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Revised Russian Nuke Doctrine Aimed at Near Abroad
Travis | Oct 19, 2009 |
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Nikolai Patrushev: where's my snare?
Guest Post by Cole Harvey
The Russian newspaper Izvestia last week ran an interview (original Russian; Reuters summary) with the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, who foreshadowed upcoming revisions to Russia’s nuclear doctrine with alarming words like “preventive strike” and “regional conflicts.” Indeed, one could almost hear rolls of distant thunder between Patrushev’s words – or at least I imagine one could in Kiev.
Below are some passages from the interview that I translated (with a little help from The Google)...
Analysis of military-strategic situation in the world and its development through 2020 indicate shifts in emphasis from large-scale military conflict to local wars and armed conflicts.
With regard to the provisions of the possibility of using nuclear weapons, this section of the military doctrine was formulated in the spirit of preservation of the nuclear status of the Russian Federation, and its ability to implement nuclear deterrence of potential adversaries from aggression against Russia and its allies.
We have also adjusted the conditions for use of nuclear weapons in repelling aggression with conventional weapons not only in large-scale, but also in regional and even local wars.
In critical national security situations, the application of a preemptive (preventive) nuclear strike against the aggressor is not excluded.
If these comments accurately reflect the final state of the revised doctrine, they do not imperil U.S.-Russian strategic stability or the present round of START negotiations. It’s not clear that they even represent a fundamental change from current Russian doctrine with regard to great-power conflicts (Sigger concurs at AG, as does Pavel Podvig).
Instead, Russia’s new revisions seem to be aimed at its near abroad, those former Soviet satellites that Moscow still seeks to influence. For example, Russia faces the loss of a strategically important naval base in 2017, when the lease expires on the home base of the Black Sea fleet on the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine. Russian officials have repeatedly made it clear that they would like the lease to be extended, despite the existence of an alternate base for the fleet on the Russian coast. Ukrainian officials have, thus far, refused. While it’s unlikely that Russia would actually use nuclear weapons in a crisis over the Crimea, it may behoove the Kremlin (or more precisely, the Byely Dom), to suggest that it might in order to encourage Ukraine to come to the table.
Russia’s apparent willingness to consider the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in small-scale conflicts comes as the United States is reportedly contemplating scaling back the Bush doctrine of preventive warfare. The two developments are probably unrelated – prompted in Washington by the U.S. experience in Iraq, and in Moscow by persistent worries of conventional inferiority and encirclement by potentially hostile states.
Yet the two countries’ security doctrines will surely interact as the United States and Russia continue to downsize their nuclear stockpiles in the years to come. What will it take, for example, for Russia to agree to deeper cuts, when it leans increasingly on nuclear weapons both to guarantee its own security and to influence its wayward neighbors? Closer Russian integration with the Euro-Atlantic security and political structures is the only ready solution, far-off and fanciful though that may seem today.
By expanding the role of nuclear weapons in its security policy, Russia’s new doctrine seems to be bad news for future U.S.-Russian arms control agreements. It is also a cautionary tale of the power of bureaucratic hardliners to influence security policy, regardless of the views of the person at the top. President Dmitry Medvedev, avowedly, would like to see a world without nuclear weapons. But does he have the political clout (or courage) to send the nuclear doctrine back to the bureaucratic drawing board, as Barack Obama reportedly did with the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review? Is the Russian political system the sort to even permit such an overt display of elite disagreement? We’ll have to keep an eye out to see how things develop in the months ahead.
Cole Harvey is a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow at the Arms Control Association.
Nukes on a Blog, New START, Russia, Nuclear Posture Review, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)
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