Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/W7EFBKGMXkI

Abstract: If before 2014 Russia was widely dismissed by the international community as a regional power whose global influence had died with the Soviet Union, its recent muscle flexing abroad has shown that reports of its death as a global power have been greatly exaggerated. From its seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and military deployment in Syria in 2015 to cyber interventions in a number of democratic countries, most notably the alleged interference in the United States elections in 2016, Russia has reasserted itself as a major global power. This has taken many analysts and policy makers by surprise. But perhaps Russia’s status as a “phoenix state” should not have been unanticipated,

A common argument has been that Russia has a weak hand, but plays it well. The book on which this talk is based argues that Russia’s cards may not be as weak as we in the West think they are—that instead, the West might be playing bridge, while Russia plays poker.  Too great an emphasis has been placed on traditional, realist means of power (like the strength of Russia's economy, its population, and its military) and this has led scholars and policy makers to discount Russia’s ability to influence international politics. In important ways, Russia has reestablished itself on the global stage, doing so as a great disrupter rather than a great power. It doesn’t have as much by way of means in realist terms as the United States or China, but it does have the ability to exercise influence, to get other countries to do what they might not otherwise do. This is because Russia today is unencumbered by a domestic political system that might exercise a brake on the ambitions of the current regime. It doesn’t have to be a great power, but it can be good enough to do a great deal to alter the post war global order. Indeed, it already has.

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