Russia revises military doctrine to name NATO as chief threat

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into law a new defense doctrine that identifies NATO as the chief threat to Russian security and claims the right to use nuclear weapons to counter any aggression that "threatens the very existence" of Russia.

The revisions to the 2010 defense mission statement were few but appeared intended to put further pressure on the United States and the Western military alliance to cease courting Ukraine as an economic and strategic ally.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has moved forces closer to Russia's borders in response to the Kremlin's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in March and its dramatically increased challenges of the alliance's airspace and maritime borders. NATO officials report that the number of aerial and maritime intrusions by Russian fighter jets in the Baltic Sea area has more than tripled this year over last.

The new defense doctrine cites NATO troop deployments and induction of former Soviet-allied states as the top threat to Russian security. It also deems the developing Prompt Global Strike program of the United States as hostile. The precision weapons system is being designed to be able to strike anywhere in the world so swiftly that the target has too little time to respond.

The new doctrine also mentions NATO missile defense plans as destabilizing and for the first time identifies a priority for Russia to protect its natural resource and maritime interests in the Arctic Sea.

Russia needed to update its defense doctrine to address "the emergence of hotbeds of interethnic and interreligious tensions, the operations of militarized international radical groupings and foreign private military companies in the areas adjoining the borders of the Russian Federation and its allies," the 29-page document posted on the Kremlin website [link in Russian] reads.

It also cited the rise in "territorial contradictions and a growth of separatism/extremism" as pressures on Russian security.

The amendments were approved by the Russian Security Council on Dec. 19 and signed Friday by Putin, the Kremlin website reported.

Among the security threats it identifies in the doctrine is "the creation and deployment of global strategic antiballistic missile systems that undermine the established global stability and balance of power in nuclear missile capabilities."

The doctrine makes clear that Russia considers NATO expansion into the realm of Soviet-era influence to be aggressive. The document accuses the Western alliance of having adopted "global functions realized with violation of international law."

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Russia revises military doctrine to name NATO as chief threat