This text traces the lineage and development of Russian foreign policy with the insight that comes from a historical perspective. Now fully updated, the sixth edition incorporates new coverage of issues including relations with the major powers and with other post-communist states, with an emphasis on tensions with the U.S. and engagement with Ukraine, Crimea, and Syria. International security issues including arms control, sanctions, and intervention continue to grow in importance. Domestic and regional issues related to natural resource politics, human rights, Islamism and terrorism also persist. Chronologically organized chapters highlight the continuities of Russia’s behavior in the world since tsarist times as well as the major sources of change and variability over the revolutionary period, wartime alliances and Cold War, détente, the Soviet collapse, and the first post-communist decades. The basic framework used in the book is a modified realism that stresses the balance of power and the importance of national interest, and identifies several factors (both internal and external) that condition Russian policy. The interpretations are original and based on a mix of primary and secondary sources.
New to the Sixth Edition
- Thoroughly updated coverage of Russia’s bilateral relations with the United States and countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
- Discussion of how Moscow employs Russia’s "soft power" assets.
- Russian-American relations, especially with respect to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and to U.S. foreign policy concerns in North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
- Russia’s interference in recent and upcoming elections in European states, which (along with the Brexit vote) threaten to jeopardize the future of the European Union.
- The full unfolding of the Ukraine crisis.
- Vladimir Putin’s continuing campaign to command greater Western respect for Russia’s interests and capabilities.
- Significant new developments in the Middle East including the nuclear deal with Iran, the involvement in the Syrian civil war, and the first-ever production-control deal with OPEC.
- A new concluding chapter: "Russia and the United States: A New Cold War?"
- An Epilogue on the July 2018 Trump-Putin Summit and surrounding events.
Robert H. Donaldson is Trustees Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Tulsa. He was educated at Harvard University, and is past president of both the University of Tulsa and Fairleigh Dickinson University. He also has taught and held administrative positions at Lehman College of the City University of New York and Vanderbilt University, and served as International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations at the U.S. Department of State and as visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Professor Donaldson has written extensively on Soviet and Russian politics and foreign policy and has authored or co-authored five other books.
Vidya Nadkarni is Professor of Political Science at the University of San Diego, where she has taught since 1990. She was educated at St. Xavier’s College, University of Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru University-New Delhi, and the University of British Columbia. Professor Nadkarni teaches courses in the area of international relations and foreign policy, and her research interests center on the foreign policies of resurgent (Russia) and aspiring (China, India) global powers. She is the author of Strategic Partnerships in Asia: Balancing without Alliances (2010) and co-editor of Emerging Powers in a Comparative Perspective: The Political and Economic Rise of the BRIC Countries (2012) and Challenge and Change: Global Threats and the State in the 21st Century (2016).
