Vladimir Putin and Russia's war decisions: Analyzing the psychological determinants of military interventions in Georgia, Crimea, Syria, and Ukraine

This dissertation asks the central question of how the personality traits of political leaders determine key decisions in foreign relations. Put differently, the study attempts to understand how and when political processes and outcomes depend on the personal characteristics of political actors in international relations. With special attention to individual-level determinants of foreign policy decisions, this dissertation will investigate the causes of Russia's three faithful war decisions during the Putin's period in power, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Syrian interventions. It arises from the academic assumption that personalities in politics have the potential to generate decision-making, as well as to play a critical part in foreign policy processes. Understanding the role of political leadership in foreign policy decisions is the main objective of this thesis. It adopts both (on distance) measures such as leadership trait analysis by M. Hermann and the neoclassical realism framework. Leadership trait analyses and neoclassical realism framework hereby are used to provide insights into the current Russian foreign policy and examine Putin-style political leadership as the dominant practice of rule as well as prospects of its influence on the international foreign policy processes. As a theory of foreign policy decisions, neoclassical realism provides a useful to systemically analyze and compare causes at three different levels, system, state, and individual. Investigating the individual-level determinants of four-war decisions, this dissertation will employ LTA. While accepting the explanatory power of systemic and state-level determinants, this study argues that Putin's personality traits play a significant role in explaining Russia's recent war decisions. Indeed, Russia under Putin is associated with an emphasis on personality and leadership style and plays a crucial role in the decision-making process in modern Russia. Within this framework, the thesis aims at exploring the multiple frames at various levels of analysis to follow how Vladimir Putin frames decisions and contribute towards a broader understanding of the mechanisms involved concerning the topic.