Threat Inflation, Russian Military Weakness, and the Resulting Nuclear Paradox: Implications of the War in Ukraine for U.S. Military Spending

Paper

If the U.S. and NATO increase their military spending and conventional forces in Europe, the weakness of Russian conventional military forces could prompt Moscow to rely more heavily on its nuclear forces. This paper lays out the case for why the United States should not engage in threat inflation when it comes to Russia, or use Russia as an excuse to expand the military budget.

2021 Defense Expenditures of the US ($828 billion), NATO ($324 billion), and Russia ($65.9 billion)

While the Russian military maintains the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry, the Russian defense budget amounts to less than 1/10 of the U.S. defense budget, just 1/5 of NATO (non-U.S.) spending, and just 6% of the NATO defense spending on aggregate. Though U.S. military spending has long surpassed Russian military spending, it escalated dramatically above Russia’s spending in the post-9/11 era. Russia has invested far fewer resources in its military than the U.S. and views its own military strength as lagging very significantly behind the U.S.

De-escalatory approaches would include, at a minimum: direct talks, reviving the arms control agenda, and pursuing military confidence building measures between NATO countries and Russia.

Western strategists have a long tradition of overinflating Russia as a threat. One example is the promotion by U.S. politicians of a false “missile gap” with the USSR in the early decades of the Cold War, which accelerated an arms race that resulted in wasteful and dangerous arsenals of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides.

The Significant Disparity in US and Russian Defense Spending

About the Author

Lyle Goldstein

Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs

lyle_goldstein@brown.edu

Lyle J. Goldstein is a Visiting Professor at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. At Brown, he is investigating the costs of great power competition with both China and Russia in association with the Costs of War Project at Watson. He is also assisting in the further development of Watson’s China Initiative. Goldstein serves concurrently as Director of Asia Engagement at the Washington think-tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for realism and restraint in U.S. defense policy. In this role, he is overseeing a range of studies that evaluate U.S. foreign policy and defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, including with respect to such key flashpoints as the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea, the Sino-Indian border, and also the status of Taiwan. He maintains expertise in both Chinese and Russian military strategic development, and also has expertise on particular issues in the China-Russia relationship, including especially the Arctic and also Central Asia. In Oct 2021, Goldstein retired after 20 years of service on the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) after being promoted by his peers to the rank of Full Professor. During his career at NWC, he founded the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) and has been awarded the Superior Civilian Service Medal for this achievement. He has written or edited seven books on Chinese strategy and continues to work on a book length project that examines the nature of China-Russia relations in the 21st century. Goldstein has his PhD from Princeton, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and his BA from Harvard. He is fluent in both Chinese and Russian languages, and is now studying Korean. He tweets regularly on both Chinese and Russian strategic matters at @lylegoldstein.