Russia has a new National Security Strategy, signed by President Putin on the last day of 2015, an uncanny New Year’s message that Russia’s relations with the West have entered an even more volatile phase. The new Russian NSS accuses the United States and its NATO allies of “seeking to preserve their global domination in world affairs” and of pursuing a policy of “containment against Russia through political, economic, military and informational pressure” (Article 12). It identifies NATO as a threat whose “growing power capabilities (and…) global functions are a clear violation of international law, shown by the growing military activities of its member-states,” and warns of the alliance’s “continued expansion” (Moscow’s standard term for NATO enlargement), “bringing its military infrastructure up to the Russian border, which constitutes a threat to national security” (Article 15). It declares the Euro-Atlantic “regional system” built around NATO and the European Union to be a failure (Article 16) and accuses the West of actively opposing the “integrative processes” in Eurasia, and “creating hotbeds of tension,” including the conflict in Ukraine, which it blames on Western interference (Article 17). The document deems “unacceptable” what it describes as NATO’s efforts to “increase military activity and to bring its military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders”—a veiled reference to the post-Wales summit reassurance measures along NATO’s northeastern flank—and likewise deems “unacceptable” any efforts to build a NATO missile defense system and to attempt to give the “bloc global functions” (Article 106).
At one level, the document largely augments Russia’s 2014 military doctrine and constitutes a further evolution of Russian thinking on national security in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the continued crises in the Middle East. But it also offers an important glimpse into how Putin thinks about Russia’s power and place in the world. Beyond its stern declarations and ominous warnings, the document is an unambiguous expression of Russia’s determination to define itself in opposition to the West. It clearly singles out the United States and NATO as threats to Russia’s security, in language increasingly reminiscent of a bygone era. Yet it is more than nostalgia for an era of imperial greatness, for Putin’s strategy has two concrete and immediate audiences, at home and abroad.
The first is the Russian public, for whom the latest statement reiterates a number of themes from Putin’s speeches and media statements this past year, including his 2015 end-of-the-year mega-press conference. Putin is readying his people for more tough times to come, squarely assigning blame for the country’s deepening malaise and incipient confrontation with the West to scheming forces outside Russia. At the most basic level, the new document appeals to a sense of Russian national pride and patriotic grievance, as it implies to the public that it is Putin who has lifted Russia from its Yeltsin-era “time of troubles.” The extent to which Russian policy today is identified with the will of a single man owes much to the myth of Putin as a strong leader in the long tradition of top-down modernizers who have historically shaped the power of the Russian state.
The second audience for Putin’s new strategy are the Europeans, whose EU project has been stumbling, amidst a deepening sense of self-doubt and confusion as to where the boundaries between the national and the supra-national ought to lie. As the EU continues to stumble, unable to cope with the flow of refugees and migrants into Europe and the deepening divisions between elites and the public (the Russian NSS singles out migration flows into Europe as further proof that the transatlantic security regime is broken), Putin’s vision of the world may find a receptive audience, or at the very least stoke enough anxiety among the already weary and fearful post-Paris publics to transform the difficult task of NATO’s strategic adaptation into a mission impossible. Russia’s new strategy is a message to the Europeans to think twice about moving from reassurance to reinforcement along the northeastern flank of NATO, and instead to seek an accommodation with Russia, beginning with an acceptance of Moscow’s “legitimate national interests.”
Though replete with references to international norms and standards, Russia’s new national security strategy is a projection of how Putin construes the Russian state—as a victim of foreign duplicity and aggression. In “Putin’s world” there is ample space for the lofty narrative of a resurgent Russia, alongside language better suited to a Pravda editorial from the early 1980s, as when the document flatly states that the U.S. has been expanding a network of military biological laboratories in countries bordering Russia (Article 19). Though much of what the new Russian strategy says about NATO’s power and its alleged hostile intentions belies the reality of the capabilities-strapped alliance, it is nonetheless important that we take what it says seriously. Given Russia’s continued military modernization, its annexation of Crimea, its war in Ukraine, and its military moves in Syria, NATO would be ill advised to dismiss Putin’s world as merely a shadowboxing ring.