Contributor(s): Tomila Lankina | The course covers the various factors shaping Soviet, post-communist Russian and Eurasian foreign and security policy. It explores both the traditional foreign policy and security issues, such as the arms race and Détente, the role of the military, economic power projection, etc., as well as new soft power and security factors shaping policy, such as transnational civil society, sub-national regionalization, transnational ethnic and cultural networks, migration, the role of ideas, norms and norm entrepreneurs, etc. Key topics covered are Cold War, East-West relations and Détente; relations with Eastern Europe; relations with the Third World; Gorbachev’s foreign policy and the end of the Cold War; post-Cold War Russian foreign and security policy; Russia and the ‘near abroad’; ethnic separatism and regional conflict; Russian national and sub-national engagement with the West; Russia’s relations with China and the other ‘rising powers’; other security challenges (demographic problems, social protest, regional developmental disparities, etc.); regionalism and multilateralism in Eurasia; domestic and external influences on foreign policy and security in Ukraine, Belarus and the states of the Caucasus and Central Asia; Caspian energy and foreign policies; the challenge of Afghanistan for the region; regional responses to the Middle Eastern uprisings.