Strategic Culture In Russian Foreign Policy

The history of international relations has been mired with conflicts among states since the beginning of the nation state system.As cynical as it may sound,conflicts in the sphere of international relations are somewhat benign.A conflict does not necessarily result in war,but wars are the worst outcome of any conflict,even the shortest military engagements.As cynical as it may sound,it may be said that conflicts are one of the main reasons behind the development of the current international system.They provoke development,and some examples of conflict leading to development can be found with the notion of democracy,social rights,emancipation of women which all had their causes somewhat accelerated during periods of conflict.Russian-Georgian relationships have a long historical background and the two countries share close cultural ties.Due to the geographical location of Georgia,it has always been within the Russian sphere of concern in terms of security and its foreign policy decision making.The period during which the Soviet Union existed was relatively peaceful due to Moscow's complete regional control.The background to the recent conflict started in the late 80's,when the centralized power of the Kremlin started to weaken.The long lasting Russo-Georgian ?tangled relation resulted in full scale military confrontation for five days.This research aims to analyze the different aspects of conflict to trace the reasons behind this military confrontationThe Russo-Georgian relations during the eras of Yeltsin and Putin may be considered as a continuation of the pattern established during the period of the Soviet Union.The tussle between the two countries resulted in war in 2008,as Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.Scholars have undertaken tremendous amounts of research on Russian foreign policy throughout the years,but the recent annexation of the Crimean peninsula has made the understanding of Russian foreign policy even more doubtful and has caught the serious attention of scholars.One may think of the explanation of rational theories in international relations which has wide aspects in the understanding of conflicts.These theories still have a lot of capability in the explanation of Russian foreign policy,but in some cases the rational theories of international relations have their limitations.States may act in different ways in different circumstances and each state has its own “rationalities”.In this way strategic culture can be the “kind of a bridge” between common and special rationalities.The Georgian war of 2008 has been used as a case study to assess Russian strategic culture for several reasons.The first and foremost reason is that this was the first conflict after the Afghan war.The second reason why this case is of special interest,is the fact that despite Russia had experience in so called peacekeeping operations,Moscow has never before had the intention to recognize separatist states(for example Transnistria)as independent states.A third important reason as to why this case was selected is in order to understand the linkage between the Georgian case and the contemporary situation in the region.This has become the first link in the way we understand Russian foreign policy towards its immediate neighbors.And last but not least is the fact that the Georgian war can be treated as an indicator of “new instruments" in dealing with near abroad countries and a step towards its new status as a great power.This research will try to answer the following question: "Why,in its attempt to retain influence over neighboring post-Soviet states,has the Russian Government frequently employed a strategy that privileges direct military control over a small part of the state's territory over favorable relationships with the state's government and people?"This thesis through testing the hypothesis,which is: "The Russian government's strategic vision for national security and its relations with post-Soviet states has consistently-particularly during the Putin presidency-privileged direct military control of territory over building of cooperative and institutional links centered on soft power.This has largely been due to fact that Russian foreign policy has been influenced by Russian strategic culture,which,because of its specific development utilizes concepts similar to classic realism and geopolitics".This case study has a final goal of proving the role of Russian strategic culture in its foreign policy vision,especially towards it's near abroad states.The analytical capabilities of strategic culture allow us to see the deeper motivation of country to act in international arena as it acts and it doesn't put it to the "rational" frame of methodological tools.Strategic culture doesn't claim to be the universal role model for the understanding of states' foreign policy but it is one of the methods of analysis,it provides a more comprehensive and precise understanding of a state's motives and desires in foreign policy decision making.The strategic culture approach allows us to use the wide variety of analytical variables to examine the case of the Georgian war.In this research,we have used the pattern given by J.Lantis where he marks out potential sources of strategic culturephysical,political and social.We can clearly understand that those wide ranges of variables which affect the foreign policy decision making can lead researchers to be confused in their understanding,but the task in this thesis is to assess the variables that are of most importance for Russia's direct security concerns.It means that the selected case study will be tested through the lens of the most influential variables.Due to the specification of the strategic culture approach,one of the important sources in assessing the elements of strategic culture is the Constitution of the Russian Federation,the concept of foreign policy,military,national security concepts,and the energy strategy.General findings of this thesis talk about strategic culture as one more tools for the analysis of Russian foreign policy.The case of the Georgian war was influenced by the peculiarity of strategic culture and it seems Russia could not act in any other way due to certain factors such as Russia's threat perception,Russia's own vision of its place in the international arena or Russia's messianic desire to help brotherhood nations.The Georgian case became the first piece of the puzzle in the big picture of Russia's foreign policy towards it's near abroad.This research has been divided into the following chapters.Chapter I gives the general introduction about the thesis,also describes the methodology,theoretical framework and literature review related to this research.Chapter II provides the historical background of the topic.History is very important tool especially when we talk about strategic culture,but in the case of Russia's and Georgia's historical relations,historical background allows us to assess all problems and complexities of two state's relations.Due to the limitations of this research,this research has done an overview of historical background rather than going into details,Chapter III discusses significant elements of Russian strategic culture,literally we answer the question: "does Russian have strategic culture?" we found out which elements are more influential and why.This also,chapter assesses Russian official documents which provide evidence of the development of Russian strategic culture from Yeltsin period to Putin's era.Chapter IV outlines the main findings of Russian strategic culture and applies it to the case study-Georgian war.In Chapter V we brainstorm about how we have conducted this thesis.We have concluded that strategic culture in Russian case has more ability to give a deeper explanation of Russian foreign policy.Also,this chapter contains the main conclusion,based on the evidence about Russian strategic culture and findings of chapter II,III,IV.Thus,we believe that this thesis will provide better and deeper understanding of Georgian war and Russian foreign policy as well.The researchers and analysts have the choice and wide range of theoretical tools for assessing 5 days war and Russian foreign intentions,but with understanding cultural tools,seems like the situation around Russian foreign policy become clearer.