As NATO’s Warsaw summit looms, the rivalry between the
alliance and Russia is intensifying. The summit’s agenda includes a lengthy
list of points of tension, including NATO enlargement, ballistic missile
defence, positioning of NATO equipment and forces in Eastern European member
states and NATO’s partnerships with states such as Georgia. At the same time,
NATO is conducting a series of substantial military exercises in Eastern
Europe, such as Anakonda-2016, the largest such exercises since the end of the
Cold War.
The Russian leadership has
responded with a mix of vocal criticism threatening retaliatory measures, most
notably President Putin’s statements that Romania would be targeted as a result of its
hosting elements of the missile defence shield. Other officials have stated that Russia
will also increase military and security exercises and other activities in
response.
These moves are in addition to
others already announced, such as the reconstitution of the 1st Guards Tank
army, this year’s strategic exercise Kavkaz 2016, and statements that the
Admiral Kuznetsov would be deployed to the naval task force in the eastern
Mediterranean and Borei class nuclear powered submarines would conduct test
launches of Bulava ballistic missiles, an important part of Russia’s nuclear
triad.
These additional moves by the
Russian leadership are the tip of a much larger iceberg, and are not so much
responses to what NATO is currently doing but rather reflections of what would
have taken place anyway. Indeed, the Russian leadership is in the middle of a
major transition period during which it is implementing emergency measures to
move Russia onto a war footing—in effect, state mobilization.
To understand the scale of
this transformation, the reasons behind it and the trajectory it is likely to
take, it is necessary to step back to see the bigger strategic picture. What we
are seeing today are the results of a series of policies and reforms that were
instigated initially in the wake of the Russo-Georgia war in 2008 and
subsequently accelerated in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.
These policies were intended
to reinvigorate the defense industry and revamp the armed forces. In 2010, the
Russian leadership committed $640 billion to a decade-long transformation
process that would result in recruiting half a million contract soldiers and
ensuring that at least 70 percent of military equipment is modern,
including the procurement of thousands of pieces of high performance and heavy
equipment, such as tanks, artillery, military aircraft and naval vessels.
At the same time, the Russian
armed forces and internal security services have taken part in thousands of
tactical, operational and strategic exercises. Over the last five years, these
exercises have become significantly larger and more sophisticated, designed to
test the system in place, particularly coordination between ministries and
federal, regional and local authorities.
These are impressive figures.
But they also represent emergency measures. On one hand, they reflect Moscow’s
concern about Russia’s ability to cope with an increasingly unstable and
threatening environment. In the government’s view, Russia is surrounded by an
arc of crisis, stretching almost all the way around Russia, from Ukraine to the
South China Sea. At the same time, the Russian authorities are concerned by
threats of international terrorism, the spread of regional instability as a
result of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and particularly by the
prospect of US-led color revolutions not only in the former Soviet space, but
even in Russia itself.
Such concerns are compounded
by Moscow’s view that the 21 st century will become increasingly unstable as major
powers compete for resources, particularly in Eurasia. Thus the Russian
leadership often speaks of the need to protect Russian territorial integrity
and sovereignty, and to insulate Russia against external threats by
consolidating state institutions and civil society.
What we see today, therefore,
is just part of a bigger picture, in which Russia is halfway through a
sustained transformation process. It is not without problems. Exercises have
revealed ongoing shortcomings within the system, particularly in terms of
coordinating military and civilian authorities. There are also problems in
procurement, leading to postponements and delays in equipment supply and in
ongoing reforms to optimal force structure.
There is little that the West
and NATO can do to alter or reduce this mobilization transformation in Russia,
partly because it is intended to meet what the Kremlin sees as Russian domestic
problems and weaknesses, and partly because to mitigate Russian concerns would
mean implementing policies that would be unpalatable to Western leaders, such
as ‘retiring’ NATO.
What is does mean, however, is that NATO’s leadership
should be beginning to think about what this transformation will mean for
Russia over the next three years, a Russia that is more muscular and more alert
to potential threats.
Andrew Monaghan is senior
research fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, and the
author of The New Politics of Russia: Interpreting Change, to be published by
Manchester University Press in July 2016.
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