Russia's Many Foreign Policies

What are Russian foreign policy objectives? It depends on whom you ask.

In making assessments of Russia's behavior in the world, it is absolutely

critical that we recognize that Russia today is not a totalitarian state ruled by a

Communist Party with a single and clearly articulated foreign policy of expanding

world socialism and destroying world capitalism and democracy. That state

disappeared in 1991. Rather, Russia is a democratizing state - a weakly institutionalized

democracy with several deficiencies, but a democratizing state

nonetheless. Russia's foreign policy, in turn, is a product of domestic politics in

a pluralistic system.