兰德-了解俄罗斯战略文化和低当量核威胁（英）-2025.8_57页_2mb

Russian Strategic Culture

Russia's strategic culture is characterized by fundamental values shaped by history, religion, and ideology. Its key features include:

• Right to Sovereignty: Territorial integrity is considered essential to Russian identity and security.
• Zero-Sum Worldview: Russia sees international relations as a battlefield for absolute gains and losses, where escalation is often framed as 'winning' while potentially de-escalating a conflict.
• Centralisation of Power: Decisions are highly concentrated, influenced by autocratic traditions and security elites, leading to opaque and potentially erratic decision-making.
• Zero-Sum Approach: Actions against Russia, even perceived as defensive, are often interpreted as existential threats.
• Autocratic Leadership: Strong leaders and centralized control reinforce strategic culture, impacting the flow of information and decision-making.
• Religious Orthodoxy: Russian Orthodoxy is intertwined with state policies, legitimizing actions that Western observers might frame as aggressive.
• Strategic Culture Influence: Russia's unique blend of historical narratives and perspectives shapes nuclear decision-making.
• Catch-Up with the West: The drive to achieve nuclear parity and strategic influence cannot be separated from its overall identity.

Nuclear Doctrine and Posture

• Russia views nuclear and conventional capabilities as complementary, not mutually exclusive.
• Nuclear deterrence is broadened beyond defence; it includes coercion, counter-value targeting, and mixed use.
• Russia maintains a deliberately ambiguous threshold for nuclear use, exploiting uncertainty as a core element of strategic culture.
• Russia holds a clear advantage in low-yield nuclear weapons, leveraging them to compensate for conventional weaknesses.
• NSNWs are integral to regional deterrence, appealing to Russia's leadership to maintain great power status and influence.
• Russian nuclear doctrine blends pre-emptive actions with the threat of first use, influenced by historical fears like Western subversion and NATO expansion.
• Nuclear signalling is common in Russia's strategic culture, including threats or limited nuclear use in coercion.
• NATO’s attempts to expand east are viewed as threats to Russia's sphere of influence, justifying nuclear assertiveness.

Key Findings

• Russia’s reliance on nuclear weapons is driven by the need to compensate for conventional inferiority.
• Nuclear strikes are rationalised as necessary to maintain sovereignty, great power status, or deter existential threats.
• Cultural factors, including a siege mentality and religious support for nationalism, fundamentally shape Russia’s nuclear posture.
• Centralised decision-making, combined with poor information management, increases the risk of miscalculation and escalation.
• Moscow’s nuclear doctrine remains highly ambiguous, creating uncertainty vital to Russian strategic culture.
• Nuclear escalation is considered a credible tool of statecraft, complicating efforts for arms control and crisis management.
• Collective security efforts may be insufficient without an understanding of Russia’s cultural moorings and limited transatlantic consensus on nuclear strategy.