PUBL.- Russian Leverage on the CIS and the Baltic States, Hedenskog and Larsson
Posted by: Robert Larsson <robert.larsson@foi.se>
New publication:
"Russian Leverage on the CIS and the Baltic States"
by Jakob Hedenskog and Robert L. Larsson
The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI)
Report can be downloaded: http://www2.foi.se/rapp/foir2280.pdf
Or www.foi.se (see publications)
Abstract:
A new report from FOI aims to identify Russia's foreign policy levers,
analyse how they have been used and assess how strong they are in the
context of the former Soviet Union.
This has been done by assessing five clusters of levers, namely
political, human-based, energy, economic and military ones. In doing
this, a pattern of how Russia uses its levers emerges.
Russia's foreign policy levers have drawn attention over the last
few years. In 2006 and 2007, Russia staged a trade boycott against
Georgia and Moldova, engaged in the "statue crisis" in Estonia, which
was followed by a cyber attack, and took a sharp policy line in the
oil and gas negotiations with Belarus. These actions went against
Russia's ambition to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
annoyed the European Union (EU). These incidents indicate that Russia
has a clear ambition of maximising its influence within the former
Soviet Union area by using its foreign policy levers.
The main conclusion of the report is that Russia has used a rather
high level of coercion toward those states that are dependent on
Russia and states that obstruct Russia's policy. Russia uses all
available levers in order to reach overarching goals even if these
result in severe backlashes. The study finally concludes that this
pattern has future consequences for Europe.
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