Abstract: Much has been written about Russian president Vladimir Putin's alliance with the United States since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Putin was the first foreign leader to call President Bush on the day of the tragedy. He followed that with an extraordinary series of actions that, for now at least, have amounted to a wholesale reorientation of Russian foreign policy.1 Although problems remain, in less than a year Washington and Moscow have made rapid progress toward settling their differences: on counterterrorism; on missile defenses and other issues that are a legacy of the cold war; in establishing a framework for NATO-Russia security relations; and on expanding energy ties. In some ways U.S.-Russia relations are today closer than between Washington and some of its European allies.The key issue is whether Moscow's change of direction marks a strategic shift in Russia's relationships with the United States or whether it is a short-term change that will quickly lose momentum because of countervailing pressures. I believe that it is too early to know. In this article I argue, however, that permanently embedding Russia in a set of strategically beneficial relationships with the West is more likely to be successful if care is paid to the process of Russian foreign policy-making. In that process, a wide variety of elite actors-each with their own foreign policy agenda and points of access to the system-battle for influence.Russian Foreign PoliciesVladimir Putin's foreign policy has two main components: a drive to use Western resources to modernize Russia; and the fight against international terrorism, which he sees as the main challenge to the country's security.2 However, Putin's goals are not necessarily shared by all segments of Russia's elite.To get what he wants on a particular issue Putin must assemble effective coalitions from among the key elite centers of power: the federal bureaucracy, the military, the intelligence services, big business, and regional leaders. His task is made even more difficult because each of these centers is criss-crossed by different policy priorities, shifting political alliances, and widely disparate points of access to the system. As Celeste Wallander has written:Rather than asking what foreign policy is under Putin, one should ask on what political coalition does Putin rely, and what are their priorities, resources, interests and ideas. Rather than asking what are Russia's geostrategic interests in the Caspian, one should ask what are its array of interests in the Caspian, which institutions control policy toward the region, and how influential is the Caspian priority as opposed to, for example, Russian hopes to join the World Trade Organization.3The way that these foreign policy actors interact can be explained by examining the perceived costs and benefits of a proposed policy.4 By costs is meant any burden, monetary or nonmonetary, that someone must bear, or thinks he must bear, if the policy is adopted. An example of a foreign policy that imposes costs would be one that forced the Russian nuclear industry to end its relationship with Iran. Benefits are any satisfaction, monetary or otherwise, that someone will enjoy if a policy is adopted. A foreign policy that brought a benefit would be one that attracted Western investment to Russian industry. However, one of the problems in analyzing Russian foreign policymaking is that it is not always easy to discover all the important players who participate in policy formulation or how they see the costs and benefits of a proposed policy.Viewed in this way, the key issues between the United States and Russia fall into four general categories:Majoritarian policies, which promise costs and benefits that will be distributed among large number of groups, or society at large, with no one group feeling intensely about the issue. Examples include the general pursuit of better relations with the United States or intelligence cooperation with Washington. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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