What deters Russia

Enduring principles for responding to Moscow

Research paper Updated 2 March 2023 ISBN: 978 1 78413 489 1

President Putin and Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu view flight data recorder from Russian jet shot down in Turkish airspace in November 2015

Keir Giles

Senior Consulting Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

Russia continues to use a variety of state and non-state levers of power to cause harm to Western governments, societies and people. Driven by a perception that it is already in conflict with the West, Moscow has progressively abandoned restraint and embarked on ever more damaging actions. This presents Western countries with an enduring challenge: how to deter or dissuade Russia from further excesses.

Repeated Western mistakes in recent years have encouraged, rather than deterred, this aggressive behaviour. The West must demonstrate both the political will and ability to defend itself against such behaviour in the future.

This paper argues that Russian attitudes to the West cannot be altered, because they are based on deeply ingrained notions of hostility that will not be swayed by Western attempts to avoid conflict. But while the misguided foundations of Russian policy are unshakeable, the actions and behaviours by which it seeks to implement that policy can be influenced – and there are successful examples of this throughout both recent and more distant history. The author examines past responses – both successful and unsuccessful – to Russian hostile actions and, from these examples, deduces a number of key principles and practical recommendations for effective deterrence.

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03 First principles

The history of Western relations with Moscow offers examples where efforts at deterrence have succeeded, as well as where they have failed. Considering both categories of outcome reveals recurring patterns.

When deterrence fails, the results are obvious; measuring success is far harder. Yet study of decades of interaction between Russia (and the Soviet Union before it) and Western powers uncovers a number of recurring themes and principles that appear to correlate to success or failure in attempts to deter Moscow. While some of these principles overlap and interact, in broad terms the preconditions for success can be summarized as:

communicating clearly with Russia and honestly with Western publics;
maintaining Western unity and resolve;
defaulting to forward deployment in support of allies;
firmly defending boundaries;
allowing for miscommunication and confusion;
avoiding self-deterrence; and
negating sub-threshold threats by means of good governance at home.

Each of these seven principles will be considered in turn.

1. Maintain clarity and transparency

Western governments must communicate clearly and directly both with Russia and with their own populations.

Clarity of messaging

Making the limits and boundaries of acceptable behaviour clear to Russia requires consistency and clarity in both setting and defending them. The alternative – ambiguous policy and words not backed up by action – will inevitably lead to Russia continuing to probe and test the limits of the achievable, exploring any openings offered by weakness or lack of clarity. In some instances there is an argument for deterrence through vagueness and uncertainty; for instance, the classic case of what constitutes an ‘armed attack’ for the purpose of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty in a new era of cyber conflict. But to apply this principle across the board, and avoid stipulating firm red lines that will be defended under all circumstances, invites Russian experimentation, with the related danger of miscalculation or inadvertent escalation. The setting of boundaries need not necessarily specify the consequences if they are transgressed, as long as it is clear that the consequences will be palpable and meaningful to Russia either at a local level or in Moscow. The subtext to messaging can be as simple, for instance, as ‘do not fly in this 25 square mile area of Syria or bad things will happen’, as long as the capability to make those things happen is also apparent to Russia. Statements and declarations need to be backed by organization, plans and resources in order to be taken seriously; if they are not taken seriously, this can exacerbate already dangerous misunderstandings.

The task in fact consists of two phases: first, deciding internally what Russian behaviour is acceptable and what is not; and, second, communicating those boundaries to Russia clearly and acting to enforce them.

The first phase entails deciding what interests are to be defended; what actions or demands by Russia would be accepted and what would not be sacrificed or compromised on. But with an opponent such as Russia, whose approach to managing or avoiding conflict is largely centred on escalation dominance, confrontation should only be joined if there are real interests at stake and therefore the will to escalate will be forthcoming at the political level. In the view of Air Commodore (rtd) Carl Scott, a scholar of Russia and former UK defence attaché to Moscow, in confrontation with Russia there is a simple test of willingness to defend positions that defines whether they are core interests: ‘If you are not prepared to have your troops die on the battlefield, walk away early.’50

The second phase is to articulate clear and consistent internal and external messaging that will follow through on the decision to defend. Russia can send out broadly coordinated information through a loosely integrated system that extends from President Putin down through the bottom-feeder echelons of online troll armies. For Western nations, by contrast, signalling is complicated by democracy – both within a single nation and in alliances. Democracies, by their very nature, may find it hard to stick to their own policies and declared boundaries, through political change and being subject to the pressure of domestic public opinion. Domestic explanation is therefore becoming an increasingly important component of deterrent posture, especially in the light of the largely absent perception of threat from Russia among Western populations. The need to explain and justify actions to domestic audiences means simplification and pegging complex events to comprehensible issues.

Coherent messaging to Russia also entails a need to understand and watch what Moscow itself sees. For example, despite the fact that individual agents of US power may not be acting in a fully coordinated manner, Russia will see US policy as a whole, and will respond to actions and cues as though they were part of an integrated and coherent plan. This can lead to Russia concluding it is receiving mixed messages from the US or its allies through making spurious connections between unrelated actions and declarations. This is a particular hazard at times of domestic political discontinuity, such as the period when the declaratory policy of former president Donald Trump was entirely at odds with the policies actually enacted by the US government.51

Overall, it is vastly harder to deal successfully with Russia without sending firm messages, backed up by demonstrable seriousness about contingency planning.

This presents a requirement for situational awareness, across the board, of what the US and its allies – especially those Russia perceives as subordinated instruments of US power – are doing and saying to Russia, where, and why, at any given time. Decision-makers who move national assets to Russia’s areas of interest – not limited to the physical space around Russia – need to communicate both among themselves and with the intelligence community and Russia experts more broadly in order to plan for and assess Russian reactions to specific cues. The task of messaging is even more complex if messages are also to be delivered in coordination with NATO, an alliance that is not coherent or united on how to deal with Russia. In this case the task is twofold: first, understanding what each NATO state is actually doing with regard to Russia, which varies widely; and, second, striving to achieve and maintain NATO alignment and a common approach in order to remove options for creating or exploiting alliance disunity. The alternative, as described by scholar of Russian strategic deterrence principles Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, is a situation where ‘the only people keeping track of all of NATO’s deterrent measures [are] probably the GRU’52 – combining the worst aspects of strategic incoherence by Western allies, a failure to realize what message is being projected, and Russia divining intent on the part of the West that is simply not present.

Strategic messages can be sent through consistent tactical interaction, as with instances from Syria described below. Assertive and robust responses to Russian actions in the air are one such example. Air interactions carry the potential for a managed conversation of increasingly robust tactical steps to deliver messages. These include replicating Russia’s practice of carrying out uncomfortable intercepts and manoeuvring into positions from which an engagement could be launched, up through releasing flares, to finally directly threatening steps such as a missile lock. In this context, but as a principle that should be carried over to other domains of interaction with Russia, it should be remembered that the possibility of an actual clash in the air resulting from a combination of irresponsible Russian airmanship and a NATO counterpart enforcing known and communicated rules of engagement would serve to set boundaries but not necessarily start a war – as was the case for Turkey in November 2015, an incident also examined further in Section 4 below.

Overall, it is vastly harder to deal successfully with Russia without sending firm messages, backed up by demonstrable seriousness about contingency planning. This kind of state interaction is considered normal by Russia – as witness its own practice – and hence is not provocative. Rather, it is unwillingness to practice deterrence and a visible lack of resolve that constitute the greatest provocation for Russia to act.

Transparency

But for Western countries, clarity of messaging, coupled with a degree of honesty and transparency, is also essential with regard to their own populations.

It is impossible for any democracy to defend itself effectively against threats of which the bulk of its population remains unaware. Political support for meaningful defensive measures depends on having an electorate that is sufficiently well informed about the kind of challenges it is being defended against. But the fine detail of Russian covert operations detected by the West has often by default been kept confidential, for a range of reasons including the need not to disclose either capabilities or vulnerabilities.

More recently, however, despite the absence of any official national or international statement on change of policy, key Western allies appear to have shown greater willingness to avow Russian actions publicly, with the intent of disrupting and deterring forms of hostile activity below the threshold of war, including cyberattacks.53 As the case study below makes clear, coordinated disclosures by a number of Western powers of details of hostile actions by Russia appear to indicate a new and successful multinational policy of transparency on the handling of selected incidents. US public indictments of foreign state intelligence officials, and the UK’s release of limited information that enabled third parties to independently identify the Salisbury attackers, set precedents for revealing information that previously would have been confidential, and confirmed the emergence of a number of new trends. The unprecedented level of detail disclosed by the Netherlands’ intelligence services in exposing Russian GRU officers in October 2018 signalled a new departure in state practice on cyber conflict. The effect of these actions is in each case augmented by substantial international cooperation to maximize the impact of transparency.

Case study. Coordinated disclosures of hostile actions

Late 2018 saw two instances that appeared to indicate an internationally coordinated policy of transparency over hostile actions. In September, the British government disclosed limited details of the two suspects in the poisoning of Sergey and Yuliya Skripal in Salisbury, UK. This came the day before a debate initiated by the UK in the UN Security Council, which showed evidence of a long period of painstaking multilateral diplomatic preparation. Ambassadors from the US, France, Germany and Canada backed the UK’s assessment in prepared statements,54 while a round of responses from other countries represented on the Security Council either condemned Russia or were cautiously equivocal, depending on how much each country had to lose from publicly criticizing Moscow. Over 20 countries subsequently supported the UK in its allegations against Russia, expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats in total.

The UK government’s response to the Salisbury chemical weapons attack included releasing as much detail on the incident as was possible without compromising the ongoing criminal investigation. This was highly effective in mobilizing international support and minimizing opportunities for Russia to deflect blame. In addition it empowered independent media, including in Russia, to pursue their own investigations, leading eventually to the exposure (and consequent reduction in value and utility) of entire cohorts of Russian intelligence officers.55 This clearly demonstrates how maximum possible transparency over Russian actions can be an important enabler for policy responses.

A month later, international coordination over disclosures was also evident in the distribution by the Netherlands of highly detailed information on an attempted close-quarter cyber break-in by GRU officers at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague in April of the previous year.56 The UK and US joined the Netherlands in making near simultaneous announcements. A British government statement promised further public action ‘confronting, exposing and disrupting the GRU’s activity’ in close cooperation with allies.57 And on the same day, following release of a report on Russia’s systematic state-sponsored subversion of the sport drug-testing process, the US charged seven GRU officers (in some cases the same individuals) with hacking and related offences targeting a wide range of sporting and drug control organizations. As in other cases, the indictment included highly detailed descriptions of the activities and tradecraft of individual GRU officers.58

The apparent new willingness by the US, UK and other core allies to disclose hostile operations in fine detail suggests not only a recognition that this approach is effective, but also a shared perception of an escalated Russian challenge. This reflects the wide range of threats emanating from Russia,59 and in particular the broad range of hostile cyber activities undertaken against the US, including for example against key utilities and infrastructure.60 In the UK, a new readiness by senior figures to acknowledge publicly the challenge of ongoing offensive activity from Russia has been discernible from approximately early 2018, with fortuitous timing for the response to the Salisbury incident.61

Conclusions and lessons learned

Transparency and international coordination may in the medium term enhance the capability of Western nations to implement effective deterrence of sub-threshold activities. This is not because of direct consequences for those who are involved in those activities. Public identification of Russian perpetrators, even if accompanied by indictments, is of limited direct effect if they are unlikely ever to reappear in a jurisdiction where they could be arrested and tried. In addition, ‘naming and shaming’ a perpetrator only achieves half the intended effect if the perpetrator, like Russia, is immune to shame. It has even been suggested that Russia may be appreciative of the publicity, since ‘just as with so many other aspects of Moscow’s geopolitics, there is a theatrical aspect … as the country tries to assert an international status out of proportion with the size of its economy, its soft power and arguably even its effective military strength’.62

Instead, the primary value of transparency at present in dealing with sub-threshold operations is in sweeping aside their perceived anonymity and immunity.63 This approach could and should also be applied to a much broader range of hostile activities carried out by Russia against Western nations, so that publics in those countries are better informed as to the nature and scope of the challenge – for example releasing information on the mission profiles of Russian aircraft practising for missile launches against Western Europe, or on cross-border electronic warfare activities targeting Nordic and Baltic states.

The final key benefit of an internationally coordinated response to Russian aggressive action, however, is a demonstration of solidarity between allies. Examples of Western nations operating in close harmony and mutual support bring obvious practical benefits for all parties; but in addition they increase the perceived difficulty for Russia of targeting the unity of NATO, of the EU and in general of the Euro-Atlantic consensus on the rules-based international order.64 In particular, they will reduce Russia’s confidence that it can carry out hostile actions against an individual foreign country, be it a minor power or the US, without incurring a response that is unified and multilateral, and hence of much greater impact.

2. Demonstrate solidarity and will

Visible unity and credible intent are core components of successful deterrence by the West.

A united front

Russian power is often a function of inattention, policy incoherence, division or disunity among Western powers, including the US. These factors, and any resultant lack of clarity on the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, are inherently destabilizing; as described in one Russian study: ‘The lack of strategic goal-setting by Western partners hinders the shaping and implementation of the Kremlin’s foreign policy, thereby forcing it to continue feeling its way.’65 But if Russia decides to engage in open conflict with a NATO ally, its risk calculus must include the assessment that there would be a slow and/or de-escalatory response from the rest of the alliance. It follows that any suggestion that the response from the US or the rest of NATO would be anything less than resolute and united is dangerously provocative. Discussion of containing a conflict, in particular, risks being interpreted as a desire to restrict engagement to one NATO ally to protect others. Alliance solidarity therefore depends on Russia not concluding that if it targets a specific country for hostile action, the conflict can be restricted to the territory of that one country.

