Behind the Delays of Russia’s Security Strategy

Earlier this week we blogged about Russia’s new National Security Strategy, a document signed by the president which was delayed one month in its publication.  What was happening during that month, and what changes were being made?  The Power Vertical has some theories:

When the one-month delay was announced, some analysts expected the draft would be modified to reflect the apparently warming relations between Russia and the West (the United States in particular) following mutual pledges to “reset” ties. However, gazeta.ru quoted sources involved in the drafting process as saying the changes primarily were motivated by the country’s economic crisis. Vyacheslav Senchagov, a member of the council’s research staff, told the website that specific performance benchmarks were removed from the draft in order to make it easier for the government to say it had achieved the document’s aims.

 

And, indeed, the document does not reflect any warming of Russia‘s relations with the West. It states that a major threat to Russian security is “the policy of some foreign states aimed at attaining an overwhelming military superiority, particularly in the area of strategic nuclear weapons, through targeted, informational, and other high-technology means of conducting armed conflict, non-nuclear strategic arms, the development of missile defenses, and the militarization of space” (It is clear why Andrei Savelyov, head of the Great Russia party, commented that “in places the document is so ungrammatical and illogical that it makes the reader weep”).