Mordechai de Haas

University of Haifa | haifa · The National Security Studies Center

This book examines Russia's external security policy under the presidencies of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev and beyond. The Russian Federation has developed from a neglected regional power into a self-declared resurgent superpower. Russia's background in the former Soviet Union as well as close ties with the upcoming new powers of China and Indi...

The Routledge Handbook of Russian Security offersa comprehensive collection of essays on all aspects of Russian security and foreign policy by international scholars from across the world. The volume identifies key contemporary topics of research and debate and takes into account the changes that have occurred in the study of Russian security stra...

The August 2008 war of Russia against Georgia, showing severe shortcomings in Russia’s military capabilities, made Moscow realize that modernization of its armed forces was inevitable to effectively use military power as a policy instrument. Hence, a military reform plan (2008–2020) was initiated. This article demonstrates how since September 2015,...

Comparing the influence of and relationship of Central Asia with the major regional bodies, the SCO is an advantageous organization for the economic development of Central Asia, since it is an opportune podium for doing business, especially with China, with a guarantee that Moscow nor Beijing will take a dominating stance against them. Due to a lac...

So, the long-expected invasion by Russia on Ukraine is taking place. What are the lessons learned for Israel? The West – Europe and the USA – has a lack of collective memory. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made it clear that he wants to restore the Russian empire after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This includes, that...

Apparently – at least for the moment – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has changed his tactics. Instead of invading Ukraine, he has now de-facto annexed the Ukrainian regions Donetsk and Lugansk. What will be his next step and what should the West do? It looked like that Putin was going to pursue the traditional approach of replying to an allege...

As I wrote recently, totalitarian regimes, such as those of Russia and Iran, only listen to the barrel of the gun, or a tough political stance. For appeasement and concessions there is no place in their thinking. Once again, the West is negotiating with Teheran to prevent it from reaching a nuclear power status. Iran is making absurd demands but th...

Totalitarian regimes, such as Russia, only listen to the barrel of the gun, or a tough political stance. For appeasement and concessions there is no place in their thinking. Currently, Moscow is (once again) threatening to invade Ukraine. US President Joe Biden has already stated that in case Putin attacks Ukraine, the USA will not deploy its armed...

The SCO is a political, economic and security organization, which started its security policy in arms control and subsequently developed war games. Conversely, the CSTO is a military alliance with collective armed forces. The military exercises of the CSTO are focussed on conventional warfare, peacekeeping, anti-narcotics, counterterrorism, and dis...

This article examines the security policy of the Central Asian (CA) states, by comparing theory (security documents) with practice (the actual security challenges). The lack of CA regional (security) cooperation and authoritarian rule puts political and economic stability at stake. The internal and external threats are partly caused by the CA regim...

This article analyzes Kazakhstan’s security policy, in particular its main security documents: the Law on National Security, the Military Doctrine, and the Foreign Policy Concept. What does the practical application of these concepts, particularly toward the big actors Russia and China and to international organizations, tell us about Kazakh securi...

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a Russian-led military alliance, the other member states of which are Armenia, Bel-arus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

On 26 December 2014, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin finally endorsed the new version of the Military Doctrine, which had been announced months before.1 This brief explains the contents of this edition. Further-more, it provides an analysis of the new doctrine and a forecast of its pos-sible consequences. Finally, I discuss what the significance...

Is it the great powers’ relationships which shapes the South Caucasus se-curity environment, or do the disputes within the South Caucasus colour the relationship of the great powers? This article will deal with this ques-tion by focussing on Russia’s (possible) role in arms control in relation to the South Caucasus. First, the Conventional Forces i...

In June 2011, President Obama announced the withdrawal of most American troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. NATO made the same decision in 2011, reducing its current force of some 100,000 military to 8,000–12,000 troops in 2014, in a new non-combat mission, to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces. Consequences for Russia and i...

the report reviews positive and negative aspects of the relationship. It also considers the role of Western nations in the future of Sino-Russian relations. The paper, released in the wake of Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Russia [4] (his first as China’s President), maintains that China’s rapid growth has shifted the nature of this bilateral relatio...

This Clingendael Paper describes twenty years of Russian military restructuring and offers an outlook on the future stance of Moscow's military power. Previous modernization plans were to a large extent in vain. Although the Russian-Georgian conflict of August 2008 resulted in a victory for Moscow, it also demonstrated the status of decay of the Ru...

Security organisations can differ in their scope of activities and in deepness oftheir mutual cooperation. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO) nowadays pays homage to the broad concept of security: security not onlyencompassing military but also political, economic, social and environmentalfactors.1 Among other things, this c...

In assessing Russia’s security policy, the analysis of military doctrine plays an important role. Military doctrine forms a part of the national security policy and is a reflection of past and possibly future political- military policy. Therefore, to gain a good insight into Russian security policy, a thorough analysis of the development of Russian...

After a short description of the course of the conflict this article con- centrates on the response of NATO to Russia's military action against Georgia and the subsequent consequences for Moscow's relationship with the Western alliance. Finally, some thoughts will be given on how NATO might proceed in cooperating with Russia in the years ahead.

