Putin's Power Revisited: How Identity Positions and Great Power Interaction Condition Strategic Cooperation on Syria

Abstract

This article investigates how Russian foreign policies are shaped in a two-level interactive social game. Russian foreign policies take their cue from ingrained identity positions articulated by the state leadership and negotiated in domestic debates, but they are also informed by interaction with other states. The article explains the shift in Russian policies away from pragmatic cooperation with the West in Syria from autumn 2015 onwards. While the Russian leadership initially sought such cooperation, the prominence of anti-Western discourse in Russia following the crisis in Ukraine as well as the West's rejection of Russia in this period spurred Russia to act independently in Syria.     

Evidence of Russia's Bush Doctrine in the CIS1

Abstract

The article discusses the emergence of a Russian version of the Bush doctrine in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Russian officials’ conceptual stretching of the strategic culture embodied in the National Security Concept (NSC) and the Military Doctrine (MD) from 2000 onwards. While these documents seem to cherish multilateralism and United Nations (UN) primacy in questions of global and regional security, terrorist attacks on Russia proper have engendered a more assertive approach to regional security issues in the Caucasus and Central Asia and brought Russian officials to consider unilateral pre-emptive strikes against terrorist bases. In the case of the Caucasus, Russia has been striking against terrorist bases on Georgian territory and contributed to constructing a failed state, whereas in the Central Asian case, Russia has sought to revitalise the defunct CIS security framework and pledge assistance to ‘allies’ in the fight against terrorism. The article argues that the war against terrorism has given Russia a new footing in the CIS. The issue of security is more salient, as is the reliance on military force to facilitate it.     

Islamism in Azerbaijan: How Potent?

Azerbaijan is deemed to be the most secular of all post-Soviet Muslim counties. Nevertheless, growing independent Islamic activism, inspired by the international Islamic discourse and helped by foreign Islamic actors, and combined with a repressive regime response to this activity carried out under the banner of antiterrorism may contribute to make Islamism a potent factor in Azerbaijan. This article maps out independent Shi’a and Sunni activism and regime response in Azerbaijan. By assessing the dynamics between these two factors the article draws conclusions on the potential for politicization and radicalization of Islam in Azerbaijan.