Great Power Politics is Back in Fashion.

Great power politics is back in fashion.

It isn’t a short-term trend or fad; it is the solemn political reality we face today. Russia and China have partnered to push their agenda on the world. Together they intend to knock the United States out of its premier position as leader of the free world and then remake the world in their image. When Ronald Reagan held office in the 1980’s, he labelled the Soviet Union “the evil empire” and led the free world in restraining its aggressive and repressive policies. Today, we are entering a second Cold War period as Moscow and Beijing have teemed up to stop the West from supporting the cause of freedom and fledgling democratic states.

We hear a lot about Chinese military aggression, but what is Russia up to these days? Has it changed its behavior since the days when Mikhail Gorbachev called for accommodation with the West? Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. General Scott D. Berrier, testified before the US Senate Armed Services Committee recently that the two communist giants will be key adversaries within the next two decades in the area of high-technology weaponry. According to Berrier, any of the three main powers, the US, China, or Russia, will possess the most “disruptive” military technologies by 2030-2035. According to Berrier, the new weapons or concepts “will change the character of warfare.” Russian power is not going away.

Russia’s current President, Vladimir Putin, has promised his people a return to the “glory days” of the Russian Empire. He is working hard to make it the new Russian reality. Before becoming president, Putin held the rank of lieutenant colonel as a KGB intelligence officer for 15 years. He then assumed the position of prorector of Leningrad State University, mayor of St. Petersburg, and onto to political positions in Moscow. He is a savvy public politician and a brilliant strategist when it comes to operating behind the scenes. Putin views his partnership with President Xi Jinping as one that provides Russia with the needed financial resources from energy exports and military sales. Russian missile technology still is better than what China possesses. Putin knows this won’t last for long and recognizes he has to take advantage of the situation now. He needs the money to fund his military buildup to make Russia whole again.

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To avert an outright conflict with the United States, Berrier says that Russia has adopted a strategy of targeting military technologies to “match, counter, or offset” US capabilities and those of its other adversaries, rather than pursing pure R&D research inside its “massive” military-industrial complex. Berrier wrote in the DIA report to Congress that Moscow has the ability to produce “large numbers of weapons” today while also expanding its ability to develop cutting-edge technologies. At issue, he says, it that Russia is “challenged both organizationally and technically” to manufacture the “high-tech subcomponents required for advanced weapons” due to “severe funding, resource, and infrastructure constraints” in the S&T sector.

Does that make Russia less dangerous than a rising China? Berrier says that what is means is Putin will rely more heavily on a profusion of new-style nuclear weapons unlike those possessed by the West. Last fall Russia conducted live drills using battlefield nuclear weapons. Their small size may lower the threshold for their use. Putin also has in his inventory an undersea version capable of creating a tsunami that could inundate and destroy infrastructure along vast stretches of the US coastline. Add to this Russian space and counterspace capabilities and cyberspace weapons, and the answer is that Russia remains a formidable power capable of impacting the US and the West should it choose to use its power. The free world must plan for a worst case scenario while hoping for a best case situation.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. She regularly presents key updates on Russia.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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