2. Why has Russia drifted toward isolation?

At critical moments in Russia's history, given the five factors stated above, Western countries realized the complexity of the nation's domestic democratization and the fact that they had to take precautions against the revitalization of its imperial consciousness. However, democratization and de-imperialization were precisely strategic goals of the West against Russia. The changes of such perceptions eventually ended the honeymoon between the two sides. In December 1994, disputes between Moscow and the West had become an epitome of the changes of Russia's relation with the outside world. It was also an outbreak of the increasingly accumulated conflicts between the two sides in the first few years after the Soviet Union collapsed. The historical period of Russia trying to join the West came to an abrupt end.

In March 1992, Richard Nixon published a memorandum, in which he addressed his concerns that Washington would lose its historical opportunity to reconstruct the CIS region and history would raise the question over “who lost Russia.” As far as I am concerned, the above-stated five factors have exerted a strong impact on the mutual understanding between Russia and the outside world after the fall of the Soviet Union.

A country's rejuvenation and development depends on whether its political groups can cope with challenges and opportunities of a new world and whether they can evaluate the new world properly. After the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis, it is widely believed that both Russia and the West have clear strategic goals. The Western nations want to maintain the status quo of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as keeping Moscow's influence within Russia's border. Moscow, however, is trying to realize reintegration of the CIS states, especially the integration among three Slavic nations – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Due to such essential different demands of interests, the contradictions between them were structural and hard to reconcile. On that score, the Ukrainian crisis is actually an outcome of the evolution of contradictions of the international political structure in the post-Cold War era. Such an opinion is plausible. But the relationship between Moscow and the external world has mirrored a broadening gap between the internal development and the external changes. And we should clarify the process rather than simply draw a conclusion based on existing structural contradictions between them. According to the foregoing review, there were no such structural contradictions that we have been discussed at the very beginning.

The relations between Russia and the outside world have been gradually changing. From this point of view, the ultimate question is what on earth caused the changes of the mutual understanding between the two sides. Only by figuring out these factors can we better comprehend the development of the bilateral relationship between Russia and the outside world after the former stopped integrating into the latter. In fact, the five factors above are the external manifestation of Russia's strategic stability, its way of development and the issue of the CIS. Russia ended its honeymoon with the West in 1995. Since then, Moscow has never bypassed three fundamental issues when dealing with its relations with the outside world, namely European security pattern and the global strategic stability, Russia's way of development and its democratic transition, and Eurasian strategy based on the CIS.

The relationship between Russia and the external world is always changing. The long-term soft confrontation between Russia and the West after the Ukrainian crisis is an outcome of the growing gap between Russia's domestic development and changes in the outside world. That said, the evolution of the ties between Russia and the external world can be divided into two phases after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. The first one is the stage of integration that has been mentioned above, from 1991 to December 1994, when NATO confirmed its policy over enlargement. A feature of this period is that Russia basically shared the same national interest, ideology and political value with the West. It was a period of time when Russia truly wanted to join Western society. The second is the stage of independence and even isolation. From 1995 till now, the period can of course be divided into several parts with different characteristics. But once ending its pro-West policy, Russia has been increasingly distant from the West.

Since 1995, Russia and the West have seen constant disputes. There has always been a debate about Westernization versus Russification in Russia. From 1995 to the outbreak of the Kosovo War in March 1999, Russia had been trying to establish an equal partnership with the West. However, the US bombed Serbia on March 24, 1999 regardless of Russia's protests. And the ties between Moscow and Washington worsened dramatically. It indicated that the pursuit of an equitable partnership with the US was only a wishful thinking of Russia. Yeltsin pointed out in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on March 30, 1999, that the Kosovo War proved again that Russia had enough reasons to resolutely fight against NATO enlargement. It was unacceptable that NATO attempted to replace the UN and the OSCE, as well as imposed its will forcefully on others in Europe and even beyond. A major reason for Russia's protests against the Kosovo War was its domestic Chechen problem. As a matter of fact, military operations of NATO encouraged the emergence of Chechen separatists. And the second Chechen War then broke out on August 2, 1999, with the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen military forces. In June 2000, The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, approved by Putin, explicitly pointed out that certain plans related to establishing new, equitable and mutually advantageous partnership of Russia with the rest of the world have not been realized.

From the Kosovo War in March 1993 to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Russia had been fighting against the US-led unipolar structure. The September 11 attacks created an opportunity for a thaw in Russia's relationship with the West. However, it was disrupted by the outbreak of the Iraq War in March 2003. After the Yukos Affair in October 2003 and the Beslan school siege in 2004, Russia's political reform encountered pressure from the West. After color revolutions in the region of the CIS from 2003, the West started to squeeze Russia's power and influence, while the latter adopted countermeasures. A series of events both at home and abroad exacerbated the relations between Russia and the West. It could be argued that Moscow was hesitating between Westernization and Russification from 1995 to 2003. But since the beginning of Putin's second term from 2004, Russia has officially stepped onto the path of Russification.

Nevertheless, the West considers this development path as a regression of Russia's democracy. Western nations believe that Russia failed to completely realize democracy in the 1990s. Compared with Putin's presidency, in which the country saw considerable progresses in economy, Russian society was more democratic in Yeltsin's term. From 2003 to 2004, the Yukos Affair, the Beslan school siege, Russia's involvement in the Ukrainian elections and Moscow's social welfare reform were considered as four major errors of Putin. The West also believes that the errors were not made by accident, but caused by the country's system itself. It has enhanced Putin's power centralization that led to the regression of Russia's democracy, which would naturally affect the relationship between Moscow and the external world. Since then, the West no longer hopes for shared values with Russia in the latter's foreign policy.

Just when the Russia-West ties got stuck, contradictions between the two were further intensified due to the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. During the very next year, the EU announced the establishment of the Eastern Partnership (EaP). Moscow considered that the goal of this plan was to encroach on and squeeze its strategic space, after which Russia started to rethink its national identity. On the eve of Russian presidential election in October 2011, Putin put forward an initiative of the Eurasian Union. He wanted to build up a supra-national union of sovereign states and make it one polar in the multipolar international order and a crucial link between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis in 2013, the relations between Russia and Ukraine as well as the Russia-West ties have experienced an overall deterioration and a long-term soft confrontation. This has posed a negative impact on the international environment and the peripheral security environment of Russia. What's more, it has also been creating an unfavorable domino effect on Russia's national image and identity, its driving force of development, its political stability and so on.