Who says Russia has no soft power?
Well, Robert Amsterdam, for one. He has argued that the Russian invasion of Georgia illustrated its woeful loss of any sort of diplomatic legitimacy.
Outside of polite society, it has been a point beaten to death by such brownshirted bloggers as la Russophobe: “Russia's need to rely on physical force obviously shows that even in regard to a tiny country like Georgia (population less than half the city of Moscow), Russia lacks any other way to deal with a crisis”.
Unfortunately, these sentiments have got the upper hand since the Georgian war, but it was not always so. For example, in a 2006 report for the Brookings Institution, Fiona Hill wrote that
It is by no means assured that Russia's increasing soft power will be used to positive effect. But the prospect is clearly there‚ and should be encouraging Russia's current leadership to chart a new regional policy for itself in Eurasia.
Such optimism seemed quaint during the Georgian War, but as the smoke clears, it now seems that Russian soft power might have been strengthened, not weakened, by the war.
According to the BBC, today's signing of an agreement to resolve the status of another disputed region – Nagorno-Karabakh – by Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow, may have been spurned on by Moscow's ‘hard power’ actions in August:
“Correspondents say Russia's brief war with Georgia in August has given impetus to international efforts to resolve disputes in the Caucasus, a region where Moscow is seeking greater influence”
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