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Since 2012 and with Putin’s return to the presidency, Russian politics underwent a process of securitization of domestic politics. This laid the groundwork for the crisis in European-Russian relations that culminated in the ‘Ukraine crisis’ from late 2013. This article will trace the domestic determinants of Russian foreign policy choices and narratives since 2012 that help explain the political deadlock between ‘the West’ and Russia over the European Union’s ‘Eastern Partnership’. It will thereby also analyze the effects for the Russian perception of agency between the US and the EU as well as path dependencies that European Union sanctions have created. Not only Russia’s relationship with the West is at stake in this stand-off. The ‘Ukraine crisis’ has developed into a fundamental systemic crisis of the Putinite regime. Only if Putin’s ‘social contract’, which had guaranteed economic well-being in exchange for political inactivity, was to be eroded by sanctions imposed on Russia, the ‘civilizational’ narrative of Russian exclusivity would be endangered. A new social contract will be a generational task and will have to take stock of the nexus between internal determinants and identitarian foreign policy choices. It will also be the first step in recalibrating European-Russia relations.

Interpretations of Russia's military intervention in Syria overwhelmingly focus on Russia's political motivations. An alternative view foregrounds Russia's economic motivations, namely, the construction of a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline traversing Iran, Iraq and Syria. This article examines the salience of Russia's economic motivations and considers two related aspects: First, if Russian intervention aims to secure areas of strategic importance for the proposed pipeline. Second, if Russian intervention realises longer term political and commercial interests that include proposed future pipeline projects. The evidence suggests Russian military policies towards Syria are unlikely to be motivated primarily by the prospect of a proposed gas pipeline, but that regime consolidation is a more immediate policy goal. This article then posits that Russian intervention has a distinct 'dual logic' aimed at integrating the interests of key regional actors into a transnational energy network, while stabilising Russia's regional dominance within this network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Mongolia's attempts at balancing its relations with China and Russia and the dilemmas it faces as China's influence grows in the wake of its "Belt and Road Initiative". Mongolia has embraced China's connectivity projects and a new form of trilateralism, even though Mongolia was not included in the initial five economic corridors proposed by Xi Jinping in 2013. Mongolian concerns over geo-strategic isolation led to a renewed effort to embrace its two big neighbors, resulting in the proposal of the trilateral "Economic Corridor" in 2016, followed by further trilateral summits. The paper thus seeks to answer the puzzle how Mongolia's self-perception as a geopolitical bridgehead state can be reconciled with the partially diverging interests of its two neighbors. Drawing on interviews with Mongolian experts and officials as well as qualitative document analysis, the paper adds empirical nuance to the debate about Sino-Russian interaction in Eurasia, but also to the understudied dimension of the agency of the "in-between countries" in their shared neighborhood. It argues that the spectrum ranging from competition to accommodation between China and Russia is further complicated by the choices and policy responses of actors "in between", like Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the instrumental reference to Russian 'compatriots' in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 served as a discursive framing to justify contradictions in Russian approaches to state sovereignty to an international audience. Contrary to teleological readings of Russian foreign policy, however, the paper argues that while Russian diaspora policies have been tapped into, the iterative and partially contradictory development thereof on a governmental level suggests that these were not the blueprint for a revisionist foreign policy by design. It contextualizes the evolution of Russian diaspora policies against the background of the evolution of the wider 'Russian World' conception and shows how the discourse about the protection of 'compatriots' was contextual and has translated into geopolitical boundary-making at a time when relations between Russia and the West deteriorated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the US–EU transatlantic dialogue on the Iranian nuclear dossier with a particular view to the implications for EU foreign policy on Iran. Doing so, it uses neo-Gramscian scholarship to put the EU’s “over-compliance” with Iran sanctions into perspective. Constrained by the imperatives of hegemonic coercion in the form of US financial Iran sanctions against third country entities and with the hegemonic consent of a Western US-led “historic bloc”, Europe was relegated to a subaltern below its mediatory potential. It will be shown how this finding complicates the EU’s ambition to renew relations with Iran. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with experts and delegation members from the P5+1, this article thus analyses “the normative element” in the transatlantic security dialogue on Iran at a time where the latter is undergoing a sea change in the wake of the implementation of the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” of July 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines policies of both China and the United States in the Middle East. It evaluates the effectiveness of Beijing's strategic hedging behavior against Washington's 'hard power' strategies by discussing several policy challenges in this region: energy security, the Iranian nuclear issue, terrorism, regional alliance structures, and the 'Arab Spring.' The results of this study show that the gradual retreat of the United States from the Middle East coincides with a stronger Chinese presence in the region on several fronts. In examining Sino-U.S. power competition in the Middle East, it contributes to the advancement of 'strategic hedging' as a still underdeveloped concept in the International Relations literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines policies of both China and the United States in the Middle East. It evaluates the effectiveness of Beijing's strategic hedging behavior against Washington's 'hard power' strategies by discussing several policy challenges in this region: energy security, the Iranian nuclear issue, terrorism, regional alliance structures, and the 'Arab Spring.' The results of this study show that the gradual retreat of the United States from the Middle East coincides with a stronger Chinese presence in the region on several fronts. In examining Sino-U.S. power competition in the Middle East, it contributes to the advancement of 'strategic hedging' as a still underdeveloped concept in the International Relations literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's role in the Iranian nuclear dossier is often portrayed as that of a 'facilitator' and 'mediator' in scholarly analyses. NATO member Turkey was seen as a potential bridge-builder between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the 'Western camp' of negotiators. During prime minister Erdoğan's first legislature, however, Ankara's and Washington's foreign policy outlooks and strategic priorities started to diverge in the course of Turkey's new regional engagement in what has been theorized as a 'Middle-Easternization' of Turkish foreign policy. It is Turkey's location as a geostrategic hub in a politically instable region that informed Turkey's 'Zero problems with neighbors' policy and foreign minister Davutoglu's advocacy for a 'Strategic Depth' in Turkey's foreign and regional policies. Ankara emphasizes its need to uphold sound relations with its neighbors and publicly stresses an unwillingness to go along with Western pressure on Iran, and insists on the principle of non-interference and Iran's right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes. All the same, Turkish-Iranian relations are undergoing a deterioration in the wake of the Syrian civil war at the time of writing, with both sides supporting diametrically opposite causes and factions. Turkish-Iranian fundamentally differing conceptions of regional order will also impact upon Turkey's leverage power to defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis. This paper therefore adds a timely contribution to our understanding of a multifaceted and nuanced Turkish foreign policy toward Iran that can be a critical complement to 'Western' diplomatic initiatives in the search for new paradigms for a new Middle East order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]