that the
nuclear-conventional
firebreak can be
made infinite by
pursuing nuclear
abolition.
War.173 Today, however, Russia’s armed forces are estimated to total only about 700,00o-800,000 personnel, including contract-employed personnel and con-scripts. Among other things, these changes reflect how ill-prepared the Russian armed forces had been earlier in 2008 to fight even a local war on its borders against a foe as small as Georgia.
Post-Cold War restructuring of the Russian armed forces began in October 2008. In the wake of the Georgia conflict, then-Russian defense minister Ana-tolii Serdiukov initiated a series of reforms that, by 2011, had downsized Rus-sia’s bloated officer corps, dismantled empty cadre units, and introduced a new, leaner command system as well as a new branch of arms (the Aerospace Defense Forces).174 These reforms have probably weakened Russia’s conventional capabil-ities in the short run. But Swedish observers suggest that the reforms of 2008-2011 were undertaken “to establish the structural preconditions” for a gradual
“strengthening of the Army” over the next decade.175
Regardless of how successful Russia’s efforts to transform its conventional capabilities may prove to be, the broader strategic context in which post-Soviet Russian nuclear doctrine has evolved can be summarized as follows:
The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union brought about a major reduction in Moscow’s economic, industrial and demographic resource base. At the same time, the military strategic depth to the west was reduced and the military balance of strength was radically changed, to Russia’s disadvantage. This development continued up to the mid-2000s, as several former Soviet republics gravitated westwards in for-eign policy terms and, in addition, five East European countries became members of NATO.176
One aspect of these developments is that nuclear weapons have become one of the few guarantors of Russia’s security and great power status.
Closely related to the growing importance Russia’s leaders attribute to their nuclear weapons is the fact that they themselves perceive their conventional capabilities to be inferior to NATO’s in the west and China’s in the east. Com-pare, for example, the performance of the Russian armed forces against tiny Georgia in 2008 with that of the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in 1991 or of
173 Carolina Vendil Pallin, “Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective” in Carolina Vendil Pallin, ed., Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective—2011 (Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, August 2012), FOI-R—3474-SE, p. 15.
174 Pallin, “Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective,” p. 15; and Märta Carlsson and Johan Norberg, “The Armed Forces” in Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspec-tive—2011, p. 115.
175 Pallin, “Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective, p. 16; and Carlsson and Norberg,
“The Armed Forces,” p. 109.
176 Fredrik Westerlund and Roger Roffey, “Weapons of Maas Destruction” in Russian Military Ca-pability in a Ten-Year Perspective—2011, p. 136.
the U.S.-led NATO campaign against Serbia in 1999. Not only did Serdiukov initiate his reforms shortly after the Georgian campaign, but in 2010 Russia formally identified NATO as a “military danger.”177 And while China was not mentioned in Russia’s 2010 military doctrine, Russian generals would be my-opic to ignore China as an emerging military threat. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has the world’s second largest economy and its growth rates sug-gest China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will overtake U.S. GDP in the early 2020s, if not earlier.178 Moreover, Chinese troops in the two military regions bordering the Russian Far East (Beijing and Shenyang) outnumber the entire contingent of conventional troops in the Russian armed forces. Furthermore, China’s population density on its side of the shared border is sixty-two times that on the Russian side.179 Thus, there are legitimate grounds for Russian leaders to conclude that their military is conventionally inferior both to NATO and China.
How has this perception of conventional inferiority affected Russia’s nuclear doctrine? In 2010, Dima Adamsky argued that the Russians have adopted a two-tiered approach to deterrence:
Russia has two strategies of nuclear deterrence: the first is based on a threat of massive launch-on-warning and retaliatory strikes to deter nuclear aggression; the second is based on a threat of limited (in terms of targets and tasks) demonstration and de-escalation strikes to deter and terminate a large-scale conventional war.180
Again, Russia’s continuing ability to inflict massive nuclear destruction on the Unit-ed States even in the aftermath of a highly improbable American first-strike sup-ports Russia’s claim to be a global great power, and parity with the United States in offensive intercontinental nuclear weapons is viewed in Moscow as maintaining nuclear stability.181 As a result, Russia is continuing to modernize its nuclear forces.
177 President of the Russian Federation, “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation,” February 5, 2010, II.7, II.8.a. This public document was accompanied by “Principles for Government Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence, up to 2020,” which was also adopted but not published. Pre-sumably it describes Russia’s actual nuclear doctrine. Westlund and Roffey, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” p. 139.
178 “China: How To Gracefully Step Aside,” The Economist, available at http://www.economist.com/
blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/china, accessed on December 8, 2012. The online tool at this URL allows the reader to estimate when China’s economy will overtake America’s as a function of GDP growth rates, inflation, and Yuan appreciation.
179 Jakob Hedenskog, “Foreign Policy” in Carolina Vendil Pallin, ed., Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective—2011 (Stockholm: Swedish Defense Research Agency, 2012), p. 33.
180 Dima Adamsky, “Russian Regional Nuclear Developments,” Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), September 2010, p. 20 (italics in the original). See also Mark Schneider, “The Nuclear Forces and Doctrine of the Russian Federation,” National Institute Press, publication No. 0003, 2006;
and Stephen J. Blank, ed., Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future (Carlisle, PA:
Strategic Studies Institute, November 2011).
181 Westlund and Roffey, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” p. 139.
At the strategic level, Russia is tripling production of nuclear missiles, including new SLBMs and heavy ICBMs capable of carrying 10-15 warheads; at the tactical level, Russia has used hydro-nuclear testing to enhance the reliability of its new generation of very-low-yield theater nuclear weapons.182 Russia is relying on these new theater nuclear weapons to deter attacks on itself or its allies by regional adver-saries or, should deterrence fail, to defend itself against conventionally superior op-ponents by employing small numbers of low-yield weapons to de-escalate a military conflict that threatens Russian territorial integrity or sovereignty.
Since 1999, the use of very-low-yield nuclear weapons has been regularly included in operational-strategic exercises conducted by the Russian General Staff.183 In Zapad-1999 (West-1999) the Russians postulated a NATO attack on the Kaliningrad oblast and, after three days of defensive action, Russian troops resorted to a limited nuclear strike with four air-launched cruise missiles from heavy bombers to de-escalate the conflict.184 More recently, in Vostok-2010 (East-2010) in eastern Russia—the largest military exercise in post-Soviet history—the exercise culminated with two live launches of nuclear-capable Tochka-U (SS-21) missiles against the command post of a “hypothetical opponent.” In the exercise,