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Russia's Military Revival By Bettina Renz Cambridge: Polity, 2018 249 pages $64.95
Bettina Renz, an associate professor of politics and international relations in Britain, has performed an important service with Russia's Military Revival. In a concise but thorough and wide-ranging monograph, she offers both a succinct critique of the more alarmist Western assessments of Russian military capability, its uses in Moscow's foreign policy, and a well-structured, coherent overview of Russia's defense capabilities. The book's five chapters, which are supplemented by a useful biography, present an argument built on a wide range of academic and primary sources.
Chapter 1 sketches historical background, examining the nexus between military power and foreign policy and four persistent factors that shape Russian foreign policy: great-power status, sovereignty, imperial legacy, and multilateralism. Renz underscores the point that a strong military is an essential feature of Russia's great-power status and self-perception. Equally, she emphasizes the significance to Moscow of sovereignty: the collapse of the USSR presented the Russian leadership with a crisis of statehood. Consequently, the importance of maintaining sovereignty has emerged as a key principle and top priority in Russian foreign policy. She quotes President Putin: "True sovereignty for Russia is an absolute necessity for survival" and recognizes Moscow's need for armed forces able to fight simultaneously in "global, regional and-if necessary-in several local conflicts to guarantee Russian security and territorial integrity no matter what the scenario" (31-32).
Chapter 2 also establishes a longer-term context, but it...