1. CERI: Russian Foreign Policy Discourse during the Kosovo Crisis: Internal Struggles and the Political Imaginaire
- Author:
- Guillaume Colin
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
- Abstract:
- The Kosovo crisis gave rise to a domestic political crisis in Russia. The NATO bombings called into question the efficiency of Russian foreign policy, which was against them, challenging the worldview that the government conveyed, thereby reinforcing the communist anti-establishment vision. The present article, by analysing the press conferences given by both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Communist Party, argues that each of the two narratives aimed to construct and impose (or defend) its own worldview and dividing principles of the world. In both narratives, this struggle was backed up using very strong political identity myths—namely Russia's relation to the West and the memory of the Second World War—that are referred to in opposite ways. The Kosovo example allows us to highlight the stakes and themes that work their way into Russian foreign policy discourse and contribute to exploiting foreign policy issues in Russian domestic political debate, and also cast light on the distorting effects caused by this instrumentalization.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy and NATO
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Kosovo