Description
Contemporary debates on Russian nuclear weapons focus either on the technological aspects of said weapons, or on nuclear signalling, deterrence and declaration. This paper argues that understanding how Russian strategic culture feeds into its perception of the ‘self’ and the adversarial ‘other’ is fundamental to understanding Russian strategic weapons. Strategic culture creates space for construction, contention and affirmation of meanings which help actors make sense of their surroundings and available behavioural options. The key research question lies in explaining strategic policy choices of Russia. The aim of this paper is to perform ‘ideological excavation’ (Klotz and Lynch, 2014) at the site of production of Russian identity and perception, related to nuclear weapons, using discourse analysis and critical constructivist lens. This excavation will uncover the patterns of representation and self-conceptualisation and the way these patterns feed into nuclear weapons. These patterns, in turn, will show how policy decisions have been affected by the perceptions of Russia itself, its adversaries and available modes of behaviour.
