‘Post-Imperial’ Putin Glimpsed in Softer Foreign-Policy Tone

(Bloomberg) -- Vladimir Putin may be testing out a new look for Russia’s foreign policy.

The Russian president delivered his least vituperative performance for a decade or more at the annual Valdai international affairs conference in Sochi this week, passing up numerous opportunities to attack the U.S. and Europe over disputes such as Ukraine.

Putin said he wasn’t out to destroy the largely U.S.-built postwar international order. He said Russia wanted to work with Washington and made admiring comments about President Donald Trump as well as French leader Emmanuel Macron.

According to some Russian policy analysts, Putin’s more accommodating tone reflects a sea change under way in Russian foreign policy that will be less reactive, less defensive and less reliant on brute military force.

“It is the beginning of a real post-imperial period,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, who heads the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a research group that advises the Kremlin. “I can feel it changing even if you can’t see it in the rhetoric on Russian TV.”

The shift -- if one is happening -- follows a decade of bristling geopolitical confrontation with the West on issues ranging from Kosovo to NATO expansion, a U.S. missile-defense shield, the war in Syria, the conflict in Ukraine and the risks of a new nuclear arms race.

“I don’t really buy it,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group consultancy. The Kremlin still takes a revisionist approach to the U.S.-built world order, but for now is consolidating its victory in Syria and adjusting to the loss of Ukraine, he added.

Whatever reduction in vitriol was on display in Sochi, the Kremlin’s policy shows few signs of softening so far. Putin boasted at Thursday’s meeting of Russia’s military success in Syria, an intervention that has restored its Soviet-era position as a great-power player in the Middle East. At the same time, growing strategic ties to China have solidified Russia’s position to the East.

Carving a Role

Putin revealed that Russia is building an anti-missile early warning system for Beijing, as the two countries edge toward a de facto military alliance. He also basked in praise from the leaders of Azerbaijan, Jordan, Kazakhstan and the Philippines, all either partners or formal allies of the U.S.

More broadly, Russia has begun to carve a global role for itself at a time when the West is in disarray over impeachment threats in the U.S. and Brexit in Europe. U.S. threat perceptions have shifted east, toward China.

”I think we can call this new foreign policy a consolidation of gains that Russia has made,” said Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a Kremlin-founded think tank.

Putin “has grown uncomfortable with the level of tensions with the U.S. and the West,” said Robert Legvold, professor emeritus of political science at New York’s Columbia University. Still, “he is not willing to do what’s necessary to change it.”

The tug-of-war with the West for influence in Russia’s former Soviet neighbors has given way to a different perception among Moscow’s decision makers, according to Lukyanov. They now recognize that Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine aren’t going to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union any time soon, because those organizations either can’t or don’t want to digest them. That means Russia can relax and wait for events to turn in its favor.

Russia, EU

The Kremlin has also come to terms with its limited influence over Ukraine since the 2014 pro-European revolution, and has no appetite to own the problems of struggling states such as Moldova, he said. That’s why Russia was happy to join with the EU earlier this year to endorse a new coalition government in Moldova led by ardent pro-Europeans.

There are still plenty of points of friction. A punitive ban on flights to and from Georgia imposed by Putin in July remains in place. Last month, Russian mercenaries landed in Libya to join Kremlin-backed strongman General Khalifa Haftar’s fight to capture the capital Tripoli.

The conflict over Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine also remains unresolved, even if Putin offered an endorsement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s efforts to try to break the deadlock.

“The kernel of truth here is that I think Putin and his circle have calmed down,” with regards to the West, said Kupchan. “Barring some black swan event, they’re likely to stay that way.”

Returning territories that Russia either occupies or protects in Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova remains unlikely. Russia has achieved what it needs by making it impossible for them to join the West, and Putin won’t risk changing that without irreversible security guarantees, said Vasily Kashin, a defense specialist at the Higher School of Economics. Withdrawal would be viewed as weakness at home, he said.

‘Strategic Paranoia’

“The West misunderstands this,” Kashin said. “Russia’s illness is not the desire for greatness, but a deep strategic paranoia that goes back to the formation of the empire.”

Asia may offer better prospects for a new Russian approach, according to Timofey Bordachev, an academic supervisor at Moscow’s National Research University Higher School of Economics, who advises the government on Asia policy. There, asserting control is either unnecessary, because countries such as Kazakhstan are compliant, or impossible, in cases such as China and Japan.

“Russia can’t resort to the historically most reliable tool of our foreign policy, which is military force; we have to develop a more sophisticated policy,” said Bordachev. He sees a niche for Russia as a neutral security partner for smaller Asian powers increasingly squeezed by the U.S.-China rivalry.

Lukyanov sees a model for Russia’s future international relationships in the so-called Astana process, through which Putin has shaped events in Syria by working closely with Iran and Turkey.

“There is zero trust between these three countries, they have mostly diverging interests in the region, and it has nothing to do with shared values,” he said. “But they all realize that none of them can achieve their goals without at least neutrality from the others.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Marc Champion in London at mchampion7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin, Gregory L. White

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