Security cooperation between Russia and the European Union

Security organisations can differ in their scope of activities and in deepness oftheir mutual cooperation. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO) nowadays pays homage to the broad concept of security: security not onlyencompassing military but also political, economic, social and environmentalfactors.1 Among other things, this c...

This study was initiated following a request from the Dutch Ministry of Defence to the Clingendael Institute to carry out a benchmark study into the financing of peacekeeping operations (FPO) between the Netherlands and several benchmark states. The benchmark states used in this study are the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Germany and Denmark. The pu...

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a regional international organisation comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as member states and Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India as observer states. Encompassing a considerable territory in and around Central Asia, a large part of the world population, energy so...

In describing Dutch security policy first the military model of levels of strategy is applied to the (civil) national security environment. Next, the Netherlands Defence Doctrine (2005) and the Netherlands National Security Strategy (2007) are discussed. The current security priorities of the Dutch Cabinet are climate change; polarisation and radic...

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) comprises a considerable territory, a large part of the world's population, energy sources, nuclear arms and significant armed forces. In comparing the SCO with the OSCE, at first sight they share many principles, goals and activities in the three domains of security. The fight against terrorism and other...

* ‘Peace Mission 2007’ conducted from 9-17th August 2007 in China and Russia, was the first large-scale SCO exercise to include troops of all member states and in which defence forces were combined with internal security troops. * The increase in the number of participating armies as well as the introduction of non-defence troops shows that command...

he content of this paper under the editorship of Clingendael researcher Marcel de Haas is twofold. The first part consists of a discussion paper dealing with the relations between the EU and NATO in recent years. More specifically, it deals with the technological and capability gap of the European defence capacity, and on the activities of both org...

This paper addresses with political, military, energy, economic and social circumstances and problems in the Caucasus region. In itself, this topic is both vast and broad, making it impossible to discuss in detail in a short study such as this. Therefore we have set the following boundaries for this research. First, the geographic span will not cov...

During the Sino-Russian military exercises of August 2005 defence minister Ivanov stated that Russia has an open mind for joint Russian-Chinese peacekeeping operations in the Asia-Pacific region, under the condition that such operations are based upon resolutions by the UN Security Council. Ivanov also mentioned that Russia and China— although no p...

The Russian-Chinese manoeuvres of August 2005 had little to do with the formally pronounced objective of warfare against terrorism, but simply practised conventional warfare. * Their most likely real main objective was that China and Russia thus made it clear to the (Western) world that they consider themselves to be in control of the Asian-Pacific...

* Russia focuses on modern high-tech warfare and on asymmetric conflicts, instead of large-scale conventional wars. * However, unless the current large-scale structure of the armed forces is changed the adaptation of the RF Armed Forces to modern warfare is likely to be hampered. * The overall tone of the 2003 Defence White Paper is more moderate t...

According to common accepted points of view, national security policy should reflect a coherent and consistent system of political, military, economic and psychological means that a state has at its disposal. This article presents an analysis of President Putin’s security policy. It starts with a comparison between the most important entries on sec...

This new book analyzes the security policy of the Russian Federation, internally as well as externally, on all levels of strategy. It describes military and political decision-making from Moscow's grand strategy to the use of a single fighter aircraft in Chechnya. In this analysis, Russia's air forces are used as a model for all services of the arm...

This paper describes part of the second Chechen conflict, which started in autumn 1999. The purpose of this document is not to provide a comprehensive study of this conflict. This study offers an analysis of the use of Russian airpower and the Chechen response to the use of military force, in order to assess the characteristics of this case of low-...

Military doctrine forms an essential part of the security policy of a country. In this article I will analyse six military doctrines, which have been published in the USSR, the CIS and the Russian Federation between 1990 and 2000. I will provide a comparison of these doctrines on themes as the perception of the military‐political situation, threats...

In this paper I shall provide an overview of actors (both organisations and persons) that were involved in the decision-making process of the Russian security policy since 1992 and of the security documents they generated. First, I shall explain the conceptual thinking of Russian security policy. Next, I shall deal with the development (both chrono...

Russia and China have joined together in a strategic partnership aimed at countering the U.S. and Western "monopoly in world affairs," as was made clear in a joint statement released by the Chinese and Russian presidents in July 2005. The long standing border disputes between the two countries were settled in agreements in 2005, and joint military...

On January 20, 2007, a conference of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences took place in Moscow. At the conference, the academy's president, Army General Makhmut Gareyev, and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Army General Yuri Baluyevsky, presented elements of a new military doctrine. The revised doctrine --to be publis...

In recent months, relations between Georgia and Russia have deteriorated. The clash between these two states is only a symptom of the broader strategic positioning of the West and Russia in and around the South Caucasus. In this scenario, at regional and global levels, countries and organizations are involved in a struggle for power and energy secu...

In an earlier Russian Analytical Digest article (RAD no. 62, 18 June 2009), I discussed President Dmitry Medvedev's foreign security policy by analyzing his major security documents and statements at the time: the July 2008 Foreign Policy Concept, the August 2008 major policy principles, the September 2008 Arctic Strategy and the May 2009 National...