Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

conceptualized as an energy super-power. 4 Dmitri
Medvedev has very little understanding of, and less
interest in, the traditional hard security agenda, so
the emphasis on economic globalization and competition
has become even more pronounced during
his presidency. His personal impact on shaping the
mainstream political perceptions may be limited, but
the drastic contraction of the oil and gas revenues in
2009-10 has added convincing power to his discourse
of modernization, so energy export is now depicted as
humiliating dependency rather than as a major source
of power.
There are several serious problems with this pseudo-pragmatic
worldview, but perhaps the central one
is Russia’s doubtful ability to establish itself as an independent
and influential pole in the envisaged multipolar
world. 5 In this respect, the implications of the
rise of China are particularly poorly examined beyond
the rather thin official guideline on developing strategic
partnership. The very real and historically sound
proposition that a multipolar world would bring a
more tough and less restrained competition between
great powers, which could put Russia at greater risk
of confrontation with revisionist predators, is typically
neglected. 6 There is a pronounced preoccupation
with (if not fixation upon) relations with the United
States that are supposed to deliver evidence of Russia’s
status as nearly equal. The economic dimension
in these relations is, nevertheless, quite underdeveloped,
particularly in the energy interactions, which
are generally at odds with the main thrust of Russian
foreign policy. This weakness of the economic foundation
causes greater volatility in this key fixed dyad
compared with the more stable but highly complex
Russia-EU relations. Overall, acting as a main pro-
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