print

Russia and the United States on the world stage. Part II. The ideological and geopolitical path to enduring rivalry

Graham T.,

Council on Foreign Relations, New York, USА, tgraham@cfr.org

DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2022.02.11

Rubric: Orbis terrarum: international relations

For citation:

Graham T. Russia and the United States on the world stage. Part II. The ideological and geopolitical path to enduring rivalry. – Polis. Political Studies. 2022. No. 2. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2022.02.11

Abstract

The late 19th and early 20th centuries set the framework for a US-Russian rivalry, grounded in diverging principles and clashing geopolitical ambitions. The rivalry arose as a consequence of American dynamism, confidence, and self-regard, which propelled the country from the confines of the Western Hemisphere overseas into East Asia and Europe and nourished aspirations to propagate its way of life and institutions abroad as a foundation for American prosperity, security, and continued success. Russia, by contrast, remained much as it had been in domestic structure and geopolitical endeavor, despite internal stresses and shifting coalitions with European great powers. Its foreign policy was driven by a sense of vulnerability and the need to keep up with its rivals not by a grand mission. It would have preferred to retain cordial relations with the United States. But it had no choice but to resist as the United States pushed into regions it considered of vital interest and stepped up criticism of its domestic affairs. Geography, climate, and geopolitics conspired to embed a profound sense of vulnerability and insecurity in the Russian psyche, while it stimulated America’s rise as a great power. If Russia expanded out of necessity in an unending search for security, America did so out of ambition to fulfill its destiny. American ideological activism and geopolitical ambition ultimately shattered the fragile framework of comity that had existed since 1775. 

Keywords

Russian-American relations, anti-Semitism, George F. Kennan, Manchuria, Russo-Japanese War, balance of power, Russian expansionism, American expansionism.

 Full Text 

Adams, B. (2019). America’s economic supremacy. Singapore: Origami Books.

Beale, H. (1956). Theodore Roosevelt and the rise of America to world power. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dennett, T. (1959). Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese war. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.

Foglesong, D. (2007). The American mission and the “Evil Empire”: the crusade for a “Free Russia” since 1881. Cambridge: University Press.

Gaddis, J. (1978). Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: an interpretative history. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Geyer, D. (1987). Russian imperialism: the interaction of domestic and foreign policy 1860-1914. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Green, M. (2019). By more than providence: grand strategy and American power in the Asia Pacific since 1783. New York: Columbia University Press.

Griswold, A. (1938). The Far Eastern policy of the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Healy, A. (1983). Tsarist anti-semitism and Russian-American relations. Slavic Review, 42/3 (Autumn), 411-415.

Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Langer, W. (1965). The diplomacy of imperialism, 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A Knopf.

Laue, T. von (1974). Sergei Witte and the industrialization of Russia. New York: Atheneum.

Lieven, D. (2000). Empire: the Russian Empire and its rivals. New York: Yale University Press.

Mahan, A. (2003). The problem of Asia: its effect upon international politics. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Munro, D. (1912). American commercial interests in Manchuria. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 39 (January), 154-159.

Romanov, B. (1952). Russia in Manchuria (1892-1906), Ann Arbor. Michigan: Edwards Brothers.

Rosen, B. (1921). Forty years of diplomacy, vol. 1. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Saul, N. (1996). Concord and conflict: the United States and Russia 1867-1914. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Sladovskii, M. (2008). History of economic relations between Russia and China: from modernization to Maoism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers.

Tomimas, S. (1919). The open-door policy and the territorial integrity of China. New York: A.G. Seiler.

Travis, F. (1990). George Kennan and the American-Russian relations 1865-1924. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Williams, W. (1971). American-Russian relations 1782-1947. New York: Octagon Books.

Zabriskie, E. (1946). American-Russian rivalry in the Far East: a study in diplomacy and power politics 1895-1914. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Klyuchevskiy, V. (1987). Kurs russkoy istorii [The course of Russian history]. Lectures 3, 4. In V.O. Klyuchevskiy, Works in 9 vols (pp. 63-89). Moskow: Mysl’. (In Russ.)

Romanov, B. (1928). Rossiya v Man’chshurii (1892-1906) [Russia in Manchuria]. Leningrad: Leningrad Eastern Institute. (In Russ.)

Severo-Amerikanskiye Soyedinennyye Shtaty i tsarskaya Rossiya v 90-kh gg. XIX v. [North American United States and tsarist Russia in the 90s of the 19th century]. (1932). Krasnyy Arkhiv LII, 133-140. (In Russ.) 

See also: