Рабочая группа «Сотрудничество в тупике? Стратегические исследования России и проблема региональных порядков» // "Impasses in cooperation? Russian strategic studies and the problem of regional orders"

Рабочая группа «Сотрудничество в тупике? Стратегические исследования России и проблема региональных порядков» посвящена теоретической и практической проблеме развития российской стратегической мысли и политике в новейшей истории.

В центре внимания научной деятельности рабочей группы находятся следующие вопросы:

1. Концептуально-методологические аспекты изучения стратегии национальной безопасности России
2. Основные теоретические подходы к изучению стратегической политики России
3. Теоретическая концептуализация главных приоритетов стратегической политики России - в частности будут рассматриваться понятия "стратегическая стабильность", "модернизация" и "сдерживание"
4. Практическая имплементация приоритетов стратегической политики России в конкретные направления внешней политики в региональном разрезе - в частности на примере Арктики. 

Прикладные аспекты работы семинара опираются на наработанные результаты академического проекта "Revolution and tension in Russian strategy? Questioning the ‘evolution’ of ‘grand strategy’ from Yeltsin to Putin" 2021/2022 учебного года.

Работа группы ведется на английском языке.

This Working Group on Russian strategic studies aims to facilitate seminar discussions with leading Russian and international practitioners and academics on the bases of cooperation and the challenges of competition for the governing of interconnected 'regions' in today’s global governance system. 

Our practical and theoretical focus is on the institutional organisation and strained relationships between Russia and other powers in global governance, especially in regional arrangements for governing the Arctic and for securing the Euro–Atlantic and Eurasian space.

This working group builds on the findings of an HSE research project on the changes and tensions in Russian security strategy since 2008. The first set of seminars in our Working Group series will tie in with the work of the students involved in this research project and examine the importance of ‘stability’ (stabilnost’) for understanding the purpose and limits of Russian grand strategy in the context of developments in Russia’s political association with ‘unreliable partners’ at the regional and global level of the international organisation of the United Nations.

While recent events of institutional 'impasse' and hostility in–between Russia and  its erstwhile Western partners over the crisis in Ukraine have brought into sharp relief the need for sober analysis of today's strategic environment and the challenges to the international practice of strategy, our aim in this Working Group is not to fixate on the recent past, but to put the events of cooperation and competition that we discuss, analyse and evaluate in the context of changes in regional arrangements in–between Russia and neighbouing powers that have been ongoing since the end of the Cold War. 

Our main empirical reference points throughout will be Russian strategic thought and security policy and Russia's relationships in regional governance to the North, West and East. Our main theoretical contributions will be to the literature in international relations on the foundations of grand strategy and the problem of cooperation / conflict in regional order(s) and by extension on the character of and the relationships between powers in global governance. 

Details of the schedule and themes of our seminar series will be published here in due course. The plan is to hold nine seminars in all, one every calendar month from September 2022 until May 2023. In our opening seminar in late September 2022, we will discuss what it means to do strategic studies in today’s world of global governance and, in particular, what it means to do Russianstrategic studies in this institutional context and why ‘regions’ matter so much for understanding and explaining the political discourse of Russia’s global strategy.