Russian Energy Policy and Military Power: Putin's Quest for Greatness (review)

[ 187 ] policymaker’s library • select books published in 2008 Russian Energy Policy and Military Power: Putin’s Quest for Greatness Pavel K. Baev Abingdon: Routledge, 2008 • 240 pp. The book examines the interplay between Russia’s desire to restore its military power, instrumentalize its energy potential, and re-establish the country’s “greatness.” main argument The rigid centralization of political decisionmaking by the end of Putin’s second presidential term notwithstanding, the three main goals of Russian policymaking remain controversial and conflictive. In the interplay between energy and military policies, the most obvious contradiction has been between the need for military modernization and for more investment in the energy complex. Between restoring military power and asserting greatness, the key contradiction has been between prioritizing the strategic nuclear forces and building rapid-deployment capabilities. In the newly emerged interplay between maximizing energy power and achieving greatness, there is a contradiction between the desire to maximize financial returns from energy export and the desire to harvest political dividends from the role of privileged supplier. policy implications • The Russian top brass have lost much political influence and are not able to secure a sufficient transfer of resources from the energy sector. This implies that the long-postponed reform of the armed forces may result in the political leadership facing direct opposition from the military by the end of this decade • Modernizing the strategic arsenal makes limited sense for Russia as long as the risk of local wars remains high. The desire to project military power in the Caspian area might determine a build-up of rapid-deployment capabilities, but the Kremlin remains wary of the political reliability of military leaders. • Plans for modernizing Russia’s economy and society are hampered by the rigid nature of the regime, which bases its monopoly of power on distributing the growing revenues from exporting energy. This irreducible deadlock can only be broken by a crisis, a fact that might prompt Moscow to provoke a confrontation with the West. ...