Introduction: Re-embedding Pacific Russia in the Changing Regional Environment

Abstract

Russia’s comprehensive turn to Asia through the accelerated development of its Far East and Siberia, officially announced soon after Vladimir Putin returned to power in 2012,¹ is ongoing. This has attracted the attention of a number of scholars who have delved into its causes and consequences, and who have tried to assess its feasibility (Hill and Lo 2013; Karaganov and Makarov 2014; Keck 2014; Makarov et al. 2014; Rozman 2014; Huang and Korolev 2015; Korolev 2016). The protracted crisis in Russia’s relations with the West in the wake of the Ukraine Crisis, on the one hand, and disillusionment about the West, particularly the EU development model, on the other, have given an additional powerful push and determination to Putin’s “go east” strategy. Despite the lack of an absolute consensus about the preferred model of socio-economic development of Pacific Russia’s territories and the ongoing debate over the overall attractiveness of the comprehensive reorientation to Asia,² there is a growing recognition among intellectuals and policy-making elites in Russia that the country’s integration into the Asia-Pacific economic system through developing its Far East and Siberia is essential for restructuring its economy and improving its geopolitical standing. In other words, Russia’s integration into Asia-Pacific has become more a question of “how” rather than “if” or “why.” It is more about how Russia will create and implement its development plans for Siberia and the Far East, and how these plans can be optimised with the overall reorientation to Asia so as to avoid the resource trap and to diversify its export markets, rather than about fundamentally questioning whether Russia should carry out such policies.

The term “Pacific Russia” in this introduction denotes the territory of Russia’s Far East and Siberia. The concept of “Pacific Russia” is further elaborated in Chap. 2. It represents a vast area of Russia’s land and sea area related to Siberia and the Far Eastern Federal District.