5498097813659

ISBN 978-1-365-54980-990000

AMayak Intelligence reportby

Mark Galeotti

The West is at war. Not a war of the old sort, fought withthe thunder of guns, but a new sort, fought with therustle of money, the shrill mantras of propagandists, andthe stealthy whispers of spies. Often described as ‘hybridwar,’ a blend of the military and the political, it reflectsboth the way that war is changing in the modern world aswell as Russia's attempt to divide, demoralize anddistract the West as it asserts its claim to be a greatpower, with a sphere of influence and Ukraine andbeyond.

This study explores the two parallel forms of 'non-linearwarfare' and provides recommendations as to how theWest can best respond.

Mark Galeotti

Hybrid War or

Gibridnaya Voina?

Getting Russia’s non-linear

military challenge right

Mark

Galeotti

Hybrid

WarorG

ibridnayaVoina?

Getting

Russia’snon-linearm

ilitarychallenge

right

1

HYBRID WAR OR GIBRIDNAYAVOINA?GettingRussia’snon-linearmilitarychallengeright

MarkGaleotti

2

MayakIntelligence

https://mayak-intelligence.com/

©MarkGaleotti2016

ISBN:978-1-365-56541-0(PDFebookversion)

Cover: Rebel armored vehicles in the Donbas, by MstyslavChernov(CreativeCommonslicense,2015)

3

HYBRIDWARORGIBRIDNAYAVOINA?GettingRussia’snon-linearmilitarychallengeright

CONTENTS

ExecutiveSummary.......................................................................4AbouttheAuthor...............................................................................6Acknowledgements..........................................................................6

PartOne:The‘HybridWar’Scare.............................................71.Introduction.........................................................................................82.The‘HybridWar’Bandwagon....................................................173.HybridWarthroughRussianEyes...........................................24

PartTwo:TheRootsofDistinctiveness................................304.TheGapbetweenAspirationandCapability.......................315. Perceptions and Paranoias about the ‘WesternThreat’.......................................................................................................376.ModernWarfortheModernWorld........................................407.TraditionsofPoliticalWarfare..................................................448.ModernRussia’sDeinstitutionalization.................................48

PartThree:WeaponsoftheNewWar...................................519. ‘Polite People’: Conventional Military,UnconventionalUses..........................................................................5210.‘ImpolitePeople’:MilitiasandGangsters...........................5811. The Intelligence Agencies: Russia’s Strong LeftArms...........................................................................................................6412. Weaponizing Civvy Street: Hackers,BusinesspeopleandBankersasSoldiers...................................69

PartFour:Recommendations..................................................7613.Intellectual:thinkinginRussian.............................................7714. Hybrid Warfighters: Soldiers of the NewBattlefield.................................................................................................8315.Resistance:TargetHardeningandHybridDefense.......8816.Conclusions:NewWars,orNewWaysofWar?...............95

4

ExecutiveSummary

TheWestisatwar.Itisnotawar of the old sort, foughtwiththethunderofguns,buta new sort, fought with therustle of money, the shrillmantras of propagandists,and the stealthywhispers ofspies.

This is often described as‘hybrid war,’ a blend of themilitaryandthepolitical,butin fact there are two

separate issues, two

separate kinds of non-

linear war, which have

become unhelpfully

intertwined. The first is theway—as the Russians havebeen quick to spot—thatmodern technologies andmodernsocietiesmeanthatashooting war will likely beprecededbyandmaybeevenalmost, but not quite,replaced by a phase ofpolitical destabilization. Thesecond, though, is the

political war that Moscow

iswagingagainsttheWest,

in the hope not of

preparing the ground for

an invasion, but rather of

dividing, demoralizing and

distracting it enough that itcannot resist as the Kremlinasserts its claims to being a‘great power’ and in the

processasphereofinfluenceovermost of the post-SovietstatesofEurasia.

The two overlap heavily,

and maybe they could

usefullyberegardedasthe

two sides of a wider form

of ‘non-linear war.’ Theinstruments which make up‘politicalwar’arealsocrucialto the earlier phases of‘hybrid war.’ Nonetheless,while a comprehensiveanalysis of the full arsenaland objectives of Moscow’s‘political war’ against theWestarebeyondthescopeofthisreport,astudyof‘hybridwar’astheKremlinseesitisessential to explore thenatureofthepotentialthreatnotjusttotheWestbutothercountries. In addition, it iscentral to understanding theway war is changing in themodern age, and what wecan do in order to deter,defendand,ifneedbe,defeatany‘hybrid’challenge.

