Russia's strategic outlook: hastening the decline of Western hegemony
Understanding Russia's foreign policy and geopolitical/military strategy through the work of Sergey Karaganov, one of Russia’s most influential (geo)political thinkers
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Hi everyone. This is part two of a two-part breakdown of an important article by Sergey Karaganov, one of Russia’s most influential (geo)political thinkers, on the state of the West, and of West-Russia relations, and on the risk of conflict escalation. As I wrote:
We should be paying very close attention to what someone like Karaganov is thinking and writing — even if you think Russia is an enemy; indeed, especially so. Karaganov’s texts aren’t intended for the Western (or even Russian) general public; they are intended for the Russian intellectual and political elites — and Putin’s government itself — and so can’t be written off as propaganda. On the contrary, they offer a fascinating window into the debates currently occurring among Russian elites, and into the contemporary Russian mindset and “spirit” more in general.
In part one, I looked at Karaganov’s analysis of the structural factors contributing to the current unravelling of the international system, and the resulting multiplication of conflicts and hotspots — in Europe, the Pacific, the Middle East and elsewhere. I recommend you read the first part of the articlebefore moving on to this one, as it provides some much-needed context. But if you’re too lazy to do that, here’s a brief summary of Karaganov’s points:
The crisis of capitalism: The modern capitalist model prioritises profit and fosters unnecessary consumption, leading to significant environmental degradation. This system’s encouragement of relentless consumerism has contributed to resource depletion and a detachment from sustainable living practices.
Global resource crisis: Major global issues such as pollution, climate change, and the scarcity of essential resources like fresh water remain unresolved. These challenges are exacerbated by growing consumerism and unequal resource distribution, leading to intensified competition and internal societal tensions.
Rising social inequality: Social inequality has been escalating since the collapse of the USSR, diminishing the middle class in the West and increasing visible wealth gaps. This trend contributes to societal instability and discontent.
Societal and intellectual decline: The West, in particular, is experiencing societal degradation, driven by urbanisation and excessive digital consumption, which leads to a decline in critical thinking and increased susceptibility to manipulation. This, combined with oligarchic control, undermines traditional values and promotes divisive ideologies.
Virtualisation of life: Modern man is increasingly living in a virtualised state, where fears and challenges are digitalised, detaching people from real-world issues and historical drivers of human progress, like hunger and the threat of violence.
Western elites’ intellectual decline: Western elites, especially in the US, have lost strategic thinking capabilities, leading to poor governance and international policy blunders. This decline contributes to a weakened global leadership role.
Global power redistribution: Karaganov highlights the significant shift in global power from the West to rising nations, particularly Russia and China, as one of the major sources of international tension. This shift is causing geopolitical instability and redefining international relations, as the West grapples with losing its long-standing hegemony.
Deteriorating global governance: The post-war international governance structures are collapsing and are unable to maintain global stability. The arms race and the breakdown of security agreements further complicate this landscape.
Increasing risk of conflict: The West’s reaction to its declining dominance includes heightened propaganda, economic sanctions and proxy wars, fostering an environment ripe for conflict, especially with Russia and China. This tension is aggravated by dehumanisation tactics and the re-arming of strategic capabilities.
Technological and arms race: Karaganov warns of the growing technological and arms race, including developments in bioweapons and AI, which threaten to destabilise global security. The proliferation of advanced weapons, like drones and hypersonic missiles, adds to the precariousness of international relations.
Potential for catastrophe: There is a profound concern in Russia about the increasing likelihood of large-scale disasters or even a global catastrophe, driven by the above challenges.
I will now look at Karaganov’s policy recommendations for Russia in light of the aforementioned geopolitical context — which make for an even more interesting, though arguably more disquieting, read.
What Russia should do: the “Fortress Russia” concept
He starts by introducing the concept of “Fortress Russia”.
