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Russian Security Thinking
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- 3 Russian Attitude towards Arms Control and Disarmament under President Yeltsin (1991 – 1999)
- 3. 1 Domestic Influences
- 3. 1. 2 Economic Situation
2. 5 Russian Security ThinkingThe leading role of political objectives was present in every aspect of Soviet military thinking. While this might seem to be a perfectly logical extension of traditional civil-military relations, in the former USSR it was much more than that. In many other parts of the world, military doctrine does not attempt to address the uppermost direction of the national strategy paradigm: world view, national interests and threats, and linking of ends, ways, and means. Usually, a military doctrine devotes itself to orienting military capabilities with national interests in support of political objectives. Russian military doctrine derives in part from its Soviet past; therefore it represents more than a “road-map of how to wage a war” (cp. Odom 1998: 119). Russian military doctrine also specifies threats to the national interests. The US, and NATO traditionally stay on the top of this list. The military influence in the political sphere is a central and enduring issue in Russian security thinking (Brannon 2009: 15, 18). In Russian thinking on national security policy the state has military, diplomatic, legal (both national and international), information, economic and other means at its disposal to achieve its goals. These means are reflected in the National Security Concept (NSC) – Russian political or grand strategy. Basically, from NSC concepts and doctrines are derived to guarantee security in specific areas, for example, in international, military, economic, social, environmental, or information areas. In Russian security setting, the three most important documents are the National Security Concept (NSC), Foreign Policy Concept (FPC), and Military Doctrine (MD) (Haas 2010: 5). The security policy, as laid down in NSC, provides the broadest embracing framework for the other policies. NSC is pointed at safeguarding national interests against internal and external threats. The foreign policy, presented in FPC, deals with maintaining relations with international actors, such as states, or other governmental and non-governmental international bodies. The Military Doctrine, record of military policy, concerns views and measures on wars, conflicts, crises and their prevention, deterrence and suppression of aggression, building and preparation of armed forces, population and economy in securing vital interests of state (Haas 2010: 5).
Military Doctrine Foreign Policy Concept Other Concepts and Doctrines Source: Haas 2003: 2 The national security strategy is, in fact, a process of identifying threats to state security and devising plans to deal with these threats. The process launches with identification of national interests before devising other plans. In the security area, national interests are those that define the parameters of survival: state sovereignty, individual security, and defensibility of borders. Threats come from internal or external events, and are narrowly intertwined with interests that are threatened. Furthermore, the national security comprehends ends (goals and objectives), means (instruments), and ways (methods) in an effort to maximize resources and optimize results. The strategic environment, or context, determines what is available, and at what cost. It addresses risks, opportunities, and expected consequences – everything happens in a state of constant change. National security policy derives from this strategic security framework, and is usually focused on the last three aspects: ends, ways, and means (Brannon 2009: 23). Table 4: National security strategy framework
Source: Brannon 2009: 22 – 25 Russia's world view sees the rest of the world in threatening way. There are various reasons, most deriving from historical experience. In 1977, Jack Snyder introduced culture into modern security studies by a theory of strategic culture to interpret Soviet nuclear doctrine. He suggested that elites articulate a strategic culture related to security-military affairs that is, actually, a wider manifestation of public opinion, socialized into a unique mode of strategic thinking. Thus, he concluded that the Soviet military exhibited a preference for the pre-emptive, offensive use of force, and that the roots of this conduct lie in a Russian history of insecurity and authoritarian control. Like Snyder, Colin Gray deems strategic culture as a semi-permanent influence on security policy (Lantis – Howlett 2010: 88 – 89). Traditionally, writers on Russia have highlighted the importance of these factors in Russian strategic culture: geography, history, and ideology. Therefore, the political stabilization within Russia's vast land, which stresses across much of Eurasia, concerns about future military encirclement and potential attack on its territory, stemming from the past experience, are deemed instrumental in the development of a unique strategic culture in Russia. Russian strategic culture is, according to Fritz Ermath, considered as one of the most militarized of any state, but the trends of thinking towards demilitarization have been increasing since 1970s. Ermath also talks about new assertiveness within Russian strategic culture in the recent years which is fueled by economic recovery that oil and gas have stimulated. This new assertiveness, he argues, is accompanied by self-perception of a supra-national Russian mission, to contain US influences through multi-polar world structure, to establish a Eurasian geopolitical identity, and to combat perceived threats stemming from West (quoted in Lantis – Howlett 2010: 94). 