Realism and Grand Strategy

The realist's view of grand strategy is a consequence of their perception of the dog-eat-dog nature of power. Their view of the world coincides with the obvious hostility that exists in the world. In realist politics, those with the gold (or power, or both) make the rules. When it comes to national security policy and American grand strategy, it is assumed that since America has the gold and the power, America makes the rules. Historically, and even in many parts of the world today, this policy would invite corruption, violence, and utter misery for the human population which fell victim to those with the gold and the power. However, America has tended (with exceptions of course) to be a benevolent superpower, not particularly keen on flexing its muscle and shoving people around to get its way. This is made somewhat apparent by the isolationist philosophy which so permeates American thinking. It is quite likely that there has never been a state which had more power, which was so hesitant to use it to either subjugate its enemies or to enable conquest or expansionist objectives, as the United States of America has been over the decades since World War II.

This being the case, realists tend to see the world in very hostile terms, kill or be killed. Realists see the different grand strategy options in terms of raw power. They may likely ask, “Which of these strategies is more/less likely to invite the various states to take advantage of America’s weaknesses?” The potential for the evil nature of humankind to dominate is fundamental to realism and strategy is seen in this light. The realist view is that if America weakens her defenses, there will be some evil despot ready and willing to take advantage. At the same time, if America disengages internationally, it is assumed that the power vacuum left in America’s wake will be filled with some power monger or another.

Cooperative security, in realist world terms, is a recipe for disaster. The premise that America will place its full and complete trust in and rely entirely on international organizations and the international community as a whole for its own stability and security is naïve at best, and outrageously foolish at worst. Cooperative security has as its ultimate goal, the collectivization of the globe and the design of making every state interdependent on every other state for their collective security. Realists would argue that the moment America surrenders its right to pursue its own interests, is the moment America’s security is forfeit. The idealist notion that if everyone cooperates and gets along, everyone will benefit is a non reality to a realist because as soon as the cooperative begins to believe in and can finally realize its communal utopia, the one individual or state with Stalinist, alpha-dominant tendencies and the power to exercise those, will rise to the top and make a Stalinist state out of all those who foolishly let down their guard. Russia in the 1930s is a perfect example. The Soviet state was set up on the naïve notion that if everyone cooperates, works together, everyone will benefit, the working class will become the strength of society, the state will cease to exist (we have Karl Marx to thank for that) and utopia will follow. We know how that went.

The other grand strategy options are much more realistic in nature. Neo-isolationism, selective engagement, and primacy all assume the presence of an ongoing and persistent threat. No matter the perceived benign nature of the circumstances, a threat will always arise which will require force to eliminate. These strategies assume that America will maintain the elements of power necessary to insure its dominance in the world, to some degree or another. The nature of this concept can be seen in the relative calm which followed the ending of the Cold War. Peace and harmony seemed to permeate international relations, at least as far as the great powers were concerned, and as far as a comfortable public was concerned. Then, in the absence of conflict, the threat of Islamic extremism emerged to fill the void of conflict, and to again demonstrate that utopia, as dreamed of by idealist thinkers, although perhaps not impossible, is at least a distant, and at this point, naïve notion.

Realism in national security and in terms of grand strategy theory demands the maintenance of power, in order to protect America in the presence of threats of any kind. Realism views power as a necessity, without which, America will be victimized by power mongers and become a liability to its people. Power and strength are not an option to realists. The only option exists in how that power and strength are put to use.

Potential Challengers to American Primacy

The most obvious competitor presently capable of challenging U.S. primacy is the European Union. The E.U., although not hostile toward the U.S. or its interests, is capable on multiple levels of challenging the strength of the American monolith. More so than all other potential competitors, and possibly those competitors combined, the E.U. has wealth. Wealth is a necessity if a state or group of states wants to be strong in any worthy endeavor. Without sufficient capital, no other aspect of interstate relations can flourish. Insufficient capital will undermine any state's cross border relations but in a competition for the title of global hegemon, a state must be capable of competing monetarily with the one which holds that position.

