Speaking at the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 21 September 2022, President Joe Biden censured Russia for its shameless attempt to “erase a sovereign state off the map.”[1] Straying from his usual framing of the war in terms of the conflict between autocracy and democracy, Biden homed in on Russia’s imperial ambitions denouncing Moscow’s imperial character publicly for the first time. During the first year of Russia’s barbaric war in Ukraine, the theme of Russia’s imperialist motivations has become popular in the Western policy circles. This trend has displaced a view of Russia as a normal state guided by considerations of national prosperity and security. Still, ideas, and worldviews remain at odds with the dominant approaches to strategy. The mainstream perspectives on war ascribe an outsized importance to the tangible aspects of conflict and underplay the role of intangibles as useful guides for understanding the sources and outcomes of war. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is a powerful reminder of the relevance of ideas for armed conflict. Russia’s propaganda campaign against Ukraine offers useful analytical signposts for discerning the narratives of enemy-making necessitating the use of force.

Western strategists have traditionally viewed Russia as a rational and strategic actor. The U.S. government has approached President Putin as a vicious proponent of Realpolitik, whose policies prioritized material interests above ideology. The sources of Russia’s foreign policy were located in the universal condition of geopolitical insecurity. Shaped by a challenging geography, a proximity to other great powers, and its own territorial ambitions, Russia has developed a profound sense of vulnerability that it has sought to defend from external threats, such as NATO’s expansion.[2] In addition to geopolitical concerns, the Putin regime has feared that American support for Russians’ protests at home repressed by the government would inevitably escalate to regime change by Washington.[3]

These types of explanations linking Russia’s behavior to traditional geopolitics or fears of democratization fall flat as accounts of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war made little strategic sense for Moscow. The Kremlin dampened Ukraine’s prospects for joining NATO through its annexation of Crimea and its war in Donbas. The Russian government faced no meaningful opposition at home or threats from its near abroad.[4] When Russia invaded Kyiv and quickly faltered in its so-called special military operation, the focus of conversations about Moscow’s strategy shifted on Putin’s flawed assumptions, bygone grievances, and an imperialist longing for recolonized Kyiv.

Acknowledging a connection between war and ideology marks a significant shift in contemporary strategic thinking which has long been hostile to the idea of a secular ideological struggle among modern states.[5] However, the ability of ideological accounts to inform analyses of countries’ conduct has been undermined by a prevailing but flawed way of thinking about ideology as a fixed belief-system that stimulates committed followers to implement the ideological vision.[6] This framing of ideology preserves a simplistic linear relationship, which connects ideas to state conduct. It is also more susceptible to politicization of ideological labels for the purpose of disparaging adversaries rather than understanding them.

Russia’s case is instructive in demonstrating how ideology does not need to be fixed into a rigid doctrine to provide a motive for war and increase the state capacity for violence.[7] Neither does it need to be designed for export and actively promoted abroad. The Russian government, in fact, has never developed a coherent national ideology. Russia’s ideological space has always been fluid, giving rise to academic and policy debates about whether Russia is a fascist, authoritarian, or kleptocratic state.[8] The Kremlin has complicated the task of identifying ideological foundations of Russia’s foreign policy by instrumentalizing ideological narratives for political uses.

Strategic thinkers can look to Russia’s experiences with producing and reproducing ideological constructs about itself, the West and Ukraine for discovering the mechanisms of ideological influence on state conduct. A mechanism that translated ideas and ideology into the Kremlin’s decision to wage an aggressive war suggests four analytical signposts: (1) an approach to national identity that emphasizes intractable differences and elevates the Self by denigrating the Other; (2) the growing consistency in the othering themes in the official, academic, and popular discourse; (3) the institutionalization of these ideas in domestic legislation; and (4) their translation into the everyday practices of statecraft.

First, there has been remarkable consistency in Russia’s views of the Self as a successor of the Soviet Union and a great power state.[9] The key objective of the Russian government since Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power has been the restoration of Russia’s power in a multi-polar world.[10] While Western strategists have duly noted the great power aspirations of Kremlin ideologues, the fluidity of Russia’s geographic and discursive boundaries has received little consideration. During the first two terms of Vladimir Putin as Russian president, the Kremlin often used Russia’s comparative advantage in energy production and preeminence in the nuclear sector as the basis for its claims to Russia’s great power status. After the completion of the second military campaign in the North Caucasus, dubbed the counterterrorism operation, and Russia’s 2008 war in Georgia, the Russian government discursively elevated military force as a symbol of Russia’s greatness.​​ Following Vladimir Putin’s return to the post of Russia’s president in 2012, reactionary themes have become more prominent in the Kremlin’s strategic discourse. Instead of offering a forward-looking vision for Russia, the Russian president has defined the Russian Self in antiquarian terms. The tropes of World War II have become central to the national identity of a triumphant Russia, which commands respect for its ability to defend itself, even by the force of arms.

Both Ukraine and the U.S. are now central to the Russian nation-building narrative. By poaching Ukraine’s national history and denying its independent nationhood, the Kremlin has sought to galvanize Russian nationalism spurred by beliefs in the eternal and transcendental qualities of the Russian nation. Anti-Westernism has been used to champion Russia’s moral and civilizational superiority, reposition the blame for its domestic problems, and plant the seed of another conflict between the West and Russia.

Overtime, however, the otherizing narratives used for the nation-building purpose have transformed into the powerful shapers of Russia’s views about the threats to its Self. The Putin government has internalized a view that Washington has deliberately pushed Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics to curtail cooperation with Russia as a way of denying Moscow an opportunity to reclaim its political, economic, and civilizational status in the changing world. This effort to deny Russia great power status has become a threat to Russia’s very existence, justifying the risk inherent to challenging the post-Cold War architecture in Europe by force.

Second, the Russian public has always been an important arena for the Kremlin’s ideological war with the West.[11] The Russian government has relied on a complex and extensive ecosystem of traditional media, social media influencers, writers, celebrities, the Russian Orthodox Church, and nationalist groups to disseminate what it positions as historical and cultural truths about Russia, its place in the world, and threats to the Russian nationhood. The Kremlin’s public enmification campaign aimed at the West and Ukraine preceded the 2022 invasion by more than a decade. The process of transforming Ukraine into the enemy of the Russian nation has been accompanied by the preparation of the psychological battlefield through the publication of fictional and “historical” books. The books have disseminated a narrative of the Ukrainian people as a project of the U.S. and planted the seed of an imminent war between Moscow and Kyiv in readers.[12] The nationalist indoctrination has spread into the cultural medium and school and college curricula. The portrayal of the West as Russia’s existential threat and calls for the restoration of historic Russia have appeared in Russian textbooks and lesson plans. The nationalist flames fanned by the Putin regime are successful in influencing Russian public opinion and rallying the Russian citizens’ support of the Kremlin’s actions. The public opinion polls conducted in Russia show a steady deterioration of public attitudes toward Kyiv and Washington since 2014, with Western-aligned Ukraine and the U.S. believed to be the most hostile countries toward Russia.[13]

Third, Russia’s growing intolerance toward dissenting and non-conforming views have been more than a symptom of the authoritarian governance. Hostility toward political opponents and anti-government activists have been a mark of the spreading otherizing practices and views at home. The Putin government has labeled all dissenters of official views as Russia’s enemies and dubbed collaborators with the Western institutions as foreign agents. It has referred to the Russian feminists and LGBT activists as Western imposters and unholy queer threats to the Russian state. The laws that ban the promotion of nontraditional sexual relationships and foreign agents have legalized otherizing practices and turned large swaths of the Russian population into unpatriotic subaltern people. The institutionalization of ideas about Russia’s enemies in the amended 2020 Constitution, the national security concept of 2021, and other documents marked the completion of a process of enmification of the West and Ukraine. Russia’s war against Ukraine became possible only with the internalization of these ideas by the Russian elites, academics, and people.

A lesson that Russia’s war can teach strategic thinkers is that a shifting balance of material capabilities does not alone determine state conflict. War is a complex outcome of a social process of elites and societies coming to see each other as enemies and existential threats. Such perceptions are often grounded in the imagery of national identities. Similar to religious ideologies, secular theories of identity are important markers of political actors’ normative claims and who they consider to be friends or enemies.

The war in Ukraine is not just about Russia’s territorial ambitions or a veto power over policies of a sovereign state. It is fueled by conspiracy theories about Russia’s enemies and narratives about its identity. The ideological dimensions of Russia’s war raise stakes in the ongoing conflict, lessen space for negotiation and compromise, and boost capacity for violence. The Putin regime might lack the advanced military capabilities, but it commands support of the majority of the Russian population, which shares the government’s propaganda about the existential war between Russia and the West. This means that the conflict waged by Russia will not end with the truth in the war in Ukraine but shift in non-military domains. Information warfare, targeted associations, cover actions, and energy blackmail will all intensify. The U.S. and its allies and partners in Europe and elsewhere should develop resilience against Russia’s hybrid warfare in addition to bolstering deterrence and defense.

Mariya Y. Omelicheva is a Professor of Strategy at National War College. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Purdue University and JD in International Law from Moscow National Law Academy. She is the author of three books – Webs of Corruption: Trafficking-Terrorism Nexus in Central Asia, Democracy in Central Asia: Competing Perspectives and Alternate Strategies, and Counterterrorism Policies in Central Asia. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent an official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, or National Defense University.

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Header Image: Moscow river and Kremlin, Russia, 2019 (Alex Zarubi).

Notes:

[1] Remarks by President Biden Before the 77th Session of the United Nations GeneralAssembly. 21 September, 2022, New York. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/09/21/remarks-by-president-biden-before-the-77th-session-of-the-united-nations-general-assembly/

[2] Robert Person, “Four Myths about Russian Grand Strategy,” CSIS, September 22, 2020, https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/four-myths-about-russian-grand-strategy

[3] Robert Person and Michael McFaul (2022), “What Putin Fears Most,” Journal of Democracy, 8(2): 18-27.

[4] Mariya Y Omelicheva, “Repression Trap: The Mechanism of Escalating State Violence in Russia,” CSIS, July 30, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/repression-trap-mechanism-escalating-state-violence-russia

[5] The Soviet Union’s dissolution and the attendant delegitimization of Communism rendered secular ideology irrelevant for conflict. See, for example, Kalyvas Stathis N. and Bacells Laia. 2010. “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science Review 104, no.3 (2010): 416.

[6] Jonathan Maynard, Ideology and Mass Killing: The Radicalized Security Politics of Genocides and Deadly Atrocities (Oxford Academic, 2022, online edition), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198776796.001.0001

[7] Matthias Basedau, Mora Deitch, and Ariel Zellman, “Rebels with a Cause: Does Ideology Make Armed Conflicts Longer and Bloodier?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 66, no.10 (2022):1826–1853.

[8] See, for example, Marlene Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Cornell University Press, 2021).

[9] Oksana Drozdova and Paul Robinson, “A Study of Vladiir Putin’s Rhetoric,” Europe-Asia Studies 71, no. 5 (2019): 805-823.

[10] In his first-ever speech to the Russian Parliament gathered for a vote on his candidacy as Prime Minister in August 1999, Vladimir Putin stated that “Russia has been a great power for centuries, and remains so. It has always had and still has legitimate zones of interest… We should not drop our guard in this respect; neither should we allow our opinion to be ignored.” As cited in Oliver Bullough, “Vladimir Putin: The Rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia”, BBC News, 28 March 2014. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481

[11] Mariya Y. Omelicheva, “Critical Geopolitics on Russian Foreign Policy: Uncovering the Imagery of Moscow’s International Relations,” International Politics 53 (2016): 708-726.

[12] Oleksandr Grekhov, “Fifty anti-Ukrainian Propaganda Books: How Russian Publishers Soke Hatred against Ukrainians,” Chytomo, April 4, 2022.

[13] Levada-Tstenr, “International Relations and Sanctions” (In Russian), June 15, 2017, https://www.levada.ru/2017/06/15/16137/