What are the sources of nuclear deterrence strategy for the Russian Federation national security enterprise?

It is not sufficient to argue that we cannot know because it is all a secret held in the impenetrable, red-walled castle of Putin’s mind. Nor that it is spelled out unambiguously in declaratory statements from the ministry of defense. Counting RT-2PM Topols will only lull you to sleep and get you no closer to why they deploy what they deploy.

Comprehensive interdisciplinary study will generate a wider variety of explanations or predictions of behavior. We can capture viewpoints through different disciplinary lenses, include the overlapping and non-overlapping domains each discipline privileges in its research, and most importantly consider intersections or interactions between systems.