Russia's Security Policy Under Putin ─ A Critical Perspective

This books examines the evolution of Russia’s security policy under Putin and Medvedev in the 21st century, using a social-constructivist approach.

This book investigates the way in which Russia’s official discourse on state identity and
security priorities evolved over the course of the regimes of Vladimir Putin and Dmitri
Medvedev. In so doing, it evaluates the way that this evolving relationship
between state identity and security narratives framed the construction of individual security policies, and how, in turn, individual issues can impact on the meta-narratives of state and security identity. To this end, the issue of Chechnya is examined as a case study. By analysing official discourse on Chechnya as a security issue, the book traces how an individual security issue is both shaped by and shapes Russia’s wider discourses of the state identity and security.

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 culture 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.

Aglaya Snetov is Senior Researcher, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and has a PhD in international relations from the University of Birmingham.