Center for Security Studies

The Road to Crimea: Putin’s Foreign Policy Between Reason of State, Sovereignty and Bio-Politics

The Road to Crimea: Putin’s Foreign Policy Between Reason of State, Sovereignty and Bio-Politics

Author(s): Philipp Casula
Editor(s): Stephen Aris, Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic, Heiko Pleines, Hans-Henning Schröder, Aglaya Snetkov
Series: Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)
Issue: 148
Pages: 2-6
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen; Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University
Publication Year: 2014

The Crimean Crisis of 2014 has emphasized once more the troubled relations between Putin’s Russia and the West. It has also brought to the fore a lack of understanding of Russia’s foreign policy in the West. Many observers are oscillating between disbelief and alarm, trying to figure out Russia’s conduct in foreign affairs by referring to imperialism, the Cold War, or to an inherently autocratic character of Russian politics. But how special or different are the drivers of Russian foreign policy compared with those of other powers? This paper investigates Russia’s foreign policy along three key terms of political history, reason of state, sovereignty, and bio-politics, highlighting what they have meant historically and how they are put into practice by Russia’s current regime, especially during the Crimean Crisis.

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