Samenvatting

This chapter examines the use of deterrence by President Putin of the Russian Federation against potential democratic revolts. It combines insights from the literatures on democratic revolutions and social movements on the one hand and deterrence and coercion on the other. This exploratory research sketches a rough model of a strategy to deter democratic revolts. From Putin’s perspective, democratic revolts present a severe strategic threat. The chapter distinguishes two channels through which he can discourage or deter democratic revolts: suppression and the threat of intervention. It focuses on the latter and specifically on punishment after the revolt. Democratic revolts are not enacted by a unitary actor but by an emergent collective which, strictly speaking, does not exist prior to the event; this deprives the deterrent actor of the part of his arsenal that goes through backchannels. The alternative, targeting the population at large, carries increased risk that the threat backfires. Putin formulates carefully according to a rhetorical strategy that obscures his own role while ensuring the threat is mainly carried by news media, which report the failing aspirations of previous democratic revolts and the pains suffered by the people who fought for them. It serves Russia’s interests to periodically feed the media by manufacturing incidents in any of the large number of frozen conflicts in which it is involved.