Russia: Biden brings a new US challenge to Putin's backyard

Russia’s silence stands in stark contrast to the visible enthusiasm that greeted Trump’s victory in 2016. Trump’s face decorated boxes of sugar, while the Army of Russia store offered a 10 per cent discount for US citizens on the day of Trump’s inauguration. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, a far-right party, was pictured drinking champagne with members of his party in celebration of Trump’s election victory.

Unrest on the doorstep

Biden’s promise to return to a foreign policy grounded in western democratic values will have prompted disquiet in the Kremlin. It has been deeply suspicious of Washington’s efforts since the 1990s to promote democracy and support democratisation efforts around the world.

My own research has looked at how Russia perceives anti-government protests and popular uprisings that seek to overthrow incumbent regimes to be part of a wider strategy of US-sponsored regime change, deliberately designed to undermine rival states. Such events, such as the so-called 'coloured revolutions', popular uprisings that occurred across the post-Soviet space in the early to mid-2000s in countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, are seen as a fundamental threat to Russia’s national security and regime stability. The Kremlin believes that Russia is vulnerable to foreign interference in its internal affairs via western efforts to promote democratic forms of government.

In recent months, the post-Soviet space has been rocked by pro-democracy protests and popular uprisings in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and, most recently, Georgia, as well as fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and protracted conflict in eastern Ukraine.

A boost to NATO

The second core challenge for Russian foreign policy involves NATO. Moscow has consistently voiced its opposition to NATO’s global reach and enlargement. It argues that the alliance is a relic of the Cold War, which threatens Russian national interests.

NATO’s enhanced capabilities, global scope and enlargement were identified as the principal risk to Russian national security in the Kremlin’s 2014 Military Doctrine. Its 2015 National Security Strategy also makes several references to NATO, including the advance of its military infrastructure towards Russia’s borders.

Throughout his political career, Biden has been vocal in his support for NATO enlargement, including membership for Ukraine. During the presidential election campaign he was also very clear about his wish to repair America’s relationship with NATO. It’s thought that he intends to renew multilateralism and strengthen the alliance, which has been damaged by public spats during the Trump era.

Visible internal divisions over enlargement and funding have undermined NATO’s security and cohesion. Adversaries such as Russia are aware that cohesion – or a lack of it – is the alliance’s critical vulnerability. A reinvigorated, unified Euro-Atlantic alliance poses a significant challenge to Moscow, which will counter any attempts to kick-start the enlargement process in states such as Georgia or Ukraine.

Russia and its post-Soviet neighbours are unlikely to constitute foreign policy priorities for the incoming Biden administration. But several of the incoming administration’s priorities, such as bolstering NATO and promoting democracy, represent challenges for Moscow. The inaction of the Trump regime across the post-Soviet region, which could be interpreted by Moscow as either disinterest or tacit acquiescence, is likely to be replaced by a much more active approach.

This suggests that relations between Moscow and Washington are likely to become more antagonistic and confrontational, as the US intensifies its engagement in Russia’s backyard.