Not by Bread Alone: Russian Foreign Policy under Putin

by Robert Nalbandov

For a decade after its independence, Russia has struggled with the growing pains of defining its role in the international system. Since Vladimir Putin ascended to power in 2000, the country has undertaken grandiose foreign policy projects to clearly delineate its place among the world's superpowers. In Russian Foreign Policy under Putin, author Robert Nalbandov provides thorough coverage of the milestones of Russia's foreign policy since the turn of the 21st century with a focus on regional context. This framework provides a new way to view the specifics of foreign policy goals, engagement practices, and tools used by Putin's administration in promoting Russia's vital national and strategic interests in specific geographic locations, and illuminates Putin's foreign policy goal of reinstituting Russian strategic dominance in all parts of the globe. Furthermore, Nalbandov examines the identity-based politics that dominate Putin's tenure and how Russia's east/west split is reflected in Asian/European politics.
Overall, these identity politics have a large part to play in dictating Russian foreign policy and political culture that has been developed and molded for generations. This political culture is also highly influenced by unchecked domestic power that is not derived from the people, an almost exclusive application of hard power both domestically and abroad, and a determined ambition for unabridged global influence and a defined place as a world superpower. Russian Foreign Policy under Putin explores these and other significant dimensions that drive Russia's interactions around the globe.

Genres: Russia

592 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2015

Reviews

[Dmitry · Rating 1 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Такое чувство, что автор создал свою собственную Россию с собственным для него российским народом.

In response to this overwhelmingly negative reaction, according to the Levada Center’s opinion poll, a majority of the Russian population, unified beneath the constructed image of enemies surrounding Russia, continue to support Putin as president (84 percent) and believe that the country is “moving in the right direction” (66 percent).

Вот зачем ссылаться на социологические опросы, если все они проводятся в авторитарной стране, в которой всякое оппозиционное мнение наказывается и подавляется? Одно дело, если социологические опросы проводятся в демократических странах, но как можно всерьёз рассматривать социологические опросы в стране, в которой никогда этих самых социологических опросов не проводили, и где нет культуры участия (а так же профессионального их проведения, включая проведение честных социологических опросов), особенно на политические темы?

Satter contends, “Failure to memorialize the victims of Communist terror has contributed to the moral corrosion of the Russian society. Disregard for human life exists in many countries, but in Russia it is unsurprising to see it carried to grim extremes.” 60 Millions of lives sacrificed on the altar of Soviet civilization are forgotten, while collective glory is revered. At the same time, there are several monuments to the victims of political repressions in Russia, including the famous sphinxes in St. Petersburg with human heads facing the apartment houses and with rotten skeleton faces looking at the local penitentiary (one of them was vandalized in February 2015). There are only a handful of museums commemorating the victims of Stalin’s repressions, including the State Museum of Gulag History in Moscow and the Perm - 39 (included as a foreign agent in the lists of unwelcome organizations by the controversial Foreign Agents Law) on the site of one of the labor camps in Siberia. These commemorative signs are, without a doubt, a positive development in the general tendency: the mysterious Russian soul seems to settle the two opposing approaches in one historical receptacle.

Давайте вспомним послевоенную Германию и бесплодные попытки американской администрации привить немцам стыд за то, что сделало их руководство в 30-ых и 40-ых годах XX века. Как мы знаем, лишь с наступлением 70-ых годов в немецком обществе возникла политика покаяния за нацистское прошлое, которое мы видим и сегодня. Однако до 70-ых годов не то что покаяния не существовало, а наоборот Гитлер оставался в обществе популярной фигурой, а многие чиновники гитлеровского правительства перекочевали в бюрократическую систему ФРГ. Что было в России, давайте вспомним, в начале и середине 90-ых? Нищета, разочарование в демократии и демократах (или людях которые называли себя демократами и либералами), бандитизм и государство, в котором, как пелось в одно песне, «орёл был не орлом, а курицей». Как в такой ситуации можно было надеется или думать, что обычный народ будет заниматься разоблачением своего коммунистического прошлого и что он будет заниматься саморефлексией. На пустой желудок трудно саморефлексировать и немцы в конце 40-ых и начале 50-ых, это отлично продемонстрировали.

