15. SEVEN CONSIDERATIONS TO THE RUSSIAN WAY OF DETERRENCE AND DEEPER QUESTIONS

PART TWO: Western scholars are just beginning to explore various aspects of Russian strategy and operations in depth. The topic of coercion will loom large among these endeavors.

[NOTE TO READERS; I haven’t been posting for almost a month, (although I had this episode ready). I am still committed to the Library. Recently I have engaged with outside projects that take me out of the office and away from the computer. We bought some land last year, and now I am installing a water-system. This is intense work and I am doing most of it myself, so it is also tiring. We’ll see, if I make an orchard or a big garden.

As a consequence, I am doing less reading and less writing. I have the other material on the Soviet Union, but it will take some time to sort through to see which parts are relevant. If I find another Gumilev book, that will be easier to upload sequentially. Thanks for being a subscriber.]

1. Prevention in Russian Strategic Thought

How does “prevention,” a strategic concept that is gaining attention among the Russian experts, relate to deterrence à la Russe? (5,000 words)

In his opening speech of the war, Putin framed the operation as a preventive strike. His historical frame of reference was straightforward—Moscow would not repeat the Kremlin’s mistake on the eve of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa in 1941. It would preempt in order to save the colossal costs of tomorrow’s war. Such framing occurs against the backdrop of a bigger conceptual trend in the Russian expert community. During the last several years there has been a splash of professional interest among Russian military experts in the role of prevention (uprezhdenie or preventivnye deistviia) in the art of strategy. The concept originated in the current Russian military discourse at the intersection of three bodies of literature: works on “strategic deterrence,” works on “asymmetrical measures,” and works on “strategic operations” (i.e., the highest form of combat activity of the Russian military).9 This splash of interest in Russian expert circles is a novel trend, but prevention itself is an old postulate.10

[NOTE: Prevention related to the Ukraine amassing 150,000 troops just outside of Donetsk, and beginning artillery preparation on the city. If they had made a fast-lightning attack into the urban area they would be holding almost one million hostages. That was unthinkable.]

The advocacy of prevention relates to the Russian perception of the “time factor” in modern war. The agility and speed of long-range hypersonic systems pose new threats—the U.S. “global missile defense” and “prompt global strike.” Experts argue that a massive strike by tens of thousands of missiles on the objects of the Russian civilian-military critical infrastructure, on the nuclear arsenal, and on the national command-and-control centers would result in a “military knockdown or knockout.” According to this estimate, the adversarial offensive and defensive (interception) capabilities nullify the Russian retaliation capacity—launch on warning and second strike. Thus, the only way to repulse the aggression properly is to preempt. The aim of preventive measures is to disrupt adversarial intentions. “Disruption of forthcoming aggression” (sryv agressii) becomes more important than success in the initial stage of war (which might be too late).¹¹

[NOTE: The concept of a first strike of 20,000 nuclear missiles (10’s of thousands), is a blowhard fantasy. In Okinawa during the Cuban Missile crisis there were seven nuclear launch teams, each with two missiles to fire. They couldn’t even coordinate the 3 or 4 stages of firing and arming orders, and the targets had nothing to do with Russia, (probably China). There is no indication that even half that number of missiles would be ready, or even that they would work? They are sitting there for decades; who says they would still function? Who inputs all the targets?]

At present, several Russian military experts present the nonnuclear preventive strike as the only viable option for Russian decision-makers to contain war. They see “prevention” as a separate category within the nomenclature of “asymmetrical military-technological measures aimed at deterring the adversary from initiating military conflict.” The definition applies to large-scale regional or local war, or to the transition of a simmering conflict into massive combat activities. In 2022 the Russian high command explicitly ordered that a theory of prevention by “asymmetrical military-technological means” be developed for the full range of conflicts. The end result would be a coherent deterrence concept that drives procurement, doctrine, and missions from the strategic to the operational-tactical echelons.¹²

Novel nonnuclear strategic weapon systems feature as the main tool of prevention.¹³ Proponents of this view call for the inclusion of “preventive strike” in the system of strategic operations. The novelty should supplement the “strategic operation for destruction of critically important objects.”¹⁴ In the experts’ estimate, as of 2021, the Russian armed forces possessed sufficient capabilities to execute such an asymmetrical response on the strategic level to deter large-scale war. However, the operational-tactical echelons lacked sufficient capabilities to prevent lower-intensity conflicts (i.e., regional wars and local conflicts with non-state adversaries).¹⁵ Evidence suggests that the MoD and the GS have charged uniformed theoreticians with developing doctrinal concepts and organizational modifications related to “preventive strategic strike.”

However, as of this writing, there is certain mishmash in the Russian references. Three questions loom large. ✓First, it is unclear how the notion of “prevention” relates to the Russian concepts of “strategic deterrence” (i.e., cross-domain coercion) and “escalation dominance” (i.e., intrawar coercion). ✓Second, on the doctrinal level, how will the concept of prevention, if codified officially, refer to other types of Russian strategic operations? Will there be a certain hierarchy among them?¹⁶ Similarly, it is important to establish the relationship between the concept of prevention and the Strategy of Active Defense and Strategy of Limited Actions, if these are at all relevant concepts after the war. ✓Finally, there is a question regarding the role of intelligence support for the decision to opt for a preemptive strike. Putin’s decision to embark on a preemptive war in Ukraine underscores this question. According to the Russian sources, “absolutely credible evidence about the inevitability of aggression” is a precondition for preventive strike.¹⁷ Such warning is universally expected from intelligence organs. Russian sources hint at certain novelties, which should emerge in the intelligence affairs related to prevention. The exact nature of these innovations is unclear and invites a separate exploration.¹⁸

2. Emerging Technologies and Chemical Weapons

How does the Russian expert community see the impact of emerging technologies, in particular AI and the new generation of chemical weapons, on the conceptualization of coercion?

