Sea Control - Sea Control 418 - Russia’s 2022 Maritime Doctrine with Dr. Olga Chiriac

Episode Date: March 5, 2023

Links1. "The 2022 Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation: Mobilization, Maritime Law and Socio-Economic Warfare," Dr. Olga R. Chiriac, CIMSEC, November 28, 2022.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. In this episode, your host, Jared Samuelson, speaks with Dr. Olga Chiriak. They discuss her article for CIMSEC entitled The 2022 Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation, Mobilization, Maritime Law, and Socioeconomic Warfare. Alexia Boulagi edited and produced today's episode. CIMSEC is looking for a volunteer to join our technical team and support our web operations. We're looking for someone with a background in WordPress implementation and support, as well as knowledge in web hosting and networking. Some knowledge of identity management and security operations is also helpful. Please reach out to content at simsec.org to share your background and discuss.

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My guest today is Dr. Olga Chiriak, and we're going to be discussing her article for SimSec entitled The 2022 Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation, Mobilization, Maritime Law, and Socioeconomic Warfare. So, Olga, welcome. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit more about yourself, please? Hello, Jared, and thank you for having me. I am a professor of political science and international relations. I'm also a researcher, and my work is situated at the intersection between psychology and security studies. So specifically, I study human decision-making, strategic decision-making, perception, and

memory, especially in the maritime domain and special operations. And I'm associated with MEI's Frontier Europe Initiative in Washington, D.C., the Center for Strategic Studies in Bucharest and JSAO. Well, thank you again for coming on. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So Olga, we'll start a very broad question. What's the importance of the maritime domain to Russia? So that's a good question. And the short answer is the maritime domain is really important to the Russian Federation, but it's important in a very different sense than for the U.S. And here's what I mean by it. And actually, before I explain,

allow me to, I think I'll just take a step back and put things into a broader, more nuanced global context. So the U.S. is a maritime power. Nobody will dispute that, at least not too many. The U.S. is an Asian power. We did fight the Pacific War. We fought the Korean War in Vietnam. Our economic interests are very heavily weighted to Asia. And like Secretary Clinton said, we do live in the Pacific century. And overall, our foreign policy interests are closely tied to Asia and Australia, not to Europe, at least not anymore. We are, the US is a European power, but the interest equilibrium, I think, tilted towards Asia. So finally, in this bigger picture, and I'll start with the bigger picture, because that's what I focus on in my research. And I think it plays

into absolutely all aspects of all domains, whether it's maritime, land or air or cyber. I think that we are on the cusp of a new Cold War possibly emerging between the US and China. We talk a lot about the Cold War between Russia and the US. And I think that's the wrong Cold War that we potentially could be getting into. China is a real fear competitor. They do have the blue water navy they do have state-of-the-art technology they do have outstanding results in ai and they do have very respected cyber capabilities that they're using extensively both in the military and in the civilian side of things so clearly they have the economic strength some some argue they are the world economy i wouldn't go that far nevertheless they are the peer

competitor we should be thinking about. So this is the metaframe that I analyzed the doctrine, and this is the same metaframe that I'm going to answer your question in. The Kremlin and Russian planners are very aware of the situation I just described, and I think it's very reductive if we look at the strategic documents coming out of Russia or an opinion or an interview or an action if we don't look at this metaframe. Moreover, And this is also very important. I would like to stress that we need to add in historical aspects and sociocultural elements because those affect decision-making, strategic decision-making as well. Russia is an Asian power, so they're at the same time a European power, but they're not Western. That makes a huge difference in how they make strategic choices. And finally, regarding Russia and Ukraine, because we do need to speak about Ukraine when we talk about the maritime doctrine of the Russian Federation due to what's happening right now, they view things at two levels, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and in this war, Ukraine obviously is defending their territorial integrity, their identity, their state.

And then there's the meta war, what they call the hybrid war with the collective West, which is a confrontation they see between Russia and the US. So to answer your question, I finally got to it. The maritime domain is important to Russia because of geopolitics, because of economics, and because of symbolism and prestige. from Peter the Great up to today, they've been trying to portray themselves and to be a great power. And to be honest, if you look back, with the exception of the Soviet Union, they have been trying. So they fell a little bit short. Well, I'll timestamp this for the listeners. We are recording this Sunday, January 22nd, since you brought up Ukraine, just because if anything has happened in Ukraine that you, the listener, feel we should be talking about, we're not. It's just because it hasn't happened yet if it's occurred after that date. Olga, you wrote the new doctrine was strikingly different

