Drivers and Limits to Russian Foreign Policy in Asia, from Peter the Great to Putin

Abstract: Since Peter the Great, Russian leaders have been lured by opportunity to the East. Under the tsars, Russians colonized Alaska, California, and Hawaii. The Trans-Siberian Railway linked Moscow to Vladivostok. And Stalin looked to Asia as a sphere of influence, hospitable to the spread of Soviet Communism. In Asia and the Pacific lay territory, markets, security, and glory. But all these expansionist dreams amounted to little. Today the Kremlin talks up the importance of "strategic partnership" with Xi Jinping's China, and Vladimir Putin's government is at pains to emphasize Russian activities across Eurasia. But while distance is covered with relative ease in the age of air travel and digital communication, the East remains far off in the ways that matter most.

Bio: Chris Miller is assistant professor of international history at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and co-director of the school's Russia and Eurasia Program. He is author of Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia (2018) and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy (2016). He has previously served as the associate director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale, a lecturer at the New Economic School in Moscow, a visiting researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research associate at the Brookings Institution, and as a fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Academy. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Yale University and his B.A. in history from Harvard University. Carnegie Endowment's award for lifetime achievement in non-governmental work to reduce nuclear dangers in 2015.