Revisiting the Causes of Russian Foreign Policy Changes: Incoherent Biographical Narrative, Recognition and Russia's Ontological Security-Seeking

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between international practices of recognition and state quest for ontological security, on the one hand, and Russia's most recent identity makeover as well as increasingly aggressive foreign policy, on the other. I argue that in order to understand Russia's growing belligerence in foreign and security policies we need to examine the connection between Western refusal to recognize Russia's great power self-image, the effects this refusal has had on Russia's ontological security, and a subsequent shift in Russia's self-description from pro-Western to civilizational.