Russian toolkit for settling international conflicts and peculiarities of its application

Abstract

As the successor state of the former superpower USSR, the Russian Federation retains its high status of the “guarantor of peace” for the entire international community due to a range of political, military and economic means, currently being on of the few “police states”. The role of police states is important to such extent that no major conflict can be settled without their participation or approval. Such status of Russia is being maintained by its military power, as well as a number of political privileges. Alongside any police state, Russia has developed its own strategy for interfering or settling the international military conflicts using the existing toolkit. This defines the relevance of analysis of the current state of the Russian range of means and tools for suppression and settlement of the conflicts. The goal of this research consists in examination of the the means available to the Russian Federation for settling military conflicts, as well as in the analysis of the state and prospects of their use in peacekeeping campaigns of the Russian Federation. It is worth noting that the Russian Federation as the successor state of the Soviet Union, and one of the members of the nuclear club and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, retains and extends the range of tools for handling and settling military conflicts, from the preventive tools of cultural-diplomatic influence such as Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (commonly known as Rossotrudnichestvo) to high-tech military weapons, which have no analogues among the overwhelming majority of participants of international relations. The presence of such rich arsenal testifies to strong peacekeeping potential of the Russian Federation; however, the currently observed inclination towards the priority of coercive tools can severely undermine the ability of the Russian Federation to settle international military conflicts.