Russian security strategy reflects siege mentality
A central document for security planning sees threats everywhere even though it says Russia's adversaries are weakening
A new National Security Strategy (NSS) for 2021 articulates a vision of Russia's place in the world and the perceived threats it faces. The document describes a confrontational relationship with Washington and its European allies, and asserts Moscow's right to respond to their "unfriendly actions" however it sees fit. To compensate, it recommends a renewed focus on traditional partners China, India and former Soviet states -- rather than seeking out new ones.
What next
The NSS's pessimistic depiction of relations with the West sets the tone for future planning and strategy documents. It is a summation of views already articulated by senior leaders, without proposing solutions or radical policy change. As a 'vision statement', it is singularly lacking in critical thinking and ambition, and this may reflect the Kremlin's inability to envisage a future that differs from the present.
Subsidiary Impacts
- Economic policy will continue to be built around the National Projects, designed to achieve many of the objectives set out in the NSS.
- Efforts to arrest demographic decline, a crucial element of the NSS, will be set back by additional mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The creation of working groups on climate change indicates an awareness of the need for more coherent planning.
Analysis
The updated NSS which President Vladimir Putin signed on July 2 replaces the document adopted in December 2015, which in turn superseded the 2010 version. The updated document was signed one year later than originally planned.
Purpose
The NSS is one of the most important Russian strategic planning documents. The objectives contained within it are used to shape other official planning and strategy documents.
Because it serves as a master document, the NSS is not a statement of how goals will be achieved. Instead, it sets out a vision of the state of modern Russia and its place in the world, what the leadership believes are Russia's strengths and weaknesses, and what the strategy should seek to achieve.
Security is conceived in broad terms not restricted to military matters. The NSS makes reference to threats to economic, information, energy, socioeconomic and cultural security. Hence, large swathes of public policy are 'securitised', a tendency that has intensified since 2014.
Key objectives
As with previous iterations of the NSS, the key words are sovereignty and independence. Nearly all stated objectives are means towards positioning Russia to conduct a sovereign, independent foreign and domestic policy.
Sovereignty is again defined broadly, encompassing cultural as well as military, economic and political dimensions.
View of the world
The revised strategy reflects the Russian leadership's view that international threats have grown since 2015. It sees the world undergoing a transformation in which a polycentric global order is emerging, the Western liberal model is in crisis and in its place a "new architecture, rules and principles" are emerging.
As the United States resists its decline and Western countries seek to "preserve hegemony", instability is rising and there is an increased threat of conflict.
The West is weakening but Russia is more embattled -- NSS view
Economic conflict is a facet of this process. A struggle for access to resources and markets is intensifying, and foreign states are exerting political and economic pressure on Russia to gain advantage, the NSS says.
Looking inwards
The NSS assesses Russia's strengths and weaknesses.
A top priority is "safeguarding" the Russian people, who the NSS says face existential risks of external attack and internal collapse. This is a clear departure from the 2015 iteration, which did not present the threat to Russian nationhood in anything like those terms.
Framing cultural identity
Another new objective is "protecting traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory". This is about maintaining values, identity and heritage that are not compromised by Western ways -- all these concepts are imagined and defined by the Russian leaderships.
Information security, another new addition in the 2020 version, is seen as key to preserving Russian identity at home and preventing it from being discredited abroad. The document claims that foreign powers use information to interfere in and undermine other states.
Arming up
The military modernisation programme begun in 2011 is viewed as largely successful.
The NSS says the focus should now be on making the defence industry technologically independent and on "maintaining leadership" in developing innovative new weapons systems (see RUSSIA: Expanding hypersonic arsenal raises risk - May 21, 2021) and (see RUSSIA: Defence spending constrained by fiscal caution - March 22, 2021).
Economic security
Economic matters play a much larger role in this NSS than in the last one.
Russia's principal economic strengths include its military production, nuclear technology, natural resource base and geographic position. The document states that Russia has improved its capacity to withstand external sanctions, especially in the spheres of energy and food security (see RUSSIA: Central bank will anticipate sanction risks - May 18, 2021).
The list of economic objectives also reveals where the leadership sees substantial deficiencies. They include:
- the low rate of investment;
- over-dependence on imported critical technologies;
- dependence on international financial infrastructure, including use of the US dollar;
- limited development of small and medium-sized businesses and low economic competition; and
- excessive crime and corruption.
The NSS echoes Putin's 2018 blueprint for the National Projects by defining economic security goals as generating a faster GDP growth rate than the global average, raising living standards and developing science and technology.
Alongside strengthening domestic industrial capacity, economic security implies 'diversification' by expanding relations with (non-Western) economic power-houses, according to the NSS. This dual approach reflects existing economic policy.
Climate matters
The NSS makes the bold claim that climate change and carbon emission restrictions are being used as a "pretext" to restrict Russian energy exports, industrial growth, transport routes and Arctic development. This point is effectively refuted later in the document by the argument that anthropogenic climate change is causing observable damage worldwide.
The contradiction reflects the ambivalence and disagreement that persists among Russian leaders about what do about climate change (see RUSSIA: External factors will drive climate action - August 16, 2021).
Foreign friends
As before, China is assigned a high priority in the NSS, but with a slight shift in emphasis:
- The 2015 document says relations based on "comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation" with China are a "key factor for maintaining global and regional stability"; whereas
- the 2021 version places the relationship with China (defined in the same terms) alongside the "especially privileged strategic partnership" with India, and says both can help create "mechanisms for ensuring regional stability and security" in the Asia-Pacific region.
This subtle upgrading of India's importance may hint at a desire to re-balance the relationship with Beijing by framing it more widely.
After referring to greater multilateral cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the BRICS grouping and the newer RIC (Russia-India-China), the NSS calls for deeper ties with former Soviet neighbours in several formats: the Commonwealth of Independent States and the more current Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organisation, as well as the long-planned Union State with Belarus.
There is nothing radically new in Eurasian engagement
A separate paragraph is devoted to integration within the 'Great Eurasian Partnership', a concept first articulated by Putin in 2015 but still undefined, except as what it is not: a structural expansion of the EEU or SCO, or a competitor for China's Belt and Road Initiative.
The Great Eurasian Partnership is on the agenda for this year's Eastern Economic forum, taking place on September 2-4 in Vladivostok, suggesting some formal plans are under way.
