The Russian response to the Pentagon’s Third Offset Strategy has been to prioritize the development of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons argues a new report from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. But while the Kremlin is prioritizing the development of new nuclear weapons as competition in the conventional arms race speeds up, Moscow is also pursuing its own military innovations albeit on a smaller scale.
“Russian responses to counter these initiatives consist of two major elements: The first one is ‘countering the Third Offset Strategy with the First Offset Strategy’, which means prioritising the development of a wide array of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons systems,” wrote Michael Raska, a professor at IDSS, and Vasily Kashin, a senior research fellow in the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences.