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Think of Russia as an ordinary petrostate, not an extraordinary superpower
The Kremlin’s motivation in the Ukrainian conflict has split scholars. Is Russia a greedy state ideologically driven to expand or a declining insecure superpower defending itself against NATO? Realist scholars (for example, see these recent pieces by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt) argue that the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict was provoked by NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine, which were a part of Russia’s strategic zones of influence. The opponents tend to blame Russia for the conflict. To a large extent the divide is methodological: following the publication of Mearsheimer’s piece, Foreign Affairs surveyed scholars on “who is to blame for the conflict?” and discovered that scholars of international relations predominantly mentioned NATO and regional specialists tended to blame Russia.
Along with the multiple leaps in the realist argument outlined by Alexander Motyl in his recent Monkey Cage post, it also fails to explain the timing of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Since NATO expanded into the Baltic region in 2004, Russia’s land border with NATO countries has been more than twice as large as its land border with Georgia, and yet somehow Russia waited until 2008 to react. Likewise in his response to Mearsheimer, Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, points out that in multiple meetings between President Obama, President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev over a five-year period, the issue of NATO expansion never came up. Moreover, throughout most of Putin’s rule Russia engaged in numerous joint projects with NATO (including joint military exercises and peacekeeping operations) while apparently completely neglecting the existential threats it was facing from the Alliance.
The larger problem with approaches that treat “Russia,” or “the Kremlin,” or “Putin” as something monolithic and unchangeable over time is just that – neither Russia nor Putin have been unchanged nor monolithic over the 15 years of his rule. Had Russia been a coherent unity, the Soviet Union would never have collapsed to begin with. But the observed inconsistency in the Kremlin’s behavior that realist theories struggle to explain is easily understood if we remember that rather than being “an insecure superpower” Russia is first and foremost a petrostate. Petrostates are empirically shown to become aggressive against their neighbors when oil prices skyrocket. In a study of 153 country cases in the last 50 years, political scientist Cullen Hendrix shows that high oil prices consistently make oil-exporters more aggressive toward their immediate neighbors, while they don’t affect the behavior of non-exporters. On average if the oil price hits a threshold of $77 per barrel in constant 2008 dollars, petrostates get 30 percent more aggressive than non-exporters.
Jeff Colgan of Brown University analyzed militarized interstate disputes in 170 countries between 1945 and 2001 and found that countries where net oil export revenues constitute over 10 percent of GDP were among the most violent states in the world. Such petrostates showed a remarkable propensity for militarized interstate disputes on average and engaged in militarized conflicts about 50 percent more often than non-petrostates in the post-World War II era. Examples include Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez expelling their U.S. ambassadors, Venezuela’s mobilization for war against Colombia and Iran backing Hamas attacks against Israel during the 2008 oil price peak. Likewise Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 and Libya’s repeated incursions into Chad also happened during the peaks of the oil prices in the 1970s and 1980s. The mechanism is simple: High oil revenues lower leaders’ domestic political accountability and responsibility for policy decisions while increasing risks of international adventurism. Oil revenues also increase states’ military capability by providing them with larger and more fungible pools of funding for military expenditures.
From this perspective, Russia is not so much an insecure superpower as it is a typical petrostate with a short-term horizon that gets aggressive and ambitious once it accumulates substantive oil revenues. Back in the early 2000s when the price of oil was $25 a barrel, Putin was a friend of the United States and didn’t mind NATO enlargement in 2004. According to Hendrix’s research, this is exactly how petrostates behave when the oil prices are low: In fact, at oil prices below $33 a barrel, oil exporters become much more peaceful than even non-petrostates. Back in 2002 when the Urals price was around $20, in his Address to the Federal Assembly Putin enumerated multiple steps to European integration and active collaboration aimed at creating a single economic space with the European Union among Russia’s top priorities. In 2014 – with the price of oil price around $110 – Putin invaded Ukraine to punish it for the attempts to create that same single economic space with the E.U.
In 2007, soon after oil prices hit their first peak at $75 a barrel (near the threshold of $77 a barrel in constant 2008 dollars that Hendrix underlined), Putin gave his famous Munich speech where he first challenged the U.S. hegemony but was still hopeful about prospects of a meaningful partnership with the United States and Europe. By 2014 – with oil priced above $100 – Putin in his Valdai speech completely rejected prospects of any meaningful cooperation with the U.S.
When the Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the oil price was at that period’s peak of $101 a barrel. Russia’s recent adventures in Georgia in 2008 took place when the price of oil hit its highest point since 1980 ($105), and in Ukraine in 2014 when oil prices overcame even their 2008 levels, just as the theory of aggressive petrostate’s behavior would predict. From this perspective, the NATO position on Georgia’s and Ukraine’s accession really didn’t matter much to Russia’s aggressive stance on the two countries, except for serving as a useful pretext to its rising ambitions.
While Russia may seem an “aging, depopulating and declining great power” to outside observers, the Kremlin elites who have accumulated a substantive amount of reserves definitely don’t perceive themselves as such. Instead they repeatedly name Russia among the three main world superpowers along with the United States and China, and keep referencing Russia as an energy superpower, ranking second in the world on arms supply, etc. Russia’s state channels regularly hint that the Russian army could potentially march up to Eastern Europe, Berlin or London within a few days.
Robert Jervis has famously pointed out that the individual perceptions of decision-makers and ways in which they distort reality matter much more than is often acknowledged. Such distortion of reality might matter even more in the case of the leaders of petrostates, regardless of what NATO wants and thinks.
9 Comments on "Think of Russia as an ordinary petrostate, not an extraordinary superpower"
Rodster on Tue, 10th Mar 2015 5:56 pm
“Such distortion of reality might matter even more in the case of the leaders of petrostates, regardless of what NATO wants and thinks.”
All NATO errr the USSA wants is world domination. Russia and China are the two big players left.
Meanwhile Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland is pushing for war. The USSA has already sent over 100 tanks to Ukraine and Ms Fuck the EU is requesting more to counter Russian aggression.
Perk Earl on Tue, 10th Mar 2015 5:59 pm
“Is Russia a greedy state ideologically driven to expand or a declining insecure superpower defending itself against NATO?”
Answer: The latter, but how insecure is NATO to draw a line in the Ukraine? I mean who cares about an economy with an obsolete manuf. base? Are we expecting great things from the Ukraine in the future? No, so both are acting in the old territorial/imperialistic ways without considering the fiscal ramifications of taking on some country that will need it’s hand held much like Greece far into the future.
Rodster on Tue, 10th Mar 2015 6:10 pm
A great article by Prof Michel Chossudovsky which amplifies what the West in particular the USSA with it’s NATO Vassal states is up to.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ultimate-war-crime-americas-global-war-on-terrorism/5434478
Makati1 on Tue, 10th Mar 2015 7:19 pm
Actually, Perk, I would not call Russia “declining”. I would call it a superpower under stupid threat from the real dying superpower, the UFSA. Any country that is STILL independent of the empire, with plenty of resources and more nukes than any other country, (and the ability to deliver them anywhere on the earth) can hardly be called “just a petrostate”.
Lets see what happens if Russia wants to build a base and station Nukes on say, Cuba. Oh, wait, they did that long ago and the crap almost hit the fan then. Now the tables are turned and what can the empire expect except a similar demand from Russia for the US (NATO) to get out of their back yard … or else! I could be a very hot summer in more ways than one. Buckle up!
JuanP on Tue, 10th Mar 2015 7:46 pm
I pity the people that believe any of this crap. Ignorance is bliss. I wish I had skipped it.
Makati1 on Tue, 10th Mar 2015 7:55 pm
For consideration:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/russias-remarkable-renaissance/5435643
“What is unique in my mind about this generation is that they are the hybrid generation. The education they received in the schools and universities was still largely dominated by the classical Russian science. That classical Russian science, as I have verified from many discussion with Russian scientist friends over the years, was of a quality almost unknown in the pragmatic West. An American Physics professor from MIT who taught in Moscow universities in the early 1990s told me,
“When a Russian science student enters first year university, he or she already has behind them 4 years of biology, 4 of chemistry, of physics, both integral and differential calculus, geometry…they are starting university study at a level comparable to an American post-doctoral student.”
They grew up in a Russia where it was common for young girls to learn classical ballet or dance, for all children to learn to play piano or learn a musical instrument, to do sports, to paint, as in classical Greek education of the time of Socrates or Germany in the 1800s. Those basics which were also there in American schools until the 1950s, were all but abandoned during the 1980s. American industry wanted docile “dumbed-down” workers who asked no questions.”
theedrich on Wed, 11th Mar 2015 4:10 am
The decline of the American educational system mentioned by Mak reminds one of a parallel of sorts in evolution. It so happens that when any bird species enters an ecological niche where it can give up flying, it does so. Thus we have ostriches, penguins, the now-extinct dodo, and a few others.
The real aim of the relaxation of school standards is the “equalization” of Whites and Blacks. The alleged purpose of feeding teachers’ unions more money was to “help the children” and also to integrate Whites and Blacks in the primary and secondary schools in the belief that White study habits, etc., would rub off on the Blacks. In fact, the very reverse happened. White scores have dropped, many have taken on Black habits of slovenly dress and arrogant acting (even adding such enhancements as tatoos, facial jewelry and drugs), and the nation must now import high-performance technicians and scientists from Asia to fill high-tech positions. Meanwhile there is a huge uproar domestically over the rather clumsy imposition of Common Core, a feeble attempt to reintroduce a bit of academic rigor into the lower grades. Since this would require homework and serious brainwork, CC is encountering very heavy cultural headwinds. Youngsters cannot spend as much time watching TV or spray-painting public walls (or smoking marijuana). As regards the matter of national intellectual prowess, such things do not bode well for America. We are following the path of the dodo bird.
American Idiot on Wed, 11th Mar 2015 5:14 am
America’s decline began when it’s education system failed. America’s educational system is by far the worst in the world for a country that is considered developed.
The other problem is “Affirmative Action.” Idiots like George Bush and Obama are the beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. This idiot country is no longer capable of producing statesman like Eisenhower.
WHY AMERICA FAILED:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzgY20d2MtU
Makati1 on Wed, 11th Mar 2015 5:48 am
theedrich, perhaps it is the abundance of distractions fed to American youths of today? Not drugs or skin color or any other racist ideas. Every generation tries to be different than their elders. Hippies were the fad when I was in my youth. Drugs, sex, communal living was NOT a copy of blacks. It was almost exclusively whites that had the long hair, loose sexual attitudes and drug use.
There has been NO real effort to increase education standards since I was in school (60s). The teachers unionizing and being almost impossible to fire, has brought about the dumbing down of America. That and the switch in the way schools are paid for now. In my youth, the Federal government paid for schools equally. Now real estate taxes pay for them, for the most part. In high income areas, the schools are still very good. In the lower cost neighborhoods they are pitiful 3rd world schools that only the most motivated could possibly get educated in.
Do, yes, maybe today’s teens are trying to be like the blacks, or maybe they are just trying to be like teens with “selfies”, Facebook, i-phones and 24/7/365 connections to mindless fluff. Maybe two generations of slackers have made that the rule now. Too late for the US, whatever the reason.