title: The Maritime Strategy of Russia: Consistent Area Denial and Limited Power Projection
abstract: Russia’s “maritime bastion strategy” of the late Cold war was to maintain a persistent policy of area denial, enabling unimpeded patrol operations to preserve maritime bastions. Nonetheless, Soviet area denial at the end of the Cold War did not mean that it had enough advantages to easily reject U.S. power projection. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the limited defense budget prioritized maintaining strategic nuclear forces and, as a result, conventional forces were drastically reduced. D