Preparing for War? Moscow Facing an Arc of Crisis

Russia is once again at the front and center of the security agenda of the United States. With many now seeing Russia as one of the most important threats, if not the number one threat to the United States and its allies, there is much debate about how to counter possible threats, where Russia might strike next, and how to deter Russian aggression. The war in Ukraine and Russia's intervention in Syria, combined with its extensive program of exercising for war, lends policy urgency to this debate. In this Letort Paper, Dr. Andrew Monaghan, a Brit?ish academic and long-term scholar of Russia based at Chatham House in London, reflects on the view from Moscow. In so doing, he illustrates the increasingly obvious gulf in how security is perceived in Western capitals and in Moscow. Importantly, he emphasizes that the Russian leadership faces numerous doubts and difficulties-to include doubting that, in Clause?witzian terms, Russia is able to withstand the test of war. This is both the root of the emergency measures that the Russian leadership is implementing across the system, from the economy to the political system and the military, and the root of the major investment pro?gram to modernize the military that was under way even before the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014 and led to a sharp deterioration in Russia's relations with the United States and the West more broadly. This Letort Paper also serves to complement and even supersede the debate in the West about Russian "hybrid" war by looking at Russian actions through the lens of state mobilization, drawing attention to important features of Russia's evolving conventional warfighting capacity.