Territory is the only form that the Russian velikoderzhavnost’ construct has taken through generations of Russian rulers. The greater the territory, the greater the power. That is why Russia ultimately and de facto annexed two regions of Georgia in 2008 and annexed Crimea and took the southeastern territories of Ukraine under its actual control in 2014.
<…>
Despite variations of Eurocentrism, Eurasianism, or Russophilia, Eastern or traditional Orthodox Christianity or an Islam- centric orientation, the uniting element in contemporary Russian political culture is self-image as a superpower.
<…>
The task for Putin is to reanimate the great superpower image in the hearts and minds of its own citizens and to project it abroad.
<…>
Russia is located at the far end of Geert Hofstede’s “Collectivism” cultural value scale with the transcendence of the collectivist into collectivist political thinking. Two factors influenced the development of collectivist thinking in Russian political culture: the natural habitat of the Russian nation and Orthodox Christian values and practices.

Очень прямолинейное заключение, однако, проблема в том, что российское общество об этом никто и никогда не спрашивал. Все территориальные приобретения всегда осуществлялись по решению элит, а не по решению народа. Даже если народ будет «против», кто его будет слушать, если в России вся власть находилась в руках элиты, которую охраняла и продолжает охранять силовая прослойка общества? Это не значит, что спроси российский народ, нужно ли раздать все территории, он обязательно подтвердит это, но это значит что добровольно, на простом энтузиазме, российский народ за другие, новые территории, воевать не будет.


It feels like the author has created his own Russia with his own Russian people.

In response to this overwhelmingly negative reaction, according to the Levada Center’s opinion poll, a majority of the Russian population, unified beneath the constructed image of enemies surrounding Russia, continue to support Putin as president (84 percent) and believe that the country is “moving in the right direction” (66 percent).


Why refer to opinion polls when they are all conducted in an authoritarian country where any opposition opinion is punished and suppressed? It is one thing if sociological polls are conducted in democratic countries, but how can one seriously consider sociological polls in a country that has never conducted these very sociological polls, and where there is no culture of participation (as well as their professional conduct, including the conduct of honest sociological polls), especially on political topics?

Satter contends, “Failure to memorialize the victims of Communist terror has contributed to the moral corrosion of the Russian society. Disregard for human life exists in many countries, but in Russia it is unsurprising to see it carried to grim extremes.” 60 Millions of lives sacrificed on the altar of Soviet civilization are forgotten, while collective glory is revered. At the same time, there are several monuments to the victims of political repressions in Russia, including the famous sphinxes in St. Petersburg with human heads facing the apartment houses and with rotten skeleton faces looking at the local penitentiary (one of them was vandalized in February 2015). There are only a handful of museums commemorating the victims of Stalin’s repressions, including the State Museum of Gulag History in Moscow and the Perm - 39 (included as a foreign agent in the lists of unwelcome organizations by the controversial Foreign Agents Law) on the site of one of the labor camps in Siberia. These commemorative signs are, without a doubt, a positive development in the general tendency: the mysterious Russian soul seems to settle the two opposing approaches in one historical receptacle.

Let us remember post-war Germany and the fruitless attempts of the American administration to instill in Germans shame for what their leadership did in the 1930s and 1940s. As we know, it was not until the 1970s that a policy of repentance for the Nazi past emerged in German society, which we still see today. However, until the 1970s, repentance did not exist, on the contrary, Hitler remained a popular figure in society, and many officials of Hitler's government migrated to the bureaucracy of the FRG. What was Russia like, let's remember, in the early and mid-90s? Poverty, disillusionment with democracy and democrats (or people who called themselves democrats and liberals), banditry, and a state in which, as one song goes, “the eagle was not an eagle, but a chicken”. In such a situation, how could one hope or think that ordinary people would engage in exposing their communist past and that they would engage in self-reflection? It is difficult to self-reflect on an empty stomach and the Germans in the late 40s and early 50s demonstrated this perfectly.