The extremely dangerous world of the next two decades requires Russia to adjust its foreign and defense policy. In a 2022 essay for Russia in Global Affairs, I already argued that this policy should be based on the “Fortress Russia” concept: maximum possible sovereignty, independence, autonomy, and security, with a focus on intensive internal development. Russia must be intelligently open to beneficial economic, scientific, cultural, and informational cooperation with friendly countries of the World Majority.
However, openness is not an end in itself, but rather a means to ensure internal material and spiritual development. As we have already seen, liberal-globalist openness is also deadly. It would be stupid to try to integrate into “international value chains” now that the creators of the former system of globalization are destroying it and militarizing economic ties. Interdependence, previously overestimated as a source of peace, is now largely dangerous. We must try to create “value chains” on our own territory in order to increase its connectedness. This especially applies to the connections of Russia’s core to Siberia and — more carefully — to friendly states, most prominently Belarus, most of Central Asia, China, Mongolia, and the rest of the SCO and BRICS.
What this passage shows is that, by attempting to cut Russia off from the Western-led international system, the West has actually shot itself in the foot, as it has spurred Russia, along with the rest of the non-Western world, to accelerate the creation of an alternative system of global governance — spearheaded by the China-led BRICS — that already encompasses the majority of the world’s population. What we are witnessing is the effective creation of two parallel international systems — the Western one and the non-Western one — and in this new reality it is the West that is being increasingly marginalised by the Global Majority, not Russia. The reality of this new global order was exemplified by Putin’s recent visit to North Korea, which effectively heralded the latter’s entry into the “international system” — albeit not the Western one — for the first time since the country’s creation.
Russia’s dual goal: developing relations with the Global Majority — and hastening the decline of Western hegemony
Today’s foreign policy should be geared towards the comprehensive development of relations with the countries of the World Majority. Another obvious, although yet unarticulated, goal is to work together with the World Majority to ensure the West peacefully steps down from its five-centuries-held position of dominance.
Similarly, we should ensure a maximally peaceful departure of the US from hegemony that it has enjoyed since the late 1980s. The West should be relocated to a more modest, but worthy, place in the world system. There is no need to expel it. Given the trajectory of Western development, it will leave by itself. But it is necessary to firmly deter any rearguard actions of the still powerful West. While normal relations may be partly restored in a couple of decades, they are not an end by themselves.
“The West should be relocated to a more modest, but worthy, place in the world system”: it’s hard to disagree with this assessment. By the way, this would be in the interest of Western citizens as well. It’s today more apparent than ever that the system of imperial dominance, especially in its current decaying phase, only benefits the Western oligarchies that sit at the tip of the social pyramid. Dollar dominance is a good example. It has undoubtedly benefited America’s imperial elites: Wall Street, large global corporations and, most importantly, the national security establishment. It’s what has allowed the US to sustain a regime of perpetual war, on top of exercising financial dominance over much of the world. But this has come at a significant cost not only for the rest of the world but also for American workers, farmers, producers and small businesses. For America, supporting the world’s primary reserve currency has meant running permanent trade deficits, which has seriously eroded its industrial and manufacturing capacity and its ability to provide well-paying jobs to its workforce — what Michael Pettis calls the “exorbitant burden” of the dollar.
The end of this supremacy, then, would turn America into a somewhat “normal” country — a regional power among other regional powers. Both globally and within the US, this would benefit virtually everyone. Indeed, the only losers would be those who have had ample time to enrich themselves. On top of this, we have to consider the existential risk to which Western elites are exposing all Western citizens — indeed, all human beings on the planet — by engaging in a no-long-so-proxy war with Russia, while fuelling geopolitical, economic and military conflicts/tensions elsewhere as well, most notably in the Middle East and the Pacific.
