Five Steps NATO Should Take To Deter Russia
Dan Goure
Russia, Eurasia
Here are five that should form the core of a U.S./NATO effort to enhance deterrence and stability in Europe.
As events in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and Syria have unfolded, the world has had a chance to see the new Russian defense strategy and force posture in action. Russian President Putin has successfully finessed his country’s myriad of weaknesses – economic, political, demographic and military – in ways that permit him to use coercion and even naked military force against his neighbors with near impunity. Dealing with an aggressive, yet relatively weak Russia poses a far different problem for the West than deterring or containing a rising China.
Moreover, the kind of military Russia is developing may be particularly well suited to the Kremlin’s objective of undermining the existing international security order and gaining recognition of Russian great power status with a limited risk of war. The “new” Russian military has demonstrated a particular mix of capabilities – rapid, but geographically limited offensive operations, electronic and cyber warfare, long-range precision strikes, powerful anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems and advanced theater nuclear weapons – that well serve the goals of supporting gray area operations and deterring Western conventional responses or escalatory moves.
The discussions of Russian “hybrid” warfare should not obscure an understanding of the extent to which that country has modernized its conventional and nuclear forces and the extent to which it is relying not on gray zone techniques but conventional military forces as the centerpiece of its local aggressions. It is important also to recognize how much Russian adventures in Eastern Europe have rapidly morphed from hybrid operations employing non-traditional means and methods to classic conventional military operations. The recent intervention in Syria was a model power projection operation suggesting that the Russian military was quite capable of limited high intensity conventional operations.
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