Memo #341
By Alexander Korolev – akorolev [at] nus.edu.sg
Many observers have recently registered a new shift in Russia’s foreign policy, labelling it, “pivot to Asia.” President Putin himself announced that “Russia’s reorientation toward the Pacific Ocean and the dynamic development in all our [Russia’s] eastern territories are our priority for the whole 21st century.” Russia’s new Foreign Policy Concept established in 2013 also made strengthening economic presence and creating security architecture in the Asia Pacific as Russia’s new priority.
Although attempts to prioritize Asia are not unprecedented in Russian history, the new pivot is different. Not only has it more substance and much larger and more regular state financial support, but, more importantly, it is the outcome of more profound and mutually-reinforcing international systemic and Russia’s domestic factors.
In terms of the international system, Russia’s new eastward thrust is a part of its longer campaign against American unipolar domination, which started with Putin’s speech in Munich in 2007, and later embodied in the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, events in Syria since 2010, the Snowden saga in 2013, the Eurasian integration initiative, the Ukraine crisis, and the recent China-Russia rapprochement.
But probably more important is Russia’s domestic environment. The complex processes of post-Soviet identity formation has begun to re-invoke the historically ever-present but recently dormant Asiatic component of Russia’s self. One official suggestion goes so far as to make the dictum “Rossiya ne Evropa [Russia is not Europe]” a cornerstone of Russia’s new cultural policy. Political parties and interests groups in Russia have started to exhibit an unprecedented willingness to reinvent Russia as a Eurasian great power. At the same time, public opinion, increasingly antagonized by Western sanctions, supports anti-West and pro-East policies and creates an atmosphere where “pro-American Russian elites either will become anti-American or stop being elites.”
As some note perspicaciously Russia’s new pivot to Asia marks the end of the epoch of post-Communist Russia’s integration with the West and the emergence of a new Eurasian geopolitics in which Putin’s vision of a “Greater Europe” from Lisbon to Vladivostok is being replaced by a “Greater Asia” from Shanghai to St. Petersburg. Probably for the first time in its history, Russia is firmly committed to realizing its Eurasian potential.
About the Author:
Alexander Korolev (Ph.D.) is a Research Fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore.
The double-headed eagle with two heads facing East and West on the cover page of atlas of the Russian Empire published in 1799 (Credit: Author’s picture from The Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture and Ethnography, Irkutsk Region, Eastern Siberia).
Links
- Gilbert Rozman, “The Russian Pivot to Asia,” The Asan Forum (December 1, 2014)
- “Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly,” Presidential Executive Office (December 12, 2013)
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation 2013,” (February 12, 2013)
- “Ministry of Culture: a Cornerstone of State Cultural Policy of Russia Must be the Thesis ‘Russia is not Europe’,” (in Russian), Nezavisimaya Gazeta (April 2014)
- “ANALYSIS: US Containment Policy Pushes Russia, China Together,” Sputnik News (April 21, 2014)
- Dmitri Trenin, “From Greater Europe to Greater Asia? – The Sino-Russian Entente,” Carnegie Moscow Center (April 9, 2015)
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