Putin makes his isolationism official
the economic
crisis is the main reason for the emergence of national security threats to
the Russian Federation. It is expressed as
substantial
production decline, drops in investment and innovation activity, the destruction of scientific and technological potential
Leonid Bershidsky
The evolution of Russias National Security Strategy -- a document whose latest version was published on Dec. 31 -- provides valuable material for the study of the angst, paranoia and befuddlement now gripping the Kremlin.
Its well known that during his third presidential term, Putin has cultivated the image of a Western enemy out to destroy Russia. That this concept has found a way into the strategic document is not surprising or particularly important. The significance of the rewritten national security concept is that, for the first time in the 18 years since President Boris Yeltsin signed off on the first version, the Kremlin officially regrets opening up the country economically and culturally.
Yeltsin signed the first National Security Concept, as it was then known, in 1997. Even in the first post-Soviet years, when Russia did its best to integrate into the Western world, the document called the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations eastward expansion a national security threat because military groupings near the Russian borders are a potential military danger even in the absence of aggressive intentions toward Russia. It wasnt the drafters, or Yeltsins, biggest worry, though. The economy was:
The economic crisis is the main reason for the emergence of national security threats to the Russian Federation. It is expressed as substantial production decline, drops in investment and innovation activity, the destruction of scientific and technological potential, stagnation in agriculture, disarray in the payment and monetary system, fiscal revenue shrinkage, increases in public debt.
Yeltsin and his strategists were right to be worried. Less than a year after the National Security Concept was approved, oil prices dropped to about $10 per barrel, Russia defaulted on its domestic debt and suffered
perhaps the biggest post-Soviet blow to its prestige.
The country lay economically helpless, and only a sharp devaluation and an excess of unused industrial capacity allowed it to rise as domestic production gradually replaced imports.
The national security document got a face-lift in 2000, after Yeltsin resigned and Vladimir Putin became acting president. It still centered on economic challenges, but it reflected a growing concern with Western interference and NATO expansion:
A shift, enshrined in NATOs strategic doctrine, toward the use of military force outside the blocs zone of responsibility and without sanction from the United Nations Security Council carries a threat of destabilization to the entire global strategic environment.
There were other not-so-subtle changes, too: For example, where the original concept talked about the need for constructive decentralization that would devolve more powers to the vast countrys regions, the early Putin version only talked about building a strong vertical of executive power, a phrase that became the leitmotif of Putins first presidential term. The amended document stressed the need for a bigger role for the state in countering all sorts of threats, both military and economic. Unlike in the original, there was no mention that an oversized military was too much of a burden for an economically weakened country. All in all, Putin followed through on his intentions, aided by a rise in oil revenues.
The next time Kremlin strategists felt Russia needed a new national security agenda was in 2009, when Dmitri Medvedev served as a placeholder president between Putin terms. His version was supposed to last until 2020. Medvedev, who now serves as prime minister, is into windy forward-looking documents. Unlike the previous two iterations, this one was somewhat boastful: It claimed that Russias economic decline had been reversed and that its resource wealth was helping to enhance the countrys international influence.
Bloomberg
