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Outlook for Russia

Medvedev and Putin

The role Moscow plays regarding issues of interest to the United States is likely to turn on many factors, including developments on Russia’s periphery and the degree to which Russia perceives US policies as threatening to what its leadership sees as vital Russian interests.

There have been encouraging signs in the past year that Russia is prepared to be more cooperative with the United States, as illustrated by President Medvedev’s agreement last summer to support air transit through Russia of lethal military cargo in support of coalition operations in Afghanistan and Moscow’s willingness to engage with the United States on constructive ways to reduce the nuclear threat from Iran. I remain concerned, however, that Russia looks at relations with its neighbors in the former Soviet space—an area characterized by President Medvedev as Russia’s “zone of privileged interests”—largely in zero-sum terms, vis a vis the United States, potentially undermining the US-Russian bilateral relationship. Moscow, moreover, has made it clear it expects to be consulted closely on missile defense plans and other European security issues.

On the domestic front, Moscow faces tough policy choices in the face of an uptick in violence in the past year in the chronically volatile North Caucasus, which is fueled in part by a continuing insurgency, corruption, organized crime, clan competition, endemic poverty, radical Islamist penetration, and a lagging economy that is just beginning to recover from the global economic crisis. Some of the violence elsewhere in Russia, such as a deadly train bombing in late November 2009, may be related to instability in the North Caucasus.

In addressing nationwide problems, Medvedev talks about Russia’s need to modernize the economy, fight corruption, and move toward a more rule-of-law-based and pluralistic political system, but he faces formidable opposition within the entrenched elite who benefit from the status quo. Turbulence in global energy markets was a painful reminder to Moscow of the Russian economy’s overdependence on energy, dramatizing the need for constructive steps toward economic modernization and diversification. However, moving forward on issues such as reforming Russia’s state corporations or creating conditions more conducive to foreign investors could produce a backlash by those forces who might lose from competition.

The Military Picture

Russia continues to rely on an array of strategic and non-strategic nuclear forces, advanced aerospace defenses, and asymmetric capabilities as the military component of its security strategy. Russia is now implementing its most serious military reform plans in half a century and ultimately aims to shed the legacy of the Soviet mass mobilization army and create a leaner, more professional, more high-tech force over the next several years. Reform faces challenges from negative demographic trends, institutionalized corruption, and budget uncertainties in the wake of the global financial crisis.

• Moscow for the first time looked to the West to import modern weapons systems. Russia is pursuing post-START negotiations with the US while modernizing its nuclear triad to maintain a credible deterrent.

In the conventional forces realm, Moscow remains capable of militarily dominating the former Soviet space; although Russia’s experience in the August 2008 Georgia conflict revealed major shortcomings in the Russian military, it also validated previous reform efforts that sought to develop rapidly-deployable forces for use on its periphery. Russia continues to use its military in an effort to assert its great power status and to project power abroad, including through the use of heavy bomber aviation patrols, out-of-area naval deployments, and joint exercises; some of these activities can have greater demonstrative impact than operational military significance.

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