Russia’s Kissinger: The Man Behind Russia’s Geopolitical Grand Strategy

The admission of new countries into NATO and the European Union is not seen in the West as an active part of an encroachment of Russia. However, that is the view in Russia, as NATO and the EU are not only approaching but incorporating former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states. These regions, now consisting of the independent nation-states of Eastern Europe, is still regarded by Russia as being part of its sphere of influence. The Russian mindset is rooted in this essentially defensive view of global politics, in which they are the ones being encroached upon and their sphere of influence being meddled in.

An example of this Russian impression of being encroached upon is the Ukraine crisis. In order to assure that no other areas bordering Russia would fall under the influence of the West, Moscow hastily ensured, by way of the controversial 2014 referendum in Crimea, the incorporation of the entirety of Crimea into the Russian Federation (a move internationally recognized to be an unlawful annexation of Ukrainian territory) and could thereby keep its important naval base in Sevastopol, which Russia had until then leased from Ukraine. In the Donbass region (the easternmost Ukrainian Oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk), there is ongoing fighting between pro-Russian insurgents and the Ukrainian armed forces. The recent Kerch Strait incident is presumably a precursor to a more restrictive or permanent blockage of Ukrainian vessels from entering and exiting the Sea of Azov. Russia has thereby effectively succeeded in blocking the entire southeast coast of Ukraine, by claiming that the presence of Ukrainian naval vessels in the area would be in Russian territorial waters.

Alexander Dugin is a name that should be associated with Russian foreign affairs just as well as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski were, and still are, known names to American foreign policy. He is a well-known public intellectual and political thinker in Russia and, in many ways, very similar politically to President Vladimir Putin. Dugin interprets the role of Russia and its people in terms of geopolitics. In his book, The Last War of the World-Island, he distinguishes between the sea-based civilization (thalassocracy) and the land-based civilization (tellurocracy), and argues that conflict between the two poles is inevitable. Russia, according to Dugin, is the land-based, civilizational pole and has been since the Mongol conquests. As Russia makes up the land-based pole in Dugin’s world order, it will always come into conflict with the sea-based pole, regardless of which country or transnational league it may be, or what ideological beliefs it may hold.

Historically, the same is true as Dugin makes comparisons to the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, with Athens and Carthage being the sea-based civilizations, and Sparta and Rome being the land-based civilizations. Similarly, there were the wars between the land-based Russian Empire and the sea-based British Empire in the 19th century, and the sea-based capitalist camp of the West and the land-based socialist camp of Russia in the Cold War. The world is therefore made up of two poles where ideological characteristics of either of the poles are not relevant to the conflict these poles inevitably create.

According to Dugin, Russia’s role is much larger than the confines of its current borders, and should instead be seen only as a part of the Eurasian empire, with Russia being the Heartland, to which all the former Soviet republics of the current Commonwealth of Independent States belong. Dugin therefore suggests that what the Russian Federation in its current form must do to secure its tellurocratic role, is that in order ‘to guarantee its territorial security, Russia must take military control over the centre of the zones attached to it, in the south and the west, and in the sphere of the northern Arctic Ocean.’

This sentiment should not be seen as surprising, as part of Russia’s contemporary downfall began with the separation of the USSR from the countries of the Warsaw Pact, which saw Russia lose the Eastern and Central European states, and subsequently saw the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. It was a substantial loss that left the Eastern and Central European region in a power vacuum, a region that had worked as a counterweight to the West, and with anti-Soviet sentiments among the population, the region was ripe for NATO expansion. Dugin writes of the final collapse of the USSR and the territorial changes of it that ‘another geopolitical zone, established throughout many centuries of Russian history around the core of the Heartland, was lost.’ Putin too stated in 2005 that ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.’ Perhaps one of the more striking things was that it was not as a consequence of a loss in a war between the major powers, but due to internal factors that Russia eventually lost Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Not only did Russia lose control over these states, many of the now independent nation-states switched side by joining NATO and the EU, and did not become buffer states between Russia and the West, which Moscow had initially hoped for.

After every setback Russia endured throughout history, some form of territorial expansion would eventually follow. Yet, when it comes to the Gorbachev and Yeltsin administrations, Dugin writes that a ‘government that had withstood so many serious shocks – from the yoke of the Time of Troubles to the Revolution in 1917 and the Civil War – ended its existence. If Russia had suffered territorial losses in its past comparable to those which occurred in 1991, they were compensated for by acquisitions in other areas, or they lasted for a short while.’

During the post-Soviet period, it was not until Putin took over from Yeltsin that the geopolitical losses for Russia stopped and things began to reverse. The reversal began with the second Chechen War, as Putin chose to conduct military operations in the Caucasus region, and arguably restored Russia’s territorial integrity, something Yeltsin had been incapable of doing. Putin would then go on to change Russia in a more tellurocratic way, in the form of, according to Dugin, crackdowns on and banishment of Atlanticists, pro-Western oligarchs; changing Russian media outlets (as many were owned by the pro-Western oligarchs) and prohibiting oligarchic lobbying in Russian politics; revising the way Russian history was regarded; exposing “Western hypocrisy” by calling out double standards (especially regarding continental interests in Europe); and encouraging the political and economic integration of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The most apparent way this shift became visible was with Putin’s now famous Munich speech in 2007, where Putin outlined his disapproval of the unipolar world order, led by the US, and made it clear that NATO was incorporating territory that the West had previously promised not to touch. However, since there initially were no graspable and theoretical conceptions of the tellurocratic–thalassocratic dichotomy that the Putin administration could follow, deviations occurred. According to Dugin, allowing US military bases in Afghanistan and in the Russian sphere of influence was in stark contrast to what a land-based tellurocratic administration should allow its geopolitical rival to do. Thus, in the beginning of Putin’s presidency, any political actions taken by his administration that were in line with Dugin’s concept of what a land-based civilization’s foreign policy should be, were done due to a practical precondition.

Putin is currently following Dugin’s notion of contemporary Eurasianism and regionalization. This is apparent in the numerous transnational Eurasian projects Russia is taking part in and spearheading. Besides the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which consists of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and involves the military and security integration of Russia and some of the former Soviet states, Russia is extensively expanding its military cooperation in Eurasia with China, recently exemplified by the large-scale Vostok 2018 military exercise, Russia’s largest military exercise ever.

Another example of Putin’s Eurasian focus is with the amalgamation of the Eurasian Economic Space, the Eurasian Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Community into the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which consists of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. With its creation Russia is one step closer to creating not only a Eurasian single market but also a political union, with Russia outweighing its fellow member states in population, military strength and GDP. Putin has even stated in an Izvestiya article in 2011 that the Eurasian Economic Union could be “one of the poles of the modern world.” He has furthermore stated that he would wish for all the former Soviet republics to join the union, except for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as they are EU member states. Although complete economic and political integration has not yet happened, it is a step towards Putin’s vision of a Russia with a greater geopolitical standing, as Putin is trying, through increased regional integration, to rival the thalassocratic West by economically and politically reintegrating the former Eurasian Soviet states.

A similar intergovernmental institution to that of the Eurasian Economic Union working to further regional integration is that of the Commonwealth of Independent States Free Trade Area (CISFTA), which, besides the EAEU member states, also includes Moldova, Ukraine, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and, since it was created in 2011, is primarily aimed at economic integration between the former Soviet republics.

By looking at Russia’s foreign policy and cooperation in Eurasia through Dugin’s viewpoints, one gains an understanding of how geopolitics impact Russian foreign policy. Alexander Dugin therefore gives valuable insights into Russian grand strategic aspirations and how Russia sees itself as not only a powerful nation-state, but a country and a people that by way of geographic location and history is destined from the Heartland to rule the greater Eurasian continent.