds and safe havens for terrorists. For many in the Russian political elite, the 11 September events demonstrated that, on a global scale, a qualitative change in international terrorism had taken place. According to Yevgenii Primakov, former foreign minister and prime minister, international terrorism now ‘appears as a self-sufficient organization not connected with any particular state’ and, as such, can no longer be exposed by such traditional means as convincing or pressuring one or another state to stop supporting terrorism.11 In contrast to the United States, Russia has not published any black list of states supporting terrorism, and Russian officials prefer to use the more flexible term ‘arcs of instability’. At the same time, the Russian government has remained concerned with the growing number of states and areas where the existing power vacuum had been or could be filled in by terrorist groups and forces. The regions of concern, listed by Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov,12 included the Middle East, the Balkans, East Africa, parts of the South Caucasus (Georgia), Afghanistan, and some other parts of Asia. Despite these differences, in practice Russia’s approach to the fight against terrorism has increasingly been evolving in the same direction as the US response to 11 September. The main impact of the US post-11 September anti-terrorism strategy, most evident in Russia’s reaction to the October 2002 Nord-Ost hostage crisis, has been on Russia’s anti-terrorist legislative efforts and strategic thinking, and most of the anti-terrorist measures proposed or discussed in Russia in the aftermath of the NordOst hostage crisis seemed to follow the US model, with its fourfold policy on terrorism: make no concessions to terrorists; destroy them or bring them to justice; isolate and apply pressure on the actors (both state and non-state) which sponsor or support terrorism; and bolster the antiterrorist capabilities of your partners. While some of the measures employed might simply be the most natural steps to be taken by any state under similar circumstances, the similarities in the processes by which the two countries amended their anti-terrorist laws in the aftermath of 11 September and of the Nord-Ost hostage crisis, respectively, are striking. Many of the measures envisaged by the US Patriot Act of 26 October 2001 – such as giving the government vast new powers of surveillance and investigation, enhancing presidential

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authority on counter-terrorism, the criminalization of all preparatory stages and support functions (thus expanding the definition of ‘engaging in terrorist activities’ to include planning, information-gathering, soliciting funds or recruiting individuals for membership in terrorist organizations, and so on), strengthening the criminal laws, and toughening migration legislation and immigration rules – have in one way or another been mirrored by corresponding actions by Russia. At the same time, the financial, political, diplomatic and other resources available to Russia have limited its ability to apply pressure against the sponsors of terrorism and bolster the anti-terrorist capabilities of partner states. For instance, Russia’s attempts to apply pressure on Georgia, which was seen as if not intentionally harbouring terrorists then at least not doing enough on anti-terrorism, met with a distinctly cool reaction of the West, while Moscow’s support for the anti-terrorist capabilities of other states has mostly been limited to its Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) partners.13 In sum, however, while the 11 September events should have raised more questions for Russia about the US national security system in general and its anti-terrorist strategy in particular, rather than attempts to mirror them, the reverse seemed to have happened: in the aftermath of 11 September, the US security model appeared to be gaining increasing prominence in Russian discussions and thinking on anti-terrorism.14 This is all the more surprising as, on the operational level, the practical impact of the 11 September and the US-led global ‘war on terrorism’ on Russian domestic counter-terrorist operations and the situation in Chechnya per se has been (a) relatively limited and (b) as mixed as it has been for most conflict and post-conflict areas around the world.15 The US-led war on terrorism may have had some positive anti-terrorist effect by helping to reduce foreign funding for terrorist activities, driven by the conflict in Chechnya, and by reducing the number of foreign fighters there. But the Russian security services had been very active and quite effective in blocking the Chechen radicals’ external financial channels long before 11 September (attempts to block their domestic sources of funding have been less effective). As for the presence of foreign mercenaries in Chechnya, it has been an important element – but not a decisive one – for either the guerrilla or the terrorist activities of the armed resistance.16 The impact of 11 September has been far more evident where Russia’s wider foreign policy interests are concerned. In the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington, closer international cooperation on anti-terrorism with the West in general and with the United States in particular has proved particularly valuable to Russia, as, perhaps for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history, this cooperation did not come as a leftover from the past (such as the US–Russian cooperation on strategic arms control and disarmament) but stemmed from the need to counter a security threat of a post-Cold War type. Russia’s active participation in the US-led global anti-terrorist campaign has also been in line with such

The fight against terrorism 309 Russian national interests as improving relations with the United States and other Western countries. At the turn of the century, this goal became all the more pressing for Russia as it found itself in an increasingly peripheral position in world politics. Given the USA’s global supremacy, the weakening of the United Nations, NATO’s military dominance in the Euro-Atlantic region and the primacy of the European Union (EU) in European politics and economics, only the new rapprochement with the West would allow Russia to avoid the international semi-isolation which seemed almost imminent by the end of the 1990s. By participating actively in the global anti-terrorist campaign, Russia managed to associate itself directly with the United States as the world’s leading power, outstripping cumbersome Western institutional bureaucracies, such as NATO and the EU, which seemed to find themselves almost out of business in the first stages of the post-11 September anti-terrorist operation, when it appeared that most of the critical decisions were being taken by national governments and leaders. As a result, Russian leaders prevented the country from sliding into international semi-isolation and went out of their way to try to secure Russia a specific niche in world politics as a reliable partner of the West in the global fight against terrorism. The preliminary foreign policy results of Russia’s participation in the first stage of the international campaign to fight terrorism were summed up on 30 April 2002 at Russia’s Security Council special meeting on antiterrorism. It concluded that Russia had been able to avert the threat of regional destabilization along its southern borders posed by the situation in Afghanistan, to strengthen its relations with Central Asian states, and to achieve a remarkable rapprochement with the West on the basis of new common threats.17 Likewise, the financial measures taken by Russia as part of the global campaign to suppress the financing of terrorist activities, particularly those taken to suppress money laundering,18 seemed better tailored to the general need to increase the transparency of Russia’s banking and financial system in order to make it more favourable to foreign investors than for specific anti-terrorist tasks. In accordance with the Federal Law On Suppressing the Laundering of Funds Generated from Criminal Activities, adopted in August 2001, a Financial Monitoring Committee was established within the Ministry of Finance in October 2001, with the principal task of monitoring financial flows in order to detect monies of criminal origin. As a result of the Financial Monitoring Committee’s activities and other legal, administrative and police measures, in June 2002 it was admitted to the Egmont Group of the world’s financial intelligence services. Furthermore, in October 2002, Russia was removed from the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) list of Non-Cooperating Countries and Territories (the ‘black list’ of organizations that are suspected of involvement in money-laundering activities) and in June 2003 became a full member of the FATF.

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It should be noted that Russia has not been alone or particularly unique in ‘using’ the fight against terrorism to achieve wider strategic goals and to deal with a number of pressing foreign policy tasks and economic problems. In the post-11 September environment, the use of the anti-terrorism agenda as a multi-purpose strategic tool by many states has become almost inevitable, and may even be politically justified as long as it does not become counterproductive (when, for instance, there is a risk of the state’s abusing, on anti-terrorist grounds, its legitimate right to self-defence, guaranteed by Chapter 51 of the UN Charter).

Russia’s approach to the fight against terrorism: norms, concepts and definitions As Russia itself is primarily threatened by conflict-related terrorism, it is through the prism of this type of terrorism that its political, legal, and security approach to anti-terrorism should be analysed. Conflict-related terrorism can be defined as the deliberate politically motivated use of, or threat to use, violence against civilians or civilian targets by a weaker side in an asymmetrical armed conflict.19 In the most general terms, what distinguishes terrorism from plain crime is its political motivation (while such a goal may also be formulated in ideological or religious categories, it always has a political dimension); what distinguishes it from such forms of political conflict-related violence as inter-communal and sectarian violence is its asymmetric nature (implying asymmetry not just in capabilities, but in the level and status of the actors involved in a confrontation between a non-state actor and a state);20 and, finally, what distinguishes it from other types of asymmetrical political violence, such as rural and urban guerrilla warfare, is that it intentionally targets civilians.21 While, even with all possible clarifications made, in some cases it may not be possible to make a clear distinction between terrorism and other forms of politically motivated violence (particularly in conflict or post-conflict settings where the line between combatants and non-combatants might be fairly arbitrary), it is still useful to keep these general distinctions in mind. How does Russia’s official legal interpretation of terrorism relate to this general definition? The 1998 Federal Law On the Fight against Terrorism, which is Russia’s main conceptual document on the subject, defines terrorism as ‘violence or the threat of using it against physical persons or organizations as well as the destruction (damaging) . . . of material objects, that creates danger to human life, causes considerable damage to property or has other dangerous public consequences, and is carried out in order to violate public security, terrorize the population or influence the decisions taken by the authorities to the advantage of terrorists or meeting their interests’.22 While this definition would probably be satisfactory for addressing other types of terrorism (such as terrorism as a form of political extremism, not related to or generated by any armed conflict), it misses

The fight against terrorism 311 the main point in addressing conflict-related terrorism23 as it does not distinguish between terrorism and criminal violence or, even more importantly, between terrorism and other forms of politically motivated violence. Both these distinctions are crucial for dealing with conflict-generated terrorism. Russia’s federal anti-terrorism law does not recognize political motivation as a defining characteristic of terrorism, referring instead to ‘terrorist goals’, such as violating public security, terrorizing the population or influencing the decisions taken by the authorities to meet the interests of terrorists, regardless of whether these interests are political or, for instance, purely material, and thus blurring any line between terrorism and criminal violence. This point is further reinforced by the proposed division of responsibilities between the Federal Security Service, which is ‘responsible for the prevention, detection and suppression of terrorist crimes that have political motivation’ and the Ministry of the Interior, which is ‘responsible for fighting terrorist crimes motivated by financial gain’24 (Article 7 of the Federal Law On the Fight against Terrorism). In fact, ‘political demands’ as a potential motivation for terrorists are mentioned only once in the text of the law – in Article 14, on conducting talks with terrorists, which states that ‘no political demands can be considered in exchange for calling off the terrorist act’. Terrorism, however, is always a form of politically motivated violence, where political goals are an end in themselves and not just a secondary instrument or a ‘cover’ for the advancement of other interests such as illegal economic gains, as in the case of organized criminal groups. (For instance, according to a UN assessment, the bulk of hostage-taking activities in and around Chechnya, including the kidnapping of foreign aid workers, have been undertaken purely for financial gain.25) As Russia’s legal concept of terrorism does not recognize political motivation as the defining characteristic of this type of violence, no attempt is made to distinguish between terrorism and other forms of politically motivated violence, such as guerrilla warfare. While often confused in practice, these are essentially different modes of operation that have different targets, and the resort to them has different implications from the point of view of international humanitarian law.26 While guerrilla warfare is waged by rebels primarily against governmental military and security targets (acts that are not currently criminalized by international humanitarian law, although they are usually criminalized by national legislation), terrorism is intentionally directed against civilians and civilian targets, which in most cases is a crime under international humanitarian law.27 What complicates matters further is that, in the context of an armed conflict the same organization can use different modes of operation at once in order to achieve its political goals, and engage in both guerrilla warfare and terrorist activities at the same time, be it the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in Central Asia or various militant groups of Palestinian,

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Kashmiri or Chechen resistance. That is why in this chapter the preferred term for a group engaged in conflict-related terrorism is ‘organization involved in terrorist activities’ rather than ‘terrorist organization’. So far, the problem of distinguishing in law between a group’s guerrilla and terrorist activities has not been adequately solved by any state or international organization.28 In Russia, according to the federal law, for a group to qualify as a terrorist one it is sufficient for at least one of its units to be engaged in any aspects of terrorist activities (not necessarily implementation but also organization, planning, preparation or incitement) with the consent of at least one of its top decision-making bodies. In accordance with this broad definition, Russia’s first list of terrorist organizations whose activities are banned on the territory of the Russian Federation was officially compiled by Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office and adopted by the Supreme Court in February 2003. The most positive development regarding the compilation and approval of the list has been the procedure itself: according to the law, a group can only be defined as a terrorist organization by a court decision.29 While it is less extensive than the corresponding lists compiled by the US State Department or by the EU (a reflection of Russia’s concerns about terrorism as those of a regional rather than a global player), the Russian list is consistently based on the broad interpretation of activities that make a certain group liable to face charges of terrorism. As far as foreign groups are concerned, this explains why, apart from organizations directly responsible for attacks against Russian property or citizens (such as the Lebanon-based Sunni extremist group Asbat al-Ansar, which carried out a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Russian Embassy in Beirut in January 2000), the Russian list includes several Islamic foundations and charities that have no operational capabilities to mount terrorist acts themselves, but have financial links to groups involved in terrorist activities or have been known to facilitate the transit of persons suspected of terrorism.30 Russia’s list of terrorist organizations also includes Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami (the Party of Islamic Liberation), a radical Islamic transnational movement that is increasingly active in the Central Asian states. While Hizb-ut-Tahrir holds extremist views, it is well known for abstaining, at least for the time being, not just from terrorist means but also from violence in general and for advocating peaceful change (which, in the long run, makes it a greater challenge to the Central Asian regimes than professedly violent groups, such as the former IMU, included on the list under the name of the Islamic Party of Turkestan). While the inclusion of Hizb-ut-Tahrir on Russia’s ‘list of terrorist organizations’ can partly be explained by political reasons, such as the need to maintain cooperative security relations with the respective Central Asian governments, it is also illustrative of how broad the Russian definition of terrorism is, as some of Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s propaganda (which is its main type of activity) could well be interpreted as ‘incitement to terrorism’.

The fight against terrorism 313 Interestingly, as far as radical Chechen groups are concerned, the Russian list of terrorist organizations seems to be far less specific than even the corresponding US list. The Russian list includes two broad and loose sets of various smaller groups and formations, referred to as the Supreme Military Majlisul Shura (Consultation Council) of the Joint Mujahedin Forces of the Caucasus, chaired by Shamil Basaev, and the Congress of the Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan (led by Basaev and Movladi Udugov). In contrast, the US designation of terrorist elements within the Chechen resistance has been far more specific and focused on a particular group’s involvement in concrete terrorist activities, singling out the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (led by Movsar Baraev and, after his death, by Chechen commander Khamzat), Basaev’s own RiyadusSalikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, and the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (a group with international connections and a significant presence of foreign mercenaries, led by Khattab and, after his death, by Abu al-Walid), on charges of all three units’ direct involvement in the seizure of hostages at the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow.31 Very broad wording characterizes not only Russia’s official definition of terrorism but also its interpretation of what might constitute a ‘counterterrorist operation’. In contrast to the 1994–6 campaign, which was conducted in an almost complete legal vacuum,32 in 1999 Chapter III, ‘On the Conduct of Counter-terrorist Operations’, of the 1998 Federal Law On the Fight against Terrorism was invoked as the legal basis for the second federal campaign in Chechnya, officially labelled as a counter-terrorist operation. The same law also legalized the use of the armed forces in an internal counter-terrorist operation by extending the number of state agencies responsible for fighting terrorism from two (the Federal Security Service and the Ministry of the Interior) to six (including the Ministry of Defence). As applied to the situation in Chechnya, however, the law was apparently stretched to breaking: while, for instance, ‘an area of a counterterrorist operation’, to which a number of restrictions are applicable, is legally defined as ‘a sector of land or sea, a transport vehicle, a building or its part, and adjacent territory’, in practice it was expanded to include the territory of an entire national republic within the Russian Federation. This ‘extension’ had dramatic consequences for the population of the republic, as (a) all the human rights and other legal restrictions imposed on ‘an area of a counter-terrorist operation’ were applied to the entire territory of the republic, and (b) according to the law, the personnel taking part in a counter-terrorist operation are immune from criminal prosecution for damage incurred in the course of the operation. Finally, while Article 2 of the Federal Law On the Fight against Terrorism lists prevention as the second most important anti-terrorist principle, the law itself is clearly oriented towards the suppression rather than prevention of terrorist activities. This inadequacy of the anti-terrorism legislation and

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conceptual thinking was sensed by many leading Russian experts, politicians and practitioners, but all subsequent attempts to bring prevention into the political and institutional focus of Russia’s anti-terrorist efforts have been cut short – most often for the banal reason of the lack of funding for these purposes.33 While much criticism has been voiced against Russia’s current antiterrorist law, it has to be recognized that, although far from perfect, the law would probably be satisfactory if Russian citizens were threatened primarily by the classic ‘terrorism of peacetime’ – by a form of violent domestic political extremism, employed by relatively marginal radical political groups and not related to a protracted armed conflict on Russia’s own territory. Indeed, the law had some positive impact in that, while still not sufficiently oriented to protecting the lives of ordinary citizens and victims of terrorism (the need to protect the rights of people who are threatened by terrorists stands sixth in the list of anti-terrorist priorities!), it at least guarantees the right of victims to seek compensation for physical and moral damage in court. Moreover, the anti-terrorist potential of the current law is not yet exhausted, provided that it is used in a proper and targeted way (the law, for instance, worked quite well when applied to the concrete situation of the Nord-Ost hostage crisis). The anti-terrorist legislation, however, cannot serve as a substitute for other legislative measures, let alone meet the general need to address far more fundamental processes and problems that generate or create favourable conditions for terrorism. In Chechnya, anti-terrorist legislation has been used for too long as a substitute for a far more legal state-of-emergency regime,34 which, according to the new republican constitution, is to be established for the transitional period.