During the last decade the Russian expert community, like their colleagues worldwide, has been exploring the impact of emerging technologies on the art of coercion. Several competing schools of thought have produced a corpus of knowledge on this matter.¹⁹ There is sufficient data to explore the following questions. Do Russian experts see emerging technologies as an enabler of or an obstacle to coercion in the nuclear, conventional, sub-conventional, and informational realms? How, in the Russian view, does human-machine dialectics project on the postulates of coercion? Can machines substitute for men to conceptualize the rationale of an adversary and design an operational plot for deterrence and “compellence” campaigns? Or are machines limited to supporting the mechanical aspects of combat planning and execution of a human-made operational plot? How does AI relate to strategic intuition? Can it produce counterintuitive plots beyond human imagination? What are the objective and human-imposed limits of AI in coercion operations? Which decisions should, and which should not be delegated to machines based on strategic, ideological, and normative considerations? Which schools of thought exist on each subject matter in the Russian military? There has been a massive exodus of Russian IT experts during the war. Will this brain drain affect the Russian attitude to the above questions? Will it shape a preference for certain tools of coercion over others?

The process through which emerging technologies are changing the character of war is known as a revolution in military affairs (RMA). RMA is not about technology per se, but about the capacity to envision its doctrinal and organizational implications. Funds for technological R&D and procurement do not guarantee that a military organization can anticipate an RMA or exploit it properly. The Soviet military outperformed its more technologically advanced and wealthier competitors in the U.S. in grasping the shifts in the character of war at the dawn of the IT era, during the 1980s. Today, again, Russia is among the world leaders in exploring the implications of AI for security affairs, including the strategy of coercion. Comparing and contrasting the Russian discourse on the above topics with parallel discussions in the West is a promising line of inquiry. Where do these discussions diverge and converge? Where do Russian experts agree and disagree with their Western counterparts exploring similar questions? Are there any topics that feature in the Russian debate that the Western exploration has overlooked?

The new generation of chemical weapons is another related line of inquiry. During the last decade chemical weapons have drawn increasing attention in Russian strategic thought. Russian experts have been learning lessons about the coercive and battlefield potential of this capability. Apparently, research and development of a new generation of chemical weapons, in particular nonlethal munitions, has been conducted at a certain scale. Russian discourse mentions this capability in several regards. First, it features as a tool of informational coercion, when staged false flag operations are used to justify subsequent escalatory steps, conventional or nonconventional.²⁰ In addition, it has emerged as another intermediate stage within the complex of pre-nuclear deterrence. Nonlethal chemical weapons that do not violate legal prohibitions represent an innovative capability that features as a battlefield tool and tool of intrawar coercion.²¹ On the escalation ladder, nonlethal chemical weapons may precede coercion by conventional fire systems. As such, they are akin to cyber and radio-electronic means of engagement in the transitional stage from nonforceful to forceful coercion.

What role is Russian military theory likely to attribute to these emerging capabilities? Which lessons will Russian experts take from the war in Ukraine about the coercive potential of these weapons? Are chemical weapons seen as an instrument of strategic signaling, a coercion tool, or part of the battlefield arsenal? What is the perceived effectiveness of each application according to Russian sources? How do ideas on chemical weapons correspond with the cross-domain coaction (i.e., strategic deterrence) theory? How do Russian experts see this capability in relation to nuclear and nonnuclear tools of coercion? As of this writing, these questions have been underexplored in the West.

3. Evolution of Informational Coercion

What is the Russian mechanism to deter mental and cultural aggression?

The Russian corpus of knowledge on informational coercion is significant, albeit still minor as compared to its nuclear and conventional analogues. Although the Russian expert community has been developing this knowledge almost in parallel with the other two, an official policy of informational deterrence is nonexistent as of this writing. (2025) It should come as no surprise if the topic gains higher prominence as part of the updates of state policy in the field of informational security.²²

In the latter realm, Russian practitioners frame the confrontation with the collective West as a “civilizational contest.”²³ They attribute to their adversaries a quest “to change the Russian cultural code,” reprogram the national DNA, and “transform Russian strategic culture.”²⁴ The argument runs as follows: the aim of foreign influence is to discredit the value system of the ruling elite and inject alien ideology and fake norms. The end goal is to control the mentality of the population and establish bogus national interests in the collective consciousness.²⁵ Subversive change of the value system forces the victim to voluntarily make ideological concessions, which in turn leads to geopolitical, military, and economic acquiescence. The adversary destroys the victim’s state-social management system,²⁶ and demoralizes and neutralizes the military without resort to kinetic violence.²⁷

In recent years, three themes—“mental wars,” “spiritual security,” and “strategic culture”—have been central to the Russian discourse on informational coercion. These concepts are interrelated. Since the 2000s the term spiritual security has appeared in the Russian national security white papers as an object of defense and deterrence.²⁸ The concept of “mental war” is a recent official variation on the theme of informational-psychological security.²⁹ In parallel, the argument that Russia’s adversaries aim to reshape Russian strategic culture has been gathering momentum.

How do Russian experts conceptualize the coercion mechanism in mental war? How do they plan to deter adversarial efforts to transform Russia’s traditional values and strategic culture? Which countermeasures, passive and active, do they contemplate employing? Are noninformational, i.e., forceful means of deterrence conceivable for this task? Do they take asymmetrical threats into consideration and how do they imagine a symmetrical response—reshaping the strategic culture of the adversaries? How might the Kremlin use religion for purposes of coercion and counter-coercion? The Russian Orthodox Church has been the Kremlin’s comrade-in-arms in several national security enterprises prior to³⁰ and during the war.³¹ The church collaborates with the state to ensure the loyalty, patriotism and morale-spiritual fortitude of the citizens. How do the Russian experts view the targeting of adversarial spiritual security? Do they envision the leveraging of religion to morally and spiritually decompose the decadent West? These are promising avenues of future inquiry.

