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Russia's BRICs Diplomacy: Rising Outsider with Dreams of an Insider

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Abstract

Russia has been the leading proponent of transforming the BRICs from an investment strategy into a recognized coalition of emerging powers bearing significant implications for international relations. Since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has tried to deny the realities of unipolarity while grudgingly adjusting to its constraints. Now that American primacy is waning, Russia, the perennial outsider, aims to become an insider and a rule maker in the international system. Despite questioning the existing order's durability and legitimacy, Russia and the other BRICs seek to be among its managing directors, not to overthrow it. Russia has simultaneously sought to renegotiate the terms of its accommodation to the Euro-Atlantic order, drawing on its preference for cooperation without domestic conditionality requirements. Moscow's BRICs diplomacy has been one of its most successful international initiatives, although the group's future existence will probably be determined by China, the real contender for polar power status.

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Notes

  1. Anna Smolchenko, “Putin Seeks New Economic Order,” New York Times, June 13, 2007.

  2. For one of many examples, see Putin's speech at the Davos Economic Forum, January 28, 2009 in The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2009, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123317069332125243.html.

  3. Henry A. Kissinger, “Globalization and Its Discontents,” International Herald Tribune, May 29, 2008; Sergei Lavrov, “Russia and the World in the 21st Century,” Russia in Global Politics 4 (July-August 2008).

  4. The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2009, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123317069332125243.html.

  5. Russia is a member of the G8 but not G7 although it has participated in select G7 meetings of finance ministers and central bankers whose members have been reluctant to include Moscow in their core economic deliberations while economic powerhouses like China were still excluded. The Clinton administration pushed to include Russia in part of the program of the summits as a side-payment for accepting NATO enlargement and a stimulus for liberal reform. However, when it became clear that Russia would become a regular participant, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin made it clear that the G7 would have to reconstitute itself to do its important financial business outside of the new G8 process. Cynthia A. Roberts, Russia and the European Union: The Sources and Limits of “Special Relationships” (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2007), 86, note 4. See also, Vladimir A. Orlov and Miriam Fugfugosh, “The G8 Strelna Summit and Russia's National Power,” The Washington Quarterly 29 (Summer 2006): 35–48. Russia is also a full member of the OSCE and the Council of Europe, although its status in the latter was put in jeopardy in the 1990s as a result of the first Chechen war.

  6. Cesare Martinetti, “C’era Una Volta Il G8,” La Stampa, July 10, 2009, 1.

  7. The texts for the Ekaterinburg summit are available on the Russian presidential website http://kremlin.ru/text/docs. Not all documents are available on the English language versions of Russia's official government websites. Translations here are the author's unless otherwise noted.

  8. Ekaterinburg Declaration of the Heads of the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, June 16, 2009, at http://kremlin.ru/text/docs/2009/06/217868.shtml.

  9. President Dmitri Medvedev, “Opening Address at a Restricted Meeting of Heads of Government of the BRIC Group,” June 16, 2009, Ekaterinburg, at http://news.kremlin.ru/transcripts/4474. After noting that the four BRICs have a significant weight in the global economy, Medvedev explained that the group's “success in implementing new economic programs and reforming international financial relations will depend on the extent to which we understand each other's positions and perhaps develop joint proposals. I hope that our meeting today will be a starting point for future negotiations and the intensive development of this new format, the BRIC format.”

  10. “Geithner to attend BRIC fin min meeting-Russia,” Reuters, September 3, 2009 http://in.reuters.com/article/idINLAG00372320090903.

  11. Robert B. Zoellick, Statement on Conclusion of the Second U.S.-China Senior Dialogue. U.S. Department of State Press Release, December 8, 2005.

  12. See, for example, Christopher Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony: Myth or Realty,” International Security 34 (Summer 2009): 147–72; and Jonathan Kirshner, “Dollar Primacy and American Power: What's at Stake?” Review of International Political Economy 15 (August 2008): 418–38.

