RUSSIA: Discourse of empire could shape foreign policy

Analysis

The discourse of empire has always been a factor in Russian politics. However, since the August conflict with Georgia, such discussion has become qualitatively different:

• Military engagement beyond Russia's borders has excited and emboldened nationalistically inclined analysts.
• Political discussions of empire have cut loose from previous norms that cautioned against going too far in alienating Western allies in general, and the United States in particular.
• The notion of empire has gone mainstream. Although there are clear differences between excitable nationalist chatter and the more sober official line of President Dmitry Medvedev's administration, there are also areas of overlap and a mutual interest in portraying Russia as strong.

Continuity and development. Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Russia's political elite has not been silent on the question of Russia's imperial mission:

• In 2003, prominent liberal reformist Anatoly Chubais wrote an article calling on Russia to pursue a "liberal empire" based on freedom, democracy and trade within Russia's traditional sphere of influence.
• Ideological developments emanating from Putin's presidential administration, particularly from Vladislav Surkov, likewise promoted the idea of Russia as a 'great power' with a territorial sphere of influence (see RUSSIA: Surkov rallies Putin party loyalists - March 27, 2006). Surkov spoke of East European countries joining the EU in terms of 'running off' from Moscow to Brussels, to another master, as if they were mere provinces rather than countries.

The strengthening of federal control during the Putin years, including in Chechnya, can also be interpreted as consolidating Moscow's hold over territories and national groups within its purview. From this perspective, events in Georgia mark a significant new step, with Medvedev venturing where Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Putin did not -- beyond Russia's official borders -- to assert a sphere of influence in a neighbouring country.

Imperial protagonists? The discourse of empire has become more prominent as well as qualitatively different since the Georgian conflict:

• Nationalist commentators -- notably Aleksandr Dugin -- have been writing and speaking with renewed vigour about the need for Russia to revisit unresolved border issues in the post-Soviet space. However, for Dugin and his ilk to speak in these terms is unremarkable.
• More notable has been a series of articles in 'Profil', a weekly news magazine published in partnership with leading German weekly 'Der Spiegel'. Editor Mikhail Leontev has taken to pushing the 'renewal of empire' line. In the latest issue, he gave space to Dugin; since the Georgian conflict, four prominent mainstream analysts have written articles promoting the notion of Russia as an empire.
• There is also an international context to this renewed discourse. The notion of Russia as an 'evil empire' has re-emerged in US political circles, in the form of the presidential election debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Neither candidate fully embraced nor definitively rejected the use of this phrase in relation to contemporary Russia.

Among the Russian elite, a widespread perception exists of the United States as an empire. This is coupled with a view that concepts such as Robert Kagan's 'benevolent empire' are influential in US policy-making. The conclusion then reached by many Russian observers is that the only way to counter the influence of one empire is with another empire.

Empire versus zone of influence. The term 'empire' is relatively imprecise, and there are several contested definitions regarding the nature of a revived imperial mission.

Contemporary discussions of empire in Russia are not really about the use of military force and the colonisation of territories. Perhaps counter-intuitively, events in Georgia only served to emphasise the non-military character of Russia's imperial aspirations: in August, Russia had the military capability to occupy Tbilisi and overthrow the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili. Yet despite some Western observers' alarmism regarding Russia's ultimate aims in Georgia, Moscow had no intention of forcing Saakashvili from power.

Even more exuberant nationalist commentators in Russia recognise that their country is not militarily strong enough to recreate an empire by force of arms (see RUSSIA: Global deployment plans exceed capabilities - October 2, 2008). What is instead envisaged is a neo-imperialism short on practical suggestions but long on theory and rhetoric:

• Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states is seen within the neo-imperialist discourse as the initial re-emergence of a Soviet-type empire of client states, though clearly without a unifying Communist ideology.
• The unifying tenets of this new empire would supposedly be notions of civilisational congruity and commonalities of history and culture, alongside Russia's role as a locus of international influence and strength to which these client states would be attracted.
• Russian neo-imperialists speak vaguely about Moscow recreating its imperial mission through the use of 'soft power', including the media, social organisations and religious groups.

Indeed, the neo-imperialist discourse speaks more to Moscow redeveloping a zone of influence, rather than exerting imperial control by brute force. It represents a traditional model of a strong Russia, whose 'core' provinces are ruled directly from Moscow, and which possesses indirect control over a periphery of client states.

From discourse to policy? The key question for those engaging with Russia is whether the renewal of discussions about empire makes any difference in terms of actual policy. In the near term, a flurry of interest in Russia's potential imperial role, whipped up in the wake of Russia's apparent show of strength of Georgia, makes no policy difference.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov published an article in 'Profil' two weeks ago in which he emphasised that a vital foundation of Russia's foreign policy position is that it has no overarching programme, imperial or otherwise. In other words, official foreign policy remains as it was: pragmatic and guided by national interests (see RUSSIA: Foreign policy shows continuity and consensus - July 23, 2008).

Nonetheless, the renewed discourse of imperialism matches more closely with official policy as it moves away from a regional perspective to take a global view. Neo-imperialist commentators and government officials both hold to the familiar precepts associated with Russia's belief in a multipolar world.

Commentators tend towards an overtly anti-American line in this respect, but officially, policymakers assert that multipolarity is a more neutral stance and that good relations are sought across the world so long as poles of influence are respected.

However, such a distinction is a fine one, and all agree that restraining the global influence of the United States is a foreign policy priority to be accomplished by strengthening other poles of influence across the world -- be that Europe, China, Latin America or the Islamic world (see INTERNATIONAL: US hegemony will persist, but decline - April 30, 2008).