Campaign of Devastation

In 1999, the Russian government all but razed Chechnya’s capital city of Groznyy. The Russian military devastated Chechnya, killing thousands of civilians and wiping out vital infrastructure, signifying the capstone in a campaign of destruction inflicted on Chechnya to crush the burgeoning separatist movement. Government-rebel attacks like this one occur when governments seek to end insurgent campaigns by using force to kill rebels and destroy their base of support.1 The unusual paradox in the Russian-Chechen conflict was that the Russian government’s ultimate intent was to stop the Chechen separatist movement and re-absorb Chechnya into the Russian Federation, and yet the damage it chose to inflict on the region was unimaginable in its scope and extent. Why would a government, in effect, completely destroy its own land and ruin what it considers its own infrastructure and part of its economy? Why would a government want to inflict massive pain, suffering and death upon enormous numbers of civilians that it considers to be legitimate members of its own nation? At face value, nothing appears more ludicrous than a government murdering its own civilians and scorching its own earth. This paper endeavors to prove, however, that such brutality was not paradoxical, but had underlying normative and strategic value for the Russian government.