Post-Cold War Continuity in Russian Foreign Policy towards Eastern Europe
Russian foreign policy toward Eastern Europe revolves around two core goals: the protection of national security and the desire for recognition as a great power with a significant sphere of influence.
Throughout its history, Russia’s ‘mental map’ of its national security has frequently extended to Eastern Europe, Russia’s ‘near abroad.’ A lack of physical borders and historically geographical vulnerability has led Russian security to have “traditionally been predicated on moving outward, in the name of preempting external attack.” Thus, expansion into or influence on Russia’s border states has been an instrumental component of maintaining territorial integrity and domestic security throughout Russia’s history.
After Hitler’s betrayal of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the subsequent Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Soviet leaders were driven primarily to protect the Russian homeland from future invasion. The Soviets believed that Germany or another capitalist state would rise again to challenge them, especially after the betrayal of Nazi Germany triggered a paranoia of war with capitalist powers known as “Barbarossa Syndrome.” This drove Stalin and his successors to maintain a protective zone that shielded Soviet territory from invasion, initiated via the ‘Sovietization’ of Eastern Europe in 1945.
Today, Putin continues to view Eastern Europe as essential to Russian security. Much of the demand for hegemony over post-Soviet space stems from a fear that instability, popular movements, or terrorism in Eastern Europe could spill into Russia and create political unrest. As a result, Putin has continued the tradition of not recognizing Ukraine and other countries in the near abroad as ‘foreign,’ instead essentially as extensions of Russia itself. Under the guise of protecting Russian compatriots and the shared history and culture of its border states, Russia has pursued various military and economic tactics — including maintaining ‘frozen conflicts’ and subsidizing Russian energy — to maintain its hold on Eastern Europe, not unlike how the Soviet Union cemented its near abroad through economic dependence and the threat of force.
This desire to maintain hegemony in the region manifests itself in an adamant need to prevent the expansion of NATO and the EU, an obvious parallel to Soviet times. When NATO marked its intentions to expand into Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, Russia made its response clear by quelling popular movements and clamping down on its near abroad. To Putin, NATO expansion represents a threat to the doctrine of limited sovereignty and principally to the national security and territorial integrity of Russia. In fact, many Russians believe that NATO expansion into post-Soviet space represents an extension of Soviet-era containment — the militarization of Europe against Russia. In a speech given shortly after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Putin emphasized the “perfectly real threat” of NATO enlargement and the Western policy of continued containment “to the whole of southern Russia”.
Furthermore, many scholars believe that Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 was in part a result of what Putin believes was a Western-backed ‘coup’ to oust pro-Kremlin President Yanukovych. Russia feels threatened by the overthrowing of Kremlin-friendly governments, and conceives the U.S. as bent on encroaching into its near abroad, just as Soviet leaders feared Western penetration of its buffer zone via liberal reforms and ‘soft power.’
Putin’s crackdown against a shift to the West appears markedly similar to Soviet interventions in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, when Soviet leaders were continuously worried about Eastern European states leaving their buffer zone and thus endangering Soviet security through a domino effect in other states. When Hungary threatened to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact alliance in 1956 and later when Czechoslovakia attempted to modernize and limit the communist party in 1968, the Warsaw Pact intervened and dispelled reform efforts. Half a century later, Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and increased tensions in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Eastern Ukraine largely to prevent Russia’s buffer states from functioning efficiently and thus joining NATO and the EU.
Much of this paranoia stems from Russia’s desire for status and recognition via the cementation of a ‘sphere of influence.’ From Kievan Rus to the imperial Russian Empire to the vast Soviet Union, Russia has always seen itself as a global leader, even if this self-image may be somewhat distorted. Today, Russia has an economy 1/15 the size of the U.S. and shares only 1.5% of global GDP, yet Russia remains frustrated at the West for not recognizing its impressiveness.
This desire for great power status in the eyes of the West has led Russia to seek a new international order with Russia in a position of leadership. In his 2014 Crimea speech, Putin went to great lengths to criticize the U.S. domination of international order, emphasizing that Russia, too, is an “independent, active participant in international affairs” whose “national interests need to be taken into account and respected.” In a quest for recognition of Russian status, the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and Eurasian Economic Union serve as vehicles to consolidate power in Eurasia, much like the Warsaw Pact and Cominform of the Soviet era. While the Cold War bipolar order may no longer be present, Russian agitation at the West for not recognizing Russian power and demanding humiliating concessions after the Cold War still drives the desire to create a ‘tripolar world order’ with Russia (and rising China) in a leadership position, a departure from U.S. domination of the international arena.
Ultimately, while state ideology has greatly changed, Russian conceptions of national security and power politics in Eastern Europe have remained constant from the time of the Soviet Union. Russia remains on the brink of integration and isolation, seemingly eternally torn between joining the international community and protesting its decaying status. In order to truly achieve the foreign policy goals that Russia claims it seeks, Putin needs to focus foremost on internal domestic and economic reforms; rooting out corruption, promoting governmental accountability, and creating true democracy and freedom. But because Russian leaders have historically been unwilling to implement these ‘Western’ reforms, Russia will continue using authoritarianism and force to conceal its insecurities and attempt to achieve recognition of its status and hegemony over Eastern Europe. Until Russia can acknowledge its own weaknesses, “make peace with the past”, and find common ground with the West, Russia may be stuck in its perpetual state of resentful isolation.
