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Arms Control Letters is a monthly newsletter of the PIR-Center for Policy Studies in Russia, sent to the e-mail boxes of the world leading experts in the field of arms control, nonproliferation and international security. The article analyzes Russia's new military doctrine adopted in late April 2000.
On April 21, 2000, Acting President Vladimir Putin signed Decree No. 706 "On Adopting the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation", which entered into force on April 22. The work on this document reached a decisive stage in October 1999, when the prepared text of the doctrine was published for discussion. In the next few months, the Ministry of Defense received more than 3,000 amendments and proposals on the document from military and civil experts. This was the official reason for not completing the elaboration of the document in March, as planned by the MOD's leadership. However, we can presume that there were some other reasons for that. The development of the military doctrine has always depended on the ministry's leadership. Previously, in the times of confrontation between the MOD and the Council of Defense, two draft variants of the doctrine were produced. The ministers changed, the tasks for the working group changed too, and this impeded the work. In this connection, it is noteworthy that the delay over the completion of the new military doctrine coincided with the widely discussed possibility of Igor Sergeyev's retirement. Only when all doubts concerning the further status of the minister were dispelled, did work on the doctrine come to an end. At first sight, the adopted doctrine differs significantly from the October 1999 draft, which was analyzed by the PIR Center earlier. Above all, the very definition of the military doctrine has changed. In the 1999 draft the military doctrine was the "a systemized aggregation of fundamental official views, concentrated in a single document, on preventing wars and armed conflicts, on their character, on the ways of conduct, and on the organization of the state and social activities to provide military security of the Russian Federation and its allies". In the new document, the military doctrine is "the aggregation of official views determining the military-political, military-strategic and military-economic guidelines to provide military security of the Russian Federation". The document has undergone many amendments. However, the most of them are of editorial character (the reshuffling of words, sentences, and paragraphs); in some sections, the sequence of statements has been changed. Some amendments were made to the structure of the documents. The sections remained the same: military-political, military-strategic, and military-economic guidelines. However, in the first section, the subsection "Managing the maintenance of military security" was renamed as "Directing the military organization of the state" (the contents have changed slightly) and was placed after the subsection entitled "Military organization of the state". The subsection entitled "Construction and preparing of the military organization of the state" has been left out in the adopted document. Practically all provisions of this subsection have been moved to the subsection "Military organization of the state". The second section has been left without the subsection "Mission of the Armed Forces and other forces". With small changes, the contents of this subsection were moved to the subsection entitled "The basic principles of using Armed Forces and other forces". Besides, the adopted document, unlike the 1999 draft, lacks a special "Conclusion" section. The general principle determining the nature of the doctrine is its defensive character, stated in the introduction: "The military doctrine has an exceptionally defensive character predetermined with the organic combination of a persistent commitment to peace and the firm resolution to defend national interests and ensure the military security of the Russian Federation and its allies." Military-Political Guidelines The adopted document, unlike in the 1999 draft, contains no description of two trends in the world development - the formation of the unipolar and multi-polar world. This paragraph from the 1999 draft was incorporated practically in full in the Concept of National Security approved by Vladimir Putin in January 2000. The list of "the key features of the military-political situation" contains among other things the following factors:
Among the main factors destabilizing the military-political situation, the doctrine mentions "the violation of international treaties and agreements in the area of arms limitation and disarmament" and the attempts to weaken or ignore "the existing mechanisms for maintaining international security (above all, the UN and the OSCE)". Analyzing "the major threats to military security", the doctrine emphasizes that the "threat of direct military aggression against the Russian Federation and its allies in its traditional forms has diminished, thanks to the positive changes in the international situation, to pursuing an active peaceful foreign policy course by our country, and to maintaining a sufficient level of Russian military might, above all the potential for nuclear deterrence." When there is little probability of direct aggression, including nuclear attack, against Russia, "the major external threats" relating to the nuclear sphere are "the activities aimed at undermining global and regional stability through interdicting the work of Russian systems of state and military control, systems providing for the normal functioning and combat viability of the strategic nuclear forces, missile attack early warning, missile defense, controlling outer space, and for the normal functioning of nuclear munitions storage facilities, nuclear energy facilities, nuclear and chemical industry facilities, and other potentially dangerous objects." So, the external threats originate from the existence of Russian nuclear and strategic facilities, which implies that they may fall the victims of sabotage or other similar activities. The list of internal threats focuses on terrorism: five out of six named threats relate to terrorism. It is noteworthy that the list of external threats also includes diversion and terrorist activities. Unfortunately, the doctrine doesn't try to correlate in detail all these factors.
In comparison to the 1999 draft, the nuclear-related provisions of the doctrine havent changed significantly. Somehow, the document states the Russian nuclear policy in a more streamlined way: whereas in the 1999 draft, the provisions concerning nuclear weapons were dispersed throughout the document, most of them are now concentrated in one part of the doctrine - in the subsection entitled "Maintaining military security". The substantive amendment to the 1999 draft is the disappearance of the provision stating that Russia stands "for complete elimination of nuclear arms in the future as an ultimate goal". The doctrine reveals some details of the Russian nuclear policy. The document states that Russia must have a potential for nuclear deterrence ensuring "the infliction of required damage to any aggressor, either a state or a coalition, under any conditions". The doctrine doesn't mention directly Russia's right to the first use of nuclear weapons. However, the document maintains that "the Russian Federation keeps the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear arms and other WMD against it or its allies, and in response to a large-scale aggression with the use of conventional arms in situations critical for the national security of the Russian Federation." In fact, this practically means the declaration of the right to the first use of nuclear weapons. The document continues with the declaration of the negative safeguards regarding non-nuclear weapons states, "Russia will not use nuclear arms against the NPT member states not possessing nuclear weapons if there is no invasion or any other attack against the Russian Federation, its Armed Forces or other troops, its allies, or against a state, to which it is tied with security commitments, carried out or supported by a non-nuclear weapon state jointly or due to alliance commitments with a nuclear weapon state." Taking into account the significance of nuclear weapons, the development and improvement of nuclear deterrence forces is marked as a top-priority for the military construction and military organization of the state. Military-Strategic Guidelines The sections starts with the classification of modern wars,
in accordance with three criteria:
The doctrine admits the possibility of world and regional nuclear warfare and argues that a conventional world war "will be characterized by a high probability of escalating to a nuclear level". The doctrine suggests that any nuclear conflict, either global or regional, will result from a non-nuclear confrontation. If we combine these provisions with the description of threats this means that Russia doesn't see the danger of direct nuclear aggression and practically rules out the possibility of sudden nuclear attack. Military-Economic Guidelines One of the priority tasks of maintaining military security with military-economic means is to provide for "the qualitative improvement of the strategic arms complex". One of the major tracks in this area is "the implementation of international commitments on reduction and limitation of Armed Forces and arms, as well as on the maintenance of international security and peace."
Analysis of the approved military doctrine demonstrates that the authors of the document have managed to get rid of the key contradictions of the 1999 draft. The new document has become more laconic, logical and streamlined. Nonetheless, the problem of homogeneity of the provisions
of the Military Doctrine and the Concept of National Security
remains. For instance, the formulas of the Concept contained
in the section "National security threats" (in the
part relating to the military threats) hardly correspond with
the appropriate section of the Military Doctrine. The Concept
states in the aforementioned section that "the aggravation
of ethnic relations and the exacerbation of international relations
generate a wide range of internal and external threats to the
national security of the state." At the same time, the doctrine
argues that "the threat of direct military aggression against
the Russian Federation and its allies in its traditional forms
has diminished thanks to the positive changes in the international
situation".
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