4. Religion and Coercion

How does religion relate to strategic deterrence? In this war, the Kremlin fostered its image as a faith-driven actor to enhance coercive potential. How effective has this strategy been? How likely is the Kremlin to exploit this approach in future?

Since the Soviet collapse, the nuclear arsenal in Russia has been steadily acquiring a divine aura. Moscow started the war at the peak of a three-decade-old nexus between the Orthodox Church and the nuclear forces—a singularity known as Russian nuclear orthodoxy. It is based on a public belief, with which Putin himself concurs, that in order to preserve its traditional (i.e., Orthodox) national character, Russia needs to ensure its being a strong nuclear power; and vice versa, to guarantee its nuclear status, it has to preserve traditional values as the main source of internal spiritual-moral well-being. Some aspects of this phenomenon have been only a ritualistic façade; not everyone has subscribed to the notion. However, it does illustrate the zeitgeist—a mixture of politicized religious philosophy and militarism.³²

Prior to the war this combination had already gained prominence in Russian politics. The political myths of Holy Rus’, the Third Rome, and Russia’s civilizational role have become applied notions.³³ Putin’s philosophical views have become integrated into his geopolitical vision and policy choices. At times, his rhetoric has been replete with religious-metaphysical ideas and apocalyptic figures of speech³⁴ in relation to nuclear weapons and beyond.³⁵ The Kremlin merged strategic and religious justifications behind the gambits in Crimea³⁶ and the Middle East³⁷ and has provided the messianic branding for the war in Ukraine.

Several factors account for this peak of messianic fervor. In prewar Russia, the hard-nosed pragmatism of the authoritarian regime,³⁸ conservatism,³⁹ nostalgia for imperial greatness,⁴⁰ and a religious sense of historical mission⁴¹ drove the Kremlin’s policies. Religious motives have not ultimately informed Russian statecraft. However, the public representation of Russia as a katechon, a shield against the apocalyptic forces of evil, has become omnipresent and predated the war in Ukraine.⁴² Such an approach resonates with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has its own imperial and military propensities.⁴³ Finally, the traditional Russian glorification of “death on military duty”—an act of martyrdom on behalf of fellow compatriots, brothers in arms, and Holy Russia—has seen a revival. In Russian military discourse, this combat duty to “lay down one’s life for one’s friends” has the connotation of a religious commandment. Presenting the killed in action as martyrs has been a trend since the Syrian operation.⁴⁴ It is a leitmotif of the agitprop in Ukraine.⁴⁵

Prior to the war scholars had registered the Kremlin’s use of religion to promote its national security goals.⁴⁶ Arguing that the Russian leadership is unlikely to test its martyrdom,⁴⁷ some have categorized the religious rhetoric as reflexive control.⁴⁸ Others concur that the image of a faith-driven decision-maker can contribute to bargaining.⁴⁹ In war, apparently, the Kremlin has started to exploit its reputation as a faith-driven actor to enhance the credibility of its coercive signaling. Putin has framed this war in almost transcendental terms, and has promoted his messianic image in the eyes of competitors.

The logic behind this choice is as follows: the image of being a staunch religious believer provides an actor with a reputation, which secular actors lack. Religious actors come across as being undeterrable, an image that enhances the credibility of their threats in coercive bargaining and makes their competitors question the relevance of classical deterrence.⁵⁰ The faith-driven strategic actor, along the lines of the “madman theory,” opts for extreme preferences—i.e., perceives the costs of war as being unusually low, attributes unusually high value to the issue at stake, for which apparently there is no reason to fight, has an unusually high tolerance of risk,⁵¹ and demonstrates a readiness to bet against the odds.

Do the Kremlin and its propagandists intentionally blend nuclear posturing with eschatological rhetoric to enhance coercive signaling? On the assumption that the Kremlin deliberately exploited the image of a faith-driven actor to foster coercion, how effective is it during the war in Ukraine? What lessons have Russian strategists learned from this episode? Are the Western analytical models adequate for diagnosing prospective Russian conduct? What lessons for general deterrence theory does this episode offer? The inclination to merge messianic rhetoric and escalatory signaling may extend beyond the war in Ukraine and beyond Putin’s tenure in the Kremlin. Without overstating the probability of this eventuality, it is safe to assume that the Kremlin will maintain ambiguity on this issue, increasing Western confusion.⁵² Thus, exploration of the above questions may be a separate avenue of research both for Russia watchers and for scholars of coercion theory.

5. Brutality, Coercion, and the Russian Way of War

Does the Russian military intentionally utilize brutality for coercion purposes? If so, what are the driving forces behind this strategy, its rationale and mechanism? [This was certainly part of Lenin’s civil war.]

Brutality in war refers to individual atrocities conducted by soldiers on the ground, intentional targeting of civilian objects, and acts of collective punishment including starvation, instigating a refugee and humanitarian crisis and scaring away the population by conventional and nonconventional strikes or the threat of them. Have the massive civilian casualties and collateral damage been unavoidable consequences of war, or an intentional operational design of the Russian command in this war? Drawing initial lessons from the battlefields of Ukraine, several Western experts have assumed that the Russian military has been compensating with atrocities for poor battlefield performance. Others have assumed that Russia weaponizes brutality as a tool of coercion. On this view, atrocity is a deliberate choice aimed at terrorizing the enemy forces and population and coercing them into submission. In a nutshell, this means that the Russian theory of victory combines fighting and coercive terrorization.

If the brutality attributed to the Russian forces operating in Ukraine was indeed a massive phenomenon and not an exceptional episode, what can explain it? Does it manifest a deeply rooted, distinct style of war? Does it express the general, nonmilitary Russian culture? Or is it in line with other examples of military brutality worldwide that derives from situational factors, such as the degradation of humanity in war, coupled with frustration at the lack of achievements? Was brutality in Ukraine a bottom-up phenomenon, a top-down directive, or a combination of both? How long-lasting and deep-rooted is this phenomenon?

