This report is a revised version of the author’s dissertation submitted for the cand.polit. degree at the University of Oslo in November 2002. As such, it constitutes the final product of an individual study conducted as part of a two years’ research master program in International Relations. Although some changes have been made in order to adapt the original manuscript to the format and volume of a NUPI report, the central argument and large parts of the text remain unaltered. A full-text version of the original dissertation will expectedly become available in an electronic library organized by the Department of...

The break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War entailed fundamental changes in our conception of world politics. There seems to be a general agreement among scholars of International Relations (IR) that these developments largely terminated the bipolar structure that had for decades served as an important premise for the study of IR in general and of many security issues in particular. There is less consensus with regard to what constitutes the new international structure and how IR can best be accounted for today. This study takes as one of its starting points IR theory and...

This chapter introduces in more detail the theoretical framework that will be applied in the analysis in Chapters 3 and 4. I start by looking at the very concept of ‘security’ in IR theory (2.1). Section 2.2 provides a brief outline of how security has been conceptualised and studied within the realist and liberal traditions. The main part of this chapter (2.3) is devoted to an in-depth presentation of some central components in Kjølberg and Jeppesen (2001), which portrays a way of incorporating insights from both the realist and liberal traditions into analyses of state behaviour and international outcomes. On...

This chapter discusses Russia’s approach to security cooperation with the West from 1991 to 1993. The central question is: In light of the domestic debate on national identity and foreign policy that emerged in Russia from 1991, how can we understand Russia’s approach to NATO and CSCE as remaining components in the post-Cold War European security architecture? I address this question in several steps. Section 3.1 provides a brief introduction to historical trajectories of ‘Europe’, ’the West’ and ‘Eurasia’ as guiding concepts for Russia’s identity and foreign policy, and analyses their reemergence as central features of the post-Soviet identity/foreign policy...

This chapter analyses developments in Russia’s policy from 1993 to 2000. Section 4.1 discusses the period from 1993 to 1996 and analyses Russian attempts to counter NATO-centrism as an emerging constraint on Russia’s foreign policy. As plans for NATO enlargement took shape and as the Western alliance took on a more active role out of area, Russia saw herself being pushed to the margins of Europe and became increasingly concerned with sustaining a level of Russian influence and avoiding Russia’s isolation altogether from the handling of European politico-military and security affairs. This was reflected in a largely unsuccessful diplomatic campaign...

A main objective of this study has been to answer recent calls for linking the study of Russian foreign and security policy closer to contemporary debates on IR theory. The analysis above suggests that realism, liberalism and constructivism may all – in their very different ways – contribute to understand Russia’s foreign policy and some related institutional outcomes in Russian– Western security relations. In particular, findings here indicate that constructivism may be helpful in revealing the link between events and developments on different levels of analysis; how Russia’s post-Soviet identity took shape and affected the formulation of Russia’s interests and...