The Holy Alliance

The Holy Alliance came into existence at about the same time the Vienna system was established, and it lasted for about as long (see the timeline).² After the European countries failed to restrain France's hegemonic ambitions and one after another submitted to Napoleon,³ Russia dealt a decisive blow to French efforts to dominate the continent. Before doing so, Russia had been part of the third anti-French coalition and had suffered serious defeats in Austerlitz. After Austria withdrew from the coalition and it suffered another defeat in Freiland, Russia signed a treaty of peace and friendship with France in Tilsit on June 22, 1807, which was followed by a secret agreement to form an alliance.⁴ These agreements, however, did not last, and in June 1812 Napoleon moved on Russia to eliminate the last obstacle to his control of Europe. Appealing to nobles, the Church, and the peasants to “carry the cross in your hearts and the sword in your hands,”⁵ Alexander called on them to take up arms against France. Due to a combination of reasons, including severe climate, Russian heroism, good logistics, and effective military strategy, the French army of 600,000 men could not last until the autumn and had largely disintegrated even before Napoleon ordered a retreat.⁶ Assisted by Prussia, Russia then chased the emperor's army all the way to Paris.

Having emerged victorious, Russia presided at the Vienna Congress, leading the effort to design a new territorial settlement for Europe. Determined to prevent a future threat arising from central Europe, Alexander wanted to dominate Poland and was ultimately able to control most of it. Russia reconciled with Austria and formed a quadruple alliance, with England and Prussia as additional members. France, despite Talleyrand's efforts, was isolated and did not join the alliance until a few years later at the Aachen conference in 1818.⁷ It was in this context that Alexander proposed the establishment of the Holy Alliance to guarantee a peace in Europe based on principles of Christian ethics.⁸ Signed on September 26, 1815, by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the declaration establishing the Holy Alliance was anything but a diplomatic document. It contained only three articles, the first of which pledged,

Although most European states eventually joined the Alliance, they had difficulty understanding or sharing Alexander's perspective or commitment.¹⁰ Alexander was a firm believer in the arrangement and, along with his contribution to the quadruple and the quintuple alliances, did “more than any other European leader … to develop co-operation and unity in Europe.”¹¹ His vision included proposals to disarm national armies and to form a permanent international army.¹²

At the Aachen conference Alexander proposed to create a universal league of sovereigns to guarantee not only each others’ frontiers but also their political systems, which ideally would be based on constitutions granted by their monarchs.¹³ By that time, Alexander had already granted a constitution to Poland while continuing to deny one to the rest of the Russian Empire. Although Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich and the British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh supported the Holy Alliance, they both objected to Alexander's proposal. The former rejected the notion of constitution, and the latter did not approve of intervention as a principle of international relations.¹⁴ In general, the Vienna participants did not think much of the Alliance. Metternich referred to it as a “high sounding nothing,” Talleyrand called it a “ludicrous contract,” and Castlereagh said it was no more than a “piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense.”¹⁵ Recognizing the role of Alexander in establishing the Vienna system, they realized they needed to be a part of the Alliance, but they each hoped to mold it into something that fit their own worldviews.

At another conference in Troppau, Russia, Austria, and Prussia finally agreed on some principles when they signed, on November 19, 1820, a Preliminary Protocol; they committed themselves to not recognize a regime brought to power by a revolution and to take necessary actions, including force, against it.¹⁶ Despite the protests of England, this agreement was put into effect, thereby serving as an important precondition of the Alliance's existence. Despite Alexander's initial vision, the arrangement was beginning to resemble what A. J. P. Taylor called the system of Metternich, which was “conservative in a double sense” – being opposed to both changes of frontiers and constitutional concessions within states.¹⁷ The system fully matured by 1833 when Russia and Austria signed the treaty of Munchengratz, binding them to maintain the status quo in Turkey, preserve control over their parts of Poland, and help suppress liberalism in other European states.¹⁸ Alexander's Foreign Minister Count Nesselrode described the Alliance's essentially conservative position in his letter to Metternich: “The old Europe has not existed for more than forty years; let us take it as it is today and try to preserve it lest it becomes something much worse.”¹⁹

Russia's evolving policy on the Polish question reflected this conservative position. After granting Poland a constitution in 1815, Russia withdrew it in 1832 after Polish demands for independence spurred the uprising of 1830–1. Russian came to see political liberalism as a threat, and Alexander's old idea of using Poland as a testing ground to guide the launch of similar reforms in Russia²⁰ was abandoned. Poland was made “an indivisible part” of the Russian Empire, as Nicholas demonstrated even greater loyalty to the new conservative thrust of the Holy Alliance than his younger brother Alexander.²¹ By suppressing the Polish revolt, Russia merely did what the system of Metternich expected it to, yet it was Nicholas who was labeled the “Gendarme of Europe.” To European liberals, Poland became a symbol of progressive values, whereas Russia was associated with imperialism and repression. It was deemed too “barbaric” and “Asiatic” by nature to absorb European civilization.²²

The Greek Question

The Greek revolt against the Turkish Sultan became an important test of Alexander's commitment to the Alliance. Not fully recognized by Europe as one of its own, Russia had historically sought to pursue policies consistent with the European political mainstream. In addition to perceiving themselves as European and Christian by culture, Russian rulers also viewed their country as the Third Rome, or the legitimate heir of the Byzantine Empire and protector of the Orthodox people. They felt a special responsibility to the millions of Balkan Christians residing in the Ottoman Empire, whose loyalty could also facilitate the attainment of Russia's geopolitical objectives in the East. Not surprisingly, at the Vienna Congress Russian officials, such as Nesselrode and Count Andrei Razumovski, saw the Balkan Christians as a “moral force which has always worked in favor of Russia and paralyzed the hostile designs of the Ottoman Empire” and Russia as “the natural protector of the Christians of the Greek Oriental rite.”²³ Although Russia did not see its European and Balkan commitments as in conflict, its ability to meet both of them partly depended on the perception of Russia's actions by both the East and the West.

When Greece revolted, Alexander was tempted to go to war with the Sultan to support Greek independence. From a military standpoint, Russia was in a favorable position, because outside the country “everyone believed that a Russo-Turkish war would destroy the Ottoman Empire in Europe.”²⁴ Inside Russia, many in Alexander's court argued that the Christian principles of the Holy Alliance did not extend to the sovereignty of the infidel Turkey.²⁵ The pressure to act was great, because the Sultan ordered the Greek patriarch to be hanged in front of his palace and Russia severed diplomatic relations with Turkey by recalling its ambassador Baron Grigori Stroganov from Constantinople.

Alexander ultimately sided with supporters of a more moderate course, such as Nesselrode and Grand Prince Constantine, and decided to pursue nonmilitary actions. By 1821, he had been convinced that supporting the Greek revolt would violate the Alliance's principle of opposing revolutions, and he shared Metternich's view that the rebellion was part of a worldwide revolutionary conspiracy centered in Paris.²⁶ Alexander's commitment to preserving common ground with the Allies was formidable. In 1822, he told the French diplomat Vicomte Chateaubriand, “I first have to show loyalty to the principles upon which I have founded the Alliance.”²⁷ Russia pursued largely ineffective diplomatic policies, and as the Greek revolt continued, in 1824 Alexander proposed the creation of three separate Greek principalities under Turkish sovereignty. Indeed, when at the St. Petersburg conference in 1825 Metternich surprised everyone by proposing the creation of a small independent Greek state, Alexander found it unacceptable.²⁸

Nicholas I then fought a successful war with Turkey in 1828–9, but he perceived that the war was fought over long-standing conflicts of interests between the two empires, and not to support the Greeks: “I detest, I abhor the Greeks, I consider them as revolted subjects and I do not desire their independence. My grievance is against the Turks’ conduct to Russia.”²⁹ Even while unintentionally assisting Greek independence by fighting Turkey, Russian officials never wanted to topple the Ottoman Empire and were explicit that they had much more limited objectives.³⁰

Support for Conservative Powers

Consistent with their views, both Alexander and Nicholas extended support to leading conservative powers to suppress revolutionary activities in Europe. In 1820–1, Alexander urged military intervention by the Alliance against the constitutionalist revolutions in Spain, Portugal, Piedmont, and Naples. In particular, Russia supported Austria's suppression of revolutionary movements in Italy against possible French counter-intervention in the 1820s.³¹ In 1830, Russia acted to support Dutch rulers in their attempts to quell a revolt in Belgium. Although Russia lacked sufficient funds and suffered a cholera epidemic, it mobilized troops and would have likely intervened militarily in the Netherlands, were it not for a revolt in Poland that required Nicholas's full attention.³² As Europe was becoming more divided, resembling what British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston called a Europe of “the Two and the Three”³³ – with England and France on one side, and Russia, Austria, and Prussia on the other – Russia was taking steps to establish “the closest union of the three states, which is the only guarantee of universal peace.”³⁴ In 1833, Nicholas even supported the Turkish Sultan in suppressing the Egyptian revolt.³⁵

Russia's role in assisting its European allies was especially prominent during the 1840s nationalist revolutions. In 1846, Russia led the way in suppressing a Polish uprising in Krakow, which was part of the Hapsburg state under the Vienna Convention. In July 1848, Nicholas suppressed revolutions in the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Walachia – partly to assist Turkey in defeating the Rumanian nationalist movement.³⁶ In 1849, Russia provided Austria with financial and diplomatic assistance to strengthen its position in Italy, and Nicholas committed almost 200,000 troops to help the Hapsburgs suppress the revolt in Hungary.³⁷ As it did everywhere in Europe, Russia acted in a multilateral spirit and had no hegemonic ambitions of its own. The Hungarian war, for example, was costly and unpopular at home,³⁸ and it generated fears among allies of Russia's overwhelming military presence. Prussia too wanted to help Austria but as a means of dominating Germany,³⁹ whereas Russia had no such conditions and was assisting Austria to fulfill its Holy Alliance obligations. Nicholas did not want to be viewed as acting against the Alliance and was “prepared to accept anything on which Austria and Prussia agreed.”⁴⁰ Nesselrode described Russia's stance this way: “let the other countries manage as they can, we shall let them alone as long as they do not touch us.”⁴¹

The Tsars’ Sense of Honor

Alexander and Nicholas's commitment to the Holy Alliance was firmly within the tradition of enhancing Russia's honor by cooperating with European nations. Russia had seen itself as a protector of the Christian world since the Ottoman Turks had conquered Byzantium, and the idea of a united Europe had a strong religious component. Before the second half of the nineteenth century, international politics was centered on managing interreligious relations, and European monarchs – from the Protestant rulers of Britain to the Orthodox tsars of Russia – were expected to be defenders of the faith. As Barbara Jelavich wrote, each tsar inherited a moral code of honor and duty that was “typical not only of Russia, but of the general outlook of most European monarchs.”⁴² In terms of foreign policy, this outlook implied the concept of cultural allies and cultural adversaries, associated with European states and Turkey, respectively.