The “Fortress Russia” policy demands minimizing Russia’s entanglement in the conflicts that will flare up during the ongoing “geostrategic earthquake”. Under these new conditions, direct involvement would not be an asset, but a liability, as the former colonial powers are beginning to experience. The United States faces an upsurge of anti-Americanism and attacks on its bases. These and other overseas holdings will become increasingly vulnerable. Russia should facilitate this, raising the cost for the American empire and helping the American foreign policy class recover from its globalist hegemonic disease of the postwar period.
In other words, Karaganov is saying that Russia should avoid direct involvement in conflicts, but, on the other hand, should be ready to increase its asymmetric warfare against the US/Wests in order to “rais[e] the cost for the American empire” — including, presumably, by supporting proxy forces challenging the US military presence across the world, most notably in then Middle East. That said, as noted earlier, Karaganov doesn’t view the intensification of military tensions with the US as a zero-sum existential struggle between two civilisation enemies that can only be resolved through a crushing military defeat of one side over the other (as Western leaders often frame the NATO-Russia conflict); he rather views it as a temporary necessity imposed on Russia by the US/West itself, which should be aimed at hastening the US’s transition to a “normal” country, not at the US’s destruction. (This also implies a radical redefinition, if not dissolution, of NATO, and the subsequent “liberation” of the US’s sub-imperial vassals, especially in Europe, from their subaltern relationship to Washington). The following passage is quite enlightening in this regard:
On the North American track, Russia should facilitate America’s ongoing long-term withdrawal into neo-isolationism. Clearly, there is no returning to the pre-World War II policy paradigm, which would probably be undesirable. The US dependence on the outside world provides tools for pressuring it. If its current liberal-globalist elites leave power, the US may even turn back to being a relatively constructive global balancer that it used to be before the second half of the twentieth century.A comprehensive strategy for containing the United States is unnecessary, as it would only waste the resources we need for internal consolidation. There are no intractable contradictions between Russia and the United States. The contradictions that currently exist were caused by the American expansion, facilitated by our weakness and stupidity in the 1990s, which contributed to the dramatic upsurge of hegemonic sentiment in the US. The American internal crisis, and the commitment of its existing elites to post-human values, will further erode Washington’s “soft power,” i.e. ideological influence. In the meantime, a harsh deterrence policy should create conditions for America’s evolution into a normal great power.
As I noted in the first part of the article, the West isn’t a civilisational enemy, in Karaganov’s view, but rather a civilisation with which Russia is destined to rebuild friendly relations in the future, once a new, more enlightened elite takes hold there — provided we are able to survive this transition without descending into all-out nuclear war.
Breaking with Europe
Interestingly, Karaganov has much more negative view of Europe than he does of the US:
Europe that was once a beacon of modernization for Russia and many other nations, is rapidly moving towards geopolitical vacuum and, unfortunately, moral and political decay. Its relatively wealthy market is worth exploiting, but our main effort in relation to the old subcontinent should lie in morally and politically fencing ourselves off from it. Having first lost its soul, which Christianity epitomized, Europe is now losing the fruits of the Enlightenment, the most significant of which is rationalism. Besides, on orders from outside, the Eurobureaucracy has isolated Russia from Europe.
A break with Europe is an ordeal for many Russians. But we must go through it as quickly as possible. Naturally, fencing-off should not be total or become a principle. Any talk of recreating a European security system is a dangerous chimera. Systems of cooperation and security should be built within the framework of the continent of the future — Greater Eurasia — by inviting European countries that are interested and are of interest to us.
This passage is interesting (and, alas, saddening) for several reasons. First, because it reveals that Russians are much angrier at Europe than they are at the US. It’s easy to understand why: the Russians have never felt much of a spiritual or civilisational affinity with the US; throughout the 18 and 19th centuries, the two countries had limited interactions, before becoming ideological arch-rivals during the 20th century. This meant that even as Russians hopes for a normalisation of its relations with the US were dashed following the Cold War, on a psychological level this was akin, from the Russian perspective, to being betrayed by a distant cousin with whom you’ve always had a difficult relationship. Problematic but not traumatic.
Europe is a very different story: it’s more like the first cousin who has always lived next door and with whom you’ve grown up since you were a kid. For obvious geographic reasons, there has always been a great civilisational affinity and intellectual cross-pollination between Europe and Russia — in literature, music, art, philosophy and, of course, politics (especially in the 20th century), ideas have always flowed between Russia and Europe. Indeed, many Russians, even during the Cold War, despite the the ideological clash between the Soviet Union and Western Europe (partially mitigated by the presence of mass socialist/communist parties in several European countries), have always viewed themselves as part of the European cultural and intellectual sphere — or, more simply, of Europe. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia didn’t so much want to integrate into the West as it wanted to integrate into Europe.
This is why Europe’s betrayal — first its passive complacency in the face of NATO’s US-driven expansionary strategy, then its embrace, especially since 2022, of NATO’s US-driven proxy war against Russia, including the cutting off of all human and cultural ties with Russia, and the demonisation of the latter — is much more difficult to accept, and will be much more difficult to mend. Unfortunately, Karaganov’s claim that “[a]ny talk of recreating a European security system [in the near future] is a dangerous chimera” is sadly true. That would require a level of mutual trust that today is simply non-existent.
To make matters worse, while the US is clearly benefiting, at least in the short term, from the proxy war against Russia — through which Washington has reasserted its economic and military influence over Europe, and achieved its longstanding aim of driving a wedge between the latter and Russia — it is painfully obvious that Europe, by unquestioningly deferring to the US strategy in Ukraine, has seriously jeopardised its strategic interests from both an economic and a security perspective. Clearly, Europe has nothing to gain from a future marked by a permanently militarised new Iron Curtain and the permanent threat of nuclear war. Such self-flagellating and outright “stupid” behaviour simply serves to exacerbate Russia’s contempt for Europe, or its elites at least. As Karaganov aptly notes:
Given the trajectory of Europe’s development — so far inexorably experiencing an economic downfall, growing inequality, mounting migration problems, increasing dysfunction of relatively democratic political systems, and moral degradation — one can expect a stratification and then even collapse of the EU.
On the Russia-Ukraine war
Struggling desperately to preserve the world order of the last 500 and especially 30 to 40 years, the United States and its allies, including new ones that seemed to have joined the winner, have provoked and are now fomenting a war in Ukraine. At first, they hoped to crush Russia. Now that this attempt has failed, they will work to prolong the conflict. This is being done in the hope of being able to wear out and bring down Russia — the military-political core of the World Majority — or at least tie its hands. That way, the West could prevent Russia from developing, and reduce the attractiveness of the alternative it presents to the Western political and ideological paradigm.
In a year or two, the special military operation in Ukraine will have to be wound up with a decisive victory, so that the existing American and related comprador elites in Europe come to terms with the loss of their dominance and agree to a much more modest position in the future international system.
Our only reasonable goal regarding Ukraine’s lands is quite obvious to me — the liberation, and reunification with Russia, of the entire South, East, and (probably) the Dnieper Basin. Ukraine’s western regions will be the subject of future bargaining. The best solution for them would be creating a demilitarized buffer-state with a formalized neutral status — and Russian military bases that would guarantee it. Such a state would be a place to live for those residents of present-day Ukraine who do not want be citizens of Russia and live by Russian laws. And to avoid provocations and uncontrolled migration, Russia should build a fence along its border with the buffer-state, much like the one Trump began building on the border with Mexico.
Restoring peace through active nuclear deterrence
This is undoubtedly the most controversial part of Karaganov’s argument (which I’ve already covered here). His thesis is basically that one of the chief reasons for the West’s reckless escalation of its war against Russia is that Western elites (and populations) have lost the existential fear of nuclear Armageddon that informed nuclear deterrence policy during the Cold War — thus increasing the risk of thermonuclear war — and therefore that restoring the credibility of nuclear deterrence, though active/offensive deterrence, is the only way to pull humanity back from the brink of global catastrophe.
One of the main principles of Russian policy should be an active struggle for peace — proposed long ago, and then rejected, by the Russian foreign policy community which was tired of Soviet slogans. And not just a struggle against nuclear war. The slogan of half a century ago that “nuclear war should never be unleashed, as it can have no winners,” is beautiful, but also starry-eyed. As the conflict in Ukraine has shown, it opens the door to major conventional wars. And such wars can and will become ever more frequent, and deadly, and yet also within reach unless they are opposed by an active policy of peace.
When it preemptively (although belatedly) launched a military operation against the West [in Ukraine], Russia, acting on old assumptions, did not expect the enemy to unleash a full war. So, we did not use active nuclear deterrence/intimidation tactics from the very start. And we are still dragging our feet. By so doing, we not only doom hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine and tens of thousands of our men to death, but we also do a disservice to the whole world. The aggressor, which the West de facto is, remains unpunished. This clears the way for further aggression.
We have forgotten the basics of deterrence. Reduced significance of nuclear deterrence benefits an actor with greater conventional military potential and human and economic resources, and vice versa. When the USSR had conventional superiority, the US did not hesitate to rely heavily on the first-strike concept. The United States bluffed, though, and if it did make such plans, they were directed solely against Soviet troops advancing into NATO’s territory. No strikes on Soviet territory were planned, since there was no doubt that a retaliation would target American cities.
Greater reliance on nuclear deterrence, and accelerated movement up the escalation ladder are designed to convince the West that it has three options regarding the conflict in Ukraine. First, to retreat with dignity, for example, on the conditions proposed above. Second, to be defeated, flee as it did from Afghanistan, and face a wave of armed and sometimes thuggish refugees. Or third, the exact same with the addition of nuclear strikes on its territory and the accompanying societal disintegration.
A viable nuclear deterrent and a security buffer in Western Ukraine should guarantee the end of the aggression. The special military operation must be continued until victory. Our enemies must know that if they do not retreat, the legendary Russian patience will run dry, and the death of each Russian soldier will be paid for with thousands of lives on the other side.
It will be impossible to prevent the world from sliding into a series of conflicts and subsequently a global thermonuclear war unless our nuclear deterrence policy is drastically energized and updated. I have covered many aspects of this policy in my previous articles and other documents. In fact, Russian doctrine already provides for the use of nuclear weapons to counter a wide range of threats, but real policy in its current form goes further than the doctrine. We should clarify and strengthen the wording and take the corresponding military-technical measures. The main thing is that we demonstrate our readiness and ability to use nuclear weapons in the event of extreme necessity.
By intensifying nuclear deterrence, we will not only sober up the aggressors, but also perform an invaluable service to all humanity. At the moment, there is no other protection from a series of wars and major thermonuclear conflict.
Russia’s policy should be based on the assumption that NATO is a hostile bloc that has repeatedly proven its aggressiveness and is de facto waging war against Russia. Therefore, any nuclear strikes on NATO, including the preemptive ones, are morally and politically justified. This applies primarily to countries that provide the most active support to the Kiev junta. The old and especially new members of the alliance must understand that their security has cardinally weakened since joining the bloc, and that their ruling elites have put them on the edge of life and death. I have repeatedly written that if Russia delivers a preemptive retribution strike on any NATO country, the US will not respond. That is unless the White House and the Pentagon are populated by madmen who hate their country and are ready to destroy American cities for the sake of Poznan, Frankfurt, Bucharest, or Helsinki.
Lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, and increasing their minimal yield, is also necessary to restore another lost function of nuclear deterrence: the prevention of large-scale conventional wars. Strategic planners in Washington and their European minions must realize that the downing of Russian planes over our territory, or the further bombardment of Russian cities, will entail punishment (after a non-nuclear warning strike) in the form of a nuclear strike. Then, perhaps, they will take it up upon themselves to do away with the Kiev junta.
