The Russian Challenge

5. Russian Foreign Policy Towards the West
and Western Responses
James Nixey
Introduction
Russian foreign policy did not suddenly change in 2014 with
the crisis over Ukraine. Many debate whether we are in a
‘new Cold War’, 140 but a newly assertive Russia is a misnomer.
Neither the Kremlin’s threat perspective nor its ambition in
the form of a challenge to European territorial integrity is
markedly different from what it has been in the past 10 years.
Russian foreign policy, for all the challenges it presents, has
been telegraphed. Moscow has been nothing if not consistent.
Indeed, the deterioration of relations with the broadly
defined West long predates not only the tumultuous events
of 2014, but also the colour revolutions in other parts of
the former Soviet Union, the 2008 war in Georgia, the
Arab Spring of 2010–11, and the anti-government street
protests in Russia in 2011. All these significant occurrences
are frequently but incorrectly cited as initiators of a seachange
in Moscow’s attitude to the external world, which
is, in reality, over a decade old. The Russian leadership may
have misread them (as Western-inspired), but none made
the Kremlin change its course because it was already on a
distinctly hostile path.
Russia’s foreign policy play is increasingly
transparent to all but those determined
not to see it.
Thus the West was unprepared for the Crimean invasion and
annexation, but it should not have been surprised. 141 Policymakers,
especially in Germany, were deaf to pleas for caution
in integrating Russia into Western structures before it was
ready with a rules-based economy and society, because those
warnings did not fit the West’s chosen narrative. In short,
there was a refusal to see Russia as anything other than some
form of qualified or quasi-partner, real or at least potential.
What has changed is the tempo, never the leadership’s
intentions. This is not to suggest that it has always been the
goal to invade Ukraine. Indeed, the Kremlin’s foreign policy
in 2014 was characterized by a great deal of opportunism.
But the prevailing view in Moscow is still that Russia was
strong in Soviet times and weak in the 1990s, and that it is
now, apparently, strong again (in spite of what it perceives
as an attack on its economy), largely by virtue of its nuclear
arsenal. Agreements made in the 1990s under pressure,
in Moscow’s view, are deemed to have no validity now.
According to the Kremlin, it is the West that has destroyed
the rules, so Russia must act in its own interests. Russia,
it then follows, is no worse than the West and therefore
lecturing will not be accepted. In other words, Russia’s
borders are, for its leadership, provisional – determined by
accidents of history 142 and to be adjusted when necessary.
Well before 2014 Moscow was prepared to use military
instruments – to limit Georgian geopolitical orientation
(notably in 2008), as well as to make aggressive moves in
the energy and trade sectors. But the change of tempo is
signalled by a greater willingness to take strong reactive
action. This was previously viewed as unrealizable but
Vladimir Putin was presented, unexpectedly, with a
historic opportunity in Crimea to act while meeting
only minimal resistance.
Notwithstanding the continuity in Russian foreign policy,
the picture has become starker and clearer since 2014.
Russia’s foreign policy play is increasingly transparent to
all but those determined not to see it. The leadership’s
ambitions are now in plain sight: in the former Soviet
Union, Russian control over the other states’ political
orientation is demanded with various degrees of
stringency, but there is a fundamental insistence on
acknowledgment of Russia’s primacy around its borders.
In particular, Ukraine is required, at a minimum, to be
declared neutral and subject to the Kremlin’s discretion to
interpret any new concords for this region. From Europe,
Moscow demands compliance over its trade practices,
while it continues to play divide-and-rule with individual
member states of the EU, consolidate its status as a longterm
energy partner and call for a new European security
architecture (with its subtext of a Russian veto). With the
United States and NATO, acknowledgment of Russia’s
equal status is a clear requirement – in effect, another veto
over major global decisions. In Asia, increased trade and
having China as an ally are the main ambitions. The rest of
the world is seen as relatively less important. Ukraine has
taken the oxygen from broader foreign policy questions.
However, the leadership sees economic mileage to be
gained from some countries in Latin America, and views
it as important that US power is not boosted by successes
in the Middle East.
The following sections explore these issues with regard to
Russia’s immediate periphery, Western Europe and the EU,
and the United States.
140
For a good exposition, see Andrew Monaghan, A ‘New Cold War’? Abusing History, Misunderstanding Russia, Chatham House Research Paper, May 2015.
141
See, for example, warnings that Crimea could be next, by security specialist Alexei Arbatov, ‘Yushenko Sentenced the Black Sea Fleet’, Novaya Gazeta, 22
May 2008, http://www.ng.ru/cis/2008-05-22/1_yushenko.html; Askold Krushelnycky, ‘Crimean peninsula could be the next South Ossetia’, the Independent,
28 August 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/crimean-peninsula-could-be-the-next-south-ossetia-910769.html; or Sergey Zayats, once the
administrator of Sevastopol’s largest district, ‘In Black Sea port, Ukraine is sovereign, but Russia rules’, McClatchy DC, 19 September 2008, http://www.mcclatchydc.
com/2008/09/19/52808/in-black-sea-port-ukraine-is-sovereign.html.
142
For example, Putin has referred to the Winter War with Finland in 1939–40 as an example of a strong Russia necessarily correcting border mistakes. See ‘Putin
Justified the Attack on Finland’, inoSMI.ru, 22 March 2013, http://inosmi.ru/sngbaltia/20130322/207240868.html#ixzz3S5xXW1XV.
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