In the main, however, Russia’s regional footprint can still be considered small. “[B]y degree of involvement in the Asia-Pacific economy Russia is second lowest among APEC countries—only ahead of Papua-New Guinea,” note Timofei Bordachev of Russia’s National Research University and Oleg Barabanov of Moscow State University. “The Russian Far East is virtually absent from the economic map of the region. The other Asia-Pacific countries see no need to turn to Moscow for a discussion of various free trade zone projects.” 17
This is true institutionally as well. With the exception of APEC, Moscow exhibits a comparatively modest diplomatic presence in the region. It participated in the East Asia Summit as an observer nation at the bloc’s first meeting in 2005 but didn’t receive full membership until comparatively recently—in 2011. Russia and the Association of South East Asian Nations, meanwhile, have had a formal diplomatic dialogue since the mid-1990s, yet robust trade and strategic ties are still lacking. 18In other words, Russia, for all of its efforts, is still very much a newcomer in the region.
Politically, too, Russian policymakers lack a comprehensive approach to Asia. Rather, Russia has promoted the idea of what its Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov has termed “network diplomacy.” Russia seeks “an extended partnership network” in the region, Ivanov told the 2011 Shangri-La conference in Singapore: one that relies on Asia’s “existing structures and forums.” 19
Russia’s Asia policy is also impeded by a series of disputes—chief among them its long-standing and acrimonious tug-of-war with Japan over the Kuril Islands. The island chain has served as a source of tension between Russia and Japan for more than 150 years, with sovereignty changing hands between the two countries repeatedly (in 1855, 1875, and again in 1905). During World War II, the Soviet Union and Japan found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. In the final days of the war, the USSR occupied the islands (as well as the territory of Sakhalin), and Japan subsequently ceded its rights to all but four of the islands (which Tokyo asserted were part of Japan proper). In 1956, a joint declaration between the two countries suspended the conflict and solidified Japanese sovereignty over two of the four. Competing claims over the remaining two islands, however, prevented the codification of a formal treaty. 20
So the situation has remained. To date, Moscow and Tokyo have yet to sign an agreement ending their dispute over the islands. To the contrary, both countries have steadily hardened their positions, damaging bilateral relations in the process. Over the past half-decade, the dispute has become much more serious. In 2009, the Japanese parliament adopted a law declaring the islands to be national territory, unjustly usurped by Russia. The Kremlin responded by orchestrating a state visit by then President Dmitry Medvedev to the Kurils, leading Japan to recall its envoy to Moscow. 21Russia has since mapped out an ambitious development program for the islands, partnering with China to create a common investment fund for the area that’s worth $4 billion. 22
The conflict is about more than mere territory. A lucrative fishing industry and prospective underwater oil deposits make the islands desirable for both countries. Their proximity to the Japanese mainland, moreover, makes the Kurils an important geostrategic outpost for Russia. The dispute has taken a toll on diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Moscow and has hampered serious Japanese investment in Russia’s Far East—at least so far.
These factors have caused Russia to pursue a reactive policy in the region—one driven by self-interest and ignorance of regional realities. Moscow’s goal in Asia, as elsewhere, is to balance American power and to expand its own room for regional political and economic maneuver under the banner of “multilateralism.” 23
Yet Russia’s regional presence appears anything but permanent. Throughout the region, an emerging consensus holds that Russia’s influence is on the decline and that Moscow soon will become a spent force in Asia. 24That same consensus holds that, despite the Kremlin’s best efforts, a Russian retreat from Asia is inevitable, as it is subsumed by a rising and increasingly assertive China.
A CHALLENGE FROM CHINA
Similar assessments increasingly predominate in Moscow. Over the past decade, China’s explosive economic growth has fueled a surging demand for energy. As a result, PRC officials consistently have sought to forge an energy partnership with Russia. At the core of their plans is a pipeline to bring oil from Siberia to northern China by way of a spur around Russia’s Lake Baikal. That route, which is expected to bring roughly three hundred thousand barrels of oil to China daily over the next two decades, went operational in January 2011. As of January 2013, it had delivered thirty tons of Russian crude to China, making Russia a significant energy provider to the PRC. 25
But Beijing is seeking still more. China has made clear that it wants to absorb all of the available oil carried by Russia’s Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline once that energy route—now under construction—comes online circa 2014. 26In the process, it has fanned fears among Russian policymakers that, if they are not careful, their country could easily end up becoming nothing but an “energy appendage” to an insatiable China. 27
Yet Moscow is doing little of substance to alter this trajectory. Putin’s government has pledged approximately $1 trillion through the end of the decade to modernize the country’s aging infrastructure. But such investments, observers say, do not include infusions of capital into sectors such as health and human welfare 28—investments that are sorely needed if Russia is to sustain and expand its presence in the Far East. And because Russia is not making these investments, its pivot to Asia remains a matter of aspiration rather than reality. It is, moreover, an aspiration that is harder and harder to sustain.
CHAPTER NINE
REBUILDING THE EMPIRE
In January 2013, Alexei Kudrin sat down for an in-depth interview with Germany’s influential newsweekly Der Spiegel. The interview was noteworthy because Kudrin, a former finance minister, is one of very few people whom Russian president Vladimir Putin counts among his confidantes. In fact, even though he is no longer in government (having left the Kremlin in late 2011 to become dean of St. Petersburg University), Kudrin’s political star is still on the rise, and some see him as a possible future prime minister. Kudrin’s stature made the comparatively progressive ideas he espoused in his interview—about economic diversification and the need for greater democracy, free elections, and a real dialogue with Russia’s political opposition—all the more surprising.
But it was Kudrin’s comments about his country’s ideological outlook that were perhaps most striking. “There is a widespread attitude that I call ‘imperial syndrome,’” he lamented. “A sizeable number of Russians place their country above other nations and see neighboring countries as part of our zone of influence.” 1
IDEOLOGUES OF EMPIRE
Today in Russia, this yearning for empire is embodied in a collection of influential politicians and thinkers who extol the virtue of an expanded Russian state.
Among the most conspicuous is Alexandr Dugin. At first blush, the bearded fifty-one-year-old KGB archivist-turned-political-theoretician seems like an unlikely power broker in the rough-and-tumble world of Russia’s identity politics. Yet more than a decade and a half after emerging in earnest onto Russia’s post-Soviet political scene, Dugin remains influential. His extreme ideas about Russian greatness and the country’s geopolitical destiny as an empire have greatly influenced Russia’s political leadership—and, by extension, the country’s foreign policy direction.