Russia as a Security Disaster Area: Possible Conflicts and Interventions in 2015

Abstract

Abstract The fluid state of the system of international relations in the middle of the global war against terrorism increases the need to undertake risk analysis of the options that until recently could have been dismissed as improbable. This article takes a deliberately pessimistic view on Russia, which continues to be a source of major security challenges, and attempts to measure the scale of possible disasters in medium-long perspective. This country, despite its present-day semblance of stability, may see a chain of violent conflicts engulfing the most vulnerable parts of its vast periphery—and some of those may pose such risks to international peace and security that external interventions might become necessary. The analysis examines the elements of the basic scenario of gradual erosion of the central authority in Russia under the impact of centrifugal forces and identifies a number of possible flash-points in the North, South, West and Far East of the country. The requirements for, and formats of external armed interventions in these low-intensity but high-risk conflicts are evaluated, while the fundamental issue of whether the West would be politically willing and militarily capable of performing any of the described interventions is deliberately left out.