Outlines of Strategic Stability in Global Multipolar Competition
Authors:   MGIMO University, Moscow 119454, Russian Federation, Mizin V. 
Published: February 2021

The article is devoted to the problems of ensuring strategic stability and the task of a comprehensive study of the current situation with strategic stability, developing new approaches to it, taking into account modern realities in the context of a crisis in the international situation, especially in relations between Russia and NATO, Russia and the United States. According to President Vladimir Putin, as a result, the system of strategic stability in the world continues to degrade. The main factors of this aggravation are analyzed. The task is to develop new foundations for strategic stability and assess its global parameters. The new concept of strategic stability can no longer be focused solely on the priority of preventing nuclear conflict between major nuclear powers, but must also take into account the totality of factors that determine the security situation in the realities of the modern world order. An analysis of the long-overdue systemic shift in world processes is arguably impossible without a fundamental re-evaluation of the entire perception of international security, and, above all, the concept of strategic stability, which is the theoretical basis of military policy and theoretical approaches to arms control. Academic community needs to develop a fundamentally innovative strategy for arms control in the new environment. Whether this will be a bilateral Russian-American format or a multilateral arrangement is a question that needs to be clarified in the course of diplomatic consultations. The required concept should obviously be both interdisciplinary (covering with various methodological tools a number of sciences such issues as strategic nuclear weapons, non-strategic nuclear systems, missile defense, "prompt global conventional strike", hypersonic, cyberwarfare, space, beam, drones and other "exotic" types of weapons), and multilateral (that is, it should take into account the nuclear forces and nuclear potential of "third" countries, and not just the two traditional rivals – Russia and the United States).Such a concept of strategic stability should thus be much more "holistic" and comprehensive, covering not only the military potential of the leading powers, but also taking into account their political relations and divergences, the imperative of providing restraint and preventing major conflicts in the modern world. As such, it involves a comprehensive study of the crisis realities in the international system, primarily in the Russia–NATO and Russia–US “dyads” interrelationship against the background of the emergence of new nuclear weapons stakeholders. Among other things, these factors in the global balance of power make it impossible to proceed to a nuclear-free world in the foreseeable future. In this regard, the author sets the task for the expert community to formulate certain concrete ways to implement new conceptual frameworks for assessing the global parameters of the world system's evolution, and to develop pragmatic initiatives that can be taken to improve overall stability and interaction between the United States, NATO, Russia, and other emerging global actors.