More of the Same? The Future of the Russian Military and its Ability to Change

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, March 2024.

Summary:

Assessing the type of threat that Russia is likely to pose in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine is a critical challenge for the United States and its allies. What will the Russian military look like in the future? Some argue that the Russian military will remain a significant threat – and perhaps become a very different and even more serious one. This argument holds that the Russian military will reconstitute in a relatively short time frame and may reform according to lessons learned during the war in Ukraine. Others argue that the Russian military will pose a far less formidable conventional threat going forward. Not only has the war against Ukraine exposed fundamental weaknesses in the Russian military, the argument goes, but Moscow’s ability to address those weaknesses will be limited by available manpower, sanctions, and export controls.

In More of the Same?, Katherine Kjellström Elgin argues that the Russian military may indeed attempt to rebuild and reform in the aftermath of the war, but that the fighting force that emerges from these efforts is likely to operate in ways similar to the force that invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Developing a framework to analyze the Russian military’s ability to conduct major reform projects and examining Russian military reforms throughout history, Elgin argues that substantial changes to Russian armed forces could be announced but are only likely to succeed under very narrow conditions – conditions that are unlikely to materialize. The Russian military is indeed learning and adapting during the war in Ukraine, and Russia is expected to remain a threat. Even so, it is unlikely that its future force will be drastically different in character from the Russian military that exists today.

“NATO has a munitions problem, and Europe needs to step up”

with Tyler Hacker, Defense News, 1 February 2024.

Preview:

"In March, European Union countries pledged to supply Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells by spring 2024. It is now clear that the EU is unlikely to deliver on its promise. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, between 2022 and 2023 the U.S. Army succeeded in doubling monthly production of 155mm shells.

The war in Ukraine has provided desperately needed momentum to renew the European defense industry. Efforts to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with weaponry have exposed startling gaps in Europe’s readiness for large-scale conflict. European nations have been found lacking not only adequate munition stockpiles, but also the industrial base required to refill inventories to keep up with Ukraine’s continued pleas for weapons. At the same time, the United States’ own production challenges and competing regional priorities suggest European NATO members cannot count on Washington to save the day.

NATO has a munitions problem, and the European defense industry needs to step up. Now is the time to think big.”

“US Alliance management in the shadow of Sino-American competition”

with Benedetta Berti, Gorana Grgić, and Martayn Vandewall, Defence Studies, Fall 2023. Available here.

Abstract:

Authoritarian, revisionist, and revanchist powers are exerting pressure on the liberal international order and challenging the United States’ vital security interests across theaters. The United States will increasingly need to simultaneously tackle challenges in two critical theaters while also addressing global threats. To do so effectively, it will need to lean in and actively capitalize on its chief geostrategic advantage over its competitors and adversaries – its global network of alliances and strategic partnerships. However, alliance management faces both traditional and emerging challenges. These range from ensuring effective burden sharing, to providing alliance assurance and balancing interests and values along with allies’ contributions across theaters and domains. In addition, because the United States is operating in a world where all instruments of power, military and non-military, are increasingly utilized in an interconnected way, it will also need to look at defense and security alliance management through the lens of issues ranging from industrial policy to economic security. This essay sheds light on these “old” and “new” challenges, providing insights into critical issues of alliance management that the United States will face in the emerging security environment.

“Sweden, Finland, and the Meaning of Alliance Membership”

with Alexander Lanoszka, Texas National Security Review 6, no. 2, Spring 2023. Available here.

Abstract:

Rationalist understandings of military alliances argue that a formal treaty underpinning the security relationship is crucial for deepening and rendering more efficient defense cooperation between countries. However, Sweden’s and Finland’s cooperation with NATO prior to 2022, when the two countries announced their intentions to formally join the alliance, was far more substantial than what rationalist explanations would expect. Traditional approaches to military alliances overlook the importance of ontological, or identity-based, considerations that come with being a formal member of an alliance. Accordingly, not only is signing a treaty functionally important, it is also significant in terms of what it implies for national identity in terms of security policy. For Sweden and Finland, this suggests that the greatest change with NATO membership will be with regard to identity and strategic culture.

