Study On Russian Military Strategy In The Post-Cold War

The Russian Army has been restructuring from the type of"Cold War"to"Post Cold War"during the last 20 years. In this process, The Russian military strategy has adjusted several times from"simple defensive"to"active defensive", from"reality containment"to"strategy containment"for different threat from different directions in different times. This paper discussed the strategic environment, the specific content and the technical basis of Russian military strategy after the Cold War, and then made assessment and fingered out the future trends. All of these discussions were organized around these questions about the new Russian military strategy: why, what, what for and how. The parts of the paper are as follow:Chapter One: Analysis of the strategic environment of Russian military in the Post-Cold War. This paper selected economic politic and military as the three basic elements of the strategy environment. During the process of exploring the inherent relationship and the transformation law between these three elements, this paper explained that the entire strategy environment impact on Russian military strategy at four levels as global, regional, peripheral and domestic. On this basis, analyzed the threats and challenges what Russia's military security faces to from west, south, central and east. And Reveal the deep reason of Russian strategy change after the Cold War.Chapter Two: The development history of Russian military strategy after the Cold War. On the basis of analysis the composition, characteristics and operation mechanism of Russian military strategic command system, the paper divided time after the Cold War into three parts with presidencies to demonstrated that Russia pursue the following strategies in sequence:"simple defensive","active defensive","reality containment", "strategy mobility based on nuclear containment"and"strategy containment", and then, analyzed the advantages and weaknesses of all the strategies above to build a framework to describe the military strategy of Russia.Chapter Three: Analysis of Russian strategy directions. By analyzing the act that Russia formatted the four joint strategy commands, this paper argued that Russia is implementing a double strategy system including military strategy of national unity and sub-strategy of directions. Currently, in Russian military strategy system, west is the major strategy direction while south is which the reality threat came from. This paper also anglicized the strategy details of all these direction. Russian present strategy is as fallow : in the west, it's comprehensive defensive strategy containment with stopping the military infrastructures of NATO and the US from propelling to the Russian border. as main objective, with the US as the main strategic rival, the principle of non-symmetrical as the basic principle, with comprehensive containment including nuclear and high-precision weapons containment as main strategy path, with Kaliningrad SAR as a strategic pivot, with the Russia-Belarus Union states as the geo-strategic basis. In the south, it's an active defensive strategy which made standing conventional forces as strategic means, clearing terrorists and armed gangs as realistic measure, countering NATO expansion and maintaining its dominant status in the Caucasus as strategic interests demands, win in armed conflicts with any rival within this region as objective. In the central, it's an union military strategy which has the main mission of consolidating and expanding Russia's benefit in politic, economic and security in Central Asia, the main goal of keeping Central Asia as its buffer zone while preventing other great powers from expansion, the approach of mixing bilateral and multilateral military cooperation, strengthening the military alliance with Central Asia countries and going even further in bringing these countries into military alliance organizations controlled by Russia itself. In the east, It is expressed as containment strategy for developing social and economic in eastern of Russia, to achieve the goal that protect the territorial integrity of the eastern region and keep the situation stable, making US-Japan military alliance as the main strategic adversary while China as key partner and potential rival, using nuclear containment as basic measure to avoid kinds of military conflicts.Chapter Four: The technical basis of Russian military strategy after the Cold War. Because of the tradition and reality that Russia attaches great importance to military technology, this paper analyzed the policies of military technology and the integrated system of defense industry of Russia. Simultaneously, the paper introduced the important weapon system especially strategy offensive weapons, strategy defensive ones and other key strategic weapons. The present Russian military strategy is made on the basis of the number of nuclear weapons that it owns and will own. The reason that Russia always put containment especially nuclear containment as the cornerstone of its military strategy is that Russia own advanced nuclear weapons and missile technology.Chapter Five: Assessment of Russian military strategy in the Post-Cold War. This chapter proposed the concept, framework and model of military strategy assessment. On this basis, the paper assessed national military strategy, national security strategy and international security strategy specially. The following aspects are assessed:First, if the strategic elements stay harmony in the military strategy framework, second, if these factors including military security, harmony between military, politic and economic strategy and national security are safeguarded. Third, if Russian military strategy is good for international security or not. Based on the assessment of Russian military strategy in the Post-Cold War, this paper predicted the future direction of Russia's military strategy. The predictions are as fallow: first, Russia's strategy of nuclear containment will expand during maintaining. Second, local offensive will strengthen while overall defensive maintains for a long time. Third, Russia will pay more attention to temporary alliances at the same time with fixing and improving the olds. Fourth, develop armed services strategy on the basis of strengthening the joint strategy construction.This paper innovated in the following aspects: First, this paper created a research model of double level system to analyze Russian military strategy with geopolitics as analysis tool in system theory. The double level system means that Russian military strategy can be described on two levels: the entirety level and regional level concluding four directions as west, central, south and east. While regional war had been the main war form what Russia faced with, this research model has important practical significance, especially the sub-strategy of regional level which may show the research direction of Russian military strategy.Second, the paper established a framework to assess Russian military strategy. It established a three-tier system which contained the military security, national security and international security strategy in a creative way. First, if the strategic elements stay harmony in the military strategy framework, second, if these factors including military security, harmony between military, politic and economic strategy and national security are safeguarded. Third, if Russian military strategy is good for international security or not. This assessment system ensured that the understanding of Russian military strategy could expand to international security field but not limited in Russia's own military security or overall security to investigate the influence to world peace and development.The research of Russian military strategy in the Post-Cold War is meaningful not only in theory but also in practice. As a main power and first-class military power, Russia's military strategy change is not just influenced by situation of global and regional political security but also with reaction. To China, Russia is the biggest neighbor and strategic cooperative partner, its military strategy change has important effect on China's national security. China is the first sponsor of world new military revolution. So finding out new ideas and theory what Russia put forward in military strategy and learning its experience and lessons are important for China to develop and improve her own theory of national security and army construction.