  13. Robert Jervis, “Unipolarity. A Structural Perspective,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 188–213, at 198; Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); and Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

  14. For an early example, see Sherman W. Garnett, “Russia's Illusory Ambitions,” Foreign Affairs 76 (Mar/Apr 1997). See also S. Neil MacFarlane, “The ‘R’ in BRICs: Is Russia an Emerging Power?” International Affairs 82 (January 2006): 41–57 and Ian Bremmer, “Taking a Brick out of BRIC,” Fortune, February 20, 2006. Some Russian economists are skeptical but not entirely dismissive of Russia's prospects, as for example, Ksenia Yudaeva, “Lidery budushchego: Obol'shchenie 2050 godom,” Vedomosti, June 29, 2005. See also accounts of Russian views analyzed in an economic and political context in Julian Cooper, “Russia as a BRIC: Only a Dream?” European Research Working Paper Series Number 13 (Birmingham: European Research Institute, July 2006). A defense of Russia's BRICs status is found in Courtney Weaver “Russia Still Has a Place In BRIC,” The St. Petersburg Times, June 16, 2009. See also Andrew S. Weiss, “BRIC-à-Brac,” foreignpolicy.com, June 2009.

  15. Andrei Shleifer, A Normal Country: Russia After Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, “A Normal Country: Russia after Communism,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19 (2005): 151–74; and Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, “A Normal Country,” Foreign Affairs 83 (March/April 2004): 20–29. For an important rebuttal, see Stephen Rosefielde, “Russia: an Abnormal Country,” The European Journal of Comparative Economics 2 (2005): 3–16.

  16. Some notable scholarship embraces the need for comparative analysis but disagrees on how to code Russia. For example, M. Steven Fish, Democracy Derailed in Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Michael McFaul, Russia's Unfinished Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  17. Schleifer and Treisman, “A Normal Country,” Foreign Affairs.

  18. Peter Spiegel, “Biden Says Weakened Russia Will Bend to U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2009, A1. “Obama: Putin is Keeping ‘One Foot in the Old Ways’,” AP, guardian.co.uk, July 2, 2009.

  19. Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “The Myth of the Authoritarian Model,” Foreign Affairs 87 (January/February 2008): 68–84.

  20. International Monetary Fund (IMF), IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) Database (Washington, DC, International Monetary Fund, April 2008); Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, European Commission, “The Impact of the Global Crisis on Neighbouring Countries of the EU,” Occasional Papers no. 40 (Brussels, European Commission, June 2009), 122–24.

  21. For a useful analysis of Russia's economic achievements and urgent need for further structural reforms, see Anders Aslund, Russia's Capitalist Revolution (Washington, DC: Petersen Institute for International Economics, 2007).

  22. Philip Hanson, “How Sustainable is Russia's Energy Power?” Russian Analytical Digest 38 (2008): 8. See also Jonathan P. Stern, The Future of Russian Gas and Gazprom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

  23. Fish, Democracy Derailed; V. Putin, Speech to an Expanded Meeting of the State Council on Russia's Development Strategy through 2020. Moscow, February 8, 2008. http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/text/speeches/2008/02/08/1137_type82912type82913_159643.shtm.

  24. Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, “Dreaming with the BRICs: The Path to 2050,” Global Economic Papers, no. 99, October 2003.

  25. World Development Indicators; ITAR-TASS, 8 April 2007; Moskovskii Komsomolets Online, May 20, 2009. See also Special Report: Diverging Demographic Prospects for BRIC Consumer Market, Euromonitor International, July 29, 2009. http://www.euromonitor.com/Special_Report_Diverging_demographic_prospects_for_BRIC_consumer_markets.

  26. Jim O’Neill, “Russia and the World in 2020,” Goldman Sachs, June 2008, mimeograph; Guy Faulconbridge, “Goldman Sachs’ O’Neill Warns Russian Growth could Slow,” Reuters, June 8, 2008; and Alison Smale, “Money Talks at Russian Forum as Business Leaders See Past Hurdles to Investing,” New York Times, June 9, 2008.

  27. Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, “Kontseptsiia dolgosrochnovo sotsial’ no-ekonomicheskovo razvitiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii do 2020 goda” [“The Concept of Long-Term Socioeconomic Development of the Russian Federation to 2020”], Moscow, October 15, 2008, at http://www.economy.gov.ru/wps/wcm/connect/economylib/mert/welcome/pressservice/news/doc1224245909936; and Putin, “Speech on Russia's Development Strategy through 2020.”