Deterrence and Defense in the Baltic Region

with Jan van Tol, Chris Bassler, and Tyler Hacker, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, June 2022. Available here.

Summary:

Deterrence and Defense in the Baltic Region examines security requirements for the Baltic States and NATO in the context of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The war has provided an opportunity to understand the implications for NATO's eastern flank stemming from Russia's demonstrated willingness to use large-scale military force against another European nation, reassess pre-war assumptions concerning putative Russian military effectiveness, and to draw preliminary observations about Russian and Ukrainian combat performance. These observations help inform analysis about major aspects of defense of the Baltic region, with an emphasis on the key roles of precision-guided weapons. The authors conclude with a series of recommendations for the Baltic States, for NATO, and for the United States to enhance deterrence, defense, and security cooperation in Eastern Europe, with emphasis on the Baltic region.

"What the use of Russian conscripts tells us about the war in Ukraine"

in POLITICO, with Suzanne Freeman, March 17, 2022. Available here.

Main Takeaway:

Whatever the reason for their deployment, the use of Russian conscripts in the war in Ukraine reflects poorly on the capability and readiness of the Russian military for this conflict. And though we still do not know the extent to which conscripts are represented in the Russian forces in Ukraine, or in which units they are fighting, how the Russian military handles them going forward will be a clear indicator of its commitment to the war and of how well they think it is going.

NATO 2030: Towards a New Strategic Concept and Beyond

Edited with Jason Blessing and Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters, and Rakel Tiderman (associate editor)
Foreign Policy Institute/Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins University SAIS, 2021. Distributed by Brookings Institution Press.

Summary:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s largest, most powerful military alliance. The Alliance has navigated and survived the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the post-9/11 era. Since the release of the 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO’s strategic environment has again undergone significant change. The need to adapt is clear. An opportunity to assess the Alliance’s achievements and future goals has now emerged with the Secretary General’s drive to create a new Strategic Concept for the next decade – an initiative dubbed “NATO 2030.” A necessary step for formulating a new strategic outlook will thus be understanding the future that faces NATO. To remain relevant and adjust to new circumstances, the Alliance must identify its main challenges and opportunities in the next ten years and beyond.

Sponsored by the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs and the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with the generous support of the Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) / German Academic Exchange Service, this book contributes to critical conversations on NATO’s future vitality by examining the Alliance’s most salient issues and by offering recommendations to ensure its effectiveness moving forward. Written by a diverse, multigenerational group of policymakers and academics from across Europe and the United States, this book provides new insights about NATO’s changing threat landscape, its shifting internal dynamics, and the evolution of warfare. The volume’s authors tackle a wide range of issues, including the challenges of Russia and China, democratic backsliding, burden sharing, the extension of warfare to space and cyberspace, partnerships, and public opinion. With rigorous assessments of NATO’s challenges and opportunities, each chapter provides concrete recommendations for the Alliance to chart a path for the future. As such, this book is an indispensable resource for NATO’s strategic planners and security and defense experts more broadly.

Contributed Chapters:

“New Decade, New Challenges, New Opportunities: The Way Ahead to NATO 2030,” with Jason Blessing, Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters, and Rakel Tiderman

“Making NATO’s Partnerships More Strategic: Sweden and Finland as Partner Models for Development,” with Anna Weislander

"The Other Actor: Gauging Russian Reactions to Potential EU-China Cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia"

in The European Union, China and Central Asia: Global and Regional Cooperation in a New Era, ed. Fabienne Bossuyt and Bart Dessein, London: Routledge, 2021.

