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ABSTRACT
This article explores the extent to which Moscow’s modus operandi during the military campaign in Syria demonstrates change or continuity in Russian strategic culture. It discusses five main characteristics of the Russian conduct and argues that these traits demonstrate more continuity than change in the Russian style of war. However, it suggests that change possibly might be evolving on the tactical-operational level – the emergence of a mission command culture. The article offers competing explanations for this eventuality, which the Syrian campaign has highlighted, and advances a conceptual debate in IR on the shifts in strategic culture.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 For example see: Michael Kofman and Mathew Rojansky, ‘What Kind of Victory for Russia in Syria?’ Military Review, Jan. 2018; Roy Allison, ‘Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis’, International Affairs 89/4 (July 2013), 795–823; Derek Averre and Lance Davies, ‘Russia, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect; the case of Syria’, International Affairs 91/4 (July 2015), 813–34; Andrew Monaghan, ‘Putin’s Russia: shaping a grand strategy?’ International Affairs 89/5 (September 2013), 1221–36; Theodore Karasik and Stephen Blank, Russia in the Middle East (Washington: Jamestown Press, 2018); Glen E. Howard, Russia’s Military Strategy and Doctrine (Washington: Jamestown Press, 2019); Tim Ripley, Operation Aleppo: Russia’s War in Syria (London: Osperey Press, 2019); Dmitri Trenin, What is Russia up to in the Middle East (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018) Aleksandr Golts, Military Reform and Militarism in Russia (Washington: The Jamestown Foundation, 2019); Mark Galeotti, The Modern Russian Army (London: Osprey Publishing, 2017); Bettina Renz, Russia’s Military Revival (London: Polity, 2018). Rod Thornton, “Countering PGS: The Russian Military Presence in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean and its Strategic Deterrence Role,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 32/1 (2019); and Andrew Monaghan, Power in Modern Russia (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2017).
2 For example see: Nathan Leitis, The Operational Code of Politburo (New York: McGraw Hill, 1951); Nathan Leites, Soviet Style in Management (New York: Crane Russak, 1985); Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1977); Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the US and the USSR Develop New Military Technologies (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993); Kimberly Marten, Engaging the Enemy: Organizational Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993); Robert Bathurst, Intelligence and the Mirror (New York: Sage, 1993); and Fritz W. Ermarth, Russia’s Strategic Culture: Past, Present and Transition? (DTRA Press, 2006).
3 For example, see: Lawrence Freedman, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019); Stephen Covington, ‘The Culture of Strategic Thought Behind Russia’s Modern Approaches to Warfare,’ Harvard Belfer Papers October 2016; Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, ‘From Moscow with Coercion: Russian Strategic Culture and Deterrence Theory’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/1 (2018); and Kristine Ven Bruusgaard, ‘Russian Strategic Deterrence’, Survival 58/4 (2016).
4 For example, see: Polina Sinovets, ‘From Stalin to Putin, Russian Strategic Culture in the 21st Century’, Philosophy Study 6/7 (2016); Pavel Baev, ‘Threat Assessments and Strategic Objectives in Russia’s Arctic Policy’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 31/1 (2019); Roget Kanet, ‘Russian strategic culture, domestic politics and Cold War 2.0’, European Politics and Society 20/2 (2019); Isabelle Facon, ‘Russian Strategic Culture in the 21st Century’, Strategic Asia 2016–2017, 8 November 2016; and Dmitry Gorenburg, ‘Russian Strategic Culture in a Baltic Crisis’, Marshall Centre Security Insights, no. 25, March 2019.
5 For a discussion, see: Colin Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context’, Review of International Studies 25/1 (January 1999); Colin Gray, Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture (Fort Belvoir VA: DTRA, 2006); Jeffrey Lantis and Darryl Howlett, ‘Strategic Culture’, in John Baylis, James Wirtz and Colin Gray (eds.), Strategy in the Contemporary World (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016); Jeffrey Lantis and Andrew Charlton, ‘Continuity of Change? Strategic Culture of Australia’, Comparative Strategy 30/4 (2011); Tomas Karasek, ‘Tracking Shifts in Strategic Culture’, Obrana A Stratgie 1 (2016); Alan Bloomfield, ‘Time to Move On: Re-conceptualizing the Strategic Culture Debate’, Comparative Security Policy 33/3 (2012); Tamir Libel, ‘Explaining the security paradigm shift: strategic culture, epistemic communities, and Israel’s changing national security policy’, Defence Studies 16/2 (2016); and David Haglund, ‘What Can Strategic Culture Contribute to Our Understanding of Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific Region?’ Contemporary Security Policy 35/2 (2014).
6 Adamsky, ‘From Moscow with Coercion’.
7 Isaiah Berlin, The Soviet Mind (Washington DC: Brooking, 2004); Lawrence Graham, Science in Russia (Cambridge UP, 1993); Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (Columbia UP, 1987); Lev Gumilevskii, Russkie Inzhinery (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1953); V. F. Shapavolov, Istoki I Smysl Rossiiskoi Tsivilizatsii (Moscow: Fair Press, 2003); and V. Solov’ev, Natsional’nyi Vopros v Rossii (Moscow: AST, 1988).
8 Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence (London: Routledge, 1997); Leitis, The Operational Code of Politburo; Bathurst, Intelligence and the Mirror; and Christopher Donnelly, Red Banner (London: Jane’s Group, 1988).
9 For a detailed discussion and supporting evidence, see: Kofman and Rojansky, ‘What Kind of Victory for Russia in Syria?’; and Adamsky, Moscow’s Syria Campaign.
10 Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence.
11 One may question the extent to which the Russian approach to campaign design is the product of strategic culture, and how much it is the product of doctrine. Along the lines of the main argument presented in this article, both doctrine and campaign design should be perceived as cultural products par excellence. The author is thankful to the anonymous reviewer for making this point.
12 Adamsky, ‘From Moscow with Coercion’; Adamsky, Moscow’s Syria Campaign; Kofman and Rojansky, ‘What Kind of Victory for Russia in Syria?’; Kofman and Rojansky, ‘Assessing Vostok-2018’.
13 V. Gerasimov, ‘Tsennost’ nauki v predvidenii’, VPK, 27 Feb. 2013; ‘Mir na graniakh voiny’, VPK, 15 Mar. 2017; ‘Organizatsii oborony RF v usloviiakh primenenia protivnikom gibridnykh metodov’, Vestnik AVN 55/2 (2016); V Gerasimov, ‘Vektory razvitiia voennoi strategii’, KZ, 4 Mar. 2019; A. Kartapolov, ‘Priamye I nepriamye desitviia v sovremennykh mezhdunarodnykh konfliktakh’, Vestnik AVN 51/2 (2015), 27–35; and I. Sergun, ‘Vzgliady rukovodstva veduschikh inostrannykh gosudrastv I NATO na primenenie VS v sovremennykh konfliktakh’, Vestnik AVN 51/2 (2015), 37–9.
14 In reference to this phenomenon, Stalin argued that the party must combine the broad outlook of the Russian revolutionary with American practicality. Leites, Operational Code, 30; and Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation (2010).
15 For example, see: Graham; Donnelly; Bathurst, Intelligence and the Mirror; Vadim Kozhinov, O russkom nacional’nom soznanii (Moscow: Algoritm, 2002); Mikhail Epstein, Na granitzakh kultur (New York: Slovo, 1995); Leites, Soviet Style in Management; and A. Kokoshin, Inovatsionnye vooruzhennye sily (Moscow: URSS, 2009).
16 For example, see: Novaya Gazeta, ‘My podarili protivniku preimuschestvo v 15 let’, 3 Dec. 2018; Pavel Baev, ‘Russia Absent from North Korean Crisis’, EDM (24 April 2017); For the ‘endemic bardak’ in the Russian planning system; and see Roger McDermott, ‘The Brain of the Russian Army: Futuristic Visions Tethered by the Past’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 27 (2014), 4–35.
17 For example, see: Anton Lavrov, Russian Military Reforms from Georgia to Syria (Washington: CSIS, 2018); Kofman and Rojansky, ‘What Kind of Victory for Russia in Syria?’; Kofman and Rojansky, ‘Assessing Vostok-2018’; Dmitry Adamsky, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy (Stanford UP, 2019); McDermott, ‘The Brain of the Russian Army’; and Editorial, ‘The War in Syria Has Been a Boon for the Russian Military’, The National Interest, 8 November 2018.
18 Aleksei Vasiliev, Rossiia na Blizhnem I Sredenm Vostoke: Ot Messianstva k Pragmatizmy (Moscow: Nauka, 1993); and Robert Donaldson and Joseph Nogee, The Foreign Policy of Russia (London: Routledge, 2014), 30–4, 116–9.
19 Geifman; Curanovic; Petro; Papkova; Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow (New Haven: Yale UP, 2016) .
20 Trenin, What Is Russia up to in the Middle East; Giles, Moscow Rulesa (2018), part 3, Chapter 7; Issaev and Yuriev 'The Christian Dimension of Russia’s Middle Eastern Policy', Alsharq Forum Expert Brief, 1-11.
21 Maria Engström, ‘Contemporary Russian Messianism’, Contemporary Security Policy 35/3 (2014), 356–79.
22 Adamsky, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy.
23 Allison, Russia and Syria, 804.
24 Trenin (2013), What is Russia 13.
25 Keir Giles, Moscow Rules (London: The Chatham House Press, 2019), Part 3, Chapter 7.
26 ‘Krym imeet dlia Rossii sakral’noe znachenie’, RIA Novosti, 4 December 2014.
27 Kh. Saifetdinov, ‘A.A. Svechin – Vydaiuschiisia Voennyi Myslitel’ nachiala XX veka’, VM 8 (2018), 101–9; and A. Kokoshin, V. Veselov, A. Liss, I. Fisenko, Sovremennye Voiny I Voennoe Iskusstvo (Moscow: URSS, 2015), 44–5.
28 Ibid.
29 S. Rudskoj, ‘Osnovnye ètapy оperatsii VS RF v SAR i оsobennosti оrganizatsii sistemy upravleniia’, Arsenal Otechestva 31/5 (2017); and V. Baranets, ‘Nachal’nik GS VS Rossii Valerij Gerasimov: My perelomili khrebet udarnym silam terrorisma’, Komsomol’skaia Pravda, (26 December 2017).
30 V. Gerasimov, ‘Opyt strategicheskogo rukovodstva v VOV I organizatsia edinogo upravleniia oboronoi strany v sovremennykh usloviiakh’, Vestnik AVN 51/2 (2015), 5–16.
31 The ability of the Russian military to employ these virtues has varied over history.
32 The author is thankful to the anonymous reviewer for pointing this to his attention.
33 Martin Van Creveld and John Andreas Olsen, The Evolution of Operational Art (Oxford UP, 2010).
34 A. Vdovin, ‘Adaptivnyi podkhod k primeneniiu sil I sredstv dlia bor’by s terroristami’, VM 5 (2018), 30–6; Kartapolov (2015); Kofman and Rojansky, ‘What Kind of Victory for Russia in Syria?’; Kofman and Rojansky, ‘Assessing Vostok-2018’; and Adamsky, ‘From Moscow with Coercion’; Adamsky, Moscow’s Syria Campaign.
35 The notion and tradition of operational creativity in the Soviet and Russian military presumes a certain delegation of authority to the theatre level commanders. The fact that a two-star general commands a Grouping of Forces in Syria implies a certain level of decision-making autonomy on the ground, without strict coordination with Moscow.
36 The author is thankful to Roy Allison for this insight. Fighting in a coalition was indeed unpredicted and ran against the traditional Russian inclination to be strategically self-sufficient. However, once Moscow began fighting in coalition, its operational behaviour was consistent with other traits of the Russian managerial tradition. The author is thankful to the anonymous reviewer for this point.
