At a Dead End: Russian Policy and the Russian Far East

Demokratizatsiya, Spring 2009 by Blank, Stephen

Abstract: Russia claims to be a great Asian power, but its policies have failed to develop the Russian Far East or to use the energy lever at its disposal to develop the region or become a major, reliable energy provider. These failures owe much to the nature of the Russian political and economic system, and, as a result of Moscow's failure, Russia is running the risk of coming under China's political and economic influence.

Keywords: Asia, China, energy, Russia

Contemporary Russian foreign policy is aggressive, belligerent, offensive, and swaggering. Official statements reflect the now-popular elite view that Russia is up, America is down, and Europe counts for little or nothing because of its disarray. Russia's statesmen and analysts are also prone to this tendency to make inflated claims of Russia as an Asian power. For example, in 2008, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that because Russian consumers are buying more Japanese cars, many of which are made in (European) Russia, Russia "makes for the prosperity of Asia, and in particular, Japan with its entire potential." Lavrov also stated that the plan to hold the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Vladivostok in 2012 and Russia's growing involvement in Asian economic and political processes proves that "Russia's integration into the [Asia-Pacific Region] has become a fait accompli."1 Similarly, the veteran foreign policy analyst Viktor Kremenyuk writes that the revival of Russian power is making it an increasingly serious competitor to the United States. He charges that Russia is "successfully crowding out the United States from its position as China's No. 1 partner, and over time could become that country's quasi-ally."2

It would be difficult to account for such grandiose delusions without understanding Russian elites' long-standing habit of making inflated claims about Russia to compensate for or conceal the weakness and disarray that they often perceive at home. However, when we examine Russian policy in Asia, and particularly the state of its far eastern provinces, whose effective development is essential for success in Asia, Moscow's tone changes. This may well reflect the differing audiences involved: in statements concerning Russian policy in Asia, Moscow and Russian elites are speaking to the local and central government elites directly responsible for making and implementing policy, whereas the aforementioned belligerent statements are targeted at different audiences; the swaggering tone is aimed to induce recognition of Russia's strength and power. This tone is intended for an audience of foreign elites that Russia wants to influence and the domestic public, whom the government wants to convince of its stalwart defense of Russia's great-power status. In this respect, statements about Russian foreign policy seek to convince audiences at home (both elite and popular) and abroad that Russia really is the great global power that its leaders want and imagine it to be. Thus, rhetoric about Russian foreign policy in Europe and Asia is very much an identity project.3

However, in the Russian Far East (RFE), the reality continues to fall short of the ideal, and Russian authorities therefore feel compelled to admit the gap between the real and desired outcomes and to frighten domestic audiences for the purpose of energizing them in pursuit of that great-power status. For that reason, policy-relevant remarks that are directed more toward the elite domestic audiences who must implement policy contain a quite open anxiety, a sense of frustration, sometimes even a sense of being lost, and mounting apprehension about the future course of events. Russian authorities have been apprehensive about their Far East policy since 2000, if not earlier. Their apprehension reflects Moscow's continuing realization that Russia is failing to develop the RFE as it has long intended to do and its attempt to galvanize local elites by any available means to develop the RFE work.

For example, in 2000, President Vladimir Putin warned local audiences that unless Russia put more effort into the region's development, they would end up speaking Korean, Japanese, or Chinese. Putin's warning left little doubt about Russian fears regarding its Asiatic holdings and which foreign powers might step in should Russia falter.4 In 2002, the prestigious Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP) admonished its elite audience that Siberia and the RFE would inevitably be depopulated. It warned: "One should not turn a blind eye to the risk of some Chinese-related dangers that could materialize within the next 10-15 years."5 Meanwhile, Dmitri Trenin of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was writing that Siberia's development was Russia's civilizational challenge of the twenty-first century and that failure to master this problem could become Russia's most serious problem.6 By 2006, he had become pessimistic about Moscow's success in meeting this challenge.