An earlier draft presented at the BACES and UNU-CRIS Research Workshop: "The EU, China and Central Asia: Global and Regional Cooperation in a New Era" (June 7-8, 2018 in Bruges, Belgium)

Abstract

This chapter has underlined the importance of Russia's perspective in European policy development, underscored the nature of Sino-Russian relations in Central Asia, and suggested a framework for understanding how Russia might react to efforts related to the BRI, including Sino-European coordination. In Central Asia, a region which not only borders China but also serves as a pathway to reach Europe and which has significant development needs, China has become a primary actor. However, China and the European Union are not the only powers in Central Asia notably, Russia is an important player in the region and its interests, and how those might both cooperate and complicate the efforts of other actors, must be taken into account. In particular, Russia is a vital actor in Central Asia; any efforts that the European Union undertakes in the region need to consider Russia's potential reactions.

Recognition and Respect: Understanding Russia’s Defense of its Great Power Status

Ph.D. Dissertation, October 2020.

Abstract:

Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has pursued a foreign policy that has, at times, surprised observers with its risky adventurism. While domestic politics and geopolitics have both been offered as explanations for Russian behavior, each of these theories falls short in important ways. In this dissertation, I instead argue that contemporary Russian foreign policy is best understood if one assumes that the Russian political elite believes that Russia is a great power and that the leadership acts to defend the country’s status when it senses that Russia is not being treated as such. I propose the ‘status-identity model’ to explain contemporary Russian foreign policy choices: when Russian policymakers perceive that the status that others give the country does not match the country’s identity as a great power, they engage in adventurist foreign policy behavior in the hopes of compelling other states to recognize and respect Russia’s great power status. Importantly, this framework emphasizes the Russian leadership’s perception of the country’s status, not how other states believe they are treating Russia – while some literature sees Russia as a status overachiever, Russian leaders consider the country a status underachiever, with important policy consequences. By testing the status-identity model and explanations based on domestic politics and geopolitics in the cases of the annexation of Crimea, the Russian intervention in Syria, and the interference campaign in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, this dissertation sheds new light on how policymakers and analysts alike should understand contemporary Russian assertive foreign policy behavior. The dissertation also contributes to scholars’ understanding of how status and identity interact, how states may behave within a hegemonic hierarchy, and the foreign policy decision-making of contemporary authoritarian states.

“How the Army is (Not) Preparing for the Next War”

WAR ROOM (United States Army War College), September 25, 2019. Available here.

Summary:

Elbridge Colby recently argued that the U.S. military needs to prepare to fight a limited great-power war. The Army, following the National Defense Strategy, has emphasized this need and has precipitously adjusted training strategy and doctrine to meet the demand. However, a recent visit to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana suggested that the Army still has a long way to go. While simulated opponents may have more advanced tools, the psychological triggers that help form new patterns of decision-making are missing – and only reinforce counterinsurgency (COIN) decision-making.

“The Thucydides Fallacy: Misdiagnosing Today’s Challenges to the International System”

The Strategy Bridge, 3rd Place Winner - Writing Contest 2019. Available on Strategy Bridge here, and on Real Clear Defense here.

Introduction:

With a renewed sense of great power conflict, many scholars and strategists are looking towards China as the greatest threat the United States must face, pivoting (if you will) towards Asia as it sets U.S. strategic priorities. Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? has become popular as a frame for the contemporary moment the United States may be facing. Examining results of competition between ruling and rising powers, Allison cleverly structures his book in terms of the infamous Thucydides trap: that the “rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta.” But his framework—and the one that so many others are using—is incomplete. His use of the analogy is useful for explaining his framework of analysis, but his analysis is fundamentally bilateral. In his story, where is Persia? Where is Macedon?

The rise of China is not the only distinguishing structural factor for the strategic environment in which the United States finds itself. Many scholars will discuss the role of terrorism, increased globalization, and non-state actors in the current strategic environment. These are all important, but from a classical view of the structure of the international system, what the U.S. today is facing is not just a rising power, or even a bloc of powers: it is also facing a declining power—Russia.

Today, the U.S. finds itself in a more complicated international system—just not the one so many seem to be focusing on. From a purely structural perspective, the United States today faces both a rising and a declining power simultaneously and must manage both, for if it only focuses on the rising power, the declining power will likely play the role of spoiler and render the international system unstable. Furthermore, the rising and declining powers have a developing relationship—asking the U.S. to manage two friends, both opposed to hegemonic U.S. leadership, moving in different directions. Many analysts group Russia and China together as one axis, but understanding their differences is vital. We cannot treat them as the same. The contemporary moment is not just about a ruling and a rising power (or group of powers) as Destined for War tells it, but a ruling, a rising, and a declining power.

