Russia's European Agenda and The Baltic States - Defence ...

RUSSIA’S EUROPEAN AGENDA AND THE BALTIC STATES
seeking to move from being merely a regional actor to being a major independent
player on the world stage.
Having rejected conflict relations with great powers Russia has not abandoned
the objective of recreating power capable of challenging the West. Although Putin’s
Russia has shaped her orientation towards the West, she has not chosen a model of
integration but of a concert of great powers, in which a few key players – the United
States, Western Europe, China, Russia – would manage international affairs through
institutions such as the UN Security Council and the Group of Eight (G8), as well
as through bilateral ‘strategic partnerships’. In other words, as a general rule of
statecraft, Russia has pursued balance of power politics. Such a form of balance of
power is a more fluid model of interaction: different circumstances demand different
union of interests, which are better served by a flexible policy of diverse partnerships.
Russia’s Western-centric orientation manifests, in essence, by her choice of Western
space for the purpose of a political game as opposed to her decision for the valuebased
integration with the West. In Putin’s foreign policy strategy, international
organisations, first and foremost Russia’s membership of the UN Security Council, are
only means to participate in a concert of great powers. A delicate Russian balancing
in the concert provides her with an opportunity to wait for a redistribution of global
forces in her favour (e.g. division of strategic interests between the EU and the U.S).
It is obvious that in Putin’s foreign policy the world view and self-perception
comes from Eurasianist school of thought. Some analysts argue that the current
foreign policy model is a revision of traditional Eurasianism. 28 Putin’s foreign policy
has enshrined two central goals: to restore Russian supremacy in the ‘near abroad’
and to balance international relations by an Eurasian perspective, following the
prescription by Primakov, much admired by Putin. The traditional interpretation
of Eurasianism sees Russia as the ‘ultimate world-island state’, apart from and
hostile to the maritime Euro-Atlantic world. Meanwhile the current vision of the
Putin administration of the 21st century mission for Russia is based on a contrary
assumption of critical geopolitics. It states that the unique geo-strategic place of the
state provides conditions for its economic revival, opportunities for engaging in the
regional institutions and security arrangements and, eventually, for the increase of
the geo-economic influence of the state as a world player. This school of thought
argues that perception of relations between states matters more than actual territory.
Thus, in the 21st century more than ever before Eurasianism becomes a version of the
engagement strategy for Russia.
In fact, Putin’s foreign policy is but a modification of Primakov’s multipolar
world strategy. Russia is actively pursuing this objective, creating a system of
counter-balances to the American presence in Central Asia. The Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO), which includes a rapidly growing giant, China, is said to
be a key element of this system. The SCO, the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC),
the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), and the CIS itself – all represent
attempts to recreate the Eurasian heartland, which, in turn, implies the presence of
Eurasianism in Russia’s foreign policy. However, the emphasis of Putin’s political
course is not on the direct blocking of U.S. power but rather on the diplomatic game
in the concert of great powers.
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