  28. Worldwide Governance Indicators, 1996–2008, Country Data Report for Russia, 1996–2008, World Bank Institute, 2009.

  29. Pekka Sutela, Focus/Opinion, Expert View, 1 (February 27, 2008).

  30. Vladimir Putin, “Speech on Russia's Development Strategy through 2020;” and Dmitrii Medvedev, “Rossiia, vpered!” gazeta.ru, September 10, 2009, http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/09/10_a_3258568.shtml.

  31. Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, Putin and Gazprom: An Independent Expert Report (Moscow: Novaia gazeta, 2008) pp 9–11; Vladislav Inozemtsev, “The Productivity Trap,” Moscow Times, June 2, 2009; and Ben Aris, 2020 Vision, http://businessneweurope.eu/story1621/2020_Vision.

  32. BRIC by Name, BRIC By Nature? Ratings Direct, Standard & Poor's, February 4, 2009.

  33. Inozemtsev, “The Productivity Trap;” Ivanov speaking to Delovaia Rossiia, Interfax, March 18, 2008; and Julian Cooper, “Of BRICs and Brains: Comparing Russia with China, India and Other Populous Emerging Economies,” Eurasia Geography and Economics 47 (2006): 255–84.

  34. “Kremlin Aide Warns of State Control,” The Moscow Times, October 4, 2007; “Raising Doubts about State Capitalism,” The Moscow Times, October 10, 2009; and Sergey Guriev and Igor Fedyukin, Challenges 2020: The View From Russian Business, New Economic School Report (2008), http://www.nes.ru/files/Challenges_2020_eng.pdf.

  35. For a report on the BRIC International Competition Conference in Kazan, September 2009, see Rossiiskaia gazeta, September 10, 2009.

  36. Robert Cottrell, “Putin's Trap,” New York Review of Books 50, December 4, 2003; William Tompson, “Putin and the ‘Oligarchs’: A Two-Sided Commitment Problem,” OECD April 2004.

  37. European Commission, “The Impact of the Global Crisis”; and Martin Gilman, “Building a Post-Crisis Economic Paradigm,” The Moscow Times, September 9, 2009.

  38. Rory MacFarquhar as cited in Yuri Mamchur, “Russia's economic crisis could have been avoided,” The Seattle Times, December 30, 2008. For a critique of the illusory assumptions underpinning Russian planning, see Andrei Ryabov, “Krizis natsiaonal’noi modeli,” gazeta.ru, July 22, 2009, http://www.gazeta.ru/column/ryabov/3225668.shtml.

  39. Andrew E. Kramer, “Political Aide Says Kremlin May Need to Ease Control,” New York Times, February 9, 2009; author's interviews, Moscow, June 2009.

  40. Although before 2008 the Russian government accumulated a substantial financial surplus and repaid debt, it should be noted that the corporate and banking sectors borrowed heavily in foreign markets, increasing their dependence on external capital, a vulnerability worsened by the depreciation of the ruble. Clifford G. Gaddy and Barry W. Ickes, “Putin's Third Way,” The National Interest (January 2009); IMF, “Statement by the IMF Mission to the Russian Federation,” Press Release No. 09/193, June 1, 2009, http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2009/pr09193.htm; Yegor Gaidar, Gibel’ Imperii. Uroki dlgya Sovremennoi Rossii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007); Andrew E. Kramer, “Rise in Oil Prices Eases Push for Reform in Russia,” New York Times, June 4, 2009; and Laura Cochrane, “Russia Beats California as Default Swaps Favor BRICs,” bloomberg.com, August 7, 2009.

  41. Another reason why Russia contracted the most among the BRIC countries was that the Russian economy was overheating before the crisis and the central bank tightened monetary policy while other countries could afford to start monetary easing to cushion the adjustment from the external shock. For useful overviews and comparisons, see Rudiger Ahrend and William Tompson, “Fifteen Years of Economic Reforms in Russia: What Has Been Achieved? What Remains to Be Done?” OECD Economics Department Working Papers, no. 430 (2005); Aslund, Russia's Capitalist Revolution; Cooper, “Of BRICs and Brains”; and Gary H. Jefferson, “How Has China's Economic Emergence Contributed to the Field of Economics?” Comparative Economic Studies 50 (2008): 167–209.

