Russian Grand Strategy: Reality and Rhetoric
Speaker(s): Charap, S. (Senior Political Scientist, RAND); Massicot, D. (Senior Policy Researcher, RAND)
Date: 14 October 2021
Speaker Session Summary
SMA hosted a speaker session with Dr. Samuel Charap (Senior Political Scientist, RAND) and Ms. Dara Massicot (Senior Policy Researcher, RAND), as part of its SMA EUCOM Speaker Series.
Russia’s strategic military doctrine mostly matches their conventional military actions. Ultimately, its main objective is to increase its own domestic and border security, especially along its borders with post-Soviet States. Dr. Charap commented that Russian military doctrine indicates that Russian leaders are predicting an increasingly multipolar world, which will increase the global political influence of many countries and weaken the overall political influence from Western states. Russian leaders believe that decreasing Western countries’ influence will increase Russia’s standing as a global leader and increase Russian security. However, they also believe that for this new multipolar world to occur, the world must experience a transitional phase during which interstate conflict is more likely and global security decreases. This shift of global focus can be seen in Russia’s interactions with non-West countries. Even though it believes that this transitional phase will decrease global security, Russia does not believe that it will need to create a strong expeditionary military force.
However, Russia has bolstered its military capabilities along its borders; especially with post-soviet states. Ms. Massicot commented that this shows Russia is willing to use its military to force coercion in a region that it still considers its own. While bolstering its military forces seems contradictory to Russian doctrine, which emphasizes the importance of non-conventional military activity, it is unlikely that Russia will build its forces capabilities enough to endure a long war with another major power. For example, Russia still struggles to carry out air and sea lift operations. Also, Russia does not have strong foreign support from its allies, or a large network of military bases to exert its military or political influence. Ultimately Russian doctrine emphasizes smaller military operations and
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Samuel Charap and Dara Massicot Biographies
Dr. Samuel Charap is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include the foreign policies of Russia and the former Soviet states; European and Eurasian regional security; and U.S.-Russia deterrence, strategic stability, and arms control. From November 2012 until April 2017, Charap was the senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Prior to joining the IISS, he served at the U.S. Department of State as senior advisor to the undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, covering Russia and Eurasia. From 2009 to 2011,Charap was director for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for American Progress. Charap's book on the Ukraine crisis, Everyone Loses:The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia (coauthored with Timothy Colton), was published inJanuary 2017. His articles have appeared in The Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Survival, Current History andseveral other journals. Charap was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center and the International Center for Policy Studies (Kyiv),and a Fulbright Scholar at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He is fluent in Russian and proficient inUkrainian. Charap holds a Ph.D. in political science and an M.Phil. in Russian and East European studies from the University ofOxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He received his B.A. in Russian and political science from Amherst College. He is a lifemember of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ms. Dara Massicot is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and is an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. Ms. Massicot previously served as a senior analyst for Russian military strategy and capabilities at the Department of Defense. Her work at RAND focuses on security issues in Russia and Eurasia like Russian military modernization, conflict and force projection studies, escalation dynamics, and U.S. force posture and plans. Her areas of interest include high intensity conventional warfare and support to U.S. war planning efforts. She received her M.A. in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College's College of Naval Command and Staff in Newport, Rhode Island and BAs in Russian Language and Literature and Peace, War, & Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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