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Dr. Roger McDermott will present Escalation Management à la Russe: The Kremlin’s Threat Assessment, Forecasting, and Conflict Control Tools. His latest research explores Moscow’s approach to assessing, managing, and mitigating escalatory scenarios in geopolitical and military contexts. It examines the Military-Political Situation (VPO) system, a sophisticated tool for categorizing threats across phases from calm to war, emphasizing its integration with the National Defense Management Center (NTsUO) for centralized decision-making. The lecture highlights the role of advanced analytical tools, such as Bayesian networks and simulation modeling, in refining threat assessments. It also examines the principles of edinonachaliye (unity of command) and vzaimodeistvie (inter-agency interaction), which underpin Moscow’s emphasis on centralized control and hierarchical coherence. Finally, the lecture addresses the challenges of over-centralization and rigidity, offering insights into adaptations like digital documentation systems to enhance flexibility in dynamic conflict environments
Roger McDermottVisiting Senior Research Fellow Department of War Studies-Kings College London
Roger N McDermott is a graduate of the University of Oxford in Modern History and a leading authority on the Russian military. He is Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Department of War Studies, King’s College, London; Research Associate, Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies (MECACS), University of St. Andrews, Scotland and a guest lecturer on Russian military strategy, Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr in Hamburg, Germany. McDermott is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the British Commission for Military History.
His book publications includes: The Reform of Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces: Problems, Challenges and Policy Issues, Jamestown Foundation, Washington, DC, 2011. His most recent book is Russia’s Path to the High-Tech Battlespace, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022
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