The Ottoman Decline

The Vienna system of international relations did not include the Ottoman Empire, and each member of the Concert of Europe had its own way of regulating relations with the Ottomans. Russia followed the route of fighting multiple wars with Turkey and gradually developing a range of complex treaties to satisfy its interests in the East. A Christian and a conservative power, Russia wanted to protect the rights of millions of Christians within the Ottoman Empire, but not at the expense of destabilizing Constantinople politically. On a number of occasions, both Alexander and Nicholas had opportunities to undermine the Ottomans, but refused to challenge them over the rights of Christians.²

Several of Russia's treaties with Turkey deserve mention. By defeating Turkey in 1739, Russia gained access to the Black Sea through the Treaty of Belgrade. The Peace of Kuchuk Kainardzhi of 1774 and the Treaty of Jassy of 1792 solidified Russia's control over Azov and the Crimea in the coastal area. The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardzhi also provided Russia with special rights to protect Orthodox Christians within the Ottoman Empire. Although these rights were not clearly defined,³ Article 7 obligated the Porte to “give the Christian faith and its churches protection,” and it granted “the Ministries of the Russian Imperial Court [the right] to protect all interests of the church built in Constantinople.” Article 8 further stipulated the rights of subjects of the Russian Empire to freely travel to the “holy city of Jerusalem and other solemn places” and not to be subject to any form of taxation or payment.⁴ From 1828–9 Nicholas fought another war with Turkey; the resulting Treaty of Adrianople gave Russia control over southern Bessarabia and thereby greater influence over the Balkans. A few years later the Tsar intervened on behalf of the Sultan in suppressing Mehemed Ali's rebellion in Egypt. In response, the grateful Sultan signed in 1833 the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, which made the two empires into allies. In recognition of Russia's interests, a secret article of this treaty closed the Straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to foreign warships in exchange for freeing Turkey from the obligation to provide military assistance to Russia.⁵

Around the same time as it was engaging in these various wars and treaties with Turkey, Russia developed a general understanding with the European powers regarding the Ottoman Empire. St. Petersburg viewed its objectives in the East as fully consistent with the Holy Alliance's obligations, and Russian tsars worked to explain to the outside world that they did not have any revisionist designs. In 1841 Russia and other European powers signed the Straits Convention reaffirming their agreement with Turkey. Nicholas also worked with individual countries to achieve a common understanding of the Eastern question. For instance, he traveled to London in 1844 to discuss the issue with Lord Aberdeen, the British foreign secretary, assuring him that Russia was keenly interested in keeping the Ottoman Empire stable for as long as possible.⁶ Nicholas made clear that he wanted not a single inch of Turkey, but that he would also not allow anyone else to have it.⁷

However, the Ottoman Empire was progressively weakening on its own. Since 1828, it had experienced three attempts to assert power by Mehemed Ali, and in 1839–40 the European powers had to undertake a concerted intervention against Ali to prevent the empire's further disintegration and guarantee its territorial integrity. From Russia's perspective, the fact that Turkey was the “sick man” of Europe – as Nicholas referred to it⁸ – meant the need to prepare for an unpleasant future. Russia had to guarantee the rights of millions of Orthodox Christians, preserve the closure of the Straits, and secure its position as a great power under changing international conditions. On the issue of Orthodox Christians, St. Petersburg could hardly afford “inaction in the Balkans,” despite its loyalty to the Holy Alliance's principles.⁹ With Greece gaining independence in 1829, inaction would have meant the growing radicalization of nationalities inside both Turkey and Russia. In addition, the Tsar had to face the ideologically opposing impulses of pan-Slavic and pan-Orthodox pressures at home.¹⁰ The Russians had legitimate security reasons to refer to the Straits as “the key to our own house,”¹¹ so keeping them closed was too vital an objective to be left to uncertainty.

In addition, the decline of Turkey had the strong potential to serve as a catalyst for a renewed rivalry among European states for power and resources in the Near East. Britain was never satisfied with the Concert of Europe and sought to play a hegemonic role in international relations by ousting Russia from its position in the East.¹² Britain's role was critical, and some scholars claim that, if it were not for the rivalry between Britain and Russia, “the [Crimean] war would have not taken place.”¹³ British elites and the general public also harbored a strong animosity toward Russia, stemming from the latter's suppression of Poland in 1830 and other European nationalities in 1848–9. France had experienced a change in power, and the new Emperor Napoleon III was looking to enhance his international prestige, possibly at the expense of Turkey and Russia.¹⁴ Russia's relationship with France, which had been difficult since the establishment of the Vienna system, further worsened with Nicholas's refusal to recognize the elected Louis Napoleon as his equal.¹⁵ Austria had its own reasons to resent Russia's position in the European international relations, which had to do with St. Petersburg's influence in the Balkans.¹⁶

Nicholas's Perception and Strategic Objectives

These cultural and geopolitical considerations shaped Nicholas's perception of the situation developing in the East. Managing Russia's double commitment to Orthodox Christians and the Holy Alliance was proving to be a challenge, and Nicholas's way of doing so was different from that of his brother Alexander.

When France insisted on its exclusive right to protect Christian holy places in Jerusalem and Palestine, Nicholas found himself in a difficult situation. This issue, as well as the status of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, was far more important to Russia than to France. More than a third of the empire's population was Orthodox Christians – approximately thirteen million people – compared to a much smaller share of Catholic population in the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a large number of Orthodox pilgrims from Russia and abroad visited the holy places in Palestine.¹⁷ To Nicholas, a truly devout churchgoer and a genuine believer in Russia's religious authority, protecting the Orthodox pilgrims had enormous significance. The Tsar was convinced of the absolute moral superiority of his country and the ethical obligations it entailed. His entire system of ruling was based on the principle of “Orthodoxy,” and he justified all his domestic and international actions in the name of religion.¹⁸ Nicholas therefore had no choice but to respond to the Sultan's decision to grant the Catholic Church special privileges to the holy places. He could not ignore the revolts of the “Orthodox community at Jerusalem, Constantinople, and even Petrograd against the treachery of the Sultan, who appeared to have made the Tsar ridiculous.”¹⁹

Yet few rulers in Europe saw themselves as committed to the Holy Alliance's principles as Nicholas. He proved his commitment by not hesitating to intervene in Europe and even Turkey in defense of the conservative autocratic order and in suppression of revolutionary nationalist movements. In the 1820s, he was infuriated by Greek claims of independence and supported the Sultan's legitimacy even though Turkey was never a member of the Holy Alliance.²⁰ He went to war with the Ottoman Empire in 1828 in an effort to uphold his special relations with the Balkan Christians and to strike a new balance between his commitments to Orthodox Christians and the Holy Alliance. To avoid stark choices between the two commitments – his brother Alexander faced such a choice in 1821 – Nicholas advocated a more activist role for Russia within the Alliance. To support the Balkan Christians, he believed in the occasional necessity to act unilaterally and dictate to Europe the policies that he thought “were in Europe's best interests.”²¹ In 1826, the Tsar stated his views on the issue as follows:

Therefore, Nicholas's synthesis between the two foreign policy commitments was in favor of the Holy Alliance, but on Russia's terms. Europe was to support Russia's Christian policies in the Ottoman Empire, so long as Russia had no intentions of politically undermining the Porte or conquering it. Nicholas was consistent in advocating this philosophy and never seriously considered grand plans of advancing to Constantinople or partitioning Turkey without Europe's support.²³

By choosing to challenge the Sultan on the issue of the holy places, Nicholas sought to achieve a diplomatic, not military victory over Turkey. He expected the major powers in Europe to support him, because he believed he was acting to return the Ottoman principalities to the European Concert. The Tsar's objectives were that “all the Christian parts of Turkey must necessarily become independent, must become again what they [formerly] were, principalities, Christian states, as such reenter the family of the Christian states of Europe.”²⁴ The statement captures all three dimensions of Russia's complex definition of honor – commitment to the Christian European order, to fellow Orthodox Christians, and to great power prestige.

In terms of practical policies, Nicholas first invoked the old Kuchuk Kainardzhi treaty to remind the Sultan of his obligations to the empire's Orthodox Christians. This was done partly in response to France's reference to the even older 1740 treaty that it had concluded with Turkey over the holy places.²⁵ In 1853, in addition to sending Prince Alexander Menshikov to deliver Russia's demands to the Sultan, Nicholas also designed a three-stage plan for pressuring the Ottomans: occupation of the Christian principalities, the Austrian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, and a Russian blockade of the Bosporus. If these actions were not effective, then the fourth stage would be Turkey's partition by way of joint Austro-Russian recognition of the independence of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Serbia.²⁶ Nicholas, however, did not believe the last stage would be necessary, and even when war seemed unavoidable, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Alexander Gorchakov, stated Russia's objectives in April 1854 in the same nonrevisionist way: “to reaffirm on a solid basis the religious immunities of our brothers of the Orthodox Church.”²⁷

From the Near Eastern to the European War

Subsequent events demonstrated that Britain and Austria neither understood nor shared Nicholas's position. The Tsar's first attempt to clarify his stance to British officials in 1844 elicited a reserved, albeit not explicitly disapproving, reaction from London.²⁸ In early 1853, Nicholas resumed his diplomatic efforts by holding a series of conversations with the British ambassador to St. Petersburg, Sir George Hamilton Seymour, assuring him of Russia's commitment to maintain the Ottoman Empire. Seymour's reaction was favorable until Nicholas broached the possibility of the empire's disintegration and proposed a partition scheme should Russia and Britain's joint effort to save the “sick man” prove insufficient. When the Tsar spoke of extending Russia's protectorate to the Danubian principalities of Serbia and Bulgaria in exchange for British control over Egypt and Crete, Seymour became suspicious.²⁹ After Nicholas mentioned his belief that Austria fully supported his position, Seymour and others in Aberdeen's cabinet interpreted the Tsar's speculations as being his actual plans and spoke of the need to thwart Russia's ambitions.³⁰

In February 1853 Nicholas, a believer in tough diplomacy, sent Menshikov to Turkey with the mandate to coerce the Sultan into accepting Russia's conditions: settling the Holy Land dispute in Russia's favor and explicitly recognizing the rights of Orthodox Christians to visit the holy places. The Tsar assumed that Britain would not interfere, and the Sultan would have little choice but to accept Russia's conditions. Britain, however, was of two minds. Although the more moderate members of Aberdeen's cabinet advocated for no interference, the anti-Russian hawks, such as then-Home Secretary Lord Henry Temple Palmerston and the ambassador in Constantinople Stratford Canning, lobbied on the Sultan's behalf to characterize Russia's conditions as an infringement of Turkish sovereignty.³¹ It was actually Canning, rather than a Turkish official, who responded first to Menshikov's ultimatum.³² Canning also convinced the Grand Vizier to dismiss Mehemet Ali in favor of Rechid Pasha, who refused to accept Russia's references to the Kuchuk Kainardzhi treaty.³³ Indeed, so close was British involvement in Russian-Turkish negotiations that Menshikov later wrote to Nesselrode, “There, my dear Count, is what the British agents have the effrontery to call the independence of the Turkish government.”³⁴

After the failure of Menshikov's mission, events progressed to the course of war. Learning about the Sultan's refusal to comply with Russia's conditions, Nicholas described himself as having felt “the five fingers on the Sultan on his cheek.”³⁵ In response, the Tsar moved to stage one of his plan by ordering the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia. In the meantime, Britain and France moved their fleets to Besika Bay, preparing to pass through the Dardanelles and then the Bosporus. Austria, Russia's trusted ally, acted against Nicholas's expectations. Rather than siding with St. Petersburg, Vienna proclaimed a policy of armed neutrality and attempted to mediate between Russia and Turkey.³⁶ Soon after that policy failed to produce the desired results and Turkey declared war on Russia in October 1853, Austria could no longer hide its interests in the Balkans. In June 1854, the Austrian government concluded a convention with the Ottomans on the joint Austrian-Turkish occupation of Wallachia and Austria's sole occupation of Moldavia.³⁷

The war therefore moved beyond being about Turkey or the Balkans. With other European powers involved, it quickly obtained the status of a general European war. As A. J. P. Taylor wrote, “the real stake in the Crimean war was not Turkey.…The Crimean war was fought to remake the European system.”³⁸

The Defeat of Russia

That Russia's military capabilities were sufficient for defeating Turkey was evident not only in Admiral Nakhimov's overwhelming victory over the Turkish Black Sea fleet in the harbor of Sinope in November 1853 but also in important victories in the Caucasus. On August 5, 1854, General Bebutov defeated the main Ottoman army of the Caucasus front, which suffered 8,000 casualties and 2,000 prisoners against Russia's 3,000 casualties. The victory impressed the Persian government enough for it to sign a neutrality treaty with Russia.³⁹ Even after the final defeat in Sevastopol in September 1855, Russians won an important battle against Turks in the Caucasus by seizing Kars in November 1855.

However, Nicholas could not fight the war alone against major European powers for very long. France and Britain entered the Black Sea in January 1854, and in February they called on Russia to evacuate the principalities by April 30. In March they established a triple alliance of Britain, France, and Turkey, declaring war on Russia. Although the most decisive military developments took place in the Crimea, Russia had to face the enemy on three additional fronts – the Caucasus, the Baltics, and the Balkans. Fighting in the Balkans proved especially distracting: during the time it took to move his regular troops from the central part of Russia to the Crimea, Nicholas could have only used the roughly 20,000 troops he kept in the principalities. In addition, despite the large size of the Russian army – 1.8 million regular troops – only about 100,000 could be deployed to defend Sevastopol, the most important battle in the war.⁴⁰ Other troops were deployed elsewhere to defend various regions of the vast empire. Sevastopol fought bravely, holding out for some eight months, but eventually fell because of insufficient supplies⁴¹ and the heavy bombardment of the European armies. In the meantime, the anti-Russian coalition kept expanding, as Palmerston was opposing any peace with Nicholas and publicizing his plans for partitioning Russia with portions of its territories to go to Prussia, Sweden, Turkey, and Austria.⁴² In January 1856, presented with the Austrian ultimatum to negotiate, Russia accepted it unconditionally.

Unable to continue with the war, Russia had to accept harsh conditions for peace at the Paris congress.⁴³ Russia lost its rights to have fortifications and a fleet in the Black Sea and to protect Orthodox Christians in the principalities and the rest of the Ottoman Empire.⁴⁴ Although Palmerston did not have his way and Russia faced no threat of political destruction, Britain succeeded in destroying the Concert of Europe and the role that Russia had played in it. The Paris congress delivered a crushing blow to Russia's reputation as a Christian protector in the Balkans and to its prestige as a great power. Nesselrode called the defeat a national humiliation of the first order.⁴⁵ Russia was no longer viewed as a major European power, because it now “carried less weight in European affairs than any time since the end of the Great Northern war in 1721.”⁴⁶ In addition, as a Russian historian wrote, “the entire southern border Russia in the Black Sea area was revealed as defenseless.”⁴⁷

Europe's Opposition to Russia

Midcentury developments, especially the 1848–9 revolutions in Europe, revealed that the continent's powers were growing resentful of Russia. In 1849, as Palmerston noted, Russia and Britain were the only powers “standing upright,”⁴⁸ but it was Russia that emerged as politically dominant after suppressing the revolutions. However, Nicholas did not want to be viewed as the continent's hegemon, and after helping Austria and the Hapsburgs suppress revolts in Italy and Hungary, he quickly withdrew to Russia. Yet his assumption that there was sufficient support in Europe for the old Holy Alliance system and Russia's role in it was incorrect. As Evgeni Tarle wrote, Nicholas made three principal errors of judgment that put his country on the course to the Crimean war: he assumed that France was weakened by the 1848–9 events, he counted Austria as an ally, and he miscalculated the reaction of Britain.⁴⁹

The most important opposition to Russia came from Britain. It stemmed from geopolitics, cultural suspicions, and the political makeup of the ruling establishment. Geopolitically, British elites struggled to dominate the continent and were never comfortable with the Concert of Europe developed under the leadership of Alexander I. Given its power, Britain's role in preserving the Concert was crucial, yet already in the 1830s Palmerston and others were devising schemes to strengthen their influence with the Ottoman Empire and to undermine Russia's position. “By 1853 there was little enthusiasm in Britain for Concert diplomacy.”⁵⁰ In addition, the British economic presence in the Near East had been steadily growing since 1829, whereas Russia's was declining.⁵¹Table 12.1 summarizes the growth of British economic wealth relative to that of Russia and other European powers. Russia was a formidable military power and had a large regular army, but Britain had a clear advantage in the number of ships, frigates, and naval guns. Table 12.2 shows the European power balance before the Crimean War, illustrating the relationship between military performance and the health of the economy.⁵²

British opposition to Russia also had its roots in cultural Russophobia that had begun to develop in the 1830s and had matured in the 1840s.⁵³ In the British public's mind, Nicholas's policies in the Near East and his suppression of the Polish revolt in the 1830s and of national revolutions in the 1840s were all indicators of Russia's naturally oppressive instincts. By 1848, the two nations’ “ideological incompatibility” produced, in Martin Malia's expression, “a paroxysm of Russophobic rage as universal as the revolution itself.”⁵⁴ Nicholas was widely hated as the “gendarme of Europe” and the leading oppressor of forces of liberty. Although official relations with Russia remained courteous, public opinion was increasingly galvanized by highly distorted coverage of Russia in the Britain media, which in turn began to influence official policy.⁵⁵ By the time that Nicholas demanded the Sultan's respect for Orthodox Christian rights in the Holy Lands, British public opinion had already turned against Russia. Incidents such as the battle of Sinop during the Crimean War caused new waves of anti-Russian and pro-Turkish feelings in British society.

These geopolitical and cultural factors caused shifts in the ruling elites’ attitudes away from Russia, further complicating a search for cooperative solutions before and during the war. Palmerston and his supporters had had considerable influence on British policy since the 1830s, when they already began entertaining the idea of a decisive war with Russia. “The fact is that Russia is a great humbug,” Palmerston wrote to his brother in 1835, “and that if England were fairly to go to work with her, we should throw her back half a century in one campaign.”⁵⁶ The war faction within the British establishment also wanted to stir up nationalities within the Russian Empire to facilitate its dismemberment.⁵⁷ During the war, this faction opposed peace with Russia and insisted on fighting Nicholas until achieving the more ambitious objective of the dissolution of Russia. According to Palmerston's memorandum of September 1855, the true aims of the war required that Russia's territory be reduced or at least “hemmed in” by “a long line of circumvallation” – an equivalent of the containment policy.⁵⁸ Although Palmerston had moderate and non-interventionist opponents, such as Richard Cobden, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Stanley,⁵⁹ the war polarized the British political spectrum, giving the advantage to the hawks. The already mentioned Sinop battle, for example, severely weakened the position of moderates in the British cabinet and strengthened the pro-war faction.⁶⁰

The opposition of other European powers was also important, albeit less pronounced. Neither France nor Austria directly challenged the Concert, but they wanted a greater share of power and each in their own way was uncomfortable with the strong and assertive Russia. France sought to renegotiate its relations with Turkey and used the Holy Lands issue to increase its influence in the Near East. The newly elected French emperor Louis Napoleon also aimed to increase his popularity at home by posturing as a defender of the Roman Catholic faith. Austria too wanted greater influence, particularly in the Danubian principalities that had been largely controlled by Russia and were occupied by Nicholas in response to the failure of the Menshikov mission. Not uncomfortable with the Concert, Austria sought greater room for itself within the system. This explains why Vienna sided with the Porte on the issues of Wallachia and Moldavia, but also worked to develop peace proposals during the war and generated the ultimatum that ended the military conflict. Overall, as a historian wrote, “Russia's strength, or appearance of strength, proved to be a serious political liability, for it tended to make other countries even more fearful of Russia.”⁶¹

Russia's Sense of Confidence

To Russia, Europe's opposition seemed to reflect a lack of recognition of its legitimate foreign policy objectives. The Tsar and many of his subjects inside Russia felt sufficiently confident to defend their country's values and interests, and it would have been offensive to them to be denied such an opportunity.

As someone who attended church services every day (and sung in the church choir), who shared the messianic vision of Orthodox Christianity, and saw his reign as an act of God's providence, Nicholas was sincere in his religious convictions.⁶² “The divine protection” was his “guiding light in all matters,”⁶³ including diplomacy. For example, the Tsar was criticized for selecting Menshikov, a professional soldier, to send on the mission to the Sultan about the holy places.⁶⁴ Arguing that he “was a great deal more insistent than Nesselrode would have been,” some even viewed Menshikov as “an extremist of the Orthodox party.”⁶⁵ For Nicholas, however, the choice of Menshikov made sense both because he held Christian Orthodox convictions and because he was expected to be forceful in his demands. On the margins of Menshikov's written request for instructions, the Tsar wrote that “without a crisis of coercion it may be difficult for the Imperial Mission to regain the degree of influence that it formerly exercised over the Divan [the Turkish government].”⁶⁶

As an Orthodox Christian, Nicholas also enjoyed strong support at home from Orthodox adherents and intellectuals committed to promoting the Slavic/Orthodox worldview and policies. In 1843 the Ecclesiastical Academy of St. Petersburg persuaded the Tsar to send several hundred missionaries to Damascus and Beirut.⁶⁷ Around the same time, partly in response to liberal Europe's outrage over Russia's suppression of Poland, a strong Slavophile movement emerged in Russia that sought to amplify the Tsar's vision and push him in a more radical direction. The movement included prominent thinkers, publicists, and diplomats, such as Ivan Aksakov, Konstantin Aksakov, Aleksei Khomyakov, Mikhail Katkov, Ivan Kireyevski, Rostislav Fadeyev, Mikhail Pogodin, Yuri Samarin, and Fyodor Tyutchev. In contrast to supporters of Russia's pro-Western path of development or Westernizers, the Slavophiles thought of Russia as a unique cultural and religious community, rather than merely as an offspring of European civilization.⁶⁸ With regard to the East, Slavophiles’ attitudes were deeply ethnocentric and not much different from those widely shared in Europe.⁶⁹

Slavophiles soon proclaimed the Crimean War to be “holy” and supported it as an effective means to promote their moral ideals.⁷⁰ For example, the poet Khomyakov, who volunteered to fight the Turks in 1828, insisted that the war was first and foremost about the Christian mission, and not about power. He also saw the Russian mission as superior to that of the West and the Christian wars fought by Western nations:

Soon after the beginning of the war, Mikhail Pogodin, a professor of Russian history at Moscow University, wrote to Nicholas urging him to provide strong support to all revolutionaries who were fighting against Turkey and Austria. In his view, Serbia and the Slavs were culturally and politically pro-Russian and therefore would fight Austria if it were to break with Russia.⁷² Similarly, Konstantin Aksakov wrote in 1854 about a new path of Russia's greatness associated with the unity of all Slavs under the supreme patronage of the Russian Tsar.⁷³

Nicholas was sympathetic with some of the Slavophiles’ ideas, although they did not drive his actions toward the Ottoman Empire. The Slavophiles’ emphasis on the cultural aspects of the war, as well as their juxtaposition of two separate projects of the Enlightenment – Russian and Western European⁷⁴ – resonated with the Tsar's vision of Russia as the only representative of “true” Europe. With Khomyakov, he felt that he was “waging war neither for worldly advantage nor for conquests, but for a solely Christian purpose.”⁷⁵ Nicholas also positively responded to Pogodin's call to be more supportive of pro-Russian revolutionaries.⁷⁶ However, the Tsar never endorsed the Slavophiles’ call to topple Constantinople, nor did he provide the full-fledged assistance for the Slav and Orthodox revolutionaries urged by the Slavophiles. Nicholas was also wary of his supporters’ views on Russia's political system, which included the abolition of serfdom and the establishment of egalitarian unity between the Tsar and the people.⁷⁷ Domestic censorship of the Slavophiles remained tight, and the war objectives remained limited and oriented to the status quo. Disappointed in Nicholas and the course of the war, the Slavophiles soon began to withdraw their support.⁷⁸

Although the Tsar rejected plans from his own court to attack Constantinople,⁷⁹ he also failed to support those who advocated a policy of greater restraint or of cooperation with Western powers. His advisors Count Nesselrode and Baron Brunnow favored a more cautious approach. The former advocated the preservation of a strong alliance with Austria and Prussia and wrote to the Tsar that “honor does not oblige us to hurl ourselves into a bottomless abyss.”⁸⁰ Brunnow argued against taking a tough and assertive line with the Turks, warning that such a stance might backfire by either destroying the Sultan or rallying his supporters against Russia.⁸¹ Nicholas favored preserving the Ottoman Empire, but he insisted on preserving it on Russia's terms, rather than on the terms decided by the European powers. He was not persuaded by Nesselrode's logic, partly because the advisor was neither Russian nor Orthodox.⁸²

Alternative Explanations

It is difficult to understand Russia's decision to fight the Crimean War by staying within the framework of offensive realism, although its logic, according to which a strong Russia is likely to maximize its power or status, does initially apply to this case. However, one problem with offensive realist logic is that it sometimes defines strength by cumulative material capabilities, and Russia was anything but strong in that dimension. After the establishment of the European Concert, as Mearsheimer himself demonstrated⁸³ (see also Table 12.1), Russia was becoming progressively weaker relative to Britain and France. Given its declining capabilities, Russia should have refrained from engaging in the risky behavior and the coercive diplomacy that Nicholas demonstrated in occupying Wallachia and Moldavia in 1853. Other theories posit that risk-taking may be a rational strategy to shore up a declining power.⁸⁴ However, this argument does not apply because Russia, although objectively weak relative to other European powers, did not view itself as a declining power.

Neoclassical realism focuses on Russia's claims of a great power status. For example, William Wohlforth has argued that Russia's power calculations centered on the symbolic dimension of prestige. According to this argument, to St. Petersburg the issue of the Holy Lands came to “symbolize the relative rankings of the powers,”⁸⁵ whereas none of the conflict's protagonists truly cared “which monastic order controlled the dusty shrines in Jerusalem.”⁸⁶ This logic of status competition captures an important aspect of Russia's honor – the prestige of a great power – yet it downplays cultural considerations. Orthodox Christian commitments played a special role in the Tsar's overall assessment of the dispute with the Ottoman Empire, as well as his choices of bargaining tactics with the Sultan and European powers. In addition, Nicholas viewed Russia as part of the larger Christian Europe, which he felt obligated to protect against the Turks. Indeed, the very legitimacy of Russia, both internal and external, rested on the notion of its being a Christian power, and it was through this cultural lens that Russia's rulers made sense of the international environment. The war might have never taken place had the European powers, especially Britain and France, given greater recognition to Russia's values and interests in the Near East. When challenged from the outside, Nicholas characteristically framed his response in terms of Russia's European duties: “Russia will do in 1854 what it did in 1812.”⁸⁷

Defensive realism also underestimates Russia's cultural commitments by concentrating instead on the structure of the international system and elites’ strategic biases. Defensive realists recognize that international conditions before the Crimean War did not encourage revisionist behavior on Russia's part. Unlike their offensive counterparts, defensive realists identify no important power changes in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. “Whether one blames the Crimean War on Nicholas I's pigheadedness, British and French domestic politics or Turkish intriguing,” wrote Matthew Rendall, “clearly no big shift had occurred in the balance of power. While this war is often depicted as tragedy, a strong case can be made that it was a crime.”⁸⁸ Consistent with this logic, scholars have written about a defense-dominant arrangement before the war and emphasized elites’ underestimation of the power of defense.⁸⁹ The logic of competition for security also leaves insufficient room for culturally framed interpretations of national interests. Nicholas's errors of judgment do not imply that his international assertiveness lacked domestic support. A poor tactician, the Tsar nevertheless acted consistently with his perceived historic obligations and had ample societal backing for his actions at home. The decision to launch the “most unnecessary of wars”⁹⁰ was culturally supported and reflected the dominant perception of an internally confident power.

The Agreements at Yalta and Potsdam

After the Soviet army's decisive victory in the Kursk battle of July 1943 and keenly aware that Hitler's days were numbered, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States began to prepare for negotiations about the postwar international order. In late 1943, Franklin Roosevelt was torn between the idea of “four policemen” – the United States, Russia, Britain, and China – and of preserving global openness for American influences.² Winston Churchill hoped to secure a sphere of influence agreement in accord with British interests, and on October 9, 1944 he concluded a bilateral deal with Joseph Stalin over dividing the Balkans.³ In the meantime, the Soviet army was everywhere in Eastern Europe, liberating it from the Nazis, but also serving to strengthen Stalin's bargaining position in the postwar negotiations.

When the three leaders met at Yalta in February 1945, the most contentious issues involved Germany and Poland. On Germany, the three powers agreed to preserve the country's economic and political unity, while dividing it into occupation zones controlled by American, British, French, and Soviet troops.⁴ The conference's communiqué insisted on the “complete disarmament, demilitarization, and dismemberment of Germany,”⁵ which suited Soviet interests well. In the meantime, the United States and Britain were already thinking about strengthening Germany in order to balance Soviet power in Europe.⁶ On Poland, it was agreed that the core government would be formed by the pro-Soviet Lublin's Poles, but émigré Poles residing in London would also be included and free elections would then complete the formation of the country's political system.⁷ Stalin also insisted on the Curzon Line along the Oder and Neisse rivers as the new Polish-German border, thereby adding a significant part of German land to Poland but also preserving the Soviet-Polish border as established by the 1939 pact with Hitler. In the vague language of the conference's Declaration, the Allies agreed to “consult” about affairs in the Eastern European countries and to “jointly assist” them in exercising their sovereign rights.⁸

At the Potsdam conference in July–August 1945, negotiations proved to be far more difficult. By the time the conference took place, Soviet intentions to preserve its dominant influence over Poland and the Balkans had become clear. In addition, Roosevelt was replaced by the tough-minded Harry S. Truman, who planned to make few concessions to Stalin and pointedly informed the latter of the United States’ possession of a new destructive weapon. As a result, the Soviets extracted only a portion of the desired reparations from Germany – mostly from its eastern part – while the United States parted with the “four policemen” idea in favor of establishing dominant influence over the Western areas of occupation. Long before the Berlin crisis, Germany had been on its way to becoming a divided state.⁹ With Stalin's long list of demands – which included increased control of the Dardanelles Straits, a military base in the Bosporus, and a part of Italy's colonies – and Truman's determination to demonstrate loyalty to Wilsonian principles of self-determination, the conference quickly turned, in Henry Kissinger's expression, “into a dialogue of the deaf.”¹⁰

Yet, during the next few months Stalin acted with restraint and generally in the spirit of the Yalta-Potsdam agreements as he interpreted them. He was willing to tolerate Poland's independence, although within the Soviet area of influence.¹¹ He also planned no communist takeovers in Europe and advised the leaders of communist parties in Italy, France, Hungary, and Bulgaria to cooperate with national governments and not expect to assume power within the foreseeable future¹² – partly because he wanted to prevent the strengthening of independent communist centers.¹³ Stalin also favored the conceptions of national democracy and “national paths” to socialism,¹⁴ arguing at the time that Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia “may not need establishment of dictatorship of [the] proletariat and the Soviet system.”¹⁵ In postwar Europe, communists emerged as influential partly because they called for social and democratic reforms, not a radical anticapitalist transformation.¹⁶

In addition – and consistent with the division of influence agreement he had devised with Churchill – Stalin refused to interfere in Greece. In early 1945, the Soviet Union did not grant Bulgaria's request to help it annex coastal Greek territories.¹⁷ Even in 1946, when Greek communists organized an uprising and were hopeful for Soviet assistance, Stalin made no attempt to get involved.¹⁸ He further abstained from interfering in Finland, which he viewed as maintaining a generally “friendly” international posture.¹⁹ Outside Europe, Stalin advised Chinese communists to enter into a coalition with their enemies, the nationalists.²⁰ He also refused to defy the United States by intervening in Japan and landing in Hokkaido, as some of his advisors encouraged him to do after the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.²¹

First Complications and the Stalin-Churchill Exchange

Soon, however, more serious complications followed the Allies’ meetings in Yalta and Potsdam. The Polish issue, in particular, was never successfully resolved. Despite U.S. pressure, Stalin did not allow genuinely free elections, including only a few pro-Western Poles in the government, and he did not agree to open the country to American financial influence.²² Another serious issue was the nuclear factor and growing Soviet suspiciousness that partly stemmed from U.S. secrecy regarding its plans for the use of atomic weapons. In fact, Truman had used the weapon in Japan without consulting Stalin.²³ The latter responded by complaining that “war is barbaric, but using the A-bomb is a super barbarity,” and demanding that Soviet scientists restore the “destroyed” balance by building a nuclear weapon.²⁴ In September 1945, Truman also ignored Secretary of War Henry Stimson's advice to build trust with Russia by directly and openly negotiating limits for the further development of nuclear power except for “peaceful and humanitarian purposes.”²⁵

In February 1946, in his speech before elections to the Supreme Soviet, Stalin offered his analysis of victory in the war and revived prewar dogmas about the relationship between war and capitalism. He billed the war as “the inevitable result of the development of world economic and political forces on the basis of modern monopoly capitalism.”²⁶ By monopoly capitalism, he meant “fascist” Germany, and Stalin even referred to the United States and Great Britain as “freedom-loving states” with which it became possible to build “the anti-fascist coalition.”²⁷ Yet Churchill and others in the West interpreted Stalin's words to mean that the war “had been caused not by Hitler but by the workings of the capitalist system.”²⁸ In addition, Stalin warned about “all possible accidents” against the Soviet Union and demanded “three more Five-Year Plans…if not more” to guarantee security of the homeland.²⁹

Aimed primarily at a domestic audience, the speech nevertheless caused a storm of alarmist reactions in the Western world. The New York Times front-page story declared that Stalin believed “the stage is set” for another war.³⁰ Two weeks later, on February 22, George Kennan sent his “long telegram” warning about the Kremlin's “traditional and instinctive sense of insecurity” that caused it to adopt confrontational Marxist ideology.³¹ In March, Churchill traveled to Fulton on Truman's invitation to deliver his Iron Curtain speech. There he argued that Eastern Europe was now fully controlled by Moscow and that communist “fifth columns” were working inside Western states – also on orders from the Soviet Union. Along with Kennan and others, the disillusioned former British statesman questioned the possibility of an alliance with Stalin's Russia and proposed to reorder the world on the principles of “Christian civilization.”³²

A few days later, Stalin responded to Churchill via an interview in Pravda. Accusing him of racism, Stalin also spoke of “Mr. Churchill and his friends” bearing “a striking resemblance to Hitler” and calling “for war on the USSR.”³³ The Soviet leader concluded the interview by expressing confidence that, should a new military campaign against the Soviet system be organized, the organizers would “be trashed, just as they were trashed once before.”³⁴

Stalin's position regarding the Allies’ efforts to reconstruct Eastern Europe also toughened. He no longer sought to obtain a loan from the United States and refused to join the Bretton Wood institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The new Soviet attitude was that its membership in such institutions might be interpreted by the Western powers as a sign of weakness and a readiness to make unilateral concessions.³⁵ In October 1946, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov argued in one of his speeches that American capital was in a position to buy up the local industries of Eastern European states, thereby depriving them “of sovereignty and independence.”³⁶ Furthermore, the U.S. plan to control atomic energy was entirely unacceptable to the Soviet Union. Initiated by Bernard Baruch, the plan called for the establishment of an Atomic Development Authority that would operate free of the UN Security Council veto and that would be largely controlled by the United States.³⁷

This looked like a Cold War, and a number of American scholars date its beginning to spring 1946.³⁸ However, Churchill's speech at Fulton was met with only a reserved reaction from Truman,³⁹ and the Truman Doctrine was not put in force until a year later. On the part of the Soviet Union – rhetoric notwithstanding – the point of no return in dealing with the West was not reached until the formulation of the Marshall Plan in June 1947.

Soviet Assertiveness in all Directions

Without directly challenging the West, Soviet Russia had begun to advance a most assertive foreign policy as early as the end of 1945. After Yalta, Stalin indicated to his foreign minister that he planned on interpreting the conference agreements to secure the Soviet position in the international system: “We can implement it in our own way later. The heart of the matter is the correlation of forces.”⁴⁰ By the end of 1945, the Soviet leader decided to act. Even though Stalin was pushing in the direction of establishing a USSR-centered geopolitical bloc, he did not plan to develop a hostile one, which he viewed as threatening Soviet interests.⁴¹ The strategy was to secure considerable territorial control outside Russia to the extent acceptable to the Western Allies.

Eastern Europe and the Balkans became critical in establishing the USSR-centered sphere of influence. In Poland, Stalin empowered the secret police and authorized the arrest of those opposing the communist government. To the Western leaders protesting his actions, he justified them by the need to “protect the rear behind the front-lines of the Red Army.”⁴² In Romania, he demanded that its king install the pro-Soviet Petru Grozu as prime minister, but – in anticipation of the harsh Western reaction – Stalin did not dismantle the opposing political parties.⁴³ He further relied on Yugoslavia's support in reconstituting the Balkans, while restraining Josip Broz Tito's own ambitions for a “greater Yugoslavia.”⁴⁴ Moscow also pressured Turkey to give up control of the Straits, the old ambition of Russia, and to allow Soviet military bases there. The demands escalated to pose the threat of war with Turkey, which Stalin diffused in September 1946 after he discovered that the United States was prepared to defend Turkey in case of a military confrontation.⁴⁵

The Soviet Union was equally assertive, yet not openly confrontational, in other directions. Seeking to prevent Germany's possible alignment with the West, Stalin established control over the Soviet zone of occupation there by moving in millions of refugees from Eastern Europe, dismantling German industries, and taking over 30 percent of all industrial production in eastern Germany.⁴⁶ In Japan, Stalin planned to establish an area of Soviet control in northern Hokkaido, but reconsidered after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In China, he gave strong support to the Manchurian communists, but soon retreated after U.S. marines landed there in September 1946 to aid the nationalist government.⁴⁷ In Iran, Stalin refused to withdraw Soviet troops, and he supported the separatist Azeri movement, demanding the Soviet right to drill oil in the northern part of the country. A serious crisis erupted, and Stalin again yielded, but only after he had tried all types of political pressure, including in the United Nations.⁴⁸

The Point of No Return

The really radical turn in the Soviet attitude toward the West did not occur until the Marshall Plan was officially proclaimed in June 1947. “There is little evidence,” wrote Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, “that before the Marshall Plan Stalin had any master plan for immediate expansion.”⁴⁹ Even after Truman first proclaimed his new doctrine in March, Stalin was hoping to continue political ties and negotiations with the United States and Great Britain. In April, he told the visiting Republican Senator Harold Stassen,

Also in April, during a long meeting with U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, Stalin argued for a possible compromise on “all the main questions” and insisted that “it was necessary to have patience and not become pessimistic.”⁵¹ Marshall, however, was of a different opinion, and in his radio address on April 28 he indicated that the United States was no longer in a mood to deliberate and was planning to take decisive actions.⁵² On June 5, he delivered his Marshall Plan speech, in which he pledged financial assistance for the postwar reconstruction of the European continent.

Soon after, Stalin and Molotov articulated their alternative to Western policy: creating a separate bloc with the Eastern European states and suppressing any opposition to Soviet policy within the region. At the Paris conference in July devoted to a common European response to Marshall's speech, Molotov denounced the American proposal as an attempt to divide Europe and undermine the sovereignty of the continent's states.⁵³ A few days later, the Soviet authorities established the Communist Information Agency (Cominform) and brushed aside Polish and Czech hopes to join the Marshall Plan. At the founding meeting of Cominform in September 1947, Andrei Zhdanov, the Stalin-appointed ideologue of the new course, defined U.S. objectives as similar to those of Hitler's Germany – “to strengthen imperialism, to hatch a new imperialist war, to combat Socialism and democracy, and to support reactionary and anti-democratic pro-fascist regimes and movements everywhere.”⁵⁴ In early 1948, Stalin sponsored the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, at that point the last Eastern European state with a multiparty government.⁵⁵ Only Finland and Yugoslavia managed to stay out of the Cominform.

At home, the new course meant a return to the prewar system of mass mobilization and repression. Despite a severe drought in 1946 and shortages of food, the state cut social welfare expenditures. In addition to increasing taxes on the peasants by 150 percent between 1946 and 1950, the state refused to pay back funds to people who had loaned the government money to fight the war.⁵⁶ Zhdanov introduced the notion of “cosmopolitan spies” to purge those insufficiently critical of the West within political, intellectual, and cultural circles.⁵⁷

Taken together, these developments soon paved the way for future Cold War crises, such as the Berlin blockade and the Korean War.

Soviet Concept of Honor

The Soviet concept of honor emphasized pride in the social system that the Kremlin viewed as critical in winning the war against Hitler's Germany. To the ruling class, victory in the war was due to the “unquestionable vitality” of the system's domestic foundations on which Stalin elaborated in his preelection speech by praising industrialization, collectivization, and the series of five-year plans.⁵⁸ Externally, pride in the social system was reflected in the ideological conviction that socialism would now expand across the world, particularly throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

Related to ideology was the notion of power prestige. Immediately after the war, Moscow began to demand a greater share of control over the world's territory and resources. As Nikita Khrushchev recalled, “after the defeat of Hitler, Stalin believed he was in the same position as Alexander I after the defeat of Napoleon – that he could dictate the rules for all of Europe.”⁵⁹ Molotov, who rarely saw things differently from his boss, emphasized that “the USSR now stands in the ranks of the most authoritative of world powers” and that “now it is impossible to resolve the important issues of international relations without the participation of the Soviet Union.”⁶⁰ Stalin, however, planned to act differently from Alexander I, who withdrew from the territory of the defeated French and even proposed to disarm national armies.⁶¹ The Soviet leader's view on the link between the Soviet social system and power was clearly expressed during his conversation with Milovan Djilas: “This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.”⁶² In Stalin's mind, enormous sacrifices suffered by the Russian people made the Soviet case for recognizing its superpower claims even more compelling – he who sacrificed much in war should receive much after it.⁶³

The last layer of the Soviet perception was about security. It also was linked to prestige and ideology, because security of the newly emerged great power could no longer be achieved or protected within its prewar boundaries. Stalin therefore expected the Allies to respect the territorial arrangement he had made with Hitler in August 1939, by which the USSR obtained the Baltic states and parts of Finland, Poland, and Romania.⁶⁴ In fact, after defeating Hitler, the Kremlin planned no return to the pre-1939 conditions, but argued instead for additional territorial expansion. In the new Soviet view, Russia's postwar security required the dismantlement of Germany and the control of the territory between Russia and the defeated power. Stalin was worried about the revival of German military capabilities within fifteen years.⁶⁵ In the Balkans and Eastern Europe, he counted on historically established Slavic ties to facilitate Soviet control; Stalin argued in private that “if the Slavs keep united and maintain solidarity, no one in the future will be able to move a finger. Not even a finger!”⁶⁶ Soviet insecurity was further reinforced by the nuclear factor. Not having a bomb, Stalin felt he had to rely on a non-nuclear response to a potential nuclear attack from the United States.⁶⁷

This concept of honor guided the Soviet interpretation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements. To Stalin, their essence was the division of influence between Russia and the West, and acceptance of free elections meant to him a one-sided concession to the United States. At Potsdam, for example, he reminded Truman that he recognized Italy, where no elections had been held, and he therefore rejected the U.S. proposal to have elections in Romania and Bulgaria.⁶⁸ Stalin also pressed the Western nations hard on Polish and German issues that he viewed as critical to the Soviet Union's honor and security. He insisted at Yalta that

Despite broad agreement within the ruling circles on the principles of Soviet honor, there was debate on methods of pursuing the assertive foreign policy. Diplomats, including the former foreign minister Maxim Litvinov, former ambassador to Great Britain Ivan Maiski, and the ambassador to the United States Andrei Gromyko, advocated a more cautious approach. They agreed with key premises of Soviet assertiveness, such as the need to expand borders, keep Poland weak, and prepare for a lengthy recovery from the war, but argued for more extensive consultations with the Allies and greater respect for domestic choices within the Soviet area of international influence. Litvinov and Maiski each headed special commissions on postwar reparations and postwar peace treaties and argued in their 1944–5 memos for working closely with London and Washington while playing a balance-of-power game between them.⁷⁰ Gromyko viewed the United States as a force for peace, and Litvinov thought that spheres of influence should not be “detrimental to the independence of the states included in them.”⁷¹ After mid-1946, Litvinov became even more critical of the official foreign policy.⁷²

Stalin and Molotov listened to what the “liberals” had to say, yet continued to act unilaterally by challenging the independence of Eastern European states and failing to consult the Allies. Such unilateral assertiveness was reminiscent of early militant Soviet policy (1928–34),⁷³ contributing to the evolution of the Kremlin's relations with the West away from the Grand Alliance and toward the Cold War. The vision of irreconcilable contradictions between capitalism and socialism, as well as the inevitability of their future war, was becoming increasingly dominant in ruling circles. The Marshall Plan became the critical threshold in the Soviet relations with the United States. Even though some around Stalin advocated the idea of joining the Marshall Plan,⁷⁴ he categorically rejected this option as incompatible with the Soviet idea of honor as independence from the West. Just as Nicholas I once refused to withdraw from the Ottoman principalities and took Russia to war with the West, Stalin refused to let Eastern European states join the Marshall Plan, thereby completing the transition to the Cold War. Both rulers were motivated by the exclusive vision of national honor and therefore rejected more cooperative international arrangements.

Domestic Confidence

Another key reason why the Kremlin felt emboldened to act in such an assertive fashion was the domestic perception of the Soviet Union's strength in the wake of the war. Foreign Minister Molotov expressed the dominant feeling in late 1945 by stating that the war had “shown all how our country grew and strengthened in the military-political sense.”⁷⁵ The new confidence partly resulted from the Red Army's position in Europe. As the Russian ambassador to Washington Nikolai Novikov argued in his long telegram in September 1946,

The economic and social reality was much less encouraging, however. Russia emerged after the war economically devastated and technologically worse off than before. In 1945 its national income was 83 percent, industrial production 92 percent, and agricultural production 60 percent of its 1940 levels.⁷⁷ Even though by comparison to other Western nations, such as Great Britain and France, the Soviet Union looked strong, it was no match for the growing capabilities of the United States (see Table 13.1), especially after the latter acquired the nuclear weapon. The Soviet Army's morale in Europe was not high, and at home the army was fighting anticommunist rebels in Western Ukraine and the Baltic republics.⁷⁸ A U.S. intelligence report in November 1945 realistically estimated that the USSR would not be willing to “risk a major armed conflict” for at least fifteen years.⁷⁹

Aware of these weaknesses, the Soviet Union insisted on war reparations, and it was especially hopeful that it could dismantle German industries and exploit German workers.⁸⁰ In addition, Stalin instructed Molotov to ask the U.S. government for a $6 billion loan for postwar reconstruction.⁸¹ To dampen his people's postwar expectations of a better life and strengthen his political control, Stalin was also making preparations for a new round of economic mobilization and new repressions.

Western Mistrust

Western suspicion and mistrust of the Soviet Union served to strengthen its determination to act assertively. From expressing a relatively high degree of willingness to work with the USSR before and during the meeting at Yalta, Great Britain and the United States soon moved to engaging in unilateral and potentially confrontational behavior. Winston Churchill led the way by changing his posture from the sphere of influence agreement with Stalin in October 1944 to the Iron Curtain speech in March 1946. Within a year and a half, London's attitude had evolved from seeking to cooperate with Moscow to insisting on reordering the world along Christian principles and without Soviet involvement.

The United States’ evolution was more gradual, yet it was ultimately the position of U.S. officials that determined the West's relations with Russia. Differences between Roosevelt and Truman played an important role. Roosevelt planned no future major involvement in European affairs and wanted to withdraw American troops from the continent within two years. He was in favor of concluding a mutually acceptable territorial agreement with the Soviets. He recognized the Soviet mistrust of the West, but was hoping to reduce it by refraining from public criticism of the Kremlin, continuing with generous lend-lease aid, and avoiding retaliatory actions.⁸² Truman, however, did not share the cooperation-through-persuasion attitude of his predecessor. Instead, he planned to exercise power unilaterally for the purpose of rebuilding the postwar world along American principles, and he was convinced that Russia would have little choice but to yield to the United States’ determination. In Truman's own words, the United States had to have its way 85 percent of the time.⁸³ In addition, he was deeply mistrustful of Russia and had not even wanted it to win the war.⁸⁴

Because of his unilateralist and anti-Russian beliefs, Truman had a propensity to take a hard line in disputes with the Soviet Union. During his first meeting with Foreign Minister Molotov in April 1945, Truman shouted at him for not complying with the Yalta agreement on Poland.⁸⁵ Molotov was shocked at Truman's rudeness; in turn the president described the USSR's actions this way to his advisors: “They don't know how to behave. They are like bulls in a china shop. They are only twenty-five years old. We are over a hundred and the British are centuries older. We have to teach them how to behave.”⁸⁶ On the advice of his ambassador to Moscow Averill W. Harriman, Truman later softened his stance and reached an understanding with Stalin on Poland,⁸⁷ but their differences were again revealed at Potsdam. In June 1945, U.S. observers such as Walter Lippmann and C. L. Sulzberger also warned against forming the impression of an Anglo-American front against Moscow that “could only serve to…convince the Soviet Union of the necessity of unilateral action and reliance upon its own strength.”⁸⁸ Truman saw the use of nuclear weapons as a means to “teach” the Soviets by asserting the American right to lead the postwar reconstruction. After using the bomb in Japan, he secured exclusive control over that country and in September 1945 rejected the Soviet proposal to establish an Allied Control Commission on Japan, similar to that on Germany. Stalin reacted furiously by cabling to Molotov that he felt that Americans had “no elementary respect towards their ally.”⁸⁹

Although Truman did not initially endorse Churchill's Iron Curtain speech given in March 1946, by its actions the United States was moving in the direction of isolating the USSR. In addition to ignoring the advice of Stimson, Lippmann, and others to build trust with the Soviets, Truman dismissed his secretary of commerce Henry Wallace because of his perceived pro-Soviet position. Alarmed by Churchill's speech, Wallace challenged the prospect of an Anglo-American anti-Soviet consensus, insisting on meeting Russia “half way” and accepting its influence in Eastern Europe.⁹⁰ After the crisis in Iran and Kennan's “long telegram” in March 1946, the United States and Britain began acting in concert to undermine Soviet policies from Eastern Europe to China and Japan. Also in March 1946, the State Department announced that the Russian $6 billion loan request had been “lost” and that a new discussion of a loan would require an evaluation of the Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.⁹¹ By that time, lend-lease aid had been terminated.⁹² Nuclear developments, particularly the Baruch Plan, also demonstrated that the United States was not interested in the Soviet perspective, but was aiming to preserve an American monopoly over atomic energy.⁹³

As had been predicted by the critics of Churchill and Truman, the policies of Britain and the United States fueled Russia's suspicions about Western motives. Soon after Truman made public his doctrine of globally containing communism on March 12, 1947,⁹⁴ and especially after the Marshall Plan was proclaimed in June of the same year, Stalin and his entourage abandoned their attempts to mend fences with the West.

Alternative Explanations

Offensive realism attributes the Cold War to Soviet expansionist ambitions in Europe and Asia that were met with the U.S. determination to balance them. As John Mearsheimer has written, “no great power or combination of great powers existed in either Europe or Northeast Asia that could prevent the Soviet army from overrunning those regions, and therefore the United States had no choice but check Soviet expansion.”⁹⁵ Another offensive realist theory explains the assertive behavior of the Soviet Union and the West by their determination to secure additional power advantages and delay each other's relative decline. As Dale Copeland has argued, risky behavior under the condition of bipolarity comes from either the preponderance or near-equal distribution of power.⁹⁶

These explanations suffer from two problems. First, they tend to overestimate Soviet capabilities. For instance, Mearsheimer relies on statistics of the gross national product in 1950, by which time it had increased considerably, especially relative to France and Britain. A more realistic baseline would have been 1945 or the end of the war, rather than 1950. For example, during this five years between 1945–50, Russian industrial production increased by 73 percent, and the overall national income grew by 64 percent.⁹⁷ Also, by 1950, the combined world power of Great Britain and France had declined from 14 to 9 percent, their industrial strength from 15 to 11 percent, and their military strength from 23 to 8 percent.⁹⁸ Second and more importantly, offensive realists pay limited attention to Soviet beliefs and perceptions of power. Objectively, Russia was weaker than realists assess, yet subjectively it felt strong. This explains why, in response to the West's postwar policies, Russia failed to exercise restraint in its claims for the “fruits of victory.”

Defensive realism explains Soviet assertiveness as caused by the Kremlin's “irrational” beliefs, such as security through expansion and territorial gains.⁹⁹ The key question for defensive realists is, as it was for Winston Churchill, “Why have they deliberately acted for three long years so as to unite the free world against them?”¹⁰⁰ By taking beliefs and perceptions seriously, this explanation comes closer to understanding Soviet behavior, yet it falls short of accounting for how widely the expansionist beliefs were held within the political class in Moscow or for the West's own contribution to the hardening of the Kremlin's beliefs. Although some have emphasized the differences in views of Stalin and Litvinov in 1944–5,¹⁰¹ historians have revealed their similarities as well. The two statesmen not only shared a Marxist outlook on international affairs but they also agreed on the necessity to expand borders and keep competitors weak. As Voitech Mastny wrote, “there is no quarrel between Litvinov and Stalin, both ardent devotees of power politics.”¹⁰²

Finally, classical and neoclassical realism concentrates on national ideology and competition for power and prestige as the key motives underlying Soviet behavior. George Kennan described ideological impatience,¹⁰³Henry Kissinger highlighted “Pan-Slavism reinforced by communist ideology,”¹⁰⁴ and Paul Kennedy postulated the ideological exclusiveness of two universal ideas, liberalism and communism.¹⁰⁵ Those closer to neoclassical realism emphasized considerations of external reputation and prestige, but they too argued that “Stalin and his circle talked and acted exactly as such realists as E. H. Carr, Ralph Hawtrey, Geoffrey Blainey, and Robert Gilpin would expect.”¹⁰⁶

As important as ideology and power were to the Soviet rulers, these explanations are not sufficient. Part of the problem is that, as John Lewis Gaddis put it, ideology “was not simply a justification for actions already decided upon,” but the internal lens through which the state viewed the very legitimacy of its actions.¹⁰⁷ The Cold War is not merely a case of ideological distortion; it is, as Martin Malia wrote, “the great example in modern history of the power of ‘irrational’, cultural forces in international affairs.”¹⁰⁸ From a realist perspective, the Kremlin should have been satisfied with “a reasonable security alliance of East European states with the Soviet Union” without demanding that these states adopt a communist “social system.”¹⁰⁹ Yet, such was the definition of Soviet honor, which – along with the West's failure to recognize the Kremlin's foreign policy claims – determined Russia's decision to impose its system abroad. By insisting on the universality of its principles, the West pushed Stalin farther away from the initially “nonprovocative military posture” and toward confrontational behavior.¹¹⁰

The Rose Revolution and the Stage of Nascent Cooperation

Despite Georgia's unequivocally Western orientation, the Rose Revolution of November 2003 provided the nation with an opportunity to mend fences with Russia. Although the two countries have deeply intertwined cultural and historical ties, before the Rose Revolution the Russian-Georgian relationship had deteriorated to its lowest ebb since the Soviet breakup. Russia routinely accused Georgia of providing haven to Chechen separatists in the remote Pankisi gorge and did not exclude military action as a potential response. Georgia was irritated with the Russians’ reluctance to remove its military bases from Georgian soil, despite a 1999 agreement to do so. Russia's accelerated passport distribution to residents of Georgia's breakaway republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, further undermined Tbilisi's claims to sovereignty over these territories. Shevardnadze's stated intention to join NATO and Georgia's involvement in the Baku-Ceylon oil pipeline, which was to bypass Russia, further irritated Russia.

When in November 2003 the Shevardnadze administration was besieged, both countries recognized an opportunity to improve relations. The first sign of cooperation was when the Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov played an important role in averting potential bloodshed by convincing Shevardnadze to resign – the dour Ivanov was even met with a crowd of Georgians chanting his name adoringly. Putin guardedly expressed hope that the forthcoming Georgian election would install an administration that would work “to restore the traditions of friendship between our two countries,”³ but clearly indicated that the onus was on the Georgian side.

President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili made “closer, warmer and friendlier relations”⁴ with Russia an immediate priority; one of his first actions was to attend a summit at the Kremlin in February 2004. Unlike Shevardnadze, who denied that Chechen separatists were present in Georgian territory, Saakashvili acknowledged their existence and vowed to help fight them. A series of crackdowns ensued, pleasing Russia but worrying human rights groups. Saakashvili also campaigned to impede the spread of Islamic fundamentalism (“We are for freedom of religion, but not that religion”),⁵ a sop to Russia's treatment of the Chechen problem as a struggle against Taliban-style repression.

Economic links between the two countries were strengthened as well. A Russia–Georgia economic forum in May 2004 was the largest business gathering between the two countries to date. Russia worked to restructure Georgia's debt, provided it electrical supplies and energy subsidies, and stepped up investment in Georgia. Visa regimes – a sticking point between the two nations – were relaxed, and a more open labor market policy was adopted.

Perhaps the greatest indicator of Russo-Georgian cooperation during this period was Russia's assistance in defusing the Adjara uprising in May 2004 and bringing about a peaceful result. Rather than allow Georgia to endure the humiliation and possible bloodshed of another separatist quagmire, Russia intervened, removing the Moscow-backed Adjaran leader Aslan Abashidze by helicopter and paving the way for a triumphant and face-saving consolidation of sovereignty by Saakashvili.⁶ This gesture provided a brief window of hope that Russia and Georgia would be able to work together on the separatist issues of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Yet despite all of this ostensible cooperation, there were several issues undermining the Russia–Georgia relationship during this period. Throughout this time, Russia and Georgia were at odds over the presence of Russia's military bases: Georgia wanted them out immediately and pushed this point strenuously, while Russia, in apparent foot-dragging, continued to provide variable but lengthy estimates for the time it would take to remove them. Georgia's westward course continued unabated – one need only contrast Saakashvili's sober Kremlin summit with his chummy visit to America later that month to judge the relative strengths of Georgia's respective alliances. The Georgian president announced in April 2004 that he wanted eventually to join the EU, the NATO-Georgian courtship continued, and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline was proceeding according to plan. Abkhazia and South Ossetia were still intractable problems.

The cooperative period ended with Georgia's bellicose response to crises in South Ossetia in August 2004.⁷ By August Russia too changed its tactics in relation to its southern neighbor.

“Passive” and “Active Containment”

When Georgia chose to use force against South Ossetia, Russia balked. In August 2004 Russia suspended talks with Georgia and stopped issuing visas to Georgians, an oft-repeated tactic throughout the relationship. The two candidates in Abkhazia's disputed election met in Moscow in November with Russia as mediator, highlighting Russia's de facto preeminence in a territory that theoretically belonged to Georgia. In February 2005 Russia reiterated that it reserved the right to wage preventive strikes into Georgian territory against potential terrorists⁸ – a chilly regression to the rhetoric of the Shevardnadze era. It also announced its intention to raise the price of gas, just in time for winter.

Georgia, meanwhile, began to see a nefarious Russian hand behind most developments. The Georgians were quick to point out the “double standard” of Russia's behavior: opposing separatists at home yet evidently supporting separatism in Georgia.⁹ When a mysterious pipeline explosion cut off gas delivery to Georgia in the winter of 2006, followed by delays to its repair, Georgia's instinct was to label it Russian sabotage, which it did so vociferously.¹⁰ Georgia accused Russia of violating Georgian airspace and of complicity in a series of bombings, and Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway regions were characterized as threatening rather than neutral. To Russia's great annoyance, Georgia took several steps, including a parliamentary resolution in February 2006, to the effect that Russian peacekeepers were no longer welcome in the breakaway regions.¹¹

Shortly after the February resolution Russia again stopped issuing visas. In March Russia banned Georgian wine, a national symbol, 90 percent of which was exported to Russia, and Georgian mineral water, ostensibly for health reasons. In July, Russia temporarily closed its only overland border with Georgia for “construction,” disrupting Georgian exports amid cries of unfriendliness and provocation.

There were some moments of cooperation, however exceptional, during this period. In early 2005 a Russian-Georgian railway ferry link was opened. After much discussion, Russia agreed to pull out its two military bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki on an accelerated time frame. In response Saakashvili claimed to be offering Russia a hand of friendship, though he lamented that his hand was “hanging in the air.”¹²

What little hope there was of renewed cooperation was destroyed by Georgia's actions and Russia's response in the spy scandal of September 2006, which initiated the transition from Russia's passive to active containment. When Georgia arrested four Russian intelligence officers and prepared to put them on trial for spying, a tipping point was evidently reached. Even though international pressure persuaded Georgia to release the officers to the OSCE after only a few days, Russia did not temper its response. The troop pullout was temporarily suspended, all transport and postal links between the countries were severed, Georgian-run businesses inside Russia were scrutinized and harassed, and many Georgians in Russia were rounded up and deported. Gazprom discussed doubling the price of gas and threatened (at the onset of winter, of course) to shut off supplies if they were not paid for.

Georgia responded with accusations of Russian “blackmail” and characterized its policies as racist and xenophobic.¹³ Appealing to the international community, it sued Russia at the European Court of Human Rights in April 2007 over the deportations. Saakashvili spun the standoff as an opportunity to wean Georgia from its dependence on Russia and to deepen economic and energy partnerships with other nations. The NATO membership process continued apace.

In October 2007 Georgia declared its intention to formally end Russia's peacekeeping mandate in Abkhazia after Russian soldiers allegedly apprehended and beat a group of Georgian police officers. Georgia also continued to accuse Russia of routine violations of its airspace. A bizarre mini-scandal surrounding a rocket that landed in August 2007 in a field near the Georgian-South Ossetian border – which Georgia, of course, insisted was of Russian provenance and Russia, of course, denied – was a typical incident.¹⁴

Georgia's elections in January 2008 presented a similar opportunity to that in 2003 to have another go at improved relations. Significantly weakened in his current political state, Saakashvili underscored the importance of improving relations with Russia, saying he wanted the two nations to start “with a clean slate.”¹⁵ Russia, however, was the leading voice questioning the legitimacy of his reelection. The head of Russia's diplomatic mission, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, echoing Putin's rhetoric after the Rose Revolution, expressed a desire for improved relations, but clearly indicated that it was Georgia's responsibility to pursue them: “Russia wants friendship [but] it expects from Georgia specific steps and actions that could be viewed as aiming at improving our relationship.”¹⁶ Movement toward renewed friendship was disrupted by Kosovo's declaration of independence on February 17, 2008, and Russia's lifting of sanctions on Abkhazia twenty days later in response. The latter action further dimmed hopes for reconciliation. From that point on the Kremlin's policies went beyond measures to contain Georgia, indicating that Russia was no longer confident in the diplomacy of containment and was preparing for a possible military confrontation.

Confrontation and the Five-Day War

Russia did not stop at lifting sanctions on Abkhazia. In April, the Kremlin reinforced its peacekeeping forces in the republic with 1,500 fresh troops without consulting or informing the Georgian side. In the meantime, ethnic Russians assumed the positions of prime minister, security minister, and defense minister in the South Ossetian government. Both South Ossetia and Abkhasia continued to oppose Georgia's membership in the Western alliance and to press for their own integration with Russia. The Kremlin was still not prepared to legally recognize Georgia's separatist territories, but in April, Russian President Putin issued a decree establishing direct relations between Moscow and both of Georgia's breakaway republics. In early June, Russia repaired the Abkhaz railroad, ending Georgia's blockade of the republic and enabling the transport of additional Russian forces into Abkhazia.¹⁷ All of these policies took place in the context of growing provocations and military hostilities between Georgia and its breakaway republics that included abductions of civilians, attacks against the republics’ officials,¹⁸ intelligence activities, and gunfire in villages on both sides of the border.

Violence escalated in June and even more so in July, with intensification of ceasefire violations by both sides and mutual accusations of war preparations. In early July Georgian forces attacked homes in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali and in nearby villages with artillery fire.¹⁹ Claiming that the South Ossetian side had attacked first, Tbilisi continued its offensive actions and stopped only when South Ossetia announced a general mobilization and appealed to Russia to come to its defense. The Russian foreign minister condemned Georgian attacks on South Ossetia as an “open act of aggression”²⁰ and insisted that all sides sign an agreement rejecting the use of force. Russia also presented a draft resolution on the situation in the conflict zones of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to the UN Security Council. Tbilisi responded by accusing Russia of de facto annexation of Georgian territory by establishing direct relations with the breakaway republics and violating Georgia's airspace by flying Russian military planes over South Ossetia. Georgia also refused to sign the non-use of force agreement and demanded that Russian peacekeeping forces be withdrawn from the region. Western officials issued several statements expressing concerns over the deteriorating situation in the Caucasus, and the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier traveled to the region to facilitate resolution of the conflict. However, Georgia and its autonomous regions continued to be engaged in provocative actions, firing shots on each others’ positions and surrounding villages²¹; in addition, Georgia continued to concentrate heavy weaponry on the border with South Ossetia.²² According to Western observers,²³ by the morning of August 7 Georgia had amassed 12,000 troops on its border with South Ossetia and had positioned 75 tanks and armored personnel carriers near Gori.

On the night of August 8, 2008, Georgia attacked the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali in an attempt to restore control over the rebellious province. Georgian troops killed ten Russian peacekeepers and, by attacking the city with heavy artillery, inflicted heavy civilian casualties on South Ossetia.²⁴ It did so despite a ceasefire agreement it had accepted on August 7. Within several hours, Russian forces responded by crossing the Georgian border into South Ossetia through the Roki Tunnel.²⁵ Its response was overwhelming and included several armored battalions, air power, and marines, defeating and destroying much of the Georgian military. Russia also recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and imposed areas of security control throughout Georgia. Despite Saakashvili's efforts to present his offensive as a response to Russia's aggression, and although it seems possible and even plausible that Russia “set a trap” for Georgia's notoriously hot-headed leader, sources as diverse as intelligence agencies, human rights organizations, OSCE, the European Union's investigation, Georgian exiled leader Irakli Okruashvili, and various government analysts agreed that the initial aggression came from Tbilisi, not Moscow.²⁶

The five-day war demonstrated the failure of Russia's active containment policies and the Kremlin's willingness to use force in the areas that it viewed of critical importance to its security. Its actions in the Caucasus demonstrated that Russia no longer viewed the old methods of preserving stability and security in the region as sufficient. Russia cemented its military presence in the Caucasus by defeating Georgia and recognizing its autonomous republics’ independence.

Honor and Humiliation in Russia

Russia's initial attempt to cooperate with Georgia was possible because the Kremlin's honor expectations were not at odds with those of Georgia and the United States. By assisting Tbilisi with the power transition after the Rose Revolution and not interfering with its efforts to restore control over Adjara, the Kremlin communicated its willingness to help Georgia strengthen its territorial integrity. In exchange Russia expected Georgia to honor Russian interests in the Caucasus by not pressuring for immediate military withdrawals, not using force in its dealings with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and consulting Russia on vital security issues such as membership in NATO. In May 2004, after Saakashvili's meeting with Putin in Moscow, the Kremlin formulated its proposals for signing a good neighbor treaty and forwarded them to Tbilisi.²⁹

In August 2004 the Kremlin's expectations of honor were violated, when Tbilisi used force against South Ossetia, possibly attempting to win control over the strategic Djava district,³⁰ and failed to consult Russia. Putin responded by calling for Georgia to show restrain and honor its pledge to resolve sovereignty disputes peacefully. “It is important,” he said, “that the negotiation process continue with a view to creating an atmosphere of trust and preserving peace and stability. Russia will do its utmost to foster this process.”³¹ Russia therefore was trying to get Georgia to honor the initial expectation of cooperation. Instead of a partner in the region, Moscow felt it was confronted with an ungrateful and uncooperative neighbor that wanted to accelerate Russian withdrawal and integrate, even by the use of force, the separatist enclaves.

The Kremlin therefore changed its tactics by canceling Putin's official trip to Georgia, stopping the issuance of visas for Georgians, strengthening ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and escalating its political rhetoric. Over time, Russia also adopted a more combative tone in relations with the United States. Most irritating and insulting to the Kremlin was Washington's newly revealed strategy of global regime change that was now being implemented in the former Soviet region, not just in Iraq. Russia was fearful that the so-called colored revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan during 2003–5 would undermine Russia's stability and influence in the region. That postrevolutionary Georgia and Ukraine had expressed their desire to join NATO only added to Russia's sense of being vulnerable and politically isolated by the West. Georgia saw Russia's response as an indicator of Russia's imperial complex and unwillingness to recognize its neighbor's independence; Georgian officials engaged in inflammatory rhetoric and referred to the Kremlin as a “fascist regime.”³²

The escalation of Russia's efforts to contain Georgia demonstrated that the Kremlin was prepared to go far to make others recognize its honor and special status in the region. Although its decision after the spy scandal to impose tough sanctions against Georgia elicited almost universal condemnation in the West, that condemnation only served to validate Russia's already formed suspicions vis-à-vis Western, particularly American intentions in the Caucasus. By now, the Kremlin felt it had only one option left – the toughest possible response short of using force. As Western officials demonstrated their support for Georgia,³³ the Kremlin sought to send a strong warning to both Tbilisi and the West. A most important aspect of the warning was that Russia would no longer tolerate its disregard by Western countries, as demonstrated by the prospects of Georgia's membership in NATO. Although Western nations helped defuse the crisis in which Russia's officers were arrested and also sought to discourage Tbilisi from using force against its separatist territories, the Kremlin did not see such efforts as sufficient in recognizing Russia's vital role in the region. In June 2006, Russia's foreign minister warned that if Ukraine or Georgia joined NATO that could lead to a colossal shift in global geopolitics.³⁴ The Kremlin was determined to stop the alliance expansion, and the spat with Georgia seemed to be a crucial test of will for Moscow. The Russia–Georgia crisis therefore became an indicator of a bigger Russia–West crisis.

The Kremlin also acted on its perceived obligation to protect Russians and those gravitating to Russia in the former Soviet region.³⁵ Unable to offer such protection earlier because of its internal weakness, Russia was now determined to demonstrate that it had not forgotten those loyal to its values and interests in the Caucasus. On a number of occasions South Ossetia had expressed its desire to reintegrate with Russia, and neither Abkhazia nor South Ossetia recognized their membership in Georgia after the Soviet breakup. In addition, the overwhelming majority of Abkhasians and South Ossetians obtained Russian passports throughout the 1990s and 2000s. For example, according to the chairman of the Russia's Duma committee for the CIS and compatriot affairs, Andrei Kokoshin, “Russian citizens constitute a large share of population living on the territory of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” which meant that “Russia must protect their lives, health, property, honor and dignity by all available means, like the United States and other Western nations are doing.”³⁶ Russia expected other powers to recognize its claims to special status as a guardian of cultural balance in the Caucasus and the larger Soviet region.

Finally, developments during 2006–7 provided ample reasons to view Russia as a power that was angry and frustrated by what it perceived as unfair treatment by the United States and NATO. President Putin's criticism of the U.S.-led “unipolarity” initiative, beginning with his speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in January 2007, as well as his threats to withdraw from already signed international treaties, such as the Intermediate Nuclear Missile Treaty, was meant to convey Russia's frustration with its inability to win recognition and develop more equitable relations with the United States. Although humiliation is a sensitive subject,³⁷ it is not difficult to see that Russians felt humiliated by the situation and were increasingly prepared to do anything to change it. The West's geopolitical advances into what Russia has traditionally viewed as its sphere of interests and the desire expressed by postrevolutionary Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO exacerbated Russia's sense of vulnerability and isolation. After the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 Russia reiterated that it would do everything in its power to prevent expansion of the alliance and extension of its membership to Georgia.³⁸ The so-called frozen conflicts were merely leverage in the Kremlin's hands, and the Kremlin planned to keep them frozen until NATO scuttled its plans to continue its march to the East. However, in the aftermath of the Bucharest summit, some Russian analysts³⁹ began to argue that if membership in NATO was so important to Georgia, then Tbilisi was likely to obtain it at the cost of its territorial integrity.

The Kremlin's policy was largely supported by both elites and the general public at home. In response to Tbilisi's provocative and militarist behavior, many in Russia felt that tough reciprocal actions were fully justified – this sentiment was reinforced by irritation about the U.S. policy of promoting democracy and special relations with Georgia. The Russian public was also very critical of the United States in general and viewed the earlier bid to build a strategic partnership with the United States as a failure. In 2006, more than 60 percent of the general public believed that the U.S. role was mainly negative.⁴⁰ In September 2008, 67 percent of Russians felt negative feelings about the United States and 75 percent about Georgia, compared to 39 percent about the European Union.⁴¹ In addition, support for the army increased considerably.⁴² There was also strong support for a tough foreign policy. One poll indicated that about 61 percent viewed Russia's course to be “well-considered and well-balanced.”⁴³

Russia's Domestic Confidence

After years of economic depression after the Soviet breakup, Russia's domestic conditions had changed dramatically. From 1999–2007, the economy improved, enabling it to catch up with the 1990 level (see Table 14.1), and it thereafter continued to grow at the annual pace of about 7 percent. The overall size of the economy increased sixfold in current dollars – from $200 billion to $1.3 trillion. Russia's per capita GDP quadrupled to nearly $7,000, and about 20 million people were lifted out of poverty.⁴⁴ Russia's middle class now constitutes about 25 percent of the population.⁴⁵ From 2000–5, the average Russian experienced a 26 percent annual growth in income, compared to only a 10 percent rise in that of the average Chinese.⁴⁶ Direct foreign investments in the Russian economy skyrocketed, making it the first in the world among developing economies.⁴⁷ In early 2008, for example, industrial production rose an annual 9.2 percent.⁴⁸ Although much of the economic recovery was due to high oil prices, the government continued to work to reduce the economy's reliance on energy exports. The percentage of Russians who thought that the chosen development course in Russia was correct grew year by year.⁴⁹

Table 14.1. Russia's Basic Economic Indicators, 1999–2007 (%, annual change)

Source: Rutland, “Putin's Economic Record,” 1052.

In response to Russia's perceived humiliation in the arena of international relations and its growing domestic strength, a consensus emerged in favor of an assertive foreign policy style for achieving the objectives of development, stability, and security. The Foreign Ministry report, A Review of the Russian Federation's Foreign Policy, commissioned by the Kremlin and released on March 27, 2007, elaborated on the new face of Russia's great power pragmatism. It indicated an important change in Russia's thinking since the 2000 Foreign Policy Concept. The report embraced the notion of multipolarity based on “a more equitable distribution of resources for influence and economic growth,”⁵⁰ which laid the ground for a more self-confident and assertive Russia. The document presented Russia as ready to actively shape international relations by challenging the actions of others, particularly the United States, if they were “unilateral” and disrespectful of international law. At the same time, the report was not anti-American and did not call for any concerted effort to undermine the U.S. global position. Instead, it defended the notion of collective leadership and multilateral diplomacy as the alternative to unilateralism and hegemony in international relations. Russia's new president Dmitri Medvedev amplified on the assertive vision that positioned Russia as a global player and a maker of new global rules. Speaking in Berlin in June 2008 he outlined a broad perspective on Europe “from Vancouver to Vladivostok” and proposed an all-European Treaty to establish a new security architecture by moving beyond NATO expansion and the conflict over Kosovo.⁵¹

The West and Georgia

Russia's desire to remain a great power and preserve its special interest and influence in the Caucasus led to foreign policy objectives that directly or indirectly contradicted Georgia's interpretation of its own sovereignty. Although Russia saw itself as a stabilizer and protector of small nationalities in a volatile region, Tbilisi viewed Russia as an overt barrier to Georgian territorial integrity because of its presence and policies in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.⁵²

Initially Georgia and the United States did not seem prepared to oppose Russia in the region. During his summit with Putin, Saakashvili humbled himself by referring to Georgia as “a small country” and pledged to respect Russia's security interests in the region. Although he expected Russia to begin to dismantle its bases in Akhalkalaki and Batumi, he also promised not to have foreign troops on Georgia's territory after Russia's withdrawal. The United States – although it had already expressed its doubts about Russia's domestic centralization⁵³ – was still hoping to make the post-9/11 partnership with Moscow work. In turn the Kremlin was still expecting to be consulted by the White House on issues relating to security in the Caucasus.

Soon, however, Tbilisi adopted a different strategy to achieve its objectives. It aimed to resolve territorial disputes without assistance from Russia by relying on political support from the United States, which had emerged as Georgia's most important ally and patron in the region. Washington had provided $1.2 billion in aid to Georgia during the 1990s, and it had deployed military advisors in Georgia ostensibly to train and equip forces to eradicate terrorism from the lawless Pankisi Gorge. Yet a Georgian Defense Ministry official revealed the real reason for the military advisors: the U.S. military intended to “train our rapid reaction force, which is guarding strategic sites in Georgia – particularly oil pipelines.”⁵⁴ The United States was determined to secure its access to the Caspian oil and strengthen its geostrategic presence in the Caucasus, which the Kremlin saw as evidence of America's bias and lack of recognition for Russia's role in the region. In contrast, Tbilisi felt emboldened by Washington's support. The Georgian Foreign Ministry did not respond to Russia's offer of a good neighbor treaty until October and then in an unsatisfactory manner.⁵⁵ Although the United States’ official position regarding the violence in South Ossetia was for both sides to disengage militarily and work toward negotiations,⁵⁶ Georgian leaders felt compelled to continue trying to solve the territorial disputes by whatever means necessary.⁵⁷

Russia's policy of active containment and its new attitude of frustration only further reinforced the already strong sense in Tbilisi that the Kremlin had no respect for Georgia's independence. Just as Russia was frustrated by the lack of recognition by the United States and NATO, Georgia demonstrated anger at what it saw as Russia's lack of respect for its own choice of foreign policy orientation. President Saakashvili and other officials were defiant and continued to condemn Russia's “imperialism” and unwillingness to honor Georgia's independence. The discourse of anger and frustration is expressed clearly in many policy statements, such as the following from President Saakashvili: “In my opinion, Russia is unable to reconcile itself with Georgia's independence. It wants to revert to the Soviet rule although this is impossible. Georgia is no longer a country that it was some four or five years ago, when we did not have either an army or police and corruption was rife in this country. Georgia is now able to protect its territorial integrity and sovereignty.”⁵⁸

Capitalizing on its special relationship with the United States and determined to benefit from the growing confrontation between Russia and the West, Tbilisi seemed, in Russian eyes, determined to humiliate Russia further. In Tbilisi there was no longer talk of Georgia's military neutrality after Russia's withdrawal; instead, a discussion was underway that a future Georgia might not object to possible future deployment by NATO of weapons of mass destruction on its territory.⁵⁹ The issue came full circle when Russia insisted that Georgia's foreign policy choice was not independent, but instead was formed by the United States, as Tbilisi's most important ally in the Caucasus.

The last stage in the Russia–Georgia escalation occurred in August 2008 when Georgia moved from anti-Russian actions and a refusal to sign a non-use of force agreement to concentrating heavy weaponry on Abkhazia and South Ossetia's borders, while the United States and other Western nations provided an implicit legitimization for Georgia's actions. Although the United States was not directly responsible for the Russia–Georgia confrontation, by its actions, it emboldened both nations to act in a more assertive and unilateral fashion. On the one hand, support of Kosovo's independence by the United States and other Western powers encouraged Georgia's breakaway republics to secede, making it more difficult for Russia to resist recognizing their independence claims. It was after the recognition of Kosovo in February 2008 that Russia lifted sanctions on Abkhazia and established direct relations with both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.⁶⁰ On the other hand, the United States did little to restrain Georgia's militarization and ambitions to rein in its autonomous republics by force. American support of Georgia's NATO aspirations, economic assistance, and training of the Georgian military were crucial in heightening the sense of confidence in Tbilisi.

As developments were proceeding in the summer of 2008, it was becoming increasingly difficult to prevent military confrontation. With Georgia and South Ossetia engaged in constant provocations and exchanges of fire, some urgent and concerted actions were necessary on the part of the larger players – the United States, the European Union, and Russia. Yet that was not forthcoming because the European Union was only beginning to be aware of the need for mediation, and the United States and Russia were acting in a partisan manner by supporting opposite sides in Georgia's conflict with its breakaway republics. While Russia was increasing its support for Abkhasia and South Ossetia, NATO and the U.S. officials were backing Tbilisi, rarely criticizing Georgia's actions publicly. For example, on June 20, NATO's general secretary met with President Saakashvili to discuss the planned conclusion of a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Georgia and scheduled a session of the North Atlantic Council to be held in Georgia in September. Less than a month before the war, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to Europe. She found no time to visit Moscow, but on July 9, Rice went to Tbilisi to demonstrate support for Georgia's territorial integrity and the MAP.

Alternative Explanations

Offensive realism expects states to maximize power and, whenever possible, to achieve the status of a regional hegemon.⁶¹ In this account, Russia then should be expected to pursue a policy of dominating Georgia by all means available. Strategic reasons that the Kremlin may view as compelling would include isolation of the external powers’ ability to penetrate the Northern Caucasus, control over energy transportation from the Caspian Sea, and securing easy access to Armenia, Russia's ally. Providing support for Georgia's separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia would therefore serve as a way to destabilize Tbilisi's grip on power from inside the country.

Russian area studies scholars, consciously or not, have reasoned about the motives of Russia's foreign policy using the offensive realist logic. Moscow's ties with separatist leaders, as well as its eagerness to exchange energy assistance for control over some strategic assets in Armenia and Georgia, prompted some scholars to speculate that Russia sought to preserve its hegemonic power in the region – a view that was reinforced by Moscow's recent reluctance to dismantle its military bases in Georgia and occasional promises to “preventively” use force outside its own territory to respond to terrorist threats. Some speculated that Russia's talk of using preventive force was in fact a pretext for invading Georgia.⁶² Others proposed that Russia was satisfied with the status quo, but would continue to seek instability and war in the region.⁶³ According to this group of scholars, what drove the Kremlin's increasingly assertive international policy was its perceived insecurity in response to the colored revolutions and the specter of Islamic radicalism.⁶⁴ Still others asserted that the war with Georgia was a part of a broader geopolitical plan to revive Russia's hegemony in the former Soviet region and strengthen Moscow's ability to challenge the West globally.⁶⁵ Many Georgian scholars and policy makers also viewed Russia's behavior in terms of expansionism and power domination.⁶⁶

As logically compelling as it may seems, the power perspective is not supported by strong evidence. For example, it is plausible to assume that Russia's insistence on Georgia's non-use of force agreement was dictated by Russia's material weakness and inability to exercise force against Tbilisi. Yet the evidence for such intentions by the Kremlin is not available, and it is at least as plausible to interpret Russia's motives as driven by defense and security considerations. It is even more difficult to find support for the offensive realist expectation that Russia's military response was driven by power objectives. If it was, why then did the Kremlin wait as long as it did; even more importantly, why did it not try to remove Saakashvili from power to secure full control over Georgia's territory and resources⁶⁷? Again, interests of Russia's security are at least as helpful in determining its behavior and explaining why it limited itself to recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence, but abstained from pursuing more expansionist objectives. The power/domination perspective lacks nuance and a sense of proportion; by presenting Russia as inherently imperialist and anti-Western, this perspective is less inclined to seriously consider the impact of contemporary developments on Russia's actions.

Defensive realism seems a more plausible lens through which to interpret Russia–Georgia policy. Rather than emphasizing power accumulation, defensive realists focus on imperatives of security and survival, and they argue that states more commonly respond to security dilemmas with balancing or bandwagoning than with war or blackmail, as in offensive realism. In terms of primary motivating factors, defensive realists⁶⁸ delineate misperceptions and institutional biases that may stand in the way of a correct reading of signals coming from the anarchical international system.

Scholars influenced by defensive realism may see Russia's policies in the Caucasus as serving the objectives of security, such as preventing a major war on its borders or allowing NATO, a potentially competitive military alliance, to use Georgia as a proxy for securing additional geopolitical gains in the region. In this case, Russia is on defense, not offense, and it is the United States and NATO that want to maximize power at the expense of Russia, not the other way around. Because they may not intend to attack Russia, the United States and NATO may not present real threats, but they certainly are threats in the eyes of Russia's officials. This perspective is useful in understanding some of Russia's motivations, and there are ample statements by the country's officials and members of the political class framing their response to Georgia in terms of defending security objectives.⁶⁹ However, this perspective is insufficient because it fails to consider Russia's prestige and historical obligations to small nationalities in the Caucasus. This explains why, although defensive realism offers a plausible interpretation of Russia's limited objectives during the war and its insistence on Georgia's non-use of force agreement before the war, it does not predict Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence.

Neoclassical realism⁷⁰ agrees with structural realists about the primary impact of the structure of the international system on state behavior, but focuses on considerations of external reputation and prestige. Russia's insistence on brokering Georgia's peace agreement with its breakaway republics can then be understood in terms of the Kremlin's desire to gain recognition by Western nations, which Russia historically viewed as its significant other. Similarly, Russia's limited objectives during the five-day war can be understood in terms of its fear of losing political standing in relations with the United States and Europe. Neoclassical realism seems less helpful, however, in explaining why Russia went to war and why it chose to officially recognize Georgia's breakaway republics. Although these steps made sense from the perspective of defending Russia's honor or prestige as a great power – especially when viewed in the larger context of Georgia's aspirations to join NATO – such steps may also be viewed as undermining the West's recognition of Russia as a democratic nation that is bound by international law.

Part of the problem with neoclassical realism is that it tends to view intangibles as determined by the structure of the international system, rather than by local historical factors. Considerations of honor and reputation then are merely endogenous to the international power balance, and not factors that may have a potentially significant independent effect. By overplaying the role of anarchy in determining state foreign policy, neoclassical realists cannot fully account for the perception of threat that is partly domestic. Their analysis therefore overlooks some aspects of honor and prestige that are domestically formed and defended on the basis of Russia's cultural perceptions of threats and challenges abroad.

Russia's Western Choices and Its Domestic Opponents

Since its emergence as an independent centralized state, Russia has followed three distinct trajectories in relations with the West. Its identity as a Christian power encouraged the Russian rulers to work on strengthening ties with the Holy Roman Empire by opening a permanent mission in Rome and seeking the West's support in a war against Lithuania in the early seventeenth century. Throughout the two following centuries, Russia frequently sided with a coalition of Western states against those that it viewed as challenging Christian unity from inside or outside of Europe. The pattern of Russia-West cooperation survived even after the European nations entered the era of interstate relations and ceased to define their ties in religious categories. This pattern of cooperation had its opponents inside Russia, but the official commitment proved strong enough to defeat the opposition.

The Holy Alliance is the last case of Russia's religion-driven cooperation with Europe. Having defeated Napoleonic France, Alexander I sponsored the Europe-wide arrangement that committed key states to suppressing all revisionist and revolutionary movements on the continent. This official course elicited opposition from several directions. Supporters of balance-of-power politics, such as the war strategist Marshal Kutuzov, insisted on not destroying the French army in order to preserve a counterbalance against British ambitions to dominate the continent. Others advocated the idea of becoming Europe's hegemonic power and expanding the fight to conquer Constantinople as well. Still others, especially within the Church, took issue with Alexander's universal and European interpretation of Christianity, arguing for turning away from ambitious external commitments and reviving Christian principles at home.

Almost a century later, Russia formed a different alliance with Western states. Threatened by the rapid rise of German power, Nicholas II accepted the French assessment that the defeat of Germany was the key objective in a European war, and in 1907 Russia also concluded a military convention with Britain. The Triple Entente emerged despite various critiques at home. Supporters of the traditional school of Russian diplomacy, beginning with Alexander Gorchakov and Nikolai de Giers, believed in the virtue of preserving even-handed relations with both France and Germany while keeping distance from Britain. Alternative courses of action also included the proposal from the conservative right to build an autocratic values-based alliance with Germany and the Bolsheviks’ secret cooperation with the Germans to deprive the Tsar of his support at home. Initially strong, the Triple Entente collapsed within ten years under the pressures of World War I and the Russian revolution.

Barely fifteen years after the revolution, the Soviet government was pressed to adopt yet another course of cooperation with Western powers. The ascendance of the Nazi Party to power in Germany and the rising threat from Japan prompted the Bolsheviks to forget about their recent confrontation with France and Britain over the nature of the Soviet system. The new foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, became an ardent proponent of a new rapprochement with the West and a collective security system in Europe. Soviet Russia joined the League of Nations and became a vocal critic of the organization's weak enforcement capabilities, particularly in response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and Germany's occupation of the Rhineland. At home Litvinov's pro-Western policy was increasingly opposed by those who advocated a pro-German course of action and those who favored the tactics of flexible alliances between Germany and the West. Stalin had appointed Livinov to see what might come out of his efforts to establish a lasting institutional arrangement with European nations, but Stalin himself preferred a more defensive and restrained version of cooperation against Hitler.

The case of the war against terrorism concludes my analysis of Russia's efforts to cooperate with the Western nations. After the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, Russia pledged important resources to help America and European nations in fighting a global war with terrorism. This course indicated the Kremlin's break with the more traditional line of balancing between the West and non-Western nations advocated by the majority of the Russian political class. Within the political class, there were also some who, like the Communist Party leader Gennadi Zyuganov, wanted higher priority to be given to Russia's relations with China and the old Soviet allies in Asia, the Muslim world, and Latin America (Table 15.1 summarizes the official and opposing views on Russia's cooperation with the Western nations).

The second trajectory of Russia's relations with the West is that of defensiveness, or balancing through domestic revival and flexible international alliances. Domestic opposition to the official course came from those favoring closer ties with the Western nations and those wanting to actively challenge the West by insisting on Russia's cultural exceptionalism.

When Alexander Gorchakov proclaimed the course of recueillment after defeat in the Crimean War, his most important opposition inside the political class came from those who, like his old boss Nesselrode, failed to see the change in the nature of world politics and favored a revival of ties with Austria and Germany within the Holy Alliance framework. Gorchakov, however, wanted “a full freedom of action,” and not because of bitterness over the betrayal of Austria, but because he understood that Austrian interests in the Balkans had changed and Russia could no longer fully cooperate with others to restore its positions in the region and outside. The other course of action might have been an alliance-like relationship with France, which was strongly backed by Russia's liberal Westernizers. The chancellor and the Tsar initially sought to improve their ties with France, but only to the extent necessary for weakening British and Austrian influences. Finally, some factions in Russia pressured the government to devise an openly pro-Serbian and pro-Balkan pan-Slavist policy for organizing the Slavs into a federation free of “hostile” European influences.

Stalin's course of peaceful coexistence with the Western nations is yet another example of Russia's defensive foreign policy. Like recueillment, peaceful coexistence was premised on the importance of Russia's economic revival after years of instability and limited cooperation with the “capitalist” world. Within the government, Stalin sided with Lenin on the New Economic Policy against those whom the latter referred to as “infantile leftists” who supported the doctrine of world revolution on the international scene. Although instinctively favoring a more isolationist version of coexistence with the West than the one advocated by his predecessor, in the early 1930s Stalin authorized the policy of collective security to counter the rising threat from Germany. Isolationism did not prove to be a viable option, and until August 1939, the Kremlin was engaged in politics of balancing between France and Germany. The Soviet policy of rebuilding the domestic economy, while balancing between key European states, was reminiscent of Gorchakov's great power maneuvering in the nineteenth century. Francophone and Germanophile voices within the government never received full official backing.

After the end of the Cold War, in yet another effort to revive the principles of Gorchakov's foreign policy, Yevgeni Primakov devised a course of containing the military expansion of NATO. Russia sought to preserve and develop relations with the Western alliance while increasing ties with non-Western powers, such as China, India, and Iran, and consolidating the former Soviet area. Primakov did not accept the premises of liberal Western thinking that remained influential in liberal circles and considered ties with NATO as the way to address Russia's security concerns. Nor did Primakov favor the position of Russia's anti-Western politicians who advocated breaking relations with the Western military alliance (Table 15.2 summarizes the official and opposing views on Russia's defensiveness).

Finally, Russia has historically resorted to assertiveness in relations with the West, as exemplified by the cases of the Crimean War, Cold War, and the Russia–Georgia war in August 2008. In each of those cases, domestic opposition to the official policy of assertiveness came from advocates both for a more restrained policy and for a more extreme expansion. In the Crimean War, some of Nicholas's advisors, such as Count Nesselrode and Baron Brunnow, urged him to be cautious in negotiations with the Ottomans and in consultations with Austria and Prussia. In turn, the Slavophiles pressured the Tsar to extend military support to the Balkan Slavs and soon proclaimed that the Crimean War served the “holy” purpose of reviving Russia's Christian mission.

Similar policy choices existed in Soviet Russia after World War II. Until the beginning of the Cold War, former foreign minister Maxim Litvinov and the ambassador to the United States Andrei Gromyko defended the approach that included more respect for the choices of Eastern European states and more extensive negotiations with the Western nations. Although the military expansion option had no strong support within the political establishment, some upper rank military, like Semyon Budennyi, did favor it.

The moderate and expansionist options were also available to the Kremlin before and during the war with Georgia. Those Russians who had earlier argued for priority relations with NATO and the West were skeptical of the use of force against Georgia. Others, however, defended an even more hawkish version of military engagement that included occupation of Tbilisi and removal of Mikhail Saakashvili from power (Table 15.3 summarizes the official and opposing views on Russia's assertiveness).

Explaining Russia's Choices

Realism is insufficient for explaining the trajectories of Russia's relations with the West. Throughout the book, I have argued that focusing on power, security, and prestige – as realists do – only partially explains why Russia acted in the ways that it has. Even though Russia's policy makers frequently invoked those objectives to justify state actions, the broader context for their behavior is best described by the concept of honor. The Russian idea of honor captures both external and internal attributes of state, such as special relations with the West, great power prestige, and pride in domestic institutions. Diverse historical experiences have taught Russia's rulers the value of simultaneously relating to several relevant communities – Western nations, the domestic population, and cultural allies. Doing so required an elaborate system of justifying its actions, which included explanations of state origins, legitimacy, institutional structure, and potential allies.

In different eras the state acted on different ideologies of honor. Each ideology provided the state with the sense of purpose, ethical principles, and meaningful context in which to act. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the dominant ideology was that of a Christian autocracy. Russians justified their actions abroad, including military ones, by the duty to defend “the faith, the Tsar and the fatherland” (za veru, tsarya i otechestvo). Soviet ideology fundamentally transformed the myth of state honor, replacing Christianity and autocracy with beliefs in communism and single-party rule. In addition to attaining international prestige and security, the Soviet state sought to uphold and promote this new system of values. The new post-Soviet ideology is still in the process of being formed and currently includes values of Russianness (Rossiyane) and a strong state (derzhava).

Russians have usually not defined their system of values as anti-Western and, indeed, have viewed the West's recognition as a critical component of such a value system. That explains the multiple cases of Russia's cooperation with Western nations, including the Holy Alliance, the Triple Entente, collective security, and the war against terrorism. In each case, Russia acted jointly with Western nations by defending its cultural beliefs, international stability, and peace. When the West recognizes the validity of Russia's foreign policy claims and the values behind those claims, a meaningful international cooperation can emerge and endure.

However, when Russia's significant other challenges its actions and values, Russia is likely to turn away from cooperative behavior. In such cases, it feels the need to relate to its non-Western constituencies and is compelled to act on non-Western components of its state honor. Whether Russia turns to a defensive or an assertive foreign policy to sustain its values depends on its perceived level of domestic confidence. In situations of perceived weakness Russian rulers are cautious in their international behavior and abstain from actions that they view as necessary but impossible to sustain; the state typically concentrates on defending the prestige of great power and abstains from acting on other components of its honor. During the periods of recueillment, peaceful coexistence, and NATO containment, Russia's rulers felt the need to defend their cultural and ideological allies abroad – the Orthodox Christians, communists, and those gravitating to Russia after the breakup of the USSR – yet in each of these cases Russia lacked the confidence to act assertively.

During periods of growing confidence, Russia may turn to a more assertive promotion of its values. Then the West's failure to accept such values is likely to encourage Russia to act alone, as it did in the Crimean War, Cold War, and the war with Georgia. In these cases, power prestige and security were not the only stakes. Each time the state also acted on its culturally and ideologically defined sense of duty to protect those who defined their own values in terms of a strong affinity with Russia.

Figure 15.1 summarizes the role of honor in Russia's relations with the West.

The Record of Russia-West Relations

Russia's foreign policy has enjoyed a mixed record of success. Russia has generally been successful in achieving its objectives when it acts in concert with the West and when such cooperation does not infringe on Russia's non-Western cultural obligations. For example, the Holy Alliance system, before it outlived its usefulness, had provided Russia with a long-lasting peace and stability on its European borders. However, even during that golden period of cooperation with the West, Russia defaulted on some of its cultural obligations, such as protecting the Balkan Christians in Greece from oppression by the Turkish Sultan. The war against terrorism was successful during its first years, until Russia and the West's definition of values begun to diverge around 2004. Responding to the colored revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, the United States pushed the former Soviet regions toward transforming their political institutions, which Russia viewed as a threat to its own stability and a deviation from the U.S. global war against terror. Similarly, cooperation in the era of collective security cooperation fell short because neither the Soviet Union nor the West had sufficient trust in each other's intentions and values.

Russia has also been relatively successful when it acts defensively on a realistic assessment of its foreign policy resources. Thus recueillement may be judged to have been more successful than containing NATO, which was based on an incorrect assumption that Russia had sufficient confidence and ability to build alternative alliances. In contrast, the recueillement defined foreign policy objectives more narrowly – as improvement of domestic capabilities and return to the Black Sea – and Russia had the ability to maneuver among great powers under conditions of multipolarity. The policy of peaceful coexistence too helped Soviet Russia win time for domestic recovery and mobilization. Alas, Stalin squandered much of this opportunity by initiating domestic repression of the peasants, the party, the military, and the intelligentsia.

Russia has been only partly successful in its assertive policy, even when it calculates its resources accurately and achieves a desired victory. For instance, Russia secured much of the territory it wanted to control during the Cold War, but the price of alienating the West turned out to be excessively high: it delayed Russia's integration into the global economy for some forty years. In confronting Georgia's use of force against one of its provinces in August 2008, Russia again acted in defiance of Europe and the United States. Even though Russia had no option but to intervene and even though it had defeated Georgia decisively, the Western reaction was largely negative. So long as gradual integration into the West's economies remains critical for Russia's development, the Kremlin will have to calibrate its decisions against reactions from the West.

Russia has been the least successful when it acts assertively and without a careful calculation of available resources. A case in point is the Crimean War, which resulted from Nicholas's misjudgment of reactions from the Sultan and key European states, as well as Russia's own military capabilities. No less successful have been attempts to act in concert with Western allies, yet without appropriate regard for Russia's domestic constraints and obligations. The words of caution by Count Nesselrode to Nicholas I before the Crimean War – “honor does not oblige us to hurl ourselves into a bottomless abyss”² – may also apply to Nicholas II before entering World War I.³ Were Russia to continue with the course of domestic reforms and flexible alliances, it might have prevented the war or at least helped decide on a prudent and limited form of military involvement. A “bottomless abyss” in the form of revolution and state collapse might have then been avoided.

Both Russia and the West have contributed to these successes and failures. The obvious lesson for Russia is that, while remaining faithful to its other honorable obligations, it should seek Western engagement and recognition. If, in the absence of such recognition, Russia turns away from attempting to establish strong cooperation with Western nations, then it should at least be conservative in assessing its resources and set narrow, specific foreign policy objectives. For the West, the lesson is that pressuring or enticing Russia into submission at the price of its obligations to domestic constituencies and cultural allies may be ultimately counterproductive. The West will hardly ever possess the power to fully determine the shape and direction of Russian developments and therefore must seek reciprocal forms of engaging Russia. Anything short of reciprocity is likely to result in Russia resorting to defensive or assertive policy responses.

Honor-Based Constructivism and the Theory of Foreign Policy

A practically relevant theory of foreign policy ought to successfully address several important tasks. First, it has to clearly establish a meaningful context in which a policy maker acts and seeks to achieve his or her goals. In the world of human interactions, beliefs and emotions often influence what ostensibly are rationally calculated decisions. Therefore, rather than assuming what an action means to those initiating it, scholarly responsibility demands that we establish this meaning by studying the relevant social and political contexts. Second, a practically relevant theory of foreign policy must formulate a cause–effect relationship by identifying the most prominent social forces or variables that drive an international decision. Furthermore, and related to causality, it is necessary to delineate the process through which a causal relationship takes effect. As advocates of process tracing have argued, this technique is important for getting closer to identifying the causal agency and making sure that the identified correlation is really causal, and not spurious.⁴ Finally, a good theory of foreign policy ought to have some predictive power. Although no theory can claim the ability to predict the exact time and shape of change, a good theory identifies powerful factors that point to the direction of change.

Key factors of the theory proposed in this book are honor, confidence, and recognition. The notion of honor characterizes the system of commitments assumed by policy makers. Honor provides the state with answers to questions of its actions’ purpose, legitimacy, and scope. Grasping the system of honor is difficult yet critical. Without studying it, the scholar has no adequate knowledge of how the state defines its vision and the social and emotional contexts in which it acts. Confidence provides the state with the required internal platform for action, and it incorporates power capabilities, institutional capacity, and the leadership's perceptions of actions necessary for implementing the vision. As to recognition, it serves the purpose of external legitimization of state behavior on the international scene. By providing moral, diplomatic, financial, and institutional support for the state, the outside world encourages it to stay on the chosen path and not deviate to revisionist behavior.

The proposed honor-based theory of foreign policy combines insights from both constructivism and realism and fits with the recently introduced realist-constructivist approach. The approach retains the constructivist commitment to viewing the world as a social interaction, not a natural necessity, but it also argues against transcending power in international politics.⁵ It takes the constructivist sensitivity to local systems of perceiving the outside world and the appreciation for studying origins of such perceptions. From realism, it takes the attention to power and the structure of the international system. Whereas realism is agnostic about domestic and cultural factors, constructivism lacks focus in its own way. Because of its intense focus on social interactions it does not pay sufficient attention to factors outside the cultural sphere. The role of constructivism in theories of foreign policy may therefore be to serve as a point of departure, rather than a final destination. Along with other factors of critical importance, constructivism may assist scholars in sketching a road map for analysis, but constructivist scholars are hardly in a position to conduct such analysis in its entirety. In order to fully illuminate the process of foreign policy making, a broad range of factors other than culture and identity must be utilized.

A more expansive approach to foreign policy incorporates both ideas and power. The logic of realist-constructivism requires that we take seriously material factors of power, but to do so within the framework of a socially interactive approach. Following such logic, we should not view systemic factors, such as the anarchical environment or the absence of a strong international authority, as ultimate or decisive in determining the nature of foreign policy. Rather, we should expect that both domestic ideas of honorable international behavior and material capabilities will figure prominently in shaping a state's foreign policy. Material power may have the especially dangerous effect of playing into an assertive policy mood, but it does not have an independent causal effect and does not set off the causal process. Rather, the local system of perceptions does.

In addition to the already considered elements of honor, confidence, and recognition, factors of domestic politics and perceptions of individual leaders may be integrated to specify the overall causal process. Leaders’ interpretations of structural factors may become responsible for their unexpected effects. For example, Nicholas's excessive self-confidence and inability to use Russia's influence to negotiate a reformed system of international relationships greatly contributed to the outbreak of the Crimean War. Even if the Concert of Europe was structurally doomed, Russia was still in a position to preserve its important influence in the Balkans and larger Europe. Although its material capabilities were declining, Russia was still viewed as a major power because of its consistent record in defeating Turkey, suppressing nationalist revolts. and preserving stability in Europe. In addition to miscalculating his own resources, Nicholas erred in anticipating the reactions of important European powers and therefore selected the wrong methods to defend his objectives. The Tsar was prepared to exercise all options of diplomatic escalation, yet failed to develop an exit option. Were he to be more prudent, Russia's assertiveness might have stayed on the diplomatic level, not escalating to a military confrontation.

Honor-Based Constructivism and the Twenty-First-Century Great Powers

The theory of honor-based constructivism offers its own assessments of the twenty-first-century world order and great powers’ behavior that differ from those viewing such behavior through lens of the power transition theory. Among the latter, John Mearsheimer has argued that the post–Cold War system with its increasingly “unbalanced multipolarity” is likely to yield intense security competition among great powers by 2020.⁶ In his assessment, such competition will result in the rise of China as the most dangerous threat to the United States, a revisionist Russia, and a greater likelihood of war in Europe. A more nuanced approach will need to go beyond analysis of power capabilities and incorporate the states’ vision, degree of confidence, and external recognition.

At least three groups of states can be identified within the current international system that have the potential to shape its structure – established, rising, and recovering great powers. Whereas the United States and the European Union remain established powers, China, India, and Brazil are frequently classified as rising powers.⁷ Russia is a recovering power that will continue to aspire to the status of an established one. Although considering these states’ power position is important, it would be simplistic to ignore their ideas of honor and degree of recognition by the outside world.

The United States envisions itself as the leader of liberal democratic states across the world. However, it is unlikely to continue to be the assertive great power it has been throughout much of the post–World War II era. Military overstretch and an undermined economy – the latter revealed by the global financial crisis – limit the country's ability to promote its values abroad the way it has been accustomed to. In addition, in response to the United States’ tendency to act unilaterally, the non-Western countries have grown considerably more skeptical of its positive role in the world. The idea of Western-style democracy, although still attractive, no longer commands the same attention.

Provided that the U.S. leadership follows these changes in the world correctly, American foreign policy is likely to evolve in either a cooperative or defensive direction. If it evolves cooperatively, President Barack Obama's emphasis on greater multilateralism, bilateral negotiations, economic globalization, and gradual military retreat will be sustained until the country recovers its confidence and recognition. If it takes a defensive direction, the United States will increasingly scale down its international commitments and turn inward to rebuild its power capabilities and other aspects of domestic confidence.

The European Union's vision of self is also democratic, albeit with a stronger emphasis on social programs and nonmilitary engagement abroad. Relative to the rise of non-Western powers, such as China and India, the EU's confidence has suffered considerably. The global financial crisis has exacerbated the problem of slow, sometimes stagnant, economic growth since the early 1990s. In addition, the enlarged union has not become more cohesive or capable of exercising coherent policies at home and abroad. While recognizing the economic power and potential influence of the EU, the outside world often views it as lacking political will and the military capabilities to purse a course of active global involvement.

Given these predicaments, the European leaders will likely to continue seeking multilateral cooperation with the world, as evident in much of their behavior throughout the post–Cold War era. However, one cannot exclude the defensive course of relative isolation. For example, surveys of the European elites and public reveal the organization's enlargement fatigue, which may encourage a turn inward. In the foreseeable future, the EU is unlikely to embark on a course of assertive promotion of its social values in the world.

China sees itself differently from the Western nations. Although Beijing presents its grand vision as consistent with the ideas of democracy and the free market, its emphasis is on the ability to resist the global spread of the West's values. The Chinese discourse is that of political control at home and democracy in international relations. The latter is expressed in its Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefits, and peaceful coexistence.⁸ Chinese concepts of a “socialist spiritual civilization” and a multipolar world fit more comfortably with values of nationalism and a strong state than those of Western-style democracy. Beginning with Chairman Deng Xiaoping, Chinese policy makers have viewed nationalism and globalization as not incompatible, but as existing in a virtuous relationship. Beijing anticipates new violent conflicts and expects that the developed states will continue to bully the developing states and encourage conflict between them.⁹

Although recognition of China as a rising global power is rather mixed – many in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East welcome it, whereas policy makers in the West and Asia frequently express their reservations – Beijing is increasingly confident and comfortable with its growing international status. It is therefore not very likely that China will continue to follow a defensive foreign policy, which was once recommended by Deng as “hide brightness and foster obscurity.” This does not mean, however, that China will necessarily become a rule challenger to the existing and largely West-centered international order or that Beijing's aspiration to a greater status would necessarily lead to a unilateral effort to revise the existing rules.¹⁰ The fact that the Chinese rise is based on an authentic cultural vision should not be viewed as an indicator of an approaching conflict with the West. Whether the unprecedented growth of Chinese power will translate into an assertive and potentially dangerous policy partly depends on the world's ability to recognize the legitimacy of Beijing's interests and engage it as a full-fledged participant in the international system.

India and Brazil's self-images are distinct yet similar in terms of their emphasis on domestic democracy and general willingness to work within the existing international rules. Over the last decade, both countries have demonstrated considerable growth in economic and military capabilities and have indicated their desires to transform the structure of international institutions, such as the United Nations Security Council and the G-8. In addition to democratic institutions and growing material power, India and Brazil's increased internal confidence has been reinforced by their stable performance during the global financial crisis. Both are increasingly global powers and are unlikely to adopt a defensive foreign policy. Nor is it likely that the two countries will turn in an assertive direction. Although they have disagreed with the United States and other Western nations on multiple issues, India and Brazil are also beneficiaries of a growing international recognition of their rising status. Within the next ten to twenty years, they will likely work on resolving their issues with the outside world by adopting a largely cooperative foreign policy.

Russia's vision of its values is more similar to China than to the West, India, and Brazil. The concepts of sovereign democracy, energy self-sufficiency, and a multipolar world sound like nationalist, rather than Western liberal, themes. Russia is also similar to China in the sense that the Kremlin demonstrates growing internal confidence, but is only partly successful in gaining the international recognition it seeks. Although Russia's economy has been growing since 1999, many in the West see the growth as too dependent on high oil prices and are in no hurry to recognize the Kremlin's aspiration to a greater independence in defining the rules of military security in Europe and Eurasia. In response, Russia has been notably more assertive in its policy since 2005, which has prompted some scholars to speculate that the Kremlin has become the leading challenger of the existing international order and the West.¹¹ Russia may indeed remain assertive, especially if the Western nations fail to recognize the legitimacy of its security interests. However, this assertiveness is unlikely to openly and unilaterally challenge the existing international system for two reasons: Russia is a recovering, not a rising, power and does not possesses the capabilities of China, and because the West remains an important cultural signifier of Russia's own identity.

Another possibility is that Russia will develop a cooperative approach in relations with the West, thereby continuing with the policies of Dmitri Medvedev. Around the fall of 2009, Russia's foreign policy began to depart from the assertive course that had culminated in the war with Georgia in August 2008. In response to the global financial crisis and U.S. attempts to “reset” relations with Russia the Kremlin revived its emphasis on cooperation. Under Medvedev's presidency, the country adopted a more nuanced approach to the outside world – one that emphasized the soft, rather than hard, dimension of power, and was dictated by the need to modernize the domestic economy. The new approach stressed the importance of building “modernization alliances” across the world, especially with those nations that could offer investments and technologies for economic development.¹² Having reestablished itself as a major power, Russia was now turning to domestic modernization and inviting the outside world to contribute to it.¹³ This approach may or may not survive depending on Russia's internal changes and the West's willingness to recognize Russia as a partner.

Table 15.4 summarizes expectations of great powers’ behavior from the honor-based constructivist perspective.

This analysis suggests that within the next ten to twenty years, the existing international order has a good chance of surviving, especially if the United States stays engaged with it and does not turn inward. In such a case, China and Russia will be further encouraged to pursue a cooperative, rather than an assertive or even openly revisionist foreign policy. In the less likely event that the United States actively withdraws from its central position within the international system, the world order is likely to evolve in one of two directions. A new institutional structure may emerge that successfully accommodates rising and recovering powers, or there may be created a dangerous multipolarity in which China and Russia increasingly challenge the existing rules without being able to impose new ones. Exactly which of these scenarios materializes – the old West-centered status quo, the new institutional order, or the conflictual world – only time can tell.