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

CIS leaders to develop joint mechanisms for peacekeeping throughout the common-wealth, stressing Russia’s special role but denying any ambitions to resume the leader-ship¹.

By September Kozyrev again pressed the Russian peacekeeping case in the UN General Assembly. He defended the right of the States which had vital interests in an area to engage in peacekeeping there, thus departing from the conventional wisdom that peacekeepers should be neutral. He asked for international support for Russia in its efforts to keep peace in the former Soviet periphery, warning that „the threat of ethnic violence today is no less serious than the nuclear threat was yesterday, especially in the former Soviet republics”¹². Russia’s yigorous promotion of activist and partisan peacekeeping stood in marked contrast to the position of Western democracies taking a min-imalist and neutrality-based approach.

After October 1993 the government’s rhetoric became measurably tougher. It stressed Russia’s special role in the „near abroad,” claimed the imperial heritage, linked Russian peacekeeping operations (as well as the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Latvia and Estonia) to the treatment of Russian minorities and Russian language rights, and denied the right of interference to third par-ties. Although the CSCE’s mediation efforts in Russia’s periphery were officially applauded, they were resisted de facto either by Russia (we can take care of the problem)¹³, or by Russia’s clients of the moment.

An invocation of the imperial heritage became standard farę for the „liberał” foreign minister. In an oft-quoted interview with “Izvestiia” on October 8, 1993, Kozyrev pointed out that Russia’s interest in dealing effectively with regional conflicts in the former Soviet Union stemmed from the desire not to lose “geopolitical positions that took centuries to conquer” and in an interview of November 24 with “Nezavisimaia Gazeta”, he said that by undertaking peacekeeping, and maintaining military bases in conflict zones, Russia had found the best compromise between two impossible options that faced it after the Soviet collapse: trying to keep the USSR together by force, or a total withdrawal. The latter would have been an “unwarranted loss” because „the periphery has been under Russian influence for centuries”¹⁴.

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   Susanne Crow, Russia Asserts lis Strategie Agenda, ibid., pp. 2-4.

¹²    Paul Lewis in the “New York Times”, September 29,1993, p. all.

¹³    In a conversation with the Swedish foreign minister, for example, October 19 in Moscow, Kozyrev stressed Russia’s readiness to take care of the conflicts on its periphery. Expressing satisfaction with the CSCE willingness to mediate in the Caucasus, he nonetheless insisted that Russia will itself deal with Georgia’s problems. Suzanne Crow in RFE/RL News Briefs October 18-22,1993, October 20, p. 4.

¹⁴    Suzanne Crow in ibid., October 4-8,1993, October 8, p. 7, November 22-26 and November 12, p. 9.