The Journal of Slavic Military Studies

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Geopolitical Rivalries in the ‘Common

Neighborhood’ — Russia’s Conflict With the West,
Soft Power, and Neoclassical Realism
Huseynov, Vasif. Stuttgart, Germany: Ibidem-Verlag, 2019. ISBN:
1
9783838212777. 1 All statements of fact, analysis, or opinion are the
author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the NIU, the
Department of Defense (DoD), the United States government, or The Journal
of Slavic Military Studies.

Lincoln E. Flake

To cite this article: Lincoln E. Flake (2020) Geopolitical Rivalries in the ‘Common Neighborhood’
— Russia’s Conflict With the West, Soft Power, and Neoclassical Realism, The Journal of Slavic
Military Studies, 33:2, 304-307, DOI: 10.1080/13518046.2020.1763126

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2020.1763126

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JOURNAL OF SLAVIC MILITARY STUDIES
2020, VOL. 33, NO. 2, 304–307

BOOK REVIEW

Huseynov, Vasif. Geopolitical Rivalries in the ‘Common Neighborhood’ — Russia’s

Conflict With the West, Soft Power, and Neoclassical Realism. Stuttgart, Germany:
Ibidem-Verlag, 2019. ISBN: 9783838212777.1

The military posture in Europe is becoming more reminiscent of the Cold War with
each passing year. The year 2019 saw the United States and NATO conduct its most
expansive military exercise ever in close proximity of Russia. DEFENDER-20 was the
largest US force deployment to Europe in 25 years.2 For its part, Russia’s military
buildup, commencing in earnest in 2008, shows no signs of abating. Its exercises are
increasing in size, and doomsday weapons, such as hypersonic weapons and space-
based assets, are no longer whimsical aspirations. Russian bluster has not subsided
since Vladimir Putin’s famous statement of intent at the 2007 Munich Conference —
and has found action in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria. Yet well removed from all this
high-profile military showmanship, but not entirely unrelated to it, is the less
perceptible confrontation for influence in the buffer states of Eastern Europe. In
his new book, Geopolitical Rivalries in the ‘Common Neighborhood’ — Russia’s
Conflict with the West, Soft Power, and Neoclassical Realism, Vasif Huseynov takes
aim at the great power rivalry that is raging just below the threshold of war. The
book is a well-argued study that examines the timeframe from 2004 to 2016 and the
case study nations of Belarus and Ukraine. It investigates the ‘soft power’ tools used
by both sides to affect change in what Russia often refers to as its Near Abroad.
Those tools used against the general public, non-governmental organizations, reli-
gious groups, and other civil society institutions are employed with the hope of
eventually influencing the alignment strategies of governments.
The author tackles a subject that is particularly germane to current affairs and in
many ways more consequential than the back-and-forth activities in the military domain.
Thirty years on from the fall of the Soviet Union, the strategic orientations of many of
these nations remain an open question. Both sides have thrown considerable resources
into the fight to tilt public opinion and government preference to their side. To date, the
contest is largely a split decision, and the author does his best to account for the differing
geopolitical postures of Near Abroad nations. Why have some nations decided to break
toward the West, like Ukraine and Georgia, while others, like Belarus and Armenia, lean
toward Russia? Still others, like Moldova, vacillate between the two. The book does not
provide a definite answer, but it does highlight several insights into the great soft power
rivalry in the region.
One significant theoretical underpinning of the author’s argument is the assumption
that the influence exerted by public pressure and non-state actors on foreign policy is
damaging to a country’s self-interest as only the government, acting independent of
domestic pressure, is best suited to choose strategic alliances. The author argues that
when state leaders have weak autonomy with regards to domestic non-state actors, then
soft power projection by external great powers has greater effect — more often than not
with destabilizing consequences.

1
All statements of fact, analysis, or opinion are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of
the NIU, the Department of Defense (DoD), the United States government, or The Journal of Slavic Military Studies.
2
US Army Europe, Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20, https://www.eur.army.mil/DefenderEurope/.
 THE JOURNAL OF SLAVIC MILITARY STUDIES 305