To this end, his reportinitially considers the wayRussianoperationsinCrimeaand south-eastern Ukraineled to the rise of concernsabout ‘hybrid war’ and thebelief that it represents

5

somethingsubstantivelynewbefore questioning many ofthese assumptions byconsideringRussianthinkingonthematter.ToMoscow,itis the West which led the

way in pioneering

political-military op-

erations focusing ondestabilizinghostileregimes,andithastakenitscuesfromits sometimes-acute,sometimes-deeply-mistakenperceptions about ourthinking.

What has emerged, if not

wholly new, is certainly a

distinctivewar ofwar, onethatisrooted,asdiscussedinthesecondpartofthereport,inresponsetofiveparticularchallengesorconditionswithwhich Moscow mustcontend, from the mismatchbetween assets andambitions, to thedeinstitutionalization ofPutin’s state.Part three thenlooksat theparticularassetsthe Russians can deploy intheir pursuit of ‘hybrid’operations short of all-outwarfare, from the specialforcesand thuggishgangsterauxiliaries who seizedCrimea in 2014 to spies,propagandists andspinmasters.

The point of trying to

understandthisthreatisto

respond to it, and the finalpart presents a series ofobservations and re-commendations for Westernpolicy. The aim must bedeterrence if possible, but

such is the nature of this

diffuse and undeclared

form of war that this will

often be by denial—

developing ‘hybrid

defenses’—andtherightmixof forces ready for a conflictthatcouldaseasilybefoughtin cyberspace or the courtsasonthebattlefield.

Nor is this simply a threatthat will subside as andwhen Putin’s regimeimplodes or subsides,however inevitable thisundoubtedly is. There areother revisionist powers inthe world and likely toemerge. ‘Hybrid war’ is aconvenient and catchy term,even if of questionablescholarly rigor, but ifanything it simply reflectsthe way conflict is evolving,and the sooner the Westadapts to the Russian

challenge,thebetteritwill

also be positioned to face

the one coming next after

that.

6

AbouttheAuthor

Mark Galeotti is a seniorresearcherat the InstituteofInternational RelationsPrague and an expert inRussian politics and securityaffairs. He studied history atCambridge University andtookhisdoctorate inpoliticsat the London School ofEconomics.Hestillconsidershimself an historian, even ifofthepresentday.

HehasbeenanadviserattheBritish Foreign Office,visiting fellow with theEuropeanCouncilonForeignRelations, visiting professorat Rutgers-Newark, MGIMO(Moscow) and CharlesUniversity (Prague), head ofthe history department atKeele University andprofessor of global affairs atNewYorkUniversity.Widelypublished, he has 15 booksand hundreds of articles tohis name and blogs athttps://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/.

Acknowledgements

All such projects involve notso much standing on theshouldersofgiantsasraidingtheir libraries andeavesdropping on theirconversations. For directassistance and indirectly forespecially helpful con-versations, I am indebted toNatalia Antonova, AnnaArutunyan, Jānis Bērziņš,Keir Giles, Toomas Ilves,Michael Kofman, EdwardLucas, Johan Norberg,András Rácz, EkaterinaShulmann, Brian Whitmore,Katherine Wilkins, and nodoubtmanyothers,includingthose interlocutors inMoscowwhounderstandablypreferrednot tobenamed. Imust thank New YorkUniversityforsupportofthisresearchproject,andIwouldlike to endwith a shout outto War On The Rocks(http://warontherocks.com/),an essential source for someof the best and most lively(andsometimesiconoclastic)discussion about emergingmilitaryissues.

7

PartOne:The‘HybridWar’Scare

specter is hauntingEurope, the specter of

‘hybridwar.’Whetherornotthatistherightnameforitintheoretical-technical terms,this has become the term ofartforastyleofwarfarethatcombines the political,economic, social and kineticin a kind of conflict thatrecognizes no boundariesbetween civilian andcombatant,covertandovert,war and peace. Rather,achieving victory—howeverthat may be defined—permits and demandswhatever means will besuccessful: theethicsof totalwar applied even to thesmallest skirmish. Althoughthe antecedents of such anapproach lie elsewhere,current concerns very muchfocus on a revanchist andadventurist Russia. As Putinbecomes increasinglyassertiveandalsoapparentlygenuinelygrippedbyabeliefthat the United States andthe West are bent on hisdownfall, this has eclipsedsuch concerns as the

turbulenceintheMiddleEastandNorthAfricaandnuclearproliferation as the primaryconcerns of NATO and itsmemberstates.

Meanwhile, though, it isnecessarytonoteonecrucialpoint: what the Westconsiders ‘hybrid war’ is, tothe Russians, actually twoparallel but separate non-linearphenomena:theuseofpolitical means to preparethe battlefield before directmilitaryaction, and thepureuse of political methods tobring about desired changesin policy in another state.One is true ‘hybridwar,’ theother perhaps bestconsidered‘politicalwar.’