Improving the credibility and effectiveness of nuclear deterrence is necessary not only to end the war that the West unleashed in Ukraine, or to peacefully put the West in a much more modest, but hopefully worthy, place in the future world system. Above all else, nuclear deterrence is needed in order to stop the approaching wave of conflicts, to ward off an “age of wars,” as well as to prevent their escalation to a thermonuclear level. This is why we should go up the ladder of nuclear deterrence, regardless of the war in Ukraine.
Raising the nuclear threat could deter the militarization of AI technologies. But most importantly, nuclear weapons, including their proliferation, are necessary to restore the aspects of nuclear deterrence that have ceased functioning — to prevent not only major conventional wars (as in Ukraine), but also a conventional arms race. A conventional war cannot be won if the potential enemy has nuclear weapons and, most importantly, is ready to use them.
Greater reliance on nuclear deterrence is necessary to cool the European “leaders” who have lost their mind, speak of an inevitable clash between Russia and NATO, and urge their armed forces to prepare for it.
If we survive the next two decades and avoid another age of wars like the twentieth century, our children and grandchildren will live in a multicolored, multicultural, and much fairer world.
What Karaganov is proposing here is obviously terrifying, especially for us Westerners who would be on the receiving end of those nuclear strikes. And yet it’s impossible to deny that there is a clear, if brutal, logic to his argument. I myself recently argued the West, by completely disregard for the possibility of nuclear escalation, is actually making it more likely:
[W]hy are Western leaders so confidently discounting the possibility of nuclear escalation? One possible explanation is that the current Western leadership is simply lacking the intellectual, strategic and moral sophistication that characterised policymakers during the Cold War. Back then, it was understood that any scenario that entails a non-zero chance of the other side using nuclear weapons should be avoided at all costs — and that, therefore, when it comes to nuclear weapons, you don’t bluff and you don’t assume that the other side is bluffing.
Today’s Western leadership, defined by a volatile and fickle blend of ignorance, hubris, moral nihilism and desperation, seems to have forgotten these basic tenets. And coupled with the Western elites’ obsession with holding on to a hegemonic order that no longer exists, this has resulted in such a detachment from reality that some are still making the argument that the West must “unambiguously endorse Ukraine’s war objectives”, including “total territorial reconstitution back to the nation’s 1991 borders” — a scenario that would almost certainly result in Russia’s recourse to tactical nuclear weapons.
In this sense, there is a (terrifying) logic to Karaganov’s argument that a pre-emptive tactical nuclear strike — ideally, of a “demonstrative” nature, as a senior member of an influential Russian think tank recently suggested — could potentially be a deterrent against the conflict’s further escalation to the point of mutual assured destruction. Yet, there are also several problems with this argument. Firstly, if Western leaders are as cognitively, intellectually and morally degraded as he claims that they are (correctly, in my opinion), there is no guarantee that they won’t unleash nuclear Armageddon in retaliation for a Russian nuclear strike, even if non-military in nature. Secondly, one cannot discount the possibility that Western strategists may deliberately be trying to provoke Putin into using a nuclear weapon — perhaps believing it will turn Russia into a pariah state and result in a geopolitical win for the West. If that is the case, then Karaganov’s suggestion would play straight into NATO’s hands, as other Russian analysts have suggested.
Anyway, readers will probably be relieved to learn that Putin’s views on the issue are quite different from Karaganov’s. Indeed, during the plenary session of the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, chaired by Karaganov himself, Putin repeatedly pushed back against Karaganov’s suggestion that “holding a nuclear pistol to the temple of the West” was the best way to win the war. “The use is possible in an exceptional case — in the event of a threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country”, Putin said. “I don’t think that such a case has come”.
But in the face of constant Western escalation, how long will Putin be able to resist the growing calls for a strong response coming from the more hawkish factions of Russia’s foreign policy circles — first and foremost Karaganov himself?
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Thomas Fazi
Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope
Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)
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