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Russian–American relations: From Tsarism to Putin

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Abstract

It is agreed that US–Russian relations today are in a crisis. This article seeks a better understanding of the current US–Russian relationship by examining its origins. Russia and the United States have always had conflicting interests as great powers, as the realist school would argue. Opportunities for cooperation were also constrained by longstanding ideological differences neglected by structural realism. Nevertheless, Russian–American relations from 1781 to 1824 were conducted according to realistic assessments of national interests, and in America, Russia was perceived as a friendly power. However, by the late nineteenth century ideological currents in American political culture reversed this favorable image of Russia. Negative perceptions peaked during the Cold War – and have survived the collapse of communism. It should thus come as no surprise that Russia and the United States in the early part of the twenty-first century are capable of conducting diplomacy based on notions of power and interests. A neoclassical realist approach considers norms and cultural forces that frame national interests, providing a more nuanced explanation of international relations in a world where elites are no longer isolated from public opinion.

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Notes

  1. Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, at www.pewglobal.org/database/, accessed 9 August 2014.

  2. In the interview Romney did distinguish between the greatest threat to world security – Iran – and Russia as our greatest opponent for refusing to help contain such threats. Tsygankov (2009) attributes continuing negative images of Russia to a conservative/neoconservative lobby of journalists, think-tank analysts, academics and ex-officials.

  3. Gracheva’s book (2009), which blends Orthodoxy and anti-Semitism with attacks on the Obama administration, is reportedly popular among the Russian military leadership. One member of the Academy of Sciences, Petr Mul’tatuli, even suggested that a cabal of leading American bankers and industrialists, led by Jacob Schiff, urged the Bolsheviks to slaughter Tsar Nicholas II’s entire family, in 1918 (Rasstrel Tsarskoi sem’i, 2012).

  4. Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Prussia, Austria and the two Sicilies joined Russia in the League, which was dissolved in 1783 following the Treaty of Paris.

  5. For each treaty a payment of 6000 rubles to each minister, or about 4500 pounds sterling total, was required (Dana, 1782). In current US dollars this would be well over half a million. The Continental Congress, saddled with debts from the Revolution, understandably balked at such extortionate fees.

  6. See, for example, the dispatches from St Petersburg of Francis Dana to Robert Livingson and John Adams, 27, 29 and 17 August 1783 (in Bashkina et al, 1980, pp. 199–206).

  7. These comments were contained in Alexander’s instructions to Count Feodor Pahlen, who replaced Dashkov as Russia’s chief representative to the US in 1810–1811 (Bolkhovitinov, 1975, pp. 214–217).

  8. On 22 June 1807 off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, the British warship Leopard attacked and boarded the USS Chesapeake without warning, killing 3 crew members, injuring 18 and arresting 4 for desertion. The incident caused an uproar among Americans, with some members of Congress calling for war against Britain (Cray, 2005).

  9. Alexander I, members of the imperial household and leading officials were major shareholders in the Russian American Company (Entsiklopediia, 2001, p. 429).

  10. Today the positions are reversed, with the United States asserting a right to intervene to promote democracy or protect vulnerable populations (the Responsibility to Protect norm), while Russia adamantly rejects any form on interference in sovereign domestic affairs.

  11. Although Secretary of State William Seward communicated to France Washington’s unwillingness to see a foreign or monarchical government in Mexico, the administration clearly understood it could not fight two wars simultaneously, notwithstanding pressure from Congress to expel the French. Once the Civil War ended the United States did at least implicitly threaten war with France over Mexico (see Bancroft, 1896).

  12. The telegraph project, which was made redundant in1867 with the completion of a trans-Atlantic cable, was staffed by engineers, demobilized officers and naturalists from the Smithsonian Institution, along with George Kennan (Saul, 1991, pp. 367–370).

  13. Alexander I, for example, was perceived by many Americans as a virtuous Christian who supported liberal principles and was a true friend of the United States, at least until the later years of his reign (Nakajima, 2007).

  14. In 2011 total US–Russia trade was $42.9 billion (Office of the US Trade Representative, at www.ustr.gov/russia, accessed 19 October 2012).

  15. As Schweller (2009) persuasively argues in his study of Nazi Germany, ideology enables leaders to extract resources and mobilize support in the age of mass politics.

  16. This, of course, is a simplification. Americans were attracted to Russian cultural developments in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and there was great sympathy for Russia during the famine of 1891–1893. But positive developments in US–Russian relations following the American Civil War foundered on increasingly critical attitudes toward Russia (Saul, 1996).

  17. In the United States, honor and pride are often manifested in references to ‘American exceptionalism’ or the country’s ‘special providence’ (see, for example, Mead, 2001). Bacevich (2008) makes the argument for a true realism in American foreign policy, shorn of a providential determination to remake the world in our own idealized image. Tsygankov (2012) argues that honor has been a major factor in Russian foreign policy over the past two centuries.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Benjamin Harrison, Anna Gregg and Artyom Lukin for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Ziegler, C. Russian–American relations: From Tsarism to Putin. Int Polit 51, 671–692 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.32

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