A

What the West considers ‘hybridwar’ is, to the Russians, actuallytwo parallel but separatephenomena: the use of politicalmeans to prepare the battlefieldbefore direct military action, andthe pure use of political methodsto bringabout desiredchanges inpolicyinanotherstate.Oneistrue‘hybrid war,’ the other perhapsbestconsidered‘politicalwar.’

8

1.Introduction

NATO’s greatest challengecoming out of the [2014]Wales Summit is to take ontwo different forms ofstrategic challenge from theEast and Southsimultaneously. Thesechallenges are composed ofvery different actors, andvarious forms of modernhybridwarfare.

- Then-Supreme AlliedCommanderEuropeGen.PhilipBreedlove,20151

It is striking how US andNATO military perspectivesonRussiahavechangedsince2014. From being all butwritten off as a decayingpost-imperial nation of atbestlimitedregionalmilitarysignificance, it is now beingcharacterized as America’smost serious threat, even—in something of a rhetoricalover-statement—a plausible‘existential threat.’ Thus, inJuly 2015, newly-nominatedChairman of the Joint Chiefsof Staff General JosephDunfordplacedRussiaatthe1 Guillaume Lasconjarias &Jeffrey Larsen (eds), NATO’sResponse to Hybrid Threats(NATODefenseCollege,2015),p.xxi

top of his list of militarythreats to the USA,2a viewechoed by a string of othersenior US militarycommanders.

The reason for this is not somuchasuddenreassessmentofRussia’smilitary,althoughthe neat and professionalwaytheyoccupiedCrimeain2014 was a useful wake-upcall that they do have eliteintervention units withintheir forces, just as thedeployment to Syria in2015demonstrated unexpectedpower projectioncapabilities. Rather, it isrooted in alarm thatwhat iswidely being called Russia’s

2Speaking at his confirmationhearings before the SenateArmedServicesCommittee.Healso noted that ‘[If] you wantto talk about a nation thatcould pose an existentialthreat to theUnitedStates, I'dhavetopointtoRussia.’

Thewhole debate about hybridwar is really two debatesintertwined:aboutthestrategicchallenge from an embitteredand embattled Russia, and thechanging nature of war in themodernage.

9

‘newwayofwar’bypassesorneutralizes much of theWest’s undoubted capacitiesand superiorities. NATO,after all, has more combattroops and reserves thatRussia, spends ten times asmuch on defense, and candeploymuchmoreadvancedforces on the ground, at seaand in the air. But just ashavinganadvantageinhorsecavalry matters little in theage of machine guns andbarbed wire, so too the fearis that, as one US officersuggests, ‘we spent billionspreparing to fight thewrongwar.’3

Has Russia truly redefinedthenatureofwarthroughitsuse of proxies, undeclaredarmies, and covert politicaloperationsinCrimeaandtheDonbas, though? No, it hasnot. Even though eachindividual aspect of recentoperations is familiar, anddespiteMoscow’s continuingfocus on conventional, high-intensity warfighting,nonetheless Russia’s recentactions have highlightedchanges inthenatureofwarthat say as much about theevolvingbattlespaceasaboutRussian military thinking.3 Conversation, Norfolk VA,March2016

Thus,thewholedebateabouthybrid war is really twodebates intertwined: aboutthe strategic challenge fromanembitteredandembattledRussia, and the changingnatureofwar in themodernage.

‘HybridWar’asanaccidentalproject

It is worth stressing whatthis study is not about. It isnot primarily about thepurelynon-kineticaspectsofMoscow’s current struggle—warisnottoostrongaword,especially as that appears tobe how the Kremlin framesit—with the West.Propaganda, politicalmanipulation, economicblackmailandalltheseotherinstruments that have beencovered elsewhere so well4

4Foranonlypartial listof themost useful examples, see:Ulrik Franke, War By Non-Military Means (FOI, 2015);Peter Pomerantsev & MichaelWeiss, The Menace ofUnreality: How the KremlinWeaponizes Information,CultureandMoney(InstituteofModern Russia, 2014); JamesSherr,Harddiplomacyandsoftcoercion: Russia's influenceabroad (Royal Institute ofInternationalAffairs,2013)

10

alreadynaturallyappear,butthey are explored primarilyin terms of their roles asadjuncts to or preparationsformilitaryoptions.

At the other end of thespectrum, it only partiallytouches on the regular, full-throated warfighting that isstill at the heart of Russianmilitary rather than politicalplanning. At the very timethatMoscowisexploringtheless-than-war options at itsdisposal—not least becauseit believes they are beingused against Russia—it isalso planning, training andequipping for high-tempomodern warfare.5As will bediscussedlater,ifRussiaevertrulygoestowar,itwilldosowith massive, intensebombardments, combinedair, sea and land operations,and all the rest of thepyrotechnic panoply of

5Thisisbestdemonstratedbythe scale and nature of itsambitious training regime,which is clearly orientedtowards large, fast,conventional assaults—seeJohan Norberg, Training tofight—Russia’s Major MilitaryExercises 2011–2014 (FOI,2015) @http://foi.se/rapport?rNo=FOI-R--4128--SE

modernwarfare.Thisiswhatthey train for, this is whatthey are spending theirmoney on, and this is at theheart of Russian militarythinkingandwriting.

However, Russia is also in arelatively constrainedsituation, and facing analliance that, for all itsinternal divisions andtimidities, has more andbettertroopsandequipment,backed by a largerpopulation and massivelygreater resources. Thus, thisis a studyonlyofoneaspectofRussia’swiderperspectiveon conflict in the modernworld,one forcedupon itbycircumstance. BecauseMoscow, fully aware of thismismatch, has had to findasymmetric ways to assertits political agenda globally

Russia is implicitly andexplicitly challenging theexistinginternationalorder.Thisisnotsimplyaregionalquestion of assertingMoscow’s sphere ofinfluence in Eurasia, it isalso a global issue, aboutthe importance andeffectiveness ofinternational law andshared understandingsaboutsovereignty.

11

andregionally insuchawayas to maximize its limitedstrengths and minimize theWest’s advantages, asvisibleinUkraineandindeedSyria.6Pressureofcircumstanceandopportunity has pushed it,inadvertently as much asanything else, towards whatis being called the hybridwarfareroute.

Awholeseriesofeventsandprocesses have contributedto this, including thecontinuing military-technicalrevolution, the West’sgrowing aversion to takinghuman casualties, theinterconnectedness of theworld economy, the 24/7news cycle, and the ‘Arabspring’ risings (whichMoscow sincerely, facts onthe ground notwithstanding,see as the products ofWestern subversion). Theoutcome, though, has been agrowing fear that it ispossibleforRussiaandother

6 See, for example, TimothyThomas, ‘Russia’s MilitaryStrategyandUkraine:Indirect,Asymmetric—and Putin-Led,’Journal of Slavic MilitaryStudies28,3(2015);LawrenceFreedman, ‘Ukraine and theArt of Limited War,’ Survival56,6(2014)

revisionist powers 7 toachieve certain local and, itmust be said, limited goalsthrough the application ofpolitical will and a tailoredmix of kinetic and politicalassets.

The result is not a specificplaybook; even if one looksat the occupation of Crimeaand the fomenting ofinsurrection in Ukraine’ssoutheast, these are verydifferentkindsofoperation.87 In other words, nationsseeking to challenge thecurrent global order. In thiscontext,itisworthnotingthatRussia’s ‘hybridwarfare’ doesbear a considerable similarityto China’s notion of‘unrestricted warfare’, asdefinedintheseminalbookbySeniorColonelsQiaoLiangandWang Xiangsui, UnrestrictedWarfare (PLA Literature andArts Publishing House, 1999).SeealsoDavidBarnoandNoraBensahel,‘Anewgenerationofunrestricted warfare,’WarOnThe Rocks, 19 April 2016 @http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/a-new-generation-of-unrestricted-warfare/8 I explore this more in‘”Hybrid War” and “LittleGreen Men”: How It Works,andHowItDoesn’t,’inUkraineand Russia: People, Politics,Propaganda and Perspectives,

12

Rather, it isawayof lookingat future conflict in a non-linear or asymmetric way,using political technologiesto do what military forceperhaps cannot, or at leastcannotsoeasily.

Thishasbeencombinedwiththe development of a seriesof Russian capabilities andassets able to wage certainkinds of blended political-militarywar.Inpart,thisisaproduct of Vladimir Putin’sambitious rearmamentprogram, committing 23trillion rubles (worth some$770 billion before theruble’srecentcrash)inabidcomprehensivelytorenovateRussian military capacitiesby 2020. Learning thelessonsofthe2008GeorgianWar (one fought largelythroughconventionalmeans,but also local proxies,deniable cyberattacks 9 and

Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Richard Sakwa(eds),e-IRPress,2015.9 A key feature of Russiancyberattacks is, after all, thattheyarelargelycarriedoutbyso-called “patriotic hackers”encouraged and supported bystate agencies but operatingautonomously. ScottApplegate, ‘Cybermilitias andpolitical hackers: Use of

high-intensity pro-paganda10), this also has ledto the expansion of Russiancommando forces, includingthecreationofanewSpecialOperationsCommand taskedprecisely with deniable andpolitical operations behindenemylines.11

