THE EMERGENCE OF THE FOREIGN-POLICY OF THE RUSSIAN-FEDERATION

In a recent state-of-the-discipline article, John Lewis Gaddis highlighted the failure of scholars of International Relations to foresee the end of the Cold War.1 A similar, no less painful, observation has been made of the inability of those engaged in Soviet Studies to anticipate the collapse of the USSR.2 Any attempt to understand the origins of these transformations has, however, been swiftly overshadowed by the urgent need to outline and evaluate their consequences. This paper seeks to make a modest contribution to this task by providing an analysis of Russian foreign policy; a policy whose orientation, and indeed very existence, is predicated on the demise of the Cold War and the end of Soviet power. © 1993.