Nipp

Russian Strategy: Expansion, Crisis and Conflict is based on readily-available and open sources of information, particularly including numerous Russian publications. Russian foreign military actions, defense initiatives, markedly expanded conventional and nuclear arms programs, internal repression, and egregious arms control non-compliance all appear to be elements of an increasingly assertive underlying Russian grand strategy. Moscow’s agenda now includes a deeply-troubling mix of ingredients: increasing hostility towards the West, including expressed military threats via statements and nuclear exercises; expanding programs to produce advanced weapons and delivery vehicles, conventional and nuclear; revisions in military doctrine that place greater emphasis on the coercive use of nuclear threats, including first use; the first annexation of European territory by military force since World War II; blatant arms control noncompliance; and increasing domestic repression and authoritarianism. A reappraisal of Russian grand strategy and its elements is long overdue following two decades of confident Western belief in benign relations with Russia and corresponding confident claims about the dwindling value of nuclear deterrence and “hard” power, and naïve expectations of a perpetual “peace dividend.” This monograph is intended to provide an initial step in that reappraisal.