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Russia’s failures are a result of outdated Soviet attitudes and ideas that cannot keep up with the evolving intelligence environment.

The Russian offensive against Ukraine has been dogged by a cascade of intelligence failures at every level of command. This has ranged from completely failing to assess the likelihood and shape of a unified Western response and Ukraine’s determined resistance, to inadequate preparations for Ukraine’s ‘mud season’ and a bewildering lack of any effective operational security (OPSEC) measures. The irony of this, of course, is that Vladimir Putin’s ruling coterie is numerically and functionally dominated by former intelligence officers. Attempts to explain this paradox have tended to rely on conventional wisdoms of why authoritarian regimes are often bad at strategic intelligence. Such governments, the orthodoxy runs, may invest heavily in covert information collection, but they are typically poor at analysis and assessment. In part this is because of an institutional bias towards espionage that neglects analysis, partly because of a pressure to tell autocrats what they want to hear because of the personal and professional risks of doing otherwise, and partly because autocrats tend to act as their own intelligence officers and ignore the truth even when someone dares speak it, acting instead on their own judgement.

As Russia’s offensive in Ukraine stalls, there is a real risk that it could escalate its nuclear threats if faced with the potential loss of Crimea.

Explaining Nuclear Peace

The Cold War saw many armed interventions by the two superpowers – by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, Africa and Afghanistan, and by the US in Korea and Indochina. The frequency of such interventions increased after 1990, with wars fought by the US in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and by Russia in Georgia, Ukraine and (other parts of) Syria. In several cases, one of these powers sought to undermine the other through arming its military opponents, often on a considerable scale. But none of these wars saw direct conflict between their armed forces. This is one of the main reasons why no nuclear weapon has been used since August 1945.

Key points

The Biden administration is confronting Russia’s naked aggression against Ukraine without direct military engagement, but a triple threat of inflation, starvation, and a coalition that is not sufficiently global promises trouble ahead for the United States and its position in a global order that is suddenly on an accelerated path to change.

In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities, the United States and NATO allies have taken numerous steps to bolster allied force posture in Eastern Europe, enhancing deterrence against further Russian aggression and demonstrating the Alliance’s ability to defend its eastern flank. The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Transatlantic Security Initiative has been tracking it all, as visualized in the animation, graphs, and table below.