Monetarily, the E.U. is really the only potential competitor which can come close to challenging the U.S. (Art 2003, 242). Although the E.U. boasted the world's largest GDP in 2008 at $14.94 trillion U.S. dollars (PPP) (the U.S. 2008 GDP was slightly less at $14.44 trillion) (CIA World Factbook), it is far from certain that the entity as a whole is capable of harnessing that GDP in order to make a credible challenge to American global dominance. Inasmuch as the E.U. is a work in progress and seems to be in the process of working out innumerable kinks in its overall existence, there is a great deal of unknown in terms of E.U. capability across the board. Indeed it seems a little premature to even calculate an E.U. GDP since many of its member states’ citizens have yet to identify themselves first as E.U. members rather than their own nationalities.

With the potential to rival the U.S. monetarily, the E.U. is on fertile ground to challenge the U.S. for military supremacy. According to Art, military equality requires little more than a comparable military; comparable in size, ground, sea, and air assets, technological advancement, etc. By this standard, according to Art, no other state actor has the potential to rival American military supremacy over the next few decades but the E.U. Presently the E.U. has 27 member states with 3 negotiating entry (Europa), and a population of 491.5 million (CIA World Factbook). In conjunction with its monetary capacity, the E.U. could probably produce a military to rival that of the U.S. However, the advantage the U.S. has in this regard is that it has been producing superior military capability for two full generations, whereas, other than a piece-meal, patchwork military with units thrown in from various states within the E.U., the E.U. would need many years to produce a uniquely European Union military capable of rivaling that of the U.S. on the battlefield. It is problematic in many ways to believe that the piece-meal strategy of military building would be an efficient and effective answer to American military hegemony (Art 2003, 243).

The other potential rivals for American hegemony would be China and Russia, likely in that order. These two states have unique problems in such an ambition. China's military infrastructure and tradition is seriously lacking in comparison to that of the U.S. China would rely almost entirely on a consistently increasing GDP at a rate of 7 percent per annum to match American might within three decades. Without said increase, China may never obtain parity with the U.S. Russia, on the other hand, has the infrastructure and tradition in place to potentially rival the U.S. as a global power, but that infrastructure and tradition is badly deteriorated and out of date, and it would likely take a few decades to upgrade and retrench that military prowess to enable a competent rivalry with the U.S. In either case, America seems firmly entrenched as the singular global power for at least two decades and probably three (Art 2003, 243-244).

The E.U. and the U.S. have a uniquely intertwined history and culture. As a result, it would be unlikely that the two would ever be at military odds with each other, but rather, should the E.U. develop a comparable military might to that of the U.S., the two would in all probability, dominate the world together in a co-equal partnership, with cooperation much like that seen in NATO. The strength of the E.U. is an asset to America and the strength of America is an asset to the E.U. It would be in America's best interests for the E.U. to develop into a formidable competitor in the modern world.


Art, Robert J. A Grand Strategy for America. Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press. 2003.

Europa: The EU at a Glance. http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/candidate_countries/index_en.htm. (accessed December 13, 2009)

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. CIA World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ee.html (accessed December 14, 2009).

Europa: The EU at a Glance. http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/eu_members/index_en.htm (accessed Decmeber 13, 2009).

Russia's Briefcase Nuclear Weapons

In May and September 1997, Alexander Lebed, a former Soviet army general who served in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, made several statements regarding the loss of many, possibly more than 100, briefcase sized nuclear weapons. He said the nukes were built to be transported like a large briefcase or a suitcase and could be armed by a single individual given only thirty minutes time. The nukes purportedly had a thermodynamic work energy rating of about one kiloton, by comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945, had a rating of 13 kilotons.

While serving as Boris Yeltsin’s National Security Advisor Lebed began a search to account for these bombs. He claimed that an unknown number of these bombs had been produced under orders from the Soviet GRU several years prior to his 1997 disclosure, and were intended for use in guerrilla or terrorist warfare. They had been assigned to units of the GRU, and upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, according to General Lebed, simply went missing. His search resulted in his belief that more than 100 of those nuclear weapons had disappeared and could not be accounted for.

[GRU is an anglicized acronym for the Russian translation of Main Intelligence Directorate – the Soviet Union’s main intelligence apparatus which was notorious for having a mind of its own. During the Soviet era the GRU supervised the KGB and had branches and units assigned to a large number of Soviet embassies and consulates around the world. The GRU was an international intelligence collection machine which operated covertly on a global scale. Its very existence was so secret that during the Soviet era, only people within intelligence circles even recognized it as a Soviet intelligence entity.]

Shortly after his assertion that these weapons were unaccounted for, the Russian government denied even the existence of such weapons. Their denial changed over time from utter revulsion at the claim, to a passive admission that the bombs did exist but that they were all fully accounted for. The Russian government then began to put Lebed’s credibility into question, suggesting he recently had been fired from his post as Yeltsin’s National Security Advisor (October 1996) and he had lost the presidential election not long before that.

The American State Department publicly announced that they “believed” the Russian officials which assured the State Department that all the nuclear arms in Russia’s arsenal were accounted for. The Soviet government, being the master of cloak and dagger, of deceit, and of misinformation, would obviously be a reliable source for such potentially lethal information. It would most certainly have admitted to the world that it had just up-n-lost 100 of the most deadly weapons ever known.

In October 1997, Lebed testified before the United States Congress about the existence of these devices and his testimony was corroborated by testimony and writings of several other notable Soviet defectors. Not long after this whole “briefcase nuke” affair blew over in the public eye, General Lebed came under investigation for revealing state secrets.

In January 2000, as well as in a book published in 1998, a recent defector by the name of Stanislav Lunev, a former colonel in the GRU made some claims substantiating what Lebed had reported. He stated, “Though most Americans don’t realize it, America is already penetrated by Russian military intelligence to the extent that arms caches lie in wait for use by Russian special forces – or Spetznatz. [These Russian special forces] troops are currently inside the United States. They regularly enter the country as foreign tourists, using fake passports and their knowledge of foreign languages to pass as Germans or Eastern Europeans. One of the GRUs major tasks is to find drop sites for their [weaponry] including …the so called “suitcase bombs.” Lunev further stated that the number of devises Lebed had claimed were “missing” was “almost identical to the number of ‘strategic targets’ upon which those bombs would be used. It is likely these weapons were deployed before Lebed looked into the matter.”

Soon after his initial defection and revelation of this information, Lunev went into the FBI’s witness protection program for fear of assassination. It is Ironic that Lebed, having returned to Russia following his testimony to the United States Congress, died in an “accidental” helicopter crash in the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia along with several of his staff members.

I am convinced that these nukes exist. To what ends they might be used is a Pandora’s box which I believe deserves careful consideration by our nation’s intelligence community (if there wasn’t a full investigation already under way into the location of these weapons by our American intelligence apparatus I would be utterly surprised and dismayed). That they may be deposited at strategically important locations throughout the United States is certainly debatable. A more believable conclusion would be that some Jihadist organization may have purchased or stolen one or more of these weapons and they are in the process of delivering it for future use. If they have already been delivered as Mr. Lunev suggests, it would be simple to sell the exact location to such a group rather than do a material swap of the weapon itself.

I would be hesitant to believe that America has been over-run by the Spetznatz, as suggested by Mr. Lunev but in the arena of national security one must always be prepared to expect the unexpected and believe the unbelievable in the name of protecting the American public, especially in the face of such a sophisticated and knowledgeable enemy. In any case, the suggestion that these briefcase nukes may be out there and unaccounted for is significant cause for concern, even alarm.

