Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

2010 AND INTO THE FUTURE
The new, third Russian Military Doctrine, which
ushered in yet another turn in the role of nuclear
weapons, was revealed in February 2010. 23 Work on
that document was launched by a special conference
convened at the Russian Academy of Military Sciences
in January 2007. Speakers at that meeting, including
then-Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevskii, agreed
that nuclear weapons would still play a central role in
Russia’s security, but the overall tone suggested that
the nuclear component of the 2000 Doctrine would
remain unchanged; attention focused instead on the
upcoming reforms and modernization of general-purpose
forces. 24
Quite unexpectedly, however, the nuclear section
of the draft became a contested issue in the months
preceding its release and was perhaps one of the reasons
for multiple delays (it was initially scheduled to
be released in the fall of 2009). In an interview in October
2009, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai
Patrushev indicated that the future document might
assign nuclear weapons to yet one more type of war—
”local conflicts.” 25 This would have represented a
massive expansion of the role of nuclear weapons:
whereas the 1993 Doctrine assigned them to “global
wars,” and the 2000 one added “regional wars,” the
further expansion described by Patrushev would have
assigned them to conflicts similar to the 2008 war with
Georgia.
In the end, however, the trend set by the new
Doctrine was opposite to what Patrushev described.
Instead of further expanding the role of nuclear weapons,
it somewhat reduced it by tightening conditions
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