Power, Culture, and Elite Interactions: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis of US Grand Strategy and Foreign Policy towards Russia, 1993-2001

Abstract

Neoclassical realism (NCR), which combines both international structural and domestic variables, has provided a powerful explanatory framework for foreign policy analysis. Despite important theoretical developments in analysing the vertical interactions between systemic pressures and domestic cultural-ideational attributes, however, the paradigm is still inadequate due to its lack of attention to the horizontal interactions between states’ elites. In this thesis, I develop a neoclassical realist framework through identifying an additional intervening variable to fill in that gap; i.e. elite interactions between states. I test my theory refinement empirically through a crucial case study of the United States’ grand strategy and foreign policy towards Russia in the post-Cold War decade. Throughout the Clinton administration(s) there was a broad continuity of unipolarity (systemic variable) and American liberal-capitalist (Open Door) strategic culture (intervening variable), while the United States’ Russia strategy (dependent variable) displayed pronounced variations. In this case I add elites’ interactions between states as an additional conditioner to analyse specific and dynamic foreign policy behaviours. This addition advances the theory of NCR as empirical analysis shows that these variations in the content, timing, and form of the United States’ Russia policy took place due to American elites’ interactions with their Russian counterparts.