Summarizing the Relevance of the US’ New National Security Strategy for Russia
Overall, the spirit of this grand strategy when it comes to Russia boils down to “poaching” its partners across the Global South through insincere cooperation outreaches and subversion in parallel with conventionally containing it through the EU/NATO.
The US’ new National Security Strategy (NSS) frames the way in which this unipolar hegemon will seek to reassert its declining influence over the global systemic transition across the coming years. It’s extremely relevant to Russia since this document describes that newly restored world power as “an immediate threat”, hence the urgency in containing it through interconnected means. Despite denying that it wants a New Cold War, the text leaves no doubt that America views everything through that paradigm.
It divides the world into so-called “autocracies” and “democracies”, though the NSS also pragmatically states that the US will cooperate even with countries that “do not embrace democratic institutions but nevertheless depend upon and support a rules-based international system.” This can be interpreted as an attempt to appeal to those dozens of countries across the Global South and especially in Africa that have retained strategic relations with Russia in spite of immense US pressure.
Regarding that swath of the world in which the vast majority of humanity resides, the NSS very strongly suggests that the US will actively compete with Russia in an attempt to “shape [its] external environment in a way that influences [its] behavior.” Although not directly stated, this can be understood as a response to President Putin’s global revolutionary manifesto, which calls upon the world to rise up in opposition to unipolarity so as to pioneer a more democratic, equal, and just system.
That envisaged outcome can’t be accomplished without the Global South coming together to this end, ergo the importance of the US dividing and ruling that collection of countries through a combination of pragmatic cooperation outreaches as well as the weaponized export of democracy (Color Revolutions). About the second-mentioned strategy, this is strongly implied in the part about how “We will work to strengthen democracy around the world”.
Every developing country is a potential target since the NSS also states that “The United States is a global power with global interests…If one region descends into chaos or is dominated by a hostile power, it will detrimentally impact our interests in the others.” This indicates that American meddling will continue unabated for the indefinite future since it’s of the highest importance for US strategists to prevent the Global South from uniting under Russia’s leadership.
As could have been expected, its perception managers are actively gaslighting their targeted audience into thinking that their declining unipolar hegemon is the one that supposedly supports their strategic autonomy amidst the systemic transition and not Russia. This lie is explicitly spewed in the part where it’s falsely claimed that the US “aims to preserve the autonomy and rights of less powerful states”, unlike Russia and China. The opposite is true, in fact, as confirmed by President Putin in July.
Another falsehood spread through the NSS is that the Ukrainian Conflict “has profoundly diminished Russia’s status vis-a-vis China and other Asian powers such as India and Japan.” While India has indisputably risen as a globally influential Great Power due to the kingmaker status that it’s obtained as a result of its masterful balancing act between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the BRICS– & SCO-led Global South, China’s superpower trajectory has been derailed and Japan is just a US proxy.
The inaccurate assessment shared in the text isn’t accidental nor due to a lack of proper analysis, but is deliberate and connected to the former Pentagon spy chief’s information warfare plan that he and a neoconservative lobbyist boasted about in Politico last month. According to them, the US should manipulate Russians’ nationalist/patriotic sentiment by misportraying their country as an increasingly irrelevant geopolitical force under President Putin. The related passage is simply a means to that end.
Everything that was hitherto described regarding the US’ New Cold War rivalry with Russia will unfold across the Global South and might thus not receive the attention that it deserves from the Western audience, which will be focused much more on their front of this respective competition. About that, the NSS’ applicable passages are predictable in the sense of strengthening US influence over the EU with a view towards enhancing its comprehensive containment capabilities, thus needing no elaboration.
Overall, the spirit of this grand strategy when it comes to Russia boils down to “poaching” its partners across the Global South through insincere cooperation outreaches and subversion in parallel with conventionally containing it through the EU/NATO. The second-mentioned was already in progress for years while the first is an emerging trend that only became apparent since February. From this observation, it’s predicted that the Global South will the center of rivalry in the New Cold War.
