The securitization of Russian foreign policy under putin

Russia Between East and West: Russian Foreign Policy on the Threshhold of the Twenty-First Century

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 12-27

  Lo, Bobo ^a  

^a ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84909151525     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203499276     Document Type: Chapter

References (35)

1. One of Catherine the Great's particular favourites, Prince Potemkin, was in the habit of putting up facades of prosperous villages (complete with freshly dressed peasants) along the Empress's carriage route in order to hide from her the reality of extreme rural degradation and poverty. Since that time, the term pokazukha (fake show) has come to signify government attempts, especially during the Soviet period, to promote the fiction of wealth and happiness where little of either existed. In the foreign policy context, Vladimir Lukin, former Ambassador to the USA, was the first to highlight the Russian 'passion for mere show, the Potemkin village syndrome'. He was referring to Moscow's approach towards Iraq, specifically the contrast between initial triumphalism and subsequent disappointments in mediating between Saddam Hussein and the Western powers - 'Bengalskii ogon v araviiskikh peskahk', Moskovskie novosti, no. 50, 23-30 October, p. 13.
2. See Viktor Kremenyuk, 'Vneshnyaya politika Moskvy v poiskakh suti', Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn, no. 4, 2001, pp. 16-17.
3. See also 'Vneshnepoliticheskii kurs stal bolee sootvetstvovat natsionalnym interesam strany', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 7 June 2001, p. 11, an elite survey completed in April 2001 by the Russian Independent Institute for Social and National Questions and the Moscow office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The survey focused on the views of 210 members of the Russian foreign policy establishment, including Duma deputies and staffers, members of the Federation Council, officials, academics and think-tankers.
4. At the Brunei APEC summit in November 2000, Putin began his address with the assertion that Russia 'has always felt itself to be a Eurasian country', going on to describe it as the 'distinctive integrating centre linking Asia, Europe and America'; see 'Rossiya: novye vostochnye perspektivy', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 14 November 2000, p. 1.
5. This view, favoured by some Western correspondents in Moscow, was also strongly implicit in such headlines as 'Vladimir Putin, Russia's Post-Cold-Warrior' (The Economist, 8 January 2000, p. 45).
6. See comments by former Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Anatolii Adamishin, in "'Kazhetsya za god osobykh oshibok vo vneshnei politike my ne nadelali'", round-table discussion in Nezavisimaya gazeta, 28 December 2000, p. 11.
7. See 'Vneshnepoliticheskii kurs stal bolee sootvetstvovat...', p. 11.
8. See also Margaretha Mommsen, 'Sfinks v Kremle', Internationale Politik, no. 5, 2000, p. 31.
9. See Strategic Survey: 2000/2001 (Institute of International Strategic Studies and Oxford University Press), pp. 121-2.
10. 'Kontseptsiya natsionalnoi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii', Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, no. 1, 14-20 January 2000, p. 6.
11. 'Kontseptsiya vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 11 July 2000, p. 1.
12. Vladimir Putin: 'Ne budet ni revolyutsii, ni kontrrevolyutsii', address to the Federal Assembly, Rossiiskaya gazeta, 4 April 2001, pp. 3-4.
13. In an address to the collegium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on 26 January 2001, Putin tacitly acknowledged these problems by calling for a major improvement in the quality and effectiveness of Russia-EU cooperation. See 'O zadachakh Rossiiskoi diplomatii', Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn, no. 2, 2001, p. 6.
14. Putin gave primary emphasis to these priorities in his address to the MFA collegium; see 'O zadachakh... ', p. 4.
15. Notwithstanding Yeltsin's immodest (and false) reference to 'my concept of a multipolar world' in his Midnight Diaries (London, 2001, p. 163), it was former Foreign Minister Primakov who assiduously promoted ideas of multipolarity and the development of a 'diversified' and 'multi-vectored' Russian foreign policy.
16. See Putin's comments reported by Arkady Dubnov in Vremya MN, 16 December 1999, p. 6
17. (in Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, vol. 51, no. 50, 1999, p. 16).
18. This point has been made by Russian commentators, e.g. Dmitrii Danilov, in 'Stroitelstvo vtoroi opory Evropeiskogo soyuza: Ispolzovanie novykh tekhnologii', in Tatyana Parkhalina (ed.), Evropeiskii soyuz na rubezhe vekov (Moscow, 2000), pp. 51-2.
19. 'Moskva protiv provedeniya sammita OBSE v etom godu', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 31 March 2001, p. 1. Significantly, also, there was no mention of the OSCE in Putin's address to the Federal Assembly a few days later.
20. Putin, 'O zadachakh... ', p. 6;
21. see also his 2001 comments to the Federal Assembly, 'Ne budet ni revolyutsii... ', p. 4.
22. See, for example, Igor Ivanov, 'Rossiya i Evropa na rubezhe stoletii', Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn, no. 2, 2000, p. 26.
23. Vladimir Putin: Otpervogo litsa (Moscow, 2000), p. 156.
24. Russia's 'right' to great power status was a constant refrain throughout the 1990s. Yeltsin was especially fixated on this idea, as typified by his claim that Russia's participation in the post-Kosovo settlement at the 1999 Cologne G8 Summit had 'reaffirmed its status as an equal political partner, without whom it is unthinkable to resolve world conflicts and decide important issues... ' CMidnight Diaries, p. 346). However, even so-called liberals such as former Foreign Minister Kozyrev claimed that Russia was 'doomed' to remain a great power ('Rossiya i SShA: Partnerstvo ne prezhdevremenno, a zapazdyvaet', Izvestiya, 11 March 1994, p. 3).
25. In his MFA address in January 2001, Putin stated that CIS integration was not 'an aim in itself but must bring concrete rather than rhetorical benefits to Russia and its citizens see 'O zadachakh... ', p. 5. In the specific context of relations with Ukraine and Belarus, Arkadii Moshes has described the new rationalist phase under Putin as a 'moderate-pragmatic period', characterized principally by reduced Russian subsidies to those countries: 'Ukraina i Belorussiya v Rossiiskoi vneshnei politike 90-kh godov' (theses of a round-table presentation at the Moscow Carnegie Center on 2 April 2001).
26. See Marina Volkova, 'Energeticheskii krizis sblizil Moskvu s Evrosoyuzom', Nezavisimaya gazeta, 31 October 2000, pp. 1, 3.
27. Strategic Survey: 2000/2001, p. 122.
28. See also 'Vneshnepoliticheskii kurs stal bolee sootvetstvovat... ', p. 11.
29. Putin, Otpervogo litsa, p. 156.
30. See figures in Tamozhennaya statistika vneshnei torgovlya Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow, 2000), p. 7.
31. The Institute of International Strategic Studies puts the EU's share of Russian foreign trade even higher at over 40 per cent (Strategic Survey: 2000/2001, p. 122).
32. Vladimir Baranovsky, 'Russia: A Part of Europe or Apart from Europe?', International Affairs, vol. 76, no. 3, 2000, p. 451.
33. Even vocal critics of Kozyrevian Atlanticism, such as Pushkov, have warned against 'excessive' expectations regarding the Europeanization of Russian foreign policy. According to him, a 'decisive' rapprochement with Europe is contingent first on the development of 'stable and solid' relations with the United States: see 'Rossiya v novom miroporyadke... ', pp. 40-1.
34. The fragility of Eurocentrism in foreign policy thinking was amply illustrated by the disproportionate Russian media reaction to the fact and outcomes of the Putin-Bush summit at Brdo in Slovenia - see, for example, comments by Vyacheslav Nikonov, in Trud, 23 June 2001, p. 2.
35. See Strategic Survey: 2000/2001, p. 116.