Power in Modern Russia: Strategy and Mobilisation by Andrew Monaghan

Author:Andrew Monaghan [Monaghan, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Government, Comparative Politics, Political Science, World, Law, General, Russian & Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9781526126429
Google: AXO5DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35758225
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2017-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

3

Making Russia work

A picture of Russian grand strategy is taking shape. On one hand, a structured strategic planning architecture has slowly taken shape, and a set of regularly updated plans, even an ambitious strategic agenda, has been broadly, if somewhat unevenly, formulated. On the other, the implementation of this agenda throughout the 2000s was problematic, both because of the complex context in which Moscow was working and because of the difficulty of coordinating the necessary resources and conducting the orchestra. The reliance on manual control meant that power was being created only unevenly, in specific areas and at certain times – to be sure, some plans were being implemented well and in a timely fashion, particularly when directly attended to by the leadership, but others were only partially implemented or their implementation dragged out or largely ignored. This, and the way the authorities have sought to resolve it, is central to understanding Russian strategy and mobilisation.

Since the early 2010s, the Russian authorities have sought to accelerate some measures and introduce others to make the vertical function more effectively and implement their agenda. There is a strong sense of urgency about these measures because of the pessimism of the assumptions and therefore what the leadership sees as the unfavourable balance between an increasingly competitive global landscape and the difficult situation in Russia. Both Putin and Medvedev have repeatedly emphasised this. Medvedev stated in 2014, for example, that ‘Russia is experiencing triple pressure for the first time’. This included global economic instability, the ‘unfriendly policies of some leading countries’, particularly the sanctions, leading to a ‘deteriorated international environment’ and ‘internal structural limitations’, he said, before noting that ‘faced with this unprecedented challenge, it is crucial that we calmly stick to the strategy we have chosen’.1

This is the context in which Putin has emphasised that ‘only by mobilising all the resources at our disposal both administrative and financial’ that Russia would be able to respond to the grave long-term challenges that faced it,2 and many Russian commentators were also suggesting that there was a ‘mobilisation’ feel to these measures.3 This feeling was underlined by the substantial increase in defence spending from some 3.4 per cent in 2011 to 4.84 per cent in 2015 as Moscow prioritised defence expenditure and investment in the military industrial complex as a locomotive for the economy during a sustained and serious economic slowdown.4

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