Read about Russia's Decaying & Vulnerable Nuclear Arsenal

Accountability of Russia's Nuclear Arsenal

The arsenal of nuclear weapons belonging to the Russian Federation has been a topic of concern to the United States and the west since the fall of the Soviet empire. The economic collapse that took place in the 1990s is largely to blame for the deteriorating and perceived unreliability of the systems and facilities used to house and protect this vast arsenal. The economic element accounts for international concern about the personnel responsible for the handling and maintenance of the stockpile as well. With the era of global terror ahead of us and the era of nuclear annihilation seemingly behind us, the decayed and corrupt system in which the old Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons is entrusted seems at best, vulnerable, at worse, disastrous.

The impact of the economic depression of the 1990s on the Russian Federation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is near incalculable. Although extensive and comprehensive measures are and always have been taken to keep the arsenal secure and out of the wrong hands, the facilities in which these weapons are housed are several decades old and in decrepit condition in most cases. The entity charged with the storage and protection of this nuclear arsenal is known as the 12th Main Directorate. This directorate has been under funded since the Soviet collapse and its facilities have accordingly gone without repair and upgrading. I spent a few years in Russia in the mid 1990s and I can picture the old and dilapidated concrete structures with rusted steel reinforcements showing through cracked and crumbling exteriors. I recall seeing an old Soviet military facility in Romania where the fencing intended to keep people out was decayed and patchy and the only thing it might have been successful at keeping out may have been an American tourist who was too fearful of the Soviet stereotype to venture inside (I’m also envisioning some old babushka sweeping snow off the porch of this nuclear storage facility with a homemade broom).

The accountability, security, and physical protection systems in place are likewise decades old and the 12th Main has consistently lacked funds to purchase, install and manage state of the art, or even second hand, computerized accountability and security systems. A former commander of the 12th Main boasted in the late 1990s that the security systems in place had been perfected over several decades and that there has never been a significant breach in security nor major accident with nuclear weapons under the 12th Main’s watch. First, that the systems are several decades old is serious cause for concern, and second, with a perfect record over a several decade span, the odds are against them.

Another issue dealing with the security systems is the economic impact of years of destitution suffered by the bulk of the Russian army. From where would they draw the personnel to man and manage these systems if not from the ranks of this destitute soldiery. 30,000 personnel are necessary to do the job under the present circumstances. The odds of a hand full of bad eggs among those 30,000 is tremendous and the reward for successfully acquiring a single nuclear warhead, or even the fissile material necessary to make a nuclear devise, is equally as great. No doubt someone could retire to some French villa and live out his life in relative luxury after successful completion of such a task.

Even if the Russian Federation suddenly came into some exorbitant amount of money to upgrade and completely modernize the storage facilities and security systems, plus compensate those 30,000 troops sufficiently to dissuade them from wanting to risk certain death for trying to steal a nuclear warhead, the infrastructure for transportation, protection while in transit, and temporary storage of the arsenal is certainly as old, decrepit and vulnerable as the permanent facilities and systems currently in use. The rail lines, rail cars, trucks and other vehicles, procedures, routes, etc., are by no means sophisticated and the material would be exponentially more vulnerable to outside interference in the process of relocation and temporary storage than it would be by leaving it in those dilapidated storage bunkers. That’s not even mentioning the increased risk of accident by putting a dozen nuclear warheads on an old rail car, on old rail lines, using old equipment, guarding it with destitute soldiers using old firearms. The recipe for disaster is clear.

The Russian Federation, although now much better off than it was 10 years ago, is still in comparative dire economic straits and likely lacking the resources and the will to fully secure those thousands of nuclear warheads. The United States has in the past provided assistance in this regard and may continue do so but the probability of U.S. resources going to buy some Russian general a retirement home on the Black Sea or a yacht in the Mediterranean is very high. The problem then goes unsolved but the necessity is still very great if the interests of the West are to be protected. Much more attention ought to be paid to the Russian nuclear stockpile and its circumstances in order to insure the security of the this vast nuclear arsenal.

Read about Russia's Missing Briefcase Nukes