Russia In Latin America

Today, extensive interconnected global processes provide non-state actors with a degree of agency that a 'System of States' paradigm cannot account for alone. Using Russia-Latin America relations as a case study and applying a Complex Adaptive Systems perspective, this work explores alternative international mechanisms of order and organization.

Russia's expanded engagement in Latin America has been seen as a response to escalating tension over its involvement in the Ukraine. Russia's activities are seemingly designed to force the United States to re­spond to a challenge in its own hemisphere, illustrating the interconnected global security environment. This book focuses on the character of the ongoing Russian re-engagement with Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean and its implications for the United States.

In recent years, attention by the U.S. national security establishment to challenges in the Western Hemisphere has concentrated on issues of transnational organized crime, socialist populism, potential terrorist threats, and similar challenges arising from poverty, inequality, and weak governance in parts of the region. As Latin America and the Caribbean nations have expanded their economic and other forms of engagement with countries beyond the region, the majority of attention has gone to activities in the region by the People's Republic of China, and to a lesser extent, by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The equally important re-engagement with the region by the Russian Federation during this period has received less attention, particularly among scholarly articles. Russia's re-engagement with the region, which began in earnest in 2008, coincided with an escalation in tension with the United States over the role of Russia in the civil war in Georgia and the related succession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Today, there is plenty of evidence that Russia has become a prominent external actor in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, few books have attempted to better understand the reasons behind Russia ́s return and Moscow’s continuous engagement in the region. In order to fill the gap, this volume offers the first interdisciplinary study of Russian-Latin American relations after the end of the Cold War. Across 16 chapters, leading experts from Russia, Europe, the United States, and Latin America collectively re-examine the Soviet legacy to reveal the conditions in which Russia operates today and identify the key trends of contemporary Russian relations with this part of the world. The book then moves on to provide a detailed case study analysis of Russia’s bilateral relations with Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, identifying the most critical dimensions of Russian engagement. Rethinking Post Cold-War Russian-Latin American Relations allows readers to identify the fundamental driving forces of Russia’s renewed commitment to the area, its strategies and experiences. The book will be of interest to readers of international relations and area studies, historians of modern Latin America, migration studies, political economy, and any political scientists interested in Russian decision-making.

This study, the first of its kind in English, examines Russian responses to the independence movement in Latin America during the early nineteenth century. From a strictly presentist perspective, the investigation of this subject contributes to the historiography of colonialism and of Latin America's relations with the major world powers. In addition, it rounds out the story of foreign interests in the emancipation of Spanish and Portuguese America, while at the same time shedding new light on the history of Russian overseas expansion. The study probes the major determinants of Russian responses to the struggle for independence of colonial Latin America and evaluates, from a European perspective, the actual impact of tsarist policy on the course of those historic events. Drawing on a wide range of printed materials and on hitherto unused manuscript sources from the archives and libraries of Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the USSR, it isolates Russian New World objectives during the first decades of the nineteenth century and relates those objectives to the formulation of tsarist policy toward the insurgent Iberian colonies.

This book would be of particular interest to students and economists who would like to know more about the crises in Russia and Latin America as it explores the various approaches of the Russian government to the crisis and the crises in Latin America in