In fact, there’s less to this blueprint than meets the eye. No Western military planners ever believed the “no first use” principle anyway, and clearly we’re much farther from nuclear war with Moscow now than we were when it was promulgated. The calls for a better and stronger army may sound grand, but the reality is that as many as 120 soldiers desert every week; highflown military rhetoric will hardly change their minds. Western experts believe that as little as one fifth of the troops and armor the Russians have on paper are actually in usable shape. Re-establishing the old Soviet Union, or some portion of it, is simply beyond the grasp of even the bitterest Kremlin generals. “An aggressive stance toward the ’near abroad’ would take financial resources that Russia just doesn’t have,” says Oleg Amirov, chief military expert at a Moscow think tank.
In fact, Western experts who saw earlier drafts of the doctrine say it’s gotten milder, not tougher, since the attack on Parliament. Hard-liners had been insisting on tough provisions for protecting Russians in the Baltic states, for example, that didn’t make it into the final version. “Earlier this year there was much stronger language in [the doctrine],” says military consultant John Hines. “With the collapse of the conservative bastion in Parliament, that’s been watered down.” So much for the Big Payoff.
That doesn’t mean that the Russian military isn’t dangerous. Armed with a doctrine justifying intervention in the “near abroad,” Russian soldiers can wreak plenty of mayhem beyond their borders, such as in the volatile Caucasus region. Ukrainian politicians, meanwhile, are incensed at the new doctrine, especially the notion that Russia could use nuclear weapons against nuclear states, such as Ukraine. “This is an imperial threat,” says nationalist lawmaker Oles Shevchenko. “We’ve got to keep nuclear weapons to defend our territory against the eastern aggressor. It will be a thousand times more dangerous for us to disarm.” The West may breathe easier about the threat from Moscow, but not everyone can.
