On January 20, 2007, the Russian Academy of Military Sciences held a special conference to discuss a revision to Russia’s military doctrine. In the summer of 2005, President Vladimir Putin had declared the need to replace the 2000 Military Doctrine, which gave a major role to the nuclear component of Russia’s military, but neither the Ministry of Defense nor the General Staff had taken steps toward preparing a new version of the document until the late January 2007 conference. [1] The 2000 Military Doctrine allowed limited use of nuclear weapons for deterrence and “de-escalation” of conventional attacks on Russia. Reliance on nuclear weapons was expected to continue until Russia completed the modernization of its conventional forces. [2] The meeting at the Academy of Military Sciences launched the review process and outlined broad parameters for a new military doctrine. The Academy, which was created in the mid-1990s, is primarily staffed by retired or semi-retired high-level military figures who act in advisory roles.

The roles and missions of nuclear weapons featured prominently in deliberations at the January conference, and debates at the conference suggested that nuclear weapons will retain their current role. Presenters uniformly pointed to significant threats to Russia’s interests and security, including threats from the United States, that warranted continued reliance on nuclear deterrence. In his opening remarks, for example, Chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluevski said that “the end of the ideological and military confrontation of two political systems has not led to demilitarization of world politics, as some expected.” [3] He described the international situation as “dynamic, unstable, tense, and subject to periodic crises.” He noted that powerful threats emanate both from developed states and their alliances, as well as from developing countries, some of which have large well-armed militaries. His equating of the threat from unnamed developing countries with that from the United States and its allies represents a shift in the worldview of the Russian military, as the 2000 doctrine viewed nuclear weapons primarily in the context of the threatened or actual use of force by the United States and its allies against Russia.

The United States and NATO, however, continued to be an important focus of attention in the description of security concerns at the conference. “Cooperation with the West,” Baluevski said, “has not resulted in the reduction of military threats.” The main threat to Russia, he stressed, comes from the “desire of the United States for global dominance and attempts to establish a presence in the regions where Russia has been traditionally present.” The next most important threats, Baluevski declared, are NATO’s eastward enlargement and local conflicts along the perimeter of Russia’s borders. Baluevski also emphasized the growth of international terrorism, which “has become a long-term element of contemporary political life, a relatively permanent phenomenon in societal development.” [4]

The keynote speaker, General (ret.) Mahmoud Gareev, offered a somewhat different perspective on future threats. He predicted that “in the next 10-15 years, ecological and the energy factors will become the main cause of political and military conflicts.” Apparently referring to the U.S. presence in Iraq, he stated that some states will seek to control energy resources, while others will have little choice except to perish or resist. [5] In Gareev’s assessment, competition for energy sources will pit Russia first and foremost against the United States and other developed countries, but will also spur nuclear proliferation, as other energy-rich countries seek nuclear weapons to defend their resources from the United States. This could lead to a “war of everyone against everyone.”

Given these conditions, Gareev asserted that nuclear weapons will remain the “central, most reliable means for the strategic deterrence of external aggression.” He predicted that although future wars will primarily be conventional, the threat of nuclear use will always be present. Thus, Russia needs to rely on its nuclear arsenal given the unfavorable balance of conventional forces in all theaters. The role of nuclear weapons will be all the more important, Gareev asserted, because the nuclear armaments of almost all other nuclear weapons states are aimed at Russia; therefore, he concluded, Russia must maintain a credible and robust strategic nuclear deterrent. He noted, however, that due to the deterioration of Russia’s space-based observation capabilities, ground-based early warning systems, and offensive weapons, Russia’s “ability to launch a strike on warning, much less a second strike is becoming problematic.” [6]

Continuing the theme that Russia needs to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent, the first vice-president of the Academy of Military Sciences, General Varfolomei Korobushin, declared that nuclear weapons remain “the most radical and the cheapest tool for security.” [7] He charged that the United States is seeking to “qualitatively upgrade” its nuclear capabilities and to develop earth-penetrating nuclear weapons that will be designed to minimize fall-out. [Editor's Note: To date, the U.S. Congress has refused to authorize the development of new nuclear weapons with these capabilities.] He also said that the missile defense program pursued by the United States is intended to undermine the effectiveness of Russia’s nuclear deterrence, but noted that the actual capabilities of U.S. missile defenses will remain “negligible” until 2015-2020.

Conference speakers made it clear that Russia continues to rely on the threat of limited nuclear use for the purpose of de-escalating large-scale conventional conflicts. Thus, Chief of the Main Operations Department of the General Staff, Aleksandr Rukshin, emphasized that “the purpose of strategic deterrence is prevention of aggression and the threat of force against Russia in peacetime and, during war, de-escalation and termination of hostilities on acceptable conditions….” [8] Specifically, in a regional war, the armed forces should be prepared to “compel the aggressor to terminate hostilities on the conditions that meet the interests of the Russian Federation and its allies.” (According to the 2000 Military Doctrine, nuclear weapons can be used in “regional conflicts” – an intermediate class of conflicts between local and global wars.) In particular, strategic forces must be able to inflict damage that would offset the aggressor’s goals. This statement directly refers to the notion of “predetermined damage” (zadannyi ushcherb), introduced in the 2000 Military Doctrine, which refers to damage that is commensurate to the enemy’s stakes in a conflict. For limited conflicts (such as a regional war), such damage could be less than the more traditional notion of “unacceptable damage” because the goals of the enemy, while still significant, are expected to be limited. The flexibility provided by the concept of “predetermined damage” effectively permits Russian military planners to depart from the rigidity of “unacceptable damage” or “mutual assured destruction.”

Even as conference participants insisted that Russia must continue to rely on nuclear weapons, some called for further nuclear arms reductions. For example, Academy Vice President Korobushin called for an agreement with the United States on the reduction of strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,500 deployed warheads. The 2002 Moscow Treaty requires the two parties to reduce the number of their deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. Korobushin suggested that after the Russian and U.S. arsenals drop to 1,500 warheads, three other nuclear weapons states – Great Britain, France, and China – should join the disarmament process. [9]

The deliberations at the Academy of Military Sciences demonstrated that the “nuclear component” of Russia’s new military doctrine will likely remain unchanged. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the conference is a reliable predictor: the development of the new doctrine will now move to the General Staff and will subsequently be reviewed by other agencies and deliberated in the Russian Security Council before President Putin makes the final determination as to the document’s contents. Although significant changes could be introduced at any of these stages, the conference statements provide a useful guide to the current thinking of the military establishment.

Nikolai Sokov – Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies