Autocracy promotion in Russia’s foreign policy:

Abstract

Russia’s influence in its Near Abroad (called “Bližkoe zarubeže” in Russian) has created a permissive zone, in which the countries within that area can ignore their democratic commitments being aware that their loyalty to Russia can protect them against any possible interference of the US and the EU. The analysis of bilateral relations between Armenia and Russia on one side, and between Russia and Belarus on the other, has led to the identification of the four models of autocracy promotion: spontaneous emulation, hard power efforts (mainly concerning military intervention), rewards (primarily regarding economic assistance) and negative sanctions (or blackmailing). A combination of rewards and punishments has proved to be the most frequent tactic used by the Kremlin, which has also been facilitated by Armenia and Belarus’s weak linkage and leverage with Western democracy promoters. Russia’s “conservative” diplomacy, which has followed a realist approach, has not resulted in a rigorous autocratic promotion policy, but the Belarusian and Armenian cases demonstrate that in these two (non-democratic) regimes (and also in those of Central Asia) the presence of Russia is stronger than in the democratic ones, such as the Baltic States. Russia’s “sanctions” against Belarus have been less than those directed against Armenia, owing mainly to the former country’s proximity to Russia in the cultural arena and the strategic geopolitical location of Belarus in Eastern Europe. Armenia, on the other hand, has also been subject to direct military intervention by Russia, which was however limited to the first Artsakh war