Maria Raquel Freire & Regina Heller. Europe-Asia Studies. Volume 70, Issue 8, October 2018.
This article looks at Russia’s exercise of power politics in Ukraine and Syria as a way of improving its international status. Russia’s recent willingness to use power and coercion is theoretically counterintuitive as it appears to be in dissonance with the prevalent characterisation of the country as a status-overachieving inconsistent power. We argue that this behaviour is not the result of a consistent weighing of status against capabilities, but rather reflective of both internal and external dynamics. We analyse issues of identity, opportunity and costs as factors that influence Russian foreign action, showing that power politics will not solve Russia’s status-inconsistency problem in the long run.
This article looks at how Russia has recently practised ‘power politics’ as a way of improving its status in the international system. Being a major power has been a traditional objective of Russian foreign policy, mainly within the post-Soviet region, defined as an area of strategic relevance, but also beyond, particularly in relations with the United States and the West in general. Equipped with a number of power assets inherited from the Soviet Union, Russia maintains key player status in international politics. At the same time, its material basis for power-projection has been quite limited. Therefore, in the literature (Freire 2011; Volgy et al. 2011b), Russia is usually depicted as a status-inconsistent power, more precisely a status-overachiever, which has more status than capabilities. Making use of its military potential, the leadership in Moscow, however, is currently showing more resolve to increase its status-seeking efforts despite its consistently poor domestic performance, thus running the risk of producing high political and economic costs for the country.
Russia’s turn towards power politics in Ukraine and Syria does not fully fit this description. Status-overachievers usually aim to avoid conflict and try to preserve the status quo, which usually provides them with more international influence and recognition from other major powers than the resources it has available would actually warrant. Actively changing this status quo would mean investing significant resources and potentially losing overachiever status. Only in their immediate neighbourhood can such ‘overachievers’ afford to become more aggressive when their regional leadership is challenged. In Ukraine, the overachiever Russia tried to defend and preserve its challenged primary status, even at the cost of a violent conflict: surprisingly, however, it did not fully succeed. Moscow was not able to prevent the new Ukrainian government from signing a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the European Union (EU) and to force Ukraine back into its political and economic sphere of influence. Also, annexing Crimea was a revisionist move, not typical for overachievers. In more remote Syria, where Russia had few strategic interests and only engaged in international diplomacy as a means to preserve its influence in international politics and as a counterweight to Western, in particular US, dominance in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), it has more recently displayed an underachiever strategy, seeking to enhance its status and influence in the region more aggressively, through direct military involvement. As Russia has had significant influence on the international conflict management in Syria via its UNSC seat, while suffering from a persistently weak economy that renders a military intervention quite costly, Moscow’s willingness to use military power in its foreign policy as a means to enhance status seems highly counterintuitive.
We therefore argue that Russia’s most recent exercise of power-based status-seeking politics is not the result of a consistent weighing of objective status against capabilities. Rather, Russia is a status-inconsistent power that uses power politics as a means of status enhancement. This use of power politics is, however, dependent on a set of external and internal conditions. We put forward the following assumptions. First, with Russia’s self-defined major power identity coming under increased pressure from outside and from within, Moscow is compelled to follow more power-based foreign policy to seek and maintain status. Second, the more a region or issue appears to be of strategic interest to Moscow, the more prone Russia is to act and to bear the costs of status-seeking and, potentially, the risk of conflict escalation. Existing opportunities can change policymakers’ assessments of the strategic value of a region or an issue, thereby increasing the willingness to act. Finally, domestic political factors influence Russia’s status-seeking policy in such a way that the costs of action are not calculated consistently: power politics hence play a greater role than its domestic capabilities warrant.
Taking these factors into account, it is argued that theoretical concepts that try to categorise major power status and explain status-seeking need more fine-tuning in order to understand current patterns of Russian power politics. Against this backdrop, Russia’s power politics are analysed vis-à-vis three key factors, namely identity, opportunity and costs. To substantiate our argument, we will proceed as follows. In the first part, we discuss existing theoretical frameworks on status and status-seeking and assess how these concepts apply to post-Soviet Russia, thereby integrating the three factors of identity, opportunity and costs. We then show how the three factors influenced Russia’s recent status-seeking strategies, applying our enhanced framework to the cases of Ukraine and Syria. In this way, we hope to explain how these factors contribute to a more precise explanation of current Russian foreign policy. In our conclusion, we put together the findings, assessing how our enhanced framework contributes to a clarification of the above research question.
Theory: Russian power politics as status-seeking
In the theoretical literature on power shift and the role of status therein, major powers and their respective politics are characterised by and measured against specific benchmarks: strong material capabilities, including economic and military resources; activity, including the willingness to act and implement foreign policy goals globally as well as relative independence from other powers to do so; and recognition of major power status (attribution) by other countries (Levy 1983; Fordham & Asal 2007; Volgy et al. 2011a). This literature suggests that these states’ projection of power is highly dependent on the level of prestige (Gilpin 1981, p. 31) and recognition (attribution) as a major power by others (Volgy et al. 2011b, p. 7). Power shift theory refers to major powers as ‘status-consistent’ when they are legitimately recognised as both having the capabilities and being willing to become independently involved in international politics, and are expected to do so, including providing assistance if requested. ‘Status-inconsistent’ powers, on the contrary, face a mismatch between capabilities, willingness and independence on the one hand and community-based status attribution on the other (Danilovic & Clare 2007, p. 292). Status-inconsistent powers can be subdivided into ‘overachievers’ and ‘underachievers’. Status-overachievers do receive status-power recognition, but do not have the attributes to act as such. Underachievers are willing and have the power to act as major powers, but do not receive recognition as such from other states (Volgy et al. 2011b, pp. 10-2).
Status-inconsistency motivates states to pursue specific strategies in order to achieve status-consistency. Status-overachievers are usually confident with the overall level of community-based status attribution and are therefore mainly interested in keeping things as they are in order not to expose their own power weakness. They also try to avoid any external activity that might change the given circumstances and context. New international structures or initiatives that would require more substantial engagement and commitment are avoided. In their immediate neighbourhood, however, they can become quite aggressive and tend to apply more competitive strategies (Wohlforth 2009, p. 40) leading to conflictive behaviour, especially when their regional leadership is challenged. Underachievers regard their status to be generally under challenge and seek to enhance it to a level deemed to be appropriate to their own role definition. Underachievers are therefore more dangerous as they are willing to ‘resolve uncertainty around their status by competing more aggressively than overachievers to create larger roles for themselves in international affairs’ (Volgy et al. 2011b, p. 11).
While there is no doubt that post-Soviet Russia is a major power, there is much confusion when it comes to defining its major power status. Clarity about Russia’s major power status is analytically important, as it facilitates a proper assessment of the status strategy it currently pursues. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to a comprehensive, ongoing debate on post-Soviet Russia’s ambiguous great power potential (Tsygankov 2005). So far as major power status assessment, the baseline here seems to be that post-Soviet Russia is a status-inconsistent power. Russia’s self-attribution of major power status has been consistent throughout its Imperial/Soviet history, despite major difficulties in securing consistent community-based status attribution. However, Russia’s capabilities have not always matched its desire for major power status (Freire 2011). A quantitative analysis of the three status measures of capability, willingness and status attribution undertaken by Volgy and colleagues advances the following conclusion: ‘after the Cold War, the Russian Federation barely surpassed thresholds of capabilities and activity needed to qualify as a major power, although its status as a major power continues to hold. This is precisely the pattern we associate with a status overachieving major power’ (Volgy et al. 2011b, p. 7).
Yet, this quantitative assessment of Russia as an overachiever does not tell us enough about Russia’s current power politics, although it fits Russia’s stance against Ukraine since 2014 as a strategically important country in the neighbourhood. Western ‘meddling’ in Ukraine, as well as the EU’s association policy and discussions within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to potentially grant Ukraine and Georgia membership (Asmus 2008), have been perceived in Moscow as challenging Russia’s strategic interests (Antonenko 1999), thus provoking Russia to defend them aggressively. However, Moscow faces a number of negative consequences from its aggressive policy, including Ukraine’s further alienation from Russia or the increase of Moscow’s partial international isolation in the form of Western sanctions or exclusion from the G8 format. These empirical observations weaken the theoretical argument that status-overachievers can successfully pursue aggressive policies of status enhancement in their region, thereby keeping the costs of such aggression low.
Also, Russia’s Syria intervention in 2015 does not quite fit this picture of a status-overachiever. Why did Russia not persist with its strategy of preserving influence in the region through diplomacy, as it had done quite successfully since 2011, instead undertaking a risky military intervention, the end of which, at the time of writing, is not yet in view? Has Syria been growing in strategic importance and what are the new strategic interests that Moscow needs to protect there? For a better understanding of Russia’s current power politics from a status-seeking point of view and to find out what determines Russian policy options, the following sections try to give more empirical substance to the measures of attribution, willingness and capability. With regard to attribution, we will discuss the factor of identity and how ideational concerns determine and alter Russia’s status-seeking logic. With regard to willingness, we will discuss the factor of opportunity and how it influences Russian power politics. Finally, with regard to capabilities, we examine the factors of cost and cost consideration.
Attribution, social recognition, and the impact of identity on Russian status concern
Prima facie, the Russian status-inconsistency puzzle suggests that it may be impossible to measure status strategies exclusively on the basis of quantifiable criteria, such as the number of high-level permanent missions sent to a state or the number of visits of international diplomats and politicians. There is also a subjective dimension to status concerns that drives a major power’s foreign policy, that is, a subjectively defined sense of relevance and role definition that describes a specific status in international relations. As stated above, Russian policymakers have been concerned with status in the past. However, previous status concerns that started to emerge in the mid-1990s did not originate from a perception of Russia as a status-overachiever, reflecting on the contrary Russia’s concerns and dissatisfaction over insufficient recognition of its international position and status by the international community (Forsberg et al. 2014; Heller 2012, 2014). Thus, for most of the post-Soviet era, Russia has perceived itself as a status-underachiever. This perception as an underachiever means that, on the basis of identity considerations, Russia constructs images of its ‘self’ and of the ‘other’ that are fundamental to define its internal and external options (Houghton 2007, pp. 42-3; Sjöstedt 2007, p. 138). Therefore, identity definition of actors at any level (particularly the state and intra-state level) is fundamental to the process of foreign policy construction, as the case of Russia does indeed make clear (Freire 2011). What a state perceives as its interests depends ‘on a particular construction of self-identity in relation to the conceived identity of others’ (Jepperson et al. 1996, p. 60). A number of scholars claim that status is socially and emotionally important in interstate relations. Forsberg et al. (2014), for instance, have advocated the systematic inclusion of socio-emotional factors in the study of status concerns in international politics and Russian status-seeking in particular. (Mis-)perceptions in status conflicts (Forsberg 2014), feelings of anger and frustration about Western disrespect (Heller 2014; Larson & Shevchenko 2014), or national concepts of ‘honour’ (Tsygankov & Tarver-Wahlquist 2009; Tsygankov 2014) provoke specific reactions, form preferences and interests, and help better understand the Russian choice of more aggressive, power-driven politics.
Yet, status recognition and material status assets go hand in hand. Material status assets—including its nuclear arsenal or its permanent UNSC seat—seem to provide Russia with ‘the right to hold its own, independent positions on matters of international and European security’ (Sakwa 2011, p. 963)—and this ‘right’ has to be recognised by others. It is the historically unbroken identity of Russia as a major power and the corresponding Westphalian vision of a multipolar world—where Russia has its regional sphere of influence and is on par with the United States on issues of international security—which creates the Russian perception of the country’s permanent status-underachievement. As the West is the ‘significant other’ against which Russia traditionally measures its status, status respect claims are foregrounded in its relations with the West. The dominant view in Moscow was (and still is) that, since the end of the Cold War, the West has not granted Russia the status it actually, and ‘naturally’, deserves (Trenin 2006). Moscow still perceives itself as a member of the ‘elite club’ of powerful states, not ‘as a defeated power, obligated to defer to the United States and its allies’ (Sakwa 2011, p. 963). Russia has consequently felt disrespected as an equal power and seen its ‘legitimate security interests ignored: NATO’s eastward expansion, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, the US’s war in Iraq, European missile defence, the integration of Ukraine into the West—the list of offenses is long’ (Frolov 2016). Accordingly, the West has experienced a Russia increasingly aggrieved by the lack of respect for its security interests.
Russia’s chagrin over Western disrespect has materialised at various instances over the last 10-15 years, in official speeches and statements, and interviews with senior Russian political figures. One such example is Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, where he openly criticised the West—the United States in particular—for its unilateral approach to international relations (Prezident RF 2007). Subsequently, in public statements, Putin repeatedly blamed the United States for treating Russia as a ‘vassal’, not a partner. Russian resentment and dissatisfaction with Western policies is evident in official documents and strategy papers, such as Russian Foreign Policy Concepts and Security Doctrines. Criticism of the West points to perceived attempts at ‘imposing their point of view on global processes and conducting a policy to contain alternative centres of power’ (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2016, §5). Western attempts at preserving a favourable status quo have, in Putin’s eyes, ‘manifested in growing instability in international relations’ (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2013, §6). Russian official documents make clear that Western involvement in ‘countering integration processes and creating seats of tension in the Eurasian region is exerting a negative influence on the realisation of Russian national interests’ (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2015, §17).
The latest National Security Strategy (NSS) (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2015), approved in December 2015, reinforces the idea that Russia is unhappy with its international status, specifically with regard to the insufficient recognition of its role and, consequently, the lack of respect for its security interests by the leading members of the international community. Responsibility for both the destabilisation of world order and for disregarding Russia is quickly assigned: the United States and its policy of unilateralism, liberal interventionism and the practice of overthrowing ‘legitimate’ governments in other countries, as well as the attempt to contain and marginalise Russia that produces ‘chaos’ and instability in the world, thus undermining the recognised international order and its institutions, and creating a highly insecure environment, also for Russia. The NSS draws important conclusions from this insight: while the probability of Russia being drawn into a military conflict in the future is considered low, Russia must prepare itself for a chaotic and therefore highly conflict-prone world, in which war can break out at any time (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2015).
The relevance of opportunities for Russia’s willingness to act
Secondly, how can we make more sense of Russia’s power politics in terms of willingness? The theoretical literature on major power status and status policies clearly suggests that Russia as an overachiever is interested in maintaining international relations structures as they are, as it benefits status-wise from them without investing too many resources. In this sense, the willingness to engage intensively, which is potentially able to change the status quo, is relatively low for a status-overachiever. Only in their immediate neighbourhood or in other regions that qualify as areas of vital interest are major powers expected to overcome their inertia and become more assertive, even aggressive, when their regional or ‘special’ status is challenged. However, even if there is a high degree of willingness to defend a certain status or distinctive favoured position, status-inconsistent powers are never fully independent in pursuing status-enhancing politics. Their willingness is always subject to other constraints or opportunities, which can be represented by the presence or absence of other major powers pursuing their own interests in that region, or when intensive status-seeking engagements clash with the overachiever’s other political objectives. Russia’s 2015 NSS, for instance, considers a number of constraints. It is underlined that any foreign action ought to avoid a new arms race or military confrontation with the West and NATO. Moreover, the NSS warns that short-term foreign policy action and long-term goals, particularly those relating to the socio-economic development of a ‘strong, technologically advanced and resilient economy’ (Connolly 2016, p. 3), ought not to contradict each other.
In both Ukraine and Syria—the two areas where Russia is currently exercising power politics—the overachiever’s assumption is not fully consistent with dynamics on the ground. So far as Ukraine, we could argue in line with power shift theory, that Russian power politics aims at defending the country’s regional primacy. From a Russian point of view, Ukraine forms an essential part of the country’s area of ‘vital interest’ (Prezident RF 2014). Russian policy statements demonstrate a clear foreign policy priority accorded to regional issues, with particular reference to the post-Soviet space (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2008, 2013, 2016). Russia makes strong claims to have ‘privileged interests’ and ‘exclusive rights’ in the region (Medvedev 2008), especially after the Western community had become politically active in the region and started to exert stronger institutional and constitutive power there through intensified political and security cooperation (Casier 2018). Western development programmes such as for instance launched by USAID or embedded in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) framework provided not only for financial support to or deepened economic relations with the countries of the region, but also included provisions for judicial and political reforms that aimed at strengthening democratisation and domestic normative change. More indirectly, the West ideationally supported the Colour Revolutions as expressions of an emancipation and democratisation process in these countries from below. However, all this is resented by Russia and perceived as a challenge to the latter’s exclusive status in the region (Adomeit 2011). In accordance with status-seeking theory, Russia would be unwilling to give up this position and would therefore risk conflict to defend it. Yet, it is exactly this claim of exclusivity that causes problems to the Russian status-seeking strategy in Ukraine, since it does not take into account alternative understandings of the regional order elaborated in other neighbouring countries. The more the regional states question Russia’s primacy, the more they challenge Russia’s major power identity, eventually accelerating status conflicts with the West.
In the case of Syria, Russia’s willingness to act militarily contradicts the status-overachiever assumption. As a more remote region, Syria and the wider Middle East do not qualify as an area of vital interest to post-Soviet Russia: although Russia has traditionally been allied with Syria, which in Soviet times was an important hub for projecting Soviet power into the region (Trenin 2013; Charap 2013), the density and relevance of the relationship has been in decline throughout the post-Soviet era. With the notable exception of the military base in Tartūs, which remains Russia’s only military outpost beyond the former Soviet Union, economic and military ties are much looser than in Soviet times. Nevertheless, Moscow started military activities in support of the al-Asad regime in autumn 2015, a risky engagement that continues at the time of writing. In a reverse argument, it could be assumed that Syria’s strategic significance increased as a result of other opportunities and dynamics, and has been ‘upgraded’ to the status of a primary region, in which the leaders in Moscow seek the realisation of their interests.
Costs of status-seeking and cost considerations under limited capabilities
A third inconsistency relates to the costs of power-driven status-seeking and the consideration of these costs by Russia’s decision-makers. Indeed, power transition theory suggests that status-inconsistent powers are ‘more willing to pay greater costs to achieve status-consistency’, as they ‘are likely to operate in the “domain of losses”‘ (Volgy et al. 2011b, p. 12). This strategy, however, runs the risk that the costs can no longer be absorbed: particularly under the condition of limited material capabilities, such strategy is inevitably doomed to fail. Hence, if a status-seeking strategy is to be successful where there is a mismatch between status attribution and capability portfolio, the increased costs of status production have to be minimised or at least mediated.
In fact, power politics play a much greater role in the Russian status-seeking strategy than the material capabilities of the country warrant, particularly when assessed against the backdrop of Russia’s growing economic problems. The theoretical literature on status suggests that countries with limited capabilities first and foremost make efforts to strengthen their structural capability portfolio. In fact, the major strategic goal of the Moscow leadership throughout the first decade of the 2000s was to develop Russia’s economic capabilities and potential, thereby acknowledging the close relationship between economic strength and international status. Integration into global markets, diversification and technological development—in short, macro-economic development and stability—are considered preconditions for realising Russia’s major power aspirations.
This economy-focused, long-term strategic orientation towards the international realm seems to have been replaced by a security-inspired and short-term oriented strategy around 2011-2012. Further weight to this proposition is lent by observing that Russia’s economic policy has since undergone a ‘securitisation’ process: it has, in other words, been ‘subordinated to concerns of broader national security nature’ (Connolly 2016, p. 1). Russian decision-makers argue that the country is facing a highly hostile geopolitical environment, thereby justifying measures that prepare Russia to defend its interests internationally in the short-term. In an article published on Vedomosti in 2012, Putin underlined that Russia needed a ‘new economy, one that guarantees a stable development of the Russian economy as a precondition for the country’s survival in the global arena’.
The strategic foreign policy turn has been accompanied by a nationalisation of domestic political discourse, dominated mainly by the so-called siloviki, Putin loyalists from the security and power ministries, over the more liberal economists in the Kremlin (Bremmer & Charap 2010). Compared to 2000, when the government’s main legitimising argument was economic prosperity, the relationship between the regime and the population today is based on foreign policy nationalism, where military might and the readiness to use it in foreign policy play a central role (Marten 2015). In a domestic power struggle, the siloviki expanded their influence on foreign policy formulation in the Kremlin, thereby ignoring or actively silencing critical positions from the liberal economists who had been, until then, responsible for Russia’s economic policy (Bremmer & Charap 2010). The latter elite group repeatedly advocated that Russia’s foreign policy ought to be guided by economic rationales and spoke out against a further increase of state control of the economy, as did former minister of economic development Alexei Ulyukaev in 2015, and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin in 2016, when he urged the Kremlin to ‘reduce geopolitical tensions for the sake of the Russian economy’. At the Gaidar Forum in Moscow in January 2016, Ulyukaev’s successor German Gref criticised the government for not doing enough to tackle the structural deficits that paralyse the Russian economy and warned that Russia could become globally uncompetitive if it persisted on its current foreign policy path.
This context may explain the substantial increase that Russian military and defence spending experienced between 2011 and 2015. While the modernisation of Russia’s military capabilities has been a long-term project that started already in 2008 under then defence minister Anatolii Serdjukov, this significant rise gained momentum in 2011 with the presidential approval of the Russian State Armament Programme 2020. The programme aims at reforming the military and developing the Russian defence industry. One of its key objectives is represented by the renewal of 70% of Russian defence equipment by 2020. Deliberate focus on defence development and investment in the military-industrial complex remains a core policy area that compensates for Russia’s many shortcomings in economic areas. Nationalist rhetoric depicts the militarisation of the Russian economy as an indispensable step towards a self-sustaining, resilient economy, which is sustained in turn by appropriate military power capabilities (Monaghan 2016b).
However, in the face of increasing economic constraints caused by tumbling oil prices and European sanctions post-Crimea, the federal budget was unable to sustain its support of such an ambitious defence programme, evidence that the governing elite would only tolerate the costs of defence-based status-production to a certain point. In 2015, the government increased defence spending by 7.5%, with the Defence Ministry’s budget reaching US$66.4 billion; allocations were cut in 2016 by US$16 billion, a reduction of approximately 30% on the prior year. Although defence, along with social spending, remains a federal budget priority (Silva 2016), Russia’s ongoing economic troubles have reduced the financial resources to be allocated to the defence sector.
In the following two sections, we will empirically analyse how the factors of identity, opportunity and cost (considerations) have determined, limited or even improved the Russian leadership’s policy options to produce status via power politics in the two cases of Ukraine and Syria.
The regional dimension: Russian power politics in Ukraine
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine showcased Russian power politics in action, highlighting how its status-seeking strategy has not reversed its inconsistent power status. As a revisionist move, it places Russia as a status-underachiever, possessing the means and willingness to act, but not receiving recognition from other states especially with regard to its positioning in international affairs (Volgy et al. 2011b, p. 11).
The crisis in Ukraine unfolded in late 2013 in the face of public discontent with the ruling elite’s corrupt and erratic policy choices. Long-term tensions were sparked by the deals with the EU and Russia, and the contradictory nature of technical matters related to setting up a Customs Union, which requires agreement on common external tariffs. The political crisis that developed in Ukraine with demonstrations against corruption and criticism of political decisions serving the political and economic elites to the detriment of the national interest, paved the way for changes in alignments and loyalties, and created tensions that escalated into armed violence. Despite the network of interaction involving Russia and the West, with a dense institutionalisation of relations within the framework of the EU, the Council of Europe or NATO, along with established cooperation in several sectors, such as energy or trade, dialogue became difficult. The NATO-Russia Council formula was not working, and the EU framing cooperation agreement revealed to be outdated in the face of the political tensions that quickly escalated to violence. Integration competition between the EU-led Association Agreement together with a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area proposal on the one side and the Russian promoted Eurasian Economic Union on the other became clear and fed into mutual distrust.
Since its war with Georgia in 2008 to support the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia has been challenging the principle of territorial integrity of states, with the annexation of Crimea constituting a clear example of direct involvement and of the changing Russian strategy in the post-Soviet space from destabilisation (Allison 2014, p. 1291) to more active engagement, through the use of force if needed. This revisionist stance reflects Russia’s wish to maintain the status quo in the post-Soviet space, and Ukraine more in particular, implying at the same time a strategy maintaining leverage over the country’s politics, particularly in the face of a pro-Western government in Kyiv. The annexation of Crimea, as a clear violation of the border regime in Europe, raises fundamental questions about the legality and legitimacy of this act (Burke-White 2014, pp. 65-6).
The decision to hold a referendum in Crimea came as a surprise to the West (Stent 2016; Treisman 2016) along with the hastened process that led to the ‘reintegration of Crimea’ (in Russian wording) into the Russian Federation. The annexation of Crimea seemed an attempt to change Russia’s inconsistent power status through a series of aggressive actions. Russia’s opportunity/cost calculations were proved drastically wrong: rather than the expected status boost, these actions brought upon it Western sanctions and isolated Russia even further. In eastern Ukraine, Russia confronted resistance and opposition from the West, and promoted a formulation in the Minsk Agreement that included the pull out of heavy weapons and the preparation of local elections according to Ukrainian law (Drezner 2015). Russia also faced resistance from Ukrainian forces, both in the Donbas and in Crimea, with the government sending ‘troops to conduct “anti-terrorist” operations against the Russian-led militias’ in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian soldiers resisting the new authority in Crimea (Fraser 2014). In turn, Russian officials accused Ukrainian forces of violating international law.
Not only because of Western resistance, but also in the face of regional states’ increasingly independent and autonomous foreign policies, Russia’s power in the post-Soviet space is not unlimited. However, Russian interest in keeping these states in its sphere of influence remains strong, not only for the geostrategic reasons mentioned earlier, but also because of dense economic relations and Russian minorities living in these countries. Thus, Russia’s revisionist course is an attempt to avert changes that threaten its preferred status quo.
As an underachiever, Russia has been seeking recognition to improve its inconsistent power status. However, if aggressive Russian actions in Ukraine prompted immediate internal support stimulated by a domestic rhetoric of international affirmation (Nardelli et al. 2015; Vice 2017), they also brought about isolation and sanctions, hence diminishing Russia’s leverage in the ‘club of great powers’ and leading to its exclusion from the former G8, now the G7. In this sense, Russia’s willingness to act as a major global player does not match its expectations of international status recognition. An analysis of the Ukraine case shows the role of identity, opportunity and cost in Russia’s status-seeking policies.
Identity
Russian multivectoral foreign policy, underpinned by the identification of geographical vectors that are structuring to foreign policy, clearly recognises the former Soviet space as an area of primary influence. References to Ukraine in Russian discourse fit this primacy, according to which privileged relations are to be developed with countries in this space and external interference will be closely monitored by Moscow to avoid any changes unfavourable to Russia. This reasoning is part of a broader policy of engagement with and, alternatively, containment of the West that defined Russian-Western relations since the end of the Cold War. It has also been part of the policy of respect for the territorial integrity of states (following UN principles, as reiterated in all main Russian Foreign Policy Concepts), reaffirming Russia as a sovereigntist country (Freire 2017). In this sense, Russia has always promoted sovereignty and non-interference as golden rules in the international system, systematically following this understanding within UNSC voting procedures. The abrogation of this fundamental principle through the violation of the border regime in Europe questions the essence of Russian rhetoric and claims, justifying Crimea’s annexation, since the latter was part of Ukrainian sovereign territory, independently of the historical and other justifications that Russia has used to try to legitimise its move, as further analysed in this section.
In the Russian view, Western involvement in Ukrainian politics contributed to instability and violence (Gander 2014). The enlargement of NATO, described in the Russian military doctrines issued since 2010 (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2010, 2014) as the major external threat to Russia, and the Alliance’s militarisation policy and arms build-up, recently added as a concern (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya 2015), became issues of dissension with the West. This tension was aggravated by the discussion of the possibility of the Atlantic Alliance offering an ultimately un-formalised Membership Action Plan to Ukraine and Georgia—which was not formalised. Accusations by Russia that the West supported the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine in 2004 and more recently, the ‘political coup’ ousting President Yanukovych in the context of the 2013 crisis, underline the relevance that Russia attaches to developments in its immediate neighbourhood.
Russian actions demonstrate that it will react whenever its interests are directly at stake. The annexation of Crimea is a result of this policy reasoning, justified both by the mostly Russian population of the peninsula (an ethnic-kin argument), and on an historically shared identity (Prezident RF 2014), as well as a ‘common history’ and ‘common memory’ (Kappeler 2014, p. 112), even if this is largely constructed (Tsygankov 2015, pp. 9-10; Averre 2016, p. 705). However, fighting ‘the “fraternal” Ukrainian people’ (Allison 2014, p. 1280) seems to add to the inconsistencies of the political discourse, since the annexation of Crimea, despite the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, became a symbol of Russia as a great power. This territorial annexation runs against the sovereignty principle as it disregards normative discourses focusing on non-interference. The Russian counter-argument—that Crimea’s ‘reintegration’ into Russian territory was the correction of a historical fault (Prezident RF 2014) and therefore does not call the normative principle into question—stands up against international law, Ukrainian law and international agreements such as the Almaty Declaration (1991) and the Budapest Memorandum (1994). The end result of Russian actions was allowing it to raise its power status through the annexation of Crimea, and through a policy of destabilisation of eastern Ukraine. However, linking ethnic identity with separatism proved to be non-rewarding. By arguing that ‘the community of Russians in Crimea lost … capacity to act as … an “internal lobby” in Ukraine after the annexation of the peninsula’ (Allison 2014, p. 1283), Allison implied a dilution of Russia’s ‘identity argument’.
The Russian strategy of status power-enhancement and recognition seeking failed for the following reasons: Western resistance, the reinforcement of Ukrainian national identity as a reaction to Russian aggression, with ‘feelings of frustration, powerlessness and anger towards Russia’ feeding anti-Russian narratives (Traill 2016), Russia’s incapacity to convincingly put forward the identity argument on historical and legal grounds to justify Crimea’s annexation, and, finally, the need to allocate economic resources that put Russia’s budget under strain.
Opportunity
Western ‘meddling’ in the post-Soviet space, as perceived by Moscow, together with Russia’s concern over the European security configuration and with NATO enlargement encroaching on Russia’s sphere of influence, contextualise the opportunity that the crisis in Ukraine offered to Moscow. It was a twofold opportunity in terms of countering Western moves and influence, and in gaining increasing leverage over Ukraine through a policy of destabilisation in the Donbas area as part of a strategy of bringing and maintaining insecurity in Europe. Russian actions sought to avoid its ‘nightmare scenario of being completely pushed out of Ukraine by the West’ (Charap 2014, p. 86). In geopolitical terms, the opportunity to ‘control the Russian Black Sea Fleet and new maritime territorial claims that encompassed much of Ukraine’s Black Sea energy potential and existing facilities’ was an additional motivation for Russian actions (Biersack & O’Lear 2014, pp. 247-69). Along with NATO enlargement and regional geopolitics, these Russian moves also reflected a reaction to ‘perceptions of insecurity and a sense of humiliation’ (Karagiannis 2014, p. 400).
Russia has combined hard and soft power approaches in the past. It has attempted to engage its neighbourhood in cooperative structures, including the CIS, CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, which have however encountered limited success. Russia has also attempted to maintain its leverage over protracted conflicts in areas defined by Moscow as vital to its interests, such as in the Moldovan territory of Transnistria or the Georgian Republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This combined use of soft and hard power was amply demonstrated in Ukraine, with Russia pressuring at first Ukraine into its own regional integration project, the Eurasian Economic Union and later on, moving to annex Crimea and supporting violence in eastern Ukraine. Moreover, Russia understood the timing was opportune since the Ukrainian military forces were not prepared to respond in a coherent way, given their demoralised status in the face of an uncertain political situation in Kyiv, particularly in the immediate period after Yanukovych left power (Allison 2014, p. 1257).
However, the tide ran against Russia. The new Ukrainian government of President Petro Poroshenko signed all sections of the Association Agreement with the European Union, including provisions for a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) in June 2014 (European Commission 2015). Russia has been seeking to reinforce its leverage over Ukrainian politics by seeing an opportunity in the fragility of Ukrainian rule and the unstable situation in the Donbas, assuming a position of ‘rectification’ not only of the past, but also of the present. This strategy, however, has not been paying off.
Cost considerations
Despite showing resolve and the material capacity to act in Ukraine, most notably by the annexation of Crimea, Russia has been facing a difficult economic situation. Objective calculations of the economic and financial losses that Russia had to bear in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict support the assessment that the Kremlin does not follow a clear strategy on cost-calculation regarding status-seeking. The costs associated to Western sanctions since March 2014 amount to about US$40 billion, the Russian ruble has devalued, oil prices remain low, and millions in economic assets have left the country (Sutyagin 2015). The Russian government itself has costed the financial losses from the Western sanctions at about US$40 billion for 2014, and about US$83 billion for 2015 (Chan 2015), approximately 2-3% of total GDP. Russia’s current military engagements seem to fly in the face of the country’s struggling economic situation: not only is Russia supporting separatist fighters in Ukraine, but it is also involved in airstrikes in Syria. Alone, the costs of the military involvement in Ukraine are estimated at over US$40 billion, covering military personnel and equipment, the support of ethnic Russians, and subsidies for Crimea (Amos 2015). On top of this, the development of new fighter jets and T-14 battle tanks as well as the acquisition of new warships and submarines under the Kremlin’s defence modernisation programme, to the alleged tune of US$400 billion, put huge pressure on the budget (Rosen 2016). ‘Economically, the war and occupation of both Crimea and the Donbas have imposed ruinous costs on Russia, whose economy has already been battered by declining global commodity prices and Western sanctions. … It is as if Putin has himself contained Russia’ (Karatnycky & Motyl 2015). In an unprecedented move, the defence budget for 2017 was cut by 20% (Bodner 2017). The human cost of the military intervention directly related to Russians fighting in Ukraine is not clear, with contradictory information circulating. Estimates point to over 2,000 casualties, based on reports by the Soldiers’ Mothers Associations (Sharkov 2016). On 26 May 2015 Putin issued a decree ordering information on military casualties during ‘special operations’ or ‘peacetime’ to be a state secret, and thus not to be disclosed (Demirjian 2015).
In political terms, the costs of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, particularly the annexation of Crimea, amount to the exacerbation of relations with the West. Russia’s use of force to (re)gain major power status recognition has not changed its ‘inconsistent’ status and is ‘unlikely to have any lasting effect’ (Urnov 2014, p. 305). It is not ultimately clear whether the Russian government is tolerating and taking these costs into account or whether its policy of ‘not backing down’ in Ukraine has increased the costs of status production in an uncontrolled and undesired way. Both President Putin and Premier Medvedev continue to insist that these economic repercussions are helping to stabilise Russia’s economy rather than putting pressure on it (Medvedev 2016). At the same time, the Kremlin has been quite successful in smoothing potential societal discontent over the deteriorating economic situation and cognitively as well as emotionally detaching it from Russian conduct in Ukraine (Goodrich 2018). On the contrary, the Kremlin managed to strengthen public support for its policy, relying on nationalistic rhetoric and evoking the narrative of a strong and independent Russia (Hale 2014)—a Russia that sought to defend its interests in Ukraine by intervening militarily to ensure that developments there did not threaten its vital interests.
The outcome of the Ukraine intervention has been mixed: Russia has managed to avoid a ‘Westernisation’ of Ukraine, mainly by blocking its short- to medium-term prospects of accession to NATO. However, as a consequence of annexing Crimea, it has been hit by sanctions and endured further isolation. The regime has represented this as being offset by increasing internal production and as a diversification in Moscow’s commercial policy. For example, after the imposition of sanctions, Moscow signed a gas deal with China worth US$400 billion in May 2014, to supply up to 38 billion cubic metres per year, over a period of 30 years. However, this agreement, within the ‘pivot to the East’ or ‘Asian pivot’ approach, did not come as a full package of deals making China a new partner to compensate for the loss of Western markets (Buckley 2016). Also, the instability in the Donbas area seems to add pressure to Russian policy options, in the face of Western resistance to withdraw the sanctions before Minsk II is implemented. Russia’s actions, despite their heavy material and non-material costs, have thus failed to provide ground for sustainable new partnerships or to prevent the Ukrainian government’s ‘turn to the West’. Displaying force led to budget tightening, and Russian involvement in Crimea and eastern Ukraine brought severe additional financial constraints to Moscow. Russia remains an underachiever: its display of force in Ukraine has not led to status recognition and has had substantial impact in terms of costs.
The global dimension: Russian power politics in Syria
The Syrian civil war represents another context in which the Russian leadership has exercised power politics and sought to boost its status. Russia’s unilateral military intervention of September 2015 came as a surprise to the international community. In the course of international efforts to mediate over Syria since 2011, Russia had always claimed neutrality and persistently defended the position that the international community should abstain from any attempts to intervene in what Moscow termed an ‘internal conflict’. With its air campaign of September 2015, Russia substantially deviated from this position. The official justification for the intervention was to support the Syrian regime in its fight against terrorism and to stabilise the ‘legitimate Syrian government’. Indeed, al-Asad’s position both militarily in the field and politically in the negotiations was significantly strengthened by Russia’s intervention (Techeau 2015; Sanger 2016). In the following analysis, we will assess how identity, opportunity and cost calculations enabled this change.
Identity
The identity vector is crucial to understanding Russian power politics in Syria. Particularly during the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, the Middle East became more important for Russia, as it came to be interpreted as a battlefield over two key issues: setting the guiding principles of global order and preserving Russia’s centrality in international conflict regulation as an embodiment of its international status. Both aspects have played a key role in Russia’s positioning on Syria and have been pursued by the Russian leadership in different ways.
From December 2010 onwards, the Arab Revolutions brought up the question of how to deal with the tension between state sovereignty and the responsibility to protect (R2P). Russia and China on the one side and the West on the other had diverging positions on upheavals in the region. While the West saw a chance for democratisation, Russia and China feared longer-term chaos and instability through political turnover. However, Russia did not categorically refuse to apply the R2P principle in the eruption of civil war in Libya, but warned the West of ‘misusing’ the international intervention to push for regime change in the country—a scenario that was not up for discussion by Moscow for domestic reasons, particularly the regime’s generalised fear of a spill-over effect on Russia. In this ambiguous position on the application of R2P, Moscow abstained from the vote on the implementation of the no-fly zone in the UNSC rather than voting against the motion (UNSC 2011a).
The dynamic of the Western-led Libya intervention, leading to the fall of President Muammar al-Gaddafi, reactivated Russian concerns over a ‘hidden agenda’ of external regime change pursued by the West (Savinykh 2011). The developments on the ground caused a hardening of the Russian position in subsequent international negotiations on Syria, with the Kremlin obstructing any future attempt to apply international pressure on the Syrian regime, systematically challenging diplomatic initiatives condemning the use of force by the Syrian regime or more substantial actions, including the imposition of sanctions.
While Russia’s policy of opposing Western actions over Syria was successful in terms of maintaining Moscow’s centrality in international conflict management efforts, it did not contribute to stopping the violence on the ground. Throughout 2013, a number of incidents of chemical weapons use were reported in Syria. The most serious one of that year took place in the suburbs of Ghouta, where the Syrian army fought against rebels. Over 1,000 people were killed (Chulov et al. 2013). International intelligence agencies were confident that the sarin gas attacks had been carried out by the Syrian government against the opposition. In this situation of conflict escalation, and Russia’s obstruction of any move against al-Asad, the US agreed to Russia’s proposal to cooperate on the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons (UNSC 2011b).
The influx of Islamist terrorism into Syria, the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and its military successes throughout 2014-2015 dramatically altered the context of the Syria conflict. International actors came to see a threat to their own security developing within the civil war, escalating their policies towards Syria. Diplomacy remained a component of the international efforts at conflict resolution but became subordinate to the practical question of how to stop ISIL on the ground. At the NATO summit in September 2014, the United States launched an international military coalition against ISIL, thereby bypassing Russia and shifting attention to the military domain. Moscow, for its part, started in early 2015 new activities aimed at reactivating the diplomatic sphere, such as inviting representatives from the Syrian government and main opposition leaders to talks in Moscow (Barmin 2015). Later that year, Putin called upon the international community to join under one broad international anti-ISIL coalition (Felgenhauer 2015), bringing together the already existing US-led coalition, Russia and al-Asad’s troops, as well as the Iraqi military and further armed groups in the region fighting against ISIL. Western reactions remained cautious and sceptical. Another appeal from the Russian president at the UN General Assembly meeting on 25 September went unheeded (President of Russia 2015). Russia’s centrality to the issue, and thus its potential to shape the global order, vanished.
The UN General Assembly meeting unfolded amidst rumours claiming that Russia was preparing for a military intervention in Syria (Black & Luhn 2015). These rumours notwithstanding, the actual intervention occurred shortly after the UN meeting on 30 September and came as a surprise to many Western observers (Hosenball et al. 2015). Moscow’s intentions remained unclear. Russian military actions apparently did not primarily target ISIL but the armed opposition to al-Asad (Cooper et al. 2015). However, Russia’s decision reactivated international diplomatic activities. By late February 2016, Russia and the United States had brokered a ceasefire between the Syrian opposition and the al-Asad regime. For Russia, this outcome was very positive, as it allowed the Kremlin to regain centrality in the conflict management process, while keeping in power its key ally, the regime led by Bashār al-Asad.
Opportunity
Identity can illuminate the broader picture of Russian normative positions on international order and security as well as the Russian preoccupation with its centrality in international security issues. However, it cannot fully explain why Russia was willing to use more power-based foreign policy instruments in Syria, as Russia’s decision to militarily intervene came exactly at a juncture when its domestic and international circumstances weighed against such a move. By late summer 2015, the United States and the European Union had imposed economic sanctions on Moscow in response to its aggression against Ukraine; Russia had been expelled from the G8 and security cooperation within the NATO-Russia Council had been put on ice. Russia’s prestige as an ‘indispensable partner’ and ‘reliable actor’ in international politics had been severely damaged. A dramatic drop in oil prices in combination with the negative effects of the Western sanctions accelerated the domestic economic crisis, which turned into a serious recession (Kollewe 2014).
Opportunity can complement the picture here. With Russian status coming under increasing pressure in Syria, Moscow used a window of opportunity that opened in late September 2015 to actively ‘rectify’ the situation. This window consisted of a perceived relative weakness on the part of the West, and offered an ideal context for Moscow to either promote itself as an ‘indispensable’ partner in fighting ISIL and managing the conflict in Syria, or to put pressure on the West by taking the lead and enforce concessions and compromise. In particular, US reservations and lack of political will to engage more actively in Syria militarily and to change the balance of power on the ground enabled Russia to take the initiative. Some observers even went so far as to insinuate that Western politicians felt somewhat relieved to see Russia engaging militarily, as this promised to ‘change the game’ and to support the West in its efforts to fight ISIL and stop the violence in Syria (Godement 2015). After the launch of the air campaign, with the apparent aim to increase the international willingness for active collaboration, Putin repeatedly offered the US military cooperation and attempted to win over Washington by indicating that in a future peace-deal scenario, exiling al-Asad was not ruled out in principle by Moscow (Ignatius 2016).
Another factor was the European refugee crisis, which, in September 2015, was experiencing one of its recurrent peaks. For Moscow, the connection between civil war in Syria and the European refugee crisis had the potential to put the European Union under pressure and undermine the sanctions regime. There had been strong disagreement among the EU members on whether to continue or to lift the EU sanctions on Russia: the refugee crisis intensified intra-European conflicts and, as a consequence, the EU’s position on Russia became less coherent or stable. By early 2015, the EU consensus on Russia, developed as a result of Crimea’s annexation a year earlier, threatened to break apart when Moscow made overtures to Athens, which was seeking financial support in light of its debt crisis (Foxley 2015). However, the Russian attempt to link Syria to Ukraine did not pay off: at the time of writing, Western sanctions remain in force, although as early as 2015 high-ranking Western politicians were promoting the idea of clearing up ‘misunderstandings’ with Russia and of ‘normalising’ the relationship. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, the French President, François Hollande, sought an alliance with Putin in the common fight against international terrorism (Chassany et al. 2015). However, Western dissatisfaction with Russia’s sustained political and military support for al-Asad thwarted any diplomatic progress on the conflict. The upcoming US presidential elections provided Russia with more opportunities throughout 2016 to continue its military engagement in Syria without major resistance from the international community. In autumn 2016, Russia launched a new major offensive in support of the Syrian army to strike targets in and around the strategically important city of Aleppo, leading to the collapse of the Syrian opposition forces (Borger & Shaheen 2016a). Western actors have since accused Russia of committing or enabling the al-Asad regime to commit war crimes against the civilian population in Syria (Borger & Shaheen 2016b).
Cost considerations
So far as the costs of this hard-power status-seeking strategy, Russia tried to keep them low from the very beginning. Given US reluctance to take the lead on Syria, the potential for political and military escalation with the West was low. Russia’s unusual policy of leaking limited but targeted information about its impending military operation in Syria had a twofold purpose: on the one hand, Moscow demonstrated its determination to save its long-time Syrian ally; on the other hand, according to Russian security expert Pavel Felgenhauer (2015), this information policy was meant to give discrete notice to Western military early on and in this way to serve as a ‘preventive means to reduce the general level of confrontation with the West’. Another indicator that Moscow was aware of the potential for conflict entrenched in its Syrian strategy was its readiness, shortly after launching the air strikes, to agree with the United States to closely coordinate their campaigns in order to avoid any undesired military incidents in the airspace over Syria (Crawford & Rizzo 2015).
The relatively low risk of military and political confrontation with the West must be balanced against a number of costs that the Russian leadership apparently did not consider at the beginning of the campaign. Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet fighter led to a deterioration of the relations between Moscow and Turkey, increasing military tensions with NATO (MacFarquhar & Erlanger 2015). The Kremlin imposed sanctions against Turkey, knowing that these would only have minor economic repercussions on the Russian economy (Bilgic-Alpaslan et al. 2015). The political damage was much higher. Until the incident, Turkey had been an important regional and economic partner. Ankara, for example, had not supported Western sanctions against Russia following the annexation of the Crimea; moreover, Turkey was central to Russia’s energy strategy (Krastev 2016). In the summer of 2016, a conciliatory gesture from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan brought the relationships back to their normal (Mankoff 2016).
With the start of the military campaign in Syria, critics, both international and domestic, warned that ‘Russia’s gambit would suck it into another Afghanistan quagmire which ended in humiliating and costly defeat during the Cold War’ (Doucet 2016). However, Russia was seemingly quite successful in giving Western military representatives the impression that its intervention was effective and efficient, and that it was achieving its goals in Syria ‘at sustainable costs’ (Ditz 2015). While the projected daily cost of the military intervention of approximately US$4 billion posed an immediate financial burden for the struggling Russian economy and federal budget, from a point of view of the Russian arms industry compensatory gains can be generated through the testing and displaying of new, high-tech military equipment in the Syrian battlefield and attraction of potential defence customers (Ditz 2015; Hobson 2015; Stupples 2015). According to Ditz, an increase in arms sales by 1%, according to these calculations, corresponded to the costs for one month of airstrikes in Syria.
With Russia’s economy declining in 2015 by about 3.8%, an inflation rate rising to 15% and wages coming under pressure along with the ruble, which fell by 50% between 2014 and 2015 (IMF 2015), the Putin regime came under pressure to legitimise its external power politics. Moscow tried to dispel domestic concerns of a too costly military engagement from the beginning by justifying it as a contribution to the fight against the Islamic State, thereby regularly pointing at its achievements in rolling back ISIL, its positive influence on international diplomatic efforts, as well as its self-declared successes in ‘turning the tide in the fight against terrorism’ in Syria.
In the medium term, however, Russian military personnel in Syria or even Russian civilians elsewhere have become targets for Islamist terrorist attacks. A significant number of Islamists from the Northern Caucasus and Muslim migrant workers from Central Asia who were radicalised in Russia went to live or fight in Syria and Iraq alongside ISIL or al-Nusra (CSIS 2017). In 2017, officials estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and Central Asia joined ISIS as fighters (CSIS 2017, p. 12). The Moscow leadership ignored this problem for a long time and has even been accused of supporting the outflow of extremists, on the basis that ‘they would be less of a threat outside Russia than inside’ (Walker 2017b). Since the start of Moscow’s intervention, ISIL has published a number of propaganda videos claiming that it will take vengeance against the Russian state and its citizens. Russia has already been a target of Islamist terrorism: in October 2015, ISIL terrorists brought down a Russian airplane over the Sinai peninsula. In early February 2016, ISIL killed a Russian military consultant and an unconfirmed number of high-ranking Russian generals in Syria. It is also not unlikely that the Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen responsible for the St Petersburg metro attacks in April 2017, in which ten people died and 50 were wounded, is connected with Russia’s Syria policy (Walker 2017a).
Conclusions
In this article, we sought an answer to the puzzle of why Russia has been increasingly exercising power politics in its foreign policy, although its capabilities do not always allow for it. We have defined Russian ‘power politics’ as the status-seeking actions of a status-inconsistent power that seeks to enhance and maintain its status through soft and hard means. We argued that current Russian status-seeking strategies are inconsistent with the conventional definition of status-overachievers and status-underachievers in the theory, and with Russia’s characterisation as a status-overachiever. With the analysis of identity, opportunity and costs as driving factors in the cases of Ukraine and Syria, we gave a more systematic picture of the logic and outcomes of status-seeking.
The analysis has shown that in the cases of Ukraine and Syria, Russian status-seeking is incoherent. In both instances, the factors of identity, opportunity and cost calculations have influenced Russia’s strategy. In the case of Ukraine, the overall Russian status-seeking strategy is consistent with the theoretical assumptions put forward in the literature on status and status-seeking, but has turned out to be highly unproductive. The definition of the post-Soviet space as a natural area of influence for Russia, and of Ukraine as a close partner with a long shared history, feeds into the discourse on shared identity that underlines justifications for Russian actions, in particular the annexation of Crimea. However, the legitimacy sought by Russia has not been widely recognised, including in its neighbourhood, and Russia has been increasingly isolated internationally as a result of its aggressive actions. The West’s response to Russia’s aggressive power politics towards Ukraine and uncooperative stance towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine has accelerated Russia’s domestic economic crisis, which throughout 2016 and 2017 turned into serious recession. This applies more widely to the overall Russian strategy of status power recognition, with its status-inconsistency remaining unchanged. The opportunity perceived by Russia, in the face of developments in Ukraine, to project its power status, mainly through the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, have led to high costs, both in material and non-material terms. Sanctions, further isolation from the West and an inability to develop substantial new partnerships, along with the worsening of the economic situation at home, to which these moves further contributed, did not lead to a change in Russia’s underachiever status.
In the case of Syria, Russian power politics, in the form of the military intervention that started in 2015, equally runs in opposition to the theoretical assumptions on status-inconsistent powers. While status theory would suggest a more conservative and thus also militarily reluctant Russian policy in Syria, Russia displayed a much more active engagement and a willingness to take greater risks than the position of an overachiever would suggest. However, Russia’s decision becomes more understandable when considering the factors of identity, opportunity and costs. Russian self-image as a central player in international diplomacy came under pressure after the Arab Revolutions and the advancement of ISIL in Syria. Identity drivers became relevant in combination with the fact that the risk of a confrontation with an indecisive and reluctant West in Syria seemed low and the perception that becoming militarily involved in Syria could help solve more general issues of status, such as a reversion of Russia’s partial international isolation following its aggression against Ukraine as well as increasing Russian influence in the wider Middle East at the expense of the West. Yet, the intervention incurred a number of costs, some of which Russia was able to mitigate in the short-term and others, both financial and political, which are likely to continue to weigh on Russia for a longer time. Nevertheless, it seems that the leadership in Moscow considers its status-seeking strategy of military diplomacy as successful and rewarding rather than cost-inducing.
Overall, Russia’s seemingly successful hard-power-based status-seeking in the region has not solved the country’s status-inconsistency problem more broadly. Russian success in producing status via power politics is strongly dependent on a combination of favourable conditions and the ability to limit the costs. With the Russian economy still in dire straits this strategy is highly questionable. In a more general vein, our analysis helps to understand that what seems unequivocally to be a ‘grand strategy’ turn towards power politics is in itself ambivalent and inconsistent. Despite the current updraft of victory mentality in Moscow, in view of some successes in imposing its will on other actors in the international community, the analysis amply shows the limits to Russia’s becoming a status-consistent power, and that the restraints on Russia being able to substantially and independently shape international politics remain tight.