In sum, the role of multilateralism in Russian foreign policy is complex, but it has been important throughout the country’s history. Moscow’s views on multilateralism differ significantly from those in the West. Instead of seeing it as a ‘horizontal tool’ that gives an equal say to big and small powers alike, the Kremlin advocates ‘great-power multilateralism’, where decisions are the prerogative of leading states. Multilateralism and cooperation, including in the security realm, is important to Russia, because true great power recognition can only be achieved within the framework of interaction with other leading powers. However, in multilateral settings where Russia does not feel like it is on an equal footing with other great powers, this can lead to conflict and validates the belief held by some in the West that Moscow is seeking to maximize its power at the expense of international institutions.
Conclusion
This chapter assessed the role of military power in Russian foreign policy throughout history. Focusing on the factors of great power status, sovereignty, imperial legacy and multilateralism, it provided essential context and background for the arguments presented in the following chapters. The chapter showed that having a strong military has always been important to Russia. The reasons for this go far beyond the desire to fight offensive wars, to expand territory, or to push for global domination. This is because Moscow has always seen military power as a flexible tool of foreign policy. An appreciation of the various roles the military has played in the country’s past is important for an informed understanding of the reasons for and implications of the recent military revival.
A powerful military has always been of symbolic importance for Russia and an essential element in its self-perception as a great power. Past lessons have taught the Kremlin that the country will only be accepted as an equal by other leading powers, if it is seen as a force to be reckoned with. As the next chapter shows, status concerns have informed reforms of the Russian armed forces since the early 1990s. However, lessons from the past, which show that strengthening the military without being able to compete in other ways often leads to failure, are still relevant today. The prospects of catching up fully with the West’s military capabilities remain in doubt.
Sizeable and capable armed forces have also always been essential for Russia’s territorial defence. The country’s vastness, long borders and historical exposure to foreign attack have made this factor particularly important. This is still the case today and has been a central reason for the military revival, as all of the remaining chapters will variously demonstrate. Russia’s concerns over sovereignty are not limited to territorial integrity, as chapters 3, 4 and 5 explain further. Military power is also required to ensure the country’s freedom of action internationally, as well as to protect order and stability at home.
Military force was essential for the creation of the Russian Empire and used for territorial expansion during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although the country’s imperial legacy continues to be a factor in foreign policy, this has predominantly expressed itself in more indirect forms of control over neighbouring lands over the past century. As chapter 4 will detail, imperialist sentiments have informed Russian decisions to use military force in the CIS region on numerous occasions since the early 1990s. The chapter will also explain why the re-emergence of an expansionist vision is at least highly unlikely.
Finally, rather than seeing the military, above all, as an instrument for confrontation, the Kremlin has used it also as a tool for multilateral engagement at various points of its history. As chapters 3 and 4 will show, Russia has cooperated with international institutions and individual states towards the solution of various security challenges throughout the post-Soviet years. The desire for inclusion remains a vital factor in Russian foreign policy. An understanding of this is important, especially in times of heightened tensions, like in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. However, the Kremlin’s specific view on multilateralism, which sees this largely within the context of multipolarity, can lead to conflict in situations where it feels that it is not being treated as an equal partner.
With the context of the role of the Russian military in foreign policy throughout history in mind, the following chapters assess reforms of the armed forces since the early 1990s, the significance of the force structures, the Kremlin’s use of military force since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and changes in strategic thought. A detailed understanding of these issues allows for an informed assessment of the implications of the military revival for Russia’s neighbours and for the West.
Chapter 2
Reforming the military
The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 went hand in hand with the demise of the once-powerful Soviet military. The newly independent Russian Federation kept the bulk of the Soviet armed forces’ manpower and assets. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, the expectation that, as the heir of the Soviet Union’s nuclear deterrent and main beneficiary of the former superpower’s material military might, Russia would automatically keep its international status as a global military power did not come to pass. In fact, when the Russian armed forces were created in 1992, it quickly emerged that the Soviet legacy was more of a curse than a blessing. Reform attempts throughout the 1990s summarily failed to turn the Russian military into a force fit for the twenty-first century. Although the country’s nuclear deterrent was always maintained, it soon became clear that strong nuclear capabilities were insufficient for coping with the military challenges of the post-Cold War security environment as well as for upholding Russia’s status as a great power. Russia’s unreformed armed forces performed woefully when deployed to deal with the ethnic conflicts that had erupted across the former Soviet region in the early 1990s and suffered humiliating failures in Chechnya. By the end of the 1990s, Russia had largely been written off as a global military force as it was generally assumed that its armed forces stood ‘perilously close to ruin’ (Arbatov 1998: 83).
The Russian armed forces started to recover when a systematic programme of military modernization was announced in 2008. Underpinned by significant financial resources and political will to enforce its implementation, the programme resulted in substantial improvements in conventional military capabilities. These were demonstrated to the world during the military operation in Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent intervention in Syria, changing the international image of the Russian armed forces almost overnight and leading to a debate about Russia’s military revival (Trenin 2016c).
This chapter shows that the perception of a sudden resurgence of the Russian armed forces and the assumed implications of this for international security require both historical and comparative contextualization. The restoration of Russian military power under Putin is best understood within the context of the various factors that led to the neglect of the armed forces and lack of fundamental reforms during the 1990s. These factors can by no means be reduced to fundamentally different views held by the Yeltsin and Putin leaderships on the importance of maintaining powerful armed forces and the status of a global military power. As the previous chapter showed, having a strong military has always been central in Russia’s self-perception as a great power and the military has played various roles and functions in the country’s foreign and defence policy throughout history. This did not fundamentally change after the end of the Cold War. Moreover, the extent of Russia’s military revival should be measured not only against its capabilities during the 1990s. A state’s military power, like its power as an actor in the international system as a whole, is always relative to the power of other states (Mearsheimer 1994/5: 10–11). Although improvements in absolute terms are certainly impressive, Russia’s relative military power compared to other global military actors, especially with regard to its conventional capabilities, continues to be limited.