Cambria Press, 2023, ISBN 9781621966739, 280 pp, RRP USD$109.99 (hardcover)
Author: Tracey German
Reviewed by: Alexey D Muraviev
It is not an overstatement to observe that anyone in the profession of arms, and in the broader community of professionals and scholars in defence and strategic studies, would value opportunities to raise their awareness of adversaries and their capabilities. Such efforts often prioritise the careful studies of their military technology and tactics. However, a broader inquiry into the adversary’s intent, including their way of thinking and analysing an armed struggle, and their approach towards contemporary and future warfighting, is an equally valuable endeavour.
Over the past 30 years, Western analysis of Russia’s military power, including its school of military thought, has evolved. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Western literature provided dramatic descriptions of the collapse of the former Soviet military machine. In more recent years, specialist works have emerged that analyse new forms of Russia’s warfighting such as hybrid warfare and grey zone operations. Balanced works concerning Russian military power and potential are more difficult to find; indeed, the war in Ukraine has made any serious efforts at even-handed analysis even more challenging to achieve. As Alexander Hill accurately observes:
In the West, Russian military power is often portrayed as considerable when NATO defence spending is being discussed, but is downplayed when an escalation in military assistance to Ukraine is being promoted.[1]
There are remarkably few examples of well-considered Western analysis of Russia’s military school of thought. And this is regrettable given that, since the late 19th century, Russia has been one of a few nations which have transformed their understanding of ‘conflict’ and ‘war’ into a science. In her book Russia and the Changing Character of Warfare, Tracey German underscores the breadth with which Soviet/Russian strategists and defence thinkers have approached this topic:
The Soviets distinguished between military science, the system of knowledge about the character and laws of war, and military art (voennoe isskustvo), which covers the theory and practice of military operations (Russians today also make this distinction).[2]
Moscow’s national school of strategic and military thought is considered to be one of the oldest and most reputable in the world. Russian military theoreticians and practitioners were among the first to engage in systematic analysis of trends in the application of armed force under various battlefield conditions. To some extent, Russia also pioneered the conversion of such research findings into publications. For example, the Morskoi Sbornik (Naval Digest), which was first published in 1848, remains the world’s oldest specialised professional journal on naval affairs.
German’s book is among only a few that offer a thorough, balanced and methodical analysis of Russia’s strategic and defence thinking in the 21st century. One of the book’s key strengths is the extensive and competent use of Russia’s specialised defence publications, which offers a Western readership an accurate insight into the country’s current school of military thought. The book provides a detailed overview of the evolution and particulars of Soviet and Russian strategic and defence thinking since the end of the country’s civil war in the early 1920s until early 2022, touching on some aspects of the Russia–Ukraine war but mostly focusing on the period ending with the Syrian expeditionary campaign and proxy operations in eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2021.
From the viewpoint of efforts to understand a potential adversary’s strategic intent and battlefield methodology, the book is particularly relevant to an Australian readership. The relevance of Russian military doctrine to Western military practitioners and strategists can be highlighted by observations made by General Valery Zaluzhny, who commanded the Ukrainian forces during the first two years of the Russia–Ukraine war. He praised the Soviet and Russian military schools of thought, including theoretical works by the current Chief of Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov. In his 2022 interview Zaluzhny conceded:
I was raised on Russian military doctrine, and I still think that the science of war is all located in Russia … I learned from [General] Gerasimov. I read everything he ever wrote … He is the smartest of men, and my expectations of him were enormous.[3]
A year later, Zaluzhny admitted that—during an unsuccessful Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023—he urged his staff to find him a monograph by Soviet Major General PS Smirnov, Breaching Fortified Defence Lines, because it provided a thorough battlefield analysis of offensive and counter-offensive operations of World War I:
And before I got even halfway through it, I realised that is exactly where we are just like then [WWI], the level of our technological development today has put both of us and our enemies in a stupor.[4]
In a similar vein, German’s book makes several important observations concerning the way that Russian military thinkers assess, strategise, action plan and implement. To showcase the breadth of the flow of ideas and debates, German reinstates key points made by Tor Bukkvoll, who identified ‘three camps of Russian military theorists: traditionalists, modernists and revolutionaries’.[5]
Russia and the Changing Character of Warfare highlights the value of learning lessons from the experiences of adversaries. In one chapter, German showcases how the Russians reviewed a select number of campaigns of the 1990s and 2000s. These included offensives against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, NATO’s operation against former Yugoslavia in 1999, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001. The lessons learned from these previous campaigns demonstrated to Russia that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had become one of the ‘critical components of success in new-generation wars’.[6] This assessment informed Moscow’s planning for and conduct of the Azerbaijani campaign against Armenia in 2020, which saw the extensive combat use of UAVs by Azerbaijani forces.
Overall, German’s book provides useful insights into how Russia conceptualises future wars and emerging military technologies. These concepts are shaping Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine now, and will continue to influence its military decision-making into the foreseeable future. A specific chapter is dedicated to understanding Russia’s way of influencing the hearts and minds of targeted audiences or nations, including its take on information and physiological operations, ‘controlled chaos’ and reflective control. Readers will undoubtedly also value the opportunity presented by German’s book to learn more about how the Russian military strategises its interactions with friendly non-state paramilitary elements and proxies.
Reviewing Russian operational experience in limited-scale conflicts—ranging from the First Chechen War of 1994–96 and ending with Syria, Crimea and conflict in eastern Ukraine—offers valuable information about how Russia has evolved its way of fighting in response to different types of conflicts with different operational tempo and requirements. This includes observations concerning what lessons Russian planners and commanders took from their previous combat experience into their planning and military action in Ukraine, as well as German’s views concerning what lessons they appear not to have adequately reflected upon. For example, reading German’s critical analysis of Russia’s combat performance in Chechnya in 1994–95 makes one wonder how the Russian defence planners and commanders made similar errors of judgement in the first year of the war in Ukraine. These omissions included underestimating the adversarial will to resist, the challenges of organising offensive operations in urban areas, problems with effective coordination of different formations assigned to different ministries, issues around control of information flows, and the implications of Ukraine’s successful conduct of information operations in the initial phase of the war.[7]
From reflecting on how Russian military thinkers and senior military leaders conceptualise warfare, informed by German’s book and the outcomes of Moscow’s firsthand combat experience in Ukraine, it is evident that Russian military thought is anything but stagnated or out of date. It is thriving and likely to influence national and (non-Western) international military thinking and force planning for decades to come. Hence, Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict provides a great foundation for future inquiries in this field.
Endnotes
[1] Alexander Hill (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2025), p. 1.
[2] Tracey German, Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2023), p. 22.
[3] Simon Shuster and Vera Bergengruen, ‘Inside the Ukrainian Counteroffensive That Turned the Tide of the War’, Time (webpage), 26 September 2022, at: https://time.com/6216213/ukraine-military-valeriy-zaluzhny/.
[4] ‘Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief on the Breakthrough He Needs to Beat Russia’, The Economist (webpage), 1 November 2023, at: https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/01/ukraines-commander-in-chief-on-the-breakthrough-he-needs-to-beat-russia.
[5] German, Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict, p. 29.
[6] Ibid., p. 71.
[7] Ibid., pp. 82–90.