Description
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 marked the culmination of Russia's dissociation from the project of institutionalized pan-European security, and from the global liberal order more generally. Processes of dissociation – defined as the intentional distancing from the core rules and norms of institutions – occur rather often, and might even become a dominant feature of world politics as deglobalization proceeds. However, this phenomenon has rarely been tackled in academic research. What has been overlooked in the scholarly debate are the specific forms and underlying causes of dissociations from multilateral arrangements. Delving into the controversial history of Russia’s drifting away from the European security regime complex after the end of the Cold War, – referred to as 'Ruxit' – this paper demonstrates why Russia’s leadership felt so estranged from the order which creation it actively endorsed. To answer this question, the study draws on the literature of institutional crises and more than 40 personal interviews with Russian politicians and diplomats as well as authoritative Russian and Western scholars of Russian foreign policy. The author concludes that Russian opposition towards transatlantic institutions hardened as they proved structurally unresponsive to the changing post-Cold War dynamic in Russian-Western relations. Had these institutions been more accommodating towards them, Moscow is likely to have remained within the bounds of a reformed European security regime complex.
