Stanford University

Putin and his generals: Explaining change in Russian nuclear strategy

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Abstract: What are the causes of change in Russian declaratory nuclear strategy? Three cases of Russian declaratory nuclear strategy, the military doctrines from 1993, 2000 and 2010, demonstrate significant variation in the role nuclear weapons play in Russian national security.

Structural theories of international relations explain this variation as a function of the balance of military power. Perceived nuclear or conventional inferiority vis-a-vis potential adversaries certainly inspires Russian behavior, but Russia chooses to balance in different ways than balance of power theory predicts, depending on available resources and capabilities.
 
A more compelling explanation for strategy variation lies in the politics of strategy formulation in Russia. Russian military actors effectively influence nuclear strategy due to both intellectual and institutional dominance. Civilian actors are less unified in their strategy preferences and less institutionally dominant in strategy formulation over time. Despite increased political control over the military, civilian influence on nuclear strategy outcomes does not seem to increase in Russia.
 
These findings have implications for how we understand the Russian security policy-making environment as well as for the content and context of Russian nuclear strategy and posture.
 
Speaker bio: Kristin Ven Bruusgaard is a Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC, and a doctoral candidate at King’s College London. Her research focuses on Russian nuclear strategy and deterrence policy in the post-cold war era. Kristin is currently on leave from the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS). She has previously been a senior security policy analyst in the Norwegian Armed Forces, a junior researcher at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), and an intern at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington, D.C., and at NATO HQ. She holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University, and a BA from Warwick University. Her work has been published in Security Dialogue, U.S. Army War College Quarterly Parameters, Survival and War on the Rocks. 
Kristin Ven Bruusgaard CISAC
Seminars

Russian-American Relations: Present and Future

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This event has reached capacity. Please email sj1874@stanford.edu to be placed on the waitlist.

NOTE: Due to the overwhelming response for this event, we have moved it to the GSB Common, a larger venue, located at the Schwab Residential Center.

 

Relations between the two countries are at the lowest level since the Cold War. Their improvement will take time and great efforts. But, as major world powers, Russia and the United States are
"doomed" to dialogue in order to try to solve some of the biggest global challenges.

 

Anatoly Antonov


Anatoly Antonov was appointed Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States and Permanent Observer of the Russian Federation at the Organization of American States in August 2017. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Deputy Minister of Defense, Director of the Department of Security, and Disarmament and Ambassador-at- Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Antonov holds a PhD in Political Science and is fluent in Russian, English and Burmese.

GSB Common
Schwab Residential Center
680 Serra Street

 

 

Anatoly Antonov Russian Ambassador to the United States speaker Russian Ambassador to the U.S.
European Security Initiative

Oleksandra Matviichuk

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Visiting Scholar, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program 2017-18
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Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights defender who works on issues in Ukraine and the OSCE region. At present she heads the human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, and also coordinates the work of the initiative group Euromaidan SOS. The activities of the Center for Civil Liberties are aimed at protecting human rights and establishing democracy in Ukraine and the OSCE region. The organization is developing legislative changes, exercises public oversight over law enforcement agencies and judiciary, conducts educational activities for young people and implements international solidarity programs. 

The Euromaidan SOS initiative group was created in response to the brutal dispersal of a peaceful student rally in Kyiv on November 30, 2013. During three months of mass protests that were called the Revolution of Dignity, several thousand volunteers provided round-the-clock legal and other aid to persecuted people throughout the country. Since the end of the protests and beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the initiative has been monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the hybrid war in the Donbas and conducting the “LetMyPeopleGo” international campaign to release political prisoners detained by the Russian authorities. 

Oleksandra Matviichuk has experience in creating horizontal structures for massive involvement of people in human rights activities against attacks on rights and freedoms, as well as a multi-year practice of documenting violations during armed conflict. She is the author of a number of alternative reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court. In 2016 she received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from missions to the OSCE.

100 Shades of Red

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This event has reached full capacity, please email Shannon at sj1874@stanford.edu to get on the waitlist.

 

Mikhail Zygar will talk about the perception of the Russian revolution of 1917 a hundred years later. He will explore how the centenary of the revolution is ignored by the Russian government and about the evolution of the attitude of the Russian society towards the revolution.

 

Mikhail Zygar is a Russian journalist, writer and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of the Russian independent news TV-channel, Dozhd (2010 - 2015). Prior to Dozhd, Zygar worked for Newsweek Russia and the business daily Kommersant, where he covered the conflicts in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Serbia, and Kosovo. His recent book All the Kremlin’s Men is based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, presenting a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. Zygar is the founder of Project1917. Free History, an online project that enables participants to learn about the events of 1917 from those who lived during this defining moment of history. He is also the founder of Future History Lab - the team behind Project1917. His new book, The Empire Must Die, will be released in the US on November, 7th. It portrays the years leading up to the Russian revolution and the vivid drama of Russia's brief and exotic experiment with civil society before it was swept away by the Communist Revolution.

 

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, European Security Initiative and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies

 

 

Mikhail Zygar journalist
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

Protecting democracy from online disinformation requires better algorithms, not censorship

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"New laws in democratic countries that force social media platforms to remove disinformation will encourage autocratic countries to do the same, with devastating effects on human rights," writes Global Digital Policy Incubator Director Eileen Donahoe in her op-ed "Protecting Democracy from Online Disinformation Requires Better Algorithms, Not Censorship." Read here. 

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The North Korean Missile Test Pushes Xi and Putin Closer

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The most dangerous impact of North Korea’s long-range missile test this past week may not have been the one in the Sea of Japan, felt in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. It was in Moscow where Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin locked arms in a united front on how to respond to the growing North Korea crisis. The target of this front was not, however, North Korea. It was the United States, who the Sino-Russian axis accused of pursuing a military “buildup” in the region.

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Daniel C. Sneider

Film Screening: The Man Who Was Too Free

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Due to overwhelming demand, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law has closed registration for this event. If you are still interested in attending this screening, please register on our wait list. We will contact you as seats become available.  

Please click here to register on the wait list.  

 

The film will be screened in Russian with English subtitles. Doors will open at 6:00pm. 


 

The life and fate of Boris Nemtsov is inextricably intertwined with the history of Russia over the last 25 years. The film begins in the 1990s, when Nemtsov was seen as a possible future president of the country, and ends in February 2015 with his assassination on Moskvoretsky Bridge across from the Kremlin as an opposition leader. Nemtsov was the only Russian political figure who shone brightly in both the 1990s, with its free press, political infighting and low gas prices, and in the 2000s, a time of stability, economic growth, censorship and the fall of political competition. Director Vera Krichevskaya and journalist Mikhail Fishman have told the full political biography of Boris Nemtsov in this documentary. The most important, pivotal events of Russian history and Nemtsov's role in them are discussed by his friends, colleagues, family members and fellow politicians.


“The Man Who Was Too Free” won the “White Elephant” award from the Russian Guild of Film Critics in the category of “Best Documentary Film of 2016”.

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       Michael McFaul

       Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

 

 

 

 

Professor Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute, will introduce the film and answer questions following the screening. McFaul is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Dr. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

This event is co-sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

 

Michael A. McFaul

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

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