Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

As political scientist Alexander Motyl observed in 2001, “[c]ommunities of people do not become nations simply because we wish to imagine them as such; regimes do not become democratic just because we use the modifier; and political entities do not become—or stop being—empires merely because terminological fashion says so.”⁷ By the mid-2000s it was increasingly clear that Russia had not become a democratic state, nor had its aspirations for empire been squashed by the “end of history.” Tensions over the post–Cold War order and post-Soviet borders reemerged. NATO and EU expansion reached Russia’s borders and the borders of its so-called near abroad states that Moscow viewed as its inherent sphere of influence. In the same period Russia went to war for the first time outside its borders in the Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008.

Nonetheless, Russia’s imperial revival appeared like a marginal idea in the broader context of Russian foreign policy for most of the 1990s and 2000s. Neo-imperialism was embraced mostly rhetorically and superficially by a handful of radical Russian politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky or alluded to by Putin and his entourage for rhetorical flourish and to drum up nationalism among the domestic audience. Some attributed this nascent imperialism to Russia’s growing wealth and confidence driven by high oil prices of the mid-2000s.⁸ Some pointed again to the natural need to correct the alleged “humiliation” of Russia after the collapse of the USSR.⁹ Following the global economic downturn of 2008 and the domestic protests of 2011–13 against Putin’s regime, some saw Russia as isolated, embattled, and defensive and hence pushing back against these constraining international conditions.¹⁰ Some suggested that the rising nationalism and aggression was Putin’s response to his weakening popularity and growing opposition at home and an attempt to rally the country behind the Russian flag.¹¹ But few took the rising signs of Russia’s vaulting imperial ambitions seriously. Indeed over the past five years, most scholars have justified this indifference by alleging that Russia was a shadow of its former self and its military presented no challenge to the European continent or international order.¹² For instance, in 2011, scholar of Russia and at the time director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, Dmitri Trenin, echoed a common sentiment at the time: “Russia’s remarkable disinterest in its former empire has been paralleled by the other former Soviet republics distancing themselves from the former imperial center.”¹³ With the Georgian war already forgotten, the signs of Russian neo-imperialism were not all that evident.

Some scholars and commentators—especially those closer to the part of the world in question—did foresee Russia’s expansionist drive all along. In 1994, Norwegian academic and founder of peace and conflict studies Johan Galtung stated that Russia is expansionist and likely to base its agenda “on Slavic culture and religious orthodoxy, building a Soviet Union II based on Russia, Belarus, eastern Ukraine and northern Kazakhstan.”¹⁴ In 2001 Ukrainian-American Motyl argued that Russia is pursuing “creeping reimperialization.”¹⁵ In 2008, without much support at the time, British commentator and Economist editor Edward Lucas argued that Putin’s Russia has waged a “new cold war” on the West.¹⁶ In 2009, Kiev-born, Moscow-based political scientist and former Yeltsin adviser Emil Pain concluded, rather anticlimactically but nonetheless in dramatic counterpoint to the established view, that Russia demonstrates an “imperial syndrome” and seeks “maintaining territories” while preserving or re-creating an empire.¹⁷ Days ahead of the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, I argued that we are witnessing an expansionist strategy in action—Moscow’s efforts to grab land in the former Soviet space under the guise of protecting Russian compatriots.¹⁸