Russian Foreign Policy

This important new study, drawing primarily on Russian sources, analyzes Russian foreign policy in the context of an ongoing national identity crisis. The work examines Russia's foreign policy in terms of two salient factors: (1) political and economic reform, given that foreign policy has been strongly influenced by reactions--positive and negative--to Yeltsin's reform agenda; and (2) Russia's geopolitical predicament between Europe and Asia, between East and West, which requires it to reconcile various strategic imperatives with regard to NATO, China, and the Islamic world. Buszynski's study reveals current Russian foreign policy as a process of interaction between these two factors, the result being considerable vacillation between support for the West and opposition to it. An important analysis that will be of interest to foreign policy and international relations experts in academia and government.

Russia has emerged as a new and assertively independent force in world politics, in Europe and Asia, and especially in the other former Soviet states. What are Moscow's foreign policy goals, and who sets them? This book provides the first systematic analysis of the domestic political, military and economic influences that shape Russia's international behavior. Five leading specialists examine the areas of foreign policy thinking and debate, how policy is made, the public politics of foreign policy, and the role of the military.

Since the fall of communism, public opinion in Russia, including that of a now more diverse elite, has become a substantial factor in that country's policymaking process. What this opinion might be and how it responds to American actions is the subject of this study. William Zimmerman offers important and sometimes disturbing insight into the thinking of citizens in America's former Cold War adversary about such matters as NATO expansion. Drawing on nearly a decade of unprecedented surveys he conducted with a wide spectrum of the Russian public, he gauges the impact of Russia's opening on its foreign policy and how liberal democrats orient themselves to foreign policy. He also shows that insights from the study of American foreign policy are often "portable" to the study of Russian foreign policy attitudes.As Zimmerman shows, the general public, which had a modest but real role in foreign policy decision making, tended much more toward isolationism than did the predominant elites who steered Russia's foreign policy in the 1990s. Interspersing smooth prose with a wide array of richly informative tables, the book represents an invaluable opportunity to discern probable shifts in Russian foreign policy that domestic political changes would bring. And it powerfully suggests that the West, by forging its own policies toward Russia with more prudence, can have a say in the outcome of the great choice facing Russia--whether to forge ahead with democracy or slip back into authoritarianism.

"This fine collection ... fills many gaps about foreign policy directions of the states of the former Soviet Union and of Central Asia generally. It provides solid, sometimes outstanding treatment of the foreign policies of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Belarus, the Baltic states, and Russia. ... Recommended". -- Choice

This volume focuses on how Russian policy toward Europe has developed since the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It argues that important aspects of cooperation have endured in the relationship despite all the vicissitudes of Russian domestic politics and at a time of flux in the international relations of the European continent. This cooperation has, at times, been fragile and has not prevented some obvious and deep-seated disagreements. It has, however, survived. Russia and Europe have increasingly "routinized" their relationship in a range of formal multilateral institutions.

The essays that comprise this collection offer international perspectives on the evolution of Russia's foreign relations. The contributors examine official Russian responses to major regional and global developments including the so-called 'war on terrorism' and continuing conflicts in the Caucasus Region.

Challenges views that Gorbachev caved in to the West on German reunification. Analyzes his new thinking and shows how internal and external factors interacted to develop Soviet policies that helped transform postwar Europe.

This collection of essays by a distinguished group of international scholars is the first to analyse current Russian policies in China, Japan, and the two Koreas. Although Russia was a rising power in Asia a century ago, historical and political events have diverted attention from this potential site of development.The essays in Imperial Decline describe the major changes that have occurred in Russia's relations with China, Japan, and South Korea under Boris Yeltzin's presidency, speculating about both Russia's future in the region and the impact this future could have on relations with the United States. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how incoherent taxation and investment, uncoordinated and contradictory economic policies, runaway inflation and currency instability, and problems of defence now constrain the possibility of Russia expanding its economic influence in the region. This book is essential for students and scholars of international relations, foreign policy, and Russian history.Contributors. Stephen J. Blank, Bruce A. Elleman, Harry Gelman, Hongchan Chun , Rajan Menon, Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Oles M. Smolansky, Henry Trofimenko, Charles E. Ziegler