Russian Strategic Deterrence

Abstract

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-

The demise of the INF Treaty: a path dependence analysis

“…New technologies of high-precision-guided weapons directly contribute to disrupting strategic stability (Bruusgaard 2016;Kashin and Raska 2017;Rojansky 2013). Any increased tolerance towards tactical nuclear weapons would also reinforce the same problem.…”

Russian nuclear forces, 2020

“…2. For examples of such analyzes, see Oliker 2018;Tertrais 2018;Oliker and Baklitskiy 2018;Bruusgaard 2016Bruusgaard , 2017. Three Typhoon-class (Project 941) submarines also remain afloat.…”

Analysis of Russia’s Policy Behaviour after the Abolition of the INF Treaty

“…With the increasingly weak role of nuclear forces in exerting conventional deterrence and curbing conventional conflicts, Russia began to question the potential of nuclear weapons for safeguarding national security and providing "great power" status concerning its national strategic deterrence policy. One former chief of the General Staff even said that Russia's elevated focus on nuclear weapons in the 2000s was an inefficient deterrence strategy [4]. Since the likelihood of a future nuclear war is minimal, and the progress of science and technology has affected the change of the nature of the war, Putin stated that "as high-precision long-range conventional weapons become increasingly common, they will tend to become the means of achieving a decisive victory over an opponent, including in a global conflict" [5].…”

“…"Nuclear containment" was a change in policy for meeting conventional threats with nuclear weapons, representing the first official declaration that Russia needed more deterrence options. Russian theorists defined the main purpose of non-nuclear deterrent tools to be the deterrence of conventional, small-scale and political threats [4].…”