Russia’s Intervention in Ukraine - A Neoclassical Realist Analysis

This thesis aims to undertake a thorough analysis of Russia’s foreign policy behaviour vis-à-vis Ukraine and the political events that unfolded after the Euromaidan uprising in late 2013 and 2014 through a neoclassical realist perspective. By means of deductive theory-testing, the objective of this paper is to derive and later test the hypothesis that neoclassical realist theory provides as a soft-positivistic approach sufficient explanatory power for the Kremlin’s crisis decision-making, foreign policy action and grand strategic adjustment choices after the ousting of the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and the further course of events until this day. The methodology hereby used is comprised of a qualitative case study analysis and the process-tracing method. I will argue that the domestic-level intervening variables of leader images, strategic culture, state-society relations and domestic institutions have a significant, yet varying influence on how the systemic stimuli stemming from the international system are perceived, processed and subsequently transformed into external action by the Russian foreign policy elite. The Russian foreign policy behaviour as the dependent variable is hereby analysed on the basis of military doctrine and new means of warfare, diplomatic activities and the strategic use of norms and international law, economic and trade policies and, finally, domestic resource extraction. The paper’s findings show that the Russian case example boldly demonstrates how – besides the influence of systemic stimuli stemming from the international structure – leader images and strategic culture occupy an important position in the equation of causal factors, while state-society relations and domestic institutions turn out to lack strong relevance due to their state of consensus and marginalisation for explaining and understanding Russia’s foreign policy behaviour vis-à-vis Ukraine.