There have been equallystriking developments innon-kinetic capabilities. TheGRU, military intelligence,has enjoyed a dramaticreversal in its previously-waning fortunes, in partprecisely because—as hasbeen demonstrated inUkraine—ithastheleadroleirregular forces incyberwarfare,’ IEEESecurity&Privacy5(2011)10 See, for example, JörgBecker, ‘The greatGeorgian/Russianmediawar,’Media Development 59, 1(2012) and Rick Fawn andRobert Nalbandov, ‘Thedifficulties of knowing thestartofwarintheinformationage: Russia, Georgia and theWar over South Ossetia,August 2008,’ EuropeanSecurity21,1(2012).11 Mark Galeotti, ‘BehindEnemy Lines: the risinginfluence of Russian specialforces’, Jane’s IntelligenceReview,December2014

13

in working with insurgentand organized crimeelements abroad. 12 Theintelligence community as awholehascontinuedtoenjoyPutin’s favor, sharpeningtheir ability to conductcovert political but alsoterrorist attacks outside12The use of organized crimeas an instrument abroad haslong been an establishedRussian practice; according toaUSdiplomaticcablereleasedby Wikileaks, Spanishinvestigative magistrate JoséGrindaGonzaleznotedbackin2010 that it is willing to “use[organized crime] groups todowhatever the [governmentof Russia] cannot acceptablydo as a government.” (@http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/247712). ThecrucialroleoftheGRUintheseoperations has emergedmorerecently. For their recoveryand role in the Ukrainianoperations, see Mark Galeotti,‘Crime And Crimea: CriminalsAs Allies AndAgents,’RFE/RLNovember 3, 2014 @http://www.rferl.org/content/crimea-crime-criminals-as-agents-allies/26671923.htmland ‘Putin’s Secret Weapon,’ForeignPolicy, July 7, 2014@http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/07/putins-secret-weapon/

Russia’sborders,13aswellasnot just cyberespionage butactivecyberattacks.14

13 Especially in Ukraine,although one could alsomakethe case for the series ofassassination of Chechenrebels and their supportersthat have taken place inEurope, predominantlyTurkey.14 This has been widelydiscussed and acknowledgedin the West; a particularlygood encapsulation of thethreat is Owen Matthews,‘Russia’sgreatestweaponmaybeitshackers,’Newsweek,May7, 2015, although a moreextensive and scholarlystudies are VolodymyrLysenko and BarbaraEndicott-Popovsky, ‘Actionand Reaction: Strategies andTacticsoftheCurrentPoliticalCyberwarfare in Russia,’Proceedings of the 8thInternational Conference onInformation Warfare andSecurity (2013) and AndrzejKozlowski, ‘Comparativeanalysis of cyberattacks onEstonia, Georgia andKyrgyzstan,’ EuropeanScientificJournal 10, 7 (2014).See also Oxford Analytica,‘Russian cyber espionage tobecome more aggressive,’ 16December2014.

14

The huge governmentforeign media operation,spearheaded by the RTmulti-lingual TV network,has been mobilized in aneffort to undermine the willand capacity of the West toresist Russian operations.15Meanwhile, the role ofRussianmoneyinsupportingdisruptive and divisivepolitical movements in theWest and infiltratingstrategic economic sectorsremains not just a concern,but one in which Europeanintelligence agencies areseeing growing signs ofstrategic coordination. 16 Inand of themselves, none ofthese instruments aredecisive, but together—andespecially if Moscowmanages to coordinate themmore effectively, an issuediscussed below—they form

15 Peter Pomerantsev &Michael Weiss, TheMenace ofUnreality: How the KremlinWeaponizes Information,Culture and Money (IMR,2014)16AsaseniorGermancounter-intelligence put it to me,‘before, Russian money cameinto Europe to be safe, nowincreasingly it is coming tobea danger.’ Conversation,November2015

the basis for a formidablemachine for fighting on thepoliticalfront.

This, after all, is a crucialpoint. While developing adoctrine which placesgreater emphasis onpreparing the battlefield inadvance with propagandaandsubversion,softeningupthe enemybefore sending inthe troops, the Russians arealso increasingly relying onthese non-kinetic methodsalone. The presence ofinternet trolls on Britishweb-pages or Russianapologists in Germany doesnot presage someapocalypticRussianinvasion,as such measures did in theDonbas. Rather, their role isas a surrogate.Thisnewageof ‘non-linear war’encompasses both thewholly political and theultimatelymilitary.

