Russia's Security Policy under Putin A critical perspective

This book examines the evolution of Russia’s security policy under Putin in the 21st century, using a critical security studies approach. Drawing on critical approaches to security the book investigates the interrelationship between the internal-external nexus and the politics of (in)security and regime-building in Putin’s Russia. In so doing, it evaluates the way that this evolving relationship between state identities and security discourses framed the construction of individual security policies, and how, in turn, individual issues can impact on the meta-discourses of state and security agendas. To this end, the (de)securitisation discourses and practices towards the issue of Chechnya are examined as a case study. In so doing, this study has wider implications for how we read Russia as a security actor through an approach that emphasises the importance of taking into account its security culture, the interconnection between internal/external security priorities and the dramatic changes that have taken place in Russia’s conceptions of itself, national and security priorities and conceptualisation of key security issues, in this case Chechnya. These aspects of Russia’s security agenda remain somewhat of a neglected area of research, but, as argued in this book, offer structuring and framing implications for how we understand Russia’s position towards security issues, and perhaps those of rising powers more broadly. This book will be of much interest to students of Russian security, critical security studies and IR

Common knowledge? Business intellectuals, BRIC and the production of knowledge across global finance and international relations

This article engages with the debate about how we come to know IR the way that we do. It seeks to contribute to this research agenda in two related ways. Firstly, it highlights the influence that a previously neglected circuit of practice has on the co-constituted knowledge relationship between global finance (GF) and International Relations (IR): the business intellectuals of cultural circuits of capital (CCC). Secondly, it argues that the science and technology studies’ concept of boundary objects is invaluable in accounting for both how IR’s ‘constitutive’ theorising is influenced by other circuits of practice and the co-constituted nature of ‘the international’ as an object of investigation. To exemplify both arguments, and how they relate to one another, the article traces the co-constituted operation of the concept of ‘BRIC’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Following the global financial crisis in 2007/2008, CCC popularised the concept of ‘BRIC’, which then came to operate as a boundary object between IR and GF and in the process impacted on how IR knows ‘rising powers’ and ‘global governance’. Thus, the functionality of BRIC as a boundary object served to provide business intellectuals with constitutive influence on how IR knows its object of study

When the Internal and External Collide: A Social Constructivist Reading of Russia's Security Policy

This study investigates the evolution of Russia’s internal and external security priorities and state identity under President Putin through the prism of its narrative on the war on terror. Drawing on social constructivist theories of identity, security and narratives, it argues a change occurred from the regime conceptualising Russia as a weak state, which prioritised the internal security threats and the fight against terrorism in the early period, to a strong state, whose main security ‘Other’ was the West. As a result, the Russian leadership have relegated the fight against terrorism to an operational level and now emphasises the struggle to defend their strength from external pressure

Theories, methods and practices - a longitudinal spatial analysis of the (de)securitization of the insurgency threat in Russia

How do securitizing actors go about desecuritizing policy issues that have been securitized across multiple spatially bounded referent objects? Do such desecuritizations develop as a single or manifold process and with what political effect? And critically, how do we methodologically approach the study of such processes? These are pertinent questions that have been left underexamined in the (de)securitization literature. In seeking to fill this gap, this article makes two main points. First, it calls for a greater focus on the study of (de)securitizations that are constructed according to multiple spatially bounded referent objects, and on how these diverging strands of discourse and practice shape the overarching process. Second, it argues for a greater use of longitudinal methods of analysis as a better way to capture the evolutionary dynamics of desecuritization processes, which (re)constitute security policies and agendas. To illustrate these claims, the article considers the empirical case of Russia’s (de)securitization of insurgent threats since 2000 by tracing this process over a longitudinal period and across three spatial-referent objects, namely the local level: Chechnya; the sub-federal level: North Caucasus; and the national level: Russia

"Global alternatives, regional stability and common causes": the international politics of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its relationship to the West

Two scholars of the international relations (IR) of Eurasia consider the “geopolitical identity” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). They first outline that most of the existing analysis and comment on the SCO assumes its raison d’etre to be countering the “West” in Eurasia and beyond and suggest that this narrow perspective does not afford the SCO enough agency, which leads to a distorted picture of the variety of SCO discourse and behavior. Second, they outline a framework based on a combination of the literatures on Critical Geopolitics and identity-focused IR for examining the “geopolitical identity” of the SCO. The article then traces the SCO’s geopolitical discourse on its own collective identity, its relationship to the West in wider international affairs, Eurasia, and in areas in which it seeks active collaboration with the West. It is argued that while in many contexts the SCO’s geopolitical discourse is indeed built upon a Self/Other dynamic that contrasts their common positions on certain international issues against those of the West, in others it identifies similarity to the West and suggests a larger in-group between itself and the West

'The Loud Dissenter and its Cautious Partner' - Russia, China, global governance and humanitarian intervention

The global issue of humanitarian intervention has become more pronounced and complicated in recent years due to increasingly diverging views on addressing security crises between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. Despite their support for the principles of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), both Russia and China are wary of Western intervention in internal conflicts after the Cold War and have become increasingly critical of Western-led armed intervention in humanitarian conflicts. Unease in Beijing and Moscow over the multilateral intervention in the 2011 Libyan conflict and their ongoing opposition to Western policies in the Syrian Civil War since 2011 would seem to point to ever more coincidence in their negative views of American and Western intervention policies. A conventional wisdom has thus emerged that there is something akin to a Sino–Russian ‘bloc’, with near-identical policies of discouraging armed intervention within state borders under the aegis of humanitarian intervention or the R2P doctrine, signed in 2005 (2005 World Summit). However, closer examination of Russian and Chinese positions on the Libyan and Syrian conflicts, drawing on normative and identity perspectives, reveals significant differences in how both states address intervention in civil conflicts involving human rights emergencies. Indeed, the Libyan and Syrian cases suggest that the distance between the two states on ‘acceptable’ policies toward international intervention in civil conflicts may actually be increasing. While Russia has assumed the role of the ‘loud dissenter’ in global dialogs on humanitarian intervention, China has opted for the position of a ‘cautious partner’

Role of SRC-Family Kinases in Hypoxic Vasoconstriction of Rat Pulmonary Artery

Aims: We investigated the role of src-family kinases (srcFKs) in hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) and how this relates to Rho-kinase-mediated Ca(2+) sensitization and changes in intracellular Ca(2+) concentration ([Ca(2+)](i)). Methods and results: Intra-pulmonary arteries (IPAs) were obtained from male Wistar rats. HPV was induced in myograph-mounted IPAs. Auto-phosphorylation of srcFKs and phosphorylation of the regulatory subunit of myosin phosphatase (MYPT-1) and myosin light-chain (MLC(20)) in response to hypoxia were determined by western blotting. Translocation of Rho-kinase and effects of siRNA knockdown of src and fyn were examined in cultured pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells (PASMCs). [Ca(2+)](i) was estimated in Fura-PE3-loaded IPA. HPV was inhibited by two blockers of srcFKs, SU6656 and PP2. Hypoxia enhanced phosphorylation of three srcFK proteins at Tyr-416 (60, 59, and 54 kDa, corresponding to src, fyn, and yes, respectively) and enhanced srcFK-dependent tyrosine phosphorylation of multiple target proteins. Hypoxia caused a complex, time-dependent enhancement of MYPT-1 and MLC(20) phosphorylation, both in the absence and presence of pre-constriction. The sustained component of this enhancement was blocked by SU6656 and the Rho-kinase inhibitor Y27632. In PASMCs, hypoxia caused translocation of Rho-kinase from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, and this was prevented by anti-src siRNA and to a lesser extent by anti-fyn siRNA. The biphasic increases in [Ca(2+)](i) that accompany HPV were also inhibited by PP2. Conclusion: Hypoxia activates srcFKs and triggers protein tyrosine phosphorylation in IPA. Hypoxia-mediated Rho-kinase activation, Ca(2+) sensitization, and [Ca(2+)](i) responses are depressed by srcFK inhibitors and/or siRNA knockdown, suggesting a central role of srcFKs in HPV