3 Russian Attitude towards Arms Control and Disarmament under President Yeltsin (1991 – 1999)Russia was at that time turned inwards as it was preoccupied with domestic political chaos stemming from a difficult process of transition. The ultimate goal of the politicians in 1990s was to reach some level of stability in domestic affairs, the affairs on its borders, and to settle the issues of ethnic Russians within former Soviet states. To achieve this point it was necessary to get rid of economic burdens which the huge former Soviet army presented. This partially explains the extraordinary willingness to cut its massive military both in conventional and nuclear sources. Another part of explanation is the role of Yeltsin who leaned on many occasions towards West. However, we need not to forget about outstanding role of military-industrial complex in Russia's affairs when these entities were stressing the external threats. Leading Russian civilian security experts at the time warned that Russia's military was almost totally without guidance from the new political leaders. Political direction, formerly job of the Communist Party hand in hand with the KGB, disappeared. In this vacuum, military tried to formulate its own doctrine and sense of purpose, and those who push Russia towards an anti-western uncompromising, even vengeful stance incrementally seemed to be gaining ground. The military's natural instinct is to preserve as much as possible of familiar system of doing business, if necessary at lower force levels. However, doing so required enemies, with the US, NATO and China on the top of the list, as well as a mission of protecting human rights of ethnic Russians abroad (Walker 1994: 41; Brannon 2009)15 . 3. 1 Domestic Influences3. 1. 1 Political Situation, Civil-Military Relations and the Role of Military-Industrial ComplexBoris Yeltsin, the first president of Russian Federation, the man who was in 1987 expelled from Politburo and lost his post as a head of the Moscow party organization16, made an unprecedented political comeback as a president of Russian Federation and a holder of codes of the biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons (Odom 1998: 209). Yeltsin gained the power in the last days of Soviet Union. He really entered the scene during the turbulent events of summer 1991 when he stood atop a tank in front of the Russian White House and faced down a coup which attempted to get Russia back to the old Soviet orders (Jackson – Karon 2007). In the following days, the Communist Party was banned in Russia by Yeltsin's presidential decree. In Russia, as in preceding Soviet state, domestic factors constrain and help to determine foreign behavior in two ways. First, internal economic, social, and political plans and policies can rival foreign and defense policies as claimants on limited resources, creating the constant dilemma whether to spend resources on guns or butter, as well as whether to allocate energy to domestic or foreign pursuits. Second, foreign policy decisions are often shaped by contests for influence among groups and individuals. Although regular competitive elections became part of Russian institutional environment during the 1990s, within the Kremlin struggles over competing policies and struggles for power remain at place by now. Since the creation of executive presidency in the USSR in 1990, the office of president has been the institutional cornerstone of Moscow's foreign policy decision-making, especially after adoption of a new constitution in 1993: Articles 80 and 86 give the president the power to exercise “leadership of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation”. The formal rights to outline the foreign policy belong to the parliament. Yeltsin however resisted the efforts of legislative body to turn these formal rights into reality. The official powers of president under the new constitution are greater than those of any previous Russian leader. President controls the government; determines the guidelines for domestic and foreign policy; serves as a commander-in-chief; appointing prime minister and military commanders; approves military doctrine; declare martial law; and issue binding decrees and directives17. The ministers of power ministries, and the heads of intelligence and security services are obliged to report directly to president. The president also appoints several advisory bodies composed from experts from inside and outside government. Initially, the Presidential Council was the most notable of these bodies. However, after the military invasion of Chechnya in December 1994 it virtually ceased to exist since its members protested against the action. The creation of Security Council were to be an act of bringing the top foreign and national security officials together to deliberate and prepare decisions for the president to implement by decree. The Security Council18 has remained an important Russia's decision-making body by now (Donaldson – Nogee 2009: 109, 123 – 129). On July 3, 1996 Boris Yeltsin was reelected president. During his Kremlin's days he was ruling the country together with his “Family” a close circle of relatives, friends, and acquaintances he chose19. At the end of 1999, Yeltsin signed his last presidential decree announcing that he was stepping down from his post as president. Boris Yeltsin died on April 23, 2007 of a heart attack (Kremlin Archive 2012). Interstate interaction affords the opportunity for other states to help empower or dis-empower the discourses of identity that are being produced at home. Any reflection of sources of state's identity is indivisible from understanding state's foreign policy. There were three main discourses on Russian political identity in the 1990s in the Russian Federation: liberal, conservative and centrist. Each was concerned with Russia with respect to the internal, external and historical Others. Liberals defined Russia's future, at first, with the American, and then with European presence. Simultaneously, they identified themselves strongly against Soviet past. In liberal view, Russia was understood as a part of universal civilization of modern liberal market democracy. Contrary to the liberal viewpoint, conservatives identified Russia's future with its Soviet past cut of its Stalinist brutality, and an