  42. Rudiger Ahrend, “Can Russia Break the ‘Resource Curse’?” Eurasian Geography and Economics 46 (2005): 584–609.

  43. Harley Balzer, “Eager Dragon, Wary Bear,” International Herald Tribune, September 24, 2007.

  44. Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, “Status, Power, and World Order: Russia and China,” Paper presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New York, NY, February 18–19, 2009.

  45. For an informed discussion that characterizes as “illusory” the hopes of the Russian elite that Russia will emerge as an “independent pole of strength in the multipolar world,” see Andrei Riabov, “Krizis natsional’noi modeli,” gazeta.ru, July 22, 2009.

  46. See Michael Glosny, “China and the BRICs,” Polity 42 (January 2010): 100-29.

  47. Bobo Lo, Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 7.

  48. Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs—America and the World, 1990, special issue 70 (1990/91): 25–33. On balancing, see Kenneth Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security 25 (Summer 2000): 5–41; Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony,” and Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States’ Unipolar Moment,” International Security 31 (Fall 2006): 7–41.

  49. On the general absence of counterbalancing in unipolarity, see Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of U.S. Primacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), especially chaps. 2 and 3.

  50. An assessment of the extensive debate on soft balancing is beyond the scope of this article. See especially T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michael Fortmann, eds., Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Randall Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Robert A. Pape, “Soft Balancing Against the United States,” International Security 30 (Summer 2005): 7–45; Kier A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back,” International Security 30 (Summer 2005): 109–39.

  51. See Jervis, “Unipolarity. A Structural Perspective,” and William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security 24 (Summer 1999): 5–41.

  52. Stephen M. Walt, “Alliances in a Unipolar World,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 86–120; Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World”; and Daniel H. Nexon, “The Balance of Power in the Balance,” World Politics 61 (April 2009): 330–59.

  53. Nexon, “The Balance of Power in the Balance.”

  54. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs 73 (March-April 1994): 67–82; Rajan Menon and Alexander Motyl, “The Myth of Russian Resurgence,” The American Interest 2 (March-April 2007): 96–101; Ariel Cohen, Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis (Westport: CT: Greenwood Press, 1996); Janusz Bugajski, Cold Peace: Russia's New Imperialism (Westport: Praeger, 2004); and Edward Lucas, The New Cold War: The Future of Russia and the Threat to the West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

  55. Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008), iv-vii.

  56. In Russian polls conducted in 2009, 37 percent of respondents perceived the existence of external threats to Russia. In 2003 the corresponding number stood at 57 percent. Viktor Khamrayev, “52 percent of Respondents Perceive No Military Threat to Russia,” Kommersant, February 24, 2009.

  57. Vladimir Putin, “Rossiya na rubezhe tysyacheletii” [“Russia on the Threshold of the Millennium”], Nezavisimaia gazeta, December 30, 1999.

  58. For a good overview, see Bobo Lo, Vladimir Putin and the Evolution of Russian Foreign Policy, Chatham House Paper, Royal Institute of International Affairs (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).

  59. Minxin Pei, Assertive Pragmatism: China's Economic Rise and Its Impact on Chinese Foreign Policy (Paris: IFRI Papers, No. 15, 2006); and Constantine C. Menges, China: The Gathering Threat (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current Publishers, 2005).

  60. Lo, Axis of Convenience. Lo emphasizes that China provides a large market for Russian weapons and energy products.

  61. Alexander Lukin, “Russia to Reinforce the Asian Vector,” Russia in Global Affairs 7 (April-June 2009). See also Harsh V. Pant, “Feasibility of the Russia-China-India ‘Strategic Triangle:’ Assessment of Theoretical and Empirical Issues,” International Studies 43 (2006): 51–72.

  62. Interfax-AVN Online, August 5, 2009. For a good overview see Alexei Arbatov and Vladimir Dvorkin, Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: Transforming the U.S.-Russian Equation (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006).

  63. Transcript of the Meeting with the Participants in the International Club Valdai, GUM Exhibition Centre, kremlin.ru, September 12, 2008. The authoritative Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, published in 2008, states that “Russia is not going to get involved in a costly confrontation, including a renewed arm race, destructive for its economy and disastrous for its internal development.” Website of the President of Russia, at http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/text/docs/2008/07/204750.shtml.