in content and tone from the 2015 version. How so? So I looked at these two documents side by side and immediately structurally, you notice that the 2022 document is far more detailed in comparison with 2015. Let's remember 2015 edition came out right after Crimea. This one comes out right after the initiation of the attack on Ukraine in February, the second rather attack. So this particular document identifies threats and challenges to national security at sea for the first time. The previous document was not that specific. It clearly separates between vital and important areas. So to us, that's important because we'll know vital, they will be willing to pay a much higher price if there is a confrontation. And the actual list of interests

is far longer than the 2015 document. In tone, obviously, there is the perception that the United States is no longer someone that they can cooperate with. But the U.S. and their allies are perceived as restricting the Russian, the country's access to resources and sea lines of communication. And then obviously, there's the usual suspect promotion of NATO infrastructure up to the Russian borders in the Baltic and in the Arctic and the Black Sea. And then if we want to get into that, if you want to get really detailed, the 2015 maritime, they call them maritime activities, we tend to call them maritime operations, or operations at sea. There's shipbuilding, personnel support, information support for maritime activities. But then they

added new ones like maritime safety, medical, sanitary support. So these get their own place in the doctrine. Another difference that I can think of that would matter, well, all matter, but that I would think to mention, it speaks about resources and socioeconomic development repetitively. In fact, that's a repetitive leitmotif in many declarations and speeches since the initiation of the attack on Ukraine in February. For instance, in June, a few weeks before the release of this document, the president attended an event that is very important. It's called the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. And he did talk about an economic blitzkrieg against Russia. So obviously, economy and development are something that the Kremlin

deems very important, including and especially actually in the maritime space. And punctually, the new doctrine has three new sections. They're all important. I think that if you understand the doctrine in a Russian context, section two, national interests, risks and challenges. So again, it gets very specific what those are. Section 7 is worrisome because it's, quote, entitled Mobilization, Training, and Readiness in the Field of Maritime Activities. And I can talk about that more later on because mobilization appears in the actual document before it was called. And Section 9, which actually presents and talks about procedures for using state policy, I'm quoting now, using state policy instruments to protect the national

interests of the Russian Federation. So to me, this reads as we're starting to assign accountability and create the instruments with which we will achieve our strategic goals. Well, I'm going to ask a follow-up question that's not one that we discussed previously, and if you can't answer it, just let me know. But do you have any insight into the way these documents are created in russia i'm very familiar with sort of the united states intergovernmental we would say interagency process for staffing a document of this nature is typically have one lead agency but then everything gets passed out to the other agencies to you know add their contributions to it and everybody has to sign off on everybody else's sections is like is that the

way that this document works in russia or is this you know we see the ukraine invasion and all the Open source reporting is about like, yeah, it was really just a small group of people who were kind of like in the know about what they were going to do as far as invading Ukraine. Is that the way they're also creating these, quote unquote, whole of government documents? Or is this more collaborative process across the Russian whole of government? Slash, does that Russian whole of government actually exist in the way that we think about it in the West? So I'm actually glad you've asked me this question because there's a, in my personal opinion, and I wouldn't call myself a Russian specialist, but I did spend the last five years studying and researching and conducting interviews with academia and people that could be familiar with this and have experience with this. There's a big misconception, I think, that these documents are just written. So let me step back.

So the big decision, people were surprised by it because it looks like it did belong to one single person, the president of the Russian Federation. But the actual establishment, Russia, is a bureaucracy. And there's the foreign office, there's the strategic planning, there's the macroeconomics. And they employ actually a lot of very smart, very educated, very knowledgeable people to produce these documents. Now, the ultimate decisions, I don't know, I don't have full insight into this. If I did, I would probably be in the Pentagon somewhere advising, you know, someone very high up. But from what I see, there is a bureaucracy that is very well prepared and the actual bureaucracy does work a lot on signaling and what they think that the person above them expects from them. So it's not like in the U.S. where we have these groups and this disclosure and interagency effort and we one side knows what the other does. But it's also not just one single person, you know, conceiving a document. I hope that that answered my question.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So in your opinion, then, to what extent was the doctrine influenced by the invasion of Ukraine? So I think it was, and that's the perfect example, I think, but it didn't alter the general direction. So I think that in 2007, 2008, the general direction of the foreign policy changed and a lot of things happened since then. And obviously, circumstances matter as they evolve. It's expected that a strategic document is adjusted based on the current context. But remember, they think it's and they see things as two wars, that there's the Russia-Ukraine confrontation. And that's exactly what it is, an invasion of the violation of the territorial integrity of another sovereign state invaded another sovereign state. And then there's the great power dynamic between the United States and China. So this doctrine, to me, read more like a strategic long-term document meant to prepare Russia for this, on one hand, hybrid war with the collective West, and then to create what they call conditions to correct shortcomings, because they perceive a lot of the current rule-based order as shortcomings for them since the fall of the Soviet Union. And remember, there's also China. I always bring back China. For them, all documents are factored in thinking U.S. is thinking about China first. So that's our weakness systemically. If we look at the system, we will deploy resources in Asia.