At first glance, this seems self-evident and an easily verifiable claim in the Near Abroad.
The problem with this assumption is that it is dangerously close to asserting that the
more anti-democratic a nation — such as Belarus, where civil society inputs to decision
making approaches zero — the less vulnerable to soft power influence. While an
adherent of Realism might argue such a line, classical Liberal thought typically views
input by the public, civil society, and non-state actors as having a beneficial effect on the
political and foreign policy calculus of a state. And the use of Belarus as an example of
a strong state autonomy and Ukraine as a weak state begs the question of outcome.
Belarus may be immune from outside soft power influence — but it is also an autocratic
state with few individual freedoms compared to Ukraine. Democracy does come with
susceptibilities, but in the aggregate it’s better than the alternatives.
The author hits the mark more accurately when discussing sources of soft power
policies. His model categorizes two sources of soft power — attractiveness (self-projec-
tion) and state-managed projection (propaganda and public diplomacy) — and is
a contribution to the study of subtle influence. The former encompasses all cultural,
political, economic, and educational attributes favorable to the nation’s image without
the involvement of its government. The latter is more sinister and involves non-military
initiatives meant to exert influence on foreign populations in an effort to mold opinions
and influence polices. Attractiveness is more aligned with what Joseph Nye initially
envisioned with his soft power concept, while state-managed projection touches on the
menacing fake news and information operations attributed of late to Russian hybrid
warfare or its whole-of-government approach to achieving national security aims. This
distinction is useful in examining the successes and failures of soft power campaigns in
the Near Abroad by Russia and the West.
Indeed, the most valuable chapter of the book is chapter 4, which details the many
soft power tools in Russia’s kit. The author points out that Russia interprets soft power
differently than those in the West. Where the West sees it as a means to attract others to
its sphere, Russia views it as a means to influence, and even coerce, other nations. Tools
in this kit include several integration projects, such as the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Customs Union. Likewise,
international broadcasting efforts have expanded considerably with the goal of establish-
ing and spreading anti-Western and pro-regime narratives. Academic exchange pro-
grams and the Russian language, the Orthodox Church, and cultural initiatives were also
established after 2007 in support of the more conventional notion of soft power. All
these efforts either began or gained considerable strength following the Color
Revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia.
Notwithstanding these initiatives, Russian diplomacy has not been known for being
particularly nimble. Russia’s history of suppression over these nations and the West’s
enormous advantage in GDP, educational institutes, and media and economic imports
resulted in Russia always playing from beyond. Moscow’s attempts at state-managed
projection, such as the Orthodox Russkiy Mir project or other cultural initiatives, have
found little success. Information campaigns have been more successful but still unable to
prevent Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova from signing agreements with the European
Union that all but eliminate a full return to Russia’s orbit.
Rather, coercive diplomacy has been Russia’s strong suit. The Kremlin’s integration of
indirect action in 2014 in Ukraine and cyber-attacks and other disruptive methods
elsewhere around the world have afforded Russia some influence and the occasional
foreign policy success. But for the most part, traditional ‘soft power’ instruments have
been the least effective aspect of this indirect action. For its part, the West scores
particularly high on the attractiveness measure. Despite the surprisingly durable level
306 BOOK REVIEW

of Soviet nostalgia in the region, noted by the author, Western values, media, and culture
have acted as bedrock for pro-Western sentiments in the region. And despite Russian
accusations that the West foments Color Revolutions throughout the region, the West
has not shown the same effort as Russia in dominating the narrative in the information
domain in these regions.
A unique aspect of Huseynov’s approach is his belief that public opinion is one of the
most influential variables in the formation of the external alignment of many of these
countries. He uses Ukraine and Georgia to illustrate the strength of this variable on
outcome and that self-aware governments in the region are cognizant of this threat from
Russia and actively countering it. While the issue of Russian employment of soft power
has only relatively recently gained attention, the author moors his analysis in Edward
Carr’s work on ‘power over opinion’ and Hans Morgenthau’s studies on ‘cultural
imperialism’, among others. He astutely notes that in both the case of Georgia in 2008
and Ukraine in 2014, Russia was forced to turn to hard power when its soft power tactics
failed. Post-conflict soft power tools have also failed, driving those nations even more
into the West’s camp. Perhaps the granting of autocephaly (self-government) to the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in January 2019 was
the greatest punctuation of Russia’s failed soft power strategy in Ukraine.
While the book is a worthwhile contribution and provides numerous insights into
great rival machinations in the Near Abroad, I must state that I have difficulty with the
author’s judgment that Ukraine would have been better off maintaining neutrality
instead of embracing Western values and institutions. I am also uneasy with the asser-
tion that Ukraine’s neutrality was compromised by a society that was free to consume
a diversity of messages and form opinions, which the public in turn expressed to political
leaders. This is an extension of my previously stated misgiving and must be reiterated as
it serves as such a vital element of the book. Free societies are naturally more vulnerable
to unreliable sources. Only relatively recently, with the advent of the Internet and
countries such as Russia and China having engaged in concerted efforts to meddle, has
this become an issue of paramount importance.
Indeed, the concern has started a very real debate within the United States about
the extent of freedom of speech — particularly as it relates to social media platforms.
This seriousness gives some weight to the author’s assertions. But on an ideological
level, I always side with freedoms over state control. It does not help his case that all
the regional examples of ‘strong states’ are aligned with Russia — a nation with
a rather dubious record on individual and institutional freedoms. I am also very
weary of the author’s synonyms for totalitarianism — such as a government that is
‘autonomous vis-à-vis the society’ (p. 29). While the author may seek to be objective,
one should call these political systems for what they are. These states can indeed
‘control the inflow of soft power projection from foreign states’, but at what cost to
individual freedoms? (p. 29)
Aside from this qualm, Huseynov’s work is a good examination of soft power
politics in the buffer countries between Russia and NATO. It would serve as a good
introductory read for those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of ongoing
dynamics — particularly Russia’s strategies and tools toward the less-confrontational
end of the conflict spectrum. The book’s empirical findings serve as a reminder that
the ‘diminishing utility of military power in international politics compels great
powers to develop soft power capacity in the pursuit of their foreign policy goals’
(p. 229). Notwithstanding the military one-upmanship described earlier in this review
and regularly displayed in such strategically important locales as the Black Sea, East
Mediterranean, and the Arctic Sea, non-military power has predominantly been the
 THE JOURNAL OF SLAVIC MILITARY STUDIES 307

currency of influence in the great power struggle for influence in the Near Aboard.
That struggle is likely far from ending as Russia will not concede easily to Western
supremacy over these buffer nations.

Lincoln E. Flake
Center for Strategic Intelligence Research (CSIR) US National Intelligence University
(NIU), Washington, DC
lincolnfl[email protected]

© 2020 Taylor & Francis

https://doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2020.1763126