Russia in Global Affairs

The growing bitterness of Western countries towards Russia is consistent with the logic of ‘preventive war’ in the initiation of armed conflicts. Rather than linking interstate confrontations with aggressive opportunism, this model views escalation as a product of fears about the future. Throughout history, major wars, as a rule, became the product of precisely this preventive logic – the desire to strike in advance of an expected weakening.

The return of great power rivalries revives the almost forgotten practice of defensive alliances. As Russia adheres to the vision of a multipolar world, it should not abandon the crucial tool for managing security threats in this sort of international system.

In international crises the sides have to rely on unreliable communication channels and often interpret the other sides’ intentions based on the nature of the actions being taken. This guesswork expands the room for speculation and misinterpretation. The latter, in turn, makes the situation extremely difficult to calculate and, hence, even more dangerous.

Since it is unlikely that universalist claims of Western liberalism will evaporate any time soon, they will continue to produce a rationale for counter-ideological alignments.

A stronger climate policy is an integral part of the national agenda the way Russia’s leadership has formulated it. It can prompt measures to technically upgrade the economy and to shift to more efficient use of the available resources. That the Russian leadership’s interest in the climate issues has been growing is seen in the approval in December 2009 of the Climate Doctrine.