Link to Video Recording
Details:
Andrew Monaghan will host a panel including Richard Connolly and Michael Peterson to discuss his recently published RSI sponsored research on Russia's strategy at sea. It will examine Moscow's intent to turn Russia into one of the "world's leading seafaring nations” and consider the naval and economic implications of this.
Abstract:
The Russian leadership has framed a strategic agenda to turn Russia into one of the world’s ‘leading seafaring states’. This agenda is set out in a series of broadly harmonized and well-resourced plans (by volume of financial resources alone, Russia is a naval power of global importance), and Moscow is making a sustained and concerted extensive effort to implement it. The agenda indicates a global horizon in which Russia links its growing maritime role to what it sees as the rise of a “post-West” world and a Pacific 21st century, and also intensifying geo-economic competition. Its use of the navy in the war in Ukraine reflects Russian strategy in action, both assisting the ground assault, and also playing a wider role in the embargo on Ukrainian grain. In fact, the war is emphasizing the importance of the sea to Moscow: the Russian economy depends on export of hydrocarbons and agricultural products by sea, and as Moscow seeks to diversify its transit routes and markets, especially to the Middle East and North Africa and Asia-Pacific regions, the sea will become yet more important. Obstacles and problems, such as slow ship building capacity, remain, underlined by Western sanctions, but it is time to think of Russia not only as a “continental” or “land” power, but as a “seafaring state”.
Biographies
Andrew Monaghan is a George F Kennan Fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, and a Non-Resident Associate Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Since 2006, Dr. Monaghan has served as the Director of the Russian Research Network Limited. He has held positions at Oxford University, at NATO, and at the Chatham House think tank in London. He has written extensively on Russian grand strategy, Russian domestic politics and the Russian way in war, and he is the author of several books, including Dealing with the Russians (2019). His latest, Russian Grand Strategy in an Era of Global Power Competition, is just published.
Dr Richard Connolly is director of the consultancy, Eastern Advisory Group, and a senior honorary fellow at the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham. He is a specialist on the Russian economy.His research interests include economic policy, the development of the defence and energy industries, industrial development, the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy, and Russia’s role in the global economy.His most recent books are Russia’s Response to Sanctions, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018, and the Very Short Introduction to the Russian Economy, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. He is currently working on a book entitled Russian Economic Power, scheduled for publication by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in 2021.Dr Connolly has acted as a consultant to a wide range of public- and private-sector organisations, including government ministries and militaries in the UK, US, and other European countries, NATO, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as well as private sector companies from across the world.
Michael PetersonDirector, Russia Maritime Studies InstituteU.S. Naval War College
Michael B. Petersen is the director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute and an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. His work focuses on Russian naval operations and strategy as well as net assessments of high-intensity maritime conflict. Prior to his appointment, he served at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. He is also the author of "Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemuende, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile" (Cambridge University Press, 2009, 2011) as well as articles, essays and book chapters on military intelligence and strategic weapons history. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland, College Park.