37 Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the U.S., British and Israeli Armies (Stanford UP, 2011).
38 ‘General Gerasimov: Siriiskij opyt – bestsennaia shkola dlia rossiiskikh voisk’, Polit Rossiia, 5 February2017; ‘V Voennoi akademii GSh VS RF proshlo ocherednoe zaniatie kursa “Armiia I Obshchestvo”’ MO RF, 3 February 2017; ‘Vystuplenie nachal’nika GS VS RF na zasedanii Kolegii Minoborony’, MO RF, 7 November 2017; and L. Khairemdinov, ‘Siriiskij opyt kak osnova’, KZ, 18 July 2017.
39 Shamir, Transforming Command.
40 John Erickson, Soviet Ground Forces: An Operational Assessment (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986). According to the Soviet military theory, wars were won at the operational, not the tactical, level. Consequently, authority was concentrated at the operational level, purposely limiting the freedom of tactical commanders. They enjoyed a certain level of independence, but all the regulations aimed to ensure that tactical commanders could not, on their own initiative, upset the plans and options of their superiors; and Michael Eisenstadt and Kenneth Pollack, ‘Armies of Snow and Armies of Sand: the Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on Arab Militaries’, in Emily Goldman and Leslie Eliason (eds.), Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2003), 69–70.
41 Christopher Donnelly, ‘The Soviet Operational Maneuver Group: The New Challenge for NATO,’ International Defence Review 15/ 9 (1982).
42 I. N.Vorob’ev, ‘Pochemu taktika okazalas’ v z astoe’, VM 1 (1989); I. N.Vorob’ev, ‘O tvorchestve i novatarstve v taktike’, VM 3 (1988), and I. N.Vorob’ev, ‘Takticheskaia oborona’, VM 1 (1989); A. M. Adgamov, ‘Protiv shablona i konservatizma v taktike i tak- ticheskoi podgotovke,’ VM 10 (1988); A. P. Kurkov, ‘O svobode tvorchestva i nauchnom potenciale professorsko-prepodavatelskogo sostava akademii’, VM 11 (1986); A. F. Shramchenko, ‘Vyrabotka tvorcheskogo myshleniia u slushatelei v khode operativno-takticheskoi podgotovki’, VM 3 (1990); M. A. Gareev, ‘Raz-vitie form i metodov’, The Soviet military profession never considered tactics prestigious and noble, and never emphasised them, relative to other levels of war. In contrast to the 1930s, theoretical writings on tactics were absent from the military literature following the Great Patriotic War. V. Triandafilov, Kharakter operatccii sovremennykh armii (Moscow: Gosvoenizdat, 1936); A. Reznichenko, Taktika (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1987); and Adamsky (2010).
43 The annual strategic exercise Vostok 2018 and several other smaller-scale manoeuvres since 2017 declaratively applied the lessons learned in Syria, in particular the employment of the RSCs on the tactical-operational level, which implies leaning on mission command. Michael Kofman and Mathew Rojansky, ‘Assessing Vostok-2018’, Russian Military Analysis Blog, 28 Sept. 2018. For the smaller exercises, see: Iurii Belousov, ‘Gotovy k buduschim uchebnym srazheniiam’,KZ, 30 May 2018; ‘Na Tsentralnom-Aziatskom strategicheskom napravlenii’, KZ (19 Dec. 2018); Ivan Bubal’tsev, KZ, 30 November 2018; Vecherniaia Moskva, ‘V voiska vnedriaetsia pobednyi Siriiskii opyt’, 13 Dec. 2017; A. Bondarenko, ‘Pod pritselom – dzhihad mobile’, KZ 9 July 2017. Some scholars debate this hypothesis, since such change, according to them, runs against the very essence of the Russian political-military culture. Despite appearances, the exercises demonstrated mission-control rather than mission command. An alternative view does not refute the abovementioned possibility upfront, conceding that there may have been a genuine intent to introduce mission command. It was not practiced during Vostok 2018, however, to avoid possible accidents that might risk losing face vis-à-vis the Chinese, which also participated in the exercise. An additional view does identify a mission command practice in the Russian military, but almost in laboratory conditions – short episodes confined to specific small units in selected military districts. According to this view, these are exceptions to the rule, which aim to test innovation and to generate generic insights, but they do not indicate overall transformation in the command a culture. Vladimir Milenski, ‘Vostok 2018 and the fear of free play in Russian military thinking’, Defence and Security Analysis (22 Jan. 2019); Mathieu Boulegue, ‘Did the Russian GS experiment with free play during Vostok 2018?’ Defence and Security Analysis (17 Jan. 2019); Daivis Petratitis, ‘Russian mission command in Vostok strategic exercise’, Defence and Security Analysis (22 Jan. 2019); Jyri Raitasalo, ‘Lessons from Vostok-2018: free play maneuvers are overrated and mission command needs to be bounded’, Defence and Security Analysis (22 Jan. 2019); and Michael Clemmesen, ‘On the role of free play in army exercises and the Russians’, Defence and Security Analysis, 22 Jan. 2019.
44 For example, see: Gray, Strategic Culture as Context; Gray, Strategy in the Contemporary World; Karasik, Russia in the Middle East; Bloomfield; Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, ‘The Test of Strategic Culture: Germany, Pacifism and Preemptive Strikes’, Security Dialogue 36/3 (2005); Heiko Biehl, Bastian Giegerich, and Alexandra Jonas, Strategic Cultures in Europe (Berlin: Springer, 2013); and Libel, Explaining the security paradigm shift; European Military Culture and Security Governance (London: Routledge, 2018).
45 Ibid.
46 See, for example: Grey, Strategic Culture as Context; Grey, Strategy in the Contemporary World; Karasik, Russia in the Middle East; Libel, Explaining the security paradigm shift; Libel, Eurpean Military Culture 2018; Bloomfield.
47 Another explanation, not explored in this article, might relate to the cultural change in Russian society. To the degree that strategic and military culture may be influenced by general social and cultural change in a society, this shift in Russian strategic culture may be at least in part due to the increasing inclination of Russian society and culture towards individualism, which could support a mission command type of C2 arrangements; and See: Ronald Inglehard, World Values Survey.
48 Golts, Military Reform and Militarism in Russia; Galeotti, The Modern Russian Army (London: Osprey Publishing 2017); and Renz, Russia’s Military Revival.
49 Adamsky, Moscow’s Syria Campaign.
50 N. Ogarkov, Vsegda v gotovnosti k zashchite otechestva (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1982); N. Ogarkov, Istoriia uchit bditel’nosti (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985); ‘Prognozirovanie’ and ‘predvidinie’ entries in Voennyi Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar’ (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1983); I. Shavrov and M. Galkin, Metodologiia voenno-nauchnogo poznaniia (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1977), F. Gaivoronovskii and M. Galkin, Kultura voennogo myshlenia (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1991); V. Konoplev, Nauchnoe predvidenie v voennom dele (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1974); S. Krupnov, Dialektika i voennaia nauka (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963); and I. Grudinin, Dialektika i sovremennoe voennoe delo (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1971).
51 For example, see: Emily Goldman, ‘“The Spread of Western Military Models to Ottoman Turkey and Meiji Japan,” and Theo Farell, “World Culture and the Irish Army”’, in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (eds.) The Sources of Military Change (London: Lynne Rienner, 2002); and Emily Goldman and Leslie Eliason, The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (Pale Alto: Stanford UP, 2003).
52 Farall in Farell and Terriff 'World Culture and the Irish Army', 85.
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Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky
Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky is a Professor at the School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the IDC Herzliya. His research interests include international security, cultural approach to IR, modern military thought, and American, Russian and Israeli national security policies. He has published on these topics in Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Intelligence and National Security, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Journal of Cold War History. His books Operation Kavkaz and The Culture of Military Innovation (Stanford UP) earned the annual (2006 and 2012) prizes for the best academic works on Israeli security. His book on religion and strategy in Russia is forthcoming with Stanford University Press in 2019.