Russia’s foreign policy took a clear and destructive turn when it invaded Ukraine just over a year ago. In its new foreign policy strategy1published on March 31, Russia endorses this direction by frontally assuming a vision of the world and a strategy that is as revisionist as it is neo-imperial.
This is a major official turning point, since the previous version of Russia’s “foreign policy concept”, adopted in 2016, is profoundly out of step with its current action on the international scene.
Why be interested in such a document? Because this new document lays the foundations of the official strategy of Russian foreign policy. This is the policy that Russia officially recognizes, that is, the strategic interests and objectives that it seeks to achieve. And in an increasingly closed Russia, where the opacity of the decision-making processes considerably limits the work of analysts, the speeches and documents of strategic orientation are, essentially, what we have left to understand and interpret the foreign policy of this major player in international relations. And this is where the masks fall.
From the first section, Russia identifies itself as a “unique country-civilization”. It claims its exceptionality, which would justify specific rights and responsibilities.
This idea is part of an ancient so-called civilizational tradition according to which Russia was, is and will be a great country, a civilizational beacon illuminating its area of influence. Where the shoe pinches is in the lack of consent of the populations to belong to this “cultural and civilizational whole of the Russian world”. The neo-colonial character of the war against Ukraine is now clearly asserted: Russia has unilaterally assumed a duty towards its neighbors and assumes it without scruple.
However, the document remains imbued with a double thought, almost Orwellian, since he simultaneously claims for Russia a “pacifist, open, predictable and constant” foreign policy.
The relationship to the West
Russia prophesies the advent of a revolutionary era which would lead to the formation of a multipolar and more equitable order, because less Western. The construction of Russia’s identity is closely linked to its relationship with the West according to dynamics of attraction-repulsion. After seeking to deepen its relations with the West in recent decades, the Russian state is now constructing the latter as a threat and the source of global destabilization. Since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and even more since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has shifted its cooperation efforts towards non-Western states. In its new strategy, it identifies the RIC (Russia-India-China) as a new partnership to invest and develop.
The image that Russia wishes to project is clear: that of a country which is not isolated on the international scene and which builds equitable relations, far from a supposed Western neo-colonialism.
This complete questioning of the rules-based international order is accompanied by the defense of Russian conservative values and the “Russian model” internationally. The 2016 strategy stated as the first foreign policy objective the “strengthening of the rule of law and democratic institutions”, and affirmed its attachment to democratic values. In the 2023 document, on the other hand, democracy is absent: any reference to democratic models and values has disappeared. Instead, priority is given to the fight against the destabilization of Russia and its values. Russia’s break with democracy is thus not only consummated, but displayed.
PHOTO PAVEL BYRKIN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin toast the Kremlin in Moscow on March 21.
Does the publication of this document foreshadow even more uninhibited behavior by Russian foreign policy actors? Although its content does not really surprise those who follow this policy closely, the degree of revisionism and aggressive imperialism assumed in a text intended to guide Russian diplomatic action suggests a growing challenge to the international order. Russian diplomats now have free rein to act; Russia’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council this April will serve as a barometer in this regard.
Above all, the new strategy confirms that Russia’s aggressive foreign policy is not a parenthesis. The question now is how to protect rules-based governance and the international order while refusing to accommodate a Russia that denies them outright.