Hybrid War as a securitychallengenonetheless

On one level, it does notmatterwhether ‘hybridwar’exists as a distinct or novelstyleofcontestation,orwhatwe call it. The fact is thatRussia is implicitly andexplicitly challenging theexisting international order.This is not simply a regional

15

question of assertingMoscow’ssphereofinfluencein Eurasia, it is also a globalissue, about the importanceand effectiveness ofinternational lawandsharedunderstandings aboutsovereignty. GivenMoscow’sdetermination to cloak itstrue capabilities and intents,and also to operate belowand around the existingthresholdsfordirectmilitaryresponses, any effective newpolicy—bothtoresistfurtherwestwards adventures andalso deter other revisionistor aggressive powers fromconsidering Russia anexample to follow—dependson a timely, nuanced, andaccurate understanding onthe strengths andweaknessesof thisnew ‘wayofwar.’

The risks are, after all,considerable. The currentRussian regime appears notonly to have staked itspolitical credibility on itsrevisionist program, 17 it

17See Dmitri Trenin, ‘Russia’sBreakout From the Post-ColdWar System: The Drivers ofPutin’s Course,’ CarnegieMoscow Center, 22 December2014 @http://carnegie.ru/2014/12/22/russia-s-breakout-from-

seems genuinely to believethat this is the only way topreserve Russiansovereignty and culturalintegrity. Putin himselfspeaks increasingly thelanguage of the clash ofcivilizations between Russiaand the West. Whenjustifying the annexation ofCrimea, for example, heframed it as a response to astrategic campaign by theWest to isolate and controlRussia:

wehave every reason toassume that theinfamous policy ofcontainment, led in theeighteenth, nineteenthand twentieth centuries,continues today. Theyare constantly trying tosweep us into a cornerbecause we have anindependent position,because we maintain itand because we callthings like they are anddo not engage inhypocrisy.18

post-cold-war-system-drivers-of-putin-s-course18Vladimir Putin, ‘Address byPresident of the RussianFederation,’18March2014@http://en.special.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603

16

The prospect of a new andperhapsmorechallengingUSpresidency 19 appears, ifanything, to be encouragingMoscow only to feel all themore threatened—and totoughen its own line inresponse.

The present atmosphere oftension and confrontationwillthuscontinue,regardlessof the outcomes of thecurrentstruggleinUkraine.20Anover-reactionwillplay toPutin’s narrative ofgrievance. It may also forcethe Kremlin intomore overtaggression in itsneighborhood and mischief-making beyond it. On theother hand, under-reaction,or a response which failsadequately to address the

19After all, while it is widelyassumed in the West thatPutin wholeheartedlywelcomes Donald Trump’svictory, in factheandtherestof the Russian foreign policyestablishment appearmarkedly uncomfortable withthe thought of anunpredictable and potentiallymoreassertiveWhiteHouse.20 For an excellent analysis,see András Rácz, Russia’sHybrid War in Ukraine(Finnish Institute ofInternationalAffairs,2015)

Russian challenge, willencourage furtheradventures, just as theunexpected ease of theseizure of Crimea helpedmakethecaseinMoscowforfurthermovesinUkraine.21Itmay also embolden andinform other revisioniststates which may see inRussia’s techniques ablueprint for their owndestabilizingadventures.

And here is where it doesmatter to understand thephenomenon we are calling‘hybrid war’ and which Iwouldsuggestshouldbestbedescribed as a twinnedapplication of ‘non-linearwarfare’,thepoliticalandthemilitary-political blend. Ishould stress that theRussians do not use ‘non-linearwarfare’inthiscontextin any official way. Indeed,the whole point is that theydo not have any generalexpression beyond a simpleecho of the West, talking ofgibridnaya voina. To be21Thiswassomethingattestedto by a just-retired officer inthe General Staff’s MainOperations Directorate, inMoscow in May 2015: ‘hadKiev fought in Crimea, theymight not now be fighting intheDonbas.’

17

honest,thatisoneofthekeypoint:tobeglib,theRussianswouldsimplycallthis‘war.’

Whether new or old,nationally-specific or simplya manifestation of widerchangesinthenatureofstateconflict, a prelude to full-blown hostilities or apolitical struggle in its ownright, it has been used tochallenge the global orderand the borders of Europe.And it is likely tobeused tothatendagain.

To deter and resist thisphenomenon mosteffectively, it must beunderstood, shorn of thetemptations to exaggerate,demonize and mobilize thethreat for political purpose.In comprehension there isthe best security: to flip anincreasingly over-usedcliché, this is the trueweaponization ofinformation.

18

2.The‘HybridWar’Bandwagon

Russia has increasinglyfocused on new and lessconventional militarytechniques.Theseasymmetrictactics (sometimes describedas unconventional,ambiguous or non-linearwarfare) techniques are bothmore aligned to Russianstrengths, and considerablymore difficult for NATO tocounter. The Russian use ofasymmetric warfaretechniques … therefore,represents the mostimmediatethreatto itsNATOneighbours and other NATOMemberStates.

