ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explain adaptations in Russia’s strategic behaviour to the American world order using the model spelled out in Chapter 2.1
Russia – viewed as the core of the former Soviet empire – stands as the single greatest loser of the Cold War. The Russian empire had been among the great powers since the seventeenth century; in its Soviet incarnation, it was one of the two superpowers in the Cold War era. But by the mid-1990s, Russia was no longer a superpower. In the words of political scientist William Wohlforth, Russia had undergone ‘the steepest peacetime decline of any major power in recorded history’ (2002b: 186). This decline was both absolute and relative. The decline in relative power position fundamentally altered the basis upon which Russia could pursue its national security strategy and its interests abroad in the new post-Cold War and unipolar American world order.
