Stephen Blank

Implications for European and U.S. Security

Proliferation and Nonproliferation in Ukraine

Richard Weitz

Army War College (U.S.). Strategic Studies Institute

Blank, S. J.; Weitz, R.: Russian military studies : a call for action. - S. 1-17 Blank, S. J.: "No need to threaten us, we are frightened of ourselves", Russia's blueprint for a police state, the new security strategy. - S. 19-149 Herspring, D. R.: Is military reform in Russia for "real"? : Yes, but. - S. 151-191 Kipp, J. W.: Operational art and the curious narrative on the Russian contribution : presence and absence over the last 2 decades. - S. 193-263 Thomas, T. L.: Russian information warfare theory : the consequences of August 2008. - S. 265-299 Goure, D.: Russian strategic nuclear forces and arms control : déjà vu all over again. - S. 301-329 Tsypkin, M.: The challenge of understanding the Russian Navy. - S. 331-357 Spero, J. B.: Russian military challenges toward Central-East Europe. - S. 359-388 Weitz, R.: Russian-Chinese security relations : constant and changing. - S. 389-453.

Essays in Memory of Mary Fitzgerald

The Russian Military Today and Tomorrow

Despite over a dozen years of talk, the Soviet and now Russian military has not undergone a true military reform. What did happen was a form of degeneration and disintegration, but not a methodically planned and directed transformation and/or adaptation to new conditions. Consequently, defense policy, in all of its ramifications, has remained essentially unreformed and remains an impediment to Russia's accommodation to today's strategic realities. This study presents an assessment of Russian defense policy as Russia has begun, in late 1997 and 1998, to grapple with the enormous challenges that inhere in the process of military reform. The outcome of what can only be a protracted process will have profound implications, not only for Russia, but for its neighbors and partners, chief among them being the United States. Given the coincidence of this reform process with what many believe to be a revolution in military affairs and the continuing urgency of reducing nuclear threats, the ongoing observation of Russian military policies remains very important for the United States.

Russia's Armed Forces on the Brink of Reform

The essays in this volume represent both a memorial and an analytical call to action. We have brought these authors and their essays together in memory of our colleague, Mary Fitzgerald of the Hudson Institute, who passed away far too soon, on April 5, 2009. Mary was one of the most brilliant and vivacious practitioners of the study of the Russian and Chinese militaries, whose insights helped not just to put those fields of study on the map, but also to influence U.S. military thinking. Her work helped shed light on the concrete meaning of such terms as the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA), as well as the profoundly original works of thinkers like Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov (1917-94), who was both Chief of the Soviet General Staff (1977-84) and an outstanding military thinker who coined that term.1 As the Dedication by Andrew Marshall points out, the influence that terms like the RMA, and the concepts surrounding them that Ogarkov developed, influenced 20 years of U.S. and European thinking, from 1980-2000, about the conduct of war.This achievement alone would suffice to merit lasting respect and admiration from her colleagues. All the authors here worked with or were influenced by Mary's contributions. But a memorial should be a living thing, not just a eulogy which is soon forgotten. In analytical terms, it is also a call to action, a continuing insistence that it is essential for the scholarly, professional, and policymaking communities not only to take into account Russian military developments, but also the military thinking that animates many of those developments. Just as Soviet military thinking was arguably the most profound of all military thinking during the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, so today we, both as scholars and professional actors, would benefit considerably from paying serious attention to the contemporary corpus of Russian thinking about warfare. Indeed, it can be argued that the U.S. military won one of its greatest victories in 1991 in Operation DESERT STORM precisely by assimilating and then operationalizing concepts laid out by Ogarkov and his contemporaries, as well as the "lost generation" of Soviet thinkers like Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1891-1937) and Colonel Alexander Svechin (1878-1938).2 The serious study of current Russian thinking will benefit policymakers and military professionals alike, both on its own merits and by virtue of the ongoing importance of Russia as a strategic factor in world politics. Unfortunately, the study of this important subject is in danger of being buried along with one of its most gifted practitioners. Western interest in this field sharply declined after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. To many, the issues and questions involved in this field, not to mention the effort connected with obtaining funding for such study, seemed to be irrelevant and not worth the time spent in doing so. Yet, recent events have shown that this approach is seriously misguided and involves major costs to the United States and its allies.Of course, it is by now a truism to say that the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 demonstrated to all observers that "Russia was back," if they had not realized that before. But in fact, as Stephen Blank points out in Chapter 2, Russian military and political leaders well before then believed that Russia was at risk in both military and nonmilitary ways. Some went so far as to say that the country was, in effect, already in an information war against the West.3 We often underestimate the impact of the Russian leadership's perception that Russia is intrinsically at risk, and in some sense under attack, from the West. That underestimation leads us astray, conceptually but also politically.

The author analyzes the so-called military reform of the former Soviet and now Russian military forces. He assesses Russian defense policy as Russia has begun lately to grapple with the enormous challenges that are inherent in the process of military reform. The outcome of this process will have profound implications, not only for Russia, but the its neighbors and partners, chief among them being the United States. Given the coincidence of this reform process with what many believe to be a revolution in military affairs and the continuing urgency of reducing nuclear threats, the ongoing observation of Russian military policies remains very important for the United States.

Four years after the NATO-Russia Council came into being, it represents a picture in ambivalence and incomplete realization of partnership. This monograph focuses on the Russian side of this growing estrangement. It finds the Russian roots of this ambivalence or alienation in the increasingly visible manifestations of an autocratic and neo-imperial Russian state and foreign and defense policy. These strong trends in Russian policy inhibit the formation of a genuine security partnership that can provide for Eurasian security in the face of multiple contemporary threats. Indeed, it is debatable whether Russia really wants a comprehensive partnership with NATO. The author examines Russia's perspectives in this relationship and this growing estrangement between the West and Russia, tracing it to trends in Russian domestic, defense, and foreign policies.

A Marriage of Convenience Or a Troubled Relationship?

The NATO-Russia Partnership

Regional Security in Asia and Prospects for Indo-American Strategic Cooperation

Natural Allies?

Earl H. Tilford

In December 1994, Russian forces invaded the rebellious province of Chechnya. They aimed to unseat General Dzhokar Dudayev, who had proclaimed Chechnya's independence from Russia. The invasion culminated a series of failed coups against Dudayev that had been orchestrated by the office of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. However, this invasion has quickly degenerated into a military-political quagmire. Generals, soldiers, and even Deputy Defense Ministers have attacked the invasion, and tactical, operational, and military incompetence has been rife. Civilian control over the military has broken down, and the armed forces' poor cohesion and limited reliability have become clear to everyone. Furthermore, the government's reporting has been exposed as official lying by the media with the result of mounting public disaffection. Worse yet, the integrity of the Yeltsin government and of Russia is at risk due to the invasion. Russian prestige has been dealt a blow abroad. As a result, in Moscow, scapegoating has already begun between the government and the military while the reputation and stability of the government and the armed forces have been severely impaired. All this is already clear from an initial, preliminary assessment of the invasion.

A Preliminary Assessment

Russia's Invasion of Chechnya

This book presents several essays analyzing Russia's extensive nuclear agenda and the issues connected with it. It deals with strategy, doctrine, European, Eurasian, and East Asian security agendas, as well as the central U.S.-Russia nuclear and arms control equations. This work brings together American, European, and Russian analysts to discuss Russia's defense and conventional forces reforms and their impact on nuclear forces, doctrine, strategy, and the critical issues of Russian security policies toward the United States, Europe, and China. It also deals directly with the present and future roles of nuclear weapons in Russian defense policy and strategy.

Past, Present, and Future

Russian Nuclear Weapons

The papers included in this volume represent just such an effort to lay a firmer foundation for this continuing dialogue and to bring together different points of view. In October 1998, the Strategic Studies Institute, assisted by Pepperdine University, assembled a distinguished group of analysts from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, in Florence, Italy. At a conference titled "Mediterranean Security into the Coming Millennium," the task of the participants was to address current regional security issues in the Balkans, Middle East, and the Aegean, as well as the perceptions of the individual states, the relevant security organizations, NATO and the European Union, and the players and major external actors like the United States and Russia. These papers cover the many areas discussed at the conference and should advance the debate on Mediterranean security both in the United States and abroad.

Mediterranean Security Into the Coming Millennium

This report makes the point that in both Russia and China it is politics OCo and not market or commercial considerations OCo that largely drive energy relationships with each other and the outside world.a For both countries, energy and energy security is regarded as a strategic asset and/or objective that are at risk from outside forces.a Moreover, both countries are taking a statist OCo in Russia even patrimonial OCo approach to energy issues.a Therefore cooperation between Russia and China will be difficult even though Russia wants to sell and China wants to buy.a The conditions that each state has attached to their energy policies ironically preclude the kind of easy cooperation seen in other strategic and political issues between Moscow and Beijing. Thus in both Central and Northeast Asia, Russia has blocked Chinese efforts to realize its version of energy security, yet it has not been able to come up either with the resources or means for a coherent policy of supplying China with reliable quantities of energy that would lead China away from Middle Eastern and other producers.a Given the political dimension in both states, the under-fulfilment of the potential for Russia to supply China will continue and continue as well to be a source of strain in their relationship."

Politics in Command

Russo-Chinese Energy Relations

Lewis B. Ware

A common thread ties together the five case studies of this book: the persistence with which the bilateral relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union continues to dominate American foreign and regional policies. These essays analyze the LIC environment in Central Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Stephen Blank

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