- British House ofCommons DefenseCommittee,2014.1

TheUSmilitarydevelopeditsown notion of blendedpolitical-military ‘hybridthreats’ over a decade ago,following William Nemeth’s1 UK House of CommonsDefence Committee, ‘Towardsthe next defence and securityreview: part two—NATO,’ThirdReportofSession2014-5,HC358 @http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmdfence/358/35805.htm

use of the term ‘hybridwar’in connection with theconflict in Chechnya, 2 butthis was essentially seen inthe context of kineticstruggles inwhich terrorismand even pseudo-criminaloperations are used tosupport more conventional

assets.Itwasassumedthatitwouldgenerallybeatacticofinsurgentstatesornon-stateactors. Increasingly, though,there isanawareness that itcanalsobeemployedbypeerstatesandthedominantsidein a conflict. 3 In the

2In his 2002 masters thesis‘Future War and Chechnya: ACase for Hybrid Warfare’ attheNavalPostgraduateSchool,Monterey,California, available@http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/5865/02Jun_Nemeth.pdf?sequence=13This is somethingwhichhadalready been raised inWestern discussions, such asby Michael Breen and JoshuaGeltzer, ‘Asymmetric

The corollary of theClausewitziandoctrinethatwarispoliticsbyothermeansisthatpoliticscanalsobewarbyothermeans.

19

introduction to the 2015edition of the InternationalInstitute for StrategicStudies’ authoritativeMilitary Balance, Russia’shybrid warfare is describedasincluding

the use of military andnon-military tools in anintegrated campaigndesigned to achievesurprise, seize theinitiative and gainpsychological as well asphysical advantagesutilising diplomaticmeans;sophisticatedandrapid information,electronic and cyberoperations; covert andoccasionally overtmilitary and intelligenceaction; and economicpressure.4

Strategies as Strategies of theStrong,’ Parameters, Spring2011 @http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/2011spring/Breen-Geltzer.pdf. However, it maderelatively little headwaywithin actual defense policyanddoctrineplanningcircles.4IISS, Military Balance 2015,Editor’s Introduction @http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/military%20balance/i

This is a good summary,althoughinmanywayswhatisactuallybeingdescribed isan understanding that thecorollary of theClausewitzian doctrine thatwar is politics by othermeans is that politics canalso bewar by othermeans.There is already active andsometimes ferocious debateat to whether this issomething truly new or not,whether it is limited tocertain specific theatres andcontexts, rather than anywider evolution of militaryart.5

AftertheunexpectedRussianseizure of the Crimea,especially its use ofunacknowledged ‘littlegreenmen’—not, it has to be said,such an innovation in theannals of warfare andstatecraft—the notion thatsomething dramatically newssues/the-military-balance-2015-5ea6/mb2015-00b-foreword-eff45 See, for example, FrankHoffman, ‘On Not-So-NewWarfare: Political Warfare vsHybrid Threats,’ War on theRocks, July 28, 2014 @http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-not-so-new-warfare-political-warfare-vs-hybrid-threats/

20

anddangeroushastakentheWest by storm, and led toboth insightful analysis andpanicked caricatures. 6 Thishas been called ‘newgeneration warfare,’ 7‘ambiguous warfare,’ 8 ‘full-spectrum warfare’9or even‘non-linear war,’10not least6Foraninterestingdiscussion,see Bettina Renz, ‘Russia and“hybrid warfare”’,Contemporary Politics, 22,3(2016)7 See, for example, MartinMurphy, ‘UnderstandingRussia’sConceptforTotalWarin Europe,’ HeritageFoundationSpecialReport184,September 9, 2016 @http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/09/understanding-russias-concept-for-total-war-in-europe8 See, for example, Russia’s“Ambiguous Warfare” andImplicationsfortheU.S.MarineCorps, CNA, May 2015 @https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/DOP-2015-U-010447-Final.pdf9Usefully summarized in thiscontext inOscar JohnssonandRobert Seely, ‘Russian Full-Spectrum Conflict: AnAppraisal After Ukraine,’Journal of Slavic MilitaryStudies,28,1(2015)10 This term was especiallyprominent in a story written

as these are termswith lessintellectual baggageassociated with them. Forbetter or (probably) worse,‘hybrid war’ is for themomenttheacceptedtermofart in Western military andstrategic circles and it is notworth trying to fight thatdefinitional struggle here.Perhaps, as Latvian scholarJānis Bērziņš has acidlynoted, it has caught onbecause ‘the word hybrid iscatchy, since it mayrepresent a mix ofanything.’ 11 The alternativeformulation, the ‘Gerasimov

by Vladislav Surkov, Putin’sformer master politicaltechnologist. See PeterPomerantsev, ‘How Putin isReinventing Warfare,’ ForeignPolicy, May 5, 2014 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/05/how-putin-is-reinventing-warfare/ andMark Galeotti, ‘Putin’s SecretWeapon,’ForeignPolicy,July7,2014 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/07/putins-secret-weapon/11Jānis Bērziņš, ‘Russian NewGeneration Warfare Is NotHybrid Warfare,’ in ArtisPabriks&AndisKudors(eds),The War in Ukraine: Lessonsfor Europe (University ofLatviaPress,2015),p.43

