Introduction

Since its inception of a state Russia has been and continues to be ruled as an empire.  And to paraphrase Charles Tilly even as the (Russian) state made war, war made the Russian state.  Moreover, this is still the case.  Already in 2000 Alexei Malashenko observed that Russia’s war in Chechnya is logical only if Russia continues to regard itself as an empire.^[i] Similarly Alexander Etkind observed in 2011 that the history of Russian governance throughout both the Russian Federation’s current borders and the historic borders of Tsarist and Soviet Russia is one of internal colonialism.[ii]  Meanwhile in the course of building and then losing an empire at least twice and striving again to recover at least some of its lost legacy the Russian state has acquired an immense amount of experience in what British analysts have called wars of imperial management, counterinsurgency, power projection beyond Russia’s borders, etc.  One of the hallmarks of this historical experience is a repeated pattern of cooptation of elites in foreign territories and with it an unending tactical flexibility that exploits ethno-religious divisions among peoples on its periphery and even beyond to break up hostile or targeted states or at least to neutralize their ability to resist Russia’s strategies for advancing its national interest. 

In other words, one of the consistent manifestations of Russian strategy has been its ability to capitalize on existing ethno-religious fractures in subject peoples at home and abroad in order to co-opt vulnerable and/or disaffected elites and then use them to advance Russian interests.  These strategies of co-optation and exploitation of ethno-religious divisions also featured prominently in Tsarist and Soviet efforts to hold together the internal empire when the government felt that the state’s imperial project was at risk or under threat.  In fact examination of Tsarist, Soviet, and current Russian foreign policy reveals a pattern that in many, maybe most cases where the issue was dealing with states that Moscow either wanted to see disintegrate or at least possess substantial influence, it generally advocated a democratic solution despite its own autocratic proclivities. It did so in order to preserve a pro-Russian party either in power or at least in a position of influence so that it could use that faction to advance its own interests or even assimilate the entire country through them into the empire.  This is happening today in Ukraine with Moscow‘s position on the Minsk accords where it demands that Ukraine reconstitute itself as a weak confederation giving significant state-like powers to the two provinces of the Donbass to ensure a kind of twenty-first century Liberum Veto there so that Russia can cripple the Ukrainian state at any time of its choice and on any issue that it chooses to exploit.  And the same is happening in Syria and Iraq.  Thus, the tactic of cooptation and its employment in service to a larger strategy of imperial assertion continues today in Russia’s efforts to reacquire at least some of the perquisites of empire and great power standing whether in Ukraine or in Syria, or in Iraq.  Therefore, this essay aims to highlight the continuing resort to this tactic in three distinct settings, the consolidation of Soviet rule over the North Caucasus and Central Asia in the first decade after the October Revolution, Chechnya after 2000, and now in Syria.