National Interests, Strategic Goals and Long-Term Security of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The state and the nation have their interests. They call them “the national interests”. Even though the study of national interests began many centuries ago, there is still no single methodology to determine national interests, let alone quantifying them. National interests largely determine the goals that society sets for itself. Thus, from the national interest “preservation and survival of society” arises the strategic goal of human society, the state, and the nation — to increase the population and ensure its security. The preservation of territorial integrity is one of the national interests, so each state has the goal to preserve its territorial integrity and maintain the territory of its habitat in a life-friendly condition. If a goal is set, there should be indicators of its achievement. For example, for the strategic goal “ensuring socio-economic well-being and growth of well-being” indicators are the volume and dynamics of income of members of the society, the unemployment rate, the coeffiients of differentiation of incomes of the population and some other indexes. The author of this paper has identifid seven strategic goals of a society that correspond to six universally recognized national interests. To quantify the measure of their achievement, the author selected 23 indicators. The author based his choice according to the state of Russian statistics. It turned out that this indicator had a downward trend in 2000–2018, and its flctuations were damped.