James Sherr - Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russias Influence Abroad

Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) is an independent body which promotes the rigorous study of international questions and does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are the responsibility of the author.

Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2013

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

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Acknowledgments

Any book written from the heart is a work in progress. Its deficiencies emerge as soon as the ink is dry, and they mature with time. It stands to reason that any shortcomings in the pages that follow are entirely my own. The inspiration behind my ideas is not. Many, too numerous to cite here, have honed my judgement and, at times, corrected it. Others have steadied my purpose and welcomed me back from the void when my mood took me there. Some should be spared citation: long-standing friends who value their privacy and officials, serving and former, who deepened my knowledge, gave substance to my intuition and allowed themselves, when necessary, to be indiscreet in service of a higher cause.

There are others who deserve recognition and will survive it. First amongst them is James Nixey, now Head of the Russia Eurasia Programme, with whom I have worked cheek by jowl over the past four years. His energy, empathy and good humour are so legendary that they risk becoming clich . The birches of the Russian banya are like honey compared to his editors pen, but the text has been much improved by his hard work. One could not wish for a more honourable, resilient or capable colleague. Alex Nice, who brings intellectual tone, integrity and discernment to all of his endeavours, has left Chatham House, but not before providing significant support to the overall project and the editing of its various publications. Lubica Pollakova has earned my gratitude for providing timely and ineffably cheerful help to the project in the midst of other demanding responsibilities. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the hard work and good nature of our interns who offered tireless assistance in the tiresome job of tracking down references and making the format of the book presentable: Johannes Olschner, Rihards Kols, Katerina Tertytchnaya, Kseniya Shvedova and Annie Kennington. Nicolas Bouchet has been helpful in drawing attention to passages that required elucidation and reformulation. Margaret May, Editor of Chatham House publications, has shepherded the publication into a finished project with a watchful eye that preserves everything of value and misses nothing. She is a model for everyone who believes that editing should be an art as well as a craft.

Profound thanks are owed to John Lough, my colleague in three institutions over 25 years, for being a personally indulgent and intellectually unforgiving interlocutor. His intellectual asperity has served as foil and model in equal measure. I am equally grateful to Andrew Wood for his moral and intellectual support. His wisdom not only lingers on the palate but surfaces in these pages. Over the course of this project, Andrew Monaghan, Nicholas Redman and Craig Oliphant have done much to sustain my motivation and rescue me from error. All of them commented on parts of this manuscript with care and insight, as did Alex Pravda during an earlier stage of this project. My former CSRC colleague, Mark Smith, has also been helpful in unscrambling my thoughts and my memory for facts.

Finally, it remains for me as well as Chatham House to express gratitude to the Smith Richardson Foundation for encouraging the Russia and Eurasia Programme to undertake this project and for enabling us to do so. I am particularly grateful to Nadia Schadlow, who originally suggested that I should write on Russian soft power and then supported our decision to expand the projects remit to include Russian influence as a whole. She and her colleagues have been a pleasure to work with from conception to completion.

J.G.S.

The publication of this book marks the conclusion of a Chatham House project entitled The Means and Ends of Russias Influence Abroad. Between 2009 and 2012, three workshops were held: two on the overall theme, at Chatham House, and one on soft power, in cooperation with the Centre of Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding in Warsaw. The projects core contributors also published six Chatham House Briefing Papers over the course of 2011/12:

Alexander Bogomolov and Oleksandr Lytvynenko, A Ghost in the Mirror: Russian Soft Power in Ukraine

James Greene, Russian Responses to NATO and EU Enlargement and Outreach

Agnia Grigas, Legacies, Coercion and Soft Power: Russian Influence in the Baltic States

John Lough, Russias Energy Diplomacy

James Nixey, The Long Goodbye: Waning Russian Influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia

Andrew Wood, Russias Business Diplomacy

1 First Principles

The state is not pure spirit Leon Trotsky

Definitions of influence, like definitions of aggression, are traps for the unwary. Both attempt to express in objective form something that is a matter of opinion. Like individuals, states can be unconscious of the influence they have, or they can be insufferably over-confident about it. Like individuals, states can indignantly deny that they are being influenced by others, or they can defensively blame others for their own culpabilities and failings. Definitions of power are meant to escape from these ambiguities, but they do not. Resources are tangible. Power the utilization of resources and capacities to achieve vague or specific ends is relational, an untidy combination of will, capacity and effects visible and concealed, immediate and ultimate.