Conclusion: strategic options for combating terrorism In order to categorize Russia’s approach to the fight against terrorism, some basic classification of various existing anti-terrorist strategies is needed. Such a classification would suggest a continuum from a short-term reactive approach, as one extreme, to a long-term preventive approach, as the other extreme. While in real life these two ‘ideal’ models are rarely seen in their extreme versions, and the particular strategy of any state has to combine elements of both, they are still useful for highlighting the dominant approach. Throughout the 1990s and in the early 2000s, it has been the short-term reactive approach, emphasizing methods of coercion, retaliation and postaction investigation over the pre-emption, disruption and prevention of terrorist activities and networks that seemed to dominate Russia’s antiterrorism strategy and practice. Along with a number of other states whose citizens have for various reasons been attacked by terrorists on a massive scale (such as the United States, Israel, India or Indonesia), Russia tended

The fight against terrorism 315 to rely excessively on the use of force and other coercive means in its fight against conflict-related terrorism. More specifically, in the Russian case, this approach involved both different types of offensive and other controversial punitive, enforcement and routine prophylactic measures of ‘collective impact’, such as zachistka operations35 or administrative arrests. This does not mean that Russia’s anti-terrorist strategy has been de-linked from the process of post-conflict stabilization and peace-building. In Chechnya, economic reconstruction is well under way, a local Chechen administration (including Chechen police), loyal to the federal centre, has been functioning (although not without problems), and attempts to address the deficiencies of the political accommodation and reconciliation process have slowly been gaining momentum. But, subject to domestic political and security pressures to respond rapidly and decisively to a terrorist threat, the Russian government seems to have little time, will and resources to explore other options for responding to a terrorist threat than those suggested by the dominant short-term reactive approach. The effectiveness of the short-term reactive approach is questionable, even – in fact particularly – from the narrow counter-terrorist perspective. The problem here is that many, if not most, of the methods employed had in fact little to do with counter-terrorism as such. What distinguishes counter-terrorism in the narrow sense from other security tasks is that its central goals are the prevention, disruption and pre-emption of terrorist activities and networks, rather than post-action punishment, coercion or retaliation. While coercive measures can be used selectively in support of counter-terrorism (for instance, to prevent a specific act of terrorism), they are not what counter-terrorism is primarily about. Similarly, the focus of the short-term approach on the interdiction and suppression of terrorists’ financial or arms flows, while important, downplays the fact that financial support or illegal arms trade channels have not been the main assets of organizations involved in terrorist activities – in other words, as long as these groups keep their structural capabilities, supported by extremist ideologies, they will find the weapons and the money for their terrorist activities. At the same time, a long-term approach emphasizing prevention and prioritizing the need to address the political, social and economic roots of conflict and terrorism comprehensively, rather than on an ad hoc basis, while theoretically more adequate for addressing the nature of the threat, may take decades to produce results. In the Russian case it is even questionable whether the long-term preventive approach has any practical relevance at all at the present stage. While useful as a far-reaching goal to be fostered, in practical terms a long-term approach might be as ineffective in addressing the current security threat to Russian citizens presented by conflict-generated terrorism as Moscow’s current strategy dominated by a short-term, reactive approach. By emphasizing the need to address the root causes of terrorism generated by the conflict in Chechnya, one

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will end up either in a dead end or in a vicious circle, as it means that no practical solution to the problem will ever be found before Russia finally completes its reforms and becomes a fully developed democracy with a stable economy, functioning state bureaucracy, reformed security sector and healthy society. While these long-term processes may take decades, the scale and the scope of the terrorist threat faced by Russia today are such that this problem cannot wait that long to be solved; has to be adequately addressed as soon as possible. In sum, at the current stage, neither of the two approaches described above taken in its extreme version would be an optimal strategic option for Russia in the fight against the main type of terrorist threat that it faces. Nor will this threat be adequately addressed by a mechanical combination of elements of specific short-term counter-terrorist measures, emphasizing pre-emption and the disruption of terrorist activities, with measures to tackle the longer-term needs of economic, social and political reconstruction and peace-building. Rather, the task of reconciling the fight against conflict-generated terrorism with post-conflict stabilization and peacebuilding might be best served by a medium-term anti-terrorist strategy focused on undermining the main comparative advantages of organizations involved in terrorist activities, such as their structures and ideologies. From the structural perspective, the most logical way to challenge these groups is to try to deprive them of their main structural advantage – to find ways to formalize the informal links within these organizations and to turn decentralized horizontal networks into hierarchies. At the stage of the search for political accommodation, this imperative becomes all the more pressing as the structural model typical for many of these groups tends to complicate centralized strategic decision making and the coordination of action by their different elements, thus calling into question their adherence to any formal or informal agreements that could be achieved. It might seem that the most logical way to achieve this objective is by stimulating these groups to get increasingly involved in non-militant activities and to form distinctive civilian/political wings which might gradually develop a stake in some legitimization for the original groups, and could even be incorporated into the political process. While that would not necessarily result in a group’s rejection of violence once and for all, and may, in fact, lead to violent splits within the group, it could contribute to marginalize its most radical elements. (The main problem here is whether and to what extent the integration and recognition of militant groups that are or have been involved in terrorist activities can be politically and publicly acceptable. It is at this stage that a group’s involvement in terrorist activities becomes a major, often insurmountable stumbling block.) From the anti-terrorism perspective, suppression of the use of terrorist means by non-state actors operating in conflict or post-conflict areas is structurally complicated by the fact that their terrorist actions (deliberate

The fight against terrorism 317 attacks against civilians) and other violent activities (such as rebel attacks against governmental security forces or property) are often concentrated in the same organizational units (wings). Until specific political, legal and other tools to distinguish between a particular organization’s terrorist activities and other violent means, such as guerrilla warfare, are devised, preferably at the international level, an ‘interim’ solution to this problem, which may be relatively non-controversial from both anti-terrorism and peace-building perspectives, could be to target and exclude from the political process (a) individual terrorists responsible for ordering, planning and carrying out terrorist attacks, and (b) those units or groups in whose activities terrorist means seem to prevail consistently over all other activities (such as Basaev’s Battalion of Martyrs), rather than broader resistance movements. Finally, as demonstrated by the structural analysis of organizations involved in terrorist activities, one of the key factors bringing their various informally interconnected elements together, and the main ‘fuel’ of these groups and movements, is their shared ideological beliefs, goals and values. It is hardly necessary to stress that religious fundamentalism can easily play the role of an extremist ideology. The ideological challenges posed to Russia by extremist groups, particularly by Islamic radicals that choose terrorism as a mode of operation, such as their attempts to use or, rather, misuse Islam in its radical form as an ideological basis for terrorism, should be countered at the ideological level as well. And, while Russia’s main partners in the fight against terrorism, in terms of financial might, and political, technical and security support, might be in the West, Russia’s allies in the search for an ideological alternative to radical Islamic extremism are to be sought and found both within its own well-established and dynamic 20 million-strong Muslim community and within the moderate currents of Islam and moderate parts of the Muslim world itself.

Notes 1 Other types, for instance, include terrorism as a form of violent left-wing, rightwing, and other ‘peacetime’ political extremism that is not related to an armed conflict. 2 See, for instance, D. A. Pluchinsky, ‘Terrorism in the former Soviet Union: A primer, a puzzle, a prognosis’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 21(2), April–June 1998, pp. 119–48. Exceptions included the Moscow Metro bombing in January 1977, allegedly by a group of Armenian nationalists. 3 See, for instance, L. Drobizheva, and E. Pain, ‘Sotsial’nye predposylki rasprostraneniia ekstremizma i terrorizma’ [Social preconditions for the spread of terrorism and extremism], in Sotsial’nye i psikhologicheskie problemy bor’bys mezhdunarodnym terrorizmom [Social and psychological problems of combating international terrorism], Moscow: Nauka, 2002, pp. 41–5. For a critical discussion, see E. Stepanova, ‘Whither the “root causes”? (On the case of conflict-generated terrorism in Russia)’, Prepared notes for the international expert meeting on Root Causes of Terrorism, organized by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo, 9–11 June 2003.

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4 According to Russia’s deputy prosecutor, General Vladimir Kolesnikov (quoted by Rosbusinessconsulting news agency, 16 June 2003). 5 The primarily internal character of the terrorist threats faced by Russia has also been reflected in its official national security documents, such as the new Military Doctrine, signed by President Putin in April 2000. According to the Military Doctrine, ‘the illegal activities of extremist, nationalist, religious, separatist and terrorist organizations and bodies, directed at the violation of the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, the destabilization of the domestic political situation in the country’ ranked second on the list of internal threats to Russian security and ‘organized crime, terrorism, smuggling and other illegal activities on a scale threatening the military security of the Russian Federation’ ranked fourth, while ‘international terrorism’ came last on the list of external threats. See ‘Voennaia doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Utverzhdena ukazom Prezidenta ot 21 aprelya 2000 g.’ [The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, confirmed by a decree of the President of the Russian Federation, 21 April 2000], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 25 April 2000. 6 See, for instance, Ye. Borisova, ‘Chechen vote is from the heart’, Moscow Times, 18 March 2003, p. 1; ‘Referendum results’, Chechnya Weekly (Jamestown Foundation), 4(10), 27 March 2003; G. Feifer, ‘Chechnya: Rights groups dispute Kremlin claim that new constitution sets foundation for peace’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL Newsline, 27 March 2003. While the results of the referendum were met with scepticism by many human rights groups and foreign observers, the referendum reflected the hopes of a significant proportion of the population of Chechnya that the political and constitutional process would finally replace the status quo. 7 The more flexible, diffuse and networked the organizational structure of groups involved in conflict-related terrorist activities and the more informal the ties between its various units, the greater its comparative advantages in an asymmetrical confrontation with a state as a more classic hierarchy. 8 On the structural and ideological aspects of conflict-related terrorism, see E. Stepanova, Anti-terrorism and Peace-building During and After Conflict, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Policy Paper, Stockholm: SIPRI, June 2003, pp. 40–50 (full text available at http://editors.sipri.se/pubs/ Stepanova.pdf). 9 Most of the existing research suggests that semi-democratic regimes and states in transition are more exposed to conflict-generated terrorism than either established democracies or rigid authoritarian regimes. For a useful review of the theoretical literature on this subject, see B. Lia and K. Skjolberg, Why Terrorism Occurs: A Survey of Theories and Hypotheses on the Causes of Terrorism, FFI (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment) Report, Kjeller: FFI, May 2001, pp. 18–20. 10 This might partly explain why public reaction in Russia to the October 2002 ‘Nord-Ost’ hostage tragedy seemed to fade away faster than that the American response to 11 September (although another explanation might be that, after all, the outcome was not as deadly as that of the 11 September events). 11 For an interview with Primakov, see M. Rostovskii, ‘Prognoz tiazhelovesa’ [The prognosis of a heavyweight], Moskovskii komsomolets, 17 May 2002, p. 2. 12 Quoted in Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 8–14 February 2002, p. 1. 13 For more detail, see E. Stepanova, ‘Partners in need: US–Russia cooperation on and approaches to antiterrorism’, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 279, in PONARS Policy Conference, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 6 December 2002, pp. 187–92. 14 Some of the more concrete ideas discussed in the immediate aftermath of the

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October 2002 hostage crisis seemed to be directly modelled on the USA’s policies and responses. The Russian State Duma, for instance, put forward an initiative to work out a uniform model law on anti-terrorism in cooperation with the US Congress in an attempt to standardize the existing terminology in order to facilitate future cooperation; and there were calls from within Russia’s security establishment for Russia to copy the newly created US Department of Homeland Security by amending or rewriting the outdated 1992 law on the Russian Security Council to upgrade its profile and task it with similar functions of coordination and control. While most of these ideas were unlikely to be realized, they may be illustrative of the widespread attitudes and sentiments in parts of the Russian ruling elite. On the mixed effects of the ‘war on terrorism’ for both conflict and postconflict areas, and for efforts to restore or build peace in those areas, see Stepanova, Anti-terrorism and Peace-building During and After Conflict, pp. 1, 3, 32, 33ff. See E. Stepanova, ‘Russia and the combat against terrorism in local and regional conflicts’, in ‘Russia: Arms control, disarmament and international security’, IMEMO contribution to the Russian edition of the SIPRI Yearbook 2001, Moscow: Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), 2002, p. 47. For more detail on the meeting, see e. g. an interview with the deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, Oleg Chernov, in Rossiiskaya gazeta, 30 April 2002; also cited by Prime-TASS new agency, 30 April 2002. Targeting money laundering may not be the most effective tool to counter the financing of terrorist activities by radical Islamic groups, as money laundering is the cleaning of illegal gains from drug trafficking and other criminal activities, while the funding of Islamic terrorism often involves the reverse process – diverting some of the initially legitimate funds (such as the Islamic tithe, voluntary donations and alms) to finance illegal activity, including terrorism. For a detailed discussion of the definitional problem in the case of conflictrelated terrorism, see Stepanova, Anti-terrorism and Peace-building During and After Conflict, pp. 3–8. This also means that terrorism may be employed as a tactic (a mode of operation) not in any armed conflict in the world but only in a conflict that is asymmetric or at least has a clear asymmetric aspect. As is clear from this definition, it applies to non-state actors only. Deliberate use of force by the state against its own or foreign civilians is not included in the definition of terrorism, as it is not applied by a weaker actor in an asymmetrical armed confrontation. This, of course, does not make it less of an international crime from the point of view of the international law of armed conflict (hereafter referred to as international humanitarian law), according to which such activities by the state are explicitly forbidden and defined, depending on the scale and domestic or international context of atrocities, as either war crimes or crimes against humanity. See Article 7, ‘Crimes against humanity’, and Article 8, ‘War crimes’, of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, UN document A/CONF. 183/9, 17 July 1998, pp. 7–13. ‘Federal’nyi zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii o bor’be s terrorizmom. Prin’at Gosudarstvennoi Dumoi 3 iyul’a 1998 g., odobren Sovetom Federatsii 9 iyul’a 1998 g.’ [Federal Law of the Russian Federation on the Fight against Terrorism, adopted by the State Duma on 3 July 1998, approved by the Council of the Federation 9 July 1998]. For the full text see http://www.fsb.ru/under/ terror.html. Ironically, the law indirectly reflects the main type of terrorist threat faced by Russia by not emphasizing the need to counter ‘new types of terrorism’. This

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lack of attention to the ‘new types of terrorism’ – in contrast, for instance, to the equivalent US law – indirectly confirms that the critical terrorist threat to the security of Russia and its people is rather posed by the more traditional, conflict-related type of terrorism than by the high-technology super-terrorism with a global reach. Emphasis added. UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), [UN Consolidated Appeal for the North Caucasus (Russian Federation), 1 December 1999–31 December 2000] (Russian version), Moscow: OCHA, 2000, p. 14. On the definition of international humanitarian law, see note 21. See, for instance, Human Rights Watch, ‘Human Rights Watch commentary 2 on the UN Draft Comprehensive Convention on Terrorism’, Press release, New York: Human Rights Watch, 22 October 2001. The EU tried for some time to apply a more nuanced approach selectively by keeping only the military wing of Hamas (‘Izz id-Din al-Qassam Brigades), rather than the entire organization, on its list of terrorist groups and entities. Only since September 2003 has the entire group, including its social components, been included in the EU list. See Article 25 of the 1998 Law on the Fight against Terrorism (note 22). Examples are the Saudi al-Haramein, the Kuwaiti Social Reform Society and the Islamic Heritage Revival Society. For Russia’s list of ‘terrorist organizations’, see Rosbusinessconsulting, ‘Spisok organizatsiei, priznannykh Rossiei terroristicheskimi’ [List of organizations recognized as terrorist organizations by Russia], Moscow, 14 February 2003. Richard Boucher (US Department of State spokesman), ‘Terrorist designation under Executive Order 13224 Islamic International Brigade, Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, and Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs’, Press statement, Washington, DC, 28 February 2003. For further detail, see US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2002, Washington, DC: US Department of State, April 2003, pp. 31–3, 136, 143–4. No state of emergency had been declared, although the appropriate law did exist. For more detail on this, as well as for an insider’s review of Russia’s antiterrorism legislation and procedures, see V. Petrishchev, ‘Russian legislation and the fight against terrorism’, in High-Impact Terrorism: Proceedings of a Russian–American Workshop, Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002, p. 35. The new version of Russia’s Federal Law on the State of Emergency was adopted on May 2001. According to the law, a state of emergency is established by a presidential decree, to be approved by the Council of the Federation within three days, and should not exceed 30 days if established for the entire country, or 60 days if imposed on a particular region. Intense population screening by special police units in a certain populated area after it has been sealed by the military or Ministry of the Interior troops, or both.

Bibliography Books and journals Drobizheva, L. and E. Pain, ‘Sotsial’nye predposylki rasprostraneniia ekstremizma i terrorizma’ [Social preconditions for the spread of terrorism and extremism], in

The fight against terrorism 321 Sotsial’nye i psikhologicheskie problemy bor’by s mezhdunarodnym terrorizmom [Social and psychological problems of combating international terrorism], Moscow: Nauka, 2002. Feifer, G., ‘Chechnya: Rights groups dispute Kremlin claim that new constitution sets foundation for peace’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RL/RFE Newsline, 27 March 2003. Lia, B. and K. Skjolberg, Why Terrorism Occurs: A Survey of Theories and Hypotheses on the Causes of Terrorism, FFI (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment) Report, Kjeller: Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 2001. Petrishchev, V., ‘Russian legislation and the fight against terrorism’, in HighImpact Terrorism: Proceedings of a Russian–American Workshop, Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002, pp. 25–36. Pluchinsky, D. A., ‘Terrorism in the former Soviet Union: A primer, a puzzle, a prognosis’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 21(2), April–June 1998, pp. 119–48. Rosbusinessconsulting, ‘Spisok organizatsiei, priznannykh Rossiei terroristicheskimi’ [List of organizations recognized as terrorist organizations by Russia], Moscow, 14 February 2003. Stepanova, E., ‘Partners in need: US–Russia cooperation on and approaches to antiterrorism’, Program in New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 279, in PONARS Policy Conference, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 6 December 2002. ——, ‘Russia and the combat against terrorism in local and regional conflicts’, in ‘Russia: Arms control, disarmament and international security’, IMEMO Contribution to the Russian Edition of the SIPRI Yearbook 2001, Moscow: Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), 2002, pp. 42–58. ——, ‘Russia and international cooperation in the fight against terrorism’, IMEMO contribution to the Russian edition of the SIPRI Yearbook 2002, Moscow: Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), 2003, pp. 32–46. —— ‘Whither the “root causes”? (On the case of conflict-generated terrorism in Russia)’, Prepared notes for the international expert meeting on Root Causes of Terrorism, organized by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo, 9–11 June 2003. ——, Anti-terrorism and Peace-building During and After Conflict, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Policy Paper, Stockholm: SIPRI, 2003 (full text available at http://editors.sipri.se/pubs/Stepanova.pdf). UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), [UN Consolidated Appeal for the North Caucasus (Russian Federation), 1 December 1999–31 December 2000] (Russian version), Moscow: OCHA, 2000. US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2002, Washington, DC: US Department of State, April 2003.

Media and Internet Borisova, Ye., ‘Chechen vote is from the heart’, Moscow Times, 18 March 2003. Boucher, Richard (US Department of State spokesman), ‘Terrorist designation under Executive Order 13224: Islamic International Brigade, Special Purpose

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Islamic Regiment, and Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs’, Press statement, Washington, DC, 28 February 2003. Human Rights Watch, ‘Human Rights Watch commentary 2 on the UN Draft Comprehensive Convention on Terrorism’, Press release, New York: Human Rights Watch, 22 October 2001. Rossiiskaia gazeta, 30 April 2002. Rostovskii, M., ‘Prognoz tiazhelovesa’ [The prognosis of a heavyweight], Moskovskii komsomolets, 17 May 2002, p. 2. ‘Voennaia doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Utverzhdena ukazom Prezidenta ot 21 aprelya 2000 g.’ [The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, confirmed by a decree of the President of the Russian Federation, 21 April 2000], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 25 April 2000. Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 8–14 February 2002.

14 Counter-terrorism as a building block for Putin’s regime Pavel K. Baev

Introduction There is a daunting certainty in the proposition that between the time of writing (in mid-2003) and the appearance of this book Moscow will have been hit by yet another terrorist attack. This prediction has nothing to do with worst-case thinking or inviting disaster: it simply reflects the fact that terrorism has emerged as the major threat to Russia’s security – and neither defensive nor proactive strategies have shown any measure of success in countering it. Since the late 1990s, Russia has been among the countries most painfully affected by terrorism, and Moscow has mourned perhaps more victims of terrorism than any other capital in the world. Massive efforts and resources have been invested in combating this threat, but no one expects victory at any time soon. Russian official propaganda, which has become so much more efficient as the freedom of the press has been reduced, portrays the country as being on the forefront of a global campaign against terrorism. Sceptics, however, including this author, keep pointing out logical flaws and factual inconsistencies in the official account. While a great variety of brands of political extremism exists in Russia, all terrorist attacks are associated exclusively with one local conflict, so that the very notion of terrorism has become synonymous with Chechnya. Moscow insists that this protracted brutal war is Russia’s ‘internal affair’, so that presenting its ‘counterterrorist operation’ as a part of the global ‘war’ involves a certain stretching of logic. This official Moscow performs with little hesitation. An analysis of the conduct of the Chechen war is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it can be said that the huge military effort Moscow has put in has not been sufficient to break the deadlock, while the search for political solutions has been superfluous, despite all the ‘spin’ put on the constitutional referendum and elections of 2003. Fundamentally, the struggle against Chechen terrorism has been remarkably useful for consolidating the foundations of the semi-authoritarian quasi-market regime in Russia, which has maintained the aura of ‘normalcy’ around its deformities. This chapter will not provide any quantitative or qualitative threat

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assessments without questioning the existence of the threat of terrorism for Russia; instead, it aims to examine how the struggle against terrorism has shaped and is shaping the essential features of Russia’s foreign and internal policies during Vladimir Putin’s first presidency. It will avoid the long-haul academic debates on defining terrorism and skip altogether the analysis of the relevant legislative foundation in Russia, as both issues are covered in the chapter by Ekaterina Stepanova. It begins with a brief profiling of the character of the Putin regime insofar as it is necessary for an analysis of the instrumental role of the counter-terrorist agenda, drawing out the connections with other dimensions of Russia’s security as examined in this volume. The functions of the struggle against terrorism in Russia’s foreign policy and in its internal affairs are then evaluated, while bearing in mind that the internal and external domains overlap and that to separate such interconnected issues as the domestic and external resonance of the war in Chechnya is unhelpful. The conclusion boils down to a simple point: Russia’s war against terrorism is not about winning; it is about having it. While this conclusion may appear disconcertingly cynical, it is actually very much in tune with Putin’s confident electoral ‘selling’ of his regime as the most efficient answer to Russia’s problems.

