National Security Strategy - 2021
Autocrats need enemies within as well as without to justify political repression. The National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation is a strategic document outlining the means by which citizens, society and the state are to be protected against external and internal threats in every sphere of national life. The first such document was created in 1997, and it has been continually updated to account for new developments.
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a revised version of Russia's national security strategy, published Saturday, that outlines measures to respond to foreign influence. The move came amid growing tensions between Russia and the West as the United States and its allies carry out naval drills in the Black Sea. Western countries have increasingly criticized the Kremlin in recent years over an array of issues, including alleged cyberattacks as well as the imprisonment of political opposition figures in Russia.
According to the 44-page document, Russia faces an even wider range of national security threats, including (but not limited to) the online activities of transnational corporations, the “Westernization of culture,” the imposition of foreign moral values, and the destructive impact of profanity on the Russian language. This growing pressure from Western countries poses a danger to Russian society. "The 'Westernization' of culture increases the danger that the Russian Federation will lose its cultural sovereignty," the new strategy says. The document claims that Russian "traditional spiritual-moral and cultural-historical values are under active attack from the US and its allies," including transnational institutions.
Putin has very frequently used the specter of external threats to justify restrictive actions at home, critics say, and has repeatedly raised the prospect of a new catastrophic war. The new National Security Strategy seems to take the war footing a few steps further. Compared to previous editions, "It reads as very closed off: more survivalist in tone and all [references] to cooperation with the West were deleted," Dara Massicot, an expert on Russian defense issues at the Rand Corporation think tank, wrote.
The wording like preparing for "wartime" and "mobilization readiness" of the economy, as well as many references to ways in which Russia is allegedly threatened by the West and, as author and analyst Mark Galeotti put it, by "the very processes reshaping the modern world." The 44-page document, Galeotti wrote in a July 5 article in The Moscow Times, is "a paranoid's charter."
While the document reaffirms Moscow's commitment to using diplomacy to resolve conflicts, it stresses that Russia "considers it legitimate to take symmetrical and asymmetric measures'' to prevent "unfriendly actions" by foreign states. The document also claims that the West is trying to use Russia's social and economic problems to destabilize society and radicalize protest. It stated that “actions of some countries are aimed at instigating disintegration processes in the Commonwealth of Independent States in order to destroy Russia’s ties with its traditional allies,” and claimed that “a number of states call Russia a threat and even a military adversary.”
Compared to the first one in 1997, the new document has removed some content about building a partnership with the US and having win-win cooperation with the EU. This shows that the contradictions between Russia and the West are serious and are hard to solve. Russia has abandoned any expectation of fundamentally fixing and improving ties with the US and the EU, and what the US has done to Russia in the past decades has disappointed and offended Moscow over and over again. "The United States is pursuing a consistent policy of abandoning international obligations in the field of arms control against the backdrop of developing the potential for the global missile defense system," reads the document.
Mark Galeotti, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, thought that the 2021 National Security Strategy marked "the progressive shift in the Kremlin’s priorities towards paranoia and a worldview that regards not just foreign countries as a threat, but the very processes reshaping the modern world. ... The final document certainly looks as though it bears the fingerprints of Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful Secretary of the Security Council and in effect the closest thing the Russian system has to a National Security Adviser. One of the more hawkish figures within Putin’s inner circle, Patrushev has made no secret of his belief that Russia is in effect already in an undeclared struggle with a West."
The Strategy states [12-13] "the cohesion of the Russian society, civic consciousness is strengthened, awareness of the need to protect traditional spiritual and moral values, the social activity of citizens increases their involvement in solving the most urgent problems of local and state significance.... the Russian Federation has demonstrated to the whole world its economic resilience and has proven its ability to resist external sanctions pressure."
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unleashed an over-the-top example of such rhetoric when he accused the United States, in effect, of weaponizing what he called the "liberal concept of boundless permissiveness" as part of what he described as a push to "impose its own rules" on other countries. Citing no evidence in a 28 June 2021 article that seemed intended to be a serious statement of Moscow's case that the West is seeking to press its values and ideals on Russia and the rest of the world -- that "in a number of Western countries, students learn at school that Jesus Christ was bisexual."
The Strategy further declares [17] that the "Growth of geopolitical instability and conflict, the strengthening of interstate contradictions are accompanied by an increase in the threat of the use of military force. Loosening generally recognized norms and principles of international law, weakening and destruction of existing international legal institutions, the ongoing dismantling of the system of treaties and arms control agreements lead to growing tension and exacerbation of the military-political situation, including near the state border of the Russian Federation. The actions of some countries are aimed at inspiration in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) disintegration processes in order to destroy the ties of Russia with its traditional allies. A number of states call Russia a threat and even a military adversary. The danger is increasing escalation of armed conflicts into local and regional wars, including those involving nuclear powers. Space and information spaces are actively developed as new areas for the conduct of hostilities."
The increasingly broad notion of ‘security’ and ‘threat’ is not just about cyberattacks and disinformation, but (19) "attempts deliberately to erode traditional values, distort global history, revise views on Russia’s role and place in it, rehabilitate fascism and incite interethnic and inter-confessional conflicts” and even to restrict the use of the Russian language."
The Strategy asserts (clause 87) that “traditional Russian spiritual, moral and cultural-historical values are under active attack by the U.S. and its allies, as well as by transnational corporations, foreign non-profit, non-governmental, religious, extremist and terrorist organizations”.
The novelty in this edition is the assertion that Russia's "cultural sovereignty" faces an existential threat from the West -- that "traditional Russian spiritual, moral, and cultural-historical values are under active attack by the United States and its allies." The strategy document states on page 36, these countries are "applying informational and psychological pressure on the individual, group, and societal consciousness by spreading social and moral tenets that contradict the traditions, convictions, and beliefs of the peoples of the Russian Federation."
On the official state Rossiya 1 TV, the 04 July 2021 edition of the Voskresny Vecher s Vladimirom Solovyovym (Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov) lasted just under three hours. The presenter, Vladimir Solovyov, said in his opening remarks: "Military threats for Russia are growing. Nato forces have drawn practically very near us". "Near our borders drills are held in using nuclear weapons. Russia will respond both symmetrically and asymmetrically against hostile actions of other countries - this is our new strategy," he added. Solovyov highlighted the actions of the "aggressive Nato bloc" (the expression being a Soviet-era propaganda cliche) in Japan. He also noted that "the threat from the south is evident", as Black Sea region became a contested area.
Chairman of the State Duma education committee Vyacheslav Nikonov said that such encroachment been taking place for hundreds of years. "Western civilisation is about violence and murder, not about humanism and enlightenment," he explained. Nikonov noted that "Western values for hundreds of years were not democracy and human rights, they are violence, nationalism, chauvinism, Nazism, fascism, jingoism, you name it, colonialism". Political analyst Dmitry Yevstafyev agreed that the "radical pro-Western opposition" being out of the way means that "it is a lot less comfortable for them to put pressure on us".
"This noisy opposition crowd has been smashed up. But has opposition been smashed up in the nomenklatura, in the apparatus? Has the ruling class been de-Chubaysized [reference is to Anatoly Chubays]? No, it was not," said Moscow State University's Vitaly Tretyakov. That is potentially more important as the apparatus can organise street protests or sabotage any decisions of the top leadership, the dean of the Higher School of Television with MSU explained.
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