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Given Russia’s “dismal geopolitical outlook", a rising number of its senior military strategists believe that the country should embrace preemption as its self-defense doctrine. If an imminent attack on Russian vital interests is about to occur, the strategists continue, Moscow must be prepared to use strategic non-nuclear or limited nuclear force in order to deter or defeat the United States or NATO. Such a doctrine, observes this report’s author, would serve one or more of three purposes – deterrence by cost imposition, deterrence by denial, and preemption via a readily available ‘defeat mechanism’.