Putin’s pyramid of power Few experts would question the proposition that Russia is now in much better shape than it was in the late 1990s, but disagreements about its further trajectory are profound: expectations of dynamic growth are as strong as arguments to the effect that Russia is slipping into a new zastoi (stagnation).1 What is remarkable about this background is that the mindboggling question ‘Who is Mr Putin?’ has faded into irrelevance without finding a satisfactory answer. The man, possessing no leadership qualities or experience, has firmly established himself at the very centre of the state system, but it has become sufficiently clear that it is the system that matters, not the man. Yet this vast superstructure has little resemblance to the ‘ideal’ model of a bureaucratic hierarchy of Putin’s dreams – which is simply the KGB of old writ large;2 up to the already visible end of his first presidency, all his efforts to concentrate control have yielded more fruit in establishing a personality cult than in getting executive orders executed.3 Behind all the public relations smoke-and-mirrors and the Kremlin intrigue, it is still fairly easy to see the three main ‘pillars’ of Putin’s regime: the enforcement mechanisms (often called the power structures), the big business interests (nicknamed the ‘oligarchs’), and the regional elites (who fully deserve the title of ‘barons’).4 This configuration has been in place since Boris Yeltsin’s second presidency, and the only visible change Putin has been able to introduce is to increase the distance between the Kremlin and the three agents, thus making the pyramid of power somewhat taller.5

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 325 At the same time, this author cannot subscribe wholeheartedly to the conclusion that ‘on close examination, much that looks new and different in Russia today turns out to be neither’.6 There is a new quality in the system and it cannot be reduced to particular details, such as the oligarchs’ concentrating even more economic power but camouflaging their political ‘clout’ better. This new quality features a combination of built-in paradoxes: the system of power is remarkably stable but highly dependent on the person on the top; the regime enjoys broad public support despite subjugating the interests of the society to those of the state; and the leadership channels a variety of hopes and expectations towards the ideal of ‘Great Russia’ but postpones the most serious reforms, thus accepting low growth, despite promises to ‘catch up with Portugal’ and to double gross domestic product (GDP).7 Perhaps the most striking paradox of all is the coexistence of Putin’s passionately proclaimed intention to build a streamlined ‘vertical of power’ and his proven inability to organize a coherent executive branch. His ‘team’ consists of at least three competing clans: (a) the survivors from the Yeltsin ‘Family’ (former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov was a key member, as was the former head of the presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin); (b) the newcomers from St Petersburg (many are from the special services, although ‘civilians’, such as Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, Minister for Economic Development German Gref, and the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, are more visible); and (c) the ‘heavyweights’ from the power structures (the key trio consists of Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, and Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service (Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the FSB)).8 Each clan has multiple internal divisions and is developing complicated interfaces with the three basic elements in the pyramid of power, and that often leaves Putin at a loss on the top of his own apparatus. Putin has to balance competing interests and agendas inside his ‘vertical’ – and preserve the façade of harmony and efficiency. He has to ‘sell’ this construct domestically, playing down the rampant administrative corruption, and internationally, glossing over Russia’s illiberalism and mismanaged democracy. The war against terrorism comes in very handy indeed.

The art of influence through anti-terrorist networking To the envy of many Europeans, Russia has been consistently able in recent years to claim a more prominent role on the international arena and to have more of a voice than its sheer ‘weight’ would warrant.9 This remarkable achievement has little to do with the quality of professional diplomacy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which has hardly improved since the time of Andrei Gromyko in the 1970s and early 1980s) or with

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academic expertise (which is in a protracted decline), and cannot be entirely explained by Putin’s special skills at playing a weak hand. It is Russia’s war against terrorism, controversial as it is, that is largely responsible for this phenomenon. While at the end of Yeltsin’s era the issue of Chechnya was a serious liability that had to be compensated for with Russia’s few remaining sources of strength (such as its energy riches or nuclear profile), by now the issue of terrorism has become a significant asset which adds to the newly achieved economic dynamism and subsumes the problem of Chechnya. What made this shift possible was the dramatic change of international climate often indicated by the simple numerals ‘9/11’, but Moscow deserves credit for exploiting to the maximum every opportunity that has emerged in the rapid reconfiguration of interstate relations. These activities have been channelled along two main avenues: building an anti-terrorist coalition with the USA and Europe, and projecting power across the former Soviet south. Qualifying for mature partnership Vladimir Putin was quite aware that his spectacular arrival to the Kremlin on the ‘war ticket’ was greeted in the West with much doubt and suspicion. With hindsight, it can now be established that breaking through this barrier of estrangement and making himself into a valuable partner was one of his top priorities from the very start. His success in achieving this goal is unquestionable, and the two fundamental reasons behind it have been the efficiency of his leadership in consolidating control over Russia’s unruly political class and the surprisingly strong performance of Russia’s economy, including its ability to deliver increasing amounts of energy resources to the world markets. Nevertheless, the issue of terrorism has been a key lever of Putin’s diplomatic offensive, particularly on the personal level where he has been able to transfigure himself from a suspicious character with a KGB background into a champion of anti-terrorism. Facing an initial storm of criticism over Chechnya, he was not so much hiding behind the ‘internal affairs’ fig leaf as trying to counter the criticism with the emphasis on the ‘counter-terrorist operation’, insisting that Russia was at the forefront of a global struggle against the growing challenge of ‘Islamic radicalism’.10 This claim that Russia was protecting ‘our civilization’ against ‘terrorist barbarity’ did not impress his Western counterparts, who gradually accepted – mostly after President George W. Bush’s famous ‘look in the eye’ in June 2001 – that they could do business with President Putin – but perhaps not that kind of business. They had to reconsider when Putin, delivering to President Bush the first word of support soon after the second tower of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed, implicitly told them: ‘I warned you.’ What changed instantly was the attitude in Washington: President Bush, reinventing himself as the leader of the global anti-terrorist coali-

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 327 tion, insisted on making his new friend ‘Pooty’ a full member of the Group of Eight industrialized countries (the G8) and on setting a new format of relations between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia. Putin accepted gracefully every invitation extended to him (even if he hated the nickname), but he was never truly enthusiastic about the prospect of building a Russian–US ‘alliance’.11 Even if he had cherished certain ambitions in this respect, by mid-2002 it had become sufficiently clear that the US administration expected from him full compliance with its many demands – from agreeing on dismantling the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (the ABM Treaty) to discontinuing nuclear cooperation with Iran – but was less than forthcoming with rewards. The Kremlin team was aware that following the US drum would hardly ever be a popular idea in Moscow, but Putin’s strategic ambitions were much more about a rapprochement with Europe that would vindicate his deep feeling of ‘belonging’.12 Europe, however, remained reserved about reshaping transatlantic relations around the anti-terrorist agenda and about embracing Russia as a full member of a new ad hoc coalition. Putin had some minor triumphs (such as the standing ovation he received in the German Bundestag on 25 September 2001), but was not able to advance his big Europeanization project, stumbling most clumsily over the issue of Kaliningrad. He was particularly upset by the persistent refusal of most European leaders to treat Chechnya as a part of the ‘terrorist threat’, which should reduce all human rights aspects of the Chechnya conflict to irrelevance.13 Reversing the old Soviet diplomatic game of playing Europe against the USA, Putin tried to use his newly acquired profile in Washington to gain some ground in Europe – but had little success.14 What has helped Putin to advance his European game plan beyond his expectations was the second Gulf war. As it became clear towards the end of 2002 that the USA intended to attack Iraq, Moscow carefully compared the parameters of available deals, and was visibly disappointed with the offer from Washington. The turning point was Putin’s visit to Paris on 10 February 2003, when he and President Jacques Chirac announced their decision to veto the US draft of a new United Nations resolution.15 The newly formed ‘entente’ (Chancellor Gerhard Schröder made sure that Germany was the third member) confirmed their commitment to fight terrorism but insisted that Iraq was not a part of this struggle, while giving Putin the long-desired consent that Chechnya indeed was a part of it. This unprecedented mutiny failed to stop the US war machine – but for Moscow that had never been the point. While Germany and France were deeply offended by US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s poignant remark about the ‘Old Europe’, Putin was delighted at being ‘counted in’. He certainly took a calculated risk, and, while many commentators in Moscow gloated over the initial difficulties in the US campaign,16 most experts argued that he had made a mistake.17 They might have developed

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second thoughts by mid-2003 (which is the time of writing): by all appearances, Putin had got it right, which testifies more to the sharpness of his political instinct than to the quality of the advice he receives.18 Russia has mended its relations with the USA with much less difficulty than France or Germany have had in rebuilding the transatlantic alliance; Putin may have lost some of Bush’s personal trust, but for him that has always been a rather abstract entity. What matters is that Russia has consolidated its position as a key member of the US-led anti-terrorist coalition (fluid and undisciplined as it is). It shows surprisingly little interest in institutionalizing this position; even the ‘advanced dialogue’ with NATO remains light on substance.19 Much more emphasis is placed on building bilateral relations, first of all with key European partners. Putin may find personal satisfaction in the fact of Chechnya’s disappearance from these exchanges;20 what is more important, his support is a commodity much valued by his partners in their anti-terrorist endeavours. Russia’s leader is perfectly comfortable with the fact that major powers are pursuing their own geopolitical agendas under the banner of the ‘global war’ against terrorism: his concern is to make sure that Russia’s agenda is accepted and a balance of interests is thereby preserved. Projecting diminishing force Russia began experimenting with the use of the threat of terrorism to advance its own interests earlier than its Western partners – in fact from the very start of Putin’s presidency. While the main target of military ‘counter-terrorist operations’ was certainly Chechnya, political efforts were focused not on the neighbouring Caucasus but on Central Asia.21 Authoritarian regimes across this vast region saw the spread of Islamic radicalism, supported from outside by the Taliban but rooted in the anger caused by deepening poverty and rampant corruption, as an acute challenge to their survival – and Russia was eager to play on these fears. Russia was pushing papers and plans for multilateral structures, such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) joint Counter-Terrorist Centre, and even threatened air strikes on Taliban camps.22 However, when violence did erupt – for instance, during the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) attacks in the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan in summer 2000 – Russia had neither the capability nor the intention to intervene. This slow-moving game changed dramatically in autumn 2001, when the USA discovered an urgent need for access to airbases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – and President Putin, despite signals of opposition from his lieutenants, swiftly gave his consent. The US deployment, limited as it is, has significantly shifted the balance of threats in the region: the Taliban were thoroughly defeated in early 2002 and the IMU suffered heavy losses as well. That impressive victory, together with the new attention the region was now attracting from the USA as well as from Europe,

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 329 objectively eroded Russia’s influence, and it has responded with a new military–diplomatic anti-terrorist offensive.23 Most experts in Moscow expected the war in Afghanistan to be a protracted affair that made heavy demands on ground forces; they also argued that the USA had no ‘staying power’ in Central Asia.24 They were proved wrong on the first assumption, although the second may still prove true since the second Gulf war determined a massive concentration of US effort and attention on Iraq, and that has reduced the residual instability in Afghanistan to a peripheral concern, while Central Asia has slipped almost entirely off the radar screens in Washington.25 Besides, it has never been certain that US troops would rush to the rescue of a Central Asian despot should a radical Islamic opposition challenge his power. It can even be argued that, from a military point of view, the forward-deployed US troops (mostly airbase technicians) are more a liability, as a potential target for terrorists, than an asset.26 Russia, however, had to demonstrate that it had military assets that could deter and defeat terrorist threats. It has deployed a composite tactical aviation squadron to the airbase at Kant in Kyrgyzstan, although it can hardly be expected that the ageing Su-25/Su-27s will make much of an impression against a background of massive application of modern US air power in Afghanistan.27 Russia has also tried to beef up the 201st Motorized Rifle Division (MRD) deployed permanently in Tajikistan, but that unit – so isolated from the headquarters of the Volga–Urals Military District and so dependent on local supplies – looks increasingly like a ‘lost legion’. Seeking to organize a truly impressive demonstration of its might, in August 2002 Russia launched a large-scale military exercise in the Caspian Sea, with 10,500 troops and 60 ships carrying out joint operations. While the official scenario of this unprecedented show of force was focused on destroying terrorist groups on land and at sea, it was quite clear for the littoral states that Russia was presenting its arguments in the deadlocked disputes over the division of the Caspian into national sectors.28 Another, perhaps more worrying, case of Russia exploiting the threat of terrorism in order to put pressure on its neighbours can be found in relations between Russia and Georgia. Claiming that terrorist groups in Chechnya had established camps in the Pankisi Gorge, Russia has been threatening Georgia with ‘adequate military measures’, culminating in Putin’s ultimatum of 11 September 2002.29 A ‘hot pursuit’ of the terrorists deep into the mountains of Georgia was hardly on the cards;30 the real aim of this blackmail was to assert Moscow’s influence on the political intrigue going on in Tbilisi around President Eduard Shevardnadze’s coming departure. After some sharp warnings from the USA, Russia had to back off, but it continues to complain about US special forces training local battalions and spy planes flying over Georgia. These tensions illustrate a characteristic discrepancy between Russia’s goals in its ‘counter-terrorist’ foreign policy and its actual conduct: while it

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aspires to join the US-led coalition as a privileged member, it is providing little if any cooperation to the USA or its Western allies in the former Soviet south, and is more often acting along the lines of traditional geopolitical competition. In this regard, Moscow has shown a strong inclination to bring China into the power play in Central Asia, counting on it as yet another counterbalance to the US influence.31 It may well be underestimating the risks involved in this game. As long as its army is engaged in Chechnya, and until a meaningful military reform is launched in earnest, Russia will be seriously lacking power projection capabilities in both the South Caucasus and Central Asia.32 At the same time, terrorism-related risks are only the tip of the iceberg of internal unrest and interstate rivalries which remains under the surface of the quasi-stability of the despotic local regimes.33 Russia’s interest would be seriously hurt by a violent crisis in these regions, which could quickly escalate out of control; but it could prevent such a scenario only through security cooperation with the USA – something Russia remains reluctant to consider in practical terms.34

The art of control through counter-terrorist mobilization President Putin projects the impression of being the master of Russia’s internal politics with such confidence that the question of further strengthening his control may appear all but irrelevant. However, his actual room for manoeuvre may be strictly limited by deeply entrenched political interests, while the skilfully presented illusion of control may mask the lack of real levers and machinery of authority. As the above analysis of Putin’s pyramid of power shows, the efficiency of his executive branch is seriously diminished by many flaws in design and built-in conflicts between the various elements of it, which have to be overcome by orienting the system towards an external challenge. Mobilization against the threat of terrorism thus serves much the same function for Putin’s regime as mobilization against the threat of ‘imperialist aggression’ did for Stalin’s successors. This section will examine the application of this ‘political technology’, focusing on three issues: (a) the centrality of the presidency; (b) the ‘politicization’ of the FSB and other special services; and (c) the manipulation of popular support for the regime. Re-centralization of power and personification of counter-terrorism Vladimir Putin arrived in the Kremlin with a clear (and insightful) perception that Russia’s very existence was threatened by an unprecedented erosion of the very centre of the state system: regional ‘barons’ were pursuing their parochial agendas, paying scant attention to the federal legislation; oligarchs were busy plundering Russia’s riches, not bothering to share the proceeds with the tax authorities; and each government ministry

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 331 was conducting its own foreign and domestic policy, having long forgotten about any central coordination or guidelines. The new leader was not content with the inherited role of a supreme arbiter and aspired to fill that vacuum of power in the centre. His vision of the Russian state recentralized through firm administrative control was perhaps outdated compared with the modern concepts of regionalism and networking, but it appeared even ‘progressive’ against the background of the postSoviet neo-feudalism. Putin just needed a lever to discipline the rotten bureaucracy – and the war against terrorism provided just that. Reclaiming power to the Kremlin was certain to meet with resistance from two powerful interest groups – the parochial regional barons and the arrogant oligarchs – and Putin was not inclined to postpone these confrontations or to play the two groups against one another. He pressed forward with a plan to establish a new layer of bureaucracy – seven administrative ‘super-regions’ over and above the 89 subjects of the Russian Federation – as a means to tame the barons, and, simultaneously, the persecution of two of the most notorious oligarchs – Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky – was immediately unleashed in order to demonstrate the president’s determination to keep them ‘equidistant’.35 With the benefit of hindsight, neither policy was particularly sound in design or, indeed, successful;36 nevertheless, the barons have been taken on a shorter leash and the oligarchs have been consistently cut down to size; the ‘war’ against terrorism played a role in these accomplishments. While the seven super-regions have turned out to be a redundant bureaucratic structure, Putin did succeed in reversing the tide of regionalism, mainly by two means: (a) reasserting control over law enforcement on the local level, and (b) reducing the share of taxes that remained in the hands of the barons. It was in the former of these that the counter-terrorist mobilization was of key importance. The elite Interior Ministry units, such as the OMON and SOBR units,37 which the regional governors had grown to perceive as their ‘praetorian guards’, were firmly subordinated to central control and have been doing tours of combat duty in Chechnya on a rotation basis. This, combined with frequent ‘terrorist alerts’ (much improved central supplies also made a difference), helped to shift the loyalty of the elite units, so that the reinvigorated system of prosecution – perhaps the least reformed of all Soviet-era institutions – is now able to use them against their former masters.38 As for the redistribution of financial flows, the federal centre was able to enforce its demand for more than 60 per cent of all taxes to be concentrated to the centre, not least because of the need for resources to pay for the war against terrorism.39 With the oligarchs, Putin’s policy of reducing their political profile was more subtle and at the same time more crude. This group had shown unity only on rare occasions, and the Kremlin team exploited this weakness skilfully, picking the most vulnerable targets. The priority task was to weaken the media empires of two maverick oligarchs, Berezovsky and Gusinsky,