21

Doctrine’—becauseofanow-infamous article by theRussian Chief of the GeneralStaff in 2013—is even lessuseful, as not only did theseideas predate Gerasimov’sappointment, but it is not a‘doctrine’ as either Russianor Western militaries wouldunderstandit.12

‘Non-linear war’—a termwhose perverse virtue ispreciselythat ithastheleast12Infairness,Ihavetoconfessmy guilt in perhaps creatingthis phrase. Intended as asnappy title and explicitlydescribedsimplyasaninterimplaceholder term in a 2014blog post, it ended up gettingfar more currency than itdeserved. ‘The “GerasimovDoctrine” and Russian Non-LinearWar’, In Moscow’sShadows, July 6, 2014 @https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/

intellectual baggage tohaul—is perhaps a usefulomnibus term to cover both‘politicalwars’ foughtwhollywithin the realm of societyand psychology and ‘hybridwars’ which will in duecourseturntoshooting.

However, the fundamentalpoint is that the Russiansthemselves certainly believethe nature of war ischanging,and inwayswhichmean the use of direct forcemaynotalwaysorinitiallybea central element of theconflict—or even notemployed at all. As Chief ofthe General Staff ValeryGerasimovputitinthat2013article,

The role of nonmilitarymeans of achievingpolitical and strategicgoals has grown, and, inmany cases, they haveexceeded the power offorceofweaponsintheireffectiveness…The focusof applied methods ofconflicthasalteredinthedirection of the broaduse of political,economic, informational,humanitarian, and othernonmilitary measures—applied in coordinationwith the protestpotential of the

‘Non-linearwar’—a termwhoseperverse virtue is precisely thatit has the least intellectualbaggage to haul—is perhaps auseful omnibus term to coverboth ‘political wars’ foughtwholly within the realm ofsociety and psychology and‘hybrid wars’ which will in duecourseturntoshooting.

22

population. All this issupplemented bymilitary means of aconcealed character,including carrying outactions of informationalconflict and the actionsof special-operationsforces. The open use offorces—often under theguise of peacekeepingand crisis regulation—isresorted to only at acertain stage, primarilyfor the achievement offinal success in theconflict.13

The Russian government, inthe midst of a revanchistbacklashagainstwhatitseesasaculturalandgeopoliticaloffensive by the West,14is

13 Voenno-promyshlennyikur’er, February 27, 2013.Translation and commentary@https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/14 See Mark Galeotti andAndrew Bowen, ‘Putin’sEmpire of the Mind,’ ForeignPolicy, April 21, 2014 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/21/putins-empire-of-the-mind/; Dmitri Trenin,‘Russia’s Breakout From thePost-Cold War System: The

actively taking advantage ofaseriesofdevelopmentsandopportunities, from thescope to use modern mediaas instruments of politicalinfluence, 15 to theimplicationsofaUSfocusonchaos in the Middle East, todrive its interests through‘the broad use of political,economic, informational,humanitarian, and othernonmilitarymeasures.’

However,Gerasimovwasnotpresenting a blueprint for afuture without conventionalmilitary operations, nor yethybrid war as originallyunderstood in the West.Instead, he was noting

Drivers of Putin’s Course,’Carnegie Moscow Center,December 22, 2014 @http://carnegie.ru/2014/12/22/russia-s-breakout-from-post-cold-war-system-drivers-of-putin-s-course15 See Peter Pomerantsev &Michael Weiss, TheMenace ofUnreality: How the KremlinWeaponizes Information,Culture and Money (IMR,2014); Keir Giles, ‘Russia'sHybrid Warfare: a Success inPropaganda’, BAKS WorkingPaper 1/15 (2015) @https://www.baks.bund.de/sites/baks010/files/150217_ap_russland_druckversion.pdf

23

Russia’s conviction that themodern world was seeingmore complex andpolitically-led forms ofcontestation alongsideregularwarfare.To this end,as will be explored below,Russia’s‘newwayofwar’canbe considered simply a

recognitionoftheprimacyofthe political over thekinetic—and that if one sidecan disrupt the others’ willandabilitytoresist,thentheactual strength of theirmilitary forces becomesmuch less relevant, even ifnotnecessarilyredundant.

24

3.HybridWarthroughRussianEyes

Somearguