Russian Approaches to Strategic Deterrence and Tactical Coercion
Speaker(s): Charap, S. (Senior Political Scientist, RAND)
Date: 18 February 2022
Speaker Session Summary
SMA hosted a speaker session with Dr. Samuel Charap (Senior Political Scientist, RAND) as part of its SMA EUCOM Speaker Series.
In his presentation, Dr. Charap discussed two papers: one that describes Russia’sconcept of military deterrence and one that relates Russia’s deterrence approach directly to the Ukrainian crisis. The conceptualization of deterrence in Western countries does not have an exact translation into Russian. The Russian termsderzhivanie—especially strategic sderzhivanie—is the closest term found to deterrence in official Russian military doctrine; however, it has several key differences that exemplifies Russia’s overall strategy. While the term was first used in 1997 to refer to nuclear deterrence, it has been used by Russian leaders as a multi-domain effort that uses a mixture of hard and soft power tools during both peace and war times to force an adversary to act in a limited or restricted way. This broad definition encompasses all of Russia’s strategic actions that are designed to help it achieve its geopolitical objectives. Dr. Charap commented that several downsides to Russia’s conceptualization of sderzhivanie includes blurring the lines between peace and war and that it does not give much time to conceptualize adversaries’ decision making.
The Ukrainian crisis shows how Russia has used sderzhivanie to maintain a simmering conflict since the signing of the second Minsk Treaty in 2015. However, Ukraine is also an example of how Russia is willing to use overwhelming military force when they see their long-term strategy failing. Dr. Charap commented that Russia’s initial limited use of force helped create an uncertain peace outcome, which allowed it to support a pro-Russian proxy force which continued to fight. Russia believed that it could use this proxy force to wear down the Ukraine and outlast the West. However, what occurred was a strengthening of the NATO-Ukraine relationship. For Russia, this undesired outcome is the main reason why it has opted for the potential use of its full military force, which includes advanced weapons systems.
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