We have, we truly did pivot, you know, the conversations that we're having around security and defense are very Asia centric, and I think they should be. But they also know that. So a telling example is the Arctic, for instance, cooperation with other Arctic states, no longer a priority. Now, this 2022 document has a very increased emphasis on protecting Russian sovereign Arctic presence. So changing tone, it did change the outcome. The situation in Ukraine had an impact, but it didn't change the overall direction, I think. So if Russia's natural transition is next question, if Russia believes the war in Ukraine marks the end of the unipolar world, What does it believe the Poles are now? And then what does it feel entitled to do? Because I'm assuming they're saying that Russia is one of the Poles. Yes. And that's the whole. So that's the whole.

That's one of the that's one of the discussion points, I guess, when we say rules based order. And I have to say so we when we talk about what they perceive as poles of power and how they see the world. I think we need to make sure that we understand Russian foreign policy from their own perspective in order for us to produce strategy and design strategy and produce policy, which is effective for everyone. So one of the main goals of Russian foreign policy is what they call a mature multipolar order. So it's not the multipolarity that we had before. The bipolar world of the Cold War is something that it's often referred to in Russian discourse as polycentric order. So there's the way I see it. And again, I'm not the ultimate expert. That's just my interpretation based on research that I've done. they see different poles of power the u.s and china undisputed poles of power but also countries like india and brazil matter of course they matter all countries matter because that's that's multilateralism and multi-polarity but in their proposition to the world it's not so much about

just two or three poles of power but about individual civilizations and clusters of civilizations. And I think this is all in flux. I don't think that they do have a set end game, to be honest. I think that they understand that they are in a weaker position, that they're definitely the junior power and not the Soviet Union. But we have to understand these nuances because in Ukraine, they will be willing to pay a much higher price than on the Asian side of Russia, most likely. I don't know. I need to look. I would need to look at intelligence, information and to to to call this but it's very important to uh to understand all of these concepts that they come up with and what they actually mean when they build these words

now a lot of your article focus on the socioeconomic aspects of the doctrine can you explain what those are sure so i can't i don't think that your listeners want me to go into all of them there would be a lecture on socio-economic warfare or as George Kennan called it political warfare but there are a few things and that are worth mentioning the socio-economic dimension and the development part are repetitive I said that before and I'm I'm going to say it again. Obviously, a priority. It emphasizes also scientific technological components. See different different words for what we would call science and research. So first off, I would I would for the maritime domain and for this doctrine, I would mention the seaports, port infrastructure and marine technology.

The doctrine actually prioritizes the creation of modern transport and logistics centers for all Russian seaports. I guess not all Russian seaports have them. They want to do that and they say it in the document in order to handle forecasted volumes of imports and exports. So there you go. They're planning on being self-sufficient. high strategic performance is allotted to developing offshore pipeline systems and that is actually given its own place in the doctrine for transportation of hydrocarbons obviously we know why the russian economy is very research um research centric uh resource research resource centric um the the 2022 doctrine is also looking to expand the capabilities of the russian fleet

and here i would be inclined to say if i would look at it from a pure militaristic way they're looking to build and i had that reaction actually when i talked about the article with people oh but they don't have the resources to build new ships and frigates and so on and And no, I wouldn't look at it that way. First of all, we don't know if they will have the funds and how they will come up with them because they do have an extensive foreign reserve. And second, it's not just about the naval shipbuilding. It also includes commercial shipping, fishing, research, and what they call specialized fleets,

which include icebreaking, emergency rescue, environmental protection, everything that is tied to the maritime. So they look at the maritime domain in a very holistic way. Section 7 is the big socioeconomic aspect that I was taken back by because it speaks about the mobilization and training and readiness of people and preparing regular ships to be taken over and to transfer command and control to the armed forces if there's an immediate threat or aggression.

We don't know who will decide what that aggression looks like or what that would be. So again, a little bit of gray there. And one thing that they focus on is also internal. And they they're looking to to manage the differences between the more developed part of Russia and the Russian Far East. One thing that I can say is that I wrote this article when the doctrine came out. I knew that Western analysis will focus on NATO and on shipbuilding and on our Navy. And something told me, write this, because someone has to put it into the bigger scheme of things, into the bigger frame.

