Shields of the Republic by Mira Rapp-Hooper

Author:Mira Rapp-Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Russia’s Strategic Turn: 2008–2012

Between 2008 and 2012, Russian foreign policy lurched toward nationalism and imperialism. Foreign and domestic policy became inextricable from Putinism, a conservative doctrine emphasizing the need for a strong state to protect Russia from enemies at home and abroad.8 Russian leaders abandoned their 1990s quest for integration into the prevailing international political system and came to view the United States as uninterested in, or disrespectful of, Russian interests.

Several events motivated this shift. One was the Kosovo War, which helped to solidify in Russia the image of the United States as a rogue superpower.9 Then there was the Baltic states’ 2004 accession to NATO. The Russians also bristled at the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without UN imprimatur. Finally, after disputed 2003 elections in Georgia and 2005 elections in Ukraine provoked pro-democracy uprisings—the Rose and Orange Revolutions, respectively—Russian leaders became convinced that the United States was fomenting upheaval on their periphery. It seemed that Washington and its European allies were encroaching upon Moscow’s security through the use of political warfare, drawing few casualties and maintaining plausible deniability. At its annual summit in Bucharest in 2008, NATO pledged that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members—a precarious commitment given these states’ location in the heart of Moscow’s near abroad.10 In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia—its first use of force since its 1989 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

By this point Putin and other Russian leaders firmly believed that the United States had a sinister agenda to thwart Russia’s restoration. In 2010 this view became official Russian military doctrine, as further NATO enlargement was labeled a direct national security threat. In 2015 Russia’s National Security Strategy reiterated that view.11

It would be wrong to claim that deterioration was the only option for US-Russia relations after 2008. At times, the Obama administration’s “reset” seemed like it might stabilize the bilateral slide. Most notably, in 2010 the two countries signed the New START arms control agreement. They also cooperated in attempting to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and on North Korean nuclear sanctions, and they worked together to accelerate Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).12 President Obama canceled the deployment to Eastern Europe of a planned missile defense system, which detractors viewed as a major concession to Moscow.

But even as the reset was proceeding in fits and starts, Russia’s economy was succumbing to the global financial crisis. The hard-won gains of the post-Cold War period that had brought Russia out of debt evaporated. After much whiplash, the leadership in Moscow concluded that the Western liberal model was utterly bankrupt.13 With its economy on the line, Russia relied more heavily on its oil exports and on kleptocracy. In the words of one scholar, it became “trans-imperial”—part of the globalized world for the sake of its survival, while increasingly corrupt and authoritarian at home.14

Russia also claimed to be increasingly victimized by American political influence. When the Arab Spring seized the Middle East in 2010–2012, officials in Moscow assumed Washington was the puppet master. When Ukraine experienced more upheaval in the 2014 Maidan protests, Russia again saw Americans at work.

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