  64. Vladimir Dvorkin, “Pochemu rasshirenie NATO dolzhno trevozhit’ voennykh professionalov,” Ezhednevnyi zhurnal, April 11, 208, at http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id+7969.

  65. For an examination of government efforts to forestall the bankruptcy of much of the Russian military-industrial complex, see Andrei Dolgikh, “Military-Industrial Collapse,” Novoe Izvestiia, March 3, 2009. On the lack of reform, see Zoltan Barany, Democratic Breakdown and the Decline of the Russian Military (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

  66. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2009 (London: Routledge, 2009), 448–49.

  67. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 213. See also the discussion in Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, 27–38.

  68. Celeste A. Wallander, “Russian Transimperialism and Its Implications,” The Washington Quarterly 30 (Spring 2007): 107–22.

  69. Jervis, “Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective,” 200. Realists also see an inevitable tendency among great powers toward coercive regional domination. See John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 41. Wohlforth goes further to argue against the existence of regional polar powers because the unipole is likely to have great power allies in the same region that would act as agents, as for example, Europe and Japan have on behalf of the U.S. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World.” See also Amitav Acharya, “The Emerging Regional Architecture of World Politics,” World Politics 59 (July 2007): 629–52.

  70. Acharya, “The Emerging Regional Architecture of World Politics.”

  71. James Mittleman and Richard Falk, “Global Hegemony and Regionalism,” in Regionalism in the Post–Cold War World, ed. Stephen C. Calleya (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 19. See also Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space for Would-be Great Powers,” International Affairs 82 (January 2006): 1–19.

  72. Andranik Migranian, “Voices from Afar: Russia Makes Partner,” The National Interest Online, October 24, 2008, at http://www.nationalinterest.org/PrinterFriendly.aspx?id=20082.

  73. Transcript of Response to Questions by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov During the Meeting with the Members of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, September 24, 2008. A group of influential Russian foreign policy analysts recently argued that: “America's efforts to spread democracy in the world at large, and particularly in the former Soviet Union usually took the form of supporting the most anti-Russian forces in CIS countries.” Sergei Karaganov, Dmitry Suslov, and Timofei Bordachev, Reconfiguration, Not Just a Reset: Russia's Interests in Relations with the United States of America (Moscow: SVOP [Council on Foreign and Defense Policy], June 2009), 10.

  74. G. John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno, and William C. Wohlforth, “Introduction: Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 1–27, at 16.

  75. For a discussion of “milieu goals,” see Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1962), chap. 5, especially 67–80; and Jervis, “Unipolarity,” 211.

  76. James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, “Russians as Joiners: Realist and Liberal Conceptions of Postcommunist Europe,” in After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition, ed. Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 232–56; Michael McFaul “Russia and the West: A Dangerous Drift,” Current History 104 (October 2005): 307–12; Lilia Shevtsova, Putin's Russia (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 2003); and Alexander J. Motyl, Blair A. Ruble, and Lilia Shevtsova, eds., Russia's Engagement with the West: Transformation and Integration in the Twenty-First Century (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2004). For a similar perspective see Vladimir Baranovsky,“Russia: insider or outsider?” International Affairs (Moscow) 46 (July 2000): 443–59. An assessment published in Kommersant in February 2008 concluded that “Russia's attempt to incorporate into the West on its own terms failed, and it proved unacceptable for Moscow to do it on the terms set by the U.S. and the EU”: see Igor Fedyukin, “Bez peremen,” Kommersant, February 25, 2008. The same point is perceptively argued in Dmitri Trenin, “Russia Redefines Itself and Its Relations with the West,” The Washington Quarterly 30 (Spring 2007): 95–105; and Dmitri Trenin, Getting Russia Right (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007).

  77. Dmitri Trenin, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics And Globalization (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002): 306–12.

  78. See Roberts, Russia and the European Union; Cynthia Roberts, “A Useful and Limited Engagement,” The Moscow Times, July 14, 2006, 6; and Cynthia Roberts, “Russia and NATO: Explaining the Sources of ‘Special Relationships’,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 2005.

