Overview

Moscow indulges in the military use of force and balancing behaviour, only when it perceives its interests to be threatened, but seeks to preserve, uphold, or return to the status-quo the moment the threats subside or are neutralized by balancing actions, acting more as a security maximizer, than a power maximizer. The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? employs a qualitative research design and case study method, relying on secondary literature, military sources, and observed and recorded news. This evidence relies on Russian strategic actions, and not Russian rhetoric. The evidence explored suggests that Russia balances against perceived threats and that Russian use of force is directly proportional to any strategic and material loss. Alternatively, Russia behaves like a status quo power when the perceived threat subsides. Also, Maitra explains how Russian military aggression is focused on geopolitical balance and has narrow strategic aims, and Russia either lacks the will and/or capability or both to be an expansionist or occupying power. Maitra concludes that Russia is inherently a reactive power with limited regional aims, which are not commensurate with an aspiration of a continental hegemony. The findings have future policy relevance for European/British and American security, as the U.S. grows increasingly isolationist, and NATO and EU rift widens.

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9781666935844

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Reviews

This is a truly excellent study of Russian foreign policy since the Cold War. It makes it manifestly clear that Putin consistently acted according to realist logic and that he does not have an imperial agenda. Hopefully, The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? will be widely read in the West, where misconceptions about Putin’s thinking abound. -- John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago Sumantra Maitra's work looks carefully, and from a realist perspective, at actual Russian behavior, its implications, and the conclusions we can draw from it, and all without the strong ideological spectacles that so many bring to the issues. He rightly concludes that Russian actions are rational, do not need some kind of Russian Sonderweg or civilizational exceptionalism to account for them, and can in large part be explained by its perceptions, justified or otherwise, of threats to its self-defined interests. At a moment when so many observers argue for the inevitability of an open-ended and possibly existential confrontation with Russia, it is timely to consider that a more clear-sighted realist approach could be more productive for Western policy-makers. -- David George Hamilton Frost, Baron Frost, The Rt Hon. Lord Frost of Allenton, CMG PC

Sumantra Maitra's work looks carefully, and from a realist perspective, at actual Russian behavior, its implications, and the conclusions we can draw from it, and all without the strong ideological spectacles that so many bring to the issues. He rightly concludes that Russian actions are rational, do not need some kind of Russian Sonderweg or civilizational exceptionalism to account for them, and can in large part be explained by its perceptions, justified or otherwise, of threats to its self-defined interests. At a moment when so many observers argue for the inevitability of an open-ended and possibly existential confrontation with Russia, it is timely to consider that a more clear-sighted realist approach could be more productive for Western policy-makers. --David George Hamilton Frost, Baron Frost, The Rt Hon. Lord Frost of Allenton, CMG PC This is a truly excellent study of Russian foreign policy since the Cold War. It makes it manifestly clear that Putin consistently acted according to realist logic and that he does not have an imperial agenda. Hopefully, The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? will be widely read in the West, where misconceptions about Putin's thinking abound. --John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago

Author Information

Sumantra Maitra is a senior editor at The American Conservative, a senior contributor to The Federalist, a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, and an associate fellow at the Royal Historical Society, London.

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