Sussex, Matthew and Kanet, Roger E. (eds) Russia, Eurasia, and the New Geopolitics of Energy: Confrontation and Consolidation (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 787 applied to whole nations. There are always variant viewpoints, different opinions, and this is no less true of Russia than it is of other societies. Whose viewpoint is to be regarded as the representative one? Trying to pin down an overall national identity is always fraught with difficulties. In any case, as the author himself admits, national policy is the product of many influences, among which identity is only one. This book makes a valuable contribution to our appreciation of recent events in the Arctic. But whether it adds a great deal to theoretical understanding seems more uncertain. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Denis J. B. Shaw University of Birmingham Sussex, Matthew and Kanet, Roger E. (eds). Russia, Eurasia, and the New Geopolitics of Energy: Confrontation and Consolidation. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2015. xiii + 252 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. £65.00. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the continuing support for pro-Russian political forces in eastern Ukraine have presented a more belligerent Russia willing forcibly to defend its interests against the perceived encroachment of Westernpowerandinfluence.Thisvolumeisacompaniontoanothervolumeby the same editors entitled Power, Politics and Confrontation in Eurasia: Foreign Policy in a Contested Area, which focused on the Russian confrontation with the West in Ukraine and the neighbouring region. This volume expands the analysis to assess how Russia’s conflictual relations with the West have affected the broader Eurasian region, including Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as Great Power relations with China and the struggle for control over energy resources. Thebookisdividedintotwoparts;partonefocusesonprovidingaframework for understanding Russian foreign policy in relation to the growing East-West confrontation; the second part focuses on political developments in Central Asia and the energy diplomacy of the competing external powers in the region. The overarching theoretical framework for the book is realist, arguing that traditionalgeopoliticsandpowerpoliticalframesarethebestwaytounderstand contemporary politics in Eurasia. This is strongly articulated by Matthew Sussex in the opening chapter, who argues that Russia is best understood as a revanchist state, a state determined to regain power as quickly as possible after a period of decline, and that developments in Ukraine represent the culmination of this process. One of the key factors behind such revanchism is, Sussex argues, the strong domestic consensus, present as much in the El´tsin as SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 788 the Putin years, that strongly opposed NATO enlargement and the expansion of Western influence. In the following chapter, Dina Moulioukova agrees with this fundamental assessment of an anti-NATO and anti-Western consensus but highlights the ways in which Russian policy is not unitary or monolithic and that there are multiple interest groups within a complex network of converging and diverging business and state networks. This suggests that Russian foreign policy is less predictable and deterministic than traditional realist accounts would generally posit. The third chapter in the first part of the book shifts the focus to Armenia, and the author, Lillia Arakelyan, analyses the reasons behind the decision of the Armenian government to adopt a pro-Russian stance by joining the Eurasian Union. Again, while adopting a realist framework, the approach involves a substantially different view of Russian policy and the idea that Russian nationalism is driven primarily in reaction against the West. Arakelyan argues that such an upsurge in Russian nationalism is more instrumental and manipulative and constructed primarily by Putin’s personal resolve ‘to increase the state power of Russia’ (p. 74) so as to legitimate Russia’s neo-imperialist ambitions. The second part of the book focuses on resource diplomacy and energy security in Central Asia and has similar nuances of difference within a broadly consensual framework. China looms large in this section and there is a general convergence in views that the Russian ‘pivot’ towards China has equally, if not even more serious, geopolitical implications than the continuing confrontation with the West. In a rich and insightful chapter by Graeme Herd, a comparison is made between the ideological constructs of the ‘Chinese Dream’ and ‘Russkiy Mir’ and how these are being played out practically to Central Asia. Herd concludes that China is clearly the ‘prime economic actor in the region’ (p. 228) and that Putin...