PSCRP-BESA Reports No 113 (February 6, 2025)
by Alexander Shpunt
PSCRP is launching a program of monthly monitoring of analytical publications from the world’s leading universities and think tanks, which in one way or another affect the study of political processes in the former USSR. We will try to select from a large stream of publications those that, in our opinion, contain fundamental innovations, whether in research approaches or methods. The central principle for selecting research for our monitoring is its usefulness in shaping the current political course of Israel and Israeli policy towards countries that have emerged in this geopolitical space. We will start with five publications and would appreciate our thoughtful and knowledgeable readers’ perspective on the project and research tips they could share with us for future reference.
1. An extremely interesting study “Russia”s Military After Ukraine: Potential Pathways for the Russian Armed Forces” published on January 16th by RAND. The voluminous report was prepared back in March last year, but the extensive list of sponsors, recipients, and contractors, including the National Defense Research Institute (NDRI), the European Command of the US Armed Forces, and other related structures, leaves no doubt as to why the document remained secret for almost a year. This is an extremely lightweight copy of the original paper. A deep study of the text allows us to see another reason that the document is published only now: it is much closer to the public position of the Trump administration in terms of conclusions and content than to the approaches of the Democrats within a paradigm of the alleged “collapse” of the Russian armed forces.
The authors identify four possible options for strategic army building for Vladimir Putin and his military leadership:
1. Reconstruction strategy based on the Shoigu model – his vector of development is based on the approaches proposed by the former Defense Minister. It involves partial structural changes aimed at improving the existing system of the armed forces.
2. A return to the traditional paradigm – this scenario involves the reintegration of the principles of mass mobilization, strengthening the role of conscription, and an emphasis on nuclear deterrence.
3. Formation of an innovative model of the armed forces-provides for the creation of compact, but highly effective troops with technological and qualitative superiority over the enemy.
4. Institutional transformation of the military structure – this approach is focused on large-scale reforms aimed at optimizing the command and management system, improving the interoperability of units and introducing new principles of military planning.
In the future, experts analyze each of the models using a variety of tools.
2. In the article “Driving Factors Behind Turkey”s Establishment of the Turkey-Russia Joint Center in 2020“, employees of the A Wahid Hashim University in Semarang (Indonesia) Russia Joint Center addressed an interesting and poorly studied topic, but important сразу in several contexts at once—cooperation between Russia and Turkey in ending the Karabakh war in 2020. Researchers view the establishment of the Joint Turkish-Russian Center not only as a tool for resolving conflicts in the Middle East after their military phase has ended but also as a model of cooperation between Russia and Turkey for jointly addressing political issues in the conflict zone. The authors identify four key factors that led to Turkey’s decision to invite Russia to participate in the creation of the Joint Center.
Internal factors: economic and military aspects
1. Economic aspect. First of all, it is critically dependent on Russian natural gas supplies, which provide a significant part of the country’s energy needs. The second factor is the financing of the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, implemented within the framework of bilateral cooperation.
2. Military aspect. Since the early 1990s, Turkey has been striving to modernize its national air defense system, seeing this process as a strategically important step to protect its sovereign territory from potential external threats.
Foreign policy factors:
3. The geopolitical position of the balance of power in the region. Given the weakening role of the West, including the decline in the effectiveness of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russian-Turkish cooperation is becoming increasingly competitive and partner-like in the context of shaping the future regional security architecture.
4. Russia’s role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Moscow seeks to consolidate its status as the dominant actor in the region’s military security, distancing itself from Western structures, counting on the status of a guarantor of security in the region, especially after the withdrawal of Armenian units.
3. Arab researchers do not often come to the attention of studying conflicts in the former USSR. The article “Foreign Intervention in Ethnic Conflicts (Case Study: The Russian Intervention in the Donbass War 2014)“ by authors from Beni Suef University of Egypt, which focuses on the conflict in Ukraine, piqued our interest primarily due to its methodological approach and qualitative theoretical analysis.
The study pays considerable attention to the concept of irredentism as one of the key factors determining the nature and motives of foreign intervention in ethnic conflicts. People perceive irredentism as a political doctrine that aims to reunify territories perceived as historically or ethnically related to the initiating state. In the context of the conflict in Donbas, irredentist rhetoric has been used to justify external intervention, providing legitimacy for actions aimed at changing existing state borders and the political structure of the region.