Territory is the only form that the Russian velikoderzhavnost’ construct has taken through generations of Russian rulers. The greater the territory, the greater the power. That is why Russia ultimately and de facto annexed two regions of Georgia in 2008 and annexed Crimea and took the southeastern territories of Ukraine under its actual control in 2014.
<…>
Despite variations of Eurocentrism, Eurasianism, or Russophilia, Eastern or traditional Orthodox Christianity or an Islam- centric orientation, the uniting element in contemporary Russian political culture is self-image as a superpower.
<…>
The task for Putin is to reanimate the great superpower image in the hearts and minds of its own citizens and to project it abroad.
<…>
Russia is located at the far end of Geert Hofstede’s “Collectivism” cultural value scale with the transcendence of the collectivist into collectivist political thinking. Two factors influenced the development of collectivist thinking in Russian political culture: the natural habitat of the Russian nation and Orthodox Christian values and practices.

It is a very straightforward conclusion, but the problem is that Russian society has never been asked about it. All territorial acquisitions have always been made by the decision of the elites, not by the people. Even if the people are “against it”, who will listen to them if, in Russia, all power was in the hands of the elite, which was and still is guarded by the force layer of society? This does not mean that if you ask the Russian people whether it is necessary to give away all the territories, they will certainly confirm it, but it means that on a voluntary basis the Russian people will not fight for other, new territories.

[Steven Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

With their agitprop aimed at the United States during the 2016 election, the Russian Federation (and their president, former KGB counterintelligence colonel and former head of the FSB Vladimir Putin) have become a hot button topic. More astute students of foreign policy, such as Ross Elder (who highlighted Russian active measures aimed at the United States back in 2015) and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, knew that Putin's power moves in Russia were something to keep an eye on. Even the late Tom Clancy's writing team at Ubisoft's Red Storm Entertainment knew Putin's moves were a possibility back in the early 2000s, as the plot of the first Ghost Recon game revolved around an ultra-nationalist Russian revival.

 

What is driving this foreign policy, though? After the fall of the Soviet Union, the governance of Boris Yeltsin and the initial Putin presidency gave the appearances of peaceful coexistence with the West. Somewhere along the way, that shifted, and it did not fully register until after Putin's invasion of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and Russia's agitprop operations during the 2016 election. A question of many people not caught up in partisan joy of Hillary Clinton's defeat was: when did US-Russian relations shift? When did Russia become our enemy once more?

 

Professor Robert Nalbandov of Utah State University has the answers in his book Not By Bread Alone: Russian Foreign Policy under Putin.It is a very comprehensive book that is based upon the premise that to understand Russian foreign policy, one must understand Russian political culture. That political culture is one that believes in national sovereignty but eschews individual sovereignty, one that believes that might makes right, and one that is laced with nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and historical revision.

 

Professor Nalbandov expertly guides the reader through Russian political history, from the days of the tsars to the Soviet Union and Putin's rise to power. He first explains the political science behind a nation's political identity, then proceeds to focus on Russian convex political identity (how others perceive Russia) and Russian conclave political identity (how Russia sees itself). Once this lens has been established, Nalbandov walks the reader through Russia's adversarial relationship with the United States and the European Union, how it views its relationships with its former Soviet satellite states, its relationship with Asian nations such as China, India, and North Korea, and the peripheral politics of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

 

I went into this book expecting a brief overview of Russian foreign policy. Instead, I got a collegiate-level crash course on Russian political identity and how it shapes their foreign policy. It is a lot to digest, so I would definitely recommend taking in every line slowly. I would approach this book as one to read to establish a general warm and fuzzy, and then shelve it and break it out to research certain items as needed (the book thankfully includes both a bibliography and an index).

 

In short, Not By Bread Alone is a comprehensive and educating must-read work for both foreign policy junkies and those looking to gain understanding of how Russia has re-emerged as a threat to the West. After a decade plus of focusing on non-state actors, it is a wake-up call of a read as to the threat posed at the nation-state, long-term level.