ethno-national Russian past of a great power with strong centralized rule. The conservatives considered liberals as the fifth column of the US and the West. Russia was, in fact, understood as a unique, sometimes Eurasian, project to be distinguished from West conception of freedom and economics. The centrists identified Russia with European Social Democracy, but against what was branded as American “wild west capitalism”. Centrist discourse also recognized an idealized Soviet past. Centrists explicitly rejected an ethno-national conception of Russia, instead calling for a civic national Rossian identity designed to capture the multinational character of the Russian Federation. While Russia was unique, it was situated within universal civilization of world modern Social Democracy (Hopf 2006: 700–702, 705). In early nineties, Russian political scene was sharply polarized between liberal and conservative discourse, with liberals implementing their ambitious economic and political plans to make Russia fit into a pattern of western liberal market democracy. The collapse of the Russian economy, the failure of the US to provide any significant aid, the rapid rise in crime, corruption and violence associated with fast privatization and democratization, and the newly emerged foreign policy issue of around 25 million Russians living outside the Russia's borders, discredited a lot of efforts of liberal adherents. While conservative discourse did not take its place, a centrist discourse emerged. Over the nineties, the centrist viewpoint became, at first, the main competitor with the conservative conception, and by the end of the decade, the predominant Russian political identity. Each of these three discourses has important implications for Russian interests and foreign policy. Liberals wished for a tighter relation with the US and the West. In contrast to liberals, conservatives called for Russia's alliance with anybody in the world who would balance with them against the US and the West. Centralist discourse desired Russia to be one among the several great powers in multilateral management of world affairs. Russia's liberal identity was officially and institutionally privileged in 1992. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) bonded to the Yeltsin administration was initially the only coherent foreign policy institution in Russia. Andrei Kozyrev, the head of the MFA, urged for purging it of its former Soviet holdovers. But the MFA's monopoly did not go unchallenged. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) and presidential Security Council (SC) were created in spring 1992. The defense and international relations committees in parliament, as well as “the power ministries”, the various intelligence and security branches of the federal government, and most notably the elements of armed forces20 became soon sites of conservative and centrist attacks on the liberal MFA (Hopf 2006: 700 – 705). In late 1992, there were four wars in the former Soviet Union and an impending potential for many more. The danger was less a newly aggressive, outward-thrusting regime than chaos and anarchy as rival warlords were battling for local control. Some Russian troops were still remaining outside Russia's own borders, sometimes against the wishes of the host countries in violation of various international commitments, and in some cases in states where ethnic Russians faced perceived or real discrimination. Consequently, there was a growing view in some Russian civilian as well as military circles that protecting the human rights of ethnic Russians whom the breakup of the Soviet empire had left stranded in other states could give the Russian Army a new mission. Russian arms control negotiators were very well aware of the fact that classic arms-control measures could do little or nothing about turmoil on their southern borders or about the fate of ethnic Russians in former Soviet republics. They were also very reluctant to confront any proposals for further force cuts that might have led to disputes between the foreign and defense ministries in Moscow – between (to oversimplify) Russia's Western-oriented reformers and more xenophobic 'patriotic nationalists' (Walker 1994: 1 – 2, 5). By early 1993, the MFA became a major policy-making instrument of increasingly centrist Yeltsin government. The liberal oriented discourse was to be found in national daily press and research institutions reestablished under Gorbachev. In fall 1993, Yeltsin crushed a primary institutional embodiment of conservative identity, the parliament, replacing it in December with a no less conservative collection of legislators in Duma but constitutionally subordinated to the centrist parliament. Furthermore, the national television networks came, with few exceptions, incrementally under the control of centrists, while the regional broadcasting and press remained predominantly in hands of local authorities reflecting local political power relations. The oligarchs who hold the economic powers supported the part of centrist-liberal discourse that identified the recovery of Russian great power status with economic growth and development (Hopf 2006: 703). We can recognize the three main discourses of Russian identity in relations (1) with Belarus; (2) with the near abroad; (3) with NATO; and (4) with NATO war against Yugoslavia in April 1999. Conservatives wished the restoration of the former Soviet Union through the Commonwealth of Independence States (CIS). This included strong defense of ethnic Russians abroad and the use of coercion to return these republics, with the exception of Baltic States, under the rule of Moscow. Both the NATO extension and the Yugoslavian intervention on behalf of Kosovo's Albanian majority were interpreted as a direct threat to Russian security, requiring Russian military engagement. Conservatives had a sense of Slavic brotherhood with Byelorussians and Serbians, generating an ethno-national interest in these states absent in other two discourses. Conversely, liberal site was strongly against