The authors emphasize that irredentism serves not only as a tool for mobilizing the local population but also as an important element of the strategic discourse used by states to justify their foreign policy decisions. In this case, it was closely linked to the ethnic identity and linguistic characteristics of the population, which made it possible to form an ideological basis for supporting separatist movements.
At the same time, the study points out the dual nature of irredentist motives: on the one hand, they can be perceived as a desire to protect compatriots living outside official borders, and on the other—as a form of expansionist policy aimed at redistributing territories. Irredentism-motivated intervention is often accompanied by an international backlash, which leads to a change in the geopolitical balance and can lead to prolonged destabilization of the region.
In this context, irredentism is considered not just as an ideological concept, but also as a practical mechanism that influences the political architecture of the region.
4. The next study—”Russia’s Quiet Conquest: Belarus”—attracts attention primarily for its source. The Washington Institute for the Study of War is one of the most respected think tanks in American political culture and one of the mouthpieces of the United States military-industrial complex.
Unfortunately, the proximity to the military-industrial aristocracy and the associated consideration of its tasks and requests often hinders the researchers of the institute. There is an accentuated search for threats in the military field, which, of course, requires building up military capabilities. This aberration leads to a simplistic, straightforward view in the reports—after all, their task is to get orders for defense enterprises, not to prepare a policy proposal for the State Department.
Rightly noting that the Kremlin actively uses political, military and economic methods to integrate Belarus into its geopolitical sphere, the authors consider only the Union State mechanism. Noting that Moscow has already made significant progress in this direction, including the adjustment of the Belarusian constitution, which rejected the official status of the country as a neutral state, the authors see this only as a rejection of the orientation toward NATO and the European Union, which in turn strengthens Russia’s strategic position in Eastern Europe—an orientation that never existed.
Military analysis is much more convincing. Noting that in 2021, Russian troops began deploying in Belarus, including air defense systems and naval weapons, in 2023, Russia deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which was a significant step in increasing the military threat on NATO’s western borders. Military integration includes joint command and training of the armed forces, which expands Russia’s ability to mobilize and deploy troops in the event of a conflict.
But the biggest gap in the document is that it completely ignores the counter-process—the influence of the political leader of Belarus on domestic political contexts in Russia, and this influence is large and multifaceted.
5. The article “Destabilizing Hegemony: Fostering Uncertainty to Sustain Russian Status with Multipolarity“ was published by three researchers from three different research centers: the Turkish Defense Intelligence Academy, Broward College (USA, Florida), and the University of Tbilisi.
We are interested in this text because the authors consider the “unpredictability” of Russian politics, which has already become a cliche in scientific circles, not as its immanent property but as a consciously cultivated resource.
According to the authors, since the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the foreign policy of the Russian Federation has undergone significant changes, and the central place in this transformation is occupied by the strategic use of unpredictability tactics aimed at promoting Russia’s interests in the context of the supposed weakening of the hegemony of the United States.
The strategy of unpredictability is implemented mainly through cyber attacks and the use of military force, which contributes to changing the structure of the international system in accordance with Russian geopolitical interests. In this regard, the key research question of the work is to try to determine what unified strategy underlies Russia’s use of cyber operations and military interventions to counter American influence.
To answer this question, the authors apply a three-level approach to the analysis of international relations proposed by Kenneth Waltz, which includes individual, state, and system levels. At the individual level, the author examines the influence of personal beliefs and strategic calculations of Vladimir Putin. Internal political, economic and social factors of Russia are considered at the state level. At the system level, the article analyzes Russia’s desire to “challenge the ideological foundations of the existing international order led by the United States.”
Unfortunately, the interesting statement of the problem—to consider unpredictability as a deliberately used political tool by Vladimir Putin, is not accompanied by sufficient analysis in the material. The authors turned out to be dependent on unproven (and, in many respects, conspiracy) “arguments” and “examples” which immediately shifted the context of their work from analytical to journalistic.
Alexander Shpunt is an Israeli and Russian researcher and expert in theory and practice of information and analytical work in the field of politics. Since 2016 he has served as a professor at the National Research University “Moscow Higher School of Economics” and in 2011 founded and headed the Institute of Political Analysis Tools (Moscow), specializing in systems for monitoring political behavior.