Russian and American National Identity, Foreign Policy, and Bilateral Relations

Abstract

How does IR structure — its derivative constraints and incentives — affect a state's international behavior and national identity? This article argues that identity must first be deconstructed into the external and the domestic and that the dynamism of each must be acknowledged. Examination of the changes in Russian and American collective identities at the end of the twentieth century lead to the conclusion that the two countries entered the new millennium with strikingly different self-perceptions and visions of the world. Each country expected the other to behave according to rules imagined as universal, while each country's interpretation of “universal” was strikingly different. President Putin has begun transforming Russia's projected desired image from great power to a European country and a full member of the Western community of states. This dynamic is linked to the transformation in US perceptions of self and of the world under the Bush administration. However, these transformations remain insecure.