SL - Blank.threats To and From Russia:an Assessment

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The Journal of Slavic Military Studies

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Threats to and from Russia: An Assessment

Stephen Blank
a a
Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College Version of record first published: 29 Aug 2008.
To cite this article: Stephen Blank (2008): Threats to and from Russia: An Assessment, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 21:3, 491-526 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13518040802313746
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Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 21: 491526, 2008 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 1351-8046 print DOI: 10.1080/13518040802313746
Journal 1556-3006 1351-8046 FSLV of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2008: pp. 149 Studies
THREATS TO AND FROM RUSSIA: AN ASSESSMENT
S. Blank Threats to and from Russia
Stephen Blank
Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College
Downloaded by [176.241.225.15] at 01:59 30 December 2012
Under conditions of visibly deteriorating Russo-American and East-West relations it is necessary to outline clearly the threats perceived by Russia from Western and U.S. policies, and second, the threats that Russia may pose in return. An analysis of such threats reveals that the balance of threat perception is asymmetrically weighted to the Russian side which perceived threats everywhere, i.e., from within and without. This underscores the fact that the baseline of Russian foreign and defense policy is the presupposition of threat, and a pervasive one at that. Second, these threats are largely perceived in terms of a classical hard power Realpolitik even if Moscows instruments for countering them are largely nuclear weapons and its energy capabilities. Third, Russias threat perception is extensively tied to the fear of information warfare as a tool for unhinging the entire society and state. Correspondingly, this potential, in Russias hands, as well as its efforts to use its economic power and accompanying political instruments, are becoming the pivot of foreign perceptions of a threat originating from Russia. Finally, there is a real danger that the United States and Russia will increasingly come to see each others military, and/or especially nuclear or missile defense forces as threats that, under conditions of ideological and political contestation, justify a new arms race.
INTRODUCTION As a presidential succession occurs in Russia and America, Russo-American ties are at their lowest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Stephen Blank is a professor of national security studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. For delivery to the Conference on Future Threats to the United States, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA, May 29, 2008. Draft, not for citation or quotation without consent of the author. The views expressed here do not in any way represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department, or the U.S. government. Address correspondence to Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013, USA. E-mail: stephen.blank@us.army.mil
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Increasingly, both sides feel that they have good reason to resent, if not fear, the other. But there is a fundamental asymmetry in their threat perceptions, possibly reflecting the enormous asymmetry of their power and international responsibilities. Whereas Russian policymakers feel gripped by perceived internal and external threats to their form of rule and Russias interests, which they mainly attribute to American machinations and policies, U.S. policymakers feel much less concern about Russia and few see serious threats to America emanating from Russia except in some few restricted areas discussed below. For example, Lt. General V.A. Gusachenko wrote in the General Staffs Journal, Voyennaya Mysl (Military Thought), that Russia faces real threats to its security in practically all spheres of its vital activities.1 However, despite this asymmetry of perceptions and power, Washingtons concern about Russias uncertain policy directions and newly acquired capabilities is beginning to stoke a diverse set of fears concerning Moscows nuclear capabilities, information warfare (IW) capabilities, and the possibility of the use by Moscow of its energy weapon to oust U.S. influence from key Eurasian areas. Moreover, reflecting the fact that both states presidential successions occur with 8 months of each other, in both countries the reigning security paradigms are being subjected to strong critique, publicly in America in the election campaign of 2008, and behind the scenes in Russia as it moves from Vladimir Putins presidency to that of Dmitry Medvedev.2 This article first analyzes Russias perception of threats to it and then moves on to assess what conceivable threats to the United States Russia is either mounting in fact or could deploy as seen from America. RUSSIAS MILITARY THREAT PERCEPTION Perhaps the basic roots of Russian antagonism to the United States and the West lies in two related phenomena, the nature of the Russian political system and Russias perception of a fundamental American lack of respect for it and its interests as it recovers from the crisis of the 1990s. The latter of these two phenomena is the easier one to assess first since numerous Russian spokesmen have frequently expressed their unending complaint that America does not take Russia sufficiently seriously, i.e., at Moscows own self-serving, and inflated, valuation of itself. President Putins envoy for relations with the EU, Sergei Yastrzhembskiy, stated that this was Russias main objection to recent developments in world
1 Lt. General V.A. Gusachenko: Ob Aktualnom Kontekste Ponyatiya Natisonal naya Bezopastnosti. Voyennaya Mysl, No. 7, 2007, p. 2. 2 Stephen Blank: Russias Unending Quest for Security, Forthcoming in Mark Galeotti, ed.,
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politics.3 Similarly, Russias Ambassador to America, Yuri Ushakov wrote that,

