Introduction
The foreign policy development can be recognised as the most fundamental responsibility of a nation to protect the state from external forces and improve relationship with other countries. The chosen study for this research “From cooperation to confrontation: US‑Russia relations since 9/11” described the relations between the U.S and Russia during the George W. Bush era. The rise of anti-Western sentiment in the Russian political narrative due to the unequivocal support of the country for the U.S.-led War as a response to the 9/11 attack in 2001. As far as the critical analysis of the article is concerned, the foreign policy of the U.S and its overwhelming impact on the power status of Russia has been presented in this paper. Moreover, this article shows the great power relations and status hierarchy between Russia and the U.S, and the impact of the foreign policies in developing democratisation in Russia (German, 2024). The increase of U.S 'unilateralism’ with the apparent rejection of ‘multilateralism’ and the promotion of democracy around the world has been taken into consideration in this article. Finally, the last part dealt with the U.S foreign policy approach and its illustration. In this research, the critical review of the chosen article will aim to explore the strengths, weaknesses, and the consequent gaps of the article while developing the topic into the themes of U.S foreign policy and its impact on Russia. The readers will get a comparative analysis of the article in terms of evaluating the initial cooperation between the U.S and Russia and the later confrontation. The main points of the critical analysis will be the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the study and the limitations of the research.
Thesis Statement
This critical analysis of the research is going to present the implications of the U.S Foreign Policy claiming its strengths to be recognised as a powerful establishment and the reasons of confrontation with Russia.
Analysis
The central argument of this research article is based on the power relations between Russia and the U.S, and the impact of the foreign policies of the U.S on Russian perception of its international system. The emerging trend of unilateralism in the U.S, along with the development of democracy, has made the foreign policy of the state more important for the other international powers. One argument has been strongly established in this article, which is the increasing power of the U.S in terms of its defense security mechanism, enlargement of NATO into the Post-Soviet space, and missile defense. These attributes posed challenges towards the perception of Russia as its status in the international structure. The gradual confrontation started with the breaking of assumptions about the equal footing of both Moscow and Washington in terms of political and economic power. The argument has been justifiably presented by the author by illustrating the power of the 2002 U.S National Security Strategy (NSS) that identified the visible weakness of Russia. The author analytically developed this journal to assess the reasons behind the confrontation between the two states the U.S and Russia. At first, the apparent cooperation that started between Russia and the U.S has been illustrated through the mentioning of the presidency of George W. Bush era (German, T., 2024). The apparent equalization of the two states was assumed through the projection of Moscow and Washington in the same frame. The development of the democratisation in the U.S interdisciplinary manner of structure has been presented in this research study that poses a great threat in front of the powers like Russia and Syria. The challenges faced by Russia due to the development of overextending foreign policies of the U.S. have been mentioned in this journal, namely the foreign security and international relationship policies.
One of the strengths of this article lies in the choice of the topic of discussion. The powerful dynamics of the U.S foreign policy and its over-expanding impact on Russia have been analysed in this research. Several themes of the U.S foreign policy mentioned in this article include the ‘liberal interventionism’, the ‘War on Terror following 9/11’ and the impact of ‘unipoliarisation’. The author has strongly evaluated the strengths of the foreign policies of the U.S and the power confrontation associated with it in terms of the security of the state, especially after the attack of 2011. The fundamental aspect of the U.S Foreign Policy was the protection of the United States and the Americans, initiating democracy, international relationships, and maintaining human rights (Tsygankov and Tsygankov, 2021). In this context, the cooperation between the two states, Russia and the U.S, has been started under the presidency of George W. Bush. The author priortised the relationship between these two states in terms of their international relationship according to the development of political and economic relations. The anti-Western sentiment in the Russian political narrative has been developed in the Post-Cold War era focusing on the influence of U.S foreign policy and perception of Russia as the great power. The U.S Foreign and Security Policy has been developed as a great tool in front of the world to protect the state in the increase of liberal interventionism, unilateralism, and promotion of democracy. Secondly, the appearance of Russia as an indispensable great power and its identification of flaws in consideration with the U.S security policy, missile defense has been evaluated as a strong part of the article. The propaganda of the Russian power equation and its boastfulness led to the present conflict with Ukraine since 2021 (Crilley and Chatterje-Doody, 2021). The self-perception of Russia as a ‘great power’ alluring the strength of Moscow as a unified entity to set examples towards other states has faced challenges according to this article against the conceptualisation of U.S foreign policies.
Research methodology is the most significant aspect of the development of any research effectively. In this research, secondary qualitative analysis has been developed to assess the political relations between the U.S and Russia. The secondary research is essential to set objective data analysis of the main argument of the research (Mishra and Alok, 2022). On the other hand, primary research indicates the analysis of the subjective opinion of the respondents about the information and experience they perceived. Hence, the thematic analysis has been conducted in this research by constructing a few themes on the challenges of the states and their partnership to witness the confrontation between Russia and the U.S. On the other hand, the ethical consideration has been maintained by managing the Creative Commons license of this article to use and adapt the original article under the permission of the author.