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and the need to intensify the information warfare against terrorism (first of all the Chechen war) was presented as a key justification for sustained pressure on their television channels, newspapers and magazines.40 Both were forced into exile, and this was intended as a lesson to other members of the business elite, who were also ‘gently’ persuaded to pay more taxes – again in order to pay for the struggle against terrorism. From their side, the oligarchs, being increasingly concerned about their image with the Western partners, wanted to keep as much distance as possible between their business interests and Chechnya41 and so preferred to make financial contributions to the ‘patriotic’ counter-terrorist campaign. Reclaiming political power with remarkable success, President Putin sought to establish that he is in charge of the state machinery, despite (or, perhaps, because of) his lack of experience in leadership of any sort. Indeed, the campaign against terrorism, as well as the war in Chechnya, has from day one become his personal crusade, which makes a striking difference with the way in which Yeltsin sheltered himself from the first Chechen war. Putin certainly had no intention of becoming a ‘one-issue president’, so he has made every effort to broaden his agenda and cover the whole range of foreign and domestic policies. Nevertheless, defeating the Chechen terrorism remains a matter of strong personal commitment for him, as well as of emotional involvement. Exploiting every PR technology available on the market, Putin has been able so far to gloss over the issue of personal responsibility for the lack of success in the Chechen campaign. However, as the terrorist dimension of the Chechen war has intensified since autumn 2002, the risks involved in using it as an instrument in internal politics have escalated, while the lack of leadership that would focus on achieving a meaningful victory becomes more and more apparent. Relying on the special services – perhaps too far President Putin has never been shy about his KGB background, seeing his ‘closeness’ to the special services as a political asset rather than a liability. During his first presidency, he has encouraged the ‘import’ of retired and active personnel from the power structures into the state apparatus to such a degree that sociologists and political commentators have popularized the term ‘militocracy’.42 It may be slightly misleading in the sense that, of all the ‘armed bureaucracies’, it is exactly with the military that Putin feels the least comfortable. He consistently seeks to minimize their political influence and prevent any shadow of a ‘military opposition’ from appearing on the horizon.43 The general trend, however, is unmistakable: the steady growth in the numbers of ‘uniformed bureaucrats’ is inevitably leading to qualitative changes in the nature of the regime. For Putin, with his initially very narrow political base, it was only natural to look upon the special services as the main pool of cadres for his

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 333 undertakings in reshuffling and reinvigorating the state machinery. The war against terrorism became a very useful tool of this policy: the need to coordinate the efforts of all state agencies towards the common goal of countering terrorism was indeed pressing, and many state agencies were required to organize special departments that would channel their activities accordingly. While this was most pronounced at the newly created bureaucratic level of the seven administrative super-regions,44 this requirement has also resulted in a proliferation of second- and third-level ‘special’ positions (deputy minister, head of department) in the ministries. Networking on this level in the central apparatus between former colleagues has created several ‘horizontals of influence’ which are perhaps more efficient than the much-advertised presidential ‘vertical of power’. The special services themselves, while leaking personnel en masse to the state machinery, are certainly able to increase their recruitment and consolidate their own domains, benefiting from massive new funding for the war on terrorism.45 Of all the power structures, the FSB has increased its profile and influence the most, supplying the president with all the necessary ammunition in his recurrent confrontations with the barons and the oligarchs. Carrying the prime responsibility for combating terrorism, the FSB has advanced its long-cherished aspiration to restore direct control over several other special services, which it lost when the KGB was split into half a dozen independent agencies in late 1991. The president eventually obliged and issued a special decree in March 2003, returning the Federal Border Service and most of Federal’noe Agentstvo Pravitel’stvennoi Svyazi (Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, FAPSI) to the control of the FSB.46 Given all the ‘harmony’ between Putin and the special services, their centrality in his presidency involves a serious problem which lies at the very heart of this relationship. A question has been lingering in the stuffy air of the Kremlin corridors from the day of Putin’s arrival: ‘Who is in charge here?’ The root of this problem can be traced to a very particular feature of Putin’s pyramid of power, whereby the ‘armed bureaucracies’ are a key element of its foundation and at the same time the hard core of the executive. Relying on the special services as a political base and using them as a key means, Putin is constantly aware of the risk of becoming overdependent on them.47 The FSB’s outreach in particular has grown into such an allpervasive networking that it is now able not only to advance its own parochial interests but also to influence a much broader strategic agenda. Putin’s presidency is thus at risk of being hijacked by the FSB-led cabal of special services and power structures, and – as ever lacking information and genuine insight into the workings of the Russian state – we can only speculate as to how far he is aware of this. It is possible to argue that, being seriously committed to the idea of a Russia resurgent through accelerated economic growth, Putin is gradually recognizing that the FSB has no competence in a market economy and in fact is working against

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economic modernization. While encouraging the special services to penetrate into business empires in order to keep maverick oligarchs in check, he is becoming increasingly frustrated with the results of their economic activity. Certain signs of his dissatisfaction were discernible in the underthe-carpet fights over reforming the leadership of Gazprom and in the cutthroat intrigues around the privatization of the oil company Slavneft,48 but the most obvious case so far is the prosecution’s ‘surprise attack’ against the leadership of the oil giant Yukos in July 2003. Putin did express a certain irritation over Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s too independent style, but the special services seized on this as an opportunity to achieve more than just cutting the owner of Yukos down to size. In this case the FSB ‘cabal’ sought to establish the precedence of the state’s interests (in their own interpretation) over any business rationale or market incentive, but this redefining of the rules of the game went way beyond, if not against, Putin’s economic agenda.49 ‘Conceptualizing’ the Yukos affair goes beyond the scope of this analysis,50 but what is relevant here is the increasingly obvious need for Putin to create a counterbalance to the sheer weight of the special services in his pyramid of power. The war against terrorism, while so useful for the power structures in developing their profiles, can somewhat paradoxically serve this function as well. It is the FSB that carries the main responsibility for combating the terrorist networks, as well as for ‘stabilizing’ Chechnya, so that every new attack inevitably, even if implicitly, signifies its failure. By keeping this all-powerful organization engaged in performing an impossible task, Putin acquires a lever for controlling it, even without explicitly playing a ‘blame game’ and performing a ritual punishment of sacking after each new suicide bombing.51 The Kremlin can effectively put pressure on the special services and restrain their ambitions to define Russia’s strategic agenda as long as they are unable to break the escalation trend in the terrorist activities – a trend which is driven by the Kremlin’s firmly set course on winning the Chechen war. Marching to the ‘war against terrorism’ drum One remarkable feature of Putin’s regime, which distinguishes it sharply from the Yeltsin era, is the sustained and, as some would argue, unnaturally high popularity of the leader. It is beside the point here whether and to what degree the ‘70s’ in Putin’s approval ratings could be the result of doctoring of the polls or of manipulation of the media by the Kremlin spin-doctors. What matters for this analysis is that the war against terrorism contributes significantly to shaping the phenomenon of Putin’s broad support in Russian society. This contribution has evolved far from the emotional reaction to Putin’s firm promise to punish (literally, ‘flush down the toilet’) those responsible for the bombings in Moscow in September 1999, but it has proved to be durable and usable.

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 335 Much evidence supports the proposition that Putin pays a great deal of attention to his approval ratings,52 perhaps perceiving public support not only as a guarantee of his re-election but also as an alternative political base that reduces, even if implicitly, his dependence on the power structures.53 The widespread political apathy and indifference increase the importance of PR ‘technologies’ that can keep this base mobilized and engaged with the leader, and the war against terrorism is definitely one of the key instruments of this kind. In this sense there is a significant difference between the war in Chechnya as a local secessionist conflict that tends to lose public attention and generate war-weariness, and the counter-terrorist campaign which by its very nature affects most of Russia’s population. This campaign features a peculiar combination of real attacks and countermeasures, and perceptions of risks and rumours about clandestine operations that are actively cultivated by the official propaganda. This ‘virtual’ war is perhaps more important for Putin than the real one, despite the known media fact that ‘bad news’ about suicide explosions resonates in public opinion infinitely more strongly than the ‘good news’ about attacks that have been prevented and the capture of terrorists. It is precisely the fears that offer the best channel to the desired societal mobilization around his presidency, and in order to sustain this effect the attacks have to escalate in frequency and brutality. To some Western observers, Russians’ psychological reaction to the permanent risk of terrorism might appear strange: no one expects the authorities to do much for the safety of the general public, but the extraordinary measures taken to protect the leadership are seen to be perfectly natural.54 There is indeed something Orwellian in the grim acceptance by the Muscovites of every new terrorist bomb that comes with the certainty of a rocket falling on the London of 1984. Nevertheless, the ‘unpatriotic’ ideas that the sufferings caused by the war are the main source of terrorism keep creeping in, corroding the monolith of anti-terrorist mobilization.55 That is a challenge which Putin’s courtiers, from the spymasters to the PR ‘technologists’, are determined to suppress, and here they spare no effort. Much has been said on the issue of the deteriorating freedom of the press under the Putin’s regime, which is indeed a crucial litmus test that reveals its ‘diminishing democracy’ trajectory.56 What is essential to emphasize here is that the information warfare against terrorism, conducted with the utmost vigour, is an important element of this trend. Every media outlet that has expressed reservations about the conduct of operations in Chechnya or doubt about the wisdom of sustaining the war effort has been put on notice that such dissent contradicts the state policy of combating terrorism; those who have not introduced self-censorship have been punished or simply shut down. This opens the field wide for the official propaganda offensive, which employs the whole range of tools from dehumanizing terrorists, to uncovering international Islamic conspiracies, to encouraging

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‘vigilance’ in the particular form of informing the FSB about every suspicious character. Control over the media certainly serves the much wider political purposes of Putin’s regime than just counter-terrorism, but it is exactly this campaign that serves as a ‘rightful’ instrument for tightening that control. The problem with the propaganda campaign is that the more successful it is, the more rigid the goals in the war against terrorism become, thus reducing further any space for compromise solutions. This self-made trap is not so very dissimilar from the one familiar from Soviet times, when permanent mobilization against the ‘aggressive NATO’ resulted in a huge investment of resources in useless assets.

Conclusions Security experts may argue about how victory in the war against terrorism is to be defined (and those of a critical mind may maintain that the concept itself is logically flawed), but for Putin’s administration this is simply a non-issue. This war is fundamentally not about victory at all: it is about its many benefits for the regime that Putin is presiding over. This feature is significantly different from the well-known phenomenon of the ‘dependence of warriors on war’;57 it fits more into the Clausewitz paradigm enriched with the addition of modern features of networking and virtual reality. It is indeed ‘nothing but a continuation of politics by other means’, and it is not just the tactical goals of consolidating this hybrid regime that are advanced by military means; also advanced are the wider external aims that are perceived as Russia’s strategic interests. What makes possible this successful instrumentalization of a violent struggle – which, in principle, testifies to the vast potential for internal instability in the ‘normalized’ Russia – is the unusual fluidity of the system of political coordinates. Across the space of the former USSR this lack of reliable points of reference is a result of the catastrophe of the collapse of a civilization; globally it is a feature of the unipolar world order which is emerging as both inevitable and impossible, undeniable and unacceptable. This uncomfortable uncertainty of the political environment generates the demand for clear-cut agendas, and the ‘war against terrorism’ is the best available surrogate. In Russia, the double disorientation – internal (resulting from the uncertainty of the post-Soviet transition) and external (caused by the lack of understanding of the shifting patterns of globalization) – makes counterterrorism into a multifunctional tool. It provides for a sufficient mobilization of the dysfunctional society around the regime and secures a better place in the US-led effort to establish a semblance of order in the unruly world. It does involve high risks, but so far not on the level that would convince the Kremlin that the tool may slip out of control. Counter-terrorism has become a key part of Putin’s ideology of ‘statism’, a crucial balancer in his pyramid of power and even a defining feature in his nascent personality cult.

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Notes 1 Anders Åslund takes a positive perspective in ‘Russia resurgent’, New York Times, 28 May 2003; while Grigorii Yavlinskii, a leading liberal and founder of the Yabloko political party, expresses great concern in ‘Demodernizatsiia’ [Demodernization], Moskovskie novosti, 43, 7 November 2002. A comprehensive middle-of-the-road scenario can be found in Vyacheslav Nikonov, ‘Russia 2013: A non-Western West’, Russia in Global Affairs, August 2003. 2 On Putin’s bureaucratic mindset, see Dale Herspring, ‘Who is Vladimir Putin?’, Russia and Eurasia Review (Jamestown Foundation), 1(11), 5 November 2002 (http://www.jamestown.org/publications_view.php?publication_id⫽2). The KGB was the Committee on State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti). 3 See Stephen Holmes, ‘Simulation of power in Putin’s Russia’, in Andrew C. Kuchins (ed.), Russia After the Fall, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002, pp. 79–89. 4 For an elaborate and insightful analysis see Lilia Shevtsova, ‘Power and leadership in Putin’s Russia’, in Andrew C. Kuchins (ed.), Russia After the Fall, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002, pp. 62–77. 5 On Putin’s reluctance to consider any significant changes to this mechanism, where ‘some economically active members possess American currency and others administrative currency, and these two groups engage in hectic exchange’, see Kirill Rogov, ‘Prezident i sistema’ [The president and the system], GazetaRu, 20 June 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/2003/06/ a_36479). 6 Daniel Treisman acknowledges two new features – sustained economic growth and Putin’s high popularity – but insists that ‘Putin’s Russia, although it sports a glossy new coat of paint, remains Yeltsin’s Russia underneath’. See ‘Russia renewed?’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002, pp. 58–72, esp. p. 59. 7 The latter promise, spelled out in Putin’s May 2003 address to the parliament, has become a popular joke since in Russian the abbreviation for GDP is VVP – which also happens to be the president’s initials. 8 One noteworthy recent sample in the cottage industry of political monitoring of this nomenklatura tug-of-war in Moscow is Gleb Pavlovskii, ‘Brat-3’ [Brother 3], Ekspert, August 2003. For a more systematic analysis see Aleksei Zudin, ‘Putin: Itogi pervogo sroka’ [Putin: Results of the first term], Moscow: Centre of Political Technologies, 2003 (http://www.politcom.ru/2003/prognoz6.php). 9 This point is elaborated in Iver Neumann’s chapter in this volume. 10 On Putin’s portraying Russia as a ‘bulwark’ protecting Europe against terrorism, see Georgii Derluguyan, ‘What happens when Russia is the West’s ally?’, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 225, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2001 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm). 11 For a positive perspective on this see Robert Legvold, ‘All the way: Crafting a US–Russia alliance’, The National Interest, Winter 2003, pp. 21–31. 12 For an insightful and condensed analysis see Dmitri Trenin, Russia Within a Greater Europe, Briefing Paper 10, Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, October 2002. 13 Putin’s irritation became clear at a press conference in Brussels when he promised a French journalist a ‘clean’ castration in Moscow, prompting a popular television author to comment that no one could hide his intelligentnost (inner culture) forever. See Anatolii Kostiukov, ‘Defekt rechi: Pochemu Prezident govorit lishnee’ [Speech impediment: Why the president says too much], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 14 November 2002.

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14 For a more elaborate analysis of this manoeuvring, see Pavel Baev, ‘Putin’s foreign policy agenda: Post-Soviet challenges to the European orientation’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, ACTA B23, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, pp. 9–22. 15 The French media were quite vociferous on the Chechnya issue on the eve of the visit but altered the focus towards opposing the US policy from the day after. See, for instance, the three-page compendium ‘Tchétchénie: choses vues sur le guerre de Poutine’ [Chechnya: glimpses of Putin’s war], Le Monde, 10 February 2003. 16 See, for instance, Vitalii Tretiakov, ‘Eto pokhorony Ameriki’ [It’s America’s funeral], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 March 2003. 17 For an overview of debates in the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, see ‘The Iraq crisis and the strategy for Russia: 2004’, Russia in Global Affairs, April/ June 2003 (www.globalaffairs.ru/live/article.asp?rubric_id⫽1303&id⫽2621#); for an overview of a round table discussion on Putin and Bush’s counter-terrorist coalition see ‘Druzhbys Vashingtonom Moskve ne izbezhat’’ [Moscow cannot avoid friendship with Washington], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 29 May 2003. 18 At the end of Putin’s first presidency the Kremlin decision-making mechanism remains as closeted and minuscule as it was when the president made his first steps on the international arena. See Peter Rutland, ‘Putin’s levitation act’, Russia and Eurasia Review (Jamestown Foundation), 1(1), 4 June 2002 (http://www.jamestown.org/publications_view.php?publication_id⫽2). 19 In similar vein, the author’s discussions in the Dutch Foreign Ministry confirm that Russia has contributed next to nothing in developing the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Strategy to Address Threats to Security and Stability in the twenty-first Century, which in fact was its own initiative. 20 Typical in this respect was his visit to London in June 2003; see Jonathan Steel, ‘Putin sweeps the Chechen war under his red carpet’, the Guardian, 18 June 2003. 21 This early shift of focus is examined in more detail in Pavel Baev, ‘Russia’s policies in the Southern Caucasus and the Caspian area’, European Security, Summer 2001, pp. 95–110. 22 Ironically, despite those threats delivered in autumn 2000, it was Norwegian, not Russian, fighter aircraft that performed combat missions against surviving Taliban groups in early 2003. See Gunnar Johnsen, ‘To historiske Norske bomber’ [Two historic Norwegian bombs], Aftenposten, 30 January 2003. 23 Lena Jonson provides a theoretical examination of this policy in her chapter in this volume, while Mette Skak in her contribution even argues that Russia’s influence has grown rather than diminished as a result of this manoeuvring. 24 See, for instance, Mikhail Khodarenok, ‘Nachalo operatsii ili predvestnik mirovogo kataklizma?’ [The start of the operation or a portent of a world cataclysm?], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 12 October 2001; and Leonid Ivashov, ‘Vpolzanie v miatezhevoinu’ [Creeping into a war–mutiny], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 13 November 2002. 25 For an urgent argument against this trend, see Rajan Menon, ‘The new Great Game in Central Asia’, Survival, Summer 2003, pp. 187–204. 26 See Mikhail Khodarenok, ‘Amerikanskaia Chechnya’ [An American Chechnya], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 6 December 2002. 27 See Sergei Sokut, ‘Grozit’ terroristam budem iz Bishkeka’ [We will deter terrorists from Bishkek], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 6 December 2002. 28 For an account of the manoeuvres, see Sergei Sokut, ‘Voennye vozvrashchaiutsia na Kaspii’ [The military return to the Caspian], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 18 August 2002; on the reaction in the region, see Roger McDer-

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mott with Alex Vatanka and Pavel Baev, ‘Central Asian states: Split loyalties’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 38(16), 2002, pp. 82–90. For a rare critical voice, see Grigorii Yavlinskii, ‘This could prove a costly escapade’, Moscow Times, 23 September 2002. The present author has looked into the background of this high-stakes political poker game: see Pavel Baev, ‘Russia’s virtual war against Georgia: Risks of a PR offensive’, PONARS Policy Memo. 251, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), December 2002 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/ policymemos/pm_index.htm). See also the chapter by Bertil Nygren in this volume. On Putin’s orders, the General Staff did prepare some plans for pursuing the terrorists, but, apart from air strikes of questionable precision, few options were found to be feasible. See Aleksandr Golts, ‘Poslednii dovod’ [The last argument], Ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal, 17 September 2002 (http://www.ej.ru/ 036/tema/polityear/01); and Andrei Savitskii, ‘Kovrovye bombardirovki Gruzii’ [Carpet bombing of Georgia], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 24 September 2002. China faces a serious secessionist/terrorist challenge in Xinjiang, but its interests in making counter-terrorism the top priority issue for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, of which the other members are Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) go much further. See Pan Guang, ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the context of the international antiterrorist campaign’, Central Asia and the Caucasus, 3(21), 2003, pp. 48–54; and Roger McDermott, ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organization takes significant step towards viability’, EurasiaNet, 9 May 2003. For a more detailed analysis of this weakness, see Pavel Baev, ‘The impact of “small wars” on the trajectory of the Russian military’, in Yuri Fedorov and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russian Military Reform and Russia’s New Security Environment, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2003. For a detailed risk assessment, see Olga Oliker and Thomas S. Szayna (eds), Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2003. A case for security cooperation between Russia and the USA is developed in Dmitri Trenin, ‘Southern Watch: Russia’s policy in Central Asia’, Journal of International Affairs, Spring 2003, pp. 119–31. A good evaluation of these policies by the end of Putin’s first year in power can be found in Yurii Levada, ‘Vesna 2001: Dela i simvoly’ [Spring 2001: Deeds and symbols], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 16 May 2001. For a collection of expert assessments of the results of the reorganization of Russia’s political space, see Graeme P. Herd and Anne Aldis (eds), Russian Regions and Regionalism, London: Routledge-Curzon, 2003. OMON stands for Otriad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniia (Special Purpose Militia Unit); originally created as riot control units, they carry the prime responsibility for manning the infamous blockposty (checkpoints) in Chechnya. SOBR stands for Spetsialnyi Otriad Bystrogo Reagirovaniia (Special Rapid Reaction Unit); their main purpose is the fight against organized crime, but in Chechnya they have proved their usefulness in various special operations. For a first-hand account see Anatol Lieven’s epic Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 50–5. See Nikolai Petrov, ‘Power ministries and federal reform in Russia’, PONARS Policy Memo. 282, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), December 2002 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm). See A. M. Lavrov, The Federal Budget and the Regions: Structure of Financial Flows, Moscow: EastWest Institute, 2001.

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40 Characteristically, Berezovsky has also tried to play the counter-terrorist trump card against Putin, accusing him of masterminding the September 1999 bombings in Moscow and mishandling the Chechen war, but with little success. For an insightful discussion see, David Satter, Darkness at Dawn, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. 41 This is in clear contrast to the situation during the first Chechen war, when several major banks were deeply involved in ‘processing’ the allocations from the federal budget for rebuilding the war zone. According to Alexei Arbatov, as much as US$1 billion disappeared without trace; see his ‘Dengi mogut ischeznut’ v “chernoi dyre” ’ [Money could disappear into the ‘black hole’], Izvestiia, 30 March 2001. 42 One sound sociological analysis of this phenomenon is Olga Kryshtanovskaya, ‘Putin’s regime: A liberal militocracy?’, Pro et Contra, 7, Autumn 2002. For an incisive political comment, see Adrian Karatnycky, ‘Jobs for the boys: Putin’s new militocracy’, Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2003. 43 The present author examined these uneasy relations in Pavel Baev, ‘Putin’s court: How the military fit in’, PONARS Policy Memo. 153, Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, December 2000; and ‘President Putin and his generals: Bureaucratic control and war-fighting culture’, PONARS Policy Memo. 205, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), November 2001 (both available at http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/ policymemos/pm_index.htm). 44 Kryshtanovskaya, ‘Putin’s regime: A liberal militocracy?’; and Petrov, ‘Power ministries and federal reform in Russia’. Both agree that the overpopulation of this bureaucratic level with special services personnel reflects the personal priorities of the seven presidential ‘envoys’, so that the counter-terrorism tasks are more of a ‘cover’ than the real reason for employing these trusted cadres. 45 Mikhail Deliagin, a respected economist who resigned from a government position in August 2003, argued that the military/law enforcement share of the 2004 budget would increase from 29.9 per cent (in 2003) to 32.4 per cent, and that this sustained reorientation of government spending went against the emphasis on economic growth set by the president himself. See Mikhail Deliagin, ‘Krizis nastupit mezhdu oseniu 2005 i oseniu 2008’ [Crisis will strike between autumn 2005 and autumn 2008], Moskovskii komsomolets, 17 September 2003. 46 In the official statement, Putin emphasized the need to increase efficiency and improve coordination in the fight against terrorism; for an incisive comment on this, as well as for the text of the statement, see Vitalii Portnikov, ‘Arkhitektor perestroiki’ [The architect of perestroika], GraniRu, 11 March 2003 (http://www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/President/m.25501.html). See also Mark Galeotti, ‘Putin reintroduces centralised intelligence’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, May 2003, pp. 52–3. 47 For a more developed analysis of this reliance–dependency interplay, see Pavel Baev, ‘Examining the “terrorism–war” dichotomy in the Russia–Chechnya case’, Contemporary Security Policy, 24(2), August 2003, pp. 29–46. 48 On the dismal performance of the FSB and other special services in company management, see Yulia Latynina, ‘A vodka shot in the arm of power vertical’, Moscow Times, 7 August 2002. 49 Gleb Pavlovskii, an insightful political thinker, has argued that it would be wrong to perceive this operation as an ‘isolated action of a marginal political group, even if at the top of state apparatus’; instead he points to the possibility of a ‘property redistribution coup’. See Aleksandr Kornilov, ‘Delo ne v Yukose’ [It is not about Yukos], GazetaRu, 10 July 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/ 2003/07/10/delonevyukose). 50 For an overview of the ‘conspiracy scenarios’, see Vitalii Tretiakov, ‘Intsident

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Yukosa’ [The Yukos incident], Mirovaia energeticheskaia politika, July 2003 (http://www.wep.ru). For that matter, no one in the special services leadership was punished after the Nord-Ost terrorist attack in October 2002, despite the public outcry about the security lapses that had made it possible for the 50-strong terrorist unit to deploy in Moscow. This is quite possibly the main reason behind the decision to ‘reorganize’ VTsIOM, the most respected of the public opinion services, in order to make it more controllable. See Yurii Levada, ‘Rech’ idet o razgrome VTsIOMa’ [The issue is the destruction of VTsIOM], GazetaRu, 5 August 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/expert/45596). VTsIOM is the Vserossiiskii Tsentr po izucheniiu obshchestvennogo mneniia (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Institute). It is Gleb Pavlovskii who argues most consistently that the Russians, who have turned into ‘Putin’s people’, should shed their habitual political apathy in order not to ‘leave Putin alone with the people whom they do not trust’. See Gleb Pavlovskii, ‘Vne konteksta’ [Out of context], Russkii zhurnal, 31 December 2002 (http://www.russ.ru/politics/20021231). As one observer at the anniversary festivities in St Petersburg pointed out: ‘The sudden unannounced appearance of armed soldiers and cops and armoured vehicles painted desert camouflage at a civic celebration caused no real surprise.’ See Ian Frazier, ‘Invented city’, The New Yorker, 28 July 2003, p. 47. See, for instance, a concise comment which argues that widespread rape in Chechnya is a simple explanation for the shocking number of young female suicide bombers. Valerii Paniushkin, ‘Dorozhe zhizni’ [Dearer than life], GazetaRu, 10 July 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/2003/07/10/dorozezizni). See also Steven Lee Myers, ‘Young, female and carrying a bomb’, International Herald Tribune, 8 August 2003. Thus Michael McFaul argues: ‘Under Putin, the Russia state has acted vigorously to silence media critics.’ See Michael McFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolutions, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 324. See also his article ‘US ignores Putin’s assault on rights’, Los Angeles Times, 2 February 2003. For a recent penetrating examination of this phenomenon, see Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, New York: Public Affairs, Perseus, 2002.

Bibliography Books and journals Baev, Pavel, ‘Russia’s policies in the Southern Caucasus and the Caspian area’, European Security, Summer 2001, pp. 95–110. ——, ‘Putin’s foreign policy agenda: Post-Soviet challenges to the European orientation’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, ACTA B23, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, pp. 9–22. ——, ‘The impact of “small wars” on the trajectory of the Russian military’, in Yuri Fedorov and Bertil Nygren (eds), Russian Military Reform and Russia’s New Security Environment, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2003. ——, ‘Examining the “terrorism–war” dichotomy in the Russia–Chechnya case’, Contemporary Security Policy, 24(2), August 2003, pp. 29–46.

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Frazier, Ian, ‘Invented city’, The New Yorker, 28 July 2003, pp. 37–47. Galeotti, Mark, ‘Putin reintroduces centralised intelligence’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, May 2003. Hedges, Chris, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, New York: Public Affairs, Perseus, 2002. Herd, Graeme P. and Anne Aldis (eds), Russian Regions and Regionalism, London: Routledge-Curzon, 2003. Holmes, Stephen, ‘Simulation of power in Putin’s Russia’, in Andrew C. Kuchins (ed.), Russia After the Fall, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002. Kryshtanovskaya, Olga, ‘Putin’s regime: A liberal militocracy?’, Pro et Contra, 7, Autumn 2002. Lavrov, A. M., The Federal Budget and the Regions: Structure of Financial Flows, Moscow: EastWest Institute, 2001. Legvold, Robert, ‘All the way: Crafting a US–Russia alliance’, The National Interest, Winter 2003, pp. 21–31. Lieven, Anatol, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. McDermott, Roger, with Alex Vatanka and Pavel Baev, ‘Central Asian states: Split loyalties’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 38(16), 2002, pp. 82–90. McFaul, Michael, Russia’s Unfinished Revolutions, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001. Menon, Rajan, ‘The new Great Game in Central Asia’, Survival, Summer 2003, pp. 187–204. Nikonov, Vyacheslav, ‘Russia 2013: A non-Western West’, Russia in Global Affairs, August 2003. Oliker, Olga and Thomas S. Szayna (eds), Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2003. Pan Guang, ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the context of the international anti-terrorist campaign’, Central Asia and the Caucasus, 3(21), 2003, pp. 48–54. Satter, David, Darkness at Dawn, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. Shevtsova, Lilia, ‘Power and leadership in Putin’s Russia’, in Andrew C. Kuchins (ed.), Russia After the Fall, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002. Treisman, Daniel, ‘Russia renewed?’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002, pp. 58–72. Trenin, Dmitri, Russia Within a Greater Europe, Briefing Paper 10, Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, October 2002. ——, ‘Southern Watch: Russia’s policy in Central Asia’, Journal of International Affairs, Spring 2003, pp. 119–31.

Media and Internet Arbatov, Alexei, ‘Dengi mogut ischeznut’ v “chernoi dyre” ’ [Money could disappear into the ‘black hole’], Izvestiia, 30 March 2001. Åslund, Anders, ‘Russia resurgent’, New York Times, 28 May 2003. Baev, Pavel, ‘Putin’s court: How the military fit in’, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) Policy Memo. 153, Washington, DC: Council on

Counter-terrorism in Putin’s regime 343 Foreign Relations, December 2000 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm). ——, ‘President Putin and his generals: Bureaucratic control and war-fighting culture’, PONARS Policy Memo. 205, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), November 2001 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm). ——, ‘Russia’s virtual war against Georgia: Risks of a PR offensive’, PONARS Policy Memo. 251, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), December 2002 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_index.htm). Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, ‘The Iraq crisis and the strategy for Russia: 2004’, Russia in Global Affairs, April/June 2003 (http://www.globalaffairs.ru/live/article.asp?rubric_id⫽1303&id⫽2621#). Deliagin, Mikhail, ‘Krizis nastupit mezhdu oseniu 2005 i oseniu 2008’ [Crisis will strike between autumn 2005 and autumn 2008], Moskovskii komsomolets, 17 September 2003. Derluguyan, Georgi, ‘What happens when Russia is the West’s ally?’, PONARS Policy Memo. 225, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2001 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/ pm_index.htm). ‘Druzhbys Vashingtonom Moskve ne izbezhat’’ [Moscow cannot avoid friendship with Washington], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 29 May 2003. Golts, Aleksandr, ‘Poslednii dovod’ [The last argument], Ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal, 17 September 2002 (http://www.ej.ru/036/tema/polityear/01). Herspring, Dale, ‘Who is Vladimir Putin?’, Russia and Eurasia Review (Jamestown Foundation), 1(11), 5 November 2002 (http://www.jamestown.org/publications_ view.php?publication_id⫽2). Ivashov, Leonid, ‘Vpolzanie v miatezhevoinu’ [Creeping into a war–mutiny], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 13 November 2002. Johnsen, Gunnar, ‘To historiske Norske bomber’ [Two historic Norwegian bombs], Aftenposten, 30 January 2003. Karatnycky, Adrian, ‘Jobs for the boys: Putin’s new militocracy’, Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2003. Khodarenok, Mikhail, ‘Nachalo operatsii ili predvestnik mirovogo kataklizma?’ [The start of the operation or a portent of a world cataclysm?], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 12 October 2001. ——, ‘Amerikanskaia Chechnya’ [An American Chechnya], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 6 December 2002. Kornilov, Aleksandr, ‘Delo ne v Yukose’ [It is not about Yukos], GazetaRu, 10 July 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/2003/07/10/delonevyukose). Kostiukov, Anatolii, ‘Defekt rechi: Pochemu Prezident govorit lishnee’ [Speech impediment: Why the president says too much], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 14 November 2002. Latynina, Yulia, ‘A vodka shot in the arm of power vertical’, Moscow Times, 7 August 2002. Levada, Yurii, ‘Vesna 2001: Dela i simvoly’ [Spring 2001: Deeds and symbols], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 16 May 2001. ——, ‘Rech’ idet o razgrome VTsIOMa’ [The issue is the destruction of VTsIOM], GazetaRu, 5 August 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/expert/45596).

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McDermott, Roger, ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organization takes significant step towards viability’, EurasiaNet, 9 May 2003. McFaul, Michael, ‘US ignores Putin’s assault on rights’, Los Angeles Times, 2 February 2003. Myers, Steven Lee, ‘Young, female and carrying a bomb’, International Herald Tribune, 8 August 2003. Paniushkin, Valerii, ‘Dorozhe zhizni’ [Dearer than life], GazetaRu, 10 July 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/2003/07/10/dorozezizni). Pavlovskii, Gleb, ‘Vne konteksta’ [Out of context], Russkii zhurnal, 31 December 2002 (http://www.russ.ru/politics/20021231). ——, ‘Brat-3’ [Brother 3], Ekspert, August 2003. Petrov, Nikolai, ‘Power ministries and federal reform in Russia’, PONARS Policy Memo. 282, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), December 2002 (http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm_ index.htm). Portnikov, Vitalii, ‘Arkhitektor perestroiki’ [The architect of perestroika], GraniRu, 11 March 2003 (http://www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/President/m.25501. html). Rogov, Kirill, ‘Prezident i sistema’ [The president and the system], GazetaRu, 20 June 2003 (http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/2003/06/a_36479). Rutland, Peter, ‘Putin’s levitation act’, Russia and Eurasia Review (Jamestown Foundation), 1(1), 4 June 2002 (http://www.jamestown.org/publications_view. php?publication_id⫽2). Savitskii, Andrei, ‘Kovrovye bombardirovki Gruzii’ [Carpet bombing of Georgia], Nezavisimaia gazeta, 24 September 2002. Sokut, Sergei, ‘Voennye vozvrashchaiutsia na Kaspii’ [The military return to the Caspian], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 18 August 2002. ——, ‘Grozit’ terroristam budem iz Bishkeka’ [We will deter terrorists from Bishkek], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 6 December 2002. Steel, Jonathan, ‘Putin sweeps the Chechen war under his red carpet’, The Guardian, 18 June 2003. ‘Tchétchénie: choses vues sur le guerre de Poutine’ [Chechnya: glimpses of Putin’s war], Le Monde, 10 February 2003. Tretiakov, Vitalii, ‘Eto pokhorony Ameriki’ [It’s America’s funeral], Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 March 2003. ——, ‘Intsident Yukosa’ [The Yukos incident], Mirovaia energeticheskaia politika, July 2003 (http://www.wep.ru). Yavlinskii, Grigorii, ‘This could prove a costly escapade’, Moscow Times, 23 September 2002. ——, ‘Demodernizatsiia’ [Demodernization], Moskovskie novosti, 43 (7 November 2002). Zudin, Aleksei, ‘Putin: Itogi pervogo sroka’ [Putin: Results of the first term], Moscow: Centre of Political Technologies, 2003 (http://www.politcom.ru/2003/ prognoz6.php).

Conclusions and perspectives

A pragmatic search for a special role in world politics Several of the preceding chapters show clearly that on the international arena President Vladimir Putin behaves as a pragmatist, adapting to Russia’s economic decline in the 1990s and seeking compromises with the West. They point out that Russia has boosted its international standing by using the opportunities offered. The events of 11 September 2001 served to form a common front with the United States against international terrorism, which led to the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and contributed to the creation of the NATO–Russia Council. In the process, Russia even accepted the presence of US military bases in Central Asia, the US missile defence and the inclusion of the Baltic states in NATO. As Ingmar Oldberg’s chapter shows, Putin also sought economic integration with the European Union and accepted a compromise on transit to Kaliningrad. On this basis, Mette Skak characterizes Putin’s foreign policy as liberal ‘bandwagoning’ with the West, and Jakub Godzimirski sees it as one which transcends the four previous schools of thought in Russian politics – the realists, the geo-economists, the Eurasianists and the Atlanticists. Similarly, in an anthology which covers some of the same ground as this one, the British political scientist Alex Pravda concludes that, while socalled realists in the Russian establishment, and especially the military, give priority to the endeavour for (great) power, and liberals, mainly in the business community, prefer economic development in cooperation with the West and accept a second-rank status for Russia, Putin is a modern realist who combines these goals.1 Richard Sakwa, another English politologist, sees Putin as a new realist seeking a third way between surrender to and rejection of the West. Realizing that Russian is too big and too different to join the West, Putin wants to create a new modern ‘East’, based on rational consensus, anti-universalism and multilateralism, which, according to Sakwa, need not take an anti-Western form.2 An expression of this is the Russian concept of multipolarity, which is now meant to allow both cooperation and conflict with the West. Russia therefore cherishes its role as one of the five permanent members of the

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United Nations Security Council and a member of the Group of Eight leading industrial countries (the G8). As formulated by Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, Russia has to ‘play the whole field, not only some of its squares, if it wants to remain a world power’.3 Oldberg’s chapter, for example, illustrates how Russia engaged in strategic partnership with China and India and used the Iraq war in the spring of 2003 to improve relations with France, Germany and the Muslim states, thus counteracting US hegemony. In her analysis of the concessions Russia has made concerning NATO bases in Central Asia and the Iraq war, Lena Jonson concludes that they are best explained as the results of structural weakness and as tactical means employed in order to make a comeback later. At the same time some of the authors show that Russia under Putin still aspires to a special role, ahead of the other great powers and second only to the United States, by virtue of its vast territory, which makes it the biggest state in both Europe and Asia, its rich natural resources and its huge nuclear arsenal. Iver Neumann elucidates how the quest for recognition as a major power in the international community is based on Russian history and tradition. Likewise, the Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky has stressed Russia’s historical legacy and consciousness, while noting the reintroduction of imperial as well as Soviet symbols and language, which he sees as part and parcel of an attempt to refurbish the national identity.4 Sometimes the ambition is couched in terms of ‘mission’ and ‘right’.5 Another conclusion is that, even if economics has gained more weight in Russian policy, geopolitical thinking and concern for military power still play an inordinate role, especially as compared with the situation in Western democracies. Thus, Neumann writes about too much ‘securitization’ of foreign policy issues.

