Is Russia looking east or west for its permanent position in global power? It’s in the middle of the Eurasian landmass, between two systems and two spheres, trying for control of both.

Presidential get-together: Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at a concert in Bailuzhou Park, Xiamen, for the 2017 BRICS summit Mikhail Klimentyev · Tass · Getty

Many western commentators think that Russia clings to an international order that has disappeared, the Yalta system of the cold war years when the country, in its Soviet guise, enjoyed an institutionalised sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. From this perspective, the annexation of Crimea and support for the Donbass uprising are military responses to the loss of influence over the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, which now sees its future in the West. The US National Security Strategy report of December 2017 defines Russia as a revisionist power, intent on destroying the existing international system.

The standard western view is that Russia is a weak authoritarian regime seeking to divert attention from its internal problems through external adventurism, and looking to export its authoritarian model by forming an ‘alliance of autocracies’ with China. Challenging the West may be an effective way to strengthen the domestic political system, but it is a mistake to explain Russia’s behaviour solely on that basis.

What does Russia really want, and what role does the rapprochement with China play? Its fundamental demand is to be accepted as a co-manager of international affairs, an ambition disappointed at the end of the cold war. The Soviet Union and then Russia sought to transform what they called the ‘historical West’ into a ‘greater West’ incorporating Russia. This would have liberated the historical West from its Atlanticist cold war institutional and ideological framework and fostered a new culture of political dialogue and creative interaction.

However, at the end of the cold war the West offered only an enlargement of the existing system. In the absence of the military and ideological threat of the Soviet Union, the liberal order became a universal Monroe doctrine: the US sphere of influence covered the whole world, leaving no room for a subset of independent powers or orders.

A strategic triangle

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