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Russia's Monroe Doctrine: Peacekeeping, Peacemakingor Imperial Outreach?

there under a label of peacekeeping. It even includes an idea that the West should pay for such operations. Ali of these points have now emerged in the mainstream of Rus-sian foreign policy.

Criticism came not only from the Parliament but also from democratic circles. Writ-ing in 1992 Professor Andranik Migranyan, director of the CIS Centre of the Institute of International Economics and Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, strongly endorsed Russia’s imperial role, and madę policy recommendations which fore-shadowed some of the later policies. He not only stressed that de jurę and de facto Russia was called upon to play a special role in the entire geopolitical space of the former Soviet Union, but advocated reincorporation of ethno-territorial entities which used to be parts of imperial Russia but were now cut off and asking for Russia’s protection, such as Ossetia, Karabakh, the Crimea, and the Dniester region. He also invoked the familiar “hands-off” attitude: no unfriendly alliances by the successor States either with each other or with a third country, and no Western or international interference into Russian geopolitical space, should be tolerated by Russia.

In assessing relations with former republics, Migranyan suggested working for a fed-eral arrangement with Kazakhstan and Belarus, and advocated vigilance in safeguarding Russian interests in Ukrainę and a return of, or at the least a special status for, Crimea. In relations with the Baltic States, Russia’s access to the Baltic and protection of the rights of the Russians there should be assured. Russia should not and could not with-draw from Transcaucasus, because a vacuum there would lead to incursions by Iran and Turkey, with potentially dangerous consequences for Central Asia and the Turks of the Russian Federation. Migranyan also invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify the pro-posed policy in terms understandable to the West¹.

The conflict between the president and Parliament was not resolved until October 1993 when the Parliament was disbanded and its leaders arrested. Thus the war of words continued until late 1993, although the shape of the new policy which reflected Parlia-ment’s main demands began to emerge earlier. Russia’s need for “peacekeeping” in its own backyard was raised by President Yeltsin in a speech to the Civic Union in February 1993 in which he stressed Russia’s special responsibility for the prevention of conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union, and announced that he

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1

Real and I/lusory Guidelines in Foreign Policy, “Rossiiskaya Gazeta”, August 4,1992, p. 7, translated in ibid., pp. 1-4 in 1994, Migranyan was a member of Yeltsin’s presidential council.