Matching Items (2)
Description
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a revisionist leader seeking to restore Russia’s status as a great power and rival U.S. global dominance by constructing a multipolar world order at the expense of the United States. Putin’s aggressive tendencies are not limited to Europe and the former Soviet sphere as Putin has expanded his revisionist ambitions into other regional theaters, including the Middle East. Putin has pursued an active foreign policy in the Middle East, exploiting the volatile region plagued with a historical predisposition to great power competition as a crucial part of his revisionist grand strategy. Putin is a realist, and employs a ruthless strategy of pragmatic flexibility, capitalizing on historical relations between the Soviet Union and Middle Eastern regimes when possible, but is also skilled at adapting to new circumstances and developments, and exploiting them for Russia’s strategic benefit. Putin has engaged in heightened relations and involvement with Turkey, Iran, and Syria. In Turkey, Putin has taken advantage of that country’s central location and used Turkey as a hub for the expansion of the Russian energy industry, placing pressure on NATO and the European Union. Putin has opportunistically used Iran’s controversial nuclear program to Russia’s benefit by acting as Iran’s primary international sponsor and patron for its nuclear program, elevating Russia’s regional prestige as a rival to the United States, and countering American foreign policy objectives. Putin intervened decisively on behalf of the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, thwarting U.S. calls for regime change in Damascus and forcefully asserting Russia as a formidable regional power with veto-authority in matters of global power dynamics at Washington’s expense. Putin’s achievements with Turkey, Iran, and Syria serve to complement his larger grand strategic objectives to rival the United States as a great power and to create a multipolar world order. Putin’s ruthless, opportunistic foreign policy poses significant challenges to U.S. foreign policy and endangers the liberal world order. Washington must come to terms with the threat posed by a revisionist Russia and adopt a more assertive policy toward Putin.
ContributorsMarch, Nicolas Robert (Author) / Drummond, Charles (Thesis director) / Carrese, Paul (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Vladimir Putin’s 2022 escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war reveals how power functions in the post-Soviet era Russia. Understanding this war as a global and regional conflict underwritten by longer-term historical and cultural factors is crucial to analyzing whether this war is exceptional or is part of a larger pattern that is redefining politics. Putin’s invocation of the Pan-Slavic movement of the early nineteenth century gives a new shape to an old form of populist agitation which stands in tension with the classic state building question of a “grand strategy”. Based on the premise that Putin may be engaging simultaneously in alliance building at a regional level, in an aggressive nationalist re-engineering of Slavic cultural ideals, and in a post-Cold War reimagining of empire, this thesis analyzes the national, international, transnational neo-populist and imperial/geo-political forces at play not just in the war, but in the actions of Russia’s leader as a kind of model for the present. This thesis studies how changing notions of politics relate to changing notions of (a particularly destructive kind of) leadership. Putin’s actions will be viewed through multiple leadership theory lenses insofar as a working characterization of Putin and his media image may be created, but also as a working hypothesis for understanding why the Russo-Ukrainian war is being conducted the way it is. Critical analysis of the forms of nationalism that Putin is weaponizing for political gain will offer new insights regarding how nationalism as a form of rhetoric has evolved since the 20th Century.
ContributorsMurray, Joseph Nathaniel (Author) / Oberle, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Ripley, Charles (Committee member) / Ellsworth, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024