What offends us is the view shared by some in Washington that Russia can be used when it is needed and discarded or even abused when it is not relevant to American objectives. Russians do not need any special favors or assistance from the United States, but we do require respect in order to build a two-way relationship. And we expect that our political interests will be recognized.4
Following in this vein, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denounced U.S. unilateralism and demanded total equality, including equality in the analysis of threats, in finding solutions, and making decisions. But beyond this protest at a lack of respect for its views and interests, Moscow has also postulated a series of growing threats from American inspired policies or initiatives. Furthermore, its leaders believe that the threat of war or military action around Russias borders or of the use of the military instrument to coerce Russia into accepting political faits accomplis there is increasing. Putins litany of complaints in speeches going back to 2006 specified this in greater detail. In 200607 he charged that,
America is a unipolar hegemon that conducts world affairs or
aspires to do so in an undemocratic way (i.e., It does not take Russian interests into account.) America has unilaterally gone to war in Iraq, disregarding the UN Charter, and demonstrating an unconstrained hyper use of force that is plunging the world into an abyss. It has therefore become impossible to find solutions to conflicts (in other words American unilateralism actually makes it harder to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistanhardly an incontestable proposition). Because America seeks to decide all issues unilaterally to suit its own interests in disregard of others no one feels safe and this policy stimulates an arms race and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore we need a new structure of world politics, i.e., multipolarity and non-intervention in the affairs of others. Here Putin has cited the Russian example of a peaceful transition
Moscow, Ekho Moskvy, in Russian, February 17, 2007, Open Source Committee, Foreign Broadcast Information Service Central Eurasia, (Henceforth FBIS SOV), February 17, 2007. 4 Yuri Ushakov: From Russia With Like, Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2007, www.latimes.com.
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to democracy! Of course, Russia hardly has a spotless record with regard to non-intervention as Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia can tell us. Putin expressed concern that the Moscow Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty of 2002 (SORT) may be violated or at least undermined by America which is holding back several hundred superfluous nuclear weapons for either political or military use. America is also creating new destabilizing hightech weapons, including space weapons. Meanwhile, the CFE treaty is not being ratified even though Russian forces are leaving Georgia and only carrying out peacekeeping operations in Moldova. Similarly U.S. bases are turning up on our border (here Putin revealed that for him the borders of Russia are in fact the old Soviet border since Russia no longer borders either on Romania or Poland). Therefore Moscow suspended its compliance with that treaty in December 2007 America is also extending missile defenses to Central and Eastern Europe even though no threat exists that would justify this. Therefore Russia can only conclude that they are intended to paralyze Russias retaliatory first-strike capability or even threaten such a capability against it. to free its hands for further adventures. Thus at the annual Munich Wehrkunde conference in 2007 Putin charged that,
The United States is actively developing and already strengthening an anti-missile defense system. Today this system is ineffective but we do not know exactly whether it will one day be effective. But in theory it is being created for that purpose. So hypothetically we recognize that when this moment arrives, the possible threat from our nuclear forces will be completely neutralized. Russias present capabilities, that is. The balance of powers will be absolutely destroyed and one of the parties will benefit from the feeling of complete security. That means that its hands will be free not only in local but eventually also in global conflicts.5
Moreover, the government, General Yuri N. Baluyevsky, Chief of the General Staff, and the General Staff all regularly argue that because there
Moscow, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Internet Version, Russian President Addresses Munich Forum, Answers Questions on Iran, February 12, 2007, FBIS SOV, February 12, 2007. The question and answer session from which these remarks are taken is not on the kremlin.ru website.
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is allegedly no threat from Iran these missile defenses can only be aimed at Russia and at threatening to neutralize its deterrent.6
NATO expansion (the Russian term in opposition to the
Western word enlargement) therefore bears no relationship to European security but is an attempt to divide Europe and threaten Russia. These threats were not suddenly revealed to us in or after Putins now famous Munich speech in 2007. Rather they were an increasing part of official and public Russian discourse for some time before then. Putins remarks in his annual speech on May 10, 2006, to the Federal Assembly presaged his remarks in Munich and merit extensive citation for they indicate the evolving threat assessment on the basis of which he likely has given his defense and foreign policy team a new strategic guidance towards postulating the source of threats to Russia and its interests. Putin began this speech by stating that, as has been the case since 2001, the terrorist threat is the main one but he then seamlessly linked it to what he perceives as a defining characteristic of much American foreign policy, i.e., the notion, stated above that key American elites want to keep Russia tied down and weak.
The terrorist threat remains very real. Local conflicts remain a fertile breeding ground for terrorists, a source of their arms and a field upon which they can test their strength in practice. These conflicts often arise on ethnic grounds, often with inter-religious conflict thrown in, which is artificially fomented and manipulated by extremists of all shades. I know that there are those out there who would like to see Russia become so mired in these problems that it will not be able to resolve its own problems and achieve full development.7
Putin then invoked the threat of nuclear proliferation, particularly to terrorists. Thus,
The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction also represents a serious danger. If these weapons were to fall into the hands of terrorists,
6 Interview with General Yuri Baluyevsky, First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the Russian Federation Armed Forces General Staff, Moscow, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, February 21, 2007 FBIS SOV, February 21, 2007. 7 Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, May 10, 2006, http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/05/10/1823_type70029type82912_105566.shtml
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and they pursue this aim, the consequences would be simply disastrous. I stress that we unambiguously support strengthening the non-proliferation regime, without any exceptions, on the basis of international law. We know that strong-arm methods rarely achieve the desired result and that their consequences can even be more terrible than the original threat.8
He then went on to berate Washington for abandoning arms control and raising the threat of using nuclear weapons against Russia. To wit,
I would like to raise another important issue today. Disarmament was an important part of international politics for decades. Our country made an immense contribution to maintaining strategic stability in the world. But with the acute threat of international terrorism now on everyones minds the key disarmament issues are all but off the international agenda, and yet it is too early to speak of an end to the arms race. Whats more, the arms race has entered a new spiral today with the achievement of new levels of technology that raise the danger of the emergence of a whole arsenal of so-called destabilizing weapons. There are still no clear guarantees that weapons, including nuclear weapons, will not be deployed in outer space. There is the potential threat of the creation and proliferation of small capacity nuclear charges. Furthermore, the media and expert circles are already discussing plans to use intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry non-nuclear warheads. The launch of such a missile could provoke an inappropriate response from one of the nuclear powers, could provoke a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear forces.9
Finally, he concluded his threat assessment with an attack on the anti-Russian thrust of American foreign policy.
And meanwhile far from everyone in the world has abandoned the old bloc mentality and the prejudices inherited from the era of global confrontation despite the great changes that have taken place. This is also a great hindrance in working together to find suitable responses to the common problems we face.10
This kind of threat assessment has several critical consequences. First, it closely resembles the assessment published by the Chinese government
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Ibid. Ibid. 10 Ibid.
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in its White Papers of 2004 and 2006 on Defense.11 Thus the shared perception of both the location and nature of the common threats they face helps cement an anti-American Russo-Chinese alliance on a host of issues in the contemporary agenda of world politics. Second, the results of this growing sense of threat from the West have not only restored the need for Russia to rearm with both conventional and nuclear weapons, they have all but undone the hopes for Russo-NATO cooperation after 9/11. As of 2003 the General Staff made clear its opposition to joint RussianNATO exercises allegedly on the grounds of NATO enlargement and the improvement of missiles.12 At the same time both Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Chief of Staff, then Deputy Chief of Staff Baluyevsky made clear that if NATO remained a military organization, this could force Russia to make changes in its overall military doctrine and nuclear policies.13 Baluyevsky went even farther by stating that,
If the anti-terrorist direction of NATO continues, the threshold for using nuclear weapons will become lower and this will require a change of the principle for military planning of the Russian armed forces, including a change of military strategy.14
Since the military had already stated in 1999 that circumstances (among them NATOs Kosovo operation) had led Russia to argue for lowering the threshold for nuclear use and broaden the circumstances under which tactical nuclear weapons might be used against purely conventional attacks, such remarks must be taken quite seriously.15 In fact, the militarys enmity to NATO is not due to its policies but rather to the fact of its existence. As the Ministry of Defense stated in the so called Ivanov doctrine or White Paper of October 2003,
Russia expects NATO member states to put a complete end to direct and indirect elements of its anti-Russian policy, both from military planning and from the political declarations of NATO member states.
11 Chinas National Defense in 2004, Beijing: State Council Information Office, December 27, 2004, pp. 24; Chinas National Defense in 2006, Beijing: State Council Information Office, December 29, 2006, pp. 24, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/200612/29/content_ 771191.htm 12 Moscow, Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, in Russian, December 5, 2003, FBIS SOV, December 5, 2003. 13 Moscow, ITAR-TASS, in English, October 2, 2003, FBIS SOV, October 3, 2003. 14 Moscow, Interfax in Russian, October 2, 2003, FBIS SOV, October 3, 2003. 15 Conversations with Russian officials and analysts in Moscow and Helsinki, June, 1999; Martin Nesirsky, Russia Says Threshold Lower for Nuclear Weapons, Reuters, December 17, 1999.
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Should NATO remain a military alliance with its current offensive military doctrine, a fundamental reassessment of Russias military planning and arms procurement is needed, including a change in Russias nuclear strategy.16
Therefore it is not surprising that first Moscow has tried, and recently met with some success, to interest Washington in negotiating what would in effect be a START III treaty to reduce nuclear weapons on both sides.17 Neither should we be surprised that Putin and his subordinates see a deteriorating threat situation that is drawing ever closer to Russia. Putins speech of June 27, 2006, to the Foreign Ministry, emphasized the increasingly threatening nature of the international system, the unilateral American use of force and supposedly indiscriminate attacks on Islam and the possibility of proliferation as major threats coming closer to Russia. Thus he said that,
We need to be fully aware that, despite all our efforts, the potential for conflict in the world continues to grow. After the collapse of the bi-polar world order there exists a lot of unpredictability in global development. Perhaps this is why we continue to hear talk of an unavoidable conflict of civilizations that could become a long-term confrontation on the lines of the Cold War. I am convinced that we have reached a point today where the entire global security architecture is indeed undergoing modernization, and you have probably noticed this for yourselves. If we let old views and approaches continue to hold sway, the world will be doomed to further futile confrontation. We need to reverse these dangerous trends and this requires new ideas and approaches. Russia does not want confrontation of any kind. And we will not take part in any kind of holy alliance. I must say, too, that the causes fuelling the desire of a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction and carry out other military programs include not just national ambitions but also the overblown importance given to force in international relations that is being foisted on us all. In this respect, the stagnation we see today in the area of disarmament is of particular concern. Russia is not responsible for this situation. We support renewed dialogue on the main disarmament issues. Above all, we propose to our American
Aktualnye Zadachi, pp. 16, 18. Viktor Myasnikov, The Time of Nuclear Truncheons Has Passed, Moscow, Nezavisismoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, in Russian, July 7, 2006, FBIS SOV, July 7, 2006; Amy F. Woolf, Nuclear Arms Control: The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, Congressional Research Service, Report to Congress, January 3, 2007. RL31448, pp. 2122; Peter Baker and Robin Wright, U.S. and Russia Vow Further Cuts in Nuclear Arms, Washington Post, July 4, 2007, p. 12.
