Russian President Vladimir Putin revoked a law that outlines Russia’s main foreign policy goals on February 21, which sets the stage for more aggressive Cold War-like relations with the West.

Putin signed off on the foreign policy law himself in May 2012 during his third presidential term, which outlines Russia’s major foreign policy goals.

The previous law contained specific instructions for cultivating “co-operative relations” with foreign countries, based on “respect for neighbouring countries’ sovereignty” and a promise to work with the various world regions.

A new decree, which came into effect on the same day, revises those goals and has abandoned any attempt to co-operate with the West as well as ditching the requirement to respect other country’s sovereignty. Meduza reports that the specific points that have been removed from the law include: 

• establishing external conditions that favour Russia’s long-term development;
• affirming the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, which require co-operation between states, based on equality and respect for the member states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity;
• active work on resolving the situation in Transnistria based on respect for Moldova’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and neutrality;
• active co-operation with Belarus within the framework of the supranational Union State;
• active assistance in the strengthening of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as modern democratic states;
• promoting the creation of a single economic and civic space spanning from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast, including efforts to lift the EU short-term visa requirements for Russian nationals and collaboration in developing a unified European energy complex;
• fostering a stable and predictable relationship with the US, based on the principles of equality, non-intervention and respect for mutual state interests, along with further efforts to relax reciprocal visa requirements;
• deepening trust and equal strategic partnership with China, as well as strategic partnerships with India and Vietnam and mutually profitable co-operation with Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand;
• developing a relationship with Nato in proportion to the alliance’s willingness to consider Russia’s national interests.

Now the key goal of Russia’s foreign policy will be to pursue Russia’s “national interests” as defined by the Kremlin, in light of “deep changes taking place in international relations.”

One of the specific instructions in the 2012 decree was for Russia’s Foreign Ministry to consistently implement the new START missile treaty signed by Putin and US President Joe Biden in January 2021 just after the US president took office. The original treaty was signed in 2010 by Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, and US President Barack Obama, when both Putin and Biden were serving as the number twos in their respective administrations. 

Putin announced that Russia was suspending the treaty during his State of the Nation speech on February 21, but emphasised that Russia was not withdrawing from the deal. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs later the same day clarified that the caps on missile numbers contained in the agreement would be respected and Russia would continue to inform Washington of any nuclear tests ahead of time, as was agreed in the deal.

What has changed is that the obligation to allow inspections at least twice a year of key nuclear sites will no longer happen. However, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic those inspections have not been happening anyway, so little has changed in practice.

The suspension of the treaty, the only Cold War-era arms control agreement still in place, is intended as a signal to the West that Russia is prepared to escalate further in its clash with the West. But at the same time, the fact the deal is suspended and that Russia has not withdrawn from the agreement can also be taken as a signal that the Kremlin remains open to restarting arms control talks.

Putin highlighted in his speech the fact that it was the US that unilaterally withdrew from the major arms controls deals over the last two decades, starting with former President George W Bush’s decision to cancel the ABM treaty (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) in 2002 over loud protestations by the Kremlin at the time. Putin specifically mentioned the US withdrawal from the INF treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) in 2018 during Donald Trump’s presidency, exclaiming he didn’t know why the US pulled out.

Biden came into office with the promise of reversing this policy and signed off renewing the START treaty within days of entering the Oval Office. The decision was warmly received by the Kremlin, which immediately called for talks to begin on reinstating the INF treaty. However, relations decayed rapidly over the next months and those talks never happened.

Biden has shown himself to be a dove on arms controls with Russia. As a Senator in 2002, he argued strongly against pulling out of the ABM treaty, saying it would destabilise international relations, which it did. Later in January 2021 in the month of shuttle diplomacy to prevent the war in Ukraine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also made it clear to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the US was keen to continue arms reduction talks, but the Kremlin rejected the offer out of hand unless the Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine could never be admitted to Nato was met first.

The revocation of the 2012 foreign policy law by Putin this week raises concerns about Russia’s future foreign policy objectives and how the country will pursue them. Putin’s decision to abandon the previous “co-operative” framework and replace it with a “national interests” framework suggests a shift towards a more assertive and confrontational foreign policy. This stance was already outlined by Lavrov in the prelude to the war with his “new rules of the game” speech in February 2020, where the veteran foreign minister said the Kremlin would no longer tolerate the Western “deals with one hand, sanctions with the other,” and threatened to break off diplomatic relations with the West. Now those sentiments have been codified.

It remains to be seen how this new foreign policy direction will play out. Commentators said that Putin’s speech was aggressive but at the same time it remained vague, as it didn’t lay out Putin’s war goals for Ukraine, nor did it carry many specific details. Even the announcement of the suspension of the START treaty was a fudge that leaves the door open to new talks. However, the revocation of the 2012 law signals a significant shift towards a new combative relation with the West similar to the policies that dominated the Cold War.