any restoration of Soviet empire expressed by possible reunification with Belarus, or centralized CIS under the Moscow's dictate. In liberal viewpoint, foreign policy interests should be the product of market economic calculus, not ethno-political fraternity, or an atavistic Cold War competitor with the US. Liberals thus neither opposed the NATO expansion nor saw the security implications for Russia in war against Yugoslavia (Hopf 2006: 703–704; Curtis 1996: 434). After 1992, the Russian foreign policy could be classified as centrist after all. Annexation of Belarus was neither accelerated nor spurned, and the creation of CIS was neither viewed as critical nor trivial. Also NATO expansion was neither welcomed nor opposed by arming or making alliances against it. In February 1994, Yeltsin outlined Russia's foreign policy in his first state of the federation address to the Russian parliament. Yeltsin's address to the more nationalistic and rightest legislative body that had just been elected spoke for a more assertive Russian foreign policy. However, Yeltsin showed the immature and even contradictory character of Russian foreign policy by making several references to conciliatory, Western-oriented policies (Curtis 1996: 436). In practice, Russia was satisfied by taking its interests into account. NATO's war in Yugoslavia was widely condemned, but once begun, Russian efforts aimed at getting Slobodan Milosević to sue for peace as soon as possible, not at arming him, or encouraging him to resist. The mainstream approach through the nineties wished for maintaining or restoring of the great power status through economic development at home, and the empowerment of multilateral international institutions abroad. In face of domestic conservative calls for use of military to rescue Russian diaspora from discriminatory citizenship law in Baltic states, the government worked thoroughly through multilateral organizations as the Council of Europe and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, while Russian multinationals, such as Yukos, Lukoil and Gazprom, cemented a Russian presence in the former Soviet area through direct investments and debt-for-equity swaps to amortize local energy arrears. The Russian Federation in nineties understood itself as a great power who can either join European Social Democratic civilization as a counterweight to US liberal market dominance, or bandwagon with that hegemony to pursue the more narrow tactical interests in defense of its own crumbling periphery (Hopf 2006: 703–705). There was a popular notion gradually gaining ground in Russia that massive exports of arms for hard currency would be necessary for some 10 – 15 years in order to finance the conversion of defense industries to civilian use (which describes, in arms-control theory, arms exports as an arms-control tool). This arms export strategy was actually an attempt to save defense industry jobs by piling ever more weapons into, for instance, the volatile Middle East. The resulting reliance on defense industries undermined the shift to the civilian economies. Thus, this dependency further enhanced the clout of military-industrial complexes that inevitably continued to look for new “enemies” to justify their existence (Walker 1994: 50). Since Gorbachev's “new thinking” in 1985 until the middle of 1990s, the military-industrial complex had survived as a body relatively independent on any higher power, and the Yeltsin Administration could exercise its influence only in a very limited way (Umbach 2005: 104). The Russian Conventional Armaments Agency (RCAA) was established in order to execute the defense and civil orders. The agency was charged with a supervision of the production of armor, artillery systems, missile systems, fire arms and munitions, and production optics for both the defense and national economy. The RCAA incorporated 136 enterprises, research institutes and design bureaus of the military-industrial complex (Global Security 2012)21. 3. 1. 2 Economic SituationMany arms-control experts believe that the reduction of military forces in Europe in the 90s was caused by economic factors rather than arms-control agreements. Therefore, they recommend focusing less on negotiating further cuts than on measures that would make it more difficult to rebuild the forces in the future when economic conditions would improve (Walker 1994: 31). The end of the 90s unveiled only a skeleton of formerly formidable army; Russia's defense expenditures had fallen by more than 60 % - from $ 130 billion to about $ 47 billion by the middle of the decade (Brannon 2009: 26). At the same time the imports of heavy weaponry to the Russian Federation were not impressive at all (UNODA 2012). Table 5: Military expenditures of Russian Federation in constant US $ m. (1992 – 1999) Source: The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database22 (SIPRI 2012)  By the end of the nineties, Russian arms exports revived with Russia finishing second to the US in arms sales agreements with developing countries during the last half of decade. Russia's primary customers are China, India, and Iran, and Russians have also undertaken major technology transfer agreements as part of its arms sales agreements (Larsen 2002: 168)23. The military-industrial sector increased output in the first 8 months of 1999 by 42 percent. While arms exports were soaring, purchases of armaments and equipment by the Russian army continued declining. The government owed the sector more than 5 billion rubles. Another 1.3 million are owed by the Defense Ministry and other government clients that have not claimed output ordered by them (FAS 2000). The decline in exports in 1994 can be explained by the concentration of Russia's military and its resources on the first war in Chechnya beginning in December 1994. Table 6: Exports from Russian Federation from 1992 to 1999 S  ource: The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (SIPRI 2012) Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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