Abstract
Consecutive Russian leaderships have attempted to project power and influence in its “near abroad”. From Moscow’s perspective, all post-Soviet countries only have limited sovereignty. However, Russia’s declining economic power and the interest of the ruling elites in the Eurasian countries to consolidate sovereignty lead to different contestation strategies. The success of these strategies depends on the countries’ resources, their geographic proximity to external players, and their elites’ bargaining abilities. In this chapter, the author illustrates the attempts by secondary or tertiary states in Eurasia to contest Russia’s leadership ambitions and identifies the key motivations behind Eurasian contestation. The chapter categorizes the different types of contestation strategies. The more Russia tries to dominate its post-Soviet neighbors, the more it will push the countries further away.
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Notes
- 1.
For more details on Russia’s leadership role in the post-Soviet region, see Neil Macfarlane ’s chapter in this volume.
- 2.
With the election of Vladimir Putin as Russian President in 2000, an authoritarian state has been established, one that includes a huge number of Putin ’s former colleagues, friends, and classmates in key positions of the state and the economy. This crony capitalism is described by a symbiotic relationship between the state and the economy, a growing role of the state in the economy, oligarchs who are loyal to the system, and loyalty rooted in rent seeking. Putin is the main guarantor of this system, and at the same time the moderator and decision-maker among competing power groups.
- 3.
On this term, see Sherr (2013).
- 4.
On this term, see Lobell et al. (2015, 154).
- 5.
This includes Armenia, Belarus, the occupied Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, the separatist Moldovan region of Transnistria, Tajikistan, and occupied Ukrainian Crimea (Hicks 2014).
- 6.
For more details, see Lobell et al. (2015, 148–149); Ebert and Flemes provide a detailed discussion of International Research (IR) theories on contested leadership in the introduction to this volume.
- 7.
Color revolutions started with the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, and the Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan) in Ukraine in 2013/2014.
- 8.
On the genesis of Belarusian-Russian relations, see Nice (2013).
- 9.
Outside the Russian-dominated world, Belarus is a member of around 60 international organizations (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus 2017).
- 10.
Members of this negotiation group include Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France.
- 11.
Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2017).
- 12.
In his speech at the Ukrainian Independence Day celebrations in August 2017, Poroshenko said his country will do everything to become a member of NATO and the EU (Euronews 2017).
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Meister, S. (2018). Hedging and Wedging: Strategies to Contest Russia’s Leadership in Post-Soviet Eurasia. In: Ebert, H., Flemes, D. (eds) Regional Powers and Contested Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73691-4_11
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