Book contents
- Before and After the Fall
- Before and After the Fall
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Sources of Continuity and Change
- Part II Continuity and Change Across the 1989/1991 Divide
- 6 The Nuclear Age
- 7 Legitimating Primacy After the Cold War
- 8 Russia’s Rejection of Liberal Politics
- 9 Continuity and Change in Russian Grand Strategy
- 10 The Stickiness of Strategy
- 11 Avoiding the Limelight
- Part III Toward a New World Order?
- Index
10 - The Stickiness of Strategy
Soviet and Russian Nuclear Doctrine
from Part II - Continuity and Change Across the 1989/1991 Divide
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2021
- Before and After the Fall
- Before and After the Fall
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Sources of Continuity and Change
- Part II Continuity and Change Across the 1989/1991 Divide
- 6 The Nuclear Age
- 7 Legitimating Primacy After the Cold War
- 8 Russia’s Rejection of Liberal Politics
- 9 Continuity and Change in Russian Grand Strategy
- 10 The Stickiness of Strategy
- 11 Avoiding the Limelight
- Part III Toward a New World Order?
- Index
Summary
The collapse of the Soviet Union radically changed the external and domestic environment for a new Russian state. Existing political science theories predict that radical changes to the international system or to the domestic regime affect the content of nuclear strategy. This chapter uses Russian archival and oral history sources on nuclear decision-making from the 1980s and 1990s to demonstrate that such change did not take place in Russian nuclear strategy. Soviet strategic thought and institutional mechanisms for strategy formulation would prove sticky, producing continuity rather than change in this area. The Soviet tradition for deterring nuclear war by preparing to fight it has continued to shape Russian nuclear strategy throughout the entire post-Cold War era.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Before and After the FallWorld Politics and the End of the Cold War, pp. 188 - 205Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021