Conventional Deterrence of Russia

Most of my writing on conventional deterrence topics since 2011 has focused on China. I’m hardly alone in that regard within the broader Western security studies community. Until recently, the most plausible (albeit presently low likelihood) scenarios for a great power war involved hypothetical American interventions to defend Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines from major Chinese aggression, or perhaps a cascading crisis on the Korean peninsula that brought the U.S. and China into direct conflict. Each of these potential fault lines represents differing sets of political objectives that might be held by and strategic circumstances that might confront the inherent parties. All the same, the underlying condition that makes each of these scenarios conceivable is the lack of a foundational political consensus between China and its neighbors regarding regional security principles.

The exact same condition has long existed between Russia and Europe. Although the Helsinki Final Act and subsequent OSCE Vienna Document series of political commitments were intended to establish a foundational European security consensus, Russia and the Euro-Atlantic bloc have never quite interpreted those commitments in the same ways. The declining security situation between the two sides over the past decade stems from that fundamental values-based disconnect.

For much of the post-Cold War era, Western policy and opinion elites (excepting those in Eastern Europe) largely glossed over the incremental decay of the Helsinki system. Hope reigned in the West that increased economic interdependence would incentivize Russian liberalization. When it became obvious that the desired liberalization would not come to pass under the Putin regime, continued economic interdependence was justified on the grounds that it would serve as an inducement for Russian restraint. Neither the ‘gas wars’ against Ukraine after the 2005 ‘Orange Revolution’ or other subsequent Russian coercive economic efforts against its neighbors, nor the 2007 Russian ‘suspension’ of its adherence to the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, nor the 2007 cyberattacks against Estonian institutions, nor the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, nor the Russian regime’s increasingly bellicose rhetoric and military posturing after 2009 resulted in any serious Western reevaluations of the security situation.

The Russian invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine last year has changed the equation somewhat. Unlike the case with ‘distant’ Georgia, the Putin regime forcibly revised the borders of a sovereign state on the EU’s and NATO’s geographic doorstep. This, combined with the Putin regime’s bald-faced propaganda offensives against the West, the surge in Russian military demonstrations along Europe’s eastern borders and northern/western maritime periphery, the realization of the growing ideological and financial relationships between Europe’s political fringe and the Putin regime, and the Putin regime’s intimations that other neighboring countries—especially those containing ethnic Russian minorities—should be brought back within Russia’s ‘historical’ sphere of influence notwithstanding their EU/NATO membership are making it impossible to continue ignoring Russian revanchism.

It is therefore refreshing to see the Western security studies community’s increased exploration over the past year of potential strategies for countering Russian aggression. All the same, even though these strategies all lean on conventional deterrence to some degree, the level of analysis regarding how that deterrent should be designed and potentially employed is nowhere nearly as detailed as the work done during the same period of time addressing conventional deterrence of China or even Iran. I’ve seen an alarming number of articles and commentaries that assert NATO’s combined strength or U.S. military superiority renders any Russian aggression against the alliance futile. This ignores the many conceivable campaigns that Russia might opt to wage in order to seize small yet strategically useful portions of victims' sovereign territories fait accompli, to politically ‘Finlandize’ Europe’s east, or to irreversibly politically split NATO. The geographically-confined nature of these potential combat zones, their sheer proximity to Russia, and Russia’s unquestioned quantitative military superiority in theater create a litany of conventional deterrence challenges that must not be paved over.

It is useful to illustrate how the Eastern European and East Asian theaters’ dissimilar geostrategic and military circumstances make for considerable differences in conventional deterrence approaches. The basic principle that conventional deterrence credibility requires forward presence is true in both cases. So is the idea that constabulary forces fill critical deterrence roles along the lower-end of the conventional conflict spectrum. Beyond that, whereas the East Asian theater is predominantly maritime, the Eastern European theater would predominantly involve land warfare. Whereas China and America’s treaty allies in East Asia are separated by the sea or otherwise do not share adjacent land borders, lines in the soil separate Russia from NATO’s Baltic members (not to mention Norway). The maritime approaches to NATO’s Baltic and Black Sea members are far narrower than is the case with any U.S. treaty ally in East Asia. Similarly, the land areas available for operational maneuver in the Baltics are miniscule compared to the vastness of the Western Pacific—and also represent those NATO members’ homelands in their entirety. The political aspects are likewise very different: U.S. alliances in East Asia are bilateral and therefore comparatively less complex to manage in a crisis or conflict, whereas NATO operates by political consensus—and U.S. lines of operations (as well as logistics) would wholly depend upon NATO’s Central and Western members’ support. Militarily, while the PLA has not fought a war since 1979, Russian forces have fought in multiple conflicts in their ‘Near Abroad’ over the past two decades—and there is considerable evidence they made great effort to learn from their 2008 invasion of Georgia and their ongoing operations in Ukraine. Last in this by no means comprehensive comparison, the Russian approach to the potential uses of nuclear forces in crises and war is vastly more assertive than the Chinese approach.

I plan to write more comprehensively on conventional deterrence of Russia as my time allows, and I highly encourage the security studies community to do the same. The subject requires lengthy treatments to be sure. In the interim I strongly recommend reading Jacub Grygiel’s and A. Wess Mitchell’s article in the December 2014 American Interest; Forrest Morgan’s prescient 2012 IFRI monograph on the challenges of managing escalation in a NATO-Russian conflict; the January 2015 CSIS European Trilateral Nuclear Consensus Statement resulting from Track II discussions amongst U.S., U.K., and French participants; the summary of the October 2014 SWP-CNA meeting on Baltic Security; an excellent set of articles by Finnish security commentators regarding Russian threats to Scandinavian security, and Elbridge Colby’s discussion of Russian concepts for the use of theater nuclear forces in his January 2015 CNAS monograph Nuclear Weapons in the Third Offset Strategy as primers for the much-needed discussions and debate.

Suffice to say, while the military-strategic challenges involved with deterring Russia may actually be more complex than are the case with China, they are not insurmountable. Rather, as was the case throughout the Cold War, the single greatest question mark will almost certainly center on the Euro-Atlantic bloc’s political resolve to create—and if necessary wield—sufficiently-capable military forces that are sized, positioned, and postured to support deterrence. We in the security studies community have an important role to play in helping to buttress these leaders' resolves by providing them and the interested public with serious empirical studies of how conventional deterrence against Russian aggression might be best obtained. We're long overdue in getting started.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.