Superpower vs. Great Power: Inside the Russian Defense Debate
Summary
A critical debate inside the Russian defense establishment has
burst into public view. Moscow's military and civilian leaders are
weighing continued dependence on nuclear weapons versus a new
conventional focus. Russia is at a crossroads, forced to choose
between a global role and a regional one. At stake are the future
of Russian national security and the fledgling presidency of
Vladimir Putin.
Analysis
Last week, a critical debate that had raged inside the Russian
defense establishment broke into public view. Russian Chief of
Staff Anatoly Kvashnin recommended that Russia's strategic nuclear
force - long a separate branch of the military - be absorbed into
one of the other branches of the armed forces. He also proposed
that spending on nuclear forces be instead directed toward
conventional forces.
On Friday, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev publicly blasted
Kvashnin's arguments, calling them a "crime against Russia and just
plain madness." President Vladimir Putin was forced to intervene.
Interestingly, he did not intervene on either side; instead, he
demanded that the public battling cease. But clearly, the private
battle will continue.
In a sense, the mere fact that the subject is being debated
represents a major victory for the Russian president. Post-Soviet
Russia has not had a coherent national security policy. Former
President Boris Yeltsin neglected national security on the premise
that building the Russian economy, with the bricks and mortar of
Western investment, took priority. It followed that political and
military confrontation with the West was essential. Both
deliberation and investment in national security were deemed
counter-productive and anachronistic.
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Yet, Russia under Yeltsin grew not only poor but also powerless. In
Kosovo and elsewhere, the West has treated Russian national
security with an indifference bordering on contempt. The explosive
debate in Moscow indicates that the new Russian president is
succeeding in reviving the notion that Russia requires a national
security policy.
The outcome of this debate will define not just policy, but how
Russia views its place in the world. Nuclear weapons constitute
less an instrument of war than a measure of Russia's self-image.
The debate over them and the way that Moscow constitutes its forces
in the coming years will reflect whether Russia intends only to be
a great power or whether it aspires, again, to the status of
superpower.
The definition of each is more complex than it seems at first
blush. The Soviet Union saw itself as a superpower. But unlike the
American definition - projecting power globally - the Soviet Union
relied instead on covert operations in support of wars of national
liberation to influence events.
Another definition of superpower lies in the ability to strike
globally. Although the Soviets had nuclear weapons during the
1950s, they did not have an intercontinental delivery system until
the mid-1960s. Nor did they have facilities close enough to the
United States for basing intermediate range ballistic missiles and
bombers. The United States, however, could strike both from the
continental United States and from bases surrounding the Soviets.
One half of the debate in Moscow carries at least faint echoes of
this bygone era.
Himself a career missile officer, Sergeyev certainly recalls the
era of the big bluff, during the 1950s and early 1960s, when the
Soviets tried to convince the world that they had the ability to
annihilate the United States when, in fact, they had nothing of the
sort. Sergeyev participated in the process where the Soviets first
gained the ability to strike and then achieved parity with the
United States. For Sergeyev, this was and remains the definition of
a superpower. Giving up ground so painstakingly won is unthinkable.
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Sergeyev has a case. Washington must calculate the potential threat
posed by those weapons. As important, the mere threat of use can be
a wedge between the United States and its allies. So long as it
enjoys formal nuclear parity Russia can at least lay claim to being
a superpower. Without these forces, Russia is just another vast,
Third World country.
Kvashnin, on the other hand, is confronting Russia's immediate
geopolitical requirements. These consist of four elements:
1. The territorial integrity of the Russian Federation must remain
under the control of Moscow. This means preventing secessionist
tendencies in places like Chechnya. Russia must also be in a
position to defend its frontiers and territorial waters.
2. Moscow must insist on the neutrality of the rest of the former
Soviet Union. Russia cannot afford to have NATO extend its
membership to the Baltics or Ukraine. Nor can Central Asia fall
under Western or Chinese influence.
3. Russia must have military forces sufficient to influence the
calculation of NATO, as well as the strategies of the former Soviet
republics. Beyond a buffer zone, Russia must work to create a
sphere of influence throughout the former Soviet Union and as far
away as Eastern Europe. Forces must be available both to threaten
operations and to execute them
4. Russia must create a force capable of the first two missions
within the constraints of the Russian economy. This is actually a
more complex issue than it appears, since defense spending can
dramatically stimulate economic growth as well as drain resources.
Nevertheless, in the immediate future, there are limits to what
Russia can do.
Ultimately, Kvashnin is arguing for a great power strategy rather
than a superpower strategy. Instead of projecting power globally,
he seeks the ability to project power regionally. A great power can
defend itself from all neighbors and project power along its
frontiers and even, to some extent beyond. Germany and China are
both examples of great powers.
Kvashnin's faction is also arguing that nuclear weapons are, in
general, irrelevant to the actual correlation of forces. The
ability to launch a first strike against the United States is
devoid of meaning, since there is no political circumstance under
which such a strike would be meaningful. Deterring Washington from
a first strike is similarly meaningless. In addition, deterrence
does not require massive capability. A much smaller force, on the
scale of France's or Israel's, is sufficient.
But Kvashnin's argument is really rooted in economics. If he is
smart as this debate unfolds, he can make the economic argument in
two ways. The first is to argue that Russia cannot afford
everything; decision makers must choose the essential strategy,
influencing regional events.
The second approach is to point out the antiquated nature of
nuclear forces: These are technologies that matured more than a
generation ago. Sustaining them doesn't help Russia's contemporary
economy. But spending money on a modern conventional force would
involve developing new technologies in areas like communications,
computing and logistics, all of which would have a major
stimulating effect on the Russian economy. Both the American and
Israeli economies, for example, have been stirred by defense
technologies.
In this debate, Kvashnin holds all the cards, and Putin's
sympathies probably lie with him. Kvashnin is essentially making
the same argument that Yuri Andropov and Marshall Ogarkov made in
the 1980s; Putin is their intellectual and political heir. The
president also shut down the debate after Sergeyev went public -
not when Kvashnin did. The president is setting the stage for a
great power strategy.
Cutting back on the cost of pretending to be a superpower makes
sense, but Sergeyev has the upper hand both psychologically and
emotionally. For older Russians nuclear parity represented an
essential achievement. Whatever else is said about the Soviet
Union, it instilled Russians with great pride, particularly in
their missiles and rockets. That pride is the emotional link
between Russia and its superpower pretenses.
Abandonment means breaking the last link with greatness - and
opening a dangerous window into the future. Russia, after all, is
still an economic cripple. Putin would be open to the charge of
having finally turned Russia into a Third World nation.
In office only a few months, Putin will find himself in a tough
spot in this debate. He needs to move on to a regional great power
strategy. But he does so only by placing himself at risk. Indeed,
one of the themes of the public debate can be found in Sergeyev
accusing Kvashnin of serving U.S. interests. Endorsing Kvashnin
means that Putin will severely weaken his power base among
nationalists. This is a loss the Russian president cannot afford.
So far, Putin has done the one thing he could: He told everyone to
shut up. This is only a political holding action, though. The
Russian leader can contain the debate behind closed doors, but he
can't end it there. If Putin does nothing, Sergeyev wins by
default. If the president acts in favor of Kvashnin, the power base
will crumble.
As a result, Putin is likely to try to have it both ways: contain
the debate and then try to quietly edge toward Kvashnin's solution.
The president, as a result, will run the risk of temporarily trying
to pursue both strategies in an economy that can't really quite
afford one. If that happens, the only solution will be to cut
investment in the civilian sector, focus on defense and hope for
spin-offs. It will also mean the heavy nationalization of the
economy as defense expenditures soar. This is an opportunity for
half-measures where clear-cut decisions will be required.
But this is one of the key issues that will define both Putin's
presidency and Russia's future. Watching him solve this problem -
or not solve it, as the case may be - will tell us a great deal.
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