And I remember thinking, wow, mobilization comes up quite a lot. And we all know what happened after that. So, again, their documents are not, they're responsive to what's happening, but they're not a product of what's happening on the ground. How does the doctrine approach the rules-based order at sea? so um i try to talk about that as well in my article the rules-based order i like that concept a lot that's one of those things that we use very very much in our day-to-day analysis but i couldn't really find a set agreed upon definition so when when people read my article and when i wrote the article, I tried to write it from a Russian perspective. So when Russia says rules-based

order, they usually mean U.S.-led international order, which is basically they see it as a hybrid between the institutions that were built after the end of World War II, like the United Nations or Bretton Woods system, and then Cold War-like institutions like NATO and the European Union. So another component to this U.S.-led international order are the actual laws, including maritime law and the norms. And the hypothesis that I found that they proposed to the rest of the world is that Western values and liberal, our own liberal attitudes, we were just talking about California and the US, they think that these values and this attitude towards life and economy

and people are now so embedded in the system that they have become part of this actual substance of international law. So their approach is to, it's like a three prong proposition to the world. First, they challenged the legitimacy of U.S. leadership because, remember, the goal is to dilute U.S. influence across the world. The second thing that I found is mentioned a lot is the equity of this order, how they position it, the West and the rest. They're not the first ones. I remember the president of Turkey, Mr. Erdogan, spoke at the United Nations a few years back, And he had a speech where he said the word is greater than five. He was referencing, you know, the way the decisions are reached in the security context. And a lot of the world actually agrees with that.

And then there's the actual rules. And this is where it gets very specific in the maritime domain. I talked about Crimea and the cases at the ICJ in The Hague and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. And then there's the dispute that's on the roll in Stockholm. But it's not just that. They mentioned UNCLOS and Article 76 and the Arctic. So it's a really, really complex discussion and rather dangerous because it could change quite a lot of things. and um the the when we talk about it as we read their interpretation i think a good example is the black sea in the black sea we have montreux we have the convention on the law of the straits which was previous to world war ii that was respected there's no discussion around that but then on clause and the exclusive economic zones and all of these things have switched and

became completely fluid once the invasion of Crimea happened. So all of these, I think these three elements we need to keep in mind when we think about going forward in engaging Russia and interpreting how they see us, the rules-based order. Okay, now one final question for you or questions is that, how do you think NATO should respond to this document? Should they respond to it

or how should NATO interpret this document? So as far as a direct response, I don't know that that would be necessary because, I mean, I'm pretty practical and I think really what would that do, you know. But I do think that NATO should think about it from a strategic point of view. And just a couple of things that I hope that NATO keeps in mind is, one, that things do matter, that the perspectives do matter. And it's important to understand how Russia and some non-aligned states see NATO widely as a instrument of power influence of the United States. Therefore, I think NATO, I talked about this in previous articles, the European pillar of NATO, that's very important to reinforce. wars. Remember, the draft treaties that the Russians presented were to US and NATO, and they were basically talking about European security. So that's, that's quite telling. Then there's the,

the planning, it has to be regional, because the Arctic is not like the Black Sea or the Baltic, there's very, the Baltic has the Hanseatic League and all these traditions of cooperations, the the Black Sea doesn't. The Arctic is just now emerging as a potential year-round route for transport, so regional solutions. I think it's important that NATO does continue to fight narratives like Eastern European states and the Baltics have been forced to join. That's just essentially an insult to millions of people who were severely traumatized and some of them died to during the Cold War and to get rid of communism. And then I'll end with my beginning and my tribute to Secretary Clinton. We are in the Pacific century. So we have to keep that in

mind. NATO is collective defense of the transatlantic community. But we need to think of what that looks like in the bigger picture of Asia, Australia, Japan, all of our others, allies and partners. And happy Lunar New Year, by the way. Happy Lunar New Year. We're celebrating that, I know. Absolutely. Well, I'm sorry that that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Olga Chiriak. Olga, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? So I'm working, I'm very excited to have my book come out this year, Russia in the Modern World.

It's about the Russian foreign policy from 2007 to present. And to share my work in the maritime space, that would be what I do with the Frontier Europe Initiative in the Black Sea and with JSAO. So thank you very much. It's good to have this conversation. Now, we look forward to seeing the book on shelves. The article will be linked in our show notes. But thank you again for joining us. Listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.