Russia Multilateralism in Asia-Pacific: A Case Study of ASEAN and APEC

When Vladimir Putin became Russia's president for third time, Russia began to increase its cooperation with Asia-Pacific regional organizations, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization (ASEC). Although this was not a new initiative and had been pursued in the post-Soviet years in the form of Primakov's idea of a multipolar system, what was new was that Russia's focus shifted from Western organizations to Eastern multilateral institutions. Accordingly, the main question of this research is what is Russia's goal in cooperating with multilateral institutions Asia-Pacific. The results of this study show that while it is important to reap the economic benefits of these institutions due to their influence on the regional and global economy, Russia's cooperation with these organizations should be seen in the context of a larger worldview, suggesting that Russia's interaction with multilateral institutions Asia-Pacific is influenced by its long-standing foreign policy perspective calling for a change (from a U.S.-dominated unipolar to a multipolar order) in the international system.