Astrada M., Martin F. Russia and Latin America: From Nation-State to Society of States

New York: Palgrave Pivot. 2013. 130 p. ISBN10: 1137308125; ISBN13: 978-1137308122.Today, extensive, intensive, and interconnected global processes provide non-state actors with a degree of agency, power, and significance that a 'System of States' paradigm cannot account for by itself. Using Russia-Latin America relations as a case study, this work explores alternative international mechanisms and principles of order and organization, charting and analyzing the emergence of complex cooperative networks in interstate relations. Applying a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) perspective, the authors argue that, as a tool of statecraft, networks present challenges and opportunities for states that reside in an international system of states dominated by realpolitik. Fusing the local and the global and integrating states' interests to an unprecedented degree, networks create alternative bases for interstate engagement based on cooperation. Russia-Latin America relations exemplify the impact that emergent complex cooperative networks are having on international order and organization because present engagement is explicitly premised on the goal of establishing long-term networks of cooperation that will ground interstate relations.Mapping Complex Cooperative Networks: Society in International Organization.
Society, complexity, networks and Russia-Latin America relations.
A systems approach to international society and organization.
Agents, CCNs, and international organizations.Globalization, International Organization and the Rise of a Society of States.
CCNs: adaptive learning and international order.
Components of CCNs: dynamics and implications.
Challenging the system of states paradigm.
System and society: utterly antithetical paradigms?
Exploring the Emergent State-Society Synthesis.
Russia-Latin America Relations.
The Cold War, the USSR, and Russia.
Soviet political ideology and foreign policy objectives.
Russian foreign policy and Latin America.
Building Complexity: Select Case Studies of CCNs — Russia and Latin America.
Mexico.
Colombia.
Venezuela.
Cuba.
Nicaragua.
Bolivia.
Brazil.
Ecuador.
Concluding Thoughts on CCNs in Russia-Latin America Relations.