Primakov Doctrine

Concept and background

The Primakov doctrine is a Russian political doctrine formulated in the 1990s. It assumes that Russia's national security rests on its superpower status and that Russia therefore cannot allow the formation of a unipolar international order led by the United States.[P1]

The doctrine takes its name from Yevgeny Primakov, whom President Boris Yeltsin appointed foreign minister in 1996.[P3] By the time he took office in January 1996, discontent with the Western-leaning course of his predecessor Andrei Kozyrev had grown,[P321][P324] and Primakov led efforts to redirect Russian foreign policy away from the West, advocating a strategic trilateral alliance of Russia, China and India to counterbalance the United States in Eurasia.[P3] He argued not for a break with the West but for preserving Russia's right to conduct an independent foreign policy in China, South Asia and the Middle East, and he was the first to propose closer cooperation among Russia, India and China.[P196]

Core principles

English Wikipedia summarises five key ideas: first, Russia is a powerful actor pursuing an independent foreign policy; second, Russia should pursue a multipolar world managed by a concert of major powers; third, it should pursue supremacy in the former Soviet sphere and Eurasian integration; fourth, it should oppose NATO expansion; and fifth, it should pursue a partnership with China.[P4]

Eugene Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment (2019) restates these as the unacceptability of a unipolar world, a multipolar order able to counterbalance U.S. unilateral power, insistence on Russian primacy and integration leadership in the post-Soviet space, opposition to NATO expansion, and partnership with China, adding that Moscow seeks to constrain the United States with the help of other major powers and to position itself as an indispensable actor with a vote and a veto.[P40][P22][P23][P24][P25] A further argument for multipolarity was that a unipolar world is inherently unstable, whereas multipolarity provides checks and balances on unilateral and arbitrary uses of power by the hegemon.[P40]

Development and historical record

In a programmatic article in the journal International Affairs (Международная жизнь) in October 1996, Primakov identified the transition to multipolarity as the main tendency of world development and set out conditions for a new polycentric order: preventing new dividing lines, shedding the "leader-follower" mentality, democratising international economic relations, and building a new European security architecture on equality and indivisibility, with the United Nations as the principal mechanism.[P332][P333] In 1997 the Russian and Chinese leaders signed a joint declaration on a multipolar world and the formation of a new international order,[P346] and in 1998, as prime minister, Primakov proposed trilateral Russia-India-China cooperation during a visit to New Delhi, a format later built upon by BRICS.[P348] English Wikipedia likewise describes the resulting Russia-India-China format as eventually becoming BRICS.[P5]

Carnegie cites the 2008 war with Georgia, the war in Ukraine from 2014 and the intervention in Syria from 2015 as implementation of these principles, and judges that Russian uses of hybrid warfare and military power were calibrated to avoid undue risks.[P29] It describes hybrid warfare as an instrument of risk management in the service of the doctrine, and notes that the 2010 Russian military doctrine flagged NATO's expansion and foreign troop deployments along Russia's periphery.[P57][P288] On the 2014 war in Ukraine, however, Carnegie reports that from the perspective of Russia's national security establishment it was a war of necessity rather than a war of choice.[P294]

Emblematic moment and legacy

The emblematic moment came on 24 March 1999, when Primakov, then prime minister, turned his plane around over the Atlantic. Flying to Washington on an official visit, he learned near Newfoundland from U.S. Vice President Al Gore that NATO had decided to bomb Yugoslavia, cancelled the visit, ordered the aircraft back and returned to Moscow, a manoeuvre popularly dubbed "Primakov's Loop" (разворот над Атлантикой, петля Примакова).[P214][P90] According to widely circulated assessments by Russian political analysts, the episode was recorded as Russia's turn towards a multi-vector foreign policy, the beginning of the revival of Russian statehood and the first demonstration to the world that Russia cannot be spoken to from a position of strength.[P150]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov brought the "Primakov doctrine" term into the geopolitical lexicon at least as early as 2014, speaking on the eve of Primakov's 85th birthday,[P6] and stated that the principles Primakov formulated underlie every edition of Russia's Foreign Policy Concept since 2000.[P355] Lavrov credited Primakov with authorship of the multi-vector principle and with seeking equal, mutually beneficial relations with all states willing to pursue them.[P344] A retrospective in International Affairs likewise describes Primakov as not only formulating the doctrine but implementing it as foreign minister and then prime minister, and cites President Vladimir Putin's remark that, largely thanks to Primakov, respect for Russia returned to world diplomacy.[P302][P352]

Assessment and controversy

The use of the name is contested and dated variously. English Wikipedia states that Primakov promoted the line after becoming foreign minister and that in 1997 the American foreign policy establishment labelled it the "Primakov doctrine,"[P86][P8] while some researchers date its publication to 1998-1999.[P11] Rumer likewise introduces the term as one popularised by Lavrov.[P21]

Scholarly assessments differ. Ariel Cohen described the doctrine as a zero-sum game even while noting strong bonds between Russia and Iran.[P8] Emanuel Copilaş presented Primakov as the architect of Moscow's geopolitical reorientation from the Western space to the Eurasian space and called the neo-Eurasianist inspiration of his geopolitical concept undeniable, while Mark Bassin observed that a variety of very different Eurasian perspectives exist, naming those of Gennady Zyuganov and Aleksandr Dugin alongside Primakov's.[P10][P9] Rumer judges that implementation has been careful rather than reckless but warns that a new generation of leaders may be more inclined to take risks.[P29][P31] Carnegie also notes that the doctrine extends claims to privileged interests across Russia's periphery into Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Baltic region.[P288]