DYNAMICS OF RUSSIAN CONVENTIONAL DETERRENCE: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR PRACTICAL STRATEGY

This paper analyses the evolution of post-Soviet Russian conceptual and doctrinal visions of conventional deterrence and its current status, prospects and impact on regional and global levels in the framework of Russian strategic military and political thinking. The paper argues that although neglected since the early post-Soviet period, Russian conventional (nonnuclear) deterrence has been revisited especially since 2014 when Russia’s Military Doctrine gave it a new definition, soon applied in practice during the Syrian campaign. In its military strategy, conventional deterrence changed its standing over the last two decades from a subsidiary tactical/sub-strategic level warfighting tool to a separate military-political factor and a self-contained component of Russian strategic deterrence.
Against the backdrop of Ukrainian crisis, Syrian conflict and rising tension between Russia and NATO, Russian conventional deterrence fulfills the function of a regional and global military-political factor, while its application in warfighting is now happening on a new, more effective technological level based on new types of long-range precision-guided munitions (PGM).





Dr. Sergey Minasyan is the Deputy Director and Head of Political Studies Department at the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, Armenia (since March 2006). He also has been representing Academic Swiss Caucasus Net (ASCN) in Armenia (since 2011). Dr. Minasyan holds PhD in Military History (2002) at the Institute of History under the National Academy of Science and Doctor of Political Sciences degree at the Institute for National Security Studies at the Ministry of Defense of Armenia (2013). Dr. Minasyan published more than ten monographs and reports, and dozens of academic papers and analytical pieces. The main areas of his expertise are international relations, military history and security studies, with particular attention to the topics of conventional deterrence, regional arms control and settlement of the ethno-political conflicts.


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