  79. A goal of NATO enlargement was to “contribute to enhanced stability and security for all countries in the Euro-Atlantic area by encouraging … democratic reforms [and] fostering … ‘the patterns and habits of cooperation, consultation and consensus building which characterize relations among current Allies….’” Study on NATO Enlargement (Sept 1995), http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/enl-9502.htm. NATO officials hoped the same process would apply to Russia despite its status as a nonmember partner. Roberts, “Russia and NATO”. For useful accounts see Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand (New York: Random House, 2002) and James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003). For the foundation of such transformations as applied to postcommunist countries, see Emanuel Adler, “The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO's Post-Cold War Transformation,” European Journal of International Relations 14 (2008): 195–230; Jeffrey Checkel, International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Frank Schimmelfennig, The EU, NATO and the Integration of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Frank Schimmelfennig, “Strategic Calculation and International Socialization: Membership Incentives, Party Constellations, and Sustained Compliance in Central and Eastern Europe,” International Organization 59 (October 2005): 827–60.

  80. For a thoughtful discussion about the difference between bargaining in traditional two-level games and those involving international-domestic coalitions to join existing regimes such as the EU see Wade Jacoby, “Inspiration, Coalition, and Substitution: External Influences on Postcommunist Transformations,” World Politics 58 (July 2006): 644–47, especially note 58.

  81. For a revealing insider account, see Talbott, The Russia Hand. See also Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Kontseptsiia vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 2008; and speeches by Putin and Medvedev on www.kremlin.ru and www.premier.gov.ru.

  82. William C. Wohlforth, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 28–57.

  83. William C. Wohlforth, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War.”

  84. Victor Yasmann, “Russia: WTO Becomes Long-Term Issue For Relations With U.S.,” RFE-RL, July 24, 2006; Michael Emerson, “Russian Games with the WTO,” CEPS Commentary, July 14, 2009; and Yevgeny Yasin's comments that Putin had sided with Russian protectionists who sought “to slow or stop” the effort to join the WTO. Nezavisimaia gazeta, July 13, 2009.

  85. Andrei Zagorski, “Moscow Seeks to Renegotiate Relations with the West,” Russian Analytical Digest 26 (September 4, 2007): 1–18.

  86. Transcript, “A Conversation with Dmitri Medvedev,” Council on Foreign Relations, November 15, 2008, at: http://www.cfr.org/publication/17775/conversation_with_dmitry_medvedev.html. For an analysis of Russia's problematic partnership with NATO see Cynthia Roberts, “Rossiia i NATO: Predely chastichnoi integratsii” [Russia and NATO: The Limits of Partial Integration], Aktual’nye Problemy Evropy [Urgent Problems of Europe] 4 (2004): 87–113; and Cynthia Roberts, “The Russia-NATO Partnership: Bargaining in Unipolarity,” paper in revisions.

  87. D. Medvedev, “Presentation at the Conference on World Politics,” Evian, France, October 8, 2008, http://news.kremlin.ru/transcripts/1659.

  88. Robert Jervis, “Theories of War in an Era of Great Power Peace: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 2001,” American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 1–14; G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); G. John Ikenberry, “Democracy, Institutions, and American Restraint,” in America Unrivaled. U.S. Unipolarity and the Future of the Balance of Power, ed. G. John Ikenberry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 213–38; Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance; and Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

  89. G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West,” Foreign Affairs (January-February 2008). See also his works cited in note 88.

  90. Michael Mastanduno, “System Maker and Privilege Taker: U.S. Power and the International Political Economy,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 121–54, at 125.

  91. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Randall L. Schweller, “The Problem of International Order Revisited,” International Security 26 (Summer 2001): 161–86.

  92. Karaganov, et al. Reconfiguration, Not Just a Reset, 10.

  93. Keohane, After Hegemony; Lisa Martin, “Multilateral Organizations after the U.S.-Iraq War,” in The Iraq War and Its Consequences: Thoughts of Nobel Peace Laureates and Eminent Scholars, ed. Irwin Abrams and Gungwu Wang (New Jersey: World Scientific Publishing, 2003), 359–73; Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52 (1998): 887–917; and Ian Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics,” International Organization 53 (1999): 379–408.

