Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order by Kathryn E. Stoner

Abstract

Russia’s horrific war in Ukraine has left scores of analysts wondering how we got here. Published just prior to the invasion, Kathryn Stoner’s Russia Resurrected deftly shows that this assertiveness has long been a trademark of Putin's regime. Her central thesis is a simple one: over the past two decades, Russia has become resurgent, not just economically and politically, but through the pursuit of an aggressive foreign policy designed to return it to great power status. With foreboding words read in retrospect, Stoner traces how Russia has amassed just enough economic resources and sharp power instruments “to disrupt the prevailing international order and to define a new one” (18). Russia Resurrected covers a lot of ground and emerges as one of the most comprehensive books on both Russian foreign policy and its determinants over the last two decades. The strongest sections thoroughly detail Russia's multipronged efforts to project power around the world, something many in the West are only now fully coming to appreciate. Part of Russia's great coup has been to convince numerous countries and companies to tie their economic fate to its abundant reserves of oil and gas. Stoner deftly unpacks the strategic logic behind Russia cultivating these dependencies, showing how Putin can hold entire states hostage to Russian energy supplies. The European Union has achieved only varying success unwinding this leverage in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, but decades of Russia courting politicians and building pipelines have shown to be more durable than anticipated. The same holds true for the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and especially East Asia, where Putin's regime has been developing relationships and strengthening its push for a new global order where Russia sits further towards the top. Stoner makes the provocative, but ultimately correct, point that contemporary Russia cannot be merely written off as a regional power. Putin's ambitions stretch much further.