Russia's droit de regard: pluralist norms and the sphere of influence

In: Global discourse: an interdisciplinary journal of current affairs and applied contemporary thought, Band 5, Heft 3, S. 434-448

Abstract

Following the end of the cold war and throughout the 1990s, Russia was described as the readily 'joining' international society. According to the English school perspective on IR, this meant that Russia was expected to adjust and accept the norms and rules established and propagated by mostly Western liberal states but hailed as common for the family of states. With Vladimir Putin's ascendance to power and Russia's economic recovery followed by Moscow's more assertive stance on global affairs, Russia was increasingly seen as the supporter of a pluralist vision of the international society, i.e. one characterized by limited cooperation, respect for sovereignty and non-intervention. These depictions ignored the fundamental differences in Russia's approach towards relations between states in the regional and global perspective. While on the global scale Russia cherishes norms of sovereignty and non-intervention, the regional realm has been subject to a variety of moves compromising the sovereignty of post-Soviet states. In the Commonwealth of Independent States, Russia has been ready and willing to engage in undermining states' sovereignty in a number of ways: attempting to establish a sphere of influence, directly intervening in a civil strives, policing borders, waging wars on 'humanitarian' grounds and stimulating separatisms, as well as undertaking less explicit interventionist activities of regional integration, security provision and development assistance. This article discusses these cases in order to make the point that Russia's approach to its most immediate neighbours cannot be subsumed under pluralist or solidarist vision of interstate relations. It highlights the difficulty to approach the Russian global-regional split using the conceptual apparatus of the English school and links it to a more perennial problem – that of the English school disregard for the specifics of post-colonial situations.