By introducing Russia as a declining power and dissecting the Sino-Russian relationship and its propensity not to act as a single unit, this essay illustrates the need to reframe our understanding of the current international system. Instead of a framework that thinks in terms of a United States defending its hegemony from a rising power in China or a bloc of China and Russia together, we need a framework that considers a ruling power (the United States) against both a rising (China) and a declining power (Russia).

“Understanding the Sino-Russian Relationship and Its Place in Russian Grand Strategy”

Presented at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, 2019 US-Russia Security Workshop (June 23-29, 2019 in New York, NY and Washington, D.C.). Policy memo available here.

Introduction:

Russia and China, two of the biggest threats to the United States-led international order, seem to be increasingly cooperating. Yet, neither policymakers nor academics seem to understand the nature of the relations, and with so much divergence in diagnosis, policy recommendations run the gamut, though most are vague if not un-useful.

Missing from much of the conversation in the United States about the Sino-Russian relationship is an understanding of the motives of each actor for pursuing such cooperation – and without such an understanding, Washington is unlikely to develop policy options that truly address the situation. While some analysts point to domestic fears, material geopolitics, Vladimir Putin, or ideational factors as the driver for Russian foreign policy, they have not sufficiently explained Russia’s contradictory approach to China: why does it cooperate with China globally, when China presents a risk to Russia’s traditional sphere of influence?

Russian grand strategy is driven not by any one factor, but by a combination of geopolitics and a search for great power status recognition. With its material capabilities limited, Russia must seek new ways to achieve what it believes is its rightful place in the hierarchy – and as it does so, it both seeks to reduce the United States’ influence and protect its own. China plays a special role in this strategy, as Russia views the Sino-Russian relationship as a tool to challenge U.S. influence but also guards against China’s potential threat to Russia’s own power. Recognizing the role that status plays in the Sino-Russian relationship, the United States would do well to downplay the relationship and to limit the effects of Russia’s attempts to weaken U.S. power.

"Testing Revisionist Toolkits: The Case of Kyrgyzstan"

UPTAKE Working Paper, No. 14, December 2018. Full paper available here.

Originally presented at the UPTAKE PhD Training School: "Internal Developments, External Conflicts, and Outside Perceptions" (August 27-31, 2018 in Uppsala, Sweden)

Abstract

It is now commonplace in the West to describe Russia as a revisionist power, seeking to change the international system and regain its status as a great power. This perception became more popular after 2008 in Georgia but only truly solidified after Russian interventions in Crimea and Syria. Russia, however, did not act on its revisionist tendencies overnight. What were the mechanisms that allowed Russia to become revisionist, and how did it test these mechanisms? This paper argues that Russia’s revisionism started earlier than many claim – in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia more broadly in the early 2000’s. In overlooking these earlier historical developments, we risk misunderstanding Russian revisionist tendencies, the roots of which stem back to the ‘Color Revolutions’ in Georgia, in Ukraine, and in Kyrgyzstan. In examining Russian revisionism, most scholars concentrate on the first two, but this focus only tells part of the story. While this paper does not try to understand the relative success or failure of Russian actions in these countries, it does demonstrate that Kyrgyzstan was in many ways a testing ground for Russia as it developed its revisionist toolkit. Through analysing Russian efforts to reduce U.S. influence in Central Asia in the early 2000s, this paper helps us to better understand how Russia developed techniques used in Georgia and Crimea, how Russia conceptualized their own abilities to intervene in other countries, and ultimately how Russia conceives of its ability to revise the international system with minimal external response.

