Paper long abstract:

A substantial literature exists investigating the variety of unintended consequences of sanctions for target countries, including the counterproductive punishment of large civilian populations (something "smart sanctions" were designed to avoid), the erosion of political rights, and the rise in local violence. This paper goes beyond examining the unintended consequences of sanctions on the target to examine consequences for Russia's Eurasian neighbors as a result of their interdependency on the same relationships that binds countries to the target. This paper asks the extent to which Western sanctions against Russia since 2014 have had the unintended consequence of shifting Russia's foreign and security policy interests away from the West and towards Eurasia, including China and Iran. One the one hand, sanctions have not deterred Russia from taking foreign and security policy positions antithetical to Western ones, including in the Kerch Strait, Donbass, Iran, and Syria, as well as election interference. On the other hand, there is no obvious re-ordering of Russian foreign and security policy away from the West and toward Eurasia, perhaps with the exception of China. Russia's role as a regional power remains steady with Russia accepting that it is not always the dominant power in Eurasian regional organizations. Using theories of international relations, this paper will explore Russian foreign and security policy since 2014, particularly toward China and Iran, to assess the extent to which Russia has shifted its foreign and security policy towards Eurasia.