The Russia connectionRussian Mercenaries in Great-Power Competition: Strategic Supermen or Weak Link?
Russia’s worst-kept secret is its increasingly heavy reliance on private security contractors—really, mercenaries—to maintain a Russia-favorable global status quo and to undermine its competitors’ interests. This reliance on mercenaries stems from a known capability gap. While its military ground forces are locally dominant, Russia’s military has strictly limited ability to project ground power worldwide. It has almost no organic ability to project and sustain ground power more than a few hundred kilometers beyond its own borders.
Along with China, Iran, and North Korea, Russia is one of a handful of strategic competitors posing a substantial threat to U.S. strategic interests.
Russia has now interfered to some extent in at least three democratic elections in the United States. Russian hackers are probably responsible for the recent SolarWinds attack on U.S. government agency networks. Russia has been aggressively undermining U.S. interests in proxy wars in Syria, Libya, and across the African continent, and it is backing the Taliban against the United States in Afghanistan.
Russia has been taking every opportunity to undermine U.S. interests and security, while the United States has strictly limited its responses. As of early 2021, Russia appears to have the upper hand. In the wake of the Trump administration’s diplomatic rapprochement, U.S.-Russian relations may be ripe for rebalancing.
On February 4, 2021, President Biden stated that “the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions—interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens—are over.” In defense of U.S. national interests, Biden said he would “not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people.” Given this new (or perhaps return-to-status-quo) approach, how should the Biden administration think strategically about countering Russia in global competition?
Russian leaders, diplomats, intelligence, and military officers have excelled at finding cracks in the edifices of American power. What are Russia’s vulnerabilities, and how could they be exploited to help reverse the present imbalance? How could the United States raise costs on Russia without unnecessarily raising the risks of all-out war? We argue that one of Russia’s perceived high-end capabilities may in fact be one of its most exploitable vulnerabilities.
Russia’s worst-kept secret is its increasingly heavy reliance on private security contractors—really, mercenaries—to maintain a Russia-favorable global status quo and to undermine its competitors’ interests. This reliance on mercenaries stems from a known capability gap. RAND has shown that while its military ground forces are locally dominant, Russia’s military has strictly limited ability to project ground power worldwide. It has almost no organic ability to project and sustain ground power more than a few hundred kilometers beyond its own borders. Russian strategic lift is anemic compared to Soviet-era lift. Available forces are often tied down in one of the many frozen conflicts that ring Russia’s western and southern borders.