  94. Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration; Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World.”

  95. Robert Jervis, review of World Out of Balance in Perspectives on Politics 7 (March 2009): 219; Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, chaps. 5, 6.

  96. Robert B. Zoellick, Statement on Conclusion of the Second U.S.-China Senior Dialogue. U.S. Department of State Press Release, December 8, 2005.

  97. Jervis, “A Structural Perspective,” 195.

  98. Martha Finnemore, “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity: Why Being a Unipole Isn’t All It's Cracked Up to Be,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 58–85, at 73 and 81.

  99. K.I. Kosachev, “Rossiya mezhdu evropeiskim vyborom i aziatskim rostom,” Mezhdunarodnye zhizn’ 12 (2005): 54–67. See also a more recent summary of his analysis in Rossiiskaia gazeta, No. 4822, December 29, 2008, http://www.rg.ru/2008/12/29/kosachev.html.

  100. Fyodor Lukyanov, “What Shapes the Global World Of The 21st Century?” Oslo, Norway, http://www.regjeringen.no/se/dep/ud/kampanjer/refleks/innspill/globalorden/lukyanov.html?id=492922.

  101. Finnemore, “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy,” 61.

  102. Feodor Lukyanov, “Mnogopolyarnyi vektor,” gazeta.ru, June 11, 2009.

  103. Lukyanov, “What Shapes the Global World.” For American critiques of U.S. revisionist policies, see especially Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Jervis, “Unipolarity”; and Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

  104. V. Putin, “Speech to Munich Security Conference,” 2007, at http://www.securityconference.de/konferenzen/rede.php?sprache=en&id=179.

  105. V. Putin, Annual Address to the Federal Assembly, May 10, 2006, the Kremlin, http://eng.kremlin.ru/speeches/2006/05/10/1823_type70029type82912_105566.shtml.

  106. V. Putin, Speech to Munich Security Conference.

  107. Finnemore, “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy,” 83.

  108. Lukyanov, “What Shapes the Global World.”

  109. BRIC Summit communiqué.

  110. “Dependence on the dollar creates dangers,” Economist Intelligence Unit, Risk Briefing June 25, 2009; and Gleb Bryanski and Guy Faulconbridge, “Russia seeks currency debate at first BRIC summit,” Reuters.

  111. Nouriel Roubini, quoted in Lester Pimentel and Valerie Rota, “BRICs Buy IMF Debt to Join Big Leagues, Goldman Says,” bloomberg.com, June 11, 2009.

  112. Daniel Whitten, “Zoellick Says U.S. Dollar's Primacy Not a Certainty,” bloomberg.com, September 27, 2009.

  113. Author interviews, Moscow, June 2009.

  114. “BRIC, but no bloc,” Economist Intelligence Unit, June 16, 2009; “IMF Members’ Quotas and Voting Power, and IMF Board of Governors,” IMF website, http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.htm.

  115. Martin Gilman, “Deciding the IMF's Future,” The Moscow Times, August 30, 2007, 9.

  116. Alexander Kramarenko, “The End of the Cold War and the Acquisition of Meaning,” Russia in Global Affairs (Jan-Mar 2009).

  117. “First Channel” program Interview with Medvedev ,June 18, 2009, http://www.kremlin.ru/transcripts/4527. See also Medvedev's speech to the Petersburg Economic Forum, June 7, 2008 where the new president talked about how “we want to participate in shaping the new rules of the game …” See, Dmitri Medvedev, speech at the XII St. Petersburg Economic Forum, 7 June 2008, http://president.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2008/06/07/1338_type82914type127286_202288.shtml.

  118. Lukin, “Russia to Reinforce the Asian Vector.”

  119. The RICs first summit was held in 2006 in St. Petersburg on the sidelines of Russia's presiding over the G8 meeting. Their differences were mentioned in the Harbin communiqué, but not repeated at the BRIC meeting. Vladimir Radyukhin, “For a New Order,” Frontline, 25 (June 07–20, 2008). http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl2512/stories/20080620251205200.htm.

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    Cynthia Roberts

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Roberts, C. Russia's BRICs Diplomacy: Rising Outsider with Dreams of an Insider. Polity 42, 38–73 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2009.18

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