• DOI:10.1080/09668130500351357
• Corpus ID: 153795176

The Russo–American dispute over the invasion of Iraq: international status and the role of positional goods

@article{Ambrosio2005TheRD,
  title={The Russo–American dispute over the invasion of Iraq: international status and the role of positional goods},
  author={Thomas Ambrosio},
  journal={Europe-Asia Studies},
  year={2005},
  volume={57},
  pages={1189 - 1210}
}

• Thomas Ambrosio
• Published 1 December 2005
• Political Science
• Europe-Asia Studies

RUSSIAN OPPOSITION TO THE US INVASION OF IRAQ was a dramatic departure from the rapprochement between Washington and Moscow after 11 September 2001. Before 9/11 Russian policy was based upon the need to balance American power through the promotion of global multipolarity-a system of global checks and balances through which the negative consequences of American-dominated unipolarity could be blocked and American power and influence would be restrained so that Washington would be prohibited from imposing unilateral outcomes on security matters.2 After 9/11 the Kremlin sought what Sergei Markov, director of the Political Studies Institute, characterised as a 'military alliance' against 'a common military enemy'.3 Izvestiya declared that 'Russia will have urgently to rethink its international stance' in light of the terrorist attacks.4 Evidence of this rethinking was expressed by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who declared that the implications of the attacks went 'far beyond the borders of the United States.... The international terrorism has caused a blatant challenge to all civilised humanity, to all the civilised world'.5 In order to deal with that challenge, 'Russia is firmly set to go down the road of forming new strategic frames of relations between our countries'.6 As practical evidence of this shift in thinking, Russia emerged as one of the strongest supporters of the American-led war on terrorism and its rhetoric has often been stronger than that expressed by America's allies in Europe.7 Moreover, its endorsement of the war in Afghanistan and US involvement in anti-terrorist activities in the Caucasus has been impressive. In other areas, such as the establishment of the NATO-Russian Council in May 2002, Moscow's acceptance of further NATO expansion and the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and a halt to the pursuit of its alliance with China, Russia seemingly undertook a sea change in its