Strategic Cooperation

This book is a valuable study because Michael Slobodchikoff analyses the region from a particular perspective. . . .The structure of the book is clear and well organised. The author provides a convincing and original explanation for bilateral relations in the former Soviet space by putting treaties and treaty nesting at the centre of the analysis. * Europe-Asia Studies *
[This] book offers a theoretically innovative approach to understanding international cooperation in the post-Soviet Eurasia. * International Studies Review *
Michael Slobodchikoff’s innovative study illuminates important ways by which treaty construction and networks enable states to advance their foreign policy, economic, and security interests. With a focus on Russia’s relations with former Soviet Union states such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, this volume offers careful and timely analyses relevant to Putin period Eurasian politics. Relying on a combination of systematic analyses and focused case studies of inter-state treaty construction, this book enables readers to assess the differing opportunities and constraints that influence both a great power and less powerful states as they engage one another. Strategic Cooperation challenges the assumption that Russia is merely a coercive regional power that can unilaterally realize its ends without constraint. In fact, smaller countries have means by which they can safeguard, and even advance, their agendas, and in fact they are often quite energetic in doing so. Treaty networks, constructed over time, have structured and channeled the intersecting interests of both Russia and its less powerful (but diplomatically active) neighbors. Slobodchikoff’s volume shows the utility for all states, powerful and not, to engage in strategic cooperation that is more long-term and nuanced in its approach, with the real possibility for all states in a region to achieve many of their interconnected strategic goals. -- John P. Willerton, Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona
Anyone interested in international cooperation and post-Soviet Eurasia should read this book. The nested treaties approach is both original and productive for explaining how states expand their relations even when the resource of trust is not in place. -- Andrei P. Tsygankov, San Francisco State University