I senaste numret av Foreign Affairs har Rysslandsexperten Stephen Kotkin, professor i historia och internationella relationer vid Princeton, bidragit med en intressant analys av Rysslands grand strategy i världspolitiken genom århundraden. Vi återger här ett par av hans nyckelpassager.
Kotkins senaste arbete är första delen (av planerade tre) av en biografi över Josef Stalin.
”Russia today is not a revolutionary power threatening to overthrow the international order. Moscow operates within a familiar great-power school of international relations, one that prioritizes room for maneuver over morality and assumes the inevitability of conflict, the supremacy of hard power, and the cynicism of others’ motives. In certain places and on certain issues, Russia has the ability to thwart U.S. interests, but it does not even remotely approach the scale of the threat posed by the Soviet Union, so there is no need to respond to it with a new Cold War.
The real challenge today boils down to Moscow’s desire for Western recognition of a Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet space (with the exception of the Baltic states). This is the price for reaching accommodation with Putin – something advocates of such accommodation do not always acknowledge frankly. It was the sticking point that prevented enduring cooperation after 9/11, and it remains a concession the West should never grant. Neither, however, is the West really able to protect the territorial integrity of the states inside Moscow’s desired sphere of influence.”
Referens: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2016-04-18/russias-perpetual-geopolitics.