Given the catastrophic failure of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine — through which Moscow has lost territory it previously controlled, suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, and become an unparalleled pariah on the world stage — we can be forgiven for asking: What the hell were the Russians thinking?
In The Russian Way of Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War, Dmitry Adamsky’s engaging and tightly-argued precis on Russian strategy, we can discern the emergence of the historical, cultural, and political forces that have characterized Moscow’s military doctrine for decades — and that seem to explain its behavior in Ukraine.
A Russophone professor of strategy and international relations in both Israel and Lithuania, Adamsky defines Russian deterrence much more broadly than its traditional Western analog. In his telling — the results of painstaking research into Russian military circulars, official records, and other definitive sources — it encompasses “employing threats, sometimes accompanied by limited use of force, to maintain the status quo, change it, shape the strategic environment within which the interaction occurs, prevent escalation, or de-escalate.”
Even more interesting is how the Russian approach is derived. “The main argument of this book,” Adamsky proclaims, “is that cultural and ideational factors account for the peculiarities of the Russian approach.” Specifically, Russia’s strategic culture, military customs, intelligence traditions, and national mentality condition the country’s warfighting posture, which Adamsky colorfully labels “deterrence a la Russe.”
One key difference between Russian and Western notions of deterrence is etymological. Adamsky observes that the English term