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partners that we launch negotiations to replace the START Treaty, which expires in 2009. 18
However, in fact military threats do not end here. Indeed, pace Gusachenko, they only start here. Russian military writers regularly intone that the use of force has not departed from the world of international affairs. Furthermore, as Dmitri Trenin has written, they focus on states military capabilities, not their political affiliations. Consequently, any state that possesses substantial military potential, regardless of its constitution, can become a threat to Russia. Not only does this view repudiate the ground won under Presidents Yeltsin and Gorbachev in rethinking Russian security, it harks back to Bismarckian times.19 Beyond that Moscow believes that Washington regards it as an adversary, and within the general categories of Putins remarks on the nature of the threats Moscow faces, they add specifics to it. For example, the war in Iraq could easily lead, not just to the influx of terrorists throughout the Middle East and even the North Caucasus, but to a general conflagration in the Middle East that might then spread toward Russia and Central Asia.20 And in that context Moscow regards Washington as a power expanding to its borders who seeks to threaten it with either destruction of its first strike capability by precision guided weapons and/ or missile defenses and use military threats to coerce it politically into surrendering the last vestiges of Russias great power pretensions. America also is prone to act militarily with no regard for the U.N., i.e., the Security Council where Moscow has a veto, and has unilaterally walked out of key arms control agreements, thereby setting a precedent that Moscow emulated with regard to the CFE Treaty in 2007. In examining Russian perceptions, then, we must always remember their scope, addiction to old-fashioned Realpolitik, and their jaundiced view of the world and of Russias prospects there. In other words, Russian thinking about national security begins from what the German philosopher Carl Schmitt called the presupposition of enemies. POLITICAL THREATS And that way of thinking and emphasis on threats are clearly tied to the nature of Russias state and its comprehensive perception of threats of a
18 Vladimir Putin, Speech at Meeting with the Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moscow, June 27, 2006, www.president.ru 19 Dmitri Trenin: Russias Threat Perception and Strategic Posture (Carlisle Barracks, PA Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2007) p. 35. 20 Ibid., pp. 3841.
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non-military nature. Beyond the aforementioned military threats that clearly raise the specter of a nuclear arms race, Putin and other officials have claimed to discern two other non-military threats. And the perception of these threats is immensely revealing of the insecurity, fragility, and awareness of illegitimacy that grips the Russian elite.
Thus, Russias leadership charges that Finally America is
seeking to turn the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) into an anti-Russian organization and NGOs are also being used by individual governments for such purposes despite their so-called formal independence. Thus revolutions in CIS countries are fomented from abroad and elections there often are masquerades whereby the West intervenes in their internal affairs.21 Obviously, this view projects Russias own politics and policies of interference in these elections (e.g., the $300 million it spent and the efforts of Putins spin doctors in Ukraine in 2004) onto Western governments and wholly dismisses the sovereign internal mainsprings of political action in those countries, another unconscious manifestation of the imperial mentality that grips Russian political thinking and action. But what is notable is that the terrorist threat has been substantially downgraded. Indeed, FSB Director, Nikolai Patrushev recently observed that the number of terrorist acts in Russia decreases annually and will continue to do so in 2008.22 Thus the real threat, both external and internal, comes from the West and people linked to it in one way or another, and in particular the United States. Given this pervasive sense of insecurity and illegitimacy it is no surprise that leading Russian military figures, e.g. Baluyevsky and Retired General Makhmut. A. Gareyev, President of the Academy of Military Sciences, have openly discussed threats to Russia in which the country might suffer even a crushing defeat without a shot being fired.23 Specifically they and other
21 FBIS SOV, February 12, 2007; Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security, February 10, 2007, www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/10/0138; Poslanie Federalnomu Sobraniiu Rossiiskoi Federatsii, April 26, 2007, www.kremlin.ru/ speeches/2007/04/26 (Henceforth Poslanie). 22 Moscow, ITAR-TASS, in English, March 12, 2008, FBIS SOV, March 12, 2008. 23 M.A. Gareyev, Russias New Military Doctrine: Structure: Substance, Military Thought, No. 2, 2007, p. 4 Y.N. Baluyevsky, Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation (Points for a Report), Military Thought, No. 1, 2007, p. 19.
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key leaders believe that Russia is already in an information war with America Thus Gareyev stated that,
The breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the parade of color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, and so on show how principal threats exist objectively, assuming not so much military forms as direct or indirect forms of political, diplomatic, economic, and informational pressure, subversive activities, and interference in internal affairs. The RFs security interests require not only that such threats be assessed, but also that effective measures of countering them be identified.24
Russian officials and analysts (e.g., the prominent Eurasianist Alexander Dugin and Gareyev among others) also openly state their belief that the country is facing an information or network war (by which they mean hostile media criticism of Putins increasingly autocratic regime) and so do their smaller counterparts in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) like Belarus. Indeed, they claim that Russia itself has been subjected to information attacks by outside forces and claims occasionally as well that Western critiques upon its policies and form of government represent information attacks. This line of reasoning also applies to the authoritarian regimes in the CIS which regard U.S. and/or NGO efforts to promote democracy as forms of information war (IW). Thus, Belarusian Television 1, the governments official channel, openly stated that, a war of a new type, based on networks of organizations, is being waged on the post-Soviet space.25 Typically, this network war is being directed by the State Department and U.S. intelligence services which direct the activity of thousands of smaller organizations and which was first tried out in Ukraines 2004 election campaign.26 It is not surprising that in 2006 Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov wrote that Moscow regarded the main threat to its security as an attempt to change the constitutional order of any of the CIS states, not just Russia.27 But what is most interesting is the description of the tactics of this operation which closely resemble what the Russian cyber-attack against Estonia in 2007. According to this report,
Political technologies and manipulating information form the basis of the network war. Networks consist of numerous modes, and each of them, civil organizations, movements, foundations, human rights
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Gareyev, p. 4. Minsk, Belarussian Television 1 in Russian, August 12, 2007, FBIS August 12, 2007. 26 Ibid. 27 Sergei Ivanov: Russia Must Be Strong, Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2006, p. 14.
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activists, and the mass media, are playing their particular role: staging protests and pickets, conducting seminars and publishing articles and reports, in other words, displaying any instance of public activity seeking to deliberately destabilize the situation in the country. [In Ukraine in 2004] the number and intensity of democratization programs have been stepped up, the target audience and the net of pro-Western forces are being expanded. Youth, women, and religious organizations, independent trade unions and regional opposition unions and the mass media are seeking to implement a civil eruption scenario with numerous sources of fire.28
Ivanovs recent observations indicate Moscows full awareness of the nature of the threat posed by information technology to modern states and Russia as well as the kinds of activity it was launching in Estonia and that it was a surrogate for a more classical military kind of operation.
The development of information technology has resulted in information itself turning into a certain kind of weapon. It is a weapon that allows us to carry out would-be military actions in practically any theater of war and most importantly, without using military power. That is why we have to take all the necessary steps to develop, improve, and, if necessaryand it already seems to be necessarydevelop new multi-purpose automatic control systems, so that in the future we do not find ourselves left with nothing.29
Patrushev recently called for intensified cooperation among CIS states to expand cooperation between secret services, security agencies, and law enforcement agencies to fight the use of the internet for terrorist purposes (of course the hidden agenda is also to stifle dissent in all these states, but nonetheless the threat to which we and he are referring is real enough).30 Similarly the Chief of the CIS Anti-Terrorist Center, Police Colonel-General Andrei Novikov told a meeting of this organization that the expansion of terrorist activity from the Balkans to Afghanistan places every member of the CIS within the orbit of terrorist information warfare. Therefore,
Terrorism not only exchanges information with the help of the internet and recruits new members, but also carries out active propagandist work. This circumstance dictates the need for developing adequate
FBIS SOV, August 12, 2007. Moscow, NTV in Russian, August 15, 2007, FBIS SOV, August 15, 2007. 30 FSB Chief Calls for Wider Cooperation Against Internet Use by Terrorists, ITAR-TASS, September 6, 2007.
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and effective strategic methods of information counteraction on the part of CIS states.31
Novikov and Patrushev have very good reason for their anxiety about IW conducted by terrorists. Russia, according to the authors conversations with U.S. experts on Russia, has also been victimized in this regard as part of the Chechen war (Indeed this aspect of that war has received hardly any coverage.). Thus, reportedly in late summer 2007, the Russian armed forces went off-line because so many hackers, and penetrations of the system, from pro-Chechen sources were recorded and their network could not cope with these threats.32 Certainly the Russian government understands both the opportunities and threats as President Putin has recently advanced a plan and called upon Russia to become a global leader in IT but also warned at the same time that Russia must guard against the threat of cyber-terrorism. Therefore it needs to develop innovative companies and replace foreign components by domestic products.33 Similarly, the recent report of a leading Russian think tank, The Council on Foreign and Defense Policys (Sovet Vneshnei i Oboronitelnoi PolitikiSVOP) recent report The World Around Russia: 2017, warned that,
The emerging global system, which involves economic globalization and the spread of information technology, opens up unprecedented opportunities for development, but at the same time makes the entire system increasingly exposed to terrorism, WMD, and IT weapons.34
Of no less importance is that current wars have brought home to the Russian military and hopefully by now to other militaries as well that, It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the information factor in local wars and armed conflicts of the early 21st century.35 The particular vehemence with which Moscow regards such threats as well as missile defense and NATO enlargement owes much to the particular configuration of its domestic political structure, i.e., the nature of the state.
Moscow, ITAR-TASS, in English, July 27, 2007, FBIS SOV July 27, 2007. Conversations with U.S. and Russian specialists, August, 2007. 33 Moscow, Kommersant.com, in English, July 26, 2007, Open Source Committee, FBIS SOV, July 26, 2007; Moscow, Interfax, in English, July 25, 2007, FBIS SOV, July 26, 2007. 34 The Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, State University-Higher School of Economics RIO Center: The World Around Russia: 2017, An Outlook for the Midterm Future (Moscow, 2007) p. 25. 35 Gennadiy Chernykh and Col. Valery Sumenkov: Based on Data, Not Rumors: The Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Situation as a Factor of Information Conflicte, Moscow, Armeyskiy Sbornik, in Russian, March 21, 2007, Open Source Committee, Foreign Broadcast Information Service Central Eurasia (Henceforth FBIS SOV), March 21, 2007.
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Moreover, it is of rather long provenance and derives from the military and more recently the political elites perception of what happened to the Soviet Union and to Russia in the 1990s. The IW threat links together internal and external threats in a way that is quite foreign to American strategic thinking. And for almost a decade if not more many leading Russian military thinkers have argue that information weapons and information warfare (IW) can achieve strategic outcomes and that those outcomes could portend major strategic defeats for Russia. Indeed. many Russian works see IW as a strategic threat comparable to nuclear weapons in their functional outcome.36 As one study of soldiers of the future concluded,
Ideologically these developments are based on the concept of an information war, created on the basis of the latest achievements of scientific and technical progress and with an associated revolution in military science at the turn of the XXI century. By its consequences, it is possible to compare it only with the creation of nuclear weapons in the middle 1940s. The introduction of information-space technology at all levels of control and troop applications actually makes it possible to seriously speak about the possibility of combat operations in digital form.37
This became an official view when Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov asked UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1998 to launch a process leading to an international agreement to ban IW because IWs destructive potential was tantamount to that of strategic nuclear weapons and should therefore
