Russia's Foreign Policy Challenges 2017

The US led sanctions and subdued energy prices have forced Russia into China's embrace, allowing China to treat Russia, a global power of no mean stature, as a mere pawn in its strategic gameplay with the US. The Chinese embrace has also isolated Russia from India and stymied its efforts to normalise relations with Japan, writes DR SUBHASH KAPILA

- Subhash Kapila

Russia’s foreign policy challenges in 2017 primarily arise from the United States’ reluctance to reset its relations with Russia, global perceptions generated by Russian foreign policy of having lapsed into a satellite state of China and finally Russia’s attempts to break-out from this boxed-in situation by Russian military interventions in Crimea and Syria in a bid to assert its strategic independence.

Russia’s foreign policy challenges in 2017 need to be viewed primarily within the above framework and from the contemporaneous perspectives arising from Russia’s relations with the United States, China, West European countries and Asia’s two ‘emerged powers’ in contention with China in the Asian power tussle.

Russia’s own national aspirational goals also need to be spelt out for an objective study of the contemporaneous perspectives obtainable in Russian foreign policy formulations towards the major powers noted above.

Russia’s goals spelt out by President Putin in the last decade dwelt on the imperatives of Russia emerging as an ‘independent power centre’ in the world’s global system. In other words, Russia is striving to regain its erstwhile status of being regarded as a superpower.

Therefore, this becomes the foremost foreign policy challenge for Russia. In 2017, Russia is nowhere near to regaining this status even with its military interventions in the Ukraine and Syria. Admittedly, Russia in comparative military terms is more powerful than China which has pretensions of being a superpower. However, in 2017, while Russia has abundant capabilities to exercise ‘hard power’ options, it gets constrained in the exercise of ‘soft power’ options due to its economic limitations.