One should differentiate between two interrelated albeit distinct issues. One question concerns the social-cultural sources of Russian brutality on the level of the individual soldier, who is a product of Russian society in a given historical epoch. This question relates to the culture of brutality in the armed forces and beyond, in all aspects of Russian life during the last several generations. If one’s dignity is trampled on in the garrison and if one has been brutalized in all spheres of everyday life since childhood, one is likely to do the same in war. The other question concerns the extent to which the military command and political leadership deliberately exploit this somewhat organically engrained brutality for the purposes of coercion.

In the Soviet and Russian military, even if brutality on a massive scale has occurred and then been exploited for the purposes of intimidation, there was no written doctrine or order sanctioning this type of activity.⁵³ It is unclear, as of this writing, which of the atrocities in Ukraine were ordered by the political leadership and high command, and which occurred due to the tacit permission, or even encouragement, of the officers on the ground. Apparently, in most of the cases, the initial impulse came from rank-and-file soldiers on the ground, and commanders on various levels seem to have preferred not to intervene and thereby encouraged the spread of the phenomenon.

The deep mechanics of this phenomenon in Russia, its patterns and connection to organizational and strategic cultures and to civil-military relations, have been underexplored. This invites a long list of research questions. Did the Russian political leadership and military command intentionally unleash atrocities to coerce Ukraine into unconditionally surrendering? If the utilization of brutality was a deliberate choice, how did the high command envision the coercive mechanism of this tactic? Does the Russian military possess a stratagem, written or unwritten, of intentionally targeting civilians for the sake of coercion? Under what circumstances do the Russian rank and file, and the military organization as a whole, become more prone to committing atrocities? Which factors incline the political leadership and military command to utilize this propensity for coercion? What makes this propensity increase or decrease? What should we expect in future military campaigns? If there is a deliberate intent to use brutality to coerce, is there a division of organizational labor in this regard? What is the role of Rossgvardia, the internal military troops, an extension of the NKVD military units, which conducted most of the coercive and punitive operations?

If the utilization of brutality is indeed an established coercive stratagem, then how do Russian servicemen and the Russian public come to terms with this development? Have additional formative experiences left an imprint? What was the impact of the brutalization observed and possibly absorbed from foreign militaries by the Russian armed forces? A certain number of Russian commanders have been exposed to such coercive performance in recent conflicts by local militaries in the Middle East and Africa, in Syria in particular. There have been claims that Russian forces deliberately used such coercive tactics in tandem with the Syrian military. Coercive manipulation of the civilian population has been evident in the functioning of the Russian reconciliation centers in Syria. Has there been an intentional or subconscious emulation of the foreign culture of war, which proved to be effective? What lessons have the Russians learned from Syria? To what extent have these lessons been applied during the war in Ukraine, if at all? All of the above can be a separate avenue of prospective research.

[I will add this doubtful note; I find this section number 5 completely “far-fetched”. All brutality I have read about was committed by Ukrainians. In the territories of combat, all the civilians are Russian speakers, and those are the people that the military has come to liberate. I think that is obvious to everyone. Of course, the opposite is true. The Ukrainian army is fighting on the land of Russian speakers. Even their national policy is to HATE Russians. Furthermore, all proxy armies are terrorist operations, because they cannot have the same depth as a non-proxy army.] It is interesting to note how this author has given so much space to alleged Russian terrorism.

6. Foreign Sources of Learning

As the Russian expert community continues to develop knowledge on coercion theory and practice, does it have any foreign sources of intellectual inspiration? Is the Russian pivot to Asia going to project on the Russian conceptualization of coercion? Is any intellectual stimulus from China likely to supplement the traditional Russian tendency to learn from the West?

Prior to the war, and even more so after it started, Russia has been pivoting to Asia.⁵⁴ This strategic reorientation may bring with it an intellectual predisposition. As regards the conceptual inspirations in the matter of coercion, (through multi-level deterrence), Russian experts have been absorbing intellectual stimuli from both East and West. They have acknowledged variance in the approaches across different strategic cultures and sought to cultivate the Russian style while critically examining foreign evidence.⁵⁵ Traditionally, in the realm of informational coercion, as in many other domains, the main source of inspiration has been the West. The U.S. cyber innovations have been the principal frame of reference for Russian knowledge development, modernization of capabilities, and conceptual-organizational transformations. However, somewhat in contrast to the nuclear and conventional realms, in the informational sphere growing attention is also being paid to the Chinese experience during the last decade. Russian experts are closely following Chinese conceptual innovations in the field of informational, network-centric, and cyber warfare(s). Russian sources are learning from the Chinese approach to informational and cyber deterrence and are familiar with the U.S. views on the Chinese approach.⁵⁶

An interest in the Chinese approach and its appeal to Russian experts is somewhat unsurprising. Chinese discourse, in particular in the informational sphere, parallels the Russian approach in at least three regards: both imply a certain level of constant operational friction; both see perception as the center of gravity; and both merge under one rubric the notions of deterrence and compellence. According to Russian sinologists, the Chinese term for deterrence, veishe, implies deterrence—forcing the enemy to break off aggressive actions against China (zastavit’ otkazatsia ot vrazhdebnykh deistvii)—and compellence—forcing the enemy to commit actions in the interest of China. As such, both veishe and deterrence à la Russe are closer to the Western notion of coercion.⁵⁷ Consequently, it may be useful to establish whether and to what extent the Chinese approach informs the Russian. Do these similarities represent Russian conceptual emulations of the Chinese case? Or does this convergence between the approaches derive from factors unrelated to learning and is owing to certain similarities in strategic culture, military thought, and style of warfare?

7. Deterrence Scholarship and Cross-Cultural Research

Do Western and non-Western practitioners tend to blur the line between coercion and war fighting? If so, what are the sources and consequences of this phenomenon? Exploring this question is a promising line of work for the current wave of deterrence scholarship in Western academic circles.

The “fourth wave” of deterrence literature, especially the notion of a “tailored approach,” has informed these arguments. Further, the latter’s findings correspond with certain claims of the so-called “fifth wave” of scholarship.⁵⁸ the current research program on deterrence. Arguably, the Russian case demonstrates a blurring of the line between coercion and war fighting. Available evidence suggests that this apparently is not unique to deterrence à la Russe. Rather, the current character of war predisposes both Western and non-Western communities of practice to adopt a similar approach to “deterrence.”

Various actors demonstrate this propensity in different domains, some in the informational realm and others in conventional deterrence. Preliminary observations suggest that this trend has been evident among those communities of practice that operate under one or more of the following conditions: 1) actors who have formulated applied deterrence theory to inform their operational planning; 2) actors who have conducted this conceptualization against the backdrop of protracted conflicts punctuated by outbreaks of kinetic clashes, usually limited in time and scope; 3) actors who have developed coercion schemes for the nonnuclear realms but against the backdrop of their nuclear arsenals. In all these cases, preexisting strategic traditions have been shaping the approach of a given actor to the conceptualization of coercion.

Limited use of force (i.e., permanent low-level operational friction) became an integral element of informational and noninformational coercion during the last decade worldwide. This regular, albeit limited, use of force makes it difficult to differentiate where coercion ends and where war fighting starts. This line was once somewhat conceptually clear. Now practitioners worldwide tend to obscure it. For example, the U.S. approach in the cyber realm (i.e., “persistent engagement”) demonstrates this inclination. The current Israeli approach to conventional deterrence, also known as “campaign between the wars” (mabam), and the Iranian doctrine of “forward defense” for deterrence (bazdarandagi) illustrate the same trend.⁵⁹ The Chinese conceptualization of deterrence implies a certain level of constant operational friction to realize its coercive goals.⁶⁰ Western strategic studies distinguish between deterrence and use of brute force. Evidence from all the above cases challenges this classic academic taxonomy.

Is there still a benefit to making this theoretical distinction? If so, what are the criteria for making it? Comparative cross-cultural research on this matter has the potential to advance deterrence theory. Future works can either refute or refine the above proposition. Such exploration will also advance knowledge on variations and congruence in the conceptualization of coercion under the impact of cultural factors and on mutual influence among strategic communities worldwide. Are there any additional peculiarities in other national approaches to coercion strategy, within and outside the Western world? Do practitioners in strategic communities worldwide learn from each other? How does the knowledge diffuse? Who serves for whom as the source of inspiration and who emulates whom? These questions are, as of this writing, underexplored. Research on this matter lies at the intersection of the current waves of literature on strategic culture and deterrence theory.

NOTES:

9. For example, see V. V. Kruglov and A. S. Shubin, “O vozrastaiuschem znachenii uprezhdeniia v deistviiakh,” VM, no. 12 (December 2021): 27–34; V. V. Selivanov and Iu. D. Il’in, “Kontesptsiia voenno-teknicheskogo assimetrichnogo otveta po sderzhivaniiu veroiatnogo protivnika ot razviazivaniia voennykh konfliktov,” VM, no. 2 (February 2022): 31–47; V. B. Zarudnitskii, “Faktory dostizheniia pobedy v voennykh konfliktah budusschego,” VM, no. 8 (August 2021): 34–47; A. A. Bartosh, “Sderzhivanie I prinuzhdenie v strategii gibridnoi voiny,” VM, no. 9 (September 2021).

10. It also has intellectual sources in the Tsarist and Soviet traditions, often under the rubric of surprise strike (vnezapnoe napadenie/udar). Russian experts who popularize prevention in contemporary operations acknowledge that it corresponds with such “principles of military art” as “seizure of initiative, decisiveness, activism and continuity of action, surprise and military cunningness (deceit of adversary).” Kruglov and Shubin, VM, December 2021.

11. Kruglov and Shubin, VM, December 2021.

12. Selivanov and Il’in, VM, February 2022.

13. Military experts designate hypersonic air- and naval-based precision-guided missiles as the most effective tool for preventive strikes (oruzhie uprezhdaiuschikh udarov) and call for establishing a new form of operations—preventive strategic strike (strategicheskii udar) (i.e., missile air-naval preventive strike). Authors refer to the Avantgard, Sarmat, Tsikron, Kinzhal, and Paseidon hypersonic cruise and ballistic missiles as the main tools of such a strike. Selivanov and Il’in, VM, February 2022.

14. Kruglov and Shubin, VM, December 2021.

15. Selivanov and Il’in, VM, February 2022.

16. In particular, this refers to “repulsion of aero-space aggression,” “strike on critical infrastructure,” and “unified strategic operation on the theater of military operations.”

17. Kruglov and Shubin, VM, 2021; Selivanov and Il’in, VM, February 2022.

18. Apparently, this refers to warning about adversarial preparations for attack, rather than an alarm to enable “launch on warning” when the enemy strike is on its way.

19. The notion of a tekhnosfera appears to be a general rubric under which ideas on the impact of emerging technologies on strategy have been discussed. A. A. Kokoshin, “Perspektivy razvtiia nauchnoi tekhnosfery I budushee voin I neboevogo primenenia voennoi sily,” Vestnik AVN 67, no. 2 (2019): 26–29.

20. For example see V. A. Kovtun, D. P. Supotnitskii, and N. I. Shilo, “Siriiskaia Khimicheskaia Voina,” Vestnik RKhBZ 2, no. 3 (2018): 7–39; V. A. Kovtun, A. N. Golipal, and A. V. Melnikov, “Khimicheskii terrorism kak silovoi instrument provedeniia vneshnei politiki SShA I stran Zapada,” Vestnik Voisk RHBZ 1, no. 2 (2017): 12–13; A. Ordin, “Rossiiskaia diplomatiia I problema khimicheskogo oruzhiia,” Vestnik uchenykh mezhdunarodnikov 3, no. 17 (2021): 22–32; S. Koshelev and V. Sumenkov, “Napravleniia sovershenstvovaniia radiatsionnoi, khimicheskoi I biologicheskoi zaschiti v sovremennykh usloviiakh,” Voennaia Mysl’, no. 1 (2022): 108–20; R. P. Koshkin, “Ugroza primeneniia khimicheskogo I biologicheskogo oruzhiia,” Strategicheskie Prioritety 18, no. 2 (2018): 25–39.