Case study. Countering Moscow’s expansion through unity

Today’s concerns over the defence or reinforcement of the front-line states in Europe parallel to a striking degree a similar challenge faced by the US in the early to mid-1980s: how to protect partner states in the Persian Gulf region from possible military intervention by the Soviet Union, in the context of its apparent desire to expand its power southwards, as evidenced by the invasion of Afghanistan.66 Then, as now, US Army and other service planners grappled with the difficulty of contingency planning, exposing severe challenges in planned force structure, logistics, sea and air lift and other support capabilities. The difficulty of projecting power into the region was similarly exacerbated by time and space asymmetries favouring the Soviet forces. Responses, then as now, included reviewing the pre-positioning of equipment and supplies, exercises addressing specific geographical vulnerabilities, and the preparation of facilities for the reception and staging of incoming US forces.

In so far as no Soviet move on the Gulf region took place, these measures can be said to have succeeded; but there are also instances from history where expansionist moves by Moscow have been halted by a clear demonstration of will by the US in solidarity with its allies. This is particularly true of the period immediately following the Second World War – another time when Moscow took advantage of fluid political situations to maximize the extent of its power and control. In early 1946, the USSR was scheduled to remove its troops from northern Iran, at the expiry of a joint agreement with the UK on military presence in the country. In keeping with the political mood between the major powers at the time, British troops remained in place in apprehension of Soviet intentions, while the US favoured rapid withdrawal. Resolute public commitments to Iranian sovereignty by the major powers, expressed through the new medium of the UN, eventually led to a Soviet capitulation and the withdrawal of troops. This palpable success encouraged further readiness to stand firm in the face of Soviet demands; the US in particular ‘regarded their position on Iran as a test of Western firmness and especially as a means of demonstrating the workability of the international peacekeeping system centred in the United Nations’.67

Shortly afterwards, the Soviet Union sought to impose on Turkey similar demands to those that had been presented to the Baltic states and Finland at the beginning of the Second World War. On this occasion, however, Britain and the US made it plain that they would back Turkish resistance. The result of this clear demonstration of resolve was restraint of the Soviet Union, and eventual NATO membership for Turkey.

The Sèvres agreement (1920), the Lausanne agreement (1923), and the Montreux Convention (1936) mandated Turkish control over shipping through the Black Sea Straits. The USSR, seeing this as a constraint on its projection of military power, sought to amend this arrangement or replace it altogether. In the context of discussing a post-war settlement between the victorious Allies, at the Yalta conference in February 1945 Stalin and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov made persistent attempts to convince British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that a new settlement for the Straits was a priority.68

The 1925 Soviet–Turkish Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality was due to expire in November 1945. In March, Molotov had announced that the USSR would not renew it, and consequently Ankara sought to negotiate a new treaty. For this purpose, Turkish ambassador to Moscow Salim Sarper met Molotov on 7 June. While expressing an interest in signing a mutual assistance treaty, Sarper ruled out renegotiating control over the Straits as this was not a bilateral issue but affected a number of different countries.69 In response, Molotov put forward territorial claims on Turkey, demanding control over the provinces of Kars and Ardahan as a precondition for treaty negotiations.70 Throughout the rest of 1945, the USSR continued to press Turkey and the Western Allies for joint Soviet and Turkish control of the Straits,71 including the establishment of military bases there.72 Britain in particular took the view that joint control would prejudice Turkish security, in addition to seeing the territorial demands as a clear violation of Turkish sovereignty.73

By August 1946, the nature of the Western Allies’ new relationship with Moscow was clear, and over the course of negotiations and with continuing British pressure, the US concluded that in the event of the USSR pressing its demands, ‘the only thing which will deter the Russians will be the conviction that the US is prepared, if necessary, to meet aggression with force of arms’.74 In response to further Soviet attempts to place bases on the Straits, the US dispatched the USS Franklin Roosevelt (its newest aircraft carrier) to the region as a show of strength with British support, as a joint indication of willingness to resort to force to constrain Soviet expansionism.75 In March the following year, the speech by President Harry Truman which later became known as the Truman Doctrine specifically referred to assistance to Greece and Turkey, and represented both a formal call for the US ‘to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures’, and the effective replacement of the UK in this global role.76 Shortly afterwards, Turkey began to receive large quantities of US military aid, and in the face of this open support, Soviet pressures and demands started to weaken. The robust stance adopted by the UK and the US to contain Moscow’s expansionist goals was later assessed as representing ‘one of the first successful results of a containment policy in the region’.77 In 1952, Turkey joined NATO, and after Stalin’s death Soviet territorial demands in this area faded away.

Conclusions and lessons learned

This case study illustrates two key points introduced earlier in this paper: the importance of firm responses to Russian demands or threats, backed up by the visible means of resisting them; and Moscow’s willingness to back down when confronted. But it also points to two further principles that are relevant today.

An important baseline for understanding how Russia views the rest of the world is that while Western allies may see areas such as the Black Sea, the Baltic, Central Asia, the Arctic and the Sea of Japan as distinctive geographical regions, to Moscow they are all ‘Russia’s borders’ – and events in one area are interlinked with those in another. In the case of the Straits crisis, timing was significant. While robust responses by the UK and the US were the primary factor in the USSR’s withdrawal of its demands, a contributing factor was concurrent activity in Eastern Europe, which remained Stalin’s region of geopolitical priority throughout this period. The subjugation of Germany and the imposition of Soviet control over other east European states in the face of protests from the UK and US were the most pressing issues for Stalin, and this may have limited Moscow’s inclination to force confrontation elsewhere.78 The lesson for today is that Russian challenges, and the means of deterring them, should not be thought of as regional, since Russia is present – and subject to influence and messaging – in many regions simultaneously.

The case study also illustrates both the benefits and the challenges of working through alliances, in this case between the US and Britain. Towards the end of the Second World War, Churchill wished to pursue a firm and robust line of deterrence of the USSR, and was dismayed by Truman’s tendency to view it as a benevolent and well-intentioned ally. Churchill’s warnings were vindicated by Soviet behaviour immediately after the end of the war, in the same way that Poland and the Baltic states – long dismissed as alarmists and trouble-makers within NATO and the EU for warning of the threat of a resurgent Russia – found themselves fully vindicated when these warnings became reality after 2014. In the case of Turkey – as with Iran – British resolve contained Soviet ambition until the US grasped the nature of Soviet intent and the urgency of countering it. But at the same time the US found that it would need to take on the long-term burden of doing so almost single-handed. The UK, faced with the reality that it had been bankrupted by the Second World War and was crippled by war debt (primarily to the US), withdrew from security commitments that were no longer sustainable. Its capacity for global power projection and security assistance collapsed rapidly, leaving the US as the partner primarily responsible for funding the deterrent mission.

But this did not mean that the UK ceased to demonstrate examples of capability and resolve that contributed to deterrence of Moscow, as the following case study shows.

Case study. The Falklands War

In 1982, the Soviet Union studied the course and outcome of the Falklands War intently. Besides the direct lessons for naval operations of the ‘first war of the missile age’, the Falklands campaign vindicated the effectiveness of a well-trained and highly motivated volunteer force, and in particular its ability repeatedly to assault and overcome a mixed professional and conscript force of superior numbers in contravention of all recognized minimum acceptable ratios of attackers to defenders.79 Despite the remoteness of some aspects of conflict as waged in the Falklands from what might be encountered in Europe, this ability was of direct relevance to the respective capabilities of the conscripted Soviet Army and its all-volunteer US and British counterparts in Germany.

But while the UK’s ability to swiftly mobilize and retake the islands was as surprising to the USSR as it was to many Western (and British) observers, it was the demonstration of political will to do so that made the deepest impression. The UK showed itself willing to mount a major operation at extreme risk to defend an apparently marginal interest, against daunting odds, on principle. In so doing, its ‘readiness to protect an even tiny group of citizens from subjugation by an aggressor also vindicated that important part of the Western tradition which upholds freedom despite material cost’.80 Today, Russia continues to recognize the significance of the ‘primacy of morale-psychological factors over material factors’;81 and demonstrated will to defend citizens and sovereignty, in order as far as possible to remove doubt in the minds of Russian planners as to whether encroachments on them will be responded to, remains a key element of continuing deterrence of Russia across the board.

3. Support allies early

There is no substitute for having meaningful assistance to allies already in place before a crisis begins.

Forward deployment

Russia can exploit its asymmetric advantages of presence, speed of decision-making, will to act and ability to act unilaterally to swiftly establish facts on the ground in the form of a physical presence of Russian troops where they should not be. If this affects a NATO ally, then by presenting NATO with a fait accompli Russia forces the onus of escalation onto an alliance whose objective is to preserve peace – thereby suggesting a failure of that objective and presenting an immediate challenge to NATO unity. In seeking to counter or prevent this scenario, seriousness in contingency planning, including proving the will and capability to deliver assets where they are required, is essential. Speed is a deterrent, as it allows arrival at the point of crisis fast enough to keep options open, as opposed to having to fight a way in. If a US or NATO response to Russian action is delayed, Russia will portray it as escalatory, and this would find sympathy among nations that – for a wide range of reasons – would prefer not to take action. In short, the need to force the decision to escalate on Russia at the outset requires placing NATO forces in Russia’s way, such that a Russian decision to move is clearly and unarguably a decision to escalate from peace to war.

Furthermore, if Russia feels it has the upper hand in a confrontation, and in particular if it has succeeded in putting troops in place on the territory of a Western ally, then a negotiated settlement and de-escalation will not be an option, unless it is to impose a ceasefire drafted in Moscow (see case studies in Section 6 below), or Russia believes it can be offered something in return for withdrawal that is worth the trade. Such options could, for example, include renegotiation of a front-line state’s relationship with NATO, removal of missile defence assets, or dismantling of one or several other collective security arrangements that cause neuralgia for Moscow. In addition to all efforts to deter pre-emptive moves by Russia, the West needs to be ready for Russia to set its price for withdrawal if they succeed.

The way to avoid this situation is to demonstrate consistently both the will and the ability to defend against aggression, and to indicate that there is a plan and the capability to bring assets to theatre when required. But this in turn requires subduing the narrative that a strong defensive posture and demonstrated readiness are provocative and escalatory. Russia promotes this narrative at any opportunity in order to induce its adversaries to self-deter from taking action and thus erode the political credibility of deterrence, and in doing so it has at times succeeded admirably in causing its international partners to forget that it is by no means a military or economic superpower. It remains the case that Russia wishes to project an image of overwhelming military power in order ‘to step up Alliance dependency on force protection and affect Nations’ perceptions of risk and therefore our public opinion and political will to intervene’.82 But blanket statements that a given action will ‘provoke’ Russia to a damaging response are not helpful. What is necessary instead is a sober assessment, based on past Russian practice, not on Western fears or concerns, of the point at which Russia would respond and how it might do so. The results of this assessment give very different results from a policy of restraint derived from giving excessive credence to Russian rhetoric, so it is fortunate that multiple recent case studies are available as empirical precedents.

When facing Russia, consistent experience suggests that deterrence by denial reliably trumps deterrence by response or punishment. It is cheaper, it is easier, and although it may not seem so in advance, it is politically more acceptable than the alternative. If NATO is reluctant to pre-position substantial forces in a threatened area, then in the event of open conflict it must be prepared to accept much more costly and politically challenging alternatives in order to fulfil its function and reason for existence. This could, for instance, include fighting past Kaliningrad in order to defend or – quite possibly by that stage – reconquer the Baltic states. This in turn would imply having to reduce Russian air and sea area denial systems without the benefit of local air superiority – a profoundly uncomfortable and unaccustomed situation for NATO forces. Furthermore if NATO leaders did indeed show the political will to order an operation of this kind, it would be even easier for Russia to portray this as unnecessary escalation – and that view would have support from wide sectors of European domestic populations and politicians even before the Russian propaganda machine went to work.

If NATO is reluctant to pre-position substantial forces in a threatened area, then in the event of open conflict it must be prepared to accept much more costly and politically challenging alternatives in order to fulfil its function and reason for existence.

In the meantime, there is a linear relationship between a smaller NATO presence in the front-line states and a greater likelihood that some form of military action will seem feasible to Russia. In precisely the same way, Russia’s use of its military assets becomes more, not less, likely as they continue to be improved and acquire a greater and more flexible range of capabilities.

Within this context, the deployment of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) units in the Baltic states and Poland represents an effective means of ensuring that any conflict there would necessarily involve other NATO nations. The utility of eFP lies not in presenting a realistic obstacle to a full-scale Russian incursion but in removing any doubt as to whether such an incursion could be written off as a bilateral issue between Russia and the target state. In addition, eFP has been paving the way for further development of NATO presence in the four countries, by developing and refining appropriate rules of engagement, administrative and legislative support for presence, basing and hosting arrangements, and the movement of troops, equipment and supplies across NATO borders – including removing bureaucratic impediments to doing so – both during and before a crisis. Furthermore, the forces in place not only deny Russia easy conventional military opportunities; they also stand in the way of a range of other measures currently described as ‘hybrid’ threats but that rely on there being no robust response from the target nation or from NATO.

But while forward deployment of any NATO troops will have a deterrent effect, the presence of US troops in particular provides additional benefits.83 Russia may risk targeting smaller individual nations within NATO, or the Alliance itself, to attempt to erode the will to support the front-line states, but the United States represents an adversary of a different order of magnitude. As put by former senior Estonian defence official Sven Sakkov, ‘the simple fact is that the military deterrence value of American soldiers is the highest in the world’.84 In 2021, rotations of a US battalion through Lithuania have had a disproportionate reassurance effect compared with deployments of other nations.85 Requests for a greater forward presence by the US Army will therefore continue indefinitely. But the fact that at the time of writing no final resolution to this debate has been found reflects the fine balance of interests arguing both for and against a substantial permanent forward US presence.