See Vladimir Rubanovs Remarks at the Press Conference Regarding Russia-West partnership in the Sphere of Security, Arbat Hotel, Moscow, October 17, 2000, in CDI Russia Weekly, No. 120, October 20, 2000; Timothy Thomas, The Russian View of Information War; Col. Michael Crutcher (USA RET) ed.: The Russian Armed Forces at the End of the Millennium (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College, 2001) pp. 335360; Timothy L. Thomas: Information Technology: US/Russian Perspectives and Potential for Military-Political Cooperation (Fort Leavenworth KS Foreign Military Studies Office 1999). http://call.army.mil/call/fmso/fmsopubs/issues/infotech.htm; Lester W. Grau and Timothy L. Thomas: A Russian View of Future War: Theory and Direction, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, IX, (3, September), 1996, pp. 501518; Timothy L. Thomas: Deterring Information Warfare: A New Strategic Challenge, Parameters, XXV, (4, Winter) 199697, pp. 8191; Timothy L. Thomas: Russian Views on Information-Based Warfare, Airpower Journal, Special Issue, 1996, pp. 2535; Timothy L. Thomas: Dialectical Versus Empirical Thinking: The Key Elements of the Russian Understanding of Information Operations, Paper Presented to the U.S. Army War College, Annual Strategy Conference, April 2224, 1997, Carlisle Barracks, PA; Edward Waitz: The US Transition to Information Warfare, Journal of Electronic Defense, December, 1998, p. 36; Sergei Modestov, The Possibilities for Mutual Deterrence: A Russian View, Parameters, XXVI (4, Winter), 19961997, pp. 9298. 37 V. Menvikov, I. Golovanev, and S. Pavlov: Soldiers of the Future, (National Air Intelligence Center, Moscow, July, 1997) p. 3.
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be banned.38 Perhaps this policy is attributable to Moscows perception of being behind in creation of an informational and asymmetric capability and of being under attack in the world press allegedly on false or unsubstantiated grounds. But there is no mistaking the belief that informational weapons are now seen as strategic assets.39 Russian Defense Minister, General Igor Sergeyev, charged in 1999 that the Kosovo campaign was
Dangerous because the political decision to use armed force was to a great extent deliberately shaped by a virtual reality based on creating a distorted image of what was really happening in the Balkans. The NATO aggression was provoked on the basis of fabricated and falsified data, most of which was never even confirmed. That is a typical example of dirty information technology being used for military and political purposes, based on manipulating public opinion in the leading European countries and the United States in order to create artificially conditions for the later use of NATOs military potential. In that way the international community has been faced with a new challenge to the modern world the need to protect the media from reckless political adventurers who can pull the whole world into uncertainty and catastrophe.40
Here IW and/or various forms of electromagnetic warfare (Electronic Warfare or in Russian Radio-Elektronicheskaya BorbaEW or REB) in general or in any one aspect of their various manifestations becomes a potentially self-sufficient operation in their own right. This point leaves aside the equally crucial issue of designing nuclear C3I forces to be adaptable to any threat environment, including both preemptive or first strikes and retaliatory second strikes.41 In both cases the informatization of military and political operations and the use of IT in IW become strategic operations that can decisively shape a wars outcome. Gareyev, the dean of Russian military thought, went even further. While insisting that armed force remains the essence of war; he stated that the major strategic events of the 1990s, including the Soviet breakup,
38 Matthew Campbell: Logic Bombs Arms Race Panics Russia, The Sunday Times, (London), November 29, 1998. 39 See, for example, the speech by Deputy Chief of Staff, General Valery L. Manilov, Moscow, Krasnaya Zvezda, in Russian, February 24, 2001, I, February 23, 2001, Sergeyevs statements about informational aspects of any missile defense system, Moscow, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, in Russian, June 22, 2000, FBIS SOV, June 22, 2000. 40 Moscow, Krasnaya Zvezda, in Russian, December 9, 1999, FBIS SOV, December 8, 1999, see also Moscow, Krasnaya Zvezda, in Russian, March 25, 2000, FBIS SOV, March 27, 2000. 41 Moscow, Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye in Russian, January 14, 2000, FBIS-SOV, January 14, 2000 This is the requirement stated by the military doctrine, of 2000 which can be found at http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a394aa0466bfe.htm0.
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indicate that wars are still the continuation of politics by other means, including informational ones. Therefore the resort to force or to other non-violent means like IW is a conscious act of a states strategy and policy and is undertaken to achieve a definite strategic goal.
Future wars could be fought without even resorting to force, purely by informational and electronic means. For this reason the cataclysm culminating in the collapse of the Soviet empire and the Soviet Union illustrate that while states and coalitions can disintegrate as a result of confrontation on the international arena without the direct application of force.42
Consequently this potential use of IW either against Russia or by Russia against its enemies is now increasingly accepted in Russian military writing.43 Thus IWs capacity for destabilizing or disorganizing an entire military force, bloc, or state clearly is a strategic one. And this aspect imparts a quality of self-sufficiency to IW and information operations (IO). Indeed Russian thinking about IO and IW, in the absence as yet of an official definition seems to be converging around their potential to disrupt, disorganize and potentially destabilize the entire information environment of opposing sides.44 Were that to occur it could easily lead to internal disturbances, demonstrations and uprisings, and even terrorist acts. IW also permeates all other forms of strategic confrontation: political and economic warfare, diplomacy, and armed struggle, not to mention war (Gareyev distinguishes between these two). Yet IW retains its essentially independent character. While its goal is to demoralize the armed forces and population, paralyzing the other sides will; it accompanies political and diplomatic pressure and confrontation and is targeted on the adversarys home front and military forces. Not even the Soviet nuclear arsenal, the ultimate guarantee of security, saved the Soviet Union.45 Russia must understand this threat and take appropriate legal-political and other measures to ensure the states informational and military-political security. And that increasingly means not just securing vital information networks and improving C3I, it also means devising an appropriate high-tech capability for waging IW against enemies, primarily the United States.46
42 43
Geopolitika i Bezopasnost, Krasnaya Zvezda, July 30, 1999, p. 3 and July 31, 1999, p. 2. Thomas, The Russian View of Information War, pp. 335360. 44 Ibid. 45 Geopolitika i Bezopasnost, p. 2. 46 Ibid.
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This assessment of IWs potential is not just Gareyevs doctrinal formulation, but has emerged from an extensive preceding discussion and coincided with views expressed by Deputy Chief of Staff, General V.L. Manilov in 1998.47 Since then more and more writing on the subject has assessed IW as a strategic capability and systems needed to wage it are regularly called for. This assessment is also reflected in the regimes mounting hysteria about oppositional media and its determination to control the Internet that dates back several years now.48 As part of this Russian debate Russian writers defined IW much more broadly than do American writers, thereby influencing Manilovs and Gareyevs formulation, as well as the Security Concept and the defense doctrine of 19992000. Those analysts included as IW weapons and warfare targeted against the minds and bodies of enemy combatants and even of whole societies. They see this form of warfare as ushering in a new series of weapons or technologies that can strike enemies in wholly new way including biological or psychotropic weapons.49 This way of thinking could eventually generate a formulation bringing informational and biological weapons as well as chemical and/or biological warfare (CBW) and IW closer together in theory and/or in practice. As much Russian writing on the subject concludes that Moscow would respond to an IW attack much as it would to a nuclear attack, i.e., by a nuclear counterattack or even preemption, IW and IO equate to the eastward extension of NATOs tactical aviation as a source of a potential long-range contactless and even preemptive first strike whose impact equates to that of a nuclear attack. Sergeyev stated as much in December 1999.50 And since Russian nuclear forces evidently operate on a launch on warning (LOW) basis, report of a threatened attack would generate great pressure for launching on warning or even preemptively. Certainly many Russian analysts are not optimistic concerning chances for their nuclear C3I to survive an external first-strike.51 IT could thus expand the scope for domestic and foreign political and military conflict and for a new definition of strategic operations beyond
Col. General V.L. Manilov, Ed.: Geopolitika i Natsionalnaya Bezopasnost, (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1998) p. 37. 48 For an early view see Judith Perera, Russias Internet Infringement, Janes Intelligence Review, June, 2000, pp. 1012. 49 See the citations in note 21 especially, Thomas, The Russian View of Information War, pp. 335360. 50 Jacob W. Kipp, Russias Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons, Military Review, May-June, 2001, pp. 2738, Nikolai Sokov, Russian Strategic Modernization; Past and Future, Foreword, Benjamin S. Lambeth, Lanham, MD and Boulder, Colorado: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000, pp. 164180. 51 Lt. General A.S. Rukshin, Yadernoe Sderzhivanie: Sovershenstvovanie Systemy Upravleniya Yadernymi Silami, Voyennaya Mysl, No. 6, 2000, pp. 68.
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anything we can envision, targeting whole sectors of societies or generating new forms of BW and psychological operations combined with computers and IT. Nor is this trend confined to the Russian military. Inasmuch as biological warfare is fast becoming another strategic deterrent comparable in this regard to nuclear weapons, the advent of weapons that can combine biological and information warfare is highly lethal proposition.52 As Russia is either retaining, building, or devising existing and potentially new biological and chemical weapons, retains its capability to make supercomputers according to officials, and its scientists now claim to have created an artificial brain or so called neuro-computer, some very dangerous strategic potentials could emerge from the Russian military-industrial-technological complex.53 These might not necessarily be new weapons or technologies but rather innovative combinations of existing systems like biological and informational weapons currently in existence. The newness of these strategic capabilities would then lie in their innovative aspect, i.e., the fact of their combination in undreamt of ways. The fear of the current phase of this alleged IW sharply intensified in the wake of Russias failed effort to subvert the Ukrainian election of 2004. As that failure became apparent, the Russian leadership initiated a vigorous ideological campaign of charging the enemy at the gates and initiated a new ideology called sovereign democracy which attempted to justify an autocratic and independent Russia resisting American subversion and military expansionism across Eurasia.54 The point of this doctrine is that it resurrects Leninist categories of thought to information technology and restores the Leninist states seamless link between internal and external threats as well as a sense of a global sate of siege. Thus it justifies the internal repression of dissidents and the return to autocracy. Consequently a close examination of the securitization process in Putins Russia points to embarassing though pointed conclusions. For example, Julian Cooper has found that under Putin state spending on domestic security has exceeded defense spending, testifying to the primacy of internal over external threats in actual policymaking, rhetoric
52 Russia Continuing to Develop Supercomputer Interfax, in English, March 28, 2001, Russia Hails Breakthrough in Building Artificial Brain, Yahoo Hong Kong News, April 1, 2001, http://english.hk.dailynews. 53 For example, General N.V. Ogarkov, Vsegda v Gotovnosti k Zashchite Otechestva, Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1982, p. 31 54 For an analysis of the concept of sovereign democracy see Thomas Ambrosio, Redefining Democracy in Russia: How the Kremlin uses Wordplay To Counter External Criticism, Paper Presented to the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, March 2008.
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to the contrary notwithstanding.55 Unfortuantely, this pattern belies Putins claim about Russias conforming to the European or Western pattern. Insteadand this should not surprise usRussian experience and overall security policy conforms to the pattern discernible in Asian and Third World states where security is primarily internal security and is recognized as such by all the leaders there. These countries simultaneously confront the exigencies of both domestic state- building, i.e., assuring the reigmes internal security and defense against external threats without sufficient means, time, or resources to compete successfully with other more established states. Not surprisingly, their primary concern becomes internal security and their continuation in power, hence the proliferation of multiple military forces, intelligence, and police forces in these countries, often enjoying more resources than do their regular armies, and their governments recourse to rent-seeking, authoritarian, and clientilistic policies.56 These facts possess significant relevance for any discussion of security in the Third World but clearly also for Russia where the security environment perceived by the government is one of reversed anarchy as described by Mikhail Alexiev and Bjorn Moeller. Moeller observes that,
While in modernity the inside of a state was supposed to be orderly, thanks to the workings of the state as a Hobbesian Leviathan, the outside remained anarchic. For many states in the third World, the opposite seems closer to reality with fairly orderly relations to the outside in the form of diplomatic representations, but total anarchy within.57
Similarly, Amitav Acharya observes that,

Unlike in the West, national security concepts in Asia are strongly influenced by concerns for regime survival. Hence, security policies in Asia are not so much about protection against external military threats, but against internal challenges. Moreover, the overwhelming
Julian Cooper, The Funding of the Power Agencies of the Russian State, Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, No. 67, 2007, www.pipss.org. 56 Mohammad Ayoob From Regional System to Regional Society: Exploring Key Variables in the Construction of Regional Order, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. LIII, No. 3, 1999 pp. 247260; Mohammad Ayoob, Inequality and Theorizing in International Relations: The Case for Subaltern Realism, International Studies Review, IV No. 3, 2002, pp. 127148 and the works cited therein. 57 As quoted in Mikhail Alekseev, Regionalism of Russias Foreign Policy in the 1990s: A Case of Reversed Anarchy, Donald W. Treadgold Papers, University of Washington, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, No. 37, 2003, p. 12.
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proportion of conflicts in Asia fall into the intra-state category, meaning they reflect the structural weaknesses of the state, including a fundamental disjunction between its territorial and ethnic boundaries Many of these conflicts have been shown to have a spillover potential; hence the question of outside interference is an ever-present factor behind their escalation and containment. Against this backdrop, the principle of non-interference becomes vital to the security predicament of states. And a concept of security that challenges the unquestioned primacy of the state and its right to remain free from any form of external interference arouses suspicion and controversy.58
Indeed, for these states, and arguably even for transitional states like Russia, internal police forces enjoy greater state resources than do the regular armies, this being a key indicator of the primacy of internal security as a factor in defining the term national security.59 But beyond that fact what emerges is a military and political elite gripped by threat perceptions. Adding to this is precisely the fact that the police and, intelligence, and military institutions of the state do not answer to any form of democratic accountability but rather to the presidential office and are thus free to do as they please in many cases. Therefore, as defense correspondent Pavel Felgengauer reports, it is quite likely that,
Russia has a Prussian-style all-powerful General Staff that controls all the different armed services and is more or less independent of outside political constraints. Russian military intelligenceGRU, as big in size as the former KGB and spread over all continentsis an integral part of the General Staff. Through GRU, the General Staff controls the supply of vital information to all other decision-makers in all matters concerning defense procurement, threat assessment, and so on. High-ranking former GRU officers have told me that in Soviet times the General Staff used the GRU to grossly, deliberately, and constantly mislead the Kremlin about the magnitude and gravity of the military threat posed by the West in order to help inflate military expenditure. There are serious indications that at present the same foul practice is continuing.60
Amitav Acharya, Human Security and Asian Regionalism: A Strategy of Localization, Amtiav Acharya and Evelyn Goh Eds., Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific: Competition, Congruence, and Transformation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007, p. 241. 59 Cooper. 60 Pavel Felgenhauer, Russias Imperial General Staff, Perspective, XVI, NO. 1, OctoberNovember, 2005, www.bu.ed./iscip/vol16/felgenhauer (Accessed).
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Thus, Putin complained that American politicians are invoking a nonexistent Russian threat to get more money for military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he even went so far as to welcome a return to the Cold War and the arms race. For example, in his press conference before the annual G-8 conference in Heiligendam, Germany in June, 2007 Putin told reporters that, Russia and the West were returning to the Cold War and added that,
Of course we will return to those times. And it is clear that if part of the United States nuclear capability is situated in Europe and that our military experts consider that they represent a potential threat then we will have to take appropriate retaliatory steps. What steps? Of course we must have new targets in Europe. And determining precisely which means will be used to destroy the installations that our experts believe represent a potential threat for the Russian Federation is a matter of technology. Ballistic or cruise missiles or a completely new system. I repeat that it is a matter of technology.61
Since then Putin has publicly threatened Ukraine that if it joined NATO Russia would have to target it with missiles, while Baluyevsky made similar threats to Poland and the Czech Republic.62 Similarly, despite dozens of statements and briefings to the contrary, Russian generals and politicians insist that 10 missile defense radars and interceptors stationed in the Czech Republic and Poland represent a strategic threat to Russia and its nuclear deterrent not because of what they are but because of what they might be, just as Putin said above.63 Russia also charges that rotational deployments of no more than 5000 army and air force troops in Bulgaria and Romania represents an imminent threat to deploy forces to the Caucasus.64 Russian spokesmen view these new bases and potential new missions of U.S. and NATO forces, including missile defense and power projection into the Caucasus or Central Asia, as anti-Russian threats,
Putin Interviewed by Journalists from G8 countries text, www.kremlin.ru, June 4, 2007 Retrieved from Nexis-Lexis. 62 Alexander Golts, How Important it is To Be Crazy, Moscow, Yezhenednevnyi Zhurnal, Febrary 13, 2008, FBIS SOV, February 13, 2008. 63 Moscow, Internet web Digest, in Russian, January 31, 2007 FBIS SOV, January 31, 2007; Interview With Yuri Baluyevsky by Yuri Gavrilov, Moscow, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, in Russian, February 21, 2007, FBIS SOV, February 21, 2007. 64 Viktor Litovkin, V Yazyke Ultimatov, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 25, 2007; Viktor Yuzbashev, Illusory Moratorium, Moscow, Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, in Russian, May 30, 2007, FBIS SOV May 31, 2007; Remarks of Col. Albert Zaccor to the Conference The Role of the Black Sea Region in the Transatlantic Security Agenda, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., June 21, 2007.
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especially as NATO has stated that it takes issues like pipeline security in the Caucasus and its members energy security increasingly seriously.65 Yet in fact U.S. bases in Romania and Bulgaria are nothing more than periodic rotational deployments of a small number of Army and Air Forces whose mission is primarily the training of the forces of their host countries. They are anything but a permanent base for strike forces in the CIS and Moscow knows it.66 Indeed, in 2004 Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that he understood the reasons behind the U.S. realignment of its forces and global basing structure and did not find it alarming.67 Nevertheless, Lavrov and other officials have now frequently reiterated that the military presence of the United States in Europe is becoming a strategic factor.68 Baluyevsky, too, has attacked this deployment because it could touch off an arms race in many countries (the hidden idea being that Russia could not keep up with the pace of the United States and China), that these defenses are not needed because neither Iran nor North Korea has the capability to strike at Europe or the United States. Thus these missile defenses are there to threaten Russia and deprive it of access to key zones along its frontier perhaps the real threat in political terms. Missile launchers could be converted to interceptors that strike throughout European Russia, the missiles will not actually defend against all incoming attacks (which is strange since he said there were no attacks to be expected), create possible ecological nightmares or even wars in Europe, etc.69 Indeed, he worked himself up to such a level of threat that in January 2008 he announced that Russia was ready even for preemptive nuclear strikes, obviously directed at the United States.70 These rhetorical salvos are coming fast and furious even though dispassionate and thorough Russian analyses, e.g., by Alexei Arbatov of the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, demonstrate that these missile defenses
65 Martin Walker, NATO Means Business To Protect Pipelines, UPI, October 13, 2005; US Missile Plans A Clear Threat to Moscow: Russian General, AFP, January 22, 2007; NATO Should Play Greater Energy Security Role, Envoy, www.serbianna.com, June 29, 2007. 66 Zaccor. 67 Bush Troop Redeployment Plan: A Threat to Russia. Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, LVI (33, September 15, 2004) pp. 15. 68 Interview With Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: We Want to Be Heard. Der Spiegel, February 5, 2007, Johnsons Russia List 2007-#30, 7 February 2007. 69 Threat to Russia May Come From Several Sides, ITAR-Tass, February 9, 2007, Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis; Baluyevsky, Chief of Russian General Staff, The Shield Is Aimed Against Russia. FBIS SOV, September 8, 2006. 70 Moscow, Kommersant, in Russian, January 21, 2008, FBIS SOV, January 21, 2008.
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cannot possibly threaten Russia.71 Hence the demand for more American transparency concerning those missiles and their purpose as well as some kind of binding agreement that Russia cannot be and is not a target of those missiles.72 Furthermore the internal contradictions among them, e.g., that Iran simultaneously is and is not a threat or that Russian missiles could spoof defenses, etc., indicate just how seriously these threat assessments should be taken. Thus, this demand for suspending the program, along with multiple complaints that Washington has not answered Russias questions etc. are one large bluff inasmuch as Russia also received over ten technical briefings on this program.73 The artificiality, not to mention systematic mendacity, of this campaign is all too redolent of Soviet tactics and suggests another attempt to divide Washington and Europe from each other by frightening the latter, even as it reflects the abiding status insecurity that underlies so much of Russian foreign policy. And, of course, the other critical goals of this campaign are first, to prevent any American military presence in the former Warsaw Pact states, not to mention the former Soviet Union so as to leave open the possibility of their remaining a Russian sphere of influence. And second, at the same time this campaign also illustrates the Russian military-political elites inability to reconcile themselves to a diminished budget, and status, and finally their consistent belief that the United States and NATO are enemies of Russia. As Nikolai Sokov recently wrote, in regard to the study by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press about U.S. strategic capabilities that generated so much heat in Russia74
The reason why hardliners in Russia pay so much attention to the state of the U.S.-Russian strategic balance (and why they continue to discuss it in terms of parity rather than retaliatory capability) is that they conceive of U.S.-Russian relations today in the same terms as during the Cold War. The underlying unspoken assumption of the Lieber-Press study is that a systematic fundamental conflict either
71
Ibid; Russias Ivanov Slams U.S. Missile Shield Plans in Europe, RIA Novosti, February 9, 2007, Press Conference with Political Analyst Alexei Arbatov and Vice President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems Leonid Ivashov on Russian Foreign Policy, RIA Novosti, February 6, 2007, www.fednews.ru (Accessed; Alexei Arbatov, An Unnecessary and Dangerous Step, Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, No. 7, March, 2007, http://www.america-russia. net/eng/security/143683092. 72 Ibid.; Russia Wants U.S. to Sign Deal Saying Militaries Dont Target Each Other, Associated Press, February 6, 2007. 73 Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, February 25, 2007, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/feb/81037.htm. 74 Lieber and Press: The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy, pp. 4254; Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The End of MAD?: The Nuclear Dimensions of U.S. Primacy, pp. 744.
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exists or could emerge in the future; this assumption is not lost on Russian hardliners.75
No less consequential than the observation about returning to the Cold War is the fact that Putin here stated that he has bought the General Staffs vision and version of ubiquitous a priori American and Western threats expressed in a worst-case scenario. Worse yet, he openly conceded their power to define and formulate those threats and on that basis formulate requirements for defense policy and strategy. Indeed, here he openly invited the General Staffthese military expertsto determine Russias threat assessment and announced that the government would accept it. In this context and in actual fact, Moscow neither faces an urgent or imminent strategic or military threat nor does it claim to face one. Rather, the threat it perceives is psychological, one of influence and diminished status abroad. Thus, when Putin proposed in June 2007 that Washington share the Russian radar at Gabala, Azerbaijan with it as a compromise, Yastrzhembskiy stated that, We consider this issue not a military question but a political one.76 The innumerable statements by Russian generals that their weapons could beat any missile defense confirm this point. So obviously there is no military threat of the kind invoked by Russian officials just alarm about America not respecting its interests. This gap between rhetoric and reality suggests not just a desire to ratchet up threat assessments for political and economic benefits for the military and political elites doing so within Russia, or a search for foreign policy gains, but also a deliberate mis or disinformation of the leadership and the population as Felgengauer suggests. Certainly, Russian charges that there is no Iranian missile threat cannot be sustained for Moscows own analysts and Russian officials like Ivanov and Baluyevsky acknowledge it.77 And that was before the Iranian missile tests of February 2008 that aroused Lavrovs public ire.78 Commenting on Irans launch in early 2007 of a sub-orbital weather rocket, Lt. General Leonid Sazhin stated that,
Irans launch of a weather rocket shows that Tehran has not given up efforts to achieve two goalscreate its own carrier rocket to take
Nikolai Sokov: Second thoughts about a First Strike, Nonproliferation Review, XIV (1, March 2007) p. 141. 76 Russia Says U.S. Democracy Criticism Is Unfair, Reuters, June 29, 2007. 77 No Final Decision to Quit INF treaty - FM Lavrov, RIA Novosti, February 16, 2007; Russia Made a Mistake By Scrapping Its Mid-Range Missiles-Ivanov, Moscow, Interfax, in English, February 7, 2007, FBIS SOV, February 7, 2007. 78 Fred Attewill et al., Russian Alarm over Iranian Missile Test, The Guardian, www.guardian.co (Accessed, February 6, 2008).
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spacecraft to orbit and real medium-range combat missiles capable of hitting targets 3,0005,000 miles away.79
Although he argued that this capability would not fully materialize for 35 years, it would also take that long to test and deploy the American missile defenses that are at issue. Equally significantly, Major-General Vitaly Dubrovin, a Russian space defense expert, said flatly now Tehran has a medium-range ballistic missile, capable of carrying a warhead.80 Naturally both men decried the fact that Iran appears intent on validating American threat assessments.81 Arguably, Russia has accepted a threat perception for which ultimately there is no solution for as the Russian philosopher Sergei Gavrov writes,
The threats are utopian, the probability of their implementation is negligible, but their emergence is a sign. This signa message to the city and the worldsurely lends itself to decoding and interpretation: we will defend from Western claims our ancient right to use our imperial (authoritarian and totalitarian) domestic socio-cultural traditions within which power does not exist to serve people but people exist to serve power.82
Indeed, numerous commentators have observed that for some time Russia has cast itself as a besieged fortress, charging Washington with imperialism, launching an arms race, interfering in the domestic policies of CIS states including Russia, expanding NATO, unilateralism, disregard for international law when it comes to using force, and resorting to military threats against Russian interests, etc.83 This wide-ranging threat perception also embraces Russias domestic politics as well. Regime spokesmen, e.g., Vladislav Surkov, the father of the sovereign democracy concept, also openly state that Russia must take national control of all the key sectors of the economy lest they be threatened by hostile foreign economic forces and so called offshore aristocrats.84 In other words, this threat perception links both internal and external threats in a seamless
Moscow, ITAR-TASS in English, February 26, 2007, FBIS SOV, February 26, 2007. Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Sergei Gavrov: Is the Transition to Authoritarianism Irreversible? Russian Social Science Review, XKVIII (3, MayJune, 2007), pp. 2223. 83 Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security, February 10, 2007; Poslanie; Open Source Committee: OSC Analysis, Russian Commentators Debate Besieged Fortress Rhetoric, FBIS SOV, June 22, 2007. 84 Philip Hanson: The Turn to Statism in Russian Economic Policy, The International Spectator, XLII (1, March 2007) pp. 5455.
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whole (as did Leninism) and represents the perception that Western democracy as such is a threat to Russia. Therefore U.S. and Western military power, even if it is not actually a threat, is a priori perceived as such. Thus, the problem is not that Russia is insufficiently respected abroad but rather that it defines its interests in ways that postulate an intrinsically adversarial relationship with the West and particularly Washington. Russian policy operates, as the German philosopher Carl Schmitt would have said, on the basis of the presupposition of enemies. Consequently, Moscow cannot accept that its problem lies not in Washington or in the stars but in itself as much if not more than in American policy. Indeed, the student of the Russian press would have no trouble discerning this besieged fortress mentality that permeates it and that can only be triggered from above.85 Much of this syndrome is traceable not to American policy but to the nature of the Russian political system. Hence the growing standoff with Washington. ACTUAL, POTENTIALLY REAL, AND SPURIOUS U.S. THREAT TO RUSSIA To say this is not to deny that possible changes in U.S. force structures and deployments could provide a threat or threats to Russia. Indeed, the best available studies of American nuclear policies, including modernization of those weapons, highlight the fact that these policies, including the introduction into practice of new concepts like dissuasion and preemptive, if not preventive war, could, if they have not already done so, develop into perceived potential threats to Russia in the near future.86 In the context of charges raised in 2006 that the United States now has and has been striving for a usable first-strike nuclear capability against Russian forcesan argument that ignited a firestorm of polemics in Russiasuch interactive Russian and American deployments of both conventional and nuclear forces do in fact raise the prospect of real as opposed to notional threats of an arms race where Washington seems to move for a supposed first-strike capability in both Russian and Western strategic analyses.87 Thus, David McDonoughs analysis of U.S. nuclear deployments in the Pacific Ocean states that,
OSC Analysis., op. cit. David S. McDonough: Nuclear Superiority: The New Triad and the Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Adelphi Paper, No. 383, 2006; Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press: The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy, Foreign Affairs, LXXXV (2, MarchApril 2006) pp. 4254; Lieber & Press, op. cit. George Bunn and Christopher F. Chyba, Eds.: U.S. Nuclear Policy: Confronting Todays Threats, Foreword, William J. Perry (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2006). 87 Lieber & Press, The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy, op. cit. Lieber & Press, op. cit.
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The increased deployment of hard-target kill weapons in the Pacific could only aggravate Russian concerns over the survivability of its own nuclear arsenal. These silo-busters would be ideal to destroy the few hundred ICBM silos and Russias infamously hardened commandand-control facilities as well as help reduce any warning time for Russian strategic forces, given their possible deployment and depressed trajectory. This is critical for a decapitation mission, due to the highly centralized command-and-control structure of the Russian posture, as well as to pre-empt any possible retaliation from the most on-alert Russian strategic forces. The Pacific also has a unique feature in that it is an area where gaps in Russian early-warning radar and the continued deterioration of its early-warning satellite coverage have made it effectively blind to any attack from this theatre. This open-attack corridor would make any increase in Pacific-deployed SLBMs appear especially threatening.88
But Moscow has said little or nothing about these forces through 2007 even though it has attacked American and Japanese missile defenses in the Asia-Pacific.89 Similarly, already in 2003 when the first reports of the Pentagons interest in new low-yield and bunker busting nuclear weapons became public, Russian analysts warned that even if such programs are merely in a research stage they would add to the hostile drift of Russo-American relations.90 Events since then have only confirmed this assessment and their warning. Meanwhile this trend continues towards increasing Russian reliance upon nuclear weapons against a perceived growing American threat. This threat perception and reliance upon nuclear weapons takes place despite American assertions that charges of excessive reliance on nuclear forces; that the United States is either not reducing nuclear forces or doing so fast enough; that the United States is building new and more dangerous nuclear weapons; that the United States is lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use by emphasizing preemption; and that these alleged failures and the supposed failure to sign new arms control treaties are encouraging proliferation are myths.91 So if we may paraphrase a famous movie line, what we have here is a failure to communicate
Mcdonough, op. cit. p. 68. Mure Dickie and Jonathan Soble: Missile Test Fails to Raise Chinas Ire, Financial Times, December 19, 2007, www.ft.com (Accessed; China Unmoved by Japan Missile Interception, Reuters, December 18, 2007; Moscow, Interfax, in English, October 17, 2007, FBIS SOV, October 17, 2007; Moscow, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website (www.mid.ru (Accessed, October 17, 2007), FBIS SOV, October 17, 2007. 90 Dvorkin, p. 9. 91 Kartcher.
89 88
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while both sides appear to be sinking deeper into their self-justifying perceptions. These threat perceptions re obviously not confined to the nuclear sphere. Rather it is here that Russia, as we shall see has chosen to retaliate politically and by means of its force acquisition policies. Russian military writers regularly inveigh against what they consider to be NATO and American plans to encircle Russia with both conventional and nuclear weapons at bases either in the Baltic, Poland, and Eastern Europe, or from attempts to place U.S. military bases within the CIS.92 Lavrov, for example, warned that the failure of NATO members and the Baltic states to ratify the CFE treaty (which they will not do because of Russian deployments in Moldova and Georgia in violation of the OSCEs Istanbul accords of 1999) plus the enlargement of NATO, resulting conventional imbalance and the U.S. military presence in Europe all constitute a strategic factor, i.e. threats to Russia.93 In addition,
Perceived foreign threats also include military build-up(s) changing the balance near the borders of Russia and its allies, anti-Russian policies of certain neighboring governments, and the US withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty announced by the G.W. Bush [Administration].94
Yet, in fact these particular so-called threats do not exist. Indeed, Sergei Ivanov as Defense Minister said as much in 2004.95 Therefore these claims are essentially phantoms for justifying Russias foreign and domestic policy goals as well as the militarys campaign for more money and high-tech weapons against NATO and America. But because the real threats facing Russia are internal in nature this perception of Russia as a besieged fortress and the primary global counterpole to America and the West demonstrate that Moscows inability to find a point of domestic stability and legitimacy carries over into its foreign and defense policies. These facts also suggest that a fundamental problem in the Russo-NATO relationship is the unyielding opposition of the MOD and the government to genuine defense reform and strategic cooperation which would entail, among other things, eliminating the ingrained presupposition of enemies and policies deriving form that posture.96
92 Nikolay Poroskov: The Last Argument of the Generals: The Topic of Tactical Nuclear Weapons Will Continue to Be Raised Repeatedly, Voyenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier, in Russian, July 19, 2006, FBIS SOV July 19, 2006. 93 Interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: We Want to Be Heard. 94 Rukavishnikov, p. 60. 95 Bush Troop Redeployment Plan: A Threat to Russia? pp. 14. 96 Blank, The NATO-Russian Partnership: A Marriage of Convenience or a Troubled Partnership?
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All these trends highlight an increasing Russian ambivalence about the arms control treaties of the 1980s and 1990s like the conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty of Paris of 1990 and the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) Washington Treaty of 1987. Ivanov has frequently called all of these treaties, including the START I Treaty, relics of the Cold War.97 Since then Lavrov, Baluyevsky, and Putin have threatened to withdraw from the CFE treaty, called it meaningless and blamed NATO for not ratifying it even though Moscow refuses to pull its forces out of Moldova and for deploying forces in the states of new members.98 Clearly the Russian debate over these treaties is closely linked to the issue of NATOs enlargement and their impact and continuation are seen in the context of that expansion. This debate also reveals the persistence of Cold War thinking in Moscow. But this debate over existing arms treaties also reveals that Moscow is unwilling to reveal or confront its true threat perceptions and instead blames Washington for its failure to take Russian interests into account. Much evidence suggests that various political forces in Russia, particularly in the military community, are urging withdrawal from those treaties, not least because of NATO enlargement towards the CIS and U.S. foreign and military policy in those areas. In March 2005 Sergei Ivanov raised the question of withdrawal from the INF Treaty with the Pentagon.99 More recently, Ivanov has stated that the INF treaty was a mistake.100 And since then Baluyevsky followed suit, threatening to pull out of the treaty unless Washington ceased its missile defense plans.101 But withdrawal from the INF treaty makes no sense unless one believes that Russia is genuinelyand more importantlyimminently threatened by NATO, or Iran and China, but most of all by the U.S. superior conventional military power, and cannot meet or deter that threat except by returning to the classical Cold War strategy of holding Europe hostage to nuclear attack to deter Washington and NATO. Similarly, with regard to China and Iran, absent a missile defense, the only applicable strategy would be to use nuclear weapons to deter them, but this means admitting that these supposed partners of Russia actually constitute a growing threat
For example, Russian Defense Minister Calls START Treaty Cold War Relic, Moscow, ITAR-TASS in Russian, February 11, 2007, FBIS SOV, February, 11, 2007. 98 Sergey Lavrov: CFE Treaty No Longer Relevant The Moscow Times, February 19, 2007; Poslanie: CFE Treaty on Verge of Collapse, Iran Threat Overblown, Russian Gen. 99 Guy Dinmore, Demetri Sevatopulo, and Hubert Wetzel: Russia Confronted Rumsfeld with Threat to Quit Key Nuclear Treaty, Financial Times, March 9, 2005, p. 1. 100 Scrapping Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles a MistakeIvanov-1, RIA Novosti, February 7, 2007. 101 Demetri Sevastopoulo, Neil Buckley, and Daniel Dombey: Russia Threatens to Quit Arms Treaty, Financial Times, February 15, 2007, www.ft.com.
97
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to it. Since it is by no means clear that Russia can or should reply to any such threat by producing IRBMs, the desire to leave the INF treaty and reactivate missile production of IRBMs represents only the interests of the defense and defense industrial sectors, not necessarily Russias state interest. Thus it would appear, as it does to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, that the real threat is the rise of neighboring states short- and medium-range missile capabilities, e.g., Iran and China.102 This is a fine irony inasmuch as Russia was instrumental in providing the wherewithal for these states military development. If Moscow withdrew from the INF treaty that would allow NATO to station INF missiles in the Baltic and Poland as well as lead China and Iran to step up their production of intermediate range missiles as well. Furthermore, it is by no means clear that Moscow could regenerate production for both intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missiles as their plant for such production systematically misses production goals. Thus withdrawal from the treaty could actually further diminish Russian security, not enhance it.103 Yet Moscow dare not admit that the enemy of the United States is also its enemy lest its domestically based foreign and defense policy that postulates partnership with China and Iran be seen to be inherently contradictory and even dangerous. Under the circumstances we should not be surprised that Putins and Ivanovs recent threat assessments suggest that Washington and NATO or their policies are becoming a growing if not the main threat.104 RUSSIAN THREATS TO AMERICA According to President Bush, The Cold War is over. Russia is not our enemy. Were working toward a new security relationship with Russia whose foundation does not rest on the prospect of mutual annihilation.105 Yet this view is not universally shared. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called Russia one of the three principal threats confronting the United States, along with North Korea and Iran.106 Thus there is a real danger that influential
102 U.S. Defense Chief Sees Problems in Russian Withdrawal from INF, ITAR-TASS, February 16, 2007. 103 The ISCIP Analyst, XIII (9, March 8, 2007), Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy, Boston University, www.bu.edu/iscip (Accessed 104 Cold War Was Paradise Compared to Modern ThreatsIvanov. RIA Novosti, January 16, 2007; Sergei Ivanov: Russia Must Be Strong. Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2006, p. 14. 105 President George W. Bush: President Bush Visits Bucharest, Romania, Discusses NATO, National Bank of Savings, Bucharest, Romania, April 3, 2008, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2008/04/20080402-2.html. 106 Senator Joseph Biden: Remarks Made at the Democratic Primary Debate in Orangeburg, South Carolina, April 26, 2007, www.msnbc.msn,com/id/18/351722.
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members of the policymaking community, either in the Bush Administration or in its successor, might come to see Russia and its capabilities as a threat. As this potential inheres primarily in Russias nuclear capability, the developments cited here are already creating a climate among government circles in which Russia can quickly come to be seen as a potential military threat due to its political differences with the United States. For example, the recent Report of the Defense Science Board on Nuclear Capabilities stated openly that nuclear reductions agreed to in the Moscow treaty of 2002 and recommended in the Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 pointed to a new and benign strategic relationship with Russia after the end of the Cold War and the desire to forge a new bilateral strategic relationship that no longer was based on the principles of Mutual Assured Destruction. Today, the report observes, that presumption of a new benign strategic relationship with Russia is increasingly open to doubt. This is because, Although United States relations with Russia are considered relatively benign at the moment, (December 2006) Russia retains the capacity to destroy the United States in 30 minutes or less. Moreover, its reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for a weakened conventional military has led it to emphasize nuclear weapons for purposes of maintaining superpower status, deterrence, and potentially warfighting. Russias regression from democracy, and rivalry with America over Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia (other issues may well be added since then to the mix-author) suggest that the assessment of 2003 that nothing had changed since 2001 to justify revising the NPRs presumption of a benign strategic relationship with Russia needs to be revised.107 Therefore the report recommends the creation of a permanently standing assessment Red Team to continuously assess the range of emerging and plausible nuclear capabilities that can threaten the United States and its allies and friends with potentially catastrophic consequences.108 This team would monitor Russian, Chinese, and North Korean developments because,
Despite the desire for improved relations with Russia, the direction, scope, and pace of the evolution of U.S. capabilities must be based on a realistic recognition that the United States and Russia are not yet the reliable, trusted friends needed for the United States to depart from a commitment to a robust nuclear deterrent. Intentions can change overnight; capabilities cannot.109
107 Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Capabilities: Report Summary (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, December, 2006), pp. 1112. 108 Ibid., pp. 1213. 109 Ibid.
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Other examples of a growing wariness about Russian intentions can also be cited.110 In his annual threat assessment for the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2008, Admiral J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, stated openly that Russia and China have the technical capabilities to target and disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure and for intelligence collection.111 Beyond these signs of heightened anxiety about Russian intentions we can also see that Russian capabilities that are now being developed and deployed also are causing increased concern among policymakers, particularly with regard to two kinds of capability, nuclear and IW. Finally several analysts discern the possibility of a joint Russo-Chinese bloc in Central or inner Asia comprising economic, energy, trade and investment capabilities that would exclude the West form these critical areas and create what might be the contemporary equivalent of Japans East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere.112 This apprehension should also be regarded as a subset of the much larger apprehensions among many analysts, including this author of a potential Russo-Chinese alliance that would be obviously directed against the United States and its Asian, if not global, interests. The visible cooperation, if not partnership, between Russia and China where both sides say that relations have never been better, is clearly tied to both states relationship with the United States.113 Several analysts of trends in East Asia see the confluence of the energy and other current international crises contributing to a Russo-Chinese alliance that has already formed in opposition to American power and ideas. Some Western writers have already opined that Sino-Russian relations appear to be tending towards an anti-American alliance in both Northeast and Central Asia.114 But more recently both Asian and Western writers have begun to argue that such a polarization in Asia could be taking shape. The shared interest of
US Report Warns of Russian Nuclear Threat, Janes Intelligence Digest, January 26, 2007, http://jid.janes.com. 111 Admiral J. Michael McConnell: Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 27, 2008, p. 15, www.dni.gov. 112 Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Wilder: A World Without the West. The National Interests, (90, JulyAugust 2007) pp. 2330; Flynt Leverett: Black is the New Green, The National Interest, (93, JanuaryFebruary 2008), pp. 3745. 113 Alexander Lukin: Russias China Card: Eyes on Washington. Byung-Kook Kim and Anthony Jones, Eds.: Power and Security in Northeast Asia: Shifting Strategies. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), pp. 167193. 114 David Kerr: The Sino-Russian Partnership and U.S. Policy Toward North Korea: From Hegemony to Concert in Northeast Asia. International Studies Quarterly, XXXXIX (3), (September 2005), pp. 411437; Constantine C. Menges: China: The Gathering Threat (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current Publishers, 2005); Stephen Blank: Towards Alliance?: The Strategic Implications of Russo-Chinese Relations, National Security Studies Quarterly, VII, (3, Summer 2001), pp. 130.
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perceiving America as an ideological and geopolitical threat has also united Moscow and Beijing in a common cause.115 That alliance would encompass the following points of friction with Washington: strategic resistance to U.S. interests in Central and Northeast Asia, resistance to anti-proliferation and pressures upon the regimes in Iran and North Korea, an energy alliance, an ideological counter-offensive against U.S. support for democratization abroad, and the rearming of both Russia and China, if not their proxies and allies, with a view towards conflict with America.116 One South Korean columnist, Kim Yong Hui, wrote in 2005 that,
China and Russia are reviving their past strategic partnership to face their strongest rival, the United States. A structure of strategic competition and confrontation between the United States and India on the one side, and Russia and China on the other is unfolding in the eastern half of the Eurasian continent including the Korean peninsula. Such a situation will definitely bring a huge wave of shock to the Korean peninsula, directly dealing with the strategic flexibility of U.S. forces in Korea. If China and Russia train their military forces together in the sea off the coast of Chinas Liaodong Peninsula, it will also have an effect on the 21st century strategic plan of Korea. We will now need to think of Northeast Asia on a much broader scale. The eastern half of Eurasia, including Central Asia, has to be included in our strategic plan for the future.117
Similarly Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev wrote that,

If the Kremlin favors Beijing, the resulting Sino-Russian energy nexus joining the worlds fastest growing energy consumer with one of the worlds fastest growing producerswould support Chinas growing claim to regional pre-eminence. From Beijings point of view, this relationship would promise a relatively secure and stable foundation for one of historys most extraordinary economic transformations. At stake are energy reserves in eastern Russia that far exceed those in the entire Caspian basin. Moreover, according to Chinese strategists, robust Sino-Russian energy links would decrease the vulnerability of Beijings sea lines of communication to forms of external pressure in case of a crisis concerning Taiwan or the South China Sea. From the standpoint of global politics, the formation of the Sino-Russian energy
Kerr, pp. 411437. Ibid; Kerr, pp. 411437; Minxin Pei: Assertive Pragmatism: Chinas Economic Rise and Its Impact on Chinese Foreign Policy Proliferation Papers, Institut Francais des Relations Internationales (IFRI), 2006, p. 17, www.ifri.org. 117 Kim Yong Hui: The Relevance of Central Asia. Seoul JoongAng Ilbo Internet Version, in English, July 11, 2005, FBIS SOV, July 11 2005.
116 115
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nexus would represent a strong consolidation of an emergent bipolar structure in East Asia, with one pole led by China (and including Russia) and one led by the United States (and including Japan).118
These ties obviously also owe a great deal to both sides rejection of the U.S. (largely rhetorical) stance championing democratic expansion throughout the world. Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace observes that,
Russia and China have found common cause in Central Asia in trying to push out American influence. Even in the security area, Russia has become more willing to advance its ties with China, as can be seen in the first large-scale joint military exercises conducted on Chinese territory in 2005. The rapid improvement in ties and growing cooperation between China and Russia owes, to a great extent, not to any Chinese new initiative, but to Russias changing relationship with the West under Vladimir Putins rule. As President Putin became increasingly authoritarian, he needed China as an ally in counter-balancing the West. The net strategic effect of Russias reorientation of its policy toward the West has been tremendously positive for China.119
Thus, beyond the strategic rivalry there is also an ideological-political rivalry which reinforces mutual suspicion. Consequently, the danger is that this ideological-strategic rivalry will harden leading to a polarized, bilateral, and hostile division of Asia into blocs based on a Sino-Russian bloc confronting a U.S. alliance system led by alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Already in the 1990s prominent analysts of world politics like Richard Betts and Robert Jervis, and then subsequent CIA studies, postulated that the greatest security threat to American interests would be a Russian-Chinese alliance.120 Arguably that is happening now and occurs under conditions of the energy crisis that magnifies Russias importance to China beyond providing diplomatic support, cover for Chinas strategic rear, and arms sales.121 That alliance would encompass the following points of friction with Washington: strategic resistance to U.S. interests in Central and Northeast
118 Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev: China, Japan and the Scramble for Siberia Survival, XLVIII (1, Spring, 2006), pp. 175176. 119 Minxin Pei, op. cit. 120 Robert Jervis: U.S. Grand Strategy: Mission Impossible. Naval War College Review, Summer 1998, pp. 2236; Richard K. Betts: Power, Prospects, and Priorities: Choices for Strategic Change. Naval War College Review, Winter 1997, pp. 922; John C. Gannon, Intelligence Challenges Through 2015. http://odci.gov/cia/publicaffairs/speeches/gannon_speech_05022000.html (Accessed). 121 Menges, op. cit.
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Asia, resistance to anti-proliferation and pressures upon the regimes in Iran and North Korea, an energy alliance, an ideological counter-offensive against U.S. support for democratization abroad, and the rearming of both Russia and China, if not their proxies and allies, with a view towards conflict with America.122 China and Russia are reviving their past strategic partnership to face their strongest rival, the United States. A structure of strategic competition and confrontation between the United States and India on the one side, and Russia and China on the other is unfolding in the eastern half of the Eurasian continent including the Korean peninsula. Such a situation will definitely bring a huge wave of shock to the Korean peninsula, directly dealing with the strategic flexibility of U.S. forces in Korea. If China and Russia train their military forces together in the sea off the coast of Chinas Liaodong Peninsula, it will also have an effect on the 21st century strategic plan of Korea. We will now need to think of Northeast Asia on a much broader scale. The eastern half of Eurasia, including Central Asia, has to be included in our strategic plan for the future.123 Since then, Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev have similarly written that,
Russias tie to China certainly expresses a deep strategic identity or congruence of interests on a host of issues from Korea to Central Asia and could have significant military implications. Those implications are not just due to Russian arms sales to China, which are clearly tied to an antiAmerican military scenario, most probably connected with Taiwan. They also include the possibility of joint military action in response to a regime crisis in the DPRK. Thus we could be on the verge of a new strategic bipolarity that bifurcates Europe and Asia and places Washington and Moscow on opposite sides in both peacetime and times of crises.124
Therefore a real danger exists that these perceptions can grow on both sides into self-fulfilling threat perceptions that will drive conventional and nuclear defense acquisitions and foreign policy decisions as well until they influence formal doctrinal and strategic pronouncements. This does not mean Washington should desist form pursuing its interests. Rather, in doing so it should remember that the only way to undermine the pervasive Russian sense of threat perception is to alter the chessboard of international relations over time so that the domestic conditions form which the
Ibid; Kerr, pp. 411437; Pei, op. cit. p. 17. Hui, op. cit. 124 James Brian McNabb: The Unanticipated Utility of U.S. Security Structures: Avoiding Cold War II in Central Asia. Comparative Strategy, XXV (4, OctoberDecember 2006), pp. 307327.
123 122
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return to Leninism spring are thwarted, most notably the neo-imperial mystique that grips Russian rulers and elites. But beyond that when we undertake actions that could actually pose real or genuine threats to Russia, we should have a very good reason for doing so beyond the dictates of ideological fervor. As the great French statesman Talleyrand observed, also in a time of turbulence, above all not too much zeal.

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The Journal of Slavic Military Studies

Threats to and from Russia: An Assessment

THREATS TO AND FROM RUSSIA: AN ASSESSMENT

S. Blank Threats to and from Russia

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Threats to and from Russia

politics.3 Similarly, Russias Ambassador to America, Yuri Ushakov wrote that,

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Ibid. Ibid. 10 Ibid.

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Similarly, Amitav Acharya observes that,

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Threats to and from Russia

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Threats to and from Russia

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Threats to and from Russia

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Threats to and from Russia

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Threats to and from Russia

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Similarly Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev wrote that,

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