"Developing Leadership: Understanding the U.S. Army's Evolving Definition of Leadership"

Presented at the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society's 2017 International Biennial Conference (November 3-5, 2017 in Reston, Virginia)

Abstract

“Leadership” is one of the most widely discussed topics surrounding the military, both within and outside the organization. What makes a good leader, and indeed what exactly defines “leadership,” however, is debated. This paper takes a novel approach to the study of military leadership by examining the evolution of the U.S. Army’s understanding of the concept and what the organization believes characterizes and composes leadership, using doctrine from as early as World War I and as recent as the present day. In so doing, it develops a theory that leadership within the military context is not a static concept; rather, leadership needs – and thus the terminology surrounding leadership training and recruitment – change with the political, military, and threat contexts facing the U.S. military at any given time. The U.S. Army’s shifting definition of leadership and the list of characteristics describing what it means to be a leader reflects broader military trends, and through understanding the Army’s approaches to leadership we gain insight into priorities, concerns, and predictions about past, current, and future conflicts and domestic messaging.

"Ideology as Strategy: Reinterpreting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan"

Ongoing working paper

Using new documents released from Soviet archives, this paper presents the argument that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was not offensive, as many scholars claim, but rather a defensive move necessitated by the larger Cold War and ideological concerns.

“Can Global Governance Help Us Navigate the 21st Century?”

With Bruce Jones, in Javier Solana and Angel Saz-Carranza (eds.), The Global Context: How Politics, Investment, and Institutions Impact European Businesses, Barcelona, Spain: ESADEgeo-Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics, July 2015, www.esadegeo.com/mekbiz-ebook.

Summary, from the book's introduction

"[Jones and Elgin] ask whether global governance can help us navigate the challenges of the 21st century.

Commencing with an outline of the evolution of global governance after the Cold War, Jones and Elgin opine that it now seems likely that we will look back on the quarter century of the post-Cold War era as a halcyon period for the West, interrupted by a number of milestone events that changed the history of global governance: the attacks of 9/11, the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2013, and the 2009 global financial crisis. These challenges to the international system have resulted in what the authors call “great disruptions” to the global order: the unraveling of the Middle East order; the rise of the global middle class – with their resultant claims for governance change and political expression, as well as their carbon emissions; the intensification of the geopolitical rivalry, resulting particularly (and more so than from Russia) from China’s increasing assertiveness; the proliferation of nuclear weapons, including to revisionist states; and the continued challenge of weak states.

In this environment, where managing geopolitics is troublesome, transnational threats – baptized “problems without passports” by former UN Secretary General Ko Annan – pose a different challenge. The authors argue that in order to manage such interconnected issues and threats as global climate change, biological issues (weapons and pandemics), the proliferation of nuclear and other materials of mass destruction, water, food, transnational terrorism, transnational organized crime, piracy, and cyber issues, there is a need for new modes of hybrid governance. Jones and Elgin assert that the state remains the bedrock in terms of organizing effective responses, however that global institutions and citizen action should be included as part of the solution. According to the authors, the most effective way to deal with transnational threats is to install mechanisms that use both the centralized authorities of nation-states and the decentralized capacities of the private and civic sectors." (ix-x)

The Triumph of Competition: Competition and Cooperation in Central Asia in the Post-9/11 Era

Undergraduate Thesis, June 2013

Abstract

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States of America, the U.S. found itself suddenly drawn into a region few Americans could locate on a map: Central Asia. The U.S. both sought and received assistance in its anti-terrorism fight in the region, including from two otherwise unlikely sources, China and Russia. Many thought that the counter-terrorism efforts would bind together these three largely competitive powers and help them realize a venue for continued and lasting competition. However, what cooperation did develop soon dissolved into geopolitical competition between the three powers. The initial hopes were mis-founded, lacking an appreciation of Chinese and, particularly, Russian fears of a loss of relative influence in the region. Although the U.S. entered the region with little intention of securing further permanent regional influence for itself and in fact acknowledged and respected the presiding Russian hegemony, both Russia and China interpreted the extended U.S. presence in the region as a geopolitical threat. The simple existence of a prolonged U.S. military presence in Central Asia encouraged Russia and China to assume and prepare for the possibility of a U.S. threat to Russian and Chinese regional hegemony.