Striving to maintain regional hegemony Russia’s great-power ambitions and emphasis on hard security are especially obvious on the regional level; that is, in relation to its neighbours in the ex-Soviet space. Russia very reluctantly accepted the NATO decision to admit the Baltic states, and continues to apply strong political and economic pressure on Latvia. Confirming the conclusions in this book, the Oxford professor Neil MacFarlane explains the priority Russia is currently giving to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by that fact that the region is unstable, with serious problems threatening to spill over to Russia. The states are to various degrees weak and susceptible to Russian pressure, but they also offer potential profits, while Western involvement is relatively small.6 Particularly here, Russians tend to see a special historical mission or right for themselves. Putin’s adviser Margelov claims that Russia is probably the most democratic country in the post-Soviet space and therefore has ‘every right to seek international support in its attempts

Conclusions and perspectives 347 7

to settle’ conflicts there. In a similar vein, Anatolii Chubais, leader of one of the Russian liberal parties, wants to see Russia as a liberal empire with democracy and private ownership, which as the strongest state in the CIS has a mission to take the lead. This should be done by supporting Russian minorities and Russian business, as was done in the Georgian energy sector, without violating international laws and territorial integrity as the USA does, Chubais has said.8 In his chapter on Russian policy towards the Baltic Sea region, Vilhelm Konnander thus illustrates Russia’s inability to abandon the paradigm of power politics or special status, and the way in which the country for this reason is facing difficulties in participating in Baltic and, consequently, European integration. Oldberg in his chapter argues that Russia is trying to reinforce its former influence in the area of the former Soviet Union by all available means – for instance, by forming regional organizations on Western models. While the Russian military bases in Vietnam and Cuba are being scrapped, new ones are being established in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. Jakob Hedenskog makes clear that Russia has effectively used the Russian minority and the existence of the Russian military base in Moldova to increase control over this weak state, and has used Ukraine’s energy dependence and internal splits to boost its influence in this most important neighbour. Bertil Nygren points out that after 11 September Russia came very close to intervening in Georgia, probably its most fragile neighbour, where it supports three breakaway regions. The toppling of President Eduard Shevardnadze by the Western-oriented opposition in November 2003 led to more Russian pressure, and the situation is likely to remain unstable. However, the chapters in this book also indicate that the involvement in the CIS is straining Russia’s resources, which could be better used either at home or in trade with the West. Further, the authoritarian CIS leaders – even the most pro-Russian one in Belarus – often resist Russian influence or turn to the West for support. When Russia took certain small steps to take control over the Kerch Strait in the autumn of 2003, this led to a strong Ukrainian reaction. In response to Russian pressure Georgia turned to and received support for its independence from the United States, partly under the cover of fighting terrorism. In 1999, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) obliged Russia to undertake to leave its military bases in Moldova and Georgia, and until that happened NATO states also refused to ratify the Agreement on Adaptation of the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. Unfortunately, Russia has not yielded, and the OSCE (where Russia has a veto) and some NATO states have seemed bent on compromise.9

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A widening perception of internal threats This book shows not only that Russian security policy interacts with external factors but also that it is linked to domestic actors and their perception of threats and needs both at home and abroad. According to Mette Skak, while Russia on the foreign level may be liberal and pro-US, on the domestic level the dominating mindset is illiberal, anti-US and neoimperialist. Strong statements against another state at home tend to be softened vis-à-vis foreign listeners, and vice versa. The leadership often refers to pressure on the home front as a means to buttress demands on the international level. All political groupings have climbed on to the ‘patriotic bandwagon’, and even liberals openly profess to be neo-imperialists, as exemplified by Chubais.10 All analysts agree that the presidency is the strongest power in Russia both according to the constitution and in practice, especially concerning security issues. Coming from the Federal Security Service (the Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, FSB) himself, Putin has widened its powers and recruited mainly FSB officers to leading positions in the state. These people tend to be illiberal, anti-Western and mainly concerned with hard security. However – as Pavel Baev points out in this book – even though Putin needed the FSB as a power base at the beginning, there is a risk that its people will become too dominant and corrupted by power. Yet it is evident from several chapters that Putin has adapted both foreign and domestic policy to other interests and needs, thereby accepting a wider concept of security. Lena Jonson concludes, for instance, that, thanks to his supreme power, Putin was able to decide to support the US anti-terrorist coalition and accept NATO bases in Central Asia against the opinion of the power ministries. At home, Putin has acted to speed up the military reform and adapt the military sector to the available economic resources, the reduced threat from NATO and new threats in the south. However, as Isabelle Facon explains, the sector is still in bad shape and many military leaders continue to resist reform and to criticize NATO. A new programme document from the Defence Ministry thus expresses concern over the increased number of wars not sanctioned by the UN and the new offensive NATO doctrine, which has to be countered.11 Thus, the current US strategy in particular can function both as a threat and as a model for emulation. As mentioned above, Putin has also tailored his foreign policy more to Russia’s economic needs and has supported or used Russian companies in their activities abroad, which may be a more efficient way to exercise influence than military means. Generally, businessmen are considered to dislike war and violent means.12 Several of Putin’s closest aides, including former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and other ministers, have been liberal economists. Putin has promoted the economic security of the popu-

Conclusions and perspectives 349 lation by market reforms and achieved steady economic growth since 2000, which has contributed substantially to his popularity and power. Yet, Roland Götz concludes that Russia is a great power resting on weak foundations, and that it is overly dependent on high energy prices in its exports to the West and on foreign investment. His analysis shows that Russia’s future economic development is threatened by grave structural, social, demographic and ecological problems. There is rampant corruption at all levels. State authorities continue to intervene in the domestic energy market and to protect local producers in general – something which is also encouraged by US and European Union (EU) protectionism. A special problem which is analysed by Baev, and by Götz (in a later paper13), is Putin’s efforts to subdue the so-called ‘oligarchs’ – businessmen who took over state companies under Yeltsin and became shamelessly rich. In late September 2003 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the biggest oil company, Yukos, was seized by FSB personnel on charges of economic crimes, after which some of his assets were seized. This was certainly popular among the general public and may have been intended to win support for the Putin party, Yedinaia Rossiia (United Russia), in the December 2003 Duma election; but probably Khodorkovsky was also targeted because he had shown political ambitions, supported opposition parties and offered to allow the US company Exxon to buy a big package of shares. The arrest was even criticized by Prime Minister Kasyanov and probably caused the head of the presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin, to leave his post. Russian capital again started to flow out of the country, and Western business worried about increased state intervention.14 Whether this happens or not will mainly depend on Putin’s own interpretation of the state interest. As demonstrated in Nikita Lomagin’s chapter, President Putin has also devoted attention to ‘soft-security’ problems such as international crime, terrorism, illegal migration, AIDS, drugs trafficking, environmental problems, nuclear hazards, and so on, and has set up programmes and institutions to deal with them. However, Lomagin concludes that the security people in charge still give priority to hard-security issues, especially when it comes to budget allocations. It is a well-known fact that Putin is hostile to environmentalism in Russia, which is seen as hampering economic growth and serving foreign interests. Following the US example and referring to economic consequences, Russia in 2003 seemingly reneged on its intention to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing air pollution in the world. A special case here, analysed by Christer Pursiainen, is that of the environmental problems in north-west Russia – in particular the risk of nuclear accidents at the bases of the Northern Fleet and the Kola and Leningrad power stations, air pollution from heavy industry near the border, and the risk of oil pollution in the Gulf of Finland. Since these problems also affect the nearest neighbours Norway and Finland, these

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states have been especially willing to help Russia increase safety and reduce pollution in the region, and an extensive network of cooperation on many levels has been created. However, cooperation is hampered by mutual suspicion: Western concern and calls for greater Russian efforts are often seen as ‘hysteria’ in Russia and attempts to ruin it, while Russian appeals for more aid are viewed as environmental blackmail in the West. It is an open question whether more cooperation will serve to integrate Russia or reinforce the traditional us–them relationship.15

Terrorism and political instability as primary security problems Another conclusion from this book is that terrorism is currently seen as one of the main internal ‘soft’-security threats by the Russian leadership and the people. Ekaterina Stepanova shows that this is mainly connected with Chechnya and that the handling of it has been influenced (and legitimized) by the US anti-terrorist campaign after 11 September. She finds that Russia does not recognize the political reasons that lie behind terrorism and that the policy is mainly repressive and reactive, and therefore ineffective. The 2002–3 elections in Chechnya are being used by the Russian authorities as evidence of normalization, but at the same time the dirty war goes on with no solution in sight. Continuing this theme, Pavel Baev makes the perspicacious observation that the fight against terrorism has served as an important instrument for Putin both to reach power and then to broaden and consolidate it on several levels, using the ‘competent organs’. In addition, as already noted, anti-terrorism has been employed as a means of putting pressure, for example, on Georgia, as a field for cooperation with the United States and other states with terrorist problems, and as a way to gain international sympathy. On the other hand, Russia deems its own war in Chechnya an internal affair. Thus, the terrorist theme and the corresponding power structure are likely to stay for many years. However, as several chapters in this book hint, perhaps the main security problem identified by President Putin and his administration is that of maintaining political stability and central control over society. While Yeltsin relied on the divide and rule principle, Putin has striven to strengthen the ‘vertical of power’. Formally, Russia is a democracy with the relevant institutions and legislation. The judicial system has been reformed under Western influence, but the implementation of the laws is deficient. The courts remain dependent on the executive power, and judges are underpaid and corruptible. Individuals have little chance of redress in cases against the state, about 99 per cent of the accused are still convicted in criminal cases, the police and the security service enjoy practical immunity for abuse of power (e.g., in Chechnya), and ‘spyomania’ against citizens and foreigners if anything continues. There is still less rule of law than law of the rulers.

Conclusions and perspectives 351 True, freedom of speech and the media is anchored in the constitution and proclaimed in official declarations, most media are privatized and they allow a lively debate on many issues. However, after assuming power Putin authorized a doctrine on ‘information security’. Loyal people gradually took control of the main independent television companies (some formerly owned by ‘oligarchs’) and the reporting increasingly focused on the president’s activities. Many regional and local media remained dependent on the state authorities, such as the governors, who have been subordinated to presidential envoys in special federal districts since 2000. Many journalists have been killed by unknown assailants. As for the parliamentary process, there have indeed been regular elections on different levels with Western observers present since 1991, but the process has been increasingly manipulated by the Putin administration, even though the parliament is already dominated by pro-Putin parties. Revealingly, Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly in May 2003 fretted about ‘ideological vagueness’ and ‘political insincerity’, while advocating ‘balanced’ criticism, national unity and strong power. ‘Parliamentary parties are part of the state political machine and . . . part of civil society . . . its most responsible part.’16 Hence, in 2003 the FSB was entrusted with running the electronic system for collecting and reporting the results of the forthcoming Duma elections. Violating the constitution, Putin openly favoured his own party (United Russia), and so did the state media. Opposition candidates were barred on technical grounds, loyal top officials were appointed to head the United Russia party or the pseudo-parties that were set up in order to split the opposition,17 and United Russia refused to debate with the other parties on television.18 Attempts were made to restrict the topics of debate, and Chechnya was indeed left out of the campaign. Alarmingly, the Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee urged the political parties to refrain from drawing up their own platforms on foreign policy, since that domain is directed by the president according to the constitution. Its chairman, Margelov, who claimed to be close to Putin, added that electoral campaigning ‘inevitably’ involves populist slogans, which could be used by ‘our partners abroad’.19 Besides, the fluid party system is still built around personalities, the elected bodies in the federation are increasingly corrupt and seats are offered for money. There is a growing personality cult around the leader, just as there was in Soviet days. Predictably, at the December 2003 Duma election United Russia emerged as the biggest party by far, reaching a two-thirds majority together with two nationalist parties, while the Communist Party lost heavily and the two liberal opposition parties Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (Soiuz Pravykh Sil, SPS) did not even pass the threshold of 4 per cent of the total vote needed for a party to be represented in the Duma. This made it easier for Putin to amend the constitution, for instance, so that he can be re-elected for a third term if he so wishes. The

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outcome of the presidential election in March 2004 was equally predictable. In fact, no incumbent president in Russia has lost an election – unlike the cases of Ukraine and even Belarus, two states not known for their democratic credentials. Partly, this sad return towards autocracy can be explained by the passivity of an electorate that is chiefly concerned about its economic situation after the deprivations of the 1990s, when democracy almost became a bad word. Most people continue to long for a return to Soviet times, admire power and strong leaders like Putin, and distrust ‘politicians, who only talk’.20 This in turn is rooted in a long authoritarian tradition with very weak democratic elements. Symptomatically, the two realistic Russian authors in this book address their comments more to the Russian leadership than to the public. Considering all these domestic problems and perceptions, virtually all the authors in this volume conclude that Russia remains different and a specific case, even though it has come closer to the West in some ways since the fall of communism. Thus, Godzimirski sees the lack of a common value and interest platform as the main challenge in relations between Russia and the West. Despite the emergence of a common threat in the face of international terrorism, no real security community has been created. Neumann ends by stating that Russia may gain recognition as a great power by stressing state and power, but it cannot become part of a Europe where the name of the game is society and integration. Partly recalling Soviet times, Götz argues: Also an authoritarian Russia that fights terrorism together with the USA and delivers oil and gas to Europe in the desired quantities is no immediate problem for the Western state community more than other, scarcely democratic CIS states . . . are. But such a Russia will not belong to Europe. And that may and must be said over and over again.21 The Western concern for democracy and human rights in Russia is mainly safeguarded by the OSCE and the Council of Europe, organizations in which Russia is also a member, but their interest in keeping Russia in also tends to restrict criticism of it. More responsibility may fall on the EU and its member countries when human rights are included into the first EU Constitution. Similar conclusions to ours are to be found in the Gorodetsky anthology mentioned above on Russian foreign policy. The Australian Russia expert Bobo Lo ponders the widening gulf in political and civil values between Russia and Western Europe, which is especially highlighted by differences over the war in Chechnya. In his view, the continuing ‘securitization’ of Russian foreign policy could turn out to be the single greatest barrier to real rapprochement.22 According to Richard Sakwa, Russia is

Conclusions and perspectives 353 seeking a third, Eastern way also in terms of geo-economics and geoideology by combining market reforms and international trade with a strong state, while giving priority to power and order over democracy and human rights.23 Finally, it seems appropriate to bring up the question of the relationship between democracy and war. MacFarlane mentions the thesis that democratic states are less likely to go to war than non-democratic ones, for both institutional and normative reasons.24 However, there are many exceptions to this thesis, and it has been further undermined by the United States and its allies in recent years. A more plausible reformulation of the thesis is that democratic states are less prone to attack each other than to attack non-democratic ones. Furthermore, in the 1990s some students of postSoviet states found that such democratizing states may even be more warprone than democratic or non-democratic states, since elites threatened by political opposition may resort to mobilizing and legitimizing nationalist sentiment by evoking external enemies.25 However, judging from developments under Putin, Russia cannot be said to be democratizing any more, and it never became a fully fledged democracy in the Western sense. Instead, Russia (like most other exSoviet states) seems to be de-democratizing, which raises the important question as to whether this process contributes to international peace and stability. Clearly, there remains ample reason to continue research on Russian foreign policy and its domestic roots, and on how security is defined and implemented there – preferably in a comparative and historical perspective.

Notes 1 Alex Pravda, ‘Putin’s foreign policy after 11 September: Radical or revolutionary?’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 49ff. 2 Richard Sakwa, ‘Putin’s foreign policy: Transforming the “East” ’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003, p. 183. 3 Margelov, Mikhail, ‘Victory on points: Pragmatism in foreign policy’, Russia in Global Affairs, 1(3), 2003, p. 22. See also L. N. Klepatskii, ‘The new Russia and the new world order’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 3ff. 4 ‘Introduction’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003, p. xiii. 5 Pravda, ‘Putin’s foreign policy after 11 September’, p. 50. 6 S. Neil MacFarlane, ‘Russian policy in the CIS under Putin’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 128ff. 7 Margelov, ‘Victory on points’, p. 19. 8 Russian TV 1, 28 September 2003 (BBC Monitoring Service). 9 Wall Street Journal Europe, 21 November 2003. 10 Carolina Vendil, ‘Patriotic foreign policy: The bandwagon no one wants to

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Conclusions and perspectives

miss’, in Ingmar Oldberg (ed.), At a Loss: Russian Foreign Policy in the 1990s, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Establishment, 1999, pp. 142ff. Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ [Immediate tasks of development of the armed forces of the Russian Federation], 2 October 2003 (http://www.mil.ru/index). For a discussion of this see Vendil, ‘Patriotic foreign policy’, p. 138ff. Cf. also the discussion of Chubais in the previous section. Roland Götz, ‘Russland und seine Unternehmer’ [Russia and its entrepreneurs], SWP-Aktuell (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik), November 2003, pp. 1–8. Götz, ‘Russland und seine Unternehmer’; and ‘Duell um den Kreml’ [Duel for the Kremlin], Der Spiegel, 45, 2003, pp. 130ff. See also Geir Hønneland, Russia and the West: Environmental Co-operation and Conflict, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 127ff. RTR TV, 16 May 2003 (BBC Monitoring Service). The top figure in Yedinaia Rossiia, Minister of the Interior Boris Gryzlov, was not even a party member. The new nationalist anti-oligarch party Rodina (Fatherland) was headed by Dmitrii Rogozin, chairman of the Duma International Affairs Committee, and Valentin Varennikov, a former army commander involved in the August 1991 coup. Bobo Lo, ‘Uncivil state’, The World Today, November 2003, pp. 23ff; ‘Unsere Heimat: UdSSR’ [Our homeland – the USSR], Der Spiegel, 49, 2003, pp. 132–4; and Ebba Sävborg, ‘Demokrati à la Putin’ [Democracy à la Putin], Internationella studier (Stockholm), 4, 2003, pp. 30ff. Pavel Palazhchenko, ‘Foreign policy taboo’, Moscow News, 42, 2003; also Hønneland, Russia and the West, pp. 127ff. In the election, voter turnout sank to 55.6 per cent, and the share of votes cast ‘against all’ parties rose to 4.7 per cent. Götz, ‘Russland und seine Unternehmer’, p. 8. Bobo Lo, ‘The securitization of Russian foreign policy’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003, p. 25; and Pravda, ‘Putin’s foreign policy after 11 September’, p. 55. Sakwa, ‘Putin’s foreign policy’, pp. 174ff. MacFarlane, ‘Russian policy in the CIS under Putin’, p. 127. Ibid. See also Vendil, ‘Patriotic foreign policy’, pp. 170ff.

Bibliography Books and journals ‘Duell um den Kreml’ [Duel for the Kremlin], Der Spiegel, 45, 2003, pp. 130ff. Gorodetsky, Gabriel (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003. Götz, Roland, ‘Russland und seine Unternehmer’ [Russia and its entrepreneurs], SWP-Aktuell, Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, November 2003. Hønneland, Geir, Russia and the West: Environmental Co-operation and Conflict, London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Klepatskii, L. N., ‘The new Russia and the new world order’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003. Lo, Bobo, ‘The securitization of Russian foreign policy’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003.

Conclusions and perspectives 355 —— ‘Uncivil state’, The World Today, November 2003, pp. 23ff. MacFarlane, S. Neil, ‘Russian policy in the CIS under Putin’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003. Margelov, Mikhail, ‘Victory on points: Pragmatism in foreign policy’, Russia in Global Affairs, 1(3), 2003. Palazhchenko, Pavel, ‘Foreign policy taboo’, Moscow News, 42, 2003. Pravda, Alex, ‘Putin’s foreign policy after 11 September: Radical or revolutionary?’ in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003. Sakwa, Richard, ‘Putin’s foreign policy: Transforming the “East” ’, in Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Russia Between East and West, London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2003. Sävborg, Ebba, ‘Demokrati à la Putin’ [Democracy à la Putin], Internationella studier (Stockholm), 4, 2003, pp. 30ff. ‘Unsere Heimat: UdSSR’ [Our homeland – the USSR], Der Spiegel, 49, 2003, pp. 132–4. Vendil, Carolina, ‘Patriotic foreign policy: The bandwagon no one wants to miss’, in Ingmar Oldberg (ed.), At a Loss: Russian Foreign Policy in the 1990s, Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Establishment, 1999.

Media and Internet Russian Ministry of Defence, ‘Aktual’nye zadachi razvitiia vooruzhennykh sil Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ [Immediate tasks of development of the armed forces of the Russian Federation], 2 October 2003 (http://www.mil.ru/index). Russian TV 1, 28 September 2003 (BBC Monitoring Service). RTR TV, 16 May 2003 (BBC Monitoring Service). Wall Street Journal Europe, 21 November 2003.

Index

Abashidze, Aslan 160 Abkhazia 264; breakaway region 160; Chechens 172; Georgia 156, 162; military bases 40, 160; peacekeeping 162–4; status 157; visas 41–2 ABM Treaty (Anti-Ballistic Missile) 30, 44, 212, 327 academics 271, 326 Afghanistan: Chechnya 167; mujahedin 166; NATO 17; al-Qaida 30, 302; Russia 92; Taliban 16, 157; USA 6, 19, 21, 41, 182, 195 air defence 134 air force 14, 167, 169, 328–9 Ajaria conflict 160 Akhalkalaki base 160, 161, 173 Alekperov, Vagit 191 Alexander I, Tsar 112 Allison, Graham 183 ammunition storage 145, 148 Andreeva Bay 282 Angarsk pipeline 44, 46 Annan, Kofi 163 anti-Americanism 94, 194 Anti-Ballistic Missile see ABM Treaty anti-terrorism: Asia, Central 188–9; CIS 308; common threat 6, 8–9, 218, 345; global 2, 159, 302, 308–9; legislation 310–11, 313–14; NATO–Russian 70, 192; Pankisi Gorge 173, 329; pyramid of power 336; rapprochement 306; recentralized power 330–2; Russia 325–30; Uzbekistan 185–6 APEC (Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation) 44 Ara Bay 283 Arab states 48 Arafat, Yasser 48 Arbatov, Alexei 206, 213, 219 Arctic Council 289

armed forces 13; conscription 207–8; dedovshchina 207, 216; defence spending 206, 208–9; media 203–4; modernization 203, 205–6, 218; professionalization 207, 209, 211, 215; reservists 217; statistics 206, 217–18; see also military reform Armenia 40 arms exports 44, 48, 134, 189 army see armed forces Aron, Leon 85 Asbat al-Ansar 312 Asia 44–9, 50 Asia, Central: anti-terrorism 188–9; CIS 189–90; energy sources 42, 43; institutional rivalry explanation 183, 188–91, 196; instrumental explanation 183, 186–8, 195; international structure explanation 182–3, 185–6; NATO 6, 182, 212, 346; Russian influence 19, 41, 147; securitization 189; socializing explanation 183–4, 191–3, 196; USA 6, 15–16, 182–4, 185–6, 196 Asia, East 46 Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 44 Atlanticism 62, 63, 124, 345 authoritarianism 307, 328, 352 Azerbaijan: energy resources 42, 43; GUUAM 39–40; Nagorno-Karabakh enclave 156; NATO 41; Turkey 48 Baku–Ceyhan oil pipeline 42, 43, 48 balancing strategy 38–9, 51, 94, 123–4 Balkans 57, 82; see also individual countries Baltic countries: ethnic Russians 117; multilateralization 121; NATO 34, 49–50, 82, 93, 95, 96; oil 37;

Index 357 rapprochement 81; soft security 258; see also individual countries Baltic Marine Environment Protection programme 270 Baltic Pipeline Systems 284 Baltic Sea region: harbours 115–16; integration 110; NATO 112–14; nuclear waste 283; OSCE 115; Russian influence 5, 82, 347; security 96 Baltiisk naval base 113 banking sector 245, 309 Baraev, Movsar 305–6, 313 Baranovichi 134 Barents Euro-Atlantic Council (BEAC) 289 Barents Sea 248 Basaev, Shamil 71, 91, 164–5, 313, 317 Batareinaia Bay 120 Battalion of Martyrs 313, 317 Batumi base 160, 161, 173 BEAC (Barents Euro-Atlantic Council) 289 Beirut 312 Belarus 5–6; arms exports 134; customs union 41; ethnicity 149; gas 136–7; geostrategic position 133, 137–8; integration 43, 130, 133, 134–5; military bases 347; oil 43; Poland 133; Putin 132–8; Yeltsin 132 Belarus–Russia Union 40, 42, 133–4, 135 Bellona Foundation 280, 281 Beltranshaz 136 Berezovsky, Boris 331 Berlusconi, Silvio 36, 96 bilateralism 120–1, 123 Bildt, Carl 93 bin Laden, Osama 71, 166 bipolar world system 61, 97 birth rates 232 Black Sea 48 Black Sea Fleet 148 Blue Stream pipeline 48 Bogdanshikov, Valentin 214 Bosnia 92 Bosporus 48 brain drain 13 Brazil 236 Brezhnev, Leonid 83 Budennovsk hostages 303 Bulgaria 34 Bush, George W.: axis of evil concept 307; coming to power 30; G8 327; Pankisi Gorge 167, 170; Putin 15, 60,

75, 213, 326–7, 328; on terrorism 16–17 Bykau, Vasil 149 Cam Rahn 212 capital accumulation 240–1, 250–1 Caspian Sea 39, 42, 141, 157, 185, 329 Catherine the Great 109 Caucasus 6, 39, 92, 167, 172 Caucasus, North 165, 204, 303 Caucasus, South 156–8, 171–2 CBSS see Council of the Baltic Sea States Ceyhan 42 CFE Treaty see Conventional Forces in Europe Chechens: Georgia 40, 172; Pankisi Gorge 163, 164–5, 170–1 Chechnya: Basaev 91; as buffer 156; civil–military relations 218; Dagestan 184; economic reconstruction 315; elections 350; ethnic minorities 303; EU 13, 21, 36; first war 84, 95, 159, 204; Georgia 40, 168–9, 172; Islamic extremism 71, 73, 303, 306; Ivanov 167; mercenaries 308; public opinion 260; Putin 166, 210; Russian interests 14, 16; second war 7, 59–60, 81, 157, 204, 304; security 13, 266; suicide bombers 305–6; terrorism 9, 44, 47, 49, 303–4, 313–14, 323, 331–2; West 188; Yeltsin 326 Chelyabinsk region 270, 283 Chernobyl 259, 267, 270, 281 Chernomyrdin, Viktor 59, 114–16, 139, 140, 160 Chernov, Oleg 190 China 72, 131; Asia, Central 4, 330; borders 45; India 47; Japan 46; multipolarity 44, 45, 73–4, 85; nuclear weapons 44; Primakov 64; rapprochement 187; trade 44–5; WTO 45 Chirac, Jacques 25, 74–5, 327 Chisinau 143, 144, 145, 148, 170 Chubais, Anatolii 347, 348 CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) 39–44; anti-terrorism 308; Asia, Central 189–90; Chisinau summit 170; Counter-Terrorist Centre 328; customs unions 41; Eurasianists 62; foreign policy 29–30; Georgia 158–9; human rights 43; integration 43, 265; joint air defence system 134; Kozyrev 91; military

358

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CIS – contd. bases 148; NATO 41, 89; Russia 29–30, 50, 208, 347; USA 49; see also individual countries civil–military relations 211, 218 civil society 287–8 Clinton, Bill 30, 90, 112 coal reserves 230, 247, 248 Colbasna 145 Cold War: aftermath 13, 258, 261; bipolarity 97; security 1–2; visas 38 Collective Security Treaty 40, 50 Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) 40–1, 113, 130 Cologne European Council 115 common enemy concept 71–2, 345 Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU 17 Common Strategy on Russia, EU 115, 258 Commonwealth of Independent States see CIS Communists 2, 143, 145, 351 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) 113 Congress of the Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan 313 constructivism 19–20, 63, 70–1, 184, 191, 257 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty 96, 133, 347 corruption 260 Council of Europe 192, 352 Council of Foreign and Security Policy (SVOP) 91–2, 133 Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) 97, 111, 115–16, 123, 289 counter-terrorism see anti-terrorism Counter-Terrorist Centre, CIS 328 crime 165, 258, 260, 268 Crimean Peninsula 142 Crimean War 23 Criminal Code 303 cross-border factors 284, 288–9, 292 CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) 113 CSTO see Collective Security Treaty Organization Cuba 30, 212, 347 customs unions 41 customs zone 137 Czech Republic 34, 57, 64, 90 Dagestan 91, 156, 165, 184, 303 Daqing 44

debt 227, 228 dedovshchina (bullying/abuse) 207, 216 defence spending 206, 208–9 deindustrialization 245 democracy 82, 118, 350, 352, 353 democratization 88–9, 261 Democrats 62, 63 demographic factors 232–5 Denmark 97, 112 derzhava see great power concept desecuritization 96 diplomacy 325 Dnipropetrovsk meeting 139 dominance 302, 348; see also hegemony Drach, Ivan 149 drug trafficking 2, 258, 260, 268 Druzhba pipeline 140–1 Dubrovka theatre hostages 303, 305–6, 307, 313, 314 Dugin, Aleksandr 112 Durkheim, Émile 261 Dutch disease 121, 245–7 Ecological Doctrine, Ministry of Natural Resources 286 ecological factors 229–30, 262; see also environmental issues Ecology and Natural Resources of Russia programme 270 economic security: investment/growth 236–7; long-term 229–35; medium term energy 247–50; medium term growth 235–41; medium term structure 241–7, 251; short-term 227–9; small and medium-sized enterprises 242 economy: biznesmeny 93–4; Chechnya 315; demographic factors 232–5; ecological factors 229–30; energy resources 51, 229, 230–2; foreign policy 29, 146–7, 156–7; military expansion 50–1, 348–9; modernization 286–7; Moldova 147–8; security 7; shadow 242–3; Ukraine 147 Egmont Group 309 elites: academic 271, 326; constructivism 257; NATO 62–3; Putin 190–1; regional 271, 324, 330–2; security 83, 266; terrorist attacks 307 empire 24, 264; see also neo-imperialism energy resources: Asia, Central 42, 43; Azerbaijan 42, 43; Caspian Sea 185; economy 51, 229, 230–2; exports 245; geopolitics 147; pollution 230; Russia–Ukraine 140–1

Index 359 English, Robert 261, 272 enterprises 242–5 Environment Protection Act 283, 285–6 environmental issues 7, 8, 259–60; health 230, 282, 283–4; international cooperation 292–3; legislation 285–6; nuclear power 270, 282; public protests 288; Putin 349 Environmental Protection Agency 287 ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) 213 Espo Convention 290 Estonia 34, 35, 113–14 ethnic cleansing 57 ethnicity 117, 130, 148, 149, 303 EurAsEC (Eurasian Economic Community) 41, 42, 142 Eurasianism 62, 90, 94, 345 Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre 291–2 Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council 291–2 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 291 European Council 115 European Investment Bank 291 European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) 213 European Union 2, 257; Belarus/Ukraine/Moldova 5–6; Chechnya 13, 21, 36; Common Foreign and Security Policy 17; Common Strategy on Russia 115, 258; enlargement 21, 37, 38, 81, 119–22; integration 109–10, 114–17, 257; Moldova 130–1; NATO 36; Permanent Partnership Council 37; Putin 35–9; Russia 21, 24–5, 35–9, 109–10, 215; Russian nuclear plants 279; security 13, 17; Tacis 245, 290–1; USA 17; see also individual countries exports 245; arms 44, 48, 134, 189; gas 136–7; oil 284–5 FAPSI (Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information) 333 Federal Border Service (FPS) 189, 207, 219, 333 federal government 228, 267–8, 269 Federal Security Service (FSB) 9, 65, 189, 288, 311, 325, 333–4, 348 Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee 351 Felgengauer, Pavel 216

Fergana Valley 40, 41 Feshbach, Murray 232 Fight against Terrorism Law 310–11, 313–14 Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering 309 Finland 96–7, 112–13, 117–18, 258, 289, 349–50 Finland, Gulf of 37, 116, 120, 281, 284, 285, 349–50 food for oil programme 194–5 For a United Ukraine 140 foreign and security policy: geopolitics 156–7; Gorbachev 88–9; ‘new political thinking’ 264; Putin 91–5, 348–9; Putnam 83; Yeltsin 89–91, 94 foreign direct investment 248–9 Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) 189 foreign policy: CIS 29–30; economy 29, 146–7, 156–7; Putin 29–30, 49, 60–1, 92; Yeltsin 29, 49; see also foreign and security policy Foreign Policy Concept 63, 85–6, 264–7; Asia 44; good-neighbourly belt 132; integration 40; NATO 114; Putin 39, 66–7 Forest Brotherhood 162–3, 166 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security 64–5, 67, 291–2 FPS see Federal Border Service France: Iraq 5, 31–2, 131, 194, 327–8; military reform 215; Putin 5, 17, 25, 35–6, 49, 74–5 Frederick III 23–4 free trade zone 137 freedom of speech 351 friendship and cooperation treaties 44–5, 131, 143, 159 FSB see Federal Security Service Fukuyama, Francis 268 Fund for Effective Politics 139–40 G8 49, 70, 192; Bush 327; meeting 46–7; membership 51, 346 Gaidar, Yegor 211, 217 Gamsakhurdia, Zviad 59, 158–9, 164–5 gas: Caspian Sea 39; consumption 247–8; exports 136–7; outlets 113–14; pipelines 37, 48, 147; prices 250; Russian production 230–2, 249; Turkmenistan 42–3; Ukraine 43, 138, 141–2 Gazprom 117, 133–4, 136–7, 141–2, 144, 248, 334

360

Index

Gdansk 141 GDP (gross domestic product) 206, 228, 236, 237–8, 240, 242, 325 Gelaev, Ruslan 167 generals 211–12 geo-economic 61–2, 172, 345, 353 geopolitics 2, 26, 57; energy resources 147; foreign security policy 156–7; great power status 110–11; modernization 94; USA 20, 74 Georgia 6, 347; Abkhazia 41–2, 156–8, 162; Chechens 40, 168–9, 172; CIS 158–9; Friendship Treaty 159; GUUAM 39–40; military bases 160–4; NATO 41; Pankisi Gorge 157–8, 169, 170; Putin 161–2, 171–3; refugees 161; terrorists 329; Turkey 48; USA 169, 171, 212; visas 41–2; see also Shevardnadze, Eduard Germany: Iraq 5, 31–2, 131, 194, 327–8; Putin 5, 17, 25, 35–6, 49, 74–5 Gilpin, Robert 186–7, 188 globalization 268 GNI (gross national income) 236 Golts, Alexander 216–17 Good-neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation Treaty 44–5 Gorbachev, Mikhail 83, 88–9, 187, 188, 191, 264 Gorchakov, Alexander 23, 111, 186–7 Gorodetsky, Gabriel 346 Goskomstat 242 Grachev, Pavel 160 Great Britain 15 great power concept 14, 109–11, 124–5, 267–8, 325 Green World 284 greenhouse gas emissions 230 Greenpeace 284 Gref, German 325 Gromyko, Andrei 325 gross national income (GNI) 236 Group of Seven 46 Grozny 204 Gryzlov, Boris 325 Gudauta base 160, 161, 164 guerrilla warfare 311, 312 Gusinsky, Vladimir 331 GUUAM 39–40, 90, 95, 130, 138, 143 harbour facilities 115–16, 120 health issues 81, 230, 282, 283–4 hegemony 4, 74, 193, 346–7; see also dominance Heikka, Henrikki 29, 51, 85–6

Helsinki Commission 270 Helsinki Final Act 113 Hermann, Robert G. 88–9 HIV/AIDS 7, 233–5, 259, 267, 268 Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami 312 Holy Roman Empire 23–4, 25 hostage crises 303, 305–6 Hu Jintao 73, 95–6 human rights 43, 58, 352 human trafficking 258 Hungary 34, 57, 64, 90 Hurd, Douglas 114 Hussein, Saddam 31–2, 134, 193 IAEA see International Atomic Energy Agency identity formation 111, 261, 272, 346 IEPP (Institute of Transition Economies) 211, 217 Illarionov, Andrei 236–7 immigration, illegal 258 IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) 311–12, 328 India 31, 47, 64 Individual Partnership Programme 64 industrial sector 230–1, 232 inflation 227, 260 Ingushetia 303 integration: balancing 123–4; Baltic Sea region 110; Belarus 43, 130, 133, 134–5; bilateralism 123; CIS 43, 265; EU 109–10, 114–17, 257; great power status 124–5; sovereignty 25–6, 110 intercontinental ballistic missiles 209 Interior Ministry (MVD) 207 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 48, 280 International Monetary Fund 237 international relations 58–60, 86–8, 191, 207 investment 238, 240, 246; see also foreign direct investment Iran 31–2, 48, 131, 156, 307 Iraq: aftermath of war 32; authoritarianism 307; dissent about 73, 74; France/Germany 5, 31–2, 131, 194, 327–8; India 47; Russia 31–2, 36, 47, 193–5; SVOP 92; UN Security Council 95, 195; USA 16, 19, 20, 193–4; weapons of mass destruction 193–5 ISKRAN (Institute of the USA and Canada) 262 Islam, moderate 8, 22 Islamic fundamentalism: Asia, Central

Index 361 39, 92; authoritarianism 328; Chechnya 71, 73, 303, 306; civilization threat 72; guerrillas 40, 41; propaganda 335; Taliban 186, 328 Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade 313 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) 311–12, 328 Islamic Party of Turkestan 312 Israel–Palestine conflict 31, 36, 48 Italy 236 Ivan III 4, 24, 25 Ivanov, Igor 190; Abashidze 160; Caucasus 167; EU 118; foreign minister 91, 118; MoD 211; NATO 118; Pankisi Gorge 166; Russia–US relations 194 Ivanov, Sergei 325; armed forces 206, 217–18; Asia, Central 189–90; Pankisi Gorge 166, 170; problem regions 307; Rumsfeld 167 Japan 46, 62 Kaliningrad exclave 113; Belarus 133; demilitarization 116–17; HELCOM 270; Lithuania 35, 82, 96; visas 38, 50, 120 Kant airbase 329 Kara Sea 263, 282 Karachaevo-Cherkessia 166 Karaganov, Sergei 13, 91, 94–5 Karamzin, Nikolai 23–4 Kashmir 47, 312 Kasyanov, Mikhail 325, 348–9 Kazakhstan 40–2, 137, 147, 194 Kennan, George 20 Keohane, Robert 183–4 Kerch Strait 142, 347 KFOR (Kosovo Force) 205, 215 KGB 189, 211, 288, 333 Khamzat, commander 313 Khattab, Field Commander 71, 166, 313 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail 195, 334, 349 Kim Jong Il 46–7 Kizlyar hostages 303 Klaipeda 113 Knudsen, Olav F. 110 Kodori Gorge 163, 166, 167 Kola Nuclear Power Plant 278–80, 349–50 Kola Peninsula 263, 270, 282, 283, 288, 289, 291 Komsomolets 263 Korean Peninsula 31–2, 46–7, 62, 307

Kormiltsev, Nikolai 214 Kosovo Force 205, 215 Kosovo war: human intervention 47; human rights 58; NATO 5, 33, 57, 81, 90–1, 188; Putin 44, 65; security 266; SVOP 92; USA 117 Kosygin, Andrei 113 Kozak, Dmitrii 144 Kozak memorandum 146 Kozyrev, Andrei 63, 83, 84, 87, 90, 91, 268 Krasnodar region 142 Krasnyi Bor 284 Kuala Lumpur 48 Kuchma, Leonid 42, 138–42, 149–50 Kudrin, Alexei 325 Kurds 48 Kurile Islands 46 Kursk 263 Kvashnin, Anatolii 190 Kyiv 141, 144 Kyoto Protocol 38, 271, 349 Kyrgyzstan 40–1, 184, 194, 328–9, 347 Ladoga, Lake 284 Latvia 34, 35, 37, 113–14, 117, 133 Lebedev, Sergei 190 legislation: anti-terrorism 310–11, 313–14; environmental 285–6 Leningrad 270 Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant 278–81, 349–50 Liberal Democratic Party 89 liberalism 83, 124, 268 Lithuania: Belarus 133; border treaty 34; Kaliningrad 35, 82, 96; NATO 113–14; oil 37; Poland 23–4, 38 Ljubljana meeting, Bush–Putin 213 Lo, Bobo 51, 92–3 Lourdes 212 Lucinschi, Petru 143 Lukashenko, Aleksandr 43, 132–3, 134–7, 148–50 Lukoil 43, 191 Luttwak, Edward 61–2 Luzhkov, Yurii 148 Lynch, Allen 14, 87 Lynch, Dov 162 Macedonia 33 MacFarlane, Neil 346, 353 Madrid European Council 114 Maiak company 283 Manilov, Valerii 204–5 manufacturing sector 245, 246

362

Index

Margelov, Mikhail 346–7, 351 Markov, Sergei 118 Marxism-Leninism 83, 264 Maskhadov, Aslan 164–5 Maximilian, Emperor 24 media 139–40, 149, 194, 203–4, 351 Medunin, A. 262 Medvedchuk, Viktor 140 Medvedev, Dmitrii 190 Medvedev, Sergei 29, 51 Mendelson, Sarah 216 Mexico 236 Michta, Andrew A. 97 Middle East 17, 49, 94 migration 268 military bases 40, 148, 160–4, 347 military capacity 1–2, 7, 13–14, 50–1, 348–9; see also armed forces Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation 64, 66 military reform 288; France 215; NATO 348; necessity 204–9; Putin 203, 209–19 Miller, Alexei 325 Milosevic, Slobodan 57, 90 Minatom (Ministry of Atomic Energy) 249, 270, 279, 281, 283, 286–7 Ministry of Defence 205, 217 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) 268–9 Ministry of Natural Resources 286, 287 MNEPR (Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme for Russia) 291 modernists 214 modernization 94, 203, 205–6, 218 Moldova 5–6; economics 147–8; education 143–4; EU 130–1; EurAsEC 142; Gazprom 144; GUUAM 39–40; Putin 143–6; see also Transnistria region money-laundering 258, 309 Mongolia 45 Monrovski doctrine 84 Moravcsik, Andrew 88 mortality rates 232 Moscow 234, 269, 303, 334; see also Dubrovka theatre hostages Motorized Rifle Division 329 mujahedin 166 Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme for Russia (MNEPR) 291 multipolarity: Asia 50; balancing 38–9, 51, 94; China 44, 45, 73–4, 85; NATO

64–5; Primakov 33, 89–90, 95–6, 266, 267; Putin 131; West 345–6 Murmansk 263, 279, 282 Muslims see Islam MVD (Interior Ministry) 207 Nagorno-Karabakh enclave 40, 156, 157 National Missile Defense (NMD) 30, 33, 46, 47, 117 National Security Concept (1997) 84–5, 96, 264–5 National Security Concept (2000) 66–7, 117, 265–7 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 4, 48–9, 62–3, 348; Afghanistan 17; Asia, Central 6, 182, 212, 346; Azerbaijan 41; Baltic countries 34, 50, 82, 93, 96; Baltic Sea region 112–14; CIS 41, 89; constructivists 19–20, 63; elites 62–3; EU 36; Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security 64–5, 67, 291–2; Georgia 41; Individual Partnership Programme 64; Kosovo war 5, 33, 57, 81, 90–1, 188; Membership Action Plan 90; neo-realists 19–20; Partnership for Peace 64, 130–1, 185; Poland 34, 57, 64, 90; Prague meeting 58, 93; Primakov 64; Putin 65–9; realists 61; Russia 4–5, 32–5, 61–5, 67–8, 109, 192, 213, 215, 327; Serbia 188; Warsaw Pact states 34; Yugoslavia (former) 58 NATO enlargement 57, 58–60, 64–5, 90, 114; Baltic countries 34, 49–50, 81, 82, 93, 95, 96; China 44, 46; countering 117–19; security 266; US 30 NATO–Russia Council 33–4, 46, 70, 192, 213, 266, 292, 345 near abroad 2, 117, 157 Nemtsov, Boris 211, 217 neo-imperialism 4, 51, 83, 84, 95, 348 neo-realists 19–20, 257 Netherlands 236, 246 network system 4, 333 Neva, River 284 ‘new political thinking’ see NPM non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 279–80, 287 Non-Proliferation Treaty 46–7, 289 Nord-Ost see Dubrovka theatre hostages Nordic Council 289, 290 Nordic countries: cooperation 112–13;

Index 363 5+3+1 formula 114; Russian nuclear power plants 263, 278–9, 292; security 82, 83, 258; social democracy 97; see also Baltic countries; individual countries North Atlantic Treaty Organization see NATO Northern Alliance 30, 186 Northern Dimension 96–7, 115, 288–92, 290 Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership 291 Northern Fleet 263, 282, 349–50 Norway 112, 246–7, 289, 349–50 Norwegian Investment Bank 291 Novaya Zemlya 263, 282, 283 Novorossiisk 141 NPM (novoe politicheskoe myshlenie) 88–9, 264 nuclear energy 17–18, 30–1, 48, 115–16, 249, 288–9 nuclear safety 8; EU/Russia 258, 292; plant malfunctions 263, 278–81, 349–50; pollution 270, 282; World Bank 291 nuclear waste 263, 268, 270, 281–3, 288–92, 291 nuclear weapons 13, 17–18, 44, 117 Nye, Joseph 183–4 Nygren, Bertil 6, 16, 347 Odesa 140–1 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) 284 oil 230–2, 250; Baltic countries 37; Belarus 43; Caspian Sea 157; exports 248–9, 284–5; Iraq 194–5; Norway 246–7; oligarchs 194–5; outlets 113–14, 284; pollution 285, 349–50; prices 94, 227, 228–9 oil pipelines 42–4, 48, 140–1, 147, 284 oligarchs 330–2; media 351; oil 194–5; Putin 196, 324, 334, 349 OMON unit 331 OPEC (Organization of PetroleumExporting Countries) 31 opportunism 5, 51, 72, 187–8, 325 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 284 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe see OSCE Organization of Islamic States 48 Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) 31

OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) 33, 68, 89; Baltic countries 115; democracy 352; Moldova 144; Porto summit 145–6; Putin 169; Russian military bases 347; UN 162 Osh region 328 Ossetia, North 156, 264, 303 Ossetia, South 40, 41–2, 158, 160 Our Ukraine 140 Ozerov, Viktor 214 Ozersk 283 Pact on Stability in Europe 115 Pakistan 31, 47 Paldiski base 115–16 Palestine 31, 48, 311 Pankisi Gorge 157–9, 168–9, 170; antiterrorism 173, 329; Chechens 163, 164–5, 170–1; crime 165 Partnership and Co-operation Agreement 36, 38, 114–15, 290 Partnership for Peace 64, 130–1, 185 Party of Moldovan Communists 143 Patrushev, Nikolai 190, 325 Patten, Chris 170 Pavlovsky, Gleb 139–40 peacekeeping 160–4, 214 pensioners 117 perestroika 88–9, 191 Permanent Partnership Council 37 Peter the Great 24, 257 Pivdenny oil terminal 140 Plock 141 Poland: Belarus 133; confidence-andsecurity-building measures 115; Kaliningrad 82; Lithuania 23–4, 38; NATO 34, 57, 64, 90 Poliarnye Zori 279 pollution 230, 267, 270, 349; see also nuclear waste Poppel, Nikolai 23–4 population factors 7, 232, 233–4, 247 Porto summit 145–6 Portugal 241, 325 Powell, Colin 17, 193 power structures 324, 330–2 pragmatism 124, 150, 188, 345 Prikhodko, Sergei 190 Primakov, Yevgenii 83, 88–9, 188–9; Abkhazia/Georgia 162; critique 91; foreign affairs 64, 84; great power concept 268; multipolarity 33, 89–90, 95–6, 266, 267; NATO 58, 64; terrorism 307; Transnistria 143

364

Index

Primorsk 120 Pristina airport 90 productivity 237, 241 protectionism 142, 349 public opinion 216, 259–60, 288, 334–5 purchasing power parity 236, 238 Putin, Vladimir 3, 59, 336; background 60–1, 65, 81–2, 189, 332–3; Belarus 132–8; Bush 15, 60, 75, 213, 326–7, 328; Chechnya 166, 210; as derzhavnik 91; Dnipropetrovsk meeting 139; elections 351–2; elites 190–1; environmentalism 349; EU 35–9; Finland 117–18; foreign and security policy 91–5, 348–9; foreign policy 29–30, 49, 60–1, 92; Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 39, 66–7; France 5, 17, 25, 35–6, 49, 74–5; generals 211–12; Georgia 161–2, 171–3; Germany 5, 17, 25, 35–6, 49, 74–5; great power concept 267; Hu Jintao 95–6; Hussein 32; Korea 46–7; Kosovo 44, 65; military reform 203, 209–19; Moldova 143–6; multipolarity 131; NATO 65–9; oligarchs 196, 324, 334, 349; as opportunist 5, 51, 72, 187–8, 325; OSCE 169; as policy entrepreneur 184; popularity 334–5; pragmatism 124, 150, 188, 345; pyramid of power 9, 324–5; realism 69, 188; Shevardnadze 159–60, 162, 169; terrorist attacks 1, 15–16, 59, 68–9, 110, 156, 173, 184; transparency 270; Ukraine 142; UN 169; USA 33, 69–75; visibility of Russia 23 Putnam, Robert D. 5, 83, 85–8 Pyongyang 46 pyramid of power 9, 324–5, 336 al-Qaida 30, 31, 167, 170, 302 radioactive waste see nuclear waste Rakhlin, Anatolii 57 rapprochement: Baltics 81; China 187; securitization 352; West 212, 259, 306, 309, 327 raw materials sector 245–6; see also energy resources realists 257, 345, 352; Germany/France 74; NATO 61, 62–3; Putin 69, 188; security 266; Waltz 182–3 Reddaway, Peter 190 refugees 161, 164–5 regions 121, 247, 269, 270–1, 346–7 rent-seeking 246

Rice, Condoleezza 91 Riga 113, 117 Road Map for peace 31, 48, 95 Robertson, Lord George 67–8, 71–2 Rogozin, Dmitrii 140 Romania 34 Rome, Club of 262 Rosvooruzhenie, arms exporter 189 rouble 227, 236 Rumsfeld, Donald 167, 327 Rushailo, Vladimir 168, 190 Russia (maps) xvii and xviii; Afghanistan 92; Chechnya 16; CIS 29–30, 50, 208, 347; EU 17, 21, 24–5; geopolitics 2, 26; international relations 58–60, 325–30; NATO 4–5, 32–5, 61–5, 67–8, 109, 192, 213, 215, 327; US relations 30–2, 81, 83, 109, 193–4; see also Putin, Vladimir Russia–Belarus Union 40, 42 Russia–NATO Founding Act (1997) 114, 291 Russia and Eurasia Program 216 Russian Embassy, Beirut 312 Russian Federal AIDS Centre 233–5 Russian language 130–1, 143–4 Russian Orthodoxy 90 Saakashvili, Mikhail 41, 158, 160 St Petersburg 112, 234, 269, 270, 284–5; oil spills 285 St Petersburg summit 75 Sakhalin 46 Sakwa, Richard 345, 352–3 Samara 234 SARS 259 Saudi Arabia 48, 49, 50, 246 Schengen agreement 38, 50, 120, 121, 132 Schmitt, Carl 72 Schnitzenpaumer, Georg 24 Schröder, Gerhard 25, 74–5, 327 sectoral structure 245–7 secularization 264 securitization 18; Asia, Central 189; excesses 22–3, 83, 346; rapprochement 352; USA 21 security: Baltic Sea region 96; Chechnya 13, 266; cooperative 4, 8, 110, 213–14; Copenhagen school 83; cross-border factors 292; economics 7, 258; elites 83, 266; European 13; external/internal factors 1–4, 6–7; funding 272; hard 2, 7–8, 259–60, 261–7, 278; Kosovo 266; Macbeth example 23; military 258; national

Index 365 259, 262; NATO enlargement 266; Nordic countries 82, 83, 258; realists 266; regions 5, 269; soft 2, 7–8, 18–19, 258, 259–60, 261–70, 278, 349; see also economic security Security Council 65, 66, 309 security identity 257, 261–7 Semipalatinsk 270 September 11, 2001 see terrorist attacks Serbia 188 SES see Single Economic Space Sevastopol naval base 40 Severodvinsk 271 SFOR (Stabilization Force) 205, 215 shadow economy 242–3 Shanghai Cooperation Organization 44, 187 Shanghai Five 187 Shanghai Forum 44 Shanghai Six nations 47 Shevardnadze, Eduard 158; Abkhazia/Georgia 163; attempted assassination 161; departure 329, 347; Maskhadov 164; National Security Council 169–70; new political thinking 264; Putin 159–60, 162, 169 Shevtsova, Lilia 75 Siberia 46, 230 Single Economic Space (SES) 42, 50, 142–3, 147 Sino-Russian declaration 95–6; see also China Skrunda 134 Slavneft oil 45, 334 Slovakia 34 Slovenia 34, 213 SOBR unit 331 social democracy 97 Social Democratic Party-united 140 social institutions 183–4 SORT see Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty Sosnovyi Bor 278 sovereignty 21, 25–6, 110 Soviet Union 2, 88–9, 302 Special Purpose Islamic Regiment 313 SPS (Union of Right Forces) 211, 217, 351 Stabilization Force (SFOR) 205, 215 Stalin, Iosif 22, 83 State Duma International Relations Committee 140 Stockholm Conference 113 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) 31

Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (SORT) 30–1, 32, 46, 209 STUK 280–1 submarines: abandoned 282; dismantled 270, 271; sinkings 263 suicide bombers 305–6 Sukhodolnaia-Rodionovka oil pipeline 141 Sunni extremists 312 surveillance 307–8 Sverdlovsk region 281 SVOP see Council of Foreign and Security Policy SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) 189 Sweden 112, 289 Syria 47, 307 Tacis, EU 245, 290–1 Taiwan 44, 46 Tajikistan 40–1, 185, 194, 328, 329 Taliban 92; Afghanistan 16, 157; Islamic extremists 186, 328; USA 30, 41, 345 Tallinn 113 Tambov 193–4 Tarasiuk, Borys 139 Tashkent Treaty 130 Tatarstan 303 Tbilisi 42, 161, 164–5, 329 television channels 149 tellurocracy 112, 124 terrorism 8, 18, 302–6; Bush 16–17; Chechnya 9, 44, 47, 49, 303–4, 313–14, 323, 331–2; conflictual 301–2, 304–5, 310, 315–17; incitement to 312; individuals/groups 317; international 166, 266, 268, 301–2; Primakov 307; public opinion 260; state 305, 315; super-terrorism 301–2; see also antiterrorism terrorist attacks: aftermath 3–4, 122–3, 306–10, 345; elites 307; Putin 1, 15–16, 59, 68–9, 110, 156, 173, 184; Russian–US relations 30, 81 thalassocracy 112, 124 Tibet 44 Tosna, River 284 Totskii, Konstantin 190, 219 toxic waste 283–4 trade disputes 142 Transcaucasian states 147 Transneft 37 Transnistria region: ammunition storage 145, 148; peacekeeping 144–5, 146, 264; Primakov 143; separatists 40, 131

366

Index

transparency 270, 309 Trenin, Dmitri 90, 93, 156 Turkey 42, 48, 49, 50, 156 Turkic Central Asian states 48 Turkmenistan 42–3 Tuzla 142 Udugov, Movladi 313 Ukraine 5–6, 138–43; economics 147; energy 43, 140–1; ethnicity 148; EU 130–1; EurAsEC 142; friendship treaty 131; gas 43, 138, 141–2; GUUAM 39–40, 138; Kerch Strait 347; NATO 41; Putin 142; Russian press centre 139; SES 42, 142–3; Sevastopol 40; trade 137, 140, 141, 142 underground economy 242–3 unemployment 227, 260 Union of Right Forces (SPS) 211, 217, 351 United Kingdom 17; see also Great Britain United Nations 44, 162, 169, 194–5, 214 United Russia 349, 351 United States of America 2; Afghanistan 6, 19, 20, 21, 41, 182, 195; airbases 328–9; Asia, Central 6, 15–16, 182–4, 185–6, 196; CIA 234; Cooperative Threat Reduction 289; democracy 118; EU 17; geopolitics 20–1, 74; Georgia 169, 171, 212; geostrategics 49, 172; hegemony 4, 74, 193; Iraq 16, 19, 20, 193–4; Kosovo 117; National Missile Defense 30, 33, 46, 47, 117; Patriot Act 307–8; Putin 33, 69–75; Road Map 31, 48, 95; securitization 21; Taliban 30, 41, 345; unilateralism 16; see also Bush, George W. UN Security Council 46, 49, 51, 94, 95, 195, 346 Ust-Luga 120 Uzbekistan 39–40; anti-terrorism 185–6; CIS ambitions 43; Iraq 194; Islamist extremists 40, 184, 186; NATO 41; US airbases 328 Vasilii, Tsar 24 Vaziani base 160, 161, 164 Ventspils 37, 113, 117, 120 Verkhovna Rada 138, 143 Vienna Conference 24–5

Vietnam 30, 212, 347 Vilnius conference 114 visas 38, 41–2 Volga–Urals Military District 329 Voloshin, Aleksandr 140, 190, 325, 349 Vorobev, Eduard 211, 216, 217 Voronin, Vladimir 143 VTsIOM surveys 203 Vysotsk 120 wage levels 246 Wahhabis 71, 165 Waltz, Kenneth 182–3 war on terrorism 110, 156, 302, 308, 325, 334–5 Warsaw Pact states 34, 113, 267 Washington Post 75 weapons of mass destruction 31, 32, 49, 193, 289, 302 West: Chechnya 188; Kosovo 58–9; rapprochement 212, 259, 306, 309, 327, 352 Westernization 14, 93, 138, 191–2 World Bank: GDP 242; global population 234; HIV/AIDS 235, 267; Moscow branch 237; nuclear safety 291 World Trade Organization (WTO) 31, 42, 45, 70, 122, 142, 192 Yabloko 351 Yablokov, Aleksei 263 Yalta CIS summit 143 Yamal Peninsula 248 Yavlinskii, Grigorii 60 Yedinaia Rossiia 349, 351 Yekaterinburg 234 Yeltsin, Boris 3, 59, 87; Belarus 132; Chechnya 326; civil–military relations 211; Clinton 112; foreign and security policy 89–91, 94; foreign policy 29, 49; health problems 81; Iran 48; Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation 64; partnership with West 263–4; political survivors 325; Soviet collapse 191 Yugoslavia (former) 33, 57–8, 90, 264; see also Kosovo Yukos oil company 37, 195, 334, 349 Yushchenko, Viktor 138 Zhirinovskii, Vladimir 85, 89, 145