Alexander I had a strong commitment to European values and came to power as a European liberal, whose political views had been shaped by his teacher, the Swiss philosopher Frederic-Cesar La Harpe. Alexander's plan for internal reforms was far reaching and included liberation of the serfs, changes in the administrative and educational systems, and creation of the constitution.⁴³ Indeed, according to his close friend Prince Adam Czartoryski, Alexander expressed some “extreme opinions,” being very enthusiastic about the republican principles of the French Revolution and viewing hereditary monarchy as an “unjust and absurd institution.”⁴⁴ The Tsar's vision of a liberal European order could be found in his instructions issued in 1804 to the Russian envoy in Great Britain. He expected Russia to play an important role in European affairs outside its traditional interests in Poland and the Balkans.⁴⁵ In particular, on completion of the Napoleonic wars Alexander wanted a new peace treaty to be concluded that would serve “as a basis for the reciprocal relations of the European states,” binding the participating powers not to begin a war without exhausting all means of mediation and empowering members of the treaty to turn against its offender.⁴⁶

Alexander's war experience challenged and transformed his secular liberal outlook. In September 1812, when Napoleon occupied Moscow and the Tsar's popularity was at its lowest point, Alexander turned to religion and “commended the fate of Russia to the Almighty.”⁴⁷ His evolving views of the objectives of the Holy Alliance were most likely shaped by this transformative experience. The Tsar's initial proposals for the Alliance in Vienna (1815) and Aachen (1818) were liberal and republican, but no longer secular. By the time of the conference in Troppau (1820) Alexander had emerged as a committed believer in suppressing revolutionary regimes, viewing them, along with Metternich of Austria and Frederick William of Prussia, as the principal threat to Europe. He grew increasingly fearful of French revolutionary ideas, no longer separating them from Napoleon's imperialism.⁴⁸ Still a believer in liberal and republican ideals,⁴⁹ Alexander nonetheless did not want these ideals to come from below in the form of a revolution. He therefore supported military interventions in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Choosing between Russia's moral commitment to fellow Orthodox believers in the Balkans and the broader commitment to keep the order in Europe, the Tsar refused to go to war with the Ottoman Empire over Greek independence.

Nicholas underwent nothing of Alexander's complex evolution and was a committed European autocrat from the beginning of his rule. Not having the luxury of Alexander's sophisticated education, Nicholas was more traditional and “excessively literal-minded,” including in his definition of national honor.⁵⁰ He held an essentially Christian dynastic vision of European order and at one point even tried to convert the Sultan to Christianity.⁵¹ Nicholas insisted that “good morality” was “the best theory of law,” and he “disliked organically all theories and abstractions” as having no practical application.⁵² He cared little for economic reforms and instead introduced the concept of official nationality, which he also understood in the dynastic sense. Rather than emphasizing popular sovereignty, the concept promoted loyalty to the tsar.⁵³ A firm believer in the Holy Alliance, Nicholas justified it on moral and dynastic grounds. He was in full agreement with Baron Brunnow's memorandum written to him in 1838 that the alliance was “solidly founded on principles analogous to our own” and was necessary as a “moral barrier” between Russia and France.⁵⁴ Until the Crimean War, Nicholas never challenged the Alliance's principles, and it was only during that war that he began to feel that Russia's interests were different from those of European monarchies.⁵⁵

Social and Political Support

Russia's rulers envisioned the Holy Alliance as a means of unifying the European and Russian people through religion. They presented the defeat of Napoleon as the victory of a truly Christian society over an atheist one. Alexander sought to make the scriptures available to all people, and he encouraged the creation of a synthesis of the Christian faith across the entire continent by bringing together members of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran churches.⁵⁶ The text of the declaration establishing the Holy Alliance was published and read from every Russian pulpit.⁵⁷

Despite these state efforts, the Russian public's reception of the Alliance was not uniformly positive; three factors worked against this religion-based idea of cooperation with Europe. First, Russia had absorbed some secular European ideas of Freemasonry and republicanism, partly because of Alexander's initial convictions and partly because of the country's exposure to European intellectual influences during the war with Napoleon. Later, these ideas became the basis for various pro-Western movements, from the Decembrists to the Westernizers. However, at the time Russia was still too isolated and commercially weak for republican ideas to take hold, and they attracted “only a tiny section of Russian society.”⁵⁸ Alexander's evolution in a religious direction further undermined the influence of secular liberalism.

Second, the Holy Alliance was opposed by those in Alexander's court who supported Russia's hegemony on the European continent. Alexander felt sufficiently confident to decide unilaterally the territorial settlement after the Napoleonic wars and, if necessary, by force – “as did Napoleon.”⁵⁹ Soon, however, the Tsar indicated that he favored a multilateral arrangement and had no ambition to become the new continent's dictator. During the Greek revolution, Alexander also felt pressure to use force against the Sultan. Balkan independence movements generated strong support inside Russia from liberal republicans and advocates of Slav/Orthodox unity.⁶⁰ Still, their pressure was not strong enough to convince Alexander to go to war against the Ottoman Empire or to push Nicholas toward seizing Constantinople or establishing a permanent military presence on Turkish territory.

The third factor that reduced popular support of the Holy Alliance was Russia's isolationism. Soon after defeating Napoleon, some members of the court and military commanders, such as Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, argued that pursuing and destroying the French army would only benefit England.⁶¹ In addition, a number of Russian statesmen, such as Nesselrode himself, favored the principles of balance-of-power politics, rather than those of the Holy Alliance. The Russian Church fiercely resisted the idea of “universal” Christianity.⁶² Russia's rulers, however, remained loyal to the Alliance.

Despite these factors, the public's opinion of the Holy Alliance was, on the whole, favorable. Within the elite, support came from advocates of European messianism and defenders of state autocracy at home. The former included adherents to movements such as Vladimir Odoevsky's Society of Wisdom-Lovers, which was inspired by German idealism⁶³ and later gave birth to another prominent movement, the Slavophiles. In addition, many conservative nobles and members of the court supported the state's international policy as a way to consolidate the Russian autocratic system. Their leader, historian Nikolai Karamzin, argued that the Alliance was needed to preserve Russia's traditional institutions and to keep liberal European developments at a distance. The historian took issues with the reformist ideas of Alexander's advisor, Mikhail Speranski, which Karamzin regarded as a mere imitation of those of the French Revolution.⁶⁴ Other conservative intellectuals, such as Professor Mikhail Pogodin and Count Sergei Uvarov, later contributed to Nicholas's notion of the official nationality,⁶⁵ thereby solidifying the domestic pillar of the Holy Alliance.

Alternative Explanations

The case of the Holy Alliance is especially problematic for offensive realism, which assumes the state's aggressive posture and continual readiness to increase its power in the international system. In general, offensive realists avoid discussing the Alliance and concentrate, as John Mearsheimer does, on long-term historical developments.⁶⁶ In particular, Mearsheimer predicts that states attempt, whenever possible, to achieve the position of a regional hegemon.⁶⁷ Russians then should have been expected to pursue a policy of dominating Europe by all means available and to exercise restraint only when its military capabilities were limited. Some geopolitically minded scholars of Russia have indeed insisted that it has demonstrated expansionist or offensive behavior throughout its entire history. For example, John LeDonne made a case for Russia's “expansionist urge” that remained “unabated until 1917,”⁶⁸ and he argued that during the 1830s and 1840s, the Russians were “dangerously close to the establishment of their hegemony in the Heartland.”⁶⁹ According to this view, the only reason why Nicholas I did not seek to establish European hegemony was because he was contained by Britain and other leading powers: “There is no greater misreading of Nicholas I's foreign policy than to see it dominated by the pursuit of ‘honor’, by respect for treaties and the determination to maintain the status quo.”⁷⁰

However, the Russia of Alexander and Nicholas never wanted to dominate in Europe, and there is hardly any reason to question the sincerity of its efforts to establish a multilateral system of great powers based on shared values and honor. As Martin Malia wrote, “The first half of the 19^th century was an age when politics was exalted and ideological,” and “states fought not merely for power, but for a triumph of good over evil.”⁷¹ Russia was no exception: it used the Vienna settlement to promote its religious-colored perspective of international relations because Alexander had faith in his vision of the Alliance, not because he had ulterior power motives. More than anything else he acted on moral grounds even though realist-minded politicians of his age had difficulty understanding him. Immediately following the defeat of Napoleon, Russia emerged as so powerful that Alexander briefly considered the hegemonic option, but soon ruled it out in favor of a cooperative approach, which he pursued even at the expense of Russia's traditionally strong ties with Greece. The same point applies to Nicholas, who passed up a number of opportunities to dominate in the Balkans and Europe after suppressing revolutionary movements there during the 1830s–1840s. On several important occasions, Russia abstained from using force actively or preventively, thereby exercising both restraint and self-restraint.⁷² As scholars have recognized, Russia was the strongest nation in the system, but it exploited its strength to design and maintain the Concert of Europe,⁷³ not to impose a unilateral settlement.⁷⁴

Defensive realists tend to view the Holy Alliance as a balancing coalition against powerful competitors, such as Britain and France. Although some offensive realists, such as LeDonne, agree with this view, they differ from defensive realists in their assessment of Russia's position of power. Offensive realists see Russia as contained and therefore insufficiently strong to impose its hegemony, whereas defensive realists find the case of Russia very puzzling precisely because St. Petersburg was so powerful and yet refrained from engaging in hegemonic behavior. The answer that defensive realists provide has to do with constraints of the international system and Russia's attitude of self-restraint.⁷⁵ This answer does not specify, however, why Russia took on the burden of leadership in the European system when it could have adopted a more isolationist approach, recommended by Kutuzov, or simply joined a balancing coalition against Napoleon, as it did before 1812. The behavior that St. Petersburg demonstrated can hardly be described as balancing. Rather, as Paul Schroeder described it, Russia followed the strategy of transcending: “attempting to surmount international anarchy and go beyond the normal limits of conflictual politics: to solve the problem, end the threat, and prevent its recurrence through some institutional arrangement involving an international consensus or formal agreement on norms, rules, and procedures for these purposes.”⁷⁶

The important role played by ideas and morality in the Holy Alliance is therefore undeniable. Indeed, it is so powerful that historically sensitive realists usually acknowledge it.⁷⁷ One even proposed a revision of the defensive realist outlook by explicitly recognizing that “defensive ‘realism’ is a synthesis of realist and non-realist theories.”⁷⁸

The Russo-French Alliance

The initial decision to develop closer relations with France was consistent with the policy of maintaining even-handed ties with important European powers pursued by Chancellor Alexander Gorchakov. The unification of Germany after Russia's denunciation of the Black Sea clauses in 1870 demanded new attention to the rising giant. The dismissal of Chancellor Bismarck in 1890 and the subsequent refusal of Germany to renew the existing Reinsurance Treaty between the two countries indicated the possible emergence of a new policy line for the German emperor. Soon, St. Petersburg's diplomats came to believe, as Foreign Minister Count Vladimir Lamsdorff stated, that “to be generally on good terms with Germany the alliance with France is necessary.”² The Russo-French alliance was also important to French ruling circles that wanted guarantees of their security in the event of a conflict with Germany.³ Such was the context in which the two nations concluded a political agreement in August 1891.

A military agreement concluded a year later was more controversial. Supported by Tsar Alexander III and the military, it was opposed by the Foreign Ministry and those in Russia who were worried about altering the balance in relations between France and Germany. According to Lamsdorff, “if our military needs to have an agreement in anticipation of some future possibilities, then at least they must do it without compromising us by some written document and by preserving our full freedom of action.”⁴ He believed that “the object of French attention is precisely our freedom of action and desire to control us by a formal agreement.”⁵ Acting on such beliefs, Russia's foreign minister Nikolai de Giers did what was in his power to delay ratification of the agreement; it did not take effect until January 1894 – a year before his retirement. If it was not for a trade war between Russia and Germany,⁶ the ratification might have been delayed even longer.⁷

Alexander III, however, believed that Germany was bent on war with Russia and that an alliance with France was a necessary defensive precaution.⁸ The emperor staked his policy on France in the hope that it might ultimately lead to the dissolution of Germany. When Giers reportedly asked him “what would we gain by helping the French to destroy Germany?” Alexander replied, “What we would gain would be that Germany, as such, would disappear. It would break up into a number of small, weak states, the way it used to be.”⁹ According to the secret agreement signed by Russia, it was obligated to provide military assistance to France in the event of a German attack.¹⁰

Political and economic considerations further consolidated Russia's ties with France. In March 1902, the two signed an agreement on the Far East, which, however, did not prevent an attack on Russia by Japan in February 1904. St. Petersburg also signed a commercial treaty with Germany, ending the protectionist rivalry between the two countries, but declined a defensive pact proposed by the German emperor. On Lamsdorff's advice, Nicholas urged Emperor Wilhelm to include France in the coalition – a proposal that Germany found unacceptable. Eventually, the two powers signed an agreement that Nicholas hoped could be amended to include France.¹¹

The defeat in the war with Japan made Russia dependent on French financial assistance. A loan of 2,250 million francs in April 1906 provided Nicholas II with the funds needed to suppress the growing Russian revolution and in reality “saved the Tsarism from the inevitable collapse.”¹² The revolution of 1905 followed Russia's external defeat, revealing the regime's internal weakness. The Tsar eventually yielded to workers’ demands by promising a constitution and new political freedoms. So dependent was Russia on French financial assistance that its finance minister at one point informed a prominent French banker of Russia's tentative budget before making it public in Russia.¹³ It was in this context that Russia agreed with the French assessment that defeat of Germany was the main aim of a European war.

Russia–Britain Relations

It was also largely through French efforts that Russia's traditionally difficult relations with Britain evolved toward closer cooperation. In addition to agreeing with France on the threat assessment, Russia dropped the anti-British element of the military agreement signed in 1892. Meanwhile, relations with Germany remained at the previous level of commercial ties, but did not develop in the direction of military cooperation. A meeting between the Russian and German emperors in August 1907 did not change the situation. However, during the same year Russia concluded a convention with Britain that effectively transformed the Russo-French bilateral alliance and the French-British entente into the Triple Entente – a new force on the European continent. Russia's new foreign minister, Alexandr Izvol'sky, took office in 1906 and was instrumental in forging a new consensus that Russia's internal weakness required an accommodation with Britain. Although members of the cabinet held different views of Britain – from Izvol'sky's Anglophilia to Stolypin's German sympathies – they accepted the agreement with Britain as a way of limiting Russia's engagement in Asia.¹⁴ The emergent triple alliance then assisted Russia in reaching a settlement with Japan, thereby strengthening the new relationship.¹⁵

Russia and Balkan Politics

The year 1908 heralded the final stage of Russia's realignment with the West. In February, Izvol'sky warned of the probable breakdown of the status quo in the Balkans, sensing the growing ambitions of Austria. In October of the same year Austria indeed occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, demanding Russia's acceptance of the annexation. Russia refused, seeking to confirm its position as the protector of a sizable Orthodox Christian population residing in the peninsula and to protect its vital interest in controlling the Mediterranean Straits through which Russia exported most of its grain to Europe. In response Germany, acting as Austria's benefactor, issued an ultimatum to Russia to accept annexation in March 1909. Internally weak, Nicholas felt he had to accept the ultimatum even though the humiliation, as the Tsar later admitted in a private correspondence, “sickened” his “feelings.”¹⁶

Nicholas then engaged Germany in earnest yet again in an attempt to devise a mutually acceptable arrangement for the Balkans. In November 1910, he and Sergei Sazonov, the new foreign minister, visited Potsdam and reached an agreement that Germany would not support Austria's Balkan ambitions.¹⁷ In addition, Russia introduced a new Turkey policy, working to undermine Austria by encouraging rapprochement between Turkey and the individual Balkan states.¹⁸ However, the two Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 upset existing arrangements and demonstrated the inability of Russia and other great powers to ensure peace on the peninsula. Russia's relations with Austria continued to worsen, with the former backing Serbia and Greece and the latter supporting Albania while both powers competed for influence in Bulgaria.¹⁹ Meanwhile, Germany, although not supporting Austria formally, was calculating its chances to become stronger at Russia's expense.²⁰

These developments convinced Nicholas of the need for additional military preparations. As early as July 1910 he supported a new Russian plan for war in Europe – a clear sign of preparation for the failure of diplomacy. In May 1912, the Tsar endorsed an even more offensive war plan devised by the military and opposed by several of his ministers.²¹ After the Balkan wars, a military confrontation among great powers was only waiting to be ignited by an additional provocation.

The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip provided that provocation. By the time Austria declared war on Serbia, Nicholas had already decided – on the advice of Foreign Minister Sazonov – to support the Balkan nation.²² From that point, events quickly progressed to war. Russia and Austria declared mass mobilizations. Germany first issued an ultimatum to Russia and then – after the latter refused to comply – declared war on Russia and France in August 1914. During the same month, Britain entered the war on the side of the Triple Entente. As in 1905, the war had a devastating effect on Russia's fragile political system. Repeated military defeats²³ resulted in the abdication of Nicholas and, ultimately, another Russian revolution. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks ended the agony of transition by exploiting the situation of social and political instability in the country and taking power.

Nicholas's Sense of Honor

Nicholas's manifesto expressed his understanding of state honor, which included protecting the “dignity and safety of Russia and its position among the Great Powers.”²⁴ Having the prestige of a great power implied the need for Russia to be true to its traditional obligations in the Balkans and to inspire respect among other European powers.

Nicholas's notion of honor also meant that, weak or strong, Russia had to demonstrate loyalty to its European allies and be part of the effort to contain the increasing strength of Germany. Already in 1902 – years before the revolution and the French loan needed to suppress it – Nicholas commanded that all war planning be based on the assumption of a massive German attack.²⁵ After 1906, the Tsar moved to a belief in deterring, rather than engaging Germany, to preserve the European peace. He therefore abandoned the older vision of the continental alliance of Russia, France, and Germany. Nicholas also supported all military and rearmament programs even when his top ministers opposed them. Eager to modernize Russia, Nicholas II was just as loyal to the traditional ideal of autocratic honor and just as inflexible in acting on it as was his predecessor Nicholas I.

Alternative visions of honorable behavior, including those similar to Gorchakov's defensive view of the continental alliance, were also known within the state and were shared by many outside the military. However, these visions failed to prevail partly because of Nicholas's reliance on “favorites” and informal advisors who worked to perpetuate his traditionalist beliefs about the Tsar's complete unity with the people. Notoriously indecisive, he never became comfortable with the enormous power bestowed on him and was especially dependent on his advisors’ recommendations.²⁶ In his memoirs, Prime Minister Vladimir Kokovtsev, dismissed by Nicholas before the war, identified those who were especially influential with the Tsar. For example, the publisher of the periodical Grazhdanin, Prince Pyort Meshcherski, was actively working to perpetuate the public image of Nicholas as the only one who truly cared about Russia.²⁷ Nicholas was heavily influenced by the Empress Alexandra, whose views on autocracy were “much more radical than those of the Emperor,” despite the reforms he introduced in response to the revolution of 1905.²⁸

Nicholas's increasingly anti-German views affected policy formation and the process of selecting government officials. Within the foreign policy establishment, moderates such as Giers and Lamsdorff were gradually replaced by the more pro-Western Izvol'sky and Sazonov. The latter were known for their Anglophile views, which they combined with a strong Russian nationalism and militarism – an attitude that made the clash with Germany all the more probable. For example, Izvol'sky believed that “basic political reform will bring us closer to Europe, and ease the foreign minister's task abroad”²⁹; yet he also supported the Tsar's expensive military and rearmament programs as a means “to remain among the great powers.”³⁰ Because of the growing popularity of such beliefs, the Russo-French alliance, which was initially viewed as a necessity, began to be viewed as a triumph of Russian diplomacy.

The other prominent supporters of Nicholas's vision served on the General Staff. At the time when Giers was expressing his doubts about the binding nature of the military agreement with France, Chief of Staff General Nikolai Obruchev emerged as its principal advocate. As Dietrich Geyer wrote, “[t]he military was in fact the driving force behind the Franco-Russian Alliance.”³¹ In 1906, the military initiated the Rearmament Program, with the secret objective to revise the Straits convention. The military fought a hard battle with the finance minister, Vladimir Kokovtsev, who argued against the new program of rearmament, which he viewed as undermining the economy and national finance. However, while Kokovtsev insisted that “Russia cannot be a great power with an economy in ruins,” his chief opponent and Obruchev's successor, Chief of Staff General Palitsyn, was arguing that even the largest military budget costs less than a lost war.³² It was the military that devised offensive plans in 1910 and 1912,³³ and it was the military that was quick to propose mobilization in response to the Balkan wars.³⁴

Although the Tsar's vision was similar to that of the War Ministry, it had less to do with military capabilities than diplomacy, as evident from the spending choices he made. However weak and indecisive, Nicholas nevertheless always supported military requests for additional expenditures, defying his prime ministers and ministers of finance. For example, Sergei Witte, who served as finance minister before the war with Japan, complained that he always had to keep cash on hand out of fear of his budget being undermined by notorious war hawks, such as Alexandr Bezobrazov and Vyacheslav von Pleve.³⁵ Kokovtsev, who succeeded Stolypin as prime minister, recalled how Nicholas justified his support of minister of war V. A. Sukhomlinov's requests as a means to solve the conflict in the Balkans:

Russia's Domestic Conditions and Support

The increasingly pro-Western and anti-German feelings within Russian society and the political class supported the Tsar's vision of state honor. Both the liberal and nationalist strata came to be largely sympathetic to Nicholas's views, partly because of Russia's domestic condition as a modernizing state. Domestic weakness called for moderation in international relations, and a growing reliance on foreign assistance led to a more dependent and less balanced foreign policy.

As a modernizing state, Russia struggled to improve ties with the wealthiest countries in Europe, France and Britain – partly out of the necessity to maintain a high level of defense expenditures worthy of a great power. From 1885–1913, such expenditures were 25 percent of the overall state budget (see Fig. 6.1).³⁷ Despite these high expenditures, during the entire period of 1856–1914, “Russia's performance…was bad enough to show most of her political leaders the wisdom of moderation in foreign policy.”³⁸ Meanwhile the economy was following a pattern of highly uneven development, indicating serious structural imbalances.³⁹It grew rapidly during the 1890s and 1910s, but sank into depression during the 1880s and 1900s. In addition, the government did little to improve working conditions and health care, which led to a increase in the number of economic and political strikes.⁴⁰

Russia's weakness and economic need increased its dependence on the allies. The large loans and other assistance received to settle relations with Japan raised expectations for Russia's successful modernization and Westernization. Domestic support for France and Britain was growing, partly because the public and political class were unaware of the Tsar's secret treaties and military commitments made to the Western nations. Only six people in the Russian Empire were informed of the alliance with France in 1894.⁴¹

In addition to the Tsar and the increasingly pro-Western foreign policy establishment, support for Westernization came from the expanding liberal part of the political spectrum, the intellectual and commercial classes. After Nicholas's 1905 manifesto and creation of the State Duma, the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) gained political prominence and did not hide their sympathies for the British and French models of development. Some of the party's leaders, such as Pavel Milyukov, advocated for the ideas of British Prime Minister Gladstone and showed little interest in foreign policy.⁴² The rising capitalist class also favored the West, as Russia was increasing its grain exports to Britain, and French and British capital were playing an increasing role in the Russian stock market.⁴³ The national discourse was that of modernization and catching up with liberal Europe, rather than the preservation of state sovereignty and autonomy in international affairs.⁴⁴ The Slavophiles were becoming increasingly unpopular, and few public figures warned against the dangers of unbalanced Westernization.⁴⁵ Even the Slavophiles’ spiritual leader, the philosopher Vladimir Solovyev, was attacking the new voices of cultural nationalism, such as Konstantin Leontyev and Nikolai Danilevskiy, as advocating dangerous attempts to create a Slav future on the ruins of European culture.⁴⁶

Simultaneously, Russian society in general and its political class in particular were developing strong anti-German attitudes. Soon after the 1905 revolution, it was no longer just the Tsar and the military that believed in the virtues of becoming stronger for the purpose of confronting Germany. Pan-Slavism, which had emerged in response to the national humiliation of the Crimean War, advocated a forceful policy of liberating Balkan Slavs and was especially critical of Germany and the “Romano-Germanic cultural type” – to use the nationalist vocabulary – it represented. In the mid-nineteenth century, pan-Slavists had attacked Gorchakov's foreign policy as excessively pro-German, and they grew stronger in the context of the Bosnia crisis and the two Balkan wars. These developments politicized society, and the majority of the media was both pro-Western and pan-Slavist. By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia's German commercial interests also became weaker, which explains the government's often protectionist policies toward Germany.

In political circles, many Kadets sympathized with pan-Slavist ideas.⁴⁷ Milyukov, who initially had pacifist leanings, defended the idea of war with Austria after the Bosnian crisis and showed an ever stronger militarist attitude after assuming the duties of foreign minister.⁴⁸ During World War I, he famously insisted on not signing a peace agreement.⁴⁹ Yevgeniy Trubetskoi was an even more extreme example of the merger of Westernist and pan-Slavist ideas. After his appointment to the Foreign Ministry, Trubetskoi soon became close to Sazonov and in 1907 argued against the moderates who favored Russia's alliance with both France and Germany: “To seek a middle way is equivalent to wanting to sit between two stools. This is scarcely either a profitable or an honorable position.”⁵⁰ A champion of the national Slavic idea, Trubetskoi explained Russia's defeat in the war with Japan as due to the absence of such a concept, and he welcomed the war with Germany as inspired by pan-Slavism.⁵¹

After the Balkan wars, only a small minority of politicians on the extreme right and extreme left displayed pro-German attitudes.⁵² Although Minister of Internal Affairs Pyotr Durnovo and conservative landowners wanted to restore the old Holy Alliance-like system of autocratic states, the radical leftist Bolsheviks worked to accelerate the collapse of the tsarist system, advocating the defeat of their own government in the war with Germany.

Table 6.1 summarizes the political currents in Russia before the war.

The Allies

France and Britain played a critical role in developing the Triple Entente with Russia. Without their financial assistance and political nudging, Russia's threat assessment might have not been as focused on Germany and could have even stayed at the level of Gorchakov and Gier's diplomacy; that is, the idea of a continental alliance with Germany as a member could have survived well after 1906. By recognizing Russia's aspiration to become a part of the West commercially, Paris and London shaped St. Petersburg's identity as a Westernizing state, strengthening the conditions for a security entente. In 1906 Germany posed no military threat to others, yet the Western coalition had already recognized it as such.

After suffering the devastating war with Japan and the revolution of 1905, Russia's economy was in no position to survive without large foreign loans and investments provided by France and Britain. Neither country was shy to exploit this leverage. For example, France only provided its 2,250 million franc loan in April 1906, more than a year after the Tsar had experienced serious political difficulties because of his brutal suppression of public demonstrations in St. Petersburg on January 5, 1905 (“Bloody Sunday”). Paris took advantage of Nicholas's weakness by orchestrating a campaign against “tsarist despotism” at home and pressuring him to revise his threat assessment. The loan had restrictions and was granted only after the Tsar had agreed that defeat of Germany was the main aim in a European war.⁵³ Franco-British investments too were growing, and by 1914 their share of foreign investment in the Russian economy reached 54.6 percent, in contrast to Germany's share of 19.7 percent.⁵⁴

As characterized by a German scholar, Russia's financial and politico-economic ties with France had become “entangled,” and the established dependence was “prone to work more to the disadvantage of the Russians.”⁵⁵ Russia's 1907 settlement with Japan was reached with British political assistance, in the interests of Anglo-French entente, and soon after Russia revised its threat assessment and dropped the anti-British element from its previous military agreement.⁵⁶ Having engaged Russia as a dependent member of the coalition, the two Western states then exploited the “entanglement”; for example, in 1913 France encouraged Nicholas to take a harder line toward Austria.⁵⁷

In contrast, Russia's ties with Germany had been weakening since the 1890s. Germany was a source of massive credit for Russia's war with Turkey in 1877–8, and in 1881 Russia, Germany, and Austria signed the Three Emperors League agreement.⁵⁸ However, during the 1890s Russia and Germany, both with mercantilist leanings, became involved in a bitter trade war,⁵⁹ which marked the beginning of the decline of their bilateral relations. Although Russia managed to secure a substantial loan from Germany in 1902, Germany continued to weaken its ties with the former ally in response to its rapprochement with France. For example, it forbade Berlin banks to participate in the 1906 loan to Russia because of St. Petersburg's behavior during the Moroccan crisis.⁶⁰

Alternative Explanations

Realists’ explanations for Russia's foreign policy and decision to go to war in 1914 are either flawed or insufficient.

According to those realist thinkers who believe in relative power as the payoff of international politics, St. Petersburg made a logical choice by joining the Triple Entente and then going to war with Germany because Russia was too weak to fight against the rising threat alone. As historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote, “There had been a real European Balance in the first decade of the Franco-Russian alliance; and peace had followed from it.”⁶¹ Yet this argument does not fully explain why Russia had to side with France and Britain against Germany and Austria, and not vice versa. Power considerations alone, especially under conditions of multipolarity, do not dictate which allies to chose nor why they are chosen.⁶² As a number of scholars have argued, a military clash with Germany was not inevitable.⁶³ Rather, a long sequence of actions taken by different sides, especially before 1912, constructed the clash. The Triple Entente did not emerge overnight and was not merely a defense pact; it was also an organization of states with increasingly similar economic interests and cultural identities. Over time, its members developed a similar assessment of threats and of appropriate actions in response to it.

In addition to balancing options, the weak Russia had a choice of back-passing, at least before the Balkan wars. From the standpoint of power alone, competition with Germany hardly made sense: Russia was weakened after taking part in several wars and was only beginning to catch up economically. It went to war even though until 1912 it viewed itself as weaker than even material calculations of power suggested⁶⁴ and despite many prominent statesmen's recommendations for moderation in foreign policy.

To defensive realists, Russia's policy and the decision to go to war resulted from an incorrect perception of the international balance of power. Despite inadequate resources to go to war, the military supported an offensive strategy and convinced the Tsar to act accordingly.⁶⁵ An incorrect assessment of international conditions was responsible for other policy errors, such as Sazonov's defiance of Stolypin's moderate policy in the Balkans.⁶⁶ However, Russia's threat assessment was similar to those of France and Britain, and it had sufficiently broad support at home. If Russia acted on a policy bias, then it was a bias largely shared by allies and domestic subjects alike. It is therefore more likely that a nationally supported system of perception with roots in a particular idea of honor was at work.

Neoclassical realists come closer to adequately explaining Russia's behavior, because they emphasize the importance of great power prestige to Nicholas.⁶⁷ The historian Hugh Seton-Watson provided this interpretation consistent with neoclassical realism:

The explanation is valid, yet by highlighting only the external aspects of Russia's cultural obligations in the Balkans, it underestimates the domestic origins of Russia's threat assessment. Just as Christian beliefs defined Nicholas I's decision to pressure the Ottoman Empire over the Holy Lands, the same beliefs played a critical role in determining Nicholas II's choices. The Tsar's choices played into widely held perceptions of the international situation, and they also reflected the West's reading of German intentions.

Finally, some scholars have argued for the primacy of Russia's nationalism or “pan-Slavist imperialism” in determining the Tsar's policy decisions in the early twentieth century.⁶⁹ The approach provides a useful corrective to the inadequate neoclassical explanation. However, the nationalism of the Russian public was only partially constructed by the country's historically developed honor commitments. Just as neoclassical realism downplays the domestic and cultural source of Russia's great power claims, the nationalist approach underestimates its external sources. Russia's “imperialism,” to a large extent, was also shaped by the international system and expectations of the allies. The West encouraged Nicholas to adopt the cooperative vision of honor and did not discourage him from taking a hard line on Russia's cultural commitments in the Balkans. Both domestic and external aspects of Russia's honor were important, interacting with and reinforcing one another.

Joining the League of Nations

The Soviet decision to join the League of Nations in 1934 marked a clear departure from the old Locarno line in Bolshevik diplomacy. The Kremlin never supported the conditions imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, and after World War I Russia's relationship with Germany strengthened in economic and military areas.² The new policy of collective security was about to place important political limitations on their deepening relations. Collective security was also a blow to leftist ideas of world revolution and worker solidarity across the globe. It reflected the Kremlin's new view of the Comintern, an extension of the world revolution, as ineffective in solving pressing international problems.

In December 1933 – the year Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany – the Politburo passed a resolution in support of collective security and approved Litvinov's proposals for action. In addition to joining the League of Nations, the proposals included signing nonaggression treaties with all members of the League and negotiating a regional security pact with European nations including Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltics, Finland, Belgium, and France.³ Russia viewed the participation of France and Poland as especially important in enabling the pact to be an effective constraint on Germany's actions.⁴

That the League of Nations formally invited Russia to become a part emboldened Litvinov and gave hope to Stalin that an anti-German coalition could be assembled. It also immediately raised the status of Soviet Russia as a responsible and peace-oriented power. The foreign minister had been initially reluctant to formally apply for membership in the organization out of fear of being rejected.⁵ Litvinov viewed such a possibility as a potentially serious blow to the Soviet Union's prestige and waited until the League itself invited the USSR to join. It then entered the organization on its own conditions.⁶

The USSR now had an important platform from which to engage other nations. The Soviet political class viewed membership in the League as opening new diplomatic horizons and signifying that “we have gained equal rights with the largest bourgeois countries that had so far refused to recognize us.”⁷

Litvinov's Crusade

The key to understanding Litvinov's security strategy lies in understanding his conception of aggressive action in international politics. The foreign minister had articulated this approach only a week after Hitler came to power, but it took ten months for the Politburo to support him by passing the collective security resolution. At the Disarmament Conference on February 6, 1933, Litvinov proposed a new definition of an “aggressor” as any state that declares war on another state; invades the territory of another state without declaration of war; bombards the territory of another state by its land, naval, or air forces; or imposes a naval blockade. He further insisted, “No considerations whatsoever of a political, strategic or economic nature, including the desire to exploit natural riches or to obtain any sort of advantages or privileges on the territory of another state…shall be accepted as justification of aggression.”⁸

Later that year, in December 1933, in one of his most important speeches delivered to the Central Executive Committee of the Supreme Soviet, Litvinov challenged not only the old Boshevik line of the “inevitable war” with capitalism⁹ but also the notion of peaceful coexistence with all states as well. “If it is possible to speak of diplomatic eras, then we are now without doubt standing at the junction of two eras,” he said.¹⁰ He further argued that “even hostilities which do not begin directly on the frontiers of our Union may threaten security” and that “the ensuring of peace cannot depend on our efforts alone; it requires the collaboration and co-operation of other States.”¹¹ The minister divided Europe into revisionist and status quo powers, and quoting from Mein Kampf, he pointed to Hitler's ambitions to “enslave the Soviet people.”¹² Both the language of revisionism and the reference to racist ideology aimed to persuade the West to perceive a common assessment of threat.

Outside the country, Litvinov showed sympathy for the French position and indicated his readiness to move in a post-Rappalo direction in early 1933, at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva. Breaking with the peaceful coexistence line, Litvinov had already launched a series of diplomatic initiatives, such as signing nonaggression pacts with leading countries, reversing the old line toward the moderate socialists in Europe, and pressuring the League of Nations to act against Germany. In his conversation with Konstantin von Neurath, the new German foreign minister, Litvinov warned, “We certainly cannot look kindly upon the prospect of an anti-Soviet bloc involving Germany and France.”¹³ The Germans clearly understood the new policy direction. In March 1933, after speaking with Litvinov, von Neurath wrote to Berlin that the Soviet minister was “thinking of developing relations with France further” and was unusually hostile during their meeting.¹⁴

In fact, the Soviet Union had already signed nonaggression treaties with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and France in 1932.¹⁵ Soviet diplomacy was now working to unite the signatories into an “eastern Locarno,” or a broad multilateral pact, in which France and the Soviet Union would serve as guarantors of the smaller states’ security. A critical part of this effort was an attempt to negotiate a separate Franco-Soviet treaty, which would not only strengthen the general pact but also obligate the two nations to provide direct mutual assistance in the case of war.¹⁶ In June 1934, Litvinov and Louis Barthou, the French foreign minister, reached agreement on supporting a multilateral eastern pact of mutual assistance with participation of Eastern European countries. In May 1935, the Soviet Union and France also reached a bilateral agreement on mutual assistance, although they could not agree on the magnitude of the assistance.¹⁷

The collective security policy also transformed Comintern. At its Seventh World Congress in July–August 1935, Stalin legitimized the new Soviet policy by reversing his hostility toward the social democratic parties in Europe and calling on communists and socialists to form a united front against the rise of Fascism.¹⁸ Thus the organization abandoned its agenda of overthrowing capitalist governments in favor of endorsing Soviet mutual assistance pacts with France and Czechoslovakia.¹⁹ From a narrow-based organization with an “anti-bourgeois” agenda, it evolved into a broad movement that pledged a popular front of support for collective security.

Finally, Litvinov emerged as a tireless critic of the League of Nations’ lack of enforcement capabilities. Any collective security system, he argued, would not be effective if it failed to muster a sufficient force to respond to an aggressor.²⁰ He further insisted that the League must become an organization dedicated to collective assistance and collective defense.²¹ The minister was especially critical of the League's lack of response to Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, Ethiopia, in October 1935 and to Germany's reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936: “we don't need a League that is safe for aggressors…for such a League will turn from a peace defender into the opposite of it.”²²

For its part, the Soviet Union indicated its firm intention to act in support of collective security despite its own limited resources. In Geoffrey Roberts’ words,

Recent research has found that the USSR was prepared to provide military assistance to Czechoslovakia and would have done so had not its prime minister decided to capitulate.²⁴

Setbacks

Soviet efforts notwithstanding, collective security suffered increasing setbacks in the mid-1930s. After formally withdrawing from the League of Nations, Germany restored compulsory military service in March 1935 and engaged in a massive rearmament program.²⁵ During 1935–6, Germany's ally Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and Germany reoccupied the Rhineland. In 1936, Germany also signed an anti-Comintern pact with Japan. Around this time, Litvinov declared that Germany had shifted from the original plan to attack France to the plan of invading Russia.²⁶ Stalin too was convinced that a major war was approaching and abandoned his attempt to mobilize the League to the Soviet defense.²⁷

Indeed the League failed to respond to Germany and Italy's acts of aggression. It stood by passively as Hitler acted in defiance of the Versailles Treaty and could not overcome France and Britain's blocking of sanctions against Italy. Litvinov anticipated the consequences of the Italian aggression in Ethiopia and the German occupation of the Rhineland, but could not convince France and Britain to support any meaningful sanctions against the aggressors.²⁸ His insistence that “peace is indivisible” had no effect, and his warnings to the League that it would become “a laughing-stock” or even “harmful”²⁹ if it failed to act on the Rhineland issue were proving increasingly prophetic.

The Soviet Union was also unable to obtain a commitment to collective security from the two major countries it had designated as absolutely necessary for success – France and Poland. The new French foreign minister, Pierre Laval, was much more skeptical of the Soviet Union than his predecessor and announced before the French Senate that “the French government will never do anything which justifies Germany in thinking that we intend to practice a policy of isolation toward her.”³⁰ Worried about French attempts to secure a separate agreement with Germany and trying to push Laval into an agreement with the Soviet Union, Litvinov even offered Germany a bilateral nonaggression pact on May 8, 1935.³¹ France signed the pact but did not ratify it until February 1936, and it consistently resisted including any military obligations in collective security. Poland too indicated its mistrust of both Russia and France. Rather than cooperating with them, Warsaw signed a nonaggression treaty with Berlin in January 1934. Between the Germans and the Russians, the Poles preferred the former.³²

At home, Litvinov was devastated by Stalin's purges in 1937, directed at Communist Party leaders, high-ranking military commanders, and diplomats. On fabricated charges of treason, the NKVD arrested and shot not only the best Red Army generals – Tukhachevski, Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eidman, Fel'dman, Primakov and Putna – but also the best of the diplomatic corps. Litvinov's colleagues and comrades, such as his first deputies Karakhan, Krestinski, Sokol'nikov, and Stomonyakov, were purged, and the commissar of foreign affairs himself was waiting to be arrested any day. The purges had a severely negative impact on the policy of collective security. The terror emboldened Hitler, who was happy to see the “catastrophic weakening” of Soviet military power,³³ and it reinforced potential allies’ already significant mistrust of the Soviet system.

Munich and After

During 1938–9, the collective security policy suffered additional blows from which it could not recover. In March 1938, Hitler invaded Austria and then called for Czechoslovakia's secession of its ethnically German Sudetland. Disappointed with the Anglo-French unwillingness to strengthen collective security, the Soviet Union blamed the two countries for their inaction, yet failed officially to condemn Germany's annexation of Austria. France only partially mobilized in response to the German threat to Czechoslovakia and was looking for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.³⁴ As the Czechoslovaks were getting ready to fight, the Soviet government made it clear it would act on its obligations to defend the country if France agreed to do so as well.³⁵ However, on September 29, 1938, France and Britain met with Germany and Italy in Munich and agreed to partition Czechoslovakia without consulting the Soviets. Czech Prime Minister Benes accepted the results.

After the Munich Conference, Litvinov expressed his disgust with Czechoslovakia's dismemberment and predicted – again correctly – a similar outcome for Poland. During his meeting with the French ambassador, Litvinov said, “I merely note that the Western powers deliberately kept the USSR out of negotiations. My poor friend, what have you done? As for us, I do not see any other outcome than a fourth partition of Poland.”³⁶

In the meantime, domestic support for special relations with Germany grew stronger. Stalin too was distancing himself from Litvinov and his policy. In March 1939, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. Stalin responded by saying that a “new imperialist war has become a fact,”³⁷ thereby indicating that he was returning to the traditional line of balancing between Western powers and Germany and that Litvinov's policy of mustering a collective resolve was now alien to him. In April, Litvinov made one last attempt to engage France in a security arrangement to guarantee the independence of the Baltic states, receiving what he described a “humiliating” response.³⁸ In May 1939, Stalin replaced him with the leading advocate of the pro-German line, Vyacheslav Molotov.

Yet Stalin was not yet prepared to enter an alliance with Germany and did not reach a final decision to do so until mid-August 1939.³⁹ By replacing Litvinov, he meant to signal to France and Britain that he had other options, were they to continue harboring hopes of their own special deal with Hitler. As one historian wrote, “There is a good reason to believe that Litvinov may have been sacked because he was skeptical about the Soviet triple alliance initiative.”⁴⁰ However, negotiations over the “grand alliance” were proceeding slowly, and Stalin began to signal – through lower-level contacts – his interest in signing a separate agreement with Berlin.⁴¹ In early August, in response to his urgent invitation to hold a military convention, Western powers sent only low-level delegations to Moscow that were unable to offer any commitments. Then, on August 24, Stalin made the decisive step of authorizing Molotov to sign a nonaggression treaty with his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop.⁴² Once again, as in the early twentieth century, the grand alliance failed to materialize, and this time Russia found itself on the other side.

Stalin's and Litvinov's Worldviews

Both Stalin and Litvinov were proud advocates of the Soviet concept of honor as derived from ideology, Communist Party membership, and state employment. Soon after its emergence, the Soviet system established the notions of chest’ (“debt of honor”) and pochet (“honorary title”) for the purpose of expanding its legitimizing reach within society.⁴³ Diplomatic imperatives of peaceful coexistence with capitalism notwithstanding, the Soviet Union was not about to surrender its ideological mission in the world.⁴⁴ Indeed, the Soviet state viewed its ideological commitments as essential for preserving world peace. As Litvinov stated in one of his international speeches,

Stalin and Litvinov therefore had a strong basis for a shared understanding of how to organize relations with Western nations. They shared communist ideological values and their Leninist interpretation. That interpretation ended the brief Soviet commitment to the idea of world revolution in favor of the doctrine of peaceful coexistence with capitalism.⁴⁶ Both politicians were also pragmatic in projecting Soviet power abroad. It was Stalin's desire to practice moderate state-centered diplomacy by moving away from the early Bolshevik ideological fervor that led to his decision to replace Georgi Chicherin as commissar for foreign affairs with Litvinov.⁴⁷

However, although they shared commitments to an ideologically inspired yet pragmatic foreign policy, the two statesmen differed in their interpretations of pragmatism and collective security. To Stalin, collective security was merely a defensive alliance to restrain Hitler, whereas Litvinov advocated a more expansive and institutionalized vision for establishing a lasting peace in international relations. Whereas Stalin's perspective on honor was defensive and isolationist, Litvinov's was more cooperative and internationalist.

With its concentration on domestic priorities and tactics of flexible alliances between Germany and France, Stalin's statesmanship was a Soviet, perhaps more isolationist, version of the Russian recueillement policy. Like his tsarist predecessors Gorchakov and Stolypin, Stalin was preoccupied with domestic modernization and stability. His state-building priorities became especially clear in the mid-1930s. By that time, Stalin's “socialism in one country” had obtained a clear nationalist dimension, and the term rodina (motherland) was reintroduced to strengthen the Soviet notion of patriotism.⁴⁸ At the Seventeenth Communist Party Congress in January 1934, Stalin stressed that the Soviet Union was not interested in either a pro-Polish or pro-French policy, but instead “oriented itself in past and present to the USSR, and only the USSR.”⁴⁹

Externally, Stalin showed himself to be a shrewd practitioner of flexible alliance tactics by waiting until the last moment to conclude the nonaggression pact with Hitler.⁵⁰ That Stalin was not in favor of an alliance with Germany is evident from his initial support for collective security diplomacy and efforts to engage Britain and France even after dismissing Litvinov. Yet it is equally true that Stalin never fully trusted Litvinov's efforts and continued to keep lines of communication with Germany open. Stalin's attitude toward collective security was similar to that toward the disarmament efforts of the late 1920s, which he dismissed as “imperialist pacifism”:

Stalin too believed in state honor, but saw it achieved not in cooperation with Western powers, but with whoever assisted the Soviet Union in better achieving its objectives. Such was the meaning of Stalin's words to Ribbentrop as he was leaving Moscow on August 23, 1939: “The Soviet Government…could guarantee on his word of honor that the Soviet Union would not betray its partners.”⁵²

In contrast, Litvinov was a practitioner of cooperative and internationalist collective security. His background – as a Jew who spent ten years of his life in Britain and was married to a British woman – lent his policy beliefs a Westernizing, anglophile leaning. Whereas Stalin viewed peace as temporary and resulting from international power balancing and imperialist wars, Litvinov assumed peace to be “indivisible,” requiring international cooperation. As if he was arguing with his boss, the minister stated on one occasion, “What other guarantees of security are there – military alliance and the policy of balance of power? Pre-war history has shown that this policy not only does not get rid of war, but on the contrary unleashes it.”⁵³

Without becoming a liberal internationalist, Litvinov went beyond Stalin's realist thinking and embraced a cautiously cooperative vision of honor. Whereas Stalin favored flexible alliances, Litvinov openly advocated “entangling alliances” that would require the commitment of military and other resources to the cause of preventing international aggression and making “war itself impossible.”⁵⁴ In addition, the minister felt a personal animosity toward Hitler and rarely missed an opportunity to emphasize his “mad ideas”⁵⁵ – points that Stalin and his realist-minded supporters did not necessarily find relevant.

Yet his commitment to a cooperative vision of honor did not make Litvinov a radical Westernizer or a foreign policy dove. As a diplomat and a politician, he exercised his power cautiously. No enthusiast for Rappalo, the minister nevertheless wanted to preserve good relations with Germany while it was still possible.⁵⁶ In addition, Litvinov did not exclude pressure from his policy arsenal and applied it to allies to persuade them to act more decisively. In December 1937, for example, he suggested to the French ambassador Robert Colander that a German-Soviet rapprochement was “perfectly” possible, as a warning against the West's appeasement of Hitler regarding Czechoslovakia.⁵⁷

Despite Litvinov's differences with Stalin, the foreign minister's views and policy were significant in executing collective security. He was ultimately Stalin's choice over Chicherin, and Stalin viewed him as a professional, rather than a party apparatchik, at a time when Stalin's own views on international matters were not fully formed. The fact that the foreign minister was excluded from the party's inner core⁵⁸ suited Stalin well. Apparently, he also had personal respect for the man, sparing Litvinov during the purges while arresting his many comrades and colleagues.

Domestic Conditions and Support

Judging by domestic conditions, the Soviet Union was hardly in a position to pursue an assertive foreign policy. During most of the 1920s, Russia was recovering from the recent war with Germany, a civil war, and a mass famine. The 1930s brought the real fear of a Japanese threat after the Kwantung Army's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, followed by the threat of another war with Germany. Thus the Soviet Union was far from ready to respond adequately to the new dangers. Short of revenue, it also lacked the industrial and military capabilities required for meeting external challengers. As one historian wrote, “Never had the regime been less prepared to withstand the shock of war, and yet never had war seemed to be more likely.”⁵⁹ It was then, in the early 1930s, that Stalin put his emphasis on accelerating “the tempo” of industrial development, justifying it in terms of responding to powerful external threats:

It was the constant fear of an external attack that drove the paranoid Stalin to conduct, at enormous human cost, mass collectivization and purges. There was also a massive increase in Soviet defense spending, from 5 percent of the overall budget in the 1920s to 26 percent in the 1930s and 43 percent in 1941.⁶¹ Although at the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Communist Party Congresses in January 1934 and March 1939, Stalin cited indicators of the absolute increase in Soviet industrial production⁶² relative to the stagnating and depressed “countries of capitalism,” he did not fail to note that the USSR remained behind much of the world in terms of per capita production.⁶³

Given the external and domestic conditions, some within the Soviet political class favored the Litvinov-advocated policy of collective security as the appropriate response to the rising German threat. Litvinov and his supporters within the Narkomindel also opposed increasing trade with Germany as advocated by David Kandelaki, the Soviet trade representative in Berlin from 1935–7.⁶⁴ In addition to the Narkomindel, collective security in its increasingly anti-German version found support within the party and military circles. For example, the leading party ideologist Nikolai Bukharin strongly shared Litvinov's conviction that Hitler's ideology “had cast a dark and bloody shadow over the world,” representing a danger to all humanity.⁶⁵ Among the military, the influential Marshal Tukhachevski supported the anti-Fascist front, which German intelligence even tried to counter by disseminating disinformation about him and forwarding it to the Soviet authorities.⁶⁶ However, both Bukharin and Tukhachevski were soon purged, thereby weakening internal support for collective security.

Stalin's own attitude was flexible. He authorized Litvinov to go ahead with collective security, but grew skeptical of it over time. A member of the flexible alliances school, he was uncomfortable with the idea of “entangling alliances” and was reluctant to support sanctions against Germany and its allies. For example, when in September 1935 Litvinov insisted on implementing “serious sanctions” over Italy's aggression in Abyssinia as “a formidable warning for Germany as well,” Stalin did not authorize them.⁶⁷ Still, until about 1937, he largely abstained from interfering with the domestic dispute between advocates and critics of the anti-Fascist front. That year signs of Soviet leaders’ increasing support for Germany included purges of the Jewish ambassador in Berlin – to the liking of the Germans – and of anti-German military commanders, such as Tukhachevski.⁶⁸

Litvinov was never a full-fledged member of the Soviet political establishment. More influential were Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrei Zhdanov, and Lazar’ Kaganovich – all members of Stalin's inner circle and supporters of continuing with the Rappalo line. Molotov, the leading critic of Litvinov who was to be his successor, either publicly advocated for including Germany in the collective security system or avoided mentioning the system at all.⁶⁹ Despite his caution, he nevertheless clearly asserted, as he did in this interview with Le Temps in March 1936, that although “there is a tendency among certain sections of the Soviet public toward an attitude of thoroughgoing irreconcilability to the present rulers of Germany…the chief tendency, and one determining the Soviet Government's policy, thinks that an improvement in Soviet-German relations is possible.”⁷⁰

Western Allies

The Western partners provided quite limited support to the Soviet Union. Although both Litvinov and Stalin understood the importance of involving France and Britain in a coalition,⁷¹ those countries acted from their own strategic calculations. In the 1930s, France was no longer capable of catching up with Germany economically, but built defensive land fortifications, expecting the Maginot Line to provide sufficient protection from external attack. Britain played for time and was even more in favor of appeasing Hitler than was France.⁷² Neither power trusted the USSR enough to enter into a binding coalition with it, and each, at times, harbored hopes to channel Germany's aggression to the East.

France had difficulty accepting Litvinov's definition of international aggression from the start.⁷³ Although it became more cooperative under Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, his tragic assassination in October 1934 returned the French course to its traditional skepticism of the USSR's motives. Having concluded the agreement on mutual assistance with the Soviet Union in May 1935, France never specified its scope nor did it ever pledge any military assistance. As late as 1937 – and despite an important decline in France's material capabilities relative to those of Germany⁷⁴ – the French leadership was against any form of military cooperation with the Soviet leaders.⁷⁵ Laval was also categorically opposed to any sanctions against Italy and Germany in response to their occupations of Ethiopia and the Rhineland, respectively. While delaying any meaningful cooperation with the Russians, the French hoped to strengthen their ties with Germany. Litvinov was alarmed by the increasing frequency of the French ambassador's meetings with Nazi leaders in Berlin and by Laval's perception of the French-Soviet pact as an “obstacle” to any improvement in France's relations with Germany.⁷⁶ In March 1938, the Soviet foreign commissar felt compelled to remark to U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies that “France has no confidence in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union has no confidence in France.”⁷⁷

Britain was even less cooperative, signaling its desire to strengthen ties with the USSR only after the Munich Conference. In March 1939, responding to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, the British government sent notes to Greece, Yugoslavia, France, Turkey, Poland, and the Soviet Union, inviting a collective response to possible aggression against Romania.⁷⁸ However, just as Poland refused to be a part of a coalition with the Soviets, Neville Chamberlain too confessed to his “profound distrust of Russia”:

The architect of appeasement, Chamberlain not only had a poor understanding of Hitler's intentions but also acted on his Russophobic instincts.⁸⁰ The British prime minister's real objective was to exclude the Soviet Union from European affairs.⁸¹ As A. J. P. Taylor suggested, “the British government…merely wanted to chalk a Red bogey on the wall, in the hope this would keep Hitler quiet.”⁸²

The United States, as significant a power as it was, had not recognized the Soviet Union until November 1933. Litvinov saw that event as securing yet more recognition of Soviet Russia as a great power and as the “fall of the last position, the last front of the capitalist world's offensive against us which after the October [revolution] took the form of non-recognition and sabotage.”⁸³ However, in the 1930s the U.S. government took a largely isolationist position toward European and Asian affairs⁸⁴ and, despite the generally favorable attitude toward Litvinov, failed to provide any form of the support he requested. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed no interest in signing a nonaggression pact in the Pacific, or sending a warship to Vladivostok or Leningrad, or giving the Soviet Union a loan.⁸⁵

Poland, which the Soviets perceived as another important power, was never interested in cooperating with the USSR and never took collective security seriously. Instead, it signed a nonaggression treaty with Hitler and was quietly preparing to take advantage of growing German strength. In particular, the Polish foreign minister Colonel Josef Beck expressed his readiness to cooperate with the Germans and the Hungarians in partitioning Czechoslovakia: the Sudetens for Germany, Slovakia for Hungary, and Teschen for Poland.⁸⁶ As the Soviets were preparing to defend Czechoslovakia, the Poles were planning to take over a piece of it.⁸⁷ They were among the first to recognize Hitler's invasion of Austria, and the Soviet leaders suspected the Poles of fomenting unrest inside the USSR for the same expansionist purposes.⁸⁸

Alternative Explanations

One common perception of collective security among scholars is that Stalin was never serious about this policy, placing his hopes instead on an imperialist war. Fully aware of Russia's weakness, he wanted to exploit Germany and the Western powers’ contradictions, thereby winning time to strengthen his country's military capabilities. From this perspective, collective security was an insignificant episode in Stalin's larger strategic design.⁸⁹

For example, in Henry Kissinger's assessment, Stalin by nature was a realist – indeed “the supreme realist…patient, shrewd, and implacable, the Richelieu of his period.”⁹⁰ Furthermore, “Stalin, the great ideologue, was in fact putting his ideology in the service of Realpolitik.…In due course, Stalin did move into the anti-Hitler camp, but only very reluctantly and after his overtures to Nazi Germany had been rebuffed.”⁹¹ Kissinger does not make much of Litvinov and describes Soviet policy during the 1930s as Stalin's “bazaar for bids on a Soviet pact – one which the democracies had no hope of winning if Hitler was prepared to make a serious offer.”⁹²

Such an interpretation does not explain why the ideologically flexible Stalin chose to ally with authoritarian Germany over Western democracies. If indeed he was thinking strictly in security terms, it would have made more sense to side with the West, given that France and Britain were together stronger than Germany.⁹³ Even more problematic is the assumption that Litvinov's beliefs and policy were insignificant. Stalin indeed did think like a realist, saying in 1927 that “a great deal…depends on whether we shall succeed in deferring the inevitable war with the capitalist world…until the time…when the capitalists start fighting each other.”⁹⁴ Still, during the 1930s, he proved flexible enough to entertain the possibility of cooperation with the West and empowered Litvinov to exploit it. While remaining deeply mistrustful of France and Britain's intentions, the Soviet Union nevertheless worked hard to implement collective security and was even prepared to fight for it in the case of aggression against Czechoslovakia. The opportunity for building an anti-Hitler coalition existed, and the West also bears responsibility for letting it slip away.

Even less convincing is the argument that the Soviet Union always sought an alliance with Germany and that it did so for offensive, rather than defensive, purposes. In this interpretation, Litvinov is not merely insignificant; he is viewed as in “unreserved agreement with Stalin and with the Rappalo line” and as merely playing a “double game”⁹⁵ of pretending to be anti-German for the West's benefit, while in fact working to strengthen Soviet relations with Berlin. Some scholars go so far as to claim that Stalin wanted a European war as much as Germany did and even deliberately aided Hitler's rise by undermining the Comintern and German communists.⁹⁶ They claim that Stalin's hidden objective from the start, or at least since 1939, was to increase Soviet territorial gains in Europe, which was ultimately achieved by signing the secret protocols.⁹⁷

This perspective too downplays the Western powers’ contribution to the failure of collective security, and it ignores evidence of the Soviet Union's relative openness to the possibility of an anti-Fascist pact and of Litvinov's fierce struggle to see it come to fruition. By presenting Stalin as consistently supportive of the Rappalo line, it attributes to him the superhuman ability to foresee the pact with Germany some ten tumultuous and complicated European years earlier. A more realistic view is that “Stalin always exploited opportunities as they appeared at a given moment”⁹⁸ and that he wanted to give collective security a chance. During the mid-1930s, another historian contends that it was quite natural to hope for the policy's success and share Litvinov's view about the importance of restraining Hitler's ambitions. Indeed it is only “from the perspective of 1939 and the Nazi-Soviet pact” that “such warnings appear Machiavellian.”⁹⁹

Engaging the United States in Counterterrorist Cooperation

The 9/11 tragedy took place on American soil, but was seen as an equally tragic and dangerous development by Russia as well. By 2001, Russia had already experienced multiple terrorist attacks, and many Russians felt instinctively sympathetic to the American people and government (see Table 8.1). President Vladimir Putin was among the first to call President George Bush to express his support and pledge important resources to help America in its fight against terror. Despite the reservations of the political class and other areas of society, Putin offered America broad support for its operations in Afghanistan, including sharing intelligence, opening Russian airspace to relief missions, taking part in search-and-rescue operations, rallying Central Asian countries to the American cause, and arming anti-Taliban forces inside Afghanistan.

However, Putin's efforts to engage the United States predated September 11. The new leader had wanted to start fresh after the NATO military campaign against Serbia that had considerably soured Russia–West relations, and he had began to cultivate ties with the American administration soon after he came to office. Washington's initial reaction was cold. The new George W. Bush administration in the United States made it clear that it did not foresee any breakthroughs in relations with Russia. It made public the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who had spied for the Russians, and it subsequently expelled fifty Russian diplomats. It threatened to end any economic aid except for nonproliferation projects and – through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – accused Russia of aiding in the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons technologies. As late as February 2001, Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice insisted that Russia was a threat to America and its European allies. Putin, however, persisted in his efforts to strengthen ties with the United States and finally had a breakthrough in a meeting with the American president in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in the summer of 2001. The relationship began to thaw, largely thanks to personal chemistry between the two leaders. It was after that summit meeting that Bush made his famous remark about their relationship: “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”²

Determined to overcome skepticism at home and abroad, Putin pressed forward by stressing the broad positive potential of the new Russian-U.S. relationship. In particular, beginning with his interview in the Wall Street Journal in February 2002, he emphasized Russia as a reliable alternative to traditional Middle Eastern sources of oil and natural gas. At that time Russia was the world's single largest non-OPEC oil exporter, with 10 percent of known oil reserves and 9 percent of world output. Yet it only accounted for 1 percent of American imports in 2001.³ Putin projected that Russia would increase production of crude oil at an annual rate of 9 percent, with much of this increase intended for export, and a considerable part of that for the United States. In May of 2002 the U.S. and Russian presidents signed a joint declaration on energy cooperation at their summit in Moscow. Then followed the Houston “energy summit” in October, at which Russian officials said that they could export as much as a million barrels a day to the United States within five years. The Economist summed up these efforts at the time: “America's relations with Russia are now better than at any time since the end of the Second World War and are improving.”⁴

U.S.-Russian relations also improved in the area of military security. Putin moved to organize security relationships with Western countries on the common basis of counterterrorism. After initially supporting Milosevic, he opted to minimize Russian involvement in the affairs of the post-Kosovo Balkans. In August 2003, Moscow withdrew its peacekeeping mission from Bosnia and Kosovo. Putin's efforts to focus the security agenda on issues of counterterrorism resonated with the White House. In addition to supporting the U.S. anti-Taliban operation in Afghanistan, Putin sought to develop a new framework of strategic interaction with the United States. He saw the decision by Bush to withdraw from the ABM treaty as potentially threatening, but at a time of relative Russian weakness and emerging trust between the two countries Putin decided to swallow hard in the interests of pursuing other Russian objectives. Despite formidable domestic resistance, he expressed little opposition to the U.S. decision to build nuclear missile defense systems unilaterally, and he accepted Bush's conclusion that “the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks.”⁵ Although Putin viewed the U.S. decision to withdraw from the treaty as a “mistake,” his reaction was nonthreatening, despite some expectations of a confrontational response.

At one point the Russian leader even expressed interest in joining NATO, and some NATO leaders indicated their support of Russia's membership in the alliance. In late 2001, NATO secretary general Lord Robertson, supported by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, advocated giving Russia a status equal to the alliance's nineteen permanent members, including veto power over certain decisions. In the assessment of the New York Times, the plan promised a “fundamental shift in behavior for the 52-year-old organization, which was founded after World War II specifically to contain the military power of the Soviet Union” and would result in Russia's “full partnership with Western democracies.”⁶ An important step in that direction was the establishment at the May 28, 2002, summit in Rome of a new NATO-Russia Council for consulting on principles and actions against common threats. The U.S.-Russian joint declaration at the summit became the high point in their fast developing relationship. It stated the two nations’ “belief that new global challenges and threats require a qualitatively new foundation for our relationship” and that “we are achieving a new strategic relationship. The era, in which the United States and Russia saw each other as an enemy or strategic threat has ended. We are partners and we will cooperate to advance stability, security, and economic integration, and to jointly counter global challenges and to help resolve regional conflicts.”⁷

Supporting the United States in Afghanistan, but Not Iraq

Despite Putin's active support of America after 9/11, he chose to oppose the U.S. military intervention in Iraq. With France and Germany, Russia decided to join the coalition of those opposing the unilateral American war.

Supporting the U.S. war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was quite simple – for a long time, Russia had supported the Northern Alliance and was happy to have its long-time rival that sponsored terrorism in Chechnya removed from power without a single Russian shot fired. While offering his support to the Northern Alliance, Putin made it clear that he would operate within the framework of the United Nations, based on support of the UN Security Council. His support for the United States was therefore strong yet conditional.

The war in Iraq was a different matter. Along with Russia's foreign policy officials, Putin was opposed to proceeding without UN authorization for the use of force. As in Afghanistan, his objective was to reduce terrorist threats to Russia, and he wanted to provide his country with better conditions for economic modernization. Unconvinced by claims about the existence of a nuclear program in Iraq and the putative links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Al Qaida terrorist network – the key arguments advanced by the Bush administration for the war – he saw it as a deviation from the global war on terror. With many others in Russia's political circles, Putin believed that terrorism, as a stateless phenomenon, was a challenge to the very system of nation-states. In his view, terrorism could only be defeated through the coordination of state efforts, and not by taking on relatively established states, such as Iraq.

Putin's decision to side with Europe, and not the United States, partly reflected pragmatic considerations. First, Russian ties with Europe were strong and becoming stronger. Russia's energy markets were primarily in Europe, which accounted for 40 percent of Russia's foreign trade against a mere 5 percent with the United States.⁸ In June 2003, Putin also sealed a joint venture with British Petroleum worth more than six billion dollars. Second, there was the issue of Iraq's sizable debt to Russia – $7–8 billion, by different calculations – and Russia's worries that it would never see the money if the war was waged. Russian experts also forecasted a drastic fall in world oil prices in the event of war – another nightmare for a country in which a considerable portion of revenue came from exporting natural resources. In addition, the war was not popular at home, with the public skeptical about supporting the United States. In April 2003, only 2 percent approved of the U.S. military action, whereas 83 percent were opposed.⁹ Finally, the world outside Russia – as the Pew Global Attitudes survey demonstrated – overwhelmingly denied the legitimacy of the American decision.¹⁰ Table 8.1 shows the degree to which different nations, including Russia, held decreasingly favorable views of the United States over time.

Putin's opposition was also shaped by the compatibility of his vision with that of Western European nations and the discrepancy between the Kremlin's perception and that of the United States. To Russia, it remained critically important not to recognize the use of force against established states and to rely on the United Nations as the only legitimate body to make such a decision.

The U.S.-Russian Partnership, Unraveled

The U.S.-Russian partnership was not to last. As the immediacy of the post-9/11 threat subsided, Washington backed away from its initial commitment to take its relationship with Moscow to a new level of cooperation and returned to expecting Russia to follow America's foreign policy agenda.

In late 2002–3, the United States perceived Russia's efforts to secure its borders and territorial integrity as a reflection of Russia's revisionist and expansionist agenda. The United States insisted on Russia providing a “political solution” to the Chechnya problem, by which Washington meant holding talks with those whom the Kremlin considered terrorists. The United States also downplayed links between Chechen terrorists and al Qaida, which made it possible for it to grant political asylum and media exposure to those closely affiliated with Chechen terrorists.¹¹ In addition, in line with its new regime change strategy, the United States applied pressure on the entire former Soviet region to transform its political institutions,¹² which the Kremlin viewed as largely destabilizing and unhelpful in fighting the war on terror. The U.S.-Russian relationship further suffered in the area of military security. In addition to withdrawing from the ABM treaty, the United States took steps to move its military infrastructure closer to Russia's borders, raising further suspicions in Moscow. Finally, there was little left of the two nations’ efforts to establish an energy partnership. Washington no longer looked for ways to work with Russia as a partner and instead routinely denounced Russia's leaders for using energy as “political leverage” to influence its neighbors’ policies. The initially ambitious global counterterrorist agenda was largely abandoned.

Putin's Sense of Honor

Much like his tsarist predecessors, Putin viewed the honor of the state as being realized by advancing Russia's status as a European great power – a power with Christian roots able to defend itself against external threats and obligated to champion the larger international objectives of the Western world. The Kremlin therefore saw Russia's participation in a global struggle with terrorism as fully consistent with its Westernness and as an affirmation of its great power status.

Putin's commitment to European identity as he understood it is obvious in his many speeches and public interviews. He came to power as a believer in Peter the Great's philosophy of catching up with Europe and did not seem to have much faith that developing relations with the East would benefit Russia. For example, he shared the concern that, if Moscow failed to improve its economic situation, Asian neighbors could exploit Russia. In one of his speeches, the president issued this explicit warning: “I do not want to dramatize the situation, but if we do not make every real effort, even the indigenous Russian population will soon speak mostly Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.”¹³ In addition, some of his statements regarding the Chechens further revealed his ethnocentric bias. The insistence on Russia's belonging to Western European culture reflected his beliefs more accurately than his attempts to cast himself as a supporter of strengthening ties with the East, as seen in the following passage:

When the Orange Revolution in Ukraine challenged Russia's influence in the former Soviet region, Putin sought to reaffirm his commitments to European values and in 2007 declared that he saw Russia moving toward the same “ideals of freedom, human rights, justice and democracy,” albeit at its own pace and given its own conditions.¹⁵

While revealing his bias toward Europe, Putin saw his task as strengthening Russia domestically, which was essential if the nation was to act on its European commitments. He envisioned Russia becoming a “normal” great power,¹⁶ pursuing the objective of becoming a full-fledged member of the Western community. Yet he also recognized that Russia could not join the Western community at the expense of its sovereignty, material and human capabilities, territorial size, and political reputation among cultural allies outside the West. Referring to the threat of terrorism and territorial disintegration, Putin perceived that remaining a great power was a security necessity for Russia, claiming that “Russia can only survive and develop within the existing borders if it stays as a great power” and reminding his audience that “during all of its times of weakness…Russia was invariably confronted with the threat of disintegration.”¹⁷ Great power status was therefore not a goal in itself for Putin, but rather a necessary condition for Russia's more advanced engagement with the world.

In addition to security imperatives, the president emphasized Russia's need to modernize by warning of the danger of its turning into a Third World country. Ridiculing overdone great power rhetoric – “let us not recollect our national interests on those occasions when we have to make some loud statements” – Russia's new leader compared Russia to Portugal, the EU's poorest member.¹⁸ Despite Russia's economic recovery after the 1998 financial crisis, the size of its economy at purchasing power parity was less than one-fourth of the economies of China and Japan and less than one-tenth of the economies of the United States and the European Union.¹⁹

Putin therefore sought to engage the West in honorable joint projects, such as fighting a global war on terror. After 9/11, his foreign policy was pragmatic, focused on improving Russia's domestic conditions and cooperation with Western nations. Despite the presence of anti-Western sentiments among some of the members of Russia's political class, the president showed little support for the previously popular concept of building a multipolar world, and – until 2005 – he was more active in promoting Russia's relationship with the United States and Europe than with the East.

Domestic Support

Putin's vision of honor and his decision to support the United States in the post-September 11 struggle against terrorism found sufficient domestic support, but were also met with criticism from some members of the political class.

Among elites, a coalition of commercial and security interests embraced Putin's vision.²⁰ Liberal and commercially oriented elites had strongly supported him and his election as president. Especially important were Russia's oligarchs, super-wealthy businesspeople who had emerged as a powerful political force in 1996. At that time they were able to overcome their differences and pull together the financial resources to reelect the unpopular Yeltsin. After the August 1998 financial crisis, the recovery of the economy provided commercial elites with new opportunities for development. Russia's foreign trade had been enjoying a structural surplus, and the economy was wide open for commercial operations. Foreign trade's share of the GDP was around 50 percent, making the Russian economy about as open as Germany's. Although the stock of foreign direct investment accumulated since 1989 remained low,²¹ rising world oil prices provided Russia with new growth opportunities.

At the same time, many members of the security elite also felt compelled to embrace the new president because of his background in the security service and his beliefs in strengthening the state and social order. Initially, even people such as Aleksandr Prokhanov, the editor of the hard-line newspaper Zavtra, were writing favorably about him, although a year later he returned to his typical “irreconcilable” opposition to the Kremlin. The intensification of terrorist activities in the Caucasus and worldwide strengthened the positions of the security elites. In August 1999, Chechen rebels led by Shamil Basayev and the Arab fighter Khattab occupied parts of the neighboring republic of Dagestan, in response to which the Kremlin resumed military operations in the region. In that same month, two bombs exploded in Moscow residential buildings, killing hundreds of civilians. The sheer magnitude of violence was unprecedented. Russians united behind Putin, who was running for president on the platform of “eradicating extremism” in Chechnya and reestablishing a “strong state” throughout the entire Russian territory.²²

Although the liberal commercial elite and the security elite held fundamentally different worldviews, at the time they agreed on Putin's vision of state honor as a Westernizing great power and hoped to win his support to their respective viewpoints. Commercial elites were hopeful that the president would come to accept an even more pro-American worldview after September 11, whereas members of the security class expected him to become less supportive of the United States, which they believed had the potential to damage Russia's own interests and special relations with China and the Muslim countries.

The Russian general public, too, showed signs of increasing concern over America's actions in the world. According to data from the Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, 63 percent of all Russians felt that 9/11 was a form of “retribution for American foreign policy,” and another 64 percent perceived Washington's military activities in Afghanistan as dangerous for Russia.²³ In November 2001 – immediately after the terrorist attacks on the United States, when Russians felt a strong sympathy toward Americans – only 30 percent agreed with the statement that cooperation with the West was the main prerequisite for Russia's economic prosperity.²⁴ At the same time, Russians continued to show strong support for Putin's decision to side with the West in general.²⁵

Western Recognition

The cooperative vision of honor became possible in the context of a growing convergence of economic interests and security concerns between Russia and the West, and it lasted for as long as that convergence remained in place. Russia's economic recovery again made it attractive to foreign investors, reinforcing the Kremlin's desire to further integrate with the Western world.

On the security front, both Russia and the West, especially the United States, had been subject to terrorist attacks and had to find an appropriate international response to the new global threat. The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 and subsequent attacks on Spain in 2003 strengthened the sense of solidarity among all those fighting terrorism across the world. President George W. Bush proclaimed terrorism to be “pure evil” directed at freedom-loving people throughout the world and argued the need to launch the strategy of preemption.²⁶ Several leading intellectuals called on the West to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and linked the terrorist attacks to Islam and the Middle Eastern region.²⁷ In Russia, these developments provided Putin with a formidable opportunity to bolster his domestic and international posture and to vindicate his conception of security threats.

The subsequent development of closer ties between Russia and the United States strengthened the ground for the cooperative, rather than unilateral, vision of honor. President Bush's conviction that “old suspicions are giving way to new understanding and respect” and that the two countries are “allies in the war on terror” moving “to a new level of partnership,”²⁸ along with practical steps toward integrating Russia into NATO and deepening energy relations, provided the Kremlin with additional assurances about its foreign policy direction. Russia's relative weakness, on the one hand, and the emerging trust between Russian and Western leaders, on the other, explain why Putin initially did not object to several unilateral moves on the part of the United States, such as withdrawal from the ABM treaty and the drive to nuclear primacy. From 2001–3, the Kremlin was hoping that strong counterterrorist cooperation between Russia and the West would develop, and it was willing to overlook policies that gave a unilateral advantage to the United States. It was only later – in response to a new wave of NATO expansion, criticisms of Russia's role in Chechnya, promotion of democracy among the former Soviet states, and renewed energy competition in Eurasia – that Putin revised his vision of honor from a cooperative one into one that was more assertive and unilateral.

Alternative Explanations

Although offensive realism is hardly applicable in explaining Putin's war on terror – Russia was not strong enough to challenge the United States and did not engage in balancing behavior – defensive realists may feel compelled to argue their case. According to them, Russia's eagerness to establish closer ties with Western nations after 9/11 should be viewed as an example of rational accommodation or bandwagoning with the strongest states in the international system. Similarly, scholars of American “unipolarity” and hegemony have long noted the overwhelming power that the United States has in the international system,²⁹ and they have constructed an intellectual tradition that cherishes America's dominance in the world above all other imperatives.³⁰ Many neoconservative pundits supported this thinking.³¹ They argued that Russia was simply in no position to complain about U.S. policies or to demand a greater role in the world. A proper assessment of the international balance of power or unipolarity required that Moscow become dependent on Washington, and if Russia did not accept this role, it had to be made to follow the U.S. lead.³²

This argument focusing on the structure of the international system is compelling because the United States is by far the most powerful nation on earth and therefore is in a position to shape the policies of other nations. However, power by itself does not dictate imperial or hegemonic policies and does not require that other nations agree to accept such policies. Indeed Russia had sufficient power to assume important responsibilities for maintaining peace and stability in Eurasia. More importantly, however, Russia acts based on the perception of its ties with the West, rather than on rational interests. Although Russia was unable to challenge significantly the position of the United States in the world, many within the Russian political class recommended that the Kremlin do so by strengthening relations with China, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Muslim world.³³ Much like President Bush, the hard-liners viewed the post–September 11 world in terms of a struggle between “good” and “evil,” except they found America on the wrong side of the barricade.

Another alternative explanation places emphasis on Moscow's expansionist beliefs and anti-Western political culture, arguing that the Kremlin was never sincere about its cooperative strategy.³⁴ Proponents of this view are even more skeptical that Russia would enter into cooperative arrangements with Western nations voluntarily. As a revisionist state, Russia is expected to use every available opportunity to upset American plans to remain the dominant world power. Russia therefore represents a threat to American interests and must be either contained or fundamentally transformed. To dictate terms to Russia is not only possible; it is indeed necessary because it is the only language Russia can understand.³⁵ If this reasoning is correct, the post-9/11 partnership was doomed from the beginning, and American policy makers would be wise to abandon any search for common solutions and stay firm in resisting Russia's power aspirations.

This explanation is inaccurate in its portrayal of Russia and unrealistic in its recommendations to contain or punish Moscow. Rather than presenting Russia as an expansionist state, it is important to point out that, at least since Peter the Great, Russia's behavior has been formed by interactions with Europe and, after World War II, the West in general. Western civilization played an especially prominent role in creating the system of meanings in which to defend Russia's international choices.³⁶ Russia therefore has always been responsive to the behavior of Western nations and – with progressive leaders in the Kremlin – prepared to mend fences and pursue cooperation, rather than confrontation. This chapter's analysis indicates that after 9/11 Putin went far to establish a working partnership with the United States. His initial vision of honor and assessment of strategic threats had little to do with the anti-Americanism for which Putin is frequently blamed. Russia's president emphasized threats coming from economic backwardness and terrorism, and like many Western leaders, he saw terrorism as a threat to the very system of modern international relations.

The correction of Russia's course toward a greater assertiveness and criticism of the United States’ role in the world took place after the so-called colored revolutions and a new wave of NATO expansion. The new language of the Kremlin began to form in 2004–5 and found its full expression in Putin's speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in January 2007. By then the Kremlin was highly critical of the United States, but the development was to a great extent a product of America's own policies that ignored Russia's concerns and security interests. The U.S. methods in the war on terror and its efforts to undermine Russia's geopolitical position in Eurasia compelled the Kremlin to reevaluate its initially pro-American policy.