21. For example see V. Moiseev, “Oruzhie neletal’nogo deistviia kak sredstvo voenno-silovogo vozdeistviia (kompleksnogo porazheniia protivnika), Voennaia Mysl’, no. 11 (2021): 41–48; A. Zaitsev, “Novyi mirovoi poriadok kak istoricheskaia neobkhodimost’ I ispol’zvonaie oruzhiia neletal’nogo deistviia,” Trudy BGTU: Istoriia I Filosophia 1, no. 245 (2012): 107–11; D. V. Zaitsev, A. V. Kozlov, and V. M. Moiseev, “Rol’ i mesto oruzhiia neletal’nogo deistviia v konflitkah nizkoi intenstivnosti,” Strategicheskaia Stabil’nost’ 4, no. 61 (2012): 27–35; L. N. Il’in and V. V. Rylin, “O nekotorykh aspektakh primimenniia otravliaiuschikh veschestv neletal’nogo deistviia,” Voennaia Mysl’, no. 12 (2018): 87–91; D. Iu. Soskov, S. F. Sergeev, and D. V. Zaitsev, “Primenenie oruzhiia neletal’nogo deistviia v usloviiakh vnutrennego vooruzhennogo konflikta,” Voennaia Mysl’, no. 4 (2018): 55–61; D. Soskov, D. Zaitsev, V. Kornilov, and E. Lozhkin, “Oruzhie neletelnogo deistviia,” Arsenal Otechestva 55, no. 5 (2021): 70–74; V. V. Selivanov, D. P Levin, and Iu. D. Il’in, “Metodologicheskie voprosy razvitiia oruzhiia neletalnogo deistviia,” Voennaia Mysl’, no. 2 (2015): 10–22; L. N. Il’in and V. V. Rylin, “Inkapasitanty kak oruzhie neletalnogo deistviia,” Voennaia Mysl’, no. 9 (2014): 37–42; A. A. Kuz’min, E. V. Ivchenko, and A. B Seleznev, “Irritanty: sovremennoe pereosmyslenie aktual’nosti dlia VS I perspektivy sozdaniia medetsinskih sredstv zaschiti,” Vestnik Rossiiskoi Voenno-Medetsinskoi Akademii 3, no. 71 (2020): 188–93; N. V. Kurdil’ and A. V. Ivaschenko, “Sovremennye boevye khimicheskie sredstva nesmertel’nogo deistviia: toksikologicheskie I klinicheskie aspekty,” Medetsina neotlozhnykh sostoianii 1, no. 64 (2015): 11–19; V. B. Antipov, and S. V. Novichkov, “Otsenka normativno-pravovoi bazy primeneniia VS RF neletal’nykh sredstv porazheniia na khimicheskoi osnove,” Voennaia Mysl’, no. 5 (2012): 56–60.

22. “Zasedanie Soveta Bezopasnosti,” kremlin.ru, March 26, 2021.

23. Bartosh, 2018; Podberezkin, 2017; A. I. Vladimirov, Osnovy obscheii teorii voiny (Moscow: Sinergiia, 2013), 1, 49. This framing is somewhat similar to the Western notion of “great-power competition.” However, the Russian expression is deeper and broader than the Western term, which implicitly refers to the current geopolitical competition of the U.S. with the incumbent regimes in Moscow and Beijing. This term is usually absent from the lexicon of the Russian practitioners. See “Why Isn’t Russia Talking About the Great Power Competition?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 27, 2021; Bartosh, 2018, 8. Russian defense experts emphasize the work of Samuel Huntington to illustrate the essence of the current great-power competition and to justify adjustments in the art of military strategy. For example, see Vladimirov, 2019; Podberezkin, 2017, 412–13. See similar assertions on the societal aspect of modern warfare in Suchkov and Teck, 23.

24. Bartosh, Strategicheskaia kul’tura.

25. Bartosh, 2018, 15–17. For an illustration of this approach in the Middle East, see E. O. Savchenko, “Specifika primeneniia isntrumentov vneshnepoliticheskoi strategii SShA na Blizhnem Vostoke,” VM (December 2018): 5–17.

26. A. I. Podberezkin, Sovremennaia Voennaia Politika Rossii (Moscow: MGIMO, 2017), 373–588.

27. I. M. Popov and M. M. Khazmatov, Voina Buduschego: Kontseptual’nye Osnovy I Prakticjhecheskie Vovody (Moscow: Kuchkovo Pole, 2016), 832–33; Podberzkin, 2017, 386–87. For the “moral-spiritual” decomposition of the armed forces, see Maxim Suchkov and Seam Teck, Buduschie Voiny (Moscow: Valdaiskii Kluv, 2019), 10; V. T. Dotsenko, “Psihologicheskaia gotovnsot’ voennosluzhaschikh,” VM, no. 1 (2019): 87–99; L. A. Kolosova, A. A. Tomilov, R. B. Beliaev, and A. E. Sergienko, “Moral’no-psihologicheskoe obespechenie deiatel’nosti voisk v boevykh usloviiakh kak sistema,” VM, no. 2 (2019): 79–86; Bartosh, “Strategiia i kontr-strategiia.”

28. Doktrina informatzionnoi bezopasnosti RF, December 5, 2016; A. V. Skrypnik, “O Vozmozhnom Podkhode k Opredeleniyu i Mesta Oruzhiya Napravlennoi Elektromagnitnoi Energii v Mekhanizme Silovogo Strategicheskogo Sderzhivanya,” Vooruzhenia I Ekonomika 3, no. 19 (2012), cited in Dave Johnson, “Russia’s Deceptive Nuclear Policy,” Survival 63, no. 3 (July 2021): 123–42; Dave Johnson, correspondence, June 2021. Also see Maxim Suchkov, “Whose Hybrid Warfare?” Small Wars and Insurgencies 32, no. 3 (2021).

29. Editorial, “Sovetnik Shoigu zaiavil o mental’oi voine SShA protiv Rossii,” Kommersant, March 25, 2021; Editorial, “Psikhologicheskaia Oborona: informatsionnoe protivoborstvo v uslviikh mental’noi voiny,” Forum Army 2021, MO RF, August 2021.

30. Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics and Strategy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019); Michael Kofman, “Blessed Be Thy Nuclear Weapons: The Rise of Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy,” War on the Rocks, June 21, 2019; Nikolas Gvosdev, “How the ROC Influences Russia’s Behavior,” National Interest, July 8, 2019; Suchkov, 2021.

31. The ROC is providing moral support and justification for the Kremlin’s strategy and operations and boosting the troops’ morale. Dmitry Adamsky, “Russia Botched Its Early Propaganda Campaign,” Foreign Policy, April 30, 2022.

32. Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, “Russian Orthodox Church and Nuclear Command and Control: A Hypothesis,” Security Studies 28, no. 5 (2019). Also see Boris Knorre and Aleksei Zygmont, “Military Piety in the 21st Century Orthodox Christianity: Return to Classical Traditions of Formation of a New Theology of War?” Religions 11, no. 2 (2020): 1–17.

33. Mihail Suslov, “The Utopia of Holy Rus’ in Today’s Geopolitical Imagination,” Plural 2, no. 1 (2014): 81–97; Dmitrii Sidorov, “Post-Imperial Third Rome,” Geopolitics 1 (2006): 317–47; Jardar Ostbo, The New Third Rome (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2016).

34. Zhanna Neigebaur, “Korni Rossiiskogo Atomnogo Pravoslaviia,” Discourse, August 20, 2019; Marlene Laruelle, Russian Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 2019); Maria Engstrom, “Contemporary Russian Messianism,” Contemporary Security Policy 35, no. 3, (2014): 365–79; “Contemporary Russian Messianism,” in Lena Jonson and Andrei Erofeev, eds., Russia-Art Resistance and the Conservative-Authoritarian Zeitgeist (New York: Routledge, 2017); Nadezhda Arbatova, “Three Faces of Russia’s Neo-Eurasianism,” Survival 61, no. 6 (2019).

35. Editorial, “Aggressors Will Be Annihilated,” Moscow Times, October 19, 2018; “Putin otvetil na vopros o blizosti k raiu,” RIA Novosti, October 3, 2019. Milena Faustova and Andrei Mel’nikov, “Torzhestvo Iadernogo Pravolsaviia Otkladivaiut na Osen’,” NG Religii, May 31, 2021. Also see Pavel Korobov, “Miry Miro: V RPTs Razrabotiali Dokument o Blagoslovlenii Voennykh I Ikh Oruzhiia,” Kommersant, June 1, 2021.

36. “Krym imeet dlia Rossii sakral’noe znachenie,” RIA Novosti, December 4, 2014.

37. Marlene Laruelle, “Russia’s Mediterranean Call,” ODR, November 9, 2018; Curanovic, 2018; “Pravo pervim podniatsia v ataku.”

38. David Lewis, Russia’s New Authoritarianism: Putin and the Politics of Order (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).

39. Marlene Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021); Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2019); Glenn Diesen, Russian Conservatism: Managing Change under Permanent Revolution (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021).

40. Jeffrey Mankoff, Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021).

41. Alicija Curanovic, The Sense of Mission in Russian Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2021); Maria Engstrom, “Contemporary Russian Messianism and New Russian Foreign Policy,” Contemporary Security Policy 35, no. 3 (2014): 356–79.

42. Maria Engstrom argues that “Russia’s eschatological mission, as expressed through the concept of Russia as katechon/restrainer,” was formulated in neoconservative circles in the early 2000s by Aleksandr Dugin and Egor Kholmogorov. According to this doctrine, Russia’s mission to protect the world from evil must be carried out by any means—military, spiritual, and cultural. Maria Engstrom, “Daughter-Land: Contemporary Russian Messianism and Neo-conservative Visually,” in Lena Jonson and Andrei Eorfeev, eds., Russia-Art Resistance and the Conservative-Authoritarian Zeitgeist (London: Routledge, 2017), 84–103. Also see Engstrom, 2014. One indication of the omnipresence of religion in politics may be the fact that church-state relations have turned into one of the most serious cleavages and deepest dividing lines in Russian society. Dmitry Uzlaner, “Konets pravolsavnogo konsensusa: religiia kak novyo raskol rossiiskogo obschestva,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 3, no. 163 (2020).

43. Some of the sources of this activism have been unrelated to national security. Driven by an internal social-political interest to increase the numbers of practicing males (over the diminishing but still female majority of the ROC congregations), the ROC during the last decades has been intentionally emphasizing “normative masculinity in the Orthodox environment.” Boris Knorre, “Masculine Strategies in Russian Orthodoxy: From Asceticism to Militarization,” in K. Bluhm, G. Pickhan, J. Stypesnka, and A. Wierzchloska, eds., Gender and Power in Eastern Europe (London: Springer, 2020).

44. Scholars attribute this martyrdom fetish to “the post-atheist vacuum,” which the depoliticized and de-ideologized military has been seeking to fill. For example, see Elina Kahla, “Why Did the Seamen Have to Die? The Kursk Tragedy and the Evoking of Old Testament Blood Sacrifice,” in Katri Pynnoniemi, ed., Nexus of Patriotism and Militarism in Russia (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021). Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, “Christ-Loving Warriors: Ecclesiastical Dimension of the Russian Military Campaign in Syria,” Problems of Post-Communism (2019); “Christ-Loving Diplomats: Russian Ecclesiastical Diplomacy in Syria,” Survival 61, no. 6 (January 2020): 49–68.

45. Adamsky, 2022.

46. Jacub Grygiel, “Russia’s Orthodox Grand Strategy,” American Interest, April 2020; Govsdev, 2019; Brad Roberts, “The Bishops and the Bomb, Take Two,” Jon Askonas, “The ROC and the Russian Nuclear Complex,” Irina do Quenoy, “Getting Comfortable with Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy,” and Anya Fink, “Rhinestone Covered Icons at Russia’s Los Alamos,” in Book Review Roundtable, TNSR, September 18, 2019; James Sher and Kaarel Kullamaa, “The Russian Orthodox Church: Faith, Power, and Conquest,” Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, 2019; Alicja Curanovic, The Religious Factor in Russia’s Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2012).

47. Olga Oliker, “Moving Beyond Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy,” in Book Review Roundtable, TNSR, September 18, 2019.

48. Clint Reach, Russia Seminar, Finnish National Defense University, February 2, 2021,

49. Maxim Suchkov, “Iadernoe Pravoslavie v voine buduschego,” Rossiia V Global’noi Politike, July 5, 2019.

50. Andreas Wenger and Alex Wilner, Deterring Terrorism: Theory and Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Alex Wilner, “Deterring the Undeterrable,” Journal of Strategic Studies 34, no. 1 (2011): 3–37; Emanuel Adler, “Complex Deterrence in the Asymmetric-Warfare Era,” in Paul, Morgan, and Wirtz, eds., Complex Deterrence; Shmuel Barr, “Religion in War in the 21st Century,” Comparative Strategy 39, no. 5 (2020): 443–74; “God, Nations, and Deterrence: The Impact of Religion on Deterrence,” Comparative Strategy 30, no. 5 (2011): 428–52.

51. Roseanne W. McManus, “Revisiting the Madman Theory,” Security Studies 28, no. 5 (2019): 976–1009.

52. Thomas Mahnken and Gillian Evans, “Ambiguity, Risk and Limited Great Power Conflict,” Strategic Studies Quarterly (Winter 2019): 57–76; Dave Johnson, 2021.

53. (Lenin was a specialist in brutality.) There have been outbreaks of wartime and peacetime brutality in Russian, Soviet, and Tsarist military history. In some of these cases the political leadership and military command initiated the atrocities. In other cases they deliberately utilized the incipient brutality to intimidate and coerce. Early Soviet experiences include the Red and White Terrors during the Civil War, the suppression of peasants’ anti-Bolshevik rebellions, followed by deportations and massive repression toward, during, and after the Great Patriotic War. These were acts of deliberate coercion. Innumerable incidents of rape and looting were reported, especially when the Red Army crossed the border into German territory. These were grassroots outbreaks, which the commanders decided not to stop. In more recent times, there have been documented examples of Russian brutality in Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Chechnya. However, the extent to which these were ordered from above or rather originated on the ground is a matter of debate. Similarly, there is a debate whether or not the leadership exploited this for coercive purposes. Nazi Germany possessed separate doctrines and separate military organizations for fighting and for punitive operations. It was the Wehrmacht that mainly executed the fighting, and it was the Einsatzgruppen that mainly conducted atrocities, although the missions of both organizations at times were interchangeable.

54. See for example Trenin and Lukianov, Russia in Global Affairs, April 2022.

55. The taxonomy of approaches usually features in the Russian discourse according to the archetypes, which they dub Anglo-Saxon (mainly equated with the U.S.), East-Asian (mainly equated with the Chinese), Roman-German (mainly that of continental Europe), and Islamic. A. V. Manoilo, Rol’ Kul’turno-Tsivilizatsionnykh Modelei I Tekhnologii Informatsionno-Psikhologicheskogo Vozdeistviia v Razreshenii Mezhdunarodnykh Konfliktov (PhD diss., MGU, 2009).

56. For example, see Timoti Tomas,”Kontseptsia kiber/informatsionnogo sderzhivaniia KNR: Mnenie iz SShA,” Digital Report, July 27, 2015. For the Western take on the Chinese approach, see Dean Cheng, “An Overview of Chinese Thinking about Deterrence,” in Deterrence in the 21st Century.

57. According to the Russian sources, veishe, as a term referring to coercion in all of its forms, is much older and richer than the Western analogue in terms of practical experience. S. A. Sebekin and A. V. Kostrov, “Voennaia filosofia Kitaia I kibervoina: traditsionnaia kontseptual’naia osnova dlia netraditsionnykh operatsii,” Mezhdunarodnye Ontosheniia 17, no. 3 (2019).

58. In the Russian conceptualization of informational deterrence, the focus is shifting away from the political leadership to political elites and society, its culture, values, and mentality. “Denial and resilience” are attributed the same importance as “punishment.” Finally, “deterrence of everything,” a buzzword associated with this wave, somewhat corresponds with the Russian concept of “strategic deterrence.” The latter is holistic, as it seeks to encompass the widest range of domains and tools of influence.

59. Amr Yussuf, “Military Doctrines in Israel and Iran: A Doctrinal Hybridity,” Middle Eastern Journal (forthcoming). Also see Guy Freedman, “Iranian Approach to Deterrence: Theory and Practice,” Comparative Strategy 36, no. 5 (2017): 400–412; Shamir and Inbar, “Mowing the Grass,” 2017; Adamsky, “From Israel with Deterrence,” 2017.

60. S. A. Sebekin and A. V. Kostrov, “Voennaia filosofia Kitaia I kibervoina: traditsionnaia kontseptual’naia osnova dlia netraditsionnykh operatsii,” Mezhdunarodnye Ontosheniia 17, no. 3 (2019.

.