Surprising Allure of Russian Soft Power.

• Author: Petro, Nicolai N.

The six Russian national security documents issued since Putin first became president in 2000 display a remarkable conceptual consistency. (1)

They argue that a polycentric world is emerging and shifting the balance of power from the West to the Asia-Pacific region. (2) The West is attempting to prevent this, according to Russia, and this will mean greater competition over values and less cooperation in combating global threats like migration, pandemics, global warming and resource scarcity. Unless the West alters course from confrontation to cooperation, the result will be chaos in the international system, which would be very bad for Russia. (3)

To provide greater global stability, Russia intends to pursue "an open, rational, and pragmatic foreign policy, eliminating the need for expensive confrontation in, among other things, a new arms race." Russia's objective is to "gain as many equal partners as it can, in as many regions of the globe." (4)

Finally, Russia sees "returning to one's roots," as a global trend, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. If other civilizations respond to this by trying to impose their own values, a clash of civilizations is all but inevitable. Partnership among civilizations, rather than conflict, is much to be desired, but it would require a common framework of values. Fortunately, says Russia, such a framework can be found in the world's major religions.

A careful reading of these documents, the most authoritative statements of Russia's worldview publicly available, challenges several common Western assumptions.

The first is that Russia rejects the post-Cold War international order. This is not correct. Russia fears global chaos, and believes that efforts to preserve the global hegemony of the West will exacerbate tensions and lead to a breakdown of the international order. Russia places a high value on the international order because, to the extent that it is rooted in the supremacy of international law and under the guidance of UN Security Council, it mitigates chaos. (5)

How does Russia reconcile this with the annexation of Crimea, support for the rebellion in Donbass, and accusations that it engages in cyber warfare against the US and Europe? By providing legal arguments for its actions.

On Crimea, Russia's legal position is that, although the Ukrainian constitution prohibits local referenda on secession, this is now trumped by the UN Charter (article 1), which stipulates that people have the right to self-determination. Russia adopted this view following the July 22, 2010 decision of the International Court of Justice to recognize Kosovo's independence from Serbia. At the time, the U.S. State Department filed a brief in support of Kosovo arguing that "there was no general rule [because] these were political acts." They were therefore worthy of recognition because declaring independence had created a new "political reality" in the region. (6)

Russia originally opposed this ICJ ruling, but later found it quite congenial in Ukraine. Russia argues that Ukrainians living in Crimea and Donbass have the same right to determine their allegiance that Kosovars did when they were living in Serbia, and that the Crimean referendum of March 16, 2014 overwhelmingly ratified that decision.

Most international legal experts, however, argue that Russia facilitated the ability of Crimean authorities to hold such a referendum with masked military intervention. Therefore the results, and the annexation, should not be considered legal. (7) To this Russia (and local Crimean officials) make two counterarguments. First, on the charge that the presence of Russian troops invalidates the referendum, the Crimean government argues that responsibility for law and order at the polling stations was borne by local self-defense forces and volunteers, not Russian troops.

Second, to the point that the Ukrainian Constitution states that the separation of a part of the country's territory cannot be subject to a local referendum, Crimean officials point out that the authorities in Kiev revoked the acting Ukrainian Constitution on February 21st and reinstated the 1996 constitution. This was done in one day, without any judicial review, and as such was illegal. The Crimean government responded by assuming control until 'constitutional order' was restored in Kiev, and began...