RUSSIA’S EMERGING DEFENSE AND SECURITY DOCTRINE: IMPACT ON EUROPE AND THE NEAR EAST
By Dr. Theodore Karasik, Director of Research and Consultancy, INEGMA-Dubai
08 Jun 14. Introduction
Last month, the Russian Ministry of Defense held the important MICS 2014 conference to announce what seems to be a new defense and security doctrine. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian Defense Ministry Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov gave significant speeches and important insight in to the Russian military elites’ thinking. So did other senior officials of the Russian General Staff and the Russian Academy of Military Affairs under General Makhmut Gareev.
The Russian security elites appear to be formulating a new Russian security and foreign policy doctrine. It is based on the need to identify and alert the world to the US and Atlantic civilization’s desire to upend the international order to their liking, in order to capture key states for geopolitical expansionism. The Russians, by announcing this new doctrine in such clear terms, are announcing their intent to counter this activity by conducting additional research and analysis, ultimately going forth with counter-policies.
Global Color Revolutions
The Russian perspective on colored revolutions focuses on the necessity for “the Russian/Eurasian civilization” to counteract “aggression from the Atlantic civilization led by the US”. There is now an onslaught of “global color revolutions”.
This concept is enshrined in geopolitical doctrine that treats the US as a dangerous country using information, intelligence, special operations, and private military security companies (PMSCs). The Russian point of view sees the US using a network struggle, also in extreme forms like as information-psychological warfare and netwars, to achieve its goals in international, regional and domestic politics and also to gain a geopolitical advantage. Russian representatives of this geopolitical school of thought on color revolutions are Igor Panarin (who predicts the collapse of America) and Aleksandr Dugin (author of the Fourth Political Theory which calls for the creation of an Eurasian identity which supersedes liberal democracy, Marxism, and fascism and adored by the European Far Right), academic teachers and mentors of peers of Russian geo-strategists and politicians.
Furthermore, geopolitics offers ideological grounds for these global battles. In opposition to the ideology of liberalism, it promotes a neo-conservative post-liberal power struggling for a just multi-polar world, which defends tradition, conservative values and true liberty. The Russian Eurasian civilization is contrasted with the Atlantic civilization led by the US, which allegedly intends to disassemble Russian statehood and gain global hegemony. Russia also sees itself as “the great Northern civilization” that hopes to garner support from many countries beyond its periphery. This concept is the main reason why Russia acts the way it does towards Syria, Iran, and Iraq, plus many other countries.
According to the Russian leadership of the Defense Ministry, the NGO actors, mainly defined as PMSCs, are part of a US force that is spreading alien ideas and imposing them on the will of the people to rise up against the state. These forms of subversion and aggression occur under the guise of democracy. This is seen now in Ukraine, Venezuela, and the countries of the Arab Spring, including Libya and now Mali. The US uses citizens in a state to rise up and create chaos in order to change the political order. If the colored revolutions’ attempt to replace leadership fails, chaos ensues, with long-term instability affecting other countries. The US’s mistakes are now resulting in West Africa fracturing and jihadists returning to Europe for a global campaign. Countries that support the US give an excuse to Washington and their Atlantic partners to interfere.
According to the Russian presentations at MICS 2014,