Post-Soviet Russian Foreign Policy: Domestic Debates, the ‘Near Abroad’ and the West

Abstract

In the four years or more since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian foreign policy towards the other Soviet successor states (the ‘near abroad’)1 and towards the West has become more assertive. Most observers would argue that this dramatic shift is the product of intense political infighting in Moscow. While this is true, it is also an oversimplification that ignores the nuances of the political debate in Moscow, the complexities of Russia’s new international position, and the interrelationship between the domestic debate and the foreign policies pursued by the Yeltsin government. For example, the initial goal of Russian foreign policy was, in the former Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev’s words, to prevent Russia from ‘dropping out of international relations as a result of the disintegration of the USSR’2 and to derive the benefits of a pro-Western policy. Yet, faced with increasingly intense criticism of that foreign policy, Yeltsin and Kozyrev pursued a second strategy — a harder line on the ‘near abroad’ — that would placate the domestic audience. The problem for Russia has been that each of these policies has ramifications both for the domestic front and for policy in other foreign policy spheres. Several international relations experts have offered characterisations of the linkage between domestic politics and foreign policy.3 One approach that seems appropriate for our purposes is Robert Putnam’s metaphor of a two-level game which ‘recognizes that central decision-makers strive to reconcile domestic and international imperatives simultaneously’.4 Most important, this metaphor highlights the complexity of this mutuality. Putnam argues that ‘... moves that are rational for a player at one board ... may be impolitic for that same player at the other board’.5 At the same time, however, the application of the metaphor to Russia requires noticing where Moscow’s experiences differ from those Putnam describes. First, much of the literature on the interrelationship between domestic and foreign policies assumes a well-institutionalised, capitalist and democratic polity. Obviously, in Russia governmental structures are not institutionalised and the direction of Russia’s economic and political transition is not assured. In addition, neither organisations such as labour unions nor legislators are quite sure whose interests they represent.6 In a related vein a bureaucratic decision-making model would not be appropriate because there are, as yet, no clear ‘rules of the political game’ to govern relations among the several institutions that deal with foreign policy. Second, Putnam’s approach does not convey the uniquely differentiated nature of Russia’s foreign policy, in which questions related to the ‘near abroad’ are distinct and separate from other policies towards the outside world. Finally, the metaphor was developed to explain the parameters of international bargaining and the fate of specific international agreements. In this chapter I will expand this notion to include foreign policies more generally defined.