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Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained that Russia’s foreign policy when it came to Iran was “schizophrenic.” I would argue that it is less a case of schizophrenia, and more a reflection of the fact that Russia does not have a singular foreign policy, but multiple foreign policies.

Even if we think that the current Russian government is more autocratic than democratic, it is still a pluralistic entity when it comes to policymaking. In the old tsarist system, the emperor might have been the supreme autocrat, but he was often pulled between different, competing policy choices backed by different power centers. Eugene Schuyler, an American diplomat posted to Russia in the nineteenth century, observed: