ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the causes of the hardening of Russia’s post-Soviet foreign policy. Russia has weighed in rhetorically on the side of the Serbs in the Balkan War and has exercised its veto power on the UN Security Council to back up its strong words. The pre-crackdown power struggle between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Parliament for control of Russia’s external policy turned, in part, on an underlying debate over first principles. Prior to October 1993, Andrey Kozyrev’s ministry saw reformist Russia’s national interests largely coinciding with the interests of the West. The Parliament sought to exploit the dispute between Japan and Russia over the status of the Kurile Islands to tip the balance of power in its favor. Kozyrev, minister of foreign affairs, and Boris Yeltsin’s principal opponents in the Supreme Soviet had very different understandings of both Russian national security and Russia’s rightful place in the international system.
