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Contemporary debates on Russian nuclear strategy focus on making sense of Russia's nuclear capabilities, signalling and nuclear declarations. This paper argues that understanding how nuclear capabilities and strategy interact with conventional capabilities is fundamental to understanding nuclear strategy. It offers the Conventional Balance of Forces thesis for explaining change in Russia's nuclear strategy after the Cold War. It shows how Russian nuclear debates and strategy decisions have been affected by perceived conventional vulnerabilities, and how the orthodox Western interpretation of Russian nuclear strategy today as one of 'escalating to de-escalate' comes short of explaining when Russia would go nuclear in conflict, and why.

Although many Western analysts are preoccupied with the likelihood of Russia plotting 'hybrid warfare' operations against NATO members, the concept itself is not an explicit part of Russian military doctrine. For Russian analysts, hybrid warfare is a Western construct. 1 A reading of Russian military-theoretical debates shows a preoccupation with a broader concept, which can be termed strategic deterrence (strategicheskoe sderzhivanie). This Russian concept is part of official doctrine and strategy, and understanding it is crucial to analysing current and future Russian security and defence policy. 2 Strategic deterrence is the indigenous concept that encompasses what others call Russia's 'hybrid warfare doctrine', Russia's 'ability for crossdomain coercion' and Russia's 'nuclear brinkmanship'. 3 The Russian concept, which can be translated as 'strategic deterrence', is conceived much more broadly than the traditional Western concept of deterrence. It is not entirely defensive: it contains offensive and defensive, nuclear, non-nuclear and non-military deterrent tools. These are to be used in times of peace and war -making the concept resemble, to Western eyes, a combined strategy of containment, deterrence and coercion -using all means available to deter or dominate conflict. Strategic deterrence provides a guide to how Russia may seek to influence any potential adversary, including NATO, in the future. Russia's intention to conduct a Ukraine-style hybrid-warfare opera-

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Dr. Kristin Ven Bruusgaard reviews the report Russian Nuclear Forces written by Steinar Høibråten and Halvor Kippe at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.