For: A consistent historical principle referred to throughout this paper is that there is no substitute for substantial and capable forces for the purpose of facing down Russia; and in addition, these forces must be pre-positioned where needed in order to offset Russia’s advantages of presence and speed.86 A 2020 RAND study on the deterrent impact of US overseas forces arrived at entirely unsurprising conclusions regarding the impact of forward deployment, including that ‘the ability of crisis deployments to prevent no-notice or short-notice faits accomplis launched by highly capable adversaries is limited’ and ‘we found the clearest evidence for the deterrent impact of [forward deployed] heavy ground forces’.87

The level of forces deployed must be sufficient that if they are engaged by Russia, it generates an incident of sufficient scale that it cannot be ignored. Unlike during the Cold War, when the certainty that conflict would be widespread reinforced deterrence, the willingness of NATO allies to join collective defence cannot be assumed; the danger persists that less robust member states could choose to accept a fait accompli presented by Russia, regardless of the circumstances through which it arose. The presence of troops from NATO allies at the epicentre of the confrontation would reduce that possibility to a minimum. It would also most probably overcome any domestic opposition within the ally in question to responding firmly to a Russian attack.

In addition to an enhanced deterrent effect, and the related benefit of greater reassurance for allies achieved through a demonstration of enduring commitment, permanent forward presence brings strictly practical advantages. These include lower overall financial cost, and improved quality of life for service personnel (with follow-on benefits in the form of improved morale and retention).88 Although the financial price of any increased deployment of allied forces on the eastern flank of NATO is negligible compared with the cost of a war with the Russian Federation, greater affordability should be a significant factor when considering the inevitable long-term commitment entailed by forward deployment.

Accusations that such a move would constitute a huge increase in the number of ‘NATO troops’ in the front-line states, and therefore be highly provocative to Russia, should be countered by improved messaging from NATO pointing out that the real boost in numbers is far less significant – because the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian or Polish troops being supported are already in themselves ‘NATO troops’.

Against: Opponents of forward deployment argue that the US should resist calls to boost its conventional force presence, since ‘to do so could spark an expensive arms race with Russia that would heighten instability in Europe and could even provoke Moscow to use military force against one or more NATO countries’.89 It is further suggested that closer physical proximity to Russia would constitute an invitation to pre-emptive action by Russia motivated by the prospect of the early destruction of high-value assets that are within easy reach and difficult to replace, whereas without them Russia would have no incentive to use military force.90 Another, contrary argument holds that forward deployments should not be increased since no level of troop presence would ever be enough to provide total reassurance.91

In addition, some NATO members feel themselves constrained by the NATO Russia Founding Act’s restrictions on permanent basing in new members, and NATO’s commitment to ensure its collective defence by retaining the ‘capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces’ – without defining the term ‘substantial’. However, no convincing justification has been offered for NATO’s continuing to bind itself to a strict interpretation of the Act, whose provisions have long been made invalid by Russian aggressive actions in Europe. The Act specifically refers to the ‘current and foreseeable security environment’ of the late 1990s – no more relevant to the present day than its reference to a ‘strong, stable and enduring partnership’ with Russia (subsequently affirmed in the NATO Strategic Concept of 2010, itself long outdated).92

Whatever the arguments for and against forward deployment, defending the front-line states against Russia must be a primary responsibility for the West if it wishes to uphold both its security and its values. NATO’s mission is to maintain security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area as a whole, and of allies without exception. Ensuring equal security for allies regardless of whether they are next door to Russia or not is core to this task, and it cannot be made conditional upon Russia’s consent.

NATO’s eFP initiative is a substantial step towards this goal, regardless of the relatively tiny number of troops involved. Arguments that it constitutes a threatening posture to Russia are misplaced: for Russia, eFP presents not a current problem but a precedent which may cause concern in the future. In a similar manner to US Ballistic Missile Defence installations in Europe, the effort to date is of limited significance, but the concern for Russia is that it provides grounds for expansion. In November 2006, not long after the accession of the Baltic states, a multilateral event at NATO Defense College in Rome heard from a group of senior Russian generals that Russia was unconcerned about NATO’s presence in the new member states, and that it was the sovereign right of neighbouring countries to set up bases near the borders; ‘but Russia will respond if forces are moved to higher readiness, are increased, or if the group of forces appears to take on an offensive nature’.93

It follows that there is significant deterrent value in the possibility of a high-profile and substantial US deployment closer to Russia. In considering placing more of its assets on the Russian border, the US holds Russia at risk of a development that it would find distinctly challenging and a response that would have real impact in Moscow. Open communication that a US forward presence will become more likely if Russia makes it necessary through further aggressive behaviour is likely to provide a significant counter-argument if Moscow considers such behaviour in the future; consequently such a deployment should not under any circumstances be publicly ruled out. In the meantime, the balance of risk and interest in the front-line states argues for a prudent mix of permanent and rotational deployments to make the best use of the relative benefits of each model.94 One of the key tasks for these deployments should be assuring the possibility of delivery of reinforcements in time of crisis, which – in the Baltic at least – demands the continuous presence of allied naval as well as land forces.95

‘Provocation’

As seen above, arguments against an assertive posture intended to deter Russia are frequently founded on the concern that Russia would see this as escalatory and provocative, and that this would trigger a crisis rather than preventing it. In the case of a forward military presence bolstering the front-line states, this line of thinking holds that ‘the best way to get a near abroad that is less under the thumb of Russia is to do our best not to play into Russian fears that we are driving our tanks and the Western way into what they consider their backyard, which … is the best way to provoke a Russian reaction’.96 More broadly, some assessments of the threat picture promoted by the Russian leadership worry that Western ignorance of Russian ‘concerns’ could ‘provoke’ it into war.

However, alarmist Russian reactions over the prospect of neighbouring states reinforcing their defences should not be taken at face value. Instead, they form a constant background noise to Russia’s claims about what it requires for its own security, and it is instead any deviation from this norm that should be studied closely for any indication of a shift in Russian intent from rhetoric to action.

Russia would like Western publics and decision-makers to believe that any initiative to reinforce European security against Russia is de facto provocative, since naturally enough it would prefer such an initiative not to be taken. But the nature of the perceived threat to Russia is a constant, and not linked to any specific action by the US or its allies. Throughout Imperial Russian, and then Soviet Russian, and then post-Soviet Russian history, the West has always been seen as a looming threat regardless of the actual state of international affairs. The notion that protestations of friendship by foreign powers could turn at no notice into a surprise attack on Russia has repeatedly been borne out in history; but it is also applied today in an entirely different framework of international relations. This preconception is hard to challenge, given fundamental Russian assumptions regarding relations between states, and how these assumptions determine that Western actions appear threatening to Moscow even when their intent is entirely innocent or defensive.97 As a result, Russia was complaining of an aggressive NATO even during the pre-2014 period while the US was withdrawing its forces from Europe and other NATO countries were drawing down their militaries.

The notion that protestations of friendship by foreign powers could turn at no notice into a surprise attack on Russia has repeatedly been borne out in history; but it is also applied today in an entirely different framework of international relations.

Paradoxically, the Russian perception of conflict already being under way argues against, not for, stronger defences in the front-line states being seen as provocative. For NATO to make military dispositions that are apposite to the risk of conflict seems normal and appropriate to Russia – as long as those dispositions do not include measures posing a realistic threat of swift offensive action against Russia, or the correlation of forces does not reach a tipping point that would require a response. Russia already presents NATO movements and presence as a direct counterpart to its own preparations for aggression; according to the Russian version, NATO is already present in force in the front-line states. In short, although the volume of Russian protestations will in no way be abated, defensive measures to respond to the Russian military build-up are not provocative to Russia because it fully expects them and considers them a natural state of affairs. It is also the case that if Russia were not complaining about the force posture of the US and its NATO allies, then those countries’ armed forces would not be fulfilling their role of presenting an obstacle to Moscow’s objective of unconstrained use of military power.

Appeasement

A related argument holds that Russian assertiveness can be tempered by a reduction in tensions brought about through concessions or expressions of goodwill towards Moscow, and that de-escalation by the US will be matched by Russia. This, unfortunately, overlooks the distinctive Russian approach to both compromise and cooperation at an international level.

Offers of cooperation with Russia are severely challenged by Moscow’s underlying assessment that peaceful cooperation for the common good is not a normal and natural state of affairs. Henry Kissinger notes how this runs counter to long-standing Western assumptions:

In the Westphalian concept of order, European statesmen came to identify security with a balance of power and with restraints on its exercise. In Russia’s experience of history, restraints on power spelt catastrophe …. The Peace of Westphalia saw international order as an intricate balancing mechanism; the Russian view cast it as a perpetual contest of wills, with Russia extending its domain at each phase to the absolute limit of its material resources.98

The essential precondition for working with Russia – repeatedly forgotten when the US, or indeed NATO as a whole, seeks ‘partnership’ – is remembering that cooperation for its own sake is of no interest to Moscow. Russia continues to interpret concessions as weakness and as an invitation to demand more, rather than to soften a stance. Reaching international agreement through compromise and cooperation that go beyond direct self-interest is not in the spirit of Russian public diplomacy, and not in President Putin’s nature. The fundamental and persistent principle, as described by John Lewis Gaddis, is that ‘the Russians themselves would regard willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness, and would raise their price for a settlement accordingly’.99 A clear example is Russian behaviour in response to Japanese overtures and concessions towards signing a peace treaty resolving the long-running territorial dispute between the two countries: as former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe signalled increasing willingness to make concessions to reach an agreement, Russian demands progressively escalated and expanded.100 One further damaging consequence of this is the Russian assumption that offers of collaboration or cooperation for its own sake, with no evident direct furthering of Russian state or leadership interests, are a ploy or a trap.

This instinctive rejection of cooperative solutions is reinforced by the belief that all great nations achieve security through the creation and assertion of raw power. In this view, one side’s gain is automatically the other side’s loss, and win-win situations are not envisaged.101 The result is that Russia negotiates seriously only when it feels that its adversary holds some advantage and is willing to act on it.102 In addition, concessions to find a mutually acceptable settlement are precluded by what security expert Pavel Baev calls ‘the inescapable logic of confrontation according to which every de-escalatory move amounts to giving up to Western pressure’.103

At times, deliberately spurning established international agreements and acting as the disrupter can serve a secondary objective of achieving recognition for Russia, or the start of negotiations where Russia can enjoy the status of an equal partner with the US – if necessary, at the same time as continuing to function as the spoiler. When Russia presents a set of excessive demands, the West treats it as a success if Moscow is eventually satisfied with only some of them being met, no matter how unreasonable they may be. Furthermore Russian compliance with already concluded agreements is repeatedly presented as a concession. Russia can exploit this syndrome by destabilizing a situation in order to then offer the ‘solution’ – as in the case of dangerous behaviour risking collisions at sea and in the air, where a more appropriate solution than negotiations with Russia on new rules would be for Russia to abide by existing agreements and once more instruct its personnel to conduct themselves professionally (this situation is examined in more detail in Section 4, in the ‘Close Encounters’ case study).104 In this model, Russia demands accommodations from others in order to restore relations after it has behaved egregiously – in Putin’s words, ‘we, as a people, say don’t hold a grudge and we are ready to meet halfway, but that can’t be a one-sided game’.105 And toleration and acceptance of this approach by Western powers (for instance, accommodating requests for new bilateral commissions on preventing incidents provoked by Russia in the first place) will only encourage its further application.

The notion that there must be at least some common ground or interest where Russia and the US (or the West more broadly) share aims and objectives leads to a persistent search for issues on which the two sides see eye to eye – a search that repeatedly comes up with the same discredited answers. One such is counterterrorism – an alluring and seductive topic because, when phrased in Western terms, it stands to reason that both sides face the same threat and would be interested in joining forces to counter it. Even after the experience of Syria has made clear to the world the fundamental variance between the Russian and Western understanding of what the term means and who terrorists are, counterterrorism continues to serve as a dog-whistle issue where Russia can always get interest and engagement by offering cooperation. But in this area as in many others, ‘much of the Western hope for partnership has been based on statements of faith rather than substantive assessment of Russian goals’.106

Overall, a wide range of terminology that sounds attractive to Western ears needs to be recast in its meaning to Russia in order to understand the true implications of what is offered to Moscow. In Russian terms, ‘cooperation with Russia’ means allowing Russia involvement, control and ultimately a veto on solutions to security issues worldwide. And now, just as in the last century, ‘What the Kremlin means by detente is a state of coexistence modified to allow for temporary accommodations with the enemy in order to receive advantages and concessions which only he can give.’107

All of these considerations together suggest that the 2009 ‘reset’ in relations between the US and Russia delivered entirely the wrong messages to Moscow. The good intentions and firm policy basis of the reset notwithstanding, by implying equal status for Russia, and normalizing relations with no conditions required in return, the US rewarded Moscow for its conduct during the armed conflict with Georgia the year before, and provided strong grounds for it to believe six years later, when it was contemplating seizing Crimea, that there would be few adverse consequences.

4. Enforce boundaries

Few things are more likely to encourage a given action by Russia than warnings against that action proving to be insincere.

Friction, boundary-setting and risk

Away from the front-line states, Russia’s increased assertiveness since 2014 has led to a substantially increased incidence of direct contacts between the forces of NATO allies and those of Russia, or its proxies or agents. NATO forces and assets find themselves operating in close proximity to Russian forces in any domain: land, air, sea, subsea, space, the electromagnetic spectrum or cyberspace. The diversity of these domains is matched by the geographic diversity of the locations where close encounters can occur. To date they have ranged from the Arctic, down through the Baltic and Black Seas, to the Mediterranean, Iraq and Syria, the Pacific Ocean and along the coasts of Canada, Alaska and the Russian Far East.

While some principles of dealing with Moscow are timeless, the environments and manners in which Russia and NATO forces are now encountering each other are in some cases entirely new, in terms of physical or virtual space, force posture and political climate. It follows that lessons from previous periods when political or tactical miscalculation was possible, or actually occurred, must be assessed carefully for relevance before being applied to today’s circumstances. Nevertheless, conclusions can be drawn from both recent and more distant incidents. This section therefore considers instances of provocative or dangerous Russian action in peacetime, with the aim of determining trends, common features and lessons learned against the background of ongoing developments in NATO–Russian relations overall.

Case study. Close encounters

In 1968 a Soviet Tupolev Tu-16 Badger, a large twin-jet bomber-reconnaissance aircraft, stalled and crashed into the sea after a very low flyby close to a US aircraft carrier, the USS Essex, in the Norwegian Sea. There were no survivors.108 The incident carried multiple layers of risk. First, there was the obvious risk of collision (plainly a realistic possibility, since the Badger could equally well have crashed into the Essex). Second, potentially fraught with equally dangerous consequences, was the presence of a second Tu-16. Any element of uncertainty about the cause of the crash could have led to further escalation with unpredictable consequences, starting with retaliation by the second aircraft in the belief that the first had been shot down.

Incidents like this led Moscow to agree to the US proposal to sign the ‘Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents On and Over the High Seas’ (INCSEA) in 1972. This agreement remains in force today, with the specific aim of preventing this kind of irresponsible and dangerous behaviour. As noted above, it should be recalled when Russia requests new international agreements to prevent inadvertent clashes at sea or in the air that these agreements already exist, and include specific provisions which dangerous actions by Russian Air Force and Navy personnel routinely breach.109 The pattern of air and sea incidents that contravene arrangements like INCSEA overwhelmingly results not from misunderstandings but from deliberate, unprofessional and provocative Russian actions designed to extort concessions from the West. Multiple efforts have been made to address the risks posed by similar incidents between the US and Russia in recent years, but the results have been modest, primarily because Russia sees value in instrumentalizing brinkmanship. By engaging in these activities, it not only studies closely the tactical capabilities of its opponent, but also learns Western operational and political responses: the Kremlin therefore has no shortage of incentives to engage in provocations. But at the same time, any such incident carries with it the risk of unintended tragic consequences.

Sometimes these aggressive behaviours are designed to extract more specific concessions, such as driving NATO air operations away from Russia’s vicinity. Russia hopes to leverage Western concern over a clash leading to inadvertent escalation as a mechanism for ‘pushing adversaries away from strategically important areas and testing whether the West can be intimidated’.110 This strategy appears, at least in public policy discussions, to achieve a measure of success. Some Western commentators suggest that the appropriate response to aggressive and dangerous interceptions of NATO aircraft in international airspace is to seek new discussions with Russia on how to reduce tensions and avoid these incidents, or even to pull back behind dividing lines, unrelated to the strict legal position on sovereignty, intended to separate Russian and US/NATO activities.111 This approach is seriously flawed, because in common with similarly well-meaning proposals on renewed arms control negotiations, it presumes Russian interest in de-escalation – an interest that is plainly absent if Russia is disregarding international conventions, customs and common sense determining what constitutes safe and professional behaviour in the air and at sea. What is required instead is recognition of the problem that ‘traditional deconfliction planning assumes a priori that everybody has a collective interest in assuring its success. But, when it comes to operational dealings with the Russian armed forces … that has usually not been true.’112 At times, the objectives of Russian brinkmanship can be even more tactical and focused. In Syria, ‘risky Russian maneuvers were frequently tied to narrow goals, such as forcing U.S. counterparts to hold a conversation on one of the deconfliction hotlines, schedule a face-to-face meeting, or adjust a deconfliction agreement in Russia’s favor’.113

Since 2014, the frequency of air and air-sea encounters has increased dramatically. In 2016–17 a total of 146 air and sea incidents between Russia’s and other nations’ aircraft and vessels – chiefly air ‘encounters’ – was documented on the basis of open-source reports. Multiple incidents were classed by Russia’s counterparts as ‘unsafe and unprofessional’.114 The list noted hazardous airspace violations; alleged near-collisions between civilian airliners and military aircraft; fighters making close passes by surveillance aircraft; warships harassed by aircraft; and exercises simulating attacks against targets on another state’s territories. It also included a number of encounters involving shadowing of ships in international waters. More recent years have seen a continuation of the pattern, with repeated occurrences on land, at sea and in the air.115

In the air, there is ample potential for misinterpretation, especially when Russia practises for attack. Cases like this include an apparent simulated air attack against radar targets in Norway in March 2017, with Russian aircraft approaching, but not violating, sovereign airspace, and UK Royal Air Force aircraft routinely intercepting Russian Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack long-range bombers that approach British airspace or cross civilian airways without communicating with air traffic control. But the vast majority of air incidents incurring real and immediate danger involve Russian fighters conducting manoeuvres in close proximity to other aircraft.116 In the words of a British Eurofighter Typhoon pilot after a Baltic Air Policing deployment, this routinely consists of ‘doing stupid stuff close up to see if we will flinch’.117 The suggestion that these Russian practices are not applied away from Russian airspace and are a response to what Russia regards as provocative behaviour near its territory does not withstand scrutiny. The regular dispatch of bombers with cruise missile carrying capability conducting practice attack runs against NATO allies and partners is not the only instance of Russia demonstrating aggressive intent away from its own airspace.118 Russian bombers regularly ‘patrol’ in a threatening manner over the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Pacific.119 And in June 2019, a Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet intercepted a US P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft over the Mediterranean three times within three hours, on one occasion conducting a highly dangerous high-speed pass directly in front of the P-8.120

At the same time, Russia has proved adept at exploiting information about clashes or near misses, and the need for NATO to demonstrate similar agility in the information domain is well recognized. There are numerous examples of how not to respond. In August 2019, an F/A-18 aircraft assigned to NATO’s Baltic Air Policing (BAP) mission escorted Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu’s aircraft. Video of the encounter was released by Russia, apparently to NATO’s surprise. When asked about it by the media, NATO’s spokespersons gave an unclear and evasive answer, not even identifying the Spanish aircraft involved as part of BAP. That led to entirely unnecessary speculation in Western media as to what exactly had happened. NATO finally released information confirming what aviation experts reviewing the video had already concluded: that Shoygu’s aircraft had been escorted because, in contravention of commonly accepted air-traffic safety norms, it had not identified itself with a transponder; and that what the video showed was the Spanish aircraft reacting to a highly dangerous and unprofessional manoeuvre by one of the Russian escort fighters, which risked a collision. But NATO released this information 24 hours after the video became available – which was 23 hours too late. In the meantime, Western media had almost universally picked up and repeated the Russian version: that an inquisitive NATO aircraft had made a close approach but then retreated in fear of the mighty Russian Sukhoi fighter.

This is one instance that shows up multiple problems with the approach followed by NATO and some individual Western states. First, by not properly publicizing Russia’s irresponsible behaviour, it cedes the information space to Moscow instead of properly educating Western publics about Russian brinkmanship and the restraint required when faced with it. In particular, it allows Russia to further the narrative that it is behaving responsibly, and that NATO is the provocative actor – a narrative far too readily repeated by US and other Western policy commentators.121 But most importantly, as outlined in the section on ‘Transparency’ above, the lack of publicly available information about Russia’s hostile actions leads to an inadequate perception of threat among Western populations, and among those political leaders who receive the same information flows and are sensitive to public opinion. As a result NATO nations continue to compete with limited authorities, while Russia believes it is already at war.

At sea, Russia applies the same pattern of behaviour, in what appears a concerted policy to challenge naval operations by the US and its allies at any promising opportunity. This too involves brinkmanship that is both dangerous and unnecessary. In a near collision between US and Russian warships in the Western Pacific in June 2019, the US cruiser USS Chancellorsville and the Russian destroyer Admiral Vinogradov came within metres of each other following what US 7th Fleet Commander Clayton Doss called an ‘unsafe manoeuvre’ undertaken in an ‘unprofessional’ manner by the Russian vessel.122 Incidents of this kind continue in various ocean regions, including in January 2020 in the North Arabian Sea, when according to the US Navy the USS Farragut was also put at risk of collision by a Russian Navy warship.123

Both in these cases and closer to Russia’s own waters, the aim demonstrated in multiple incidents has been to give the impression that US ships being where they were was inherently hostile and provocative – so they should stay further away from Russia. In 2016 John Kerry offered an unusually robust commentary on one of many instances of harassment of the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea. A member of the Russian parliament responded that the US ‘ought to know that the Donald Cook approached our borders, and might already have been unable to depart them’.124 The message to US politicians is intended to be an alarming one; but if it leads to political pressure to cease operations in Russia’s immediate vicinity, this would constitute a success for Russia and an invitation to engage in further provocative and dangerous behaviour.

Case study. Direct clashes

But it is the experience of direct clashes between NATO and Russian force elements involving actual losses that could provide the most important lessons for management of incidents. At the time of writing, a number of instances of encounters between Russia and other countries are available for study from open sources. Three of these merit close attention in order to draw specific conclusions on Russian behaviour.

Russia and Turkey

In November 2015 a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24M that had repeatedly crossed briefly into Turkish airspace from Syria. Both Sukhoi aircrew ejected but the pilot was killed as a result of (Syrian rebel) enemy action. The firing of a missile by the F-16 had been preceded by multiple warnings. This was an instance of Russia ignoring rules of engagement that had been clearly signalled, and previously enforced, by Turkey. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford reportedly contacted his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, and in an effort to deter any impulsive Russian moves against coalition aircraft in response, he confirmed that the US would take any necessary action to defend itself.125

Russia’s response to the incident is highly instructive. Putin described Turkey’s actions as a ‘stab in the back’. Additional military deployments and economic sanctions followed, and under severe pressure from Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan found it necessary to apologize publicly. But a key result of the subsequent political manoeuvring was that within two years, Russian–Turkish relations were closer than at any time in the previous century – with highly alarming implications for NATO.

While the route by which these improved relations was reached is complex, the underlying lesson is that escalation from an unplanned clash can be managed, and firm enforcement of red lines does not preclude a constructive relationship with Russia. It is an oversimplification to say that shooting down a Russian aircraft improved the overall relationship between the two countries. But there is no doubt that it introduced clarity. Furthermore a NATO nation demonstrated the will to enforce boundaries, and to follow through on previously declared red lines and rules of engagement, and the result was not a widespread escalation of conflict between Russia and NATO. Nor has it prevented Russia and Turkey from cooperating in the longer term on areas of mutual interest while compartmentalizing those issues where their interests conflict.

The Turkish incident has clear and direct relevance to management of airspace incursions in the Baltic region, where a pattern of possibly accidental infringements by Russian aircraft in the previous decade has been replaced by routine violations of airspace and air traffic norms, in particular flights by Russian military aircraft with transponders not activated, flight plans not filed, and failure to communicate with air traffic controllers.126 The risk this presents includes the very real prospect that without remedial action by controllers and interception for identification by NATO aircraft, these flights could endanger civilian air traffic that would otherwise not be aware of them.

Russia and the US

Syria, as the location where US and Russian forces are currently operating in closest proximity, continues to provide case studies in deterring Russian assertiveness. The origins of the widely reported February 2018 incident at Deir ez-Zor, when an unconfirmed number of Russian private military contractors were killed or wounded by US fires disrupting preparations for an attack, remain murky, with speculation continuing on the level of authority at which the Russian operation was launched.127 Despite conflicting accounts of the circumstances that led to the incident, and of the real chain of command and accountability on the Russian side, it is known that existing deconfliction measures between the US and Russia in Syria functioned as intended.128

In any case, the operation was launched with the assumption, expectation or hope that there would be no US response. When this response was delivered, and forcefully, it generated no official Russian protest, although it might ordinarily have been expected to provoke outrage and countermeasures. One possible explanation is that it was considered entirely justified under the circumstances: Russia had engaged in deniable probing of the limits of tolerable behaviour, and in doing so had asked a question of the US and received an answer. This supports the conclusion that, given Russia’s higher tolerance both of casualties and of setbacks incurred in the course of exploring the boundaries of the possible, this incident should be seen as a successful demonstration of a red line being drawn and a message delivered that Moscow understood, internalized and acted on.

The result is likely to have been to set a boundary, and instil prudence in the planning of certain Russian operations; but this of course prompts Russia to probe elsewhere. In September 2018 the Al-Tanf base in Syria was once again the subject of threatening attention, with Russia stating its intent to enter the deconfliction zone around the base in breach of agreements with coalition forces. The local US response – a live-fire exercise calculated to demonstrate both capability and intent, accompanied by appropriate messaging – was precisely what was required to cause the Russian forces a change of heart. This incident too could serve as a template for how assertive and confident responses to Russian threats or demands consistently cause those threats and demands to evaporate.129

The 2016 US presidential election

In stark contrast to this pattern, the initial response by the US to Russian attacks on its democratic system during 2016 constituted an alarming failure of deterrence.

The Obama administration showed unwillingness or inability to respond in any meaningful manner to Russian cyber and information operations. As a result, Russian activities became more and more blatant and overt, gradually abandoning layers of deniability. The culmination was the practically open attack on the 2016 presidential election, and the series of prior and subsequent probing attacks on critical national and communications infrastructure, as well as destabilizing information campaigns attacking civil cohesion. For entirely different sets of wrong reasons, Presidents Obama and Trump both failed to elevate Russia’s intervention in the US to the national priority that it should have been, or to respond to it vigorously enough to deter Russia or other hostile states from undertaking future attacks.130 Despite clear and public statements by the US intelligence community attributing hostile political interference to Russia,131 the Obama administration found itself still unable to respond appropriately.132 A belated request to Russia to cease its interference, delivered shortly before the vote, was far too little and far too late.133

In effect, every aspect of the US response – dignified silence, polite requests, absence of meaningful countermeasures, unwillingness to draw public attention to the threat – met the criteria for how not to deter Russia. Subsequently, hopes that the incoming Trump administration might take a more robust attitude to Russian attacks on the US were swiftly disappointed.134 According to cyber policy expert Jason Healey, ‘there is now a well-documented example of cyber deterrence … Unfortunately for the United States, it was executed by Russia.’135

It was left to US law enforcement officials to develop a response to Russia without the support from the presidency that should have been automatic and unequivocal. Fortunately, they were aided by the new international willingness to confront Russian hostile actions, including in cyberspace, in close multinational cooperation, publicly and with greatly enhanced transparency, as described above in the case study on ‘Coordinated disclosures of hostile actions’.

Conclusions and lessons learned

Russia will continue to test boundaries with the West, but if those boundaries are defended with tangible resolve, they will be respected. This will not prevent further probing elsewhere or by other means, however, as Russia seeks to expand the range of actions it can undertake without incurring costs or consequences. It follows that Western lines must be consistently held in the face of ongoing Russian attempts to shift them. Friction is inevitable, and confrontation cannot be avoided, because it is already happening. The process of establishing the limits of tolerance will continue to be messy and expensive, but it is essential for setting bounds to Russian assertive action and containing excesses in the future. The case studies above show how in the context of this process, the critical skill for Russia’s adversaries is determining when irresponsible Russian behaviour should be treated as irritating and inconvenient background noise, and when it poses the threat of causing real damage, or when permitting it would allow Russia the freedom of manoeuvre to cause further, even more substantial harm.

5. Anticipate misunderstanding, miscommunication and miscalculation

Even best efforts to ensure clarity of communication will not ensure messages are received and understood.

The deconfliction mechanism set up by the US and Russia in Syria provides a good example of effective means to reduce the likelihood of accident or incident, and an example to follow at a time when many other channels of military communication have been curtailed, primarily as a result of Western policy. But even constant contact does not eliminate the potential for misunderstanding, including – in the context specifically of deterrent messaging – failures by one side effectively to communicate its interpretation of the other’s signals and thus to confirm that a deterrent message has been received as intended. And this is just one subset of the wide scope for things going wrong as a result of miscommunication or misunderstanding. This is especially but not only the case when Russia is probing responses or engaging in deliberately dangerous behaviour in the air or at sea.

Of all the air or maritime incidents described above, only the example of Turkey in 2015 has as yet involved an actual clash or collision, deliberate or otherwise. But a precedent from the Cold War provides useful indicators of when miscalculation or political change could lead to a more serious encounter.

Case study. 1988 Black Sea ramming

As NATO allies consider or undertake freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in areas of high political and military sensitivity for Russia such as the Arctic and the coast of Crimea, an assertive response by Russia is assumed and expected – an expectation borne out by its reaction to the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender’s transit of the Black Sea in June 2021.136 A previous instance of FONOPs leading to a potentially dangerous confrontation is worth considering in detail for the lessons it provides on the multiple and complex factors that can lead to miscalculation in these circumstances.

Incident outline

In 1986 the US claimed territorial waters extending to three miles from the coast. The Soviet Union claimed 12 miles of territorial waters, a claim that the US accepted as long as free navigation was permitted through the additional nine miles. The USSR, however, only allowed foreign warships to travel unannounced within the 12-mile limit in restricted lanes, with any deviation from those lanes requiring advance Soviet approval. The US did not recognize these restrictions, and conducted freedom of navigation operations to contest them.

In early March 1986 the Aegis cruiser USS Yorktown and the Spruance-class destroyer USS Caron entered the Black Sea via the Turkish Straits. Their entrance was observed by a Soviet Krivak-class frigate, the Ladny, which shadowed them as they crossed towards the Soviet coast. On 13 March Yorktown and Caron entered Soviet territorial waters and remained there for just over two hours, sailing west along the southern coast of Crimea and coming within six miles of land. The Ladny continued to shadow them but took no action to intervene, and the Soviet response was limited to diplomatic protests after the fact.

In February 1988 the Yorktown and Caron repeated the operation but this time were confronted by two Soviet warships, the frigates Bezzavetnyy and SKR-6, which after issuing warnings both rammed the US ships.

There had been key developments on the Soviet side which meant the reaction in 1988 was far more robust than in 1986, but these changes may not have been visible to the US side, causing a potentially hazardous misalignment of assumption and expectation. Factors contributing to the USSR’s unexpectedly assertive response fall under three broad categories: the operational context, political developments, and a mismatched understanding of what constituted legal freedom of navigation. Each of these will be examined in turn.

Operational context

Russia’s rules of engagement had changed between March 1986 and February 1988, and this change may or may not have been discernible to the US.

A key development in the intervening period was the incident in 1987 when German private pilot Matthias Rust landed his Cessna light aircraft in Red Square. The evident confusion of Soviet air defence on how to respond to Rust’s incursion provided a political pretext for the mass sackings of senior Soviet military officers; but it also led to a determination on the part of the Soviet Armed Forces to prevent similar embarrassment in the future. By February 1988, according to Vice Admiral Nikolay Mikheyev (at that time chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet’s 70th Brigade of anti-submarine warfare vessels), the Black Sea Fleet’s mission was to prevent a US incursion ‘by any available means’; so after the Yorktown and Caron had first approached ‘dangerously close to the closed area off the coast of Crimea’ and then ‘crossed the line into the forbidden area in spite of warnings’, a confrontation was inevitable.137

The Soviet Navy had given careful thought to scenarios and methods for preventing a repeat incursion. However, the actions of the Bezzavetny in February 1988 were not one of these methods. The frigate had just returned from a Mediterranean cruise, and had started unloading its missiles and had released part of the crew for shore leave. However, it was allocated at short notice to meet the US warships as the destroyer Krasnyy Kavkaz was unable to put to sea because of ‘technical problems’.138

Rear Admiral Vladimir Bogdashin, then commander of the Bezzavetny, considered that his only option after issuing warnings to the US ships was shouldering. Interviewed in 2008, Bogdashin commented that this was despite understanding ‘that colliding with an object three times your size was in best case a fire, in the worst breaking up and foundering … My ship had a displacement of 3,100 tonnes and they were 9,700. What could we do?’139 This also suggests a potential factor for miscalculation that lies in asymmetry of attitude to risk. According to Bogdashin, speaking in another interview, ‘the Americans are good sailors. But they are weaker psychologically. Dying for their Motherland doesn’t feature in their plans.’140

After the first glancing collision, the Bezzavetny was ordered to withdraw but, according to Bogdashin, was forced to change heading back towards the Yorktown once more and ram it by the bows to prevent the sterns of both vessels – with loaded torpedo tubes on the Bezzavetny and Harpoon missile launchers on the Yorktown – from clashing, with the likelihood of fire or explosion.141

Political developments

The political climate of the time was predisposed towards reducing tensions and consequently avoiding escalation. According to US reporting at the time, ‘Government officials said little would be made of the incident for fear of jeopardizing warming superpower relations’.142

However, if there had been a further escalation of confrontation over the incident, it is likely that the USSR’s response would have been hard to predict and influenced by internal policy incoherence. The senior leadership in Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev was rapidly adjusting to the context of thawing tensions with the US. A new minister of defence, General Dmitry Yazov, had recently been appointed, with a potentially different approach to rules of engagement. According to Admiral Vladimir Chernavin, commander-in-chief of the Soviet and Russian Navy from 1985 to 1993, his report to Yazov on the bumping incident met with incomprehension:

When I came to Yazov, he asked me what was going on down there in the Black Sea Fleet. I said nothing, all is as planned. He said, what do you mean planned, the General Secretary [Gorbachev] has just called me and said ships have collided and we are practically at war with the Americans! I said no, this is all as planned.143

As a further indication of confusion in Moscow over the appropriate handling of the incident, Mikheyev and Bogdashin were congratulated and given commemorative watches – after first being threatened with disciplinary action and told they would have to pay for the Bezzavetny’s anchor lost in the collision.144

Legal position

A further source of confusion, and a primary cause of the confrontation, was differing legal interpretations of what constituted permissible sailing in foreign territorial waters.

The US claim of innocent passage was open to legal question, since electronic intelligence gathering was a secondary aim of the close approach to the Soviet coast. But in addition, as noted above, at the time the Soviet Union recognized the right of innocent passage for warships in its territorial waters solely in designated sea lanes, but the US held that there was no legal basis for a coastal nation to limit navigation in this way.

These interpretations were based on the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention; but after the 1988 incident, a US Department of State investigation found crucial differences between the English and Russian language texts of the Convention. The Russian text allowed a coastal state to regulate the right of innocent passage whenever necessary, while the English text did not. (Other differences were detected in the official text of the Convention rendered in several other languages as well.)

In other words, in challenging the US warships’ passage, the USSR was acting in good faith and in accordance with its rights under the official Russian-language version of the Convention.145

Conclusions and lessons learned

During this period of rapid political change in Moscow, it was to be expected that the USSR’s further actions after the incident were the subject of conflicting views between Soviet Navy command, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the KGB.146 In this instance, Moscow joined with Washington in not escalating further, either locally or elsewhere. But one final mismatch of perception was in the USSR’s view that the results of the incident constituted a successful outcome. According to Bogdashin, ramming was a successful tactic because ‘after that NATO vessels came no closer than 120 miles from our shores’.147 This is patently untrue; but it is hardly uncommon for Russian narratives, whether for external or domestic consumption, to be entirely unconstrained by factual accuracy.

In summary, the responses of Russia and indeed other nations to movements by Western forces can be rendered unpredictable not only by deliberately provocative Russian behaviour at a tactical level, but also by a range of objective factors, all of which may or may not be detectable outside Russia:

Political change at a senior level, and accompanying policy incoherence;
Shifting perceptions and motivations among military commanders;
Differing interpretations of legal rights and obligations between the two sides;
Mismatched attitudes to and acceptance of risk;
Varying concepts of what constitutes a successful outcome to confrontation.

6. Avoid conflict avoidance

Western, especially European, aversion to conflict has repeatedly been a key enabler for Russian objectives.

Readiness to escalate

Once relations with Russia deteriorate to the point where decisions need to be made about escalation, a key requirement for preventing Russia achieving its aims is not being seen to be desperate to avoid conflict. Defusing the confrontation must not be the only priority in an escalation scenario, since examples abound where Russia has achieved its goals through other parties being intent on preventing or ending the fighting, while Russia is more focused on ensuring it emerges from the process with advantage. The early stages of the crisis around Ukraine saw repeated offers of ‘off-ramps’ made to Moscow by Western leaders led by President Barack Obama in order to resolve the confrontation. All of these were entirely pointless, since they were made at a time when Russia was achieving its objectives. Conformity to this pattern invites a challenge described by Russia-watcher Oscar Jonsson: ‘As long as the West is entirely predictable, Russia believes it can escalate cost-free because the West will always want to sit down and negotiate.’148

Case study. 21st-century ceasefires

In three armed conflicts (Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014–15 and Syria 2015–16) Russia has achieved strategic aims by exploiting Western preoccupation with ending conflict. The common feature in each of Russia’s campaigns in this period was that major Western powers were induced to impose on Russia’s adversary a ceasefire agreement drafted in Moscow, cementing Russian interests and legitimizing Russian demands even where Russia was the aggressor. The Georgian ceasefire agreement was overseen by French President Nicolas Sarkozy; the Minsk agreements by French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel; and a series of Syrian ceasefires was brokered by the US, primarily through Secretary of State John Kerry. Russia achieved its goals because each of these Western leaders prioritized ending the fighting, while Russia focused on winning the war.149

In Georgia, Sarkozy took over previously even-handed peace negotiations and drove through acceptance of a peace plan drafted in Moscow. In part this resulted from a false perception that Georgia could be overrun altogether, despite the absence of credible evidence that the storming of Tbilisi was ever seriously contemplated. In the six-point ceasefire agreement of 12 August 2008, Sarkozy forced a disastrous concession on Georgia: that ‘awaiting an international mechanism, Russian peacekeepers shall implement additional security measures’. In doing so, he gave Russia licence not only to retain its troops in the disputed territories, but also to establish an 8-km-deep ‘security zone’ beyond the administrative borders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Subsequent EU protests that Russia was violating the ceasefire agreement by occupying the two disputed regions were easily countered by reference to the explicit permission granted to Russia in that agreement.150

Russia’s military offensives in Ukraine in August 2014 and January 2015 introduced a dramatically new dynamic into the conflict there, and yet they represented escalations of influence as much as of conventional war-fighting. The January offensive formed the backdrop to threats delivered to Merkel by Putin himself to escalate the conflict to unspecified levels if his demands were not met. Despite her robustness up to this point, a key part of Merkel’s cognitive matrix was the strong desire to avoid conventional, let alone nuclear war in Europe, and Putin exploited this sensitivity to the full.151 In other words, he used a combination of direct military action and understanding of the psychological trigger points of his interlocutor to exercise reflexive control over her actions (and those of François Hollande). This was combined with a largely successful information campaign aimed at convincing the West that Ukraine was to blame for the failure to implement the Minsk protocols.

There were three main consequences of this exploitation. The first was the flawed and hastily concluded Package of Measures for Implementation of the Minsk Accords (Minsk II). The second was a decision to link sanctions, until this point tied to the return of Donbas to Ukraine, to implementation of Minsk II, which does not stipulate its return but its ‘special status’ and hence meets Russian objectives entirely. The third was the ‘Normandy process’, which continues to this day despite Russia’s failure to honour any of the provisions of the prior agreements.152 Overall, combining conventional kinetic activity with a sustained and multi-dimensional information campaign brought Russia success in ensuring a permissive environment for ongoing destabilizing activity against Ukraine, condoned by a notional ceasefire ensuring the protection of Russia’s baseline interests.

In Syria, Russia exploited Western alarm and revulsion at atrocities against the civilian population, together with a campaign of reflexive control against US Secretary of State John Kerry, to arrive at a ceasefire agreement entirely in the interests of Russia and its partners. The agreement on a limited cessation of hostilities in Syria in March 2016, and its successor agreements, achieved some of the West’s immediate aims of reducing the level of bloodshed and creating conditions for the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid. But it met a much wider range of Russian objectives, not limited to Syria itself.153 Locally, the agreement achieved a Russian goal that had been consistent since the beginning of the conflict in Syria: halting military operations by opposition forces against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Those opposition groups that signed up to the ceasefire plan also agreed to join the next round of peace talks in Geneva, in exchange for the promise – later shown to be entirely insincere – of no further attacks by Assad’s forces or Russia. This was in line with another key Russian aim: a negotiated transition of power in Syria, rather than the forcible removal of Assad previously insisted on by the US. But while Europe and the US were focused on the short-term aim of ending the fighting in Syria – or at least limiting it to operations against Islamic State (ISIS) – Russia remained focused on much longer-term goals including cementing its position as a power broker in the Middle East, eroding US power and seeking means of mitigating its exposure to criticism or adverse consequences over its actions in Ukraine.

The change in US policy from insisting on the removal of Assad towards possibly accepting him as part of a negotiated political transition represented a retreat in the face of Russian military assertiveness. The US in effect abandoned its allies: Kerry announced that the opposition groups supported by the US would make themselves targets for continuing air strikes and ground operations if they did not fall in with Russia’s plans and sign up to the ceasefire and the political negotiations.

Case study. Failures of resolve in Syria and Kosovo

The March 2016 ceasefire was the second high-profile occasion on which Secretary Kerry had been used as a tool to endorse and validate a plan for Syria that was drawn up in Moscow. The first was in September 2013, when the Obama administration declared ‘red lines’ following the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces. If these had been enforced despite Russian opposition, potentially including by means of the promised US strike on Syria, this would have represented a substantial reverse for Russia’s policy on the conflict; it would have demonstrated the boundaries of Russian influence and left Moscow significantly less emboldened to undertake the seizure of Crimea less than a year later. Instead, the US administration’s aversion to assertive action both displayed lack of resolve and handed the diplomatic initiative to Russia. Moscow responded swiftly to unguarded comments by Kerry by presenting a proposal for chemical weapons withdrawal that he was hardly able to refuse (despite its later proving entirely fraudulent). This validation of Russia’s claims to decisive influence in the region – and to the ability successfully to influence US policy – constituted a major turning point in Moscow’s views of its power and capabilities, with similarly highly damaging results for international security.154

There is no shortage of examples of Western powers not deterring but in fact encouraging Russian military adventurism. President Obama’s declaration that there was ‘no military solution to the confrontation in Ukraine’ left Russia free to pursue its own military solution without fear of meaningful interference from the US.155 Later, statements by European politicians that Russia must be part of the political settlement process in Syria because of its military presence there sent the message to Moscow that if Russia intervenes militarily in other regions in the future, it is guaranteed a voice or a veto in that region’s political future.156

But the pattern for Russia’s use of unilateral military intervention to insert itself into situations where it is subsequently accepted by all sides was set long before. Eighteen years before the incident in Syria that opened this paper, the confrontation between British and Russian troops at Pristina airport in Kosovo in June 1999 offers a direct parallel to the Russian threat to Al-Tanf in 2017, described at the start of this paper, but with diametrically opposite results.

With a four-hour head start on British forces entering Kosovo as part of K-FOR, 200 Russian troops arriving by road from Bosnia had time to establish a loose perimeter around the airport and block roads with armoured personnel carriers while awaiting reinforcement by air.157 SACEUR General Wesley Clark recognized how failure to control the region’s only airport, and the presence of an uncooperative Russian contingent, presented a significant challenge to the success of the entire K-FOR mission. Accordingly, after acquiring explicit political authority from NATO Secretary General Javier Solana he gave orders for NATO troops to face down the Russian contingent and proceed to the airport as planned. But British commander General Sir Mike Jackson refused first to enter the airport perimeter without Russian cooperation, and subsequently to block the runway to prevent the arrival of Russian reinforcements.

Jubilant Russian television coverage with footage of ineffectual attempts by British armoured fighting vehicles to pass the Russian roadblocks while civilian traffic was allowed through freely left a lasting impression to set against recent memories of disaster in Chechnya.158 More significantly, the coup de main in Pristina represented a successful post-Imperial intervention for Russia, a vindication of its persistent belief that it can act as a great power, and the first in a series of confirmations that bold military intervention is an effective means of resolving foreign policy challenges – and that Western powers will accept this and concede its results because they are unwilling to risk confrontation with Moscow.

The refusal of British commanders to follow orders and force the issue, on the basis that this would ‘start the Third World War’,159 has since been presented as a successful peaceful resolution of a potentially highly dangerous crisis. But this refusal rested on two highly questionable assumptions: that the situation could not have been resolved without resort to lethal force, and that this in turn would have led to uncontrollable escalation involving Russian and NATO forces far from Kosovo. The proximate result, besides humiliation for British troops, was the unwanted parallel presence of Russian troops alongside, but not subordinate to, K-FOR.

But the British exercise of self-deterrence had adverse consequences that lasted well beyond the lifespan of K-FOR and the Russian presence in Kosovo. The crucial initial minutes of the airport encounter set a precedent and a reference point for Russia’s continuing drive to project power far beyond its borders, and to strive for relevance and influence by means of military assertiveness, with all its attendant dangers for Russia’s adversaries. More locally, according to Sir Andrew Wood. a former British ambassador to both Yugoslavia and Russia, it also contributed strongly to a persistent perception of close partnership between Russia and Serbia: ‘Pausing at Pristina, in a period when Moscow was talking to Milosevic of conceding defeat while he could still do so and yet remain in office, helped to feed the idea that has grown since in Serbia itself that Russia is now on their side.’160

Conclusions and lessons learned

In a number of cases, as outlined above, Western nations have accommodated and excused appalling behaviour by Russia, by imposing on its victims a ceasefire agreement drawn up in Moscow. But other opportunities too have been missed to set boundaries for Russian assertiveness. The confrontation at Pristina airport in 1999, if handled differently, could have served as a salutary reminder to Moscow of the limits of its power, at a pivotal moment in Russia’s political, social and constitutional development. A similarly important opportunity was missed in Syria in 2013.

Once again the key asymmetry that needs to be adjusted in order for effective deterrence to be maintained is in the perceived willingness to implement forceful solutions. The lesson Russia learned from each of the above cases is that the West, including on occasion the US, is willing to prioritize avoiding conflict over winning it. Consequently, assertive or even aggressive action remains likely to achieve Russian objectives since the possibility is left open that it may not be opposed.

7. Deterrence by denial below the threshold of war

Resilience to ‘hybrid threats’ is mostly indistinguishable from best practice in ordinary governance

Russia remains aware that its military power will remain inferior to that of the United States, and of the US allies combined. This awareness will continue to stimulate a search for asymmetric means of prevailing in conflict. Alongside growing awareness of the multi-faceted and whole-of-government nature of the Russian challenge, the majority of US and allied military commanders must necessarily remain primarily concerned with kinetic capability. But Russia, if at all possible, would prefer a mode of conflict that renders that superior capability, and all the associated exquisite skills, equipment and technology, irrelevant.

‘Hybrid’ terminology remains firmly embedded in NATO discourse and beyond to describe grey-zone activities and unconventional warfare. But an at times excessive focus on hybrid threats has been unhelpful in describing the range of options available to Moscow. This is in part because the original and perfectly valid concept of hybrid warfare, relating to counter-insurgency operations, became stretched in all directions to fit campaigning by Russia and other adversaries, with the resulting proliferation of definitions militating against common understanding. More damagingly, the belief arose that the Western notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ was in fact a Russian concept and approach161 – allied with the so-called ‘Gerasimov doctrine’, another phrase whose widespread misuse brought with it dangerous misconceptions about the nature of Russian security thinking.

Russia will, of course, seek to exploit asymmetries in warfare – just as anybody fighting a war will do – but even without ‘hybrid warfare’ there are plenty of asymmetries in Russia’s favour simply in terms of straightforward conventional forces. These include speed, presence, mass, unity of command, political will, and a decision-making structure which – in marked contrast to that of NATO – is designed to actually make decisions. At the same time, however, while a US presence in eastern Europe raises the cost for Russia of launching a traditional, conventional military assault on a NATO country, it has not deterred Russian whole-of-government efforts to attack, subvert and degrade its adversaries, including the US, and this will continue to be the case.

Moscow’s belief that the insecurity of others makes Russia itself more secure depends on the dubious principle that there is only a finite amount of security in the world. But it also prompts Russia to engage in subversion and destabilization of states it perceives as adversaries, even if there is not necessarily a final objective in mind; simply weakening them will in relative terms make Russia stronger.162 It follows that deterrent postures are also required to close off perceived opportunities for Russia in diplomatic, political, economic, information and societal confrontation,163 as well as undesirable actions at a level below the strategic – such as campaigns of targeted assassination164 or seeking to cause societal harm through sponsoring anti-vaccination campaigns.165

Since grey-zone activities also constitute a means of testing responses and deterrence, it can be noted that while Russia pursues low-intensity options to destabilize its neighbours and adversaries further afield, it is also consistently testing the credibility of the current international security framework and the overall principle of deterrence.166 Potential responses must be considered wherever Russia pursues ‘active measures’ abroad via its intelligence and special operations agencies. Definitions of ‘active measures’ can be wide-ranging; in practical terms they cover activities ‘from simple propaganda and forgery to assassination, terrorism and everything in between’.167 Russian operations in the grey zone, while not entirely risk-free, rely on a calculation that the adversary (or more significantly its allies, including the US) will not escalate.

As such, in some instances they are an indication that Russia does not feel strong or confident enough to achieve its aims through overt measures. It follows that there is a strong argument for responding swiftly and forcefully to indications of Russian grey-zone activity, since hesitation is likely to allow it to succeed.168 It could be argued that by disguising and disavowing its actions in Crimea, Russia showed it was not willing to risk military escalation. But responding to covert aggression with escalation lifts the conflict out of the grey zone and renders it no longer deniable, removing at a stroke several of Russia’s key advantages. In addition, if front-line states follow the principle stated by former Estonian defence chief General Riho Terras – ‘shoot the first little green man that appears’ – this forces Russia either to back down, withdraw and deny any connection to the incident, or immediately to escalate to a level of conflict where an armed attack on the target state is undeniable, removing arguments for the rest of NATO not to become involved.

… the task is to ensure that the periphery of Russian control in Europe consists as far as possible of countries with well-organized, competent societies and competent militaries. This would ultimately render subversion ineffective, as domestic cohesion is an effective barrier.

In addition to willingness to escalate, Russia’s neighbours can implement effective deterrence by denial of unconventional threats, through reducing the areas of weakness that Russia would seek to target in order to subvert and destabilize them. For instance, corruption at varying levels creates vulnerabilities which can then have much wider ramifications, whether allowing the undetected introduction of Russian covert funding which can then be spent on subversion, or simply allowing the capture of local elites and influencing the role they play in NATO and the EU.169 In this respect the task is to ensure that the periphery of Russian control in Europe consists as far as possible of countries with well-organized, competent societies and competent militaries. This would ultimately render subversion ineffective, as domestic cohesion is an effective barrier. The best deterrence to ‘political warfare’ lies in creating sufficient societal resistance that subversion is likely to fail.170

Measures that will reduce the effectiveness of Russian methods of political subversion and unconventional warfare include:

Recognizing the critical importance of good governance, including proper strategic regional policies, in order to avoid the emergence of neglected areas that can become disaffected – especially if those areas contain Russian minorities;
Investing in political early warning and situational awareness, including monitoring the sources of finance for political parties and organized crime groups, and granular monitoring of popular sentiment;
Bolstering the capabilities and resources of internal security forces, including border security, customs and immigration control to prevent infiltration, maritime control to minimize unmonitored border crossing opportunities, counterterrorism capabilities and physical security measures;
Developing the capability for highly mobile crowd and riot control, and the judicial capacity to deal swiftly with large numbers of detained individuals;
Building social cohesion and ensuring democracy works, including by increasing resilience to malicious propaganda and projecting coherent messages;
Placing systemic vulnerabilities at the core of exercises on hybrid warfare scenarios;
Strengthening national conventional defence capabilities;
Investing in provision for a long-term allied presence and for rapid reinforcement, including reception and staging infrastructure, and command-and-control elements capable of rapid expansion.

Building resilience in the face of Russian efforts to undermine the political or economic foundations of a nation can be a long-term and costly process. In the case of Ukraine, for instance, as the country is unable to prevent Russian efforts to control its maritime borders through measures such as interdiction of the Kerch Strait (by naval blockade or simply by building a bridge), the primary recommendation is to develop alternative export infrastructure.171 But, as is commonly the case, the alternative to long-term investment in resilience is even greater costs resulting from increased exploitation by Russia.

At the same time, awareness of Russia’s grey-zone and information warfare capabilities and the development of countermeasures should not distract from considering its conventional capabilities overall, since activities below the threshold of war or in other domains are an addition to conventional military power, not a replacement for it. Moscow’s consistent experience throughout the last decade is that application of military force swiftly and effectively achieves strategic aims, with costs and consequences that are manageable by comparison with the gains made. The cessation of hostilities agreement in Syria in March 2016 discussed in Section 6 above was a notable example of US and Western capitulation to a limited demonstration of military will, with the US acquiescing to all of Russia’s demands in exchange for a notional reduction in the level of fighting. In the following year, in surveying the nature of modern warfare, Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov focused on the continuing erosion of the boundaries between war and peace, and noted that it is more and more common for a country’s sovereignty and national security to be threatened in peacetime. But the response to ‘new generation warfare’, Gerasimov argued, should be a focus on conventional and nuclear readiness for high-end, high-intensity, high-technology war.172 Russia’s response to the changing character of war, he indicated, was not a pivot to focusing on ‘hybrid’ capabilities, but rather nuclear rearmament, investment in precision guided weapons, long-range strategic aviation, increased stand-off capabilities, electronic warfare, ‘increasing the cohesion of society in support of the Armed Forces’, and an overall mobilization of the economy and society.

Overall conclusions

Russia can exploit differences in strategic cultures between itself and Western powers. This includes greater willingness by Russia to accept risk, and to accept brief or protracted conflict as a means to further state aims, as evidenced in continuing operations in Ukraine and Syria.173 A distinguishing feature in Russian conduct is a higher acceptance of risk and a lower threshold for the use of force, be it military or non-military. In order to avoid this trap, it is essential that Russia’s adversaries also display willingness to exhibit a firm response to challenges, up to and including meeting force with force and maintaining escalation dominance.

A 2020 RUSI study noted:

The prospect of actually harming Russians and the perceived escalatory consequences have had a genuine deterrent effect on Western planners in the past. However, a distinction must be drawn between the use of military force against Russians and strikes against forces contravening communicated red lines. Whereas the former is clearly escalatory, the latter has consistently proven not to be. The Soviet Union and the US avoided revealing direct confrontation, even as their pilots flew against one another in Korea and Russian air defenders knocked out US aircraft in Vietnam. Today, we observe Russia and Turkey, and Russia and Israel, playing down suggestions that Russian advisers may have been killed in drone strikes against SA-22s. Russia has persistently probed adversary red lines, but has withdrawn – rather than escalated – when it has suffered casualties, even in significant numbers. In short, the infliction of ‘doses of pain’ to enforce red lines has proven to provide an effective deterrent by punishment. The limited application of force has had a constraining effect on Russian operations.174

Two of the case studies explored above – the Russia–Turkey air encounter and the Deir ez-Zor incident – support the conclusion that given Russia’s higher tolerance both of casualties and of setbacks incurred in the course of probing the boundaries of the possible, these incidents should be seen as a successful demonstration of red lines to Moscow. The lesson from both cases is that escalation from an unplanned clash can be managed, and firm enforcement of boundaries does not preclude a constructive relationship with Russia.

Crucially, Russia does not necessarily regard assertive action for the purpose of deterrence as provocative; rather, it is considered a normal part of interaction between states. This takes the form of a non-verbal conversation, since as Dima Adamsky notes, ‘the deterrence equation, for the product of this cognitive milieu, is a function of one and one’s competitor interacting, and not of mere static balances, an insight from which emanates another instinct – the inclination to constantly shape the adversary’.175 Moscow is ready for this conversation to be robust: according to Daniel Flynn, ‘since Russia is at war, for the Kremlin, there [are no] unacceptable forms of deterrence, compellence, or coercion’.176

This also highlights a dangerous false premise guiding many Western approaches to confrontation with Russia overall: the notion that Western states can choose whether they enter a conflict with Russia or not. This false premise underpins every action that simultaneously seeks to punish Russian hostility but also to ‘avoid escalation’. This avoidance is counter-productive, since ‘the more confident the Russian leadership is in the ability to manage escalation, and in the existence of workable war termination strategies in each possible type of war (local, regional, and large-scale), the more likely they are to engage in activities short of war or competitions in risk taking’.177

Russia mounts military operations not only when it believes that this is the only remaining way of achieving its political objectives, but also when it simply considers that this is likely to be the most effective solution. It is highly unlikely to start a war it believes it will lose. Actions intended to persuade Russia that it is imprudent to embark on overt hostile activity, therefore, should focus on those areas of capability and political will that cause it the greatest concern – tempered with caution that a perception of overwhelming inferiority and risk does not cause it to strike first before the balance of power deteriorates still further.

Missile strikes by the US and its allies in Syria, as a demonstration both of Western capability and of will, caused deep reflection in Moscow. Russia’s fear of superior US capabilities which could deliver retaliation or deterrence by punishment based on cruise missiles backed by a massive aerospace advantage may have been displaced by Prompt Global Strike and hypersonic weapons,178 but decapitation strikes targeting control structures remain a key concern as they were during Soviet times. Russia has a strong respect for the US ability to inflict damage on critical infrastructure; this mirrors its own concept of inflicting demonstrative damage on targets that cause disruption to civil society in order to deter an adversary.179

Sustainability is also a concern for Russia, since its capacity to conduct protracted warfare at a more intense level than that shown in Ukraine and Syria is in doubt. While Russia retains the capability to increase its armed forces in a crisis, the early stages of its military overhaul following the 2008 conflict with Georgia involved dismantling the structures for full-scale and extended military mobilization. The US could underscore this concern by advertising continuing stamina for extended conflict, though this approach might be beyond the plausible reach of European allies.

But even before deterrent messaging that plays on specific Russian concerns, evidence of allied unity and will to act promptly and act together will have substantial deterrent value in its own right, by heavily weighting Russia’s risk-benefit calculus against action. Plausible demonstrations of speed of recognition and decision-making in response to Russian initiatives, followed up by other shows of international solidarity, will help to prevent Russia from reaching the conclusion that it can take action against an individual Western nation without incurring consequences inflicted by its friends, partners and allies.

Meanwhile, however, Russia wishes to stoke fears in the West of miscalculation or misinterpretation leading uncontrollably to nuclear war. The success of this campaign in creating an impression of deteriorating stability and imminent danger can be measured by the number of influential Western figures who can be persuaded (often unwittingly) to endorse Russian messages, and with them Russia’s preferred solutions. Claims of a ‘deterioration of the European security situation in recent years’ where ‘incidents in the course of military activities which bring Russian and NATO forces into close proximity are worrisome in their own right and run the risk of escalation’ and ‘a real military confrontation becomes an increasing danger’ (and hence where new – Russian-sponsored – agreements constraining military activities in Russia’s vicinity are essential) have been signed by an impressive roll-call of former SACEURs, deputy SACEURs, chiefs of defence, defence ministers and NATO secretaries-general.180 Given that NATO deterrence explicitly rests on the promise of escalation if attacked, senior figures from the organization signing up with their adversary to the proposition that NATO and Russia must agree urgent measures to restrict the possibilities of escalation represents a striking success for the Russian intent. According to a detailed study of Russian views on escalation management, ‘the concepts underpinning Russian thinking [on this topic] have several objectives: managing escalation at existing levels, keeping the conflict bounded, deterring additional participants from joining, and reducing the cohesion of opposing coalitions’.181 The last three of these objectives are directly antithetical to the interests and priorities of alliances like NATO, with its founding principles of mutual assistance against aggression.

The suggestion that the security situation in northeast Europe in particular is rapidly deteriorating has been accepted by many of Russia’s interlocutors; unquestioningly, it seems, since as soon as it is questioned it becomes immediately clear that it is a proposition based on false premises. In 2021, the only destabilizing factor in Baltic security is the same deliberate Russian provocative behaviour (with the more recent addition of Belarusian unpredictability under Russian protection). In fact, ‘the level of tension in the Baltic region has gradually declined from its level in 2014–15, when both political tensions and the imbalance in capability were at their height’.182 A key factor in this decline has been the start of attempts by NATO, and by NATO partner Sweden, to address the imbalance in capability by starting to fill the relative military vacuum in the region. In this process the contribution of NATO’s eFP programme has been a resounding success, as much for its signalling of unity and political will among the Alliance as for its ability in itself to deter or – moderately – slow a Russian incursion.183

The suggestion that the security situation in northeast Europe in particular is rapidly deteriorating has been accepted by many of Russia’s interlocutors; unquestioningly, it seems, since as soon as it is questioned it becomes immediately clear that it is a proposition based on false premises.

Nevertheless, the repeated pattern of success for Russia in its use of intimidation suggests that this is likely to be attempted again in the future, since consistent Russian practice, alongside considerable capacity for innovation, is to repeat a tactic for as long as it achieves success. This implies that in the event of future conflict, Moscow is very likely once again to seek to influence Western leaders to impose a ceasefire on Russian terms on the victim of Russian aggression. In the meantime, given the drivers for Russian provocative behaviours and brinkmanship outlined above, Western nations need to be prepared for similar incidents to continue for as long as Russia wishes to persist – or until a miscalculation leads to an avoidable tragedy.

Speaking at Chatham House seminar, August 2018.

Giles, ‘Assessing Russian Success and Failure’, pp. 125–6.

Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, speaking at Russia Strategic Initiative (RSI) seminar ‘Deterrence à la Russe’, 1 June 2021.

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Roberts, ‘Moscow’s Cold War on the Periphery’.

The two provinces hosted populations of Armenian and Georgian descent, and had been part of the Tsarist empire from 1878 until 1921, when they were transferred to Turkey. Roberts, ‘Moscow’s Cold War on the Periphery’; Hasanli, Stalin and the Turkish Crisis, p. 107; Sotnichenko, A. A. (2010), ‘Советско-турецкие противоречия в 1945-1950 гг. в условиях формирования Ялтинской системы международных отношений’ [Soviet-Turkish tensions in 1945–1950 in the context of the formation of international relations based on the Yalta system], Труды Исторического факультета Санкт-Петербургского университета [Works of the St Petersburg University History Faculty journal], N2, http://statehistory.ru/5550/Sovetsko-turetskie-protivorechiya-v-1945-1950-gg—v-usloviyakh-formirovaniya-YAltinskoy-sistemy-mezhdunarodnykh-otnosheniy (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Roberts, ‘Moscow’s Cold War on the Periphery’.

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De Luca, R. (1977), ‘Soviet-American Politics and the Turkish Straits’, Political Science Quarterly, 92 (3),  p. 519, https://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=10200, quoted in Roberts, ‘Moscow’s Cold War on the Periphery’, p. 77.

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Lanoszka and Hunzeker, Conventional Deterrence and Landpower in Northeastern Europe.

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Meeting attended by the author.

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Charles Kupchan, speaking at Council on Foreign Relations Russia Symposium, New York, 13 April 2017, see https://www.cfr.org/event/responding-russia (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

A theme explored at length in two essential studies of Russian civilization and culture originally published in the 1970s: Szamuely, T. (1974), The Russian Tradition, New York: McGraw Hill; and Pipes, R. (1974), Russia Under the Old Regime, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Kissinger, H. (2015), World Order, London: Penguin, p. 52.

Gaddis, J. (1982), Strategies of Containment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 86.

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Hosking, G. (2017), ‘Putin is part of a continuum that stretches back to the tsars’, Guardian, 4 April 2017,  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/putin-continuum-tsars-russia (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Discussed in detail in Marten, ‘President Trump, Keep in Mind that Russia and the West Think about Negotiations Very, Very Differently’.

Baev, P. (2015), ‘Russia Reinvents Itself as a Rogue State in the Ungovernable Multi-Polar World’, in Lipman, M. and Petrov, N. (eds) (2015), The State of Russia: What Comes Next?, London: Palgrave Pivot, p. 77.

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Crankshaw, Putting up with the Russians, p. 135.

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Giles, K. (2016), ‘Russian High Seas Brinkmanship Echoes Cold War’, Chatham House Expert Comment, 15 April 2016, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/russian-high-seas-brinkmanship-echoes-cold-war (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Weiss, A. S. and Ng, N. (2019), Collision Avoidance: Lessons From U.S. and Russian Operations in Syria, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/03/20/collision-avoidance-lessons-of-u.s.-and-russian-operations-in-syria-pub-78571 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021); Hamilton, R. E. (2018), Russian and American De-Confliction Efforts in Syria: What’s the Endgame in the Civil War?, Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Hamilton2018.pdf (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Frear, T. (2018), Lessons Learned? Success and Failure in Managing Russia–West Incidents 2014–2018, London: European Leadership Network, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/11042018-Incidents-Management-Review-Tom-Frear.pdf (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Clem, ‘Risky Encounters with Russia’.

Weiss and Ng, Collision Avoidance.

Raynova D. and Kulesa, L. (2018), Russia–West Incidents in the Air and at Sea 2016–2017: Out of the Danger Zone?’, London: European Leadership Network, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Military-Incident-Report.pdf (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

For examples see: AMN News (2020) ‘Show of force: Russian military blocks US convoy in northeast Syria’, 2 May 2020, https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/show-of-force-russian-military-blocks-us-convoy-in-northeast-syria; US Navy (2019), ‘7th Fleet Statement on Unsafe Maneuver by Russian Destroyer’, 7 June 2019, https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Statements/display-statements/Article/2240355/7th-fleet-statement-on-unsafe-maneuver-by-russian-destroyer; U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa Public Affairs and U.S. 6th Fleet Public Affairs (2020), ‘Unsafe Unprofessional Interception of a U.S. Navy P8 by Russian SU-35s over the Mediterranean Sea’, 26 May 2020, https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/News-Display/Article/2198048/unsafe-unprofessional-interception-of-a-us-navy-p8-by-russian-su-35s-over-the-m (all accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Raynova and Kulesa, Russia–West Incidents in the Air and at Sea 2016–2017.

Author interview, September 2019.

Cohen, Z. and Browne, R. (2019), ‘US fighter jets intercept Russian bombers near Alaska’, CNN, 9 August 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/08/politics/us-aircraft-intercept-russian-bombers/index.html; RFE/RL (2019) ‘Russia Sends ‘Nuclear-Capable Bombers’ To Base Near U.S. Alaskan Coast In Exercise’, 14 August 2019,  https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-sends-nuclear-capable-bombers-to-base-near-u-s-alaskan-coast-in-exercise/30110004.html; White, D. and Knox, P. (2019), ‘RAF Typhoon jets scrambled twice in a day to intercept Russian bombers in UK and Baltic’, The Sun, 8 August 2019, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9663600/raf-typhoon-jets-scrambled-to-intercept-russian-bear-bomber-and-two-fighters (all accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Tass (2019), ‘Two Tu-22M3 bombers conduct patrol mission over Black Sea international waters’,  14 March 2019, https://tass.com/defense/1048703; Osborn A. and Lee, J. (2019), ‘First Russian-Chinese air patrol in Asia-Pacific draws shots from South Korea’, Reuters, 23 July 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-russia-aircraft/first-russian-chinese-air-patrol-in-asia-pacific-draws-shots-from-south-korea-idUSKCN1UI072; Tass (2017), ‘Two Russian Tu-160 bombers escorted by fighter jets of 5 states during Baltic Sea flight’, 17 September 2017, https://tass.com/defense/1078614 (all accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Starr, B., Kelly C. and Cohen, Z. (2019), ‘Russia intercepts US aircraft flying over the Mediterranean Sea’, CNN, 5 June 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/04/politics/russia-us-aircraft-mediterranean/index.html (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

As for instance in Raynova and Kulesa, Russia–West Incidents in the Air and at Sea 2016–2017.

BBC News (2019), ‘Russia and US warships almost collide in East China Sea’, 7 June 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48553568; and Smith, S. (2019), ‘Video shows Russian destroyer nearly colliding with U.S. warship’, CBS News, 7 June 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-destroyer-admiral-vinogradov-nearly-collides-uss-chancellorsville-warship-today-2019-06-07 (both accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

US 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) (2020), ‘While the Russian ship took action, the initial delay in complying with international rules while it was making an aggressive approach increased the risk of collision. ‘The US Navy continues to remain vigilant and is trained to act in a professional manner.’, tweet, 10 January 2020,  https://twitter.com/US5thFleet/status/1215658823471501315 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Lenta.ru (2016), ‘В Совфеде и Госдуме ответили на угрозу США сбить облетевшие «Дональд Кук» Су-24’ [Federation Council and State Duma respond to US threat to shoot down Su-24 that overflew the Donald Cook], 15 April 2016, https://lenta.ru/news/2016/04/15/parliament (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Weiss and Ng, Collision Avoidance.

ERR News (2019), ‘Russian ambassador summoned after aircraft breaches Estonian airspace’,  24 September 2019, https://news.err.ee/983785/russian-ambassador-summoned-after-aircraft-breaches-estonian-airspace (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Sukhankin, S. (2018), ‘‘Continuing War by Other Means’: The Case of Wagner, Russia’s Premier Private Military Company in the Middle East’, The Jamestown Foundation, 13 July 2018, https://jamestown.org/program/continuing-war-by-other-means-the-case-of-wagner-russias-premier-private-military-company-in-the-middle-east (accessed 26 Jun. 2021)

Marten, K. (2019), ‘Russia’s use of semi-state security forces: the case of the Wagner Group’, Post-Soviet Affairs, 35 (3), pp. 181–204, https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2019.1591142 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Pickrell, R. (2018), ‘Russia threatened a key US base, and US Marines there just doubled-down with a threatening show of force’, Business Insider, 7 September 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-troops-warn-russia-with-live-fire-exercises-in-syria-2018-9 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Blackwill, R. D. and Gordon, P H. (2018), Containing Russia: How to Respond to Moscow’s Intervention in U.S. Democracy and Growing Geopolitical Challenge, Special Report No. 80, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, https://cfrd8-files.cfr.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/CSR80_BlackwillGordon_ContainingRussia.pdf (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Department of Homeland Security (2016), ‘Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland  Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security’, 7 October 2016,  https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Miller, G., Nakashima, E. and Entous, A. (2017), ‘Obama’s secret struggle to retaliate against Putin’s election interference’, Washington Post, 23 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Ignatius, D. (2016), ‘In our new Cold War, deterrence should come before détente’, Washington Post, 15 November 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/in-our-new-cold-war-deterrence-should-come-before-detente/2016/11/15/051f4a84-ab79-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Deni, J. (2017) ‘Eroding U.S. Deterrence’, Carnegie Europe, 13 January 2017, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/67675 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Healey, J. (2017), ‘There Is Now a Well-Documented Example of Cyber Deterrence’, Defense One,  17 August 2017, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/06/not-cyber-deterrence-united-states-wants/149009 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Giles, K. (2021), ‘Black Sea incident is Russia telling the same old story’, Chatham House Expert Comment, 24 June 2021, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/06/black-sea-incident-russia-telling-same-old-story (accessed 26 Jun. 2021). An alarmist commentary that nonetheless is based on sound summary of the analogous situation in the Arctic can be found at Auerswald, D. (2019), ‘Now Is Not The Time For A FONOP In The Arctic’, War on the Rocks, 11 October 2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/10/now-is-not-the-time-for-a-fonop-in-the-arctic (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Interviewed by Russian Pervyy kanal TV, ‘Солдаты России. Жизнь на линии огня’ [Soldiers of Russia: Life on the Firing Line], 2100 GMT, 20 February 2008, uploaded 15 May 2015, available at https://youtu.be/m1lLwn7I1kU?t=862, from 14.22 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Ovchinnikov, A. (2012), ‘Империя наносит последний удар’ [The Empire Strikes for the Last Time], Komsomolskaya Pravda, 15 February 2012, https://www.kp.ru/daily/25836.3/2809165 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Pervyy kanal TV, ‘Солдаты России’ [Soldiers of Russia]’.

Ovchinnikov, ‘Империя наносит последний удар’ [The Empire Strikes for the Last Time].

Ibid.

Thompson, M. (1988), ‘Soviet, U.S. Ships Bump In Black Sea’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 February 1988, available at https://www.inquirer.com/archives/past-articles (requires search for title and paid account to read).

Pervyy kanal TV, ‘Солдаты России’ [Soldiers of Russia].

Ibid.

Aceves, W. J. (1993), ‘Diplomacy at Sea: U.S. Freedom of Navigation Operations in the Black Sea’, Naval War College Review, 46 (2), pp. 59–79, https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol46/iss2/6/ (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Ovchinnikov, ‘Империя наносит последний удар’ [The Empire Strikes for the Last Time].

Ibid.

Oscar Jonsson, speaking at Russia Strategic Initiative (RSI) seminar ‘Understanding the Russian Way of War’, 20 May 2021, https://community.apan.org/wg/rsi/project-connect/w/events/29775/rsi-connect-understanding-the-russian-way-of-war (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

The outline of this process with regard to Georgia and Ukraine is based on analysis by James Sherr, previously published in Giles, K., Sherr, J. and Seaboyer, A. (2018), Russian Reflexive Control, Report, Ottawa: Defence Research and Development Canada, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328562833_Russian_Reflexive_Control (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

As predicted immediately after the signing of the ceasefire agreement in Giles, K. (2008), The Nature of the Georgian Ceasefire, Swindon: Advanced Research and Assessment Group, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

Putin had already issued similar threats to President of the EU Commission José Manuel Barroso. The Kremlin’s furious reaction when he publicized the comments suggests that their purpose was intimidation rather than propaganda: CBS News (2014), ‘Leaked Putin Comment on Ukraine Spurs Diplomatic Showdown’, 2 September 2014, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/leaked-putin-remarks-on-ukraine-enrage-russia (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Sherr, J. (2017), ‘Geopolitics and Security’, in The Struggle for Ukraine, Chatham House Report, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, pp. 11–13, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2017/10/struggle-ukraine (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Giles, K. (2016), ‘What Russia Learns From the Syria Ceasefire: Military Action Works’, Chatham House Expert Comment, 3 March 2016, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-russia-learns-syria-ceasefire-military-action-works (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Giles, K. (2017), The Turning Point for Russian Foreign Policy, Letort Paper, Carlisle: US Army War College Press, Strategic Studies Institute, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/292 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Diehl, Jackson (2014), ‘The sloppy thinking of ‘no military solution’’, Washington Post, 7 December 2014,  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jackson-diehl-the-sloppy-thinking-of-no-military-option/ 2014/12/07/8996eef6-7bd4-11e4-b821-503cc7efed9e_story.html.

Lobel, O. (2020), ‘Russia’s quest to make itself indispensable in the Middle East’, The Strategist,  16 September 2020, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/russias-quest-to-make-itself-indispensable-in-the-middle-east (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

A RUSI study describes Russia’s model for theatre entry as ‘for a self-contained expeditionary contingent to establish a beachhead at an airfield or port, to emplace sea and air denial capabilities to protect the logistics hub, and then to airlift or sealift relevant capabilities to achieve the given mission’. It then continues, without irony: ‘In an environment where the UK is already operating, one way to forestall such an eventuality is to occupy the relevant port or airfield.’ Watling, By Parity and Presence.

AP (2015), ‘KOSOVO: RUSSIAN TROOPS STANDOFF WITH K-FOR TROOPS’, AP Archive, 21 July 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6436f-Asg_w (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

BBC News (2000), ‘Confrontation over Pristina airport’, 9 March 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/671495.stm (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Author’s correspondence with Sir Andrew Wood, former British Ambassador to Yugoslavia (1985–89) and Russia (1995–2000).

As explored in detail in Lasconjarias, G. and Larsen, J. A. (eds) (2015), NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats, Rome: NATO Defense College, https://css.ethz.ch/en/services/digital-library/publications/publication.html/195405 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Sanger, D. (2016), ‘Putin revels in his role as disrupter of U.S plans’, International New York Times, 1–2 October 2016, p. 1.

As detailed in the author’s previous work including Giles, K. (2016) Russia’s ‘New Tools’ for Confronting the West, Research Paper, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2016/03/russias-new-tools-confronting-west-continuity-and-innovation-moscows-exercise-power (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

As in the case of the UK: see Blake, H. (2017), ‘From Russia With Blood’, Buzzfeed, 15 June 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Henley, J. (2021), ‘Influencers say Russia-linked PR agency asked them to disparage Pfizer vaccine’, Guardian, 25 May 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/25/influencers-say-russia-linked-pr-agency-asked-them-to-disparage-pfizer-vaccine (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Śliwa, Z., Veebel, V. and Lebrun, M. (2018), ‘Russian Ambitions And Hybrid Modes Of Warfare’, Sõjateadlane (Estonian Journal of Military Studies), 7, pp. 86–108, https://www.baltdefcol.org/files/files/publications/HybridModes.pdf (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

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Lanoszka, A. (2018), ‘Stop calling every potential act of Russian aggression ‘hybrid warfare’’, International Affairs Blog, 24 May 2018, https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/stop-calling-every-potential-act-of-russian-aggression-hybrid-warfare-e980b3b888a9 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Rogers, J. and Martinescu, A.-L. (2015), After Crimea: Towards a New British Geostrategy for Eastern Europe?, London: Henry Jackson Society, https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/after-crimea-towards-a-new-british-geostrategy-for-eastern-europe (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

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Lough, J. (2018), ‘Western Countries Must Rethink How to Deter Russian Aggression Against Ukraine’, Chatham House Expert Comment, 3 December 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/western-countries-must-rethink-how-deter-russian-aggression-against-ukraine (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

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Wintour, P. and Borger, J. (2018), ‘Syria faces perpetual war unless Russia extends ceasefire, France warns’, Guardian, 24 September 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/24/syria-war-unga-france-warning-russia-extend-ceasefire (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

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Kofman, M., Fink, A. and Edmonds, J. (2020), Russian Strategy for Escalation Management: Evolution of Key Concepts, CNA Research Memorandum, Arlington: CNA, https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/DRM-2019-U-022455-1Rev.pdf (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

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Kofman, Fink and Edmonds, Russian Strategy for Escalation Management.

Sherr, J. and Hurt, M. (2020), ‘Initial Reflections on the Recommendations of the Participants of the Expert Dialogue on NATO–Russia Military Risk Reduction in Europe’, ICDS, 17 December 2020, https://icds.ee/en/initial-reflections-on-the-recommendations-of-the-participants-of-the-expert-dialogue-on-nato-russia-military-risk-reduction-in-europe (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

Lanoszka, A., Leuprecht, C. and Moens, A. (eds) (2020), Lessons from the Enhanced Forward Presence, 2017–2020, Research Paper No.14, Rome: NATO Defense College, https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1504 (accessed 26 Jun. 2021).

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