{"id":24378,"date":"2016-01-29T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=24378"},"modified":"2016-01-29T14:06:14","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T03:06:14","slug":"securing-putinism-russias-national-security-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/securing-putinism-russias-national-security-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Securing Putinism: Russia\u2019s National Security Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3022244227_4784e8b10c_z\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Be vigilant, for the enemy never sleeps’\u00a0<\/em>– Soviet propaganda slogan<\/p>\n

On the last day of 2015, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving a revised National Security Strategy<\/a>. As the document contains the latest definitions of Russia\u2019s national interests as perceived by Putin and his lieutenants, and sets out measures by which they say they\u2019ll be protected and advanced, it behoves countries affected to try to understand what the Strategy says, and doesn\u2019t say, and what its goals are.<\/p>\n

Comparing the new text with its predecessor from 2009<\/a> illuminates a marked shift.<\/em> Depicting \u2018the US and its allies\u2019 as \u2018striving for world hegemony\u2019 and NATO as an \u2018inherently aggressive alliance\u2019 isn\u2019t new. But accusing the US of constructing \u2018a network of biological-warfare laboratories in territories contiguous with Russia\u2019 is. It exemplifies bellicose language that makes the text the most starkly anti-American and anti-NATO Russian document since the late Soviet period.<\/p>\n

The paper identifies eight primary threats to Russia\u2019s security. Of those, the most pressing are: the US and NATO; foreign espionage activity (ranked first in a separate list of \u2018threats to state and public security\u2019); terrorists and other extremists; and the activities in Russia of foreign and international NGOs. Corruption is ranked seventh, just ahead of emergencies, natural disasters, and climate change.<\/p>\n

Students of Russian history will note a recrudescence of Soviet-era terminology: \u2018sharpening contradictions\u2019 and \u2018economic growth rates surpassing those of the West\u2019. Other formulations, such as \u2018Russia\u2019s spiritual potential\u2019 and \u2018the rebirth of traditional Russian spiritual-moral values\u2019, are from the ideological armoury of Tsar Nicholas I (\u2018the Gendarme of Europe\u2019), with whom Putin is said to enjoy being compared. This pseudo-religiosity also owes much to Putin\u2019s cooptation of the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

The Strategy exemplifies what James Sherr has called<\/a> an \u2018obsession with the connection between events abroad and events at home\u2019. <\/em>Asked to formulate its fundamental idea Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of Russia\u2019s National Security Council, said \u2018the essence is strengthening the unity of Russian society and ensuring social stability\u2026<\/a>\u2019 In other words, with \u2018the US and its allies\u2019 seeking to \u2018contain\u2019 and subvert Russia by \u2018eroding its traditional values\u2019, Russians must unite behind their president.<\/p>\n

Patrushev is the KGB\/FSB general responsible, under Putin, for the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko. In June 2015 he claimed that \u2018the US would like Russia not to exist\u2026because we have a lot of resources which the Americans think we don\u2019t deserve or have rights to…Madeleine Albright claimed that neither the Far East nor Siberia belonged to Russia.\u2019 Albright, former US Secretary of State, said no such thing, but in 2007 a Russian intelligence officer claimed that FSB psychologists<\/a> had read her mind. Patrushev now presents this feat of psychic espionage as a fact.<\/p>\n

The accusation about US biological warfare is made without supporting evidence. But the claim serves an instrumental function of telling the military establishment, the officer corps, rank-and-file servicemen and the general Russian public, that the US represents a kind of radical evil that\u2019s preparing a genocidal plague to exterminate the Russian people. In this sense, the Strategy is an exercise in mobilisation and information warfare.<\/p>\n

The Strategy\u2019s measures to counter this putative assault on Russia include: enhancing \u2018informational security at home and abroad\u2019 i.e. control of the Russian internet and cyber warfare; the \u2018consolidation of traditional Russian spiritual-moral values through patriotic education\u2019; and \u2018the preservation and development of an all-Russian identity\u2019.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know why the document has been released now. The Kremlin\u2019s explanation is that a law adopted in 2014 requires the President to review the country\u2019s national security strategy every six years. In other words, revising the strategy was just a bureaucratic exercise. But the document\u2019s content makes clear that it is, in fact, an exercise in crisis management and mobilisation.<\/p>\n

Context matters. Russia is in a recession. GDP is down by 4% and household consumption by 9%. Fixed investment, falling since 2011, fell 8% in 2015. In 2015 the CPI climbed 12% year-on-year, and the average wage fell by about 8%. Those two figures in particular should worry the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

Sanctions have played a role but the key cause is the falling price of oil. If indirect contributions are included energy exports contribute 20 or even 25% of GDP. Russia is pumping oil at a record post-Soviet level of about 10.7 million barrels per day, to keep production high in order to maintain market share.<\/p>\n

Respected Russian commentators, such as Dmitry Trenin and Konstantin Remchukov, have written of an erosion of the Putinist consensus and Putinist stability. They warn that <\/a>unless the Russian economy is \u2018modernised\u2019\u2014code for \u2018reformed\u2019\u2014a new outbreak of unrest is inevitable. From the Kremlin\u2019s viewpoint, a National Security Strategy depicting threats to the Fatherland in apocalyptic terms, diverting attention from the economy and \u2018strengthening the unity of Russian society and ensuring social stability\u2019 is sound policy.<\/p>\n

The final part of the revised Strategy expresses Russia\u2019s willingness to \u2018cooperate with other countries on the basis of respect for Russia\u2019s interests and international law\u2019, that is, as they\u2019re defined and interpreted by Russia. Therein lies a big difficulty: \u2018the US and its allies\u2019 and Russia have fundamental differences about what such a basis for cooperation would mean in practice.<\/p>\n

Leaving to one side Russia\u2019s role in the Middle East, \u2018respect for Russia\u2019s interests\u2019 presumably means, at the very least, recognition of Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea; forgetting about MH17; acquiescing in the status of east Ukraine as a de facto<\/em> Russian protectorate; recognising Russia\u2019s right to limit the sovereignty of other former Soviet republics; and lifting economic sanctions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to see how the norms of Putin\u2019s Russia and those of the liberal democracies can be made compatible. As Angela Merkel put it: Putin is ‘living in another world<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Be vigilant, for the enemy never sleeps’\u00a0– Soviet propaganda slogan On the last day of 2015, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving a revised National Security Strategy. 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