6 mins read
| By Simon Saradzhyan via Vladimir Putin has just signed off on Russia’s new National Security Strategy. As with any such strategic document, it is useful to compare it to its predecessor, if only to identify key changes in the Kremlin’s vision of what constitutes Russia’s national security and how to attain it. My comparison between the 2021 document and its 2015 predecessor reveals that the Kremlin has strengthened its determination to deter the West and engage the East (Asia), which it sees, respectively, as declining and rising, while starting to pay more attention to domestic components of national security, such as human capital. When the previous strategy was adopted in 2015, many analysts suspected that relations between the West and Russia had already hit rock bottom following the intervention in Ukraine that the Kremlin launched in 2014 with some hoping for an eventual rebound, if only a partial one. The new document shows that that bottom was false, with multiple layers underneath ripe for the further deterioration of Russia’s relations with the United States and its allies, even as Moscow’s partnership with Asia’s leading powers remained strong (India) or strengthened further (China). While the 2015 strategy contained clauses for cooperation with the United States and the European Union, with multiple goals to be pursued jointly, and even for the development of relations with NATO, the 2021 version contains no such language when describing Russia’s interaction with what the Kremlin sees as a declining West. Moreover, the new document does not mention the European Union at all, indicating that in the Russian leadership’s view, the European Union no longer matters—at least in matters of national security (and never mind that it remains Russia’s largest trading partner). While the number of references to the European Union has gone from three in the 2015 document to zero in the 2021 document, the latter mentions the United States four times, and all these references are negative, as is the sole reference to NATO, accusing the United States and the alliance it leads of exacerbating “military dangers and military threats to the Russian Federation” and even of attacking “traditional Russian spiritual, moral, cultural and historical values.” Also, the language criticizing the United States and its allies has become harsher. The 2015 document referred to these countries’ “aspirations” to “retain their domination of world affairs.” The 2021 document proclaims that the world is undergoing a “period of transformation” amid the failing “aspiration of the Western countries to retain their hegemony” in the world. It also accuses “certain states” of encouraging a “process of disintegration” in the Commonwealth of Independent States, while also accusing unnamed states of trying to “isolate the Russian Federation.” If there is a silver lining to all of this, it is the omission in the 2021 strategy of any references (present in the 2015 document) to a “network of U.S. military-biological laboratories on the territories of states adjacent to Russia.” In contrast to its treatment of the United States, all three of the 2021 document’s references to a rising China are positive, though not without a caveat. The 2021 document—like the preceding version, as well as statements by Russian leaders—is careful to distinguish Russia’s partnership with China from that with India, which is mentioned in the new strategy twice. Russia’s relationship with China is described as a “comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction,” while the relationship with India is described as an “especially privileged strategic partnership.” That distinction, which reflects Moscow’s desire to retain deep cooperation with New Delhi in spite of its growing ties to Beijing, is especially illustrative of Moscow’s desire not to keep all its eggs in one basket, given that Chinese leaders routinely describe relations with Russia as a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” To sum up, the new strategy’s geopolitical arithmetic reflects a Kremlin view that can be described as “deter the U.S., ignore the EU, partner with China and India.” While taking pains to formulate Russia’s national security priorities in relations with other countries, overall, the 2021 strategy appears to prioritize the development of domestic components of national security significantly more than the preceding version. One section, entitled “National interests of the Russian Federation and strategic national priorities,” starts with a description of national priorities, the first of which is the “preservation of the people of Russia and the development of human capital,” and discusses at length how to retain and improve the quality and quantity of that capital in Russia. That subsection is followed by “Defense of the country” and then “State and public security.” In contrast, the national interest section in the 2015 document contained no references to the “preservation of the people of Russia.” It did contain subsections on defense and public security and these were followed by a subsection entitled “Increasing the quality of life of Russian citizens.” Also, the 2015 document lauded population growth in Russia, while the 2021 strategy contains no such language, implicitly acknowledging that, after nearly a decade of population growth, depopulation has resumed in Putin’s Russia. The 2021 document assigns less priority to the democratization of Russia. The very first national interests it identifies are the “preservation of the people of Russia, developing human potential and improving the quality of life and well-being of citizens”; in contrast, the 2015 document explicitly mentioned democratization (albeit only once) among the first national interests listed: the “strengthening of national accord, political and social stability, the development of democratic institutions and the improvement of mechanisms of interaction between the state and civil society.” The 2021 strategy’s sole reference to democracy is contained in the section on “Russia in the modern world,” which makes clear that democracy has to conform to what the Kremlin is fond of describing as traditional values: “The preservation of Russian identity, culture, traditional Russian spiritual and moral values and the patriotic education of citizens will contribute to the further development of democratic order in the Russian Federation and its openness to the world.” Overall, one can’t help getting the impression that the 2021 document is distinctly more inward-looking than the preceding version, even though the Security Council—which typically plays the lead role in drafting such strategies and which remains a bastion of Russian conservatism under Nikolai Patrushev—has acquired a new, less conservative senior figure since 2015: former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who has been the deputy chairman since 2020. The table below provides a comparison of the two strategies’ key points.[DJ: Not here] |
5 mins read
April 30th is an important date in American politics. This is the day 100 for the American President in the White House, and all attention will be on the reports of his achievements and failures. But nothing can be more critical than Peace…
6 mins read
Russia’s invasion has made ordinarily outspoken critics of antisemitism wary of criticizing Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
1 min read
Richard Sakwa has for many years been one of the most distinguished and insightful observers of relations between the West and Russia, and one of the leading critics of Western policy. In this talk with Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, Sakwa discusses his book, The Culture of the Second Cold War (Anthem 2025). The book examines the cultural-political trends and inheritances that underlie the new version of a struggle that we thought we had put behind us in 1989. Sakwa describes both the continuities from the first Cold War and the ways in which new technologies have reshaped strategies and attitudes.