As a consequence, weaknesses of this article are concerned, the use of approach and method of this article has been found less contextualised according to the choice of the topic. It has been found in the article that the approach of Bush’s administration to security and foreign policy challenged the self-perception and identity of Russia as a great nation has not been illustrated under the deductive approach (German, 2024). On the other hand, the choice of the research method as ‘thematic and conceptual analysis’ could not satisfactorily establish the inherent dichotomy between the power relations of Russia and the U.S to claim themselves as the most powerful nation states. The methodological perception of this article has not been structurally constructed to assess the limitations and weaknesses of Russia that put them under the confrontation against the U.S and the ultimate culmination through the dominance over Ukraine. The choice of research methods is very important to develop the argument in a structured manner and reach the selected objectives (Dubey and Kothari, 2022). In this context, the central argument of the article has not been justifiably presented through the thematic analysis of a few concepts such as ‘challenging status of Russia’ and the way of presenting the navigation in the establishment of central power dynamics between the two states.
As it has been proclaimed that the secondary research has been conducted by the researcher to analyze the confrontation and the impact of the foreign policy of the U.S over Russia. The cooperation and confrontation between the U.S and Russia could be presented through the use of a primary research method, which has been found as another weakness of this research. The primary research would be effective to assess the objective responses and survey about the way of democratisation of the U.S. Moreover, no theoretical analysis of the research has been found in this article that could illustrate the visible split between the European and the U.S pillars in the economy and foreign states. The status of Russia and the acknowledgement of hegemony in the power status has not been presented through the development of any power-equation theory in this article.
The study focuses on discussing the cooperation and confirmation between the US and Russia. The literature has covered challenging scenarios, the way from an initial cooperation to illusory partnership, view towards democratisation to develop understanding of the relationship and international politics after George W. Bush took office and within a year Vladimir Putin had become Russian president. The political aspects and critical vulnerabilities of the international conflicts impacted the relationship among the US and Russia. On a negative note, the changes in international politics and global conflicts increase mistrust among countries that can affect peace treaties in the world. The aggressive nature of the US in the Middle Eastern and the invasion of Russia in the Ukraine negatively affected the mutual image and respect over the years. However, these events not only impact world politics but also harm the environmental sustainability initiatives worldwide. Since the Cold War, Russia has influenced U.S. foreign policy and collaboration with the US, causing a serious crisis that is affecting the initiatives towards the environmental welfare objectives worldwide (German, 2024). The literature does not enlighten the future opportunity to foster environmental sustainability worldwide through cooperation in between Russia and the US. In addition, the literature also does not cover the threat of confrontation between these two countries to promote optimistic environmental sustainability efforts throughout the globe. The literature has only focused on the influence and impact of changing political relations between the US and Russia from cooperation to confrontation since 9/11 on the foreign policy and global politics. Lack of focus in identifying the role of declining relationships between the US and Russia on environmental sustainability and community growth in the world is the key limitation associated with this study. A future step to incorporate primary data analysis, taking a purposive sampling of the people belonging to social work, to know their opinion on the impact of the Russia-US conflict on world sustainability, can help to bridge this limitation.
Conclusion
The article demonstrates the factors, incidents, and events that affect the relationship between Russia and the US. The literature states that the arrival of George W. Bush in America and Vladimir Putin in Russia as president significantly altered the interrelationship between these two countries. The journey and events over the years that make the political relationship between Russia and the US from cooperation to confrontation have been described within the study. The literature followed secondary sources of data to develop a comprehensive idea on the political conflicts in between the US and Russia. On the other hand, the analysis mainly explored the perceived powerful establishment of Russia its confrontation with the U.S for not standing out in front of the foreign and safety policies. The study mentioned that in 2020, President Joe Biden announced that the US will return to a foreign policy grounded in Western democratic values and mentioned Russia as the ‘biggest threat’ to US security. It helps to portray the declining relationship between Russia and the US over the years within the literature. However, the study identifies a lack of primary data and a lack of focus in identifying the negative impact of the US and Russia conflict, which is considered as a weakness and limitation of the literature, respectively.
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References
Crilley, R. and Chatterje-Doody, P.N., 2021. From Russia with lols: Humour, RT, and the legitimation of Russian foreign policy. Global Society, 35(2), pp.269-288.
Dubey, U.K.B. and Kothari, D.P., 2022. Research methodology: Techniques and trends. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
German, T., 2024. From cooperation to confrontation: US-Russia relations since 9/11. International Politics, 61(3), pp.567-586.
Mishra, S.B. and Alok, S., 2022. Handbook of research methodology. Educreation publishing.
Sokolshchik, L.M., 2024. Year One of the Biden Administration: US Foreign Policy Towards Russia. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 15(1), pp.70-80.
Tsygankov, A.P. and Tsygankov, P.A., 2021. Constructing national values: The nationally distinctive turn in Russian IR theory and foreign policy. Foreign Policy Analysis, 17(4), p.orab022.
