From 2015 to 2016, Russia developed an extensive strategy aimed at significantly expanding its influence worldwide and establishing geopolitical leadership by 2035. According to a large body of correspondence from Andrey Kurnosov, the deputy chief designer of armaments at the Malakhit design bureau and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ scientific council, Russian officials were preparing to create a series of global crises to weaken the United States’ position on the international stage.
This is reported by Finway
Technological Developments and the Personality of Andrey Kurnosov
Andrey Kurnosov, a key figure at the Malakhit design bureau, is not only responsible for the development and implementation of missile systems but also actively engages in the integration of artificial intelligence systems, which are applied not only on submarines. Kurnosov also holds positions at several leading technical universities in St. Petersburg and heads an innovative engineering center.
Kurnosov paid special attention to the creation of a new strategic underwater system—a modular complex capable of conducting reconnaissance, searching for infrastructure objects, including cables, and providing target designation for strikes. The main characteristic of such a device was intended to be stealth and the impossibility of identifying the country of origin. This system was also expected to have civilian applications: extracting minerals in the Arctic and cleaning the ocean of debris.
Support for the Project and Strategic Crises
Kurnosov’s idea received support from several high-ranking officials, including Andrey Bezrukov, an advisor to the head of Rosneft and a professor at MGIMO. Alongside the development of technologies, Russian ideologists in 2016 formulated a concept for creating artificial global crises: economic disasters, cyber wars, migration waves, and wars, after which Moscow was to position itself as a “security exporter” for other countries.
“By playing into Trump’s Monroe Doctrine 2.0, destabilizing the situation in Germany, France, Italy, and other states through its political proxies, Moscow continues its diversionary-terrorist activities at sea, launches drones into the airspace of neighboring countries to Ukraine, ignites conflicts in Africa, provides Iran with intelligence for strikes on U.S. bases, and fuels any instability in every region where it has influence,” the material states.
Strategic documents presented at meetings of the international discussion club “Valdai” indicated that in the event of mass crises, world powers would be forced to turn to Russia as an alternative to the U.S. on security and technology issues. In this context, China’s role in these calculations was almost disregarded—Russia was positioned as the “safest country in the world” and a political arbiter.
Plans for Global Redistribution of the World
The correspondence also includes a presentation prepared for Russian strategic forums, which contains forecasts and plans up to 2035. Among them is the onset of a new Cold War, escalation of cyber wars, and the U.S. transitioning to a “Monroe Doctrine 2.0” policy. In this doctrine, the world was to be divided into “islands” with several centers of influence, with Russia expected to become a leader in Eurasia and gain influence over a significant part of Europe.
The strategy also anticipated the division of the U.S. into an English-speaking northern block and a Spanish-speaking southern block, while South America, the Middle East, and parts of Africa were considered zones of permanent instability. It was specifically noted that the Kremlin desired to exert influence even over Greenland.
Although, according to the authors’ conclusions, there is no talk of creating a single Eurasian island centered in Moscow, the Kremlin continues to strive to implement some of these plans, attempting to weaken the EU and NATO and achieve an advantage in the global ocean through cutting-edge technologies.