Abstract:
How different would the foreign policy of a democratic Russia be from the foreign policy of Russia now? While some aspects of a democratic Russia’s foreign policy would be different from that of the Putin/Medvedev regime, much of it could be the same. It is important to understand this since identifying how a democratic Russian foreign policy would be similar to as well as different from Putin/Medvedev’s helps us to distinguish between what are Russia’s core foreign policy interests — no matter what kind of regime is in power — and what are the peculiar interests of an authoritarian Russia which might change as democratisation occurs. It is timely to explore just what a democratic Russian foreign policy might be toward several areas, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa, the Near Abroad, and the United States.
