WHAT ARE THE SECURITY THREATS FOR RUSSIA ?

The current system of international relations and the world order in general is undergoing a significant transformation. The core of the new system is shifting from the West to Eurasia, thus making Russia and China the biggest and most influential actors.

This creates numerous security challenges for Russia. Being the biggest state in Eurasia, Russia is affected the most by any changes and instability around it. The threats Russia is facing currently centers around several major issues: destabilization of the regions surrounding Russia (Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia), the terrorist threat emanating from instability in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The most urgent challenges for Russia are the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis based on the Minsk Agreements and putting an end to the Syrian civil war. The involvement into the Syrian crisis, has raised terrorist risks within the country itself.

The U.S. and the West are not an existential threat to Russia. Moreover, reestablishing relations with Western countries is essential, first and foremost for Russia itself, in order to stop its economic downfall, attract investment, and get access to technologies needed for modernization.

Other challenges are no less urgent, rather more ongoing.

1. Security-related challenges. Arms control should be reinvigorated. Russia should re-energize the arms control process. In particular, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses real-time dangers.
2. Combating terrorism, reducing threats of cyber-terrorism and countering space threats are also important here. Other security-related tasks like peacekeeping and fighting piracy also require constant attention and would benefit from Russia’s more active participation.
3. Environmental challenges that include preventing climate change, green energy, Arctic exploration, ensuring a weapons-free Antarctica and dealing with the problems of the world’s oceans.
4. Humanitarian challenges such as combating drug trafficking, ensuring sustainable development of the world’s poorest regions, and fighting disease (Ebola has already penetrated Asia).

All these challenges require international cooperation. The vast majority of these problems also cannot be resolved without Russia’s participation.

As for long-term challenges, besides the above-mentioned ones, it is worth being aware of a giant neighbor looming in the east, the arc of instability in the south, and the spread of radicalism and fundamentalism worldwide, including in Russia itself.

Zones of Instability

1. Eastern Europe, from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, including Ukraine, the Baltics, etc. Events in those areas naturally affect Russia and no one could argue against that.
2. North Africa from Tunisia to Egypt. Russia was affected here through the instability in Libya and ouster of its leader Muammar Qaddafi and the terror attack against the Russian aircraft over Sinai.
3. The Middle East is another segment that directly affects Russia through the energy issues (oil and gas output), attempts to construct alternative oil and gas pipelines, etc.
4. South Asia with its own complex of issues in Iran, Pakistan, India and China, which are connected with Southeast Asian problems.
5. Territorial disputes and includes disputes between Russia and Japan, between the two Koreas, between China and Japan, China and other states of Southeast Asia, etc.
6. The Artic which signals the new stage of the struggle for the resources. Russia’s military drills in the area and greater attention to the Arctic demonstrate the seriousness of such an approach.
7. The Caucasus region with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Georgia.
8. Central Asia. The ambitious Chinese project of the New Silk Road, which poses a big challenge to the U.S. and Western economic dominance, passes through the states of Central Asia. This Central Asian segment covers the areas through which the Chinese project of the New Silk Road plan to go. Naturally it affects Russia as it has common borders with Central Asian states.