Tsygankov Andrei P. Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity

Fifth Edition. — Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2019. — 336 p.Winston Churchill once famously observed that the key to understanding Russia’s “enigma” is its national interest. However, he failed to explain what that interest was. It is therefore our scholarly task to uncover what Russians themselves understand to be their foreign policy interests and objectives. In contrast to the direction of Churchill’s thought, there has been a great deal of change in Russia’s perceptions of its national interest. Thus, President Boris Yeltsin and his first foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, defined national interest as that of integration with Western economic and security institutions. The second foreign minister, Yevgeni Primakov, saw the need to restore Russia’s great power status and balance hegemonic aspirations of the United States. Finally, Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev adopted their own distinct vision of national interest, which balanced Russia’s great power status with the need to have special relationships with the West in general and the United States in particular. In the wake of the global economic crisis and rise of non-Western powers, Russia is yet again reassessing its interests and relations with the West. This book seeks to contribute to our understanding of the national interest formation in Russia’s foreign policy. Instead of assuming that national interest is about power or modernization, as mainstream international relations theories tend to do, I maintain that we ought to study the complex forces behind its formation. Upon closer inspection, we discover that much of Russia’s foreign policy and national interest can be understood in the context of the country’s relations with the West. Russia’s attempts to embrace Western liberalism, as well as its insistence on great power status, make sense when we consider the significance of Western recognition in affirming Russia’s actions. Western actions serve to reinforce or undermine dominant political forces inside Russia. Extending recognition emboldens Russian liberals insisting on their country’s belongingness with the West. Withholding such recognition strengthens Russia’s traditionally strong supporters of greater independence from the West. It is therefore domestic identity coalitions competing for influence in the context of Western actions that help to make sense of Russia’s foreign policy formation.