How the Russian Government has Destablilized the World Over the Past 12 Months (Political Science 101)

How the Russian Government Has Destabilized the World over the Past 12 Months
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Russia’s war efforts and destabilizing effects have mostly been felt in Eastern Europe in countries that were parts of the Soviet Union. This is especially in Ukraine and to a smaller extent the republic of Georgia. Other than this is the Middle East region, where Russia has recently intervened in the Syrian Crisis. Russia’s foreign policy appears to be aimed at deterring North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO’s) influence in East Europe, especially U.S. involvement and supporting friendly nations in the Middle East especially the Shia led governments of Syria and Iran. Russia’s foreign policy has focused more on expansionism and there are hints that they may antagonize Washington.
One of the principles of American foreign policy has been to export democracy and has supported ‘revolutions’ Eastern Europe especially the Ukrainian revolution. This is based on the belief that democratic ideals are the best for the world, but this has also been used to expand NATO’s sphere of influence. However, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President has argued that the democratic revolutionaries simply provide an unrealistic view of the world (Gregory, 2015). Putin further alludes to the failure of Russia to influence socialist revolution as a case in point, arguing that the West ought also not to interfere with the sovereignty of other countries through exporting democratic regimes (Gregory, 2015). The western backed countries of the former Soviet Union depend on Russia for energy sources, and Putin has threatened to cut off the energy sources.
The annexation of Crimea demonstrated that Russia was walling to use military action to serve her foreign interest in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, Putin framed the annexation as an attempt to rewrite a historical wrong. Even though Russian speaking people were the Majority in Crimea, the region was administered from Kiev as part of Ukraine. The ascendancy of a pro western presidency after the ‘February 2014 revolution’ highlights that Russian policy makers were anxious of having pro western countries so close to Russia’s borders (BBC, 2015). The Crimean issue has pitted Ukraine and the West on one side versus Russia on the other. Direct military action and subsequent western backed sanctions demonstrate that NATO’s influence in Eastern Europe is still not been felt. Luxmoore (2014) argues that Russia’s military actions abroad are aimed at providing a stable external environment to safeguard Putin’s regime with buffer zones along the country’s periphery.
Other than the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s efforts to support the separatists in Eastern Ukraine has also been related to the inability of the Ukrainian governments to controlled areas held by rebels (Woehrel, 2015). Russian intelligence agents have provided direct support to the rebels in the Russian speaking region of Ukraine. There is reasonable belief that Russia’s efforts are aimed at destabilizing Kiev for supporting pro-western stances given the timing of the anti-Ukrainian protests in the Easter part of Ukraine (State Department, 2014). Furthermore, supplying the separatists with military help demonstrate that Russia has destabilized Ukraine so the government can water down support for western policies and NATO.
Direct military intervention is not the only option available to Russia in the former Soviet republic, with policy makers the world order where the U.S. has mostly looked up to the European allies to support her foreign policy. The Russian foreign policy is based on domination of political reasoning as well as coercion and control to maintain power, and this explains the differences in perspectives with the Europeans on the issue of sovereignty (Makarychev, 2014). In the former Soviet Republic, the destabilizing effects meant that the pro-Western regimes are prone to Russia’s actions to thwart their attempts to join NATO. For instance, Pro Kremlin politicians in Moldova rallied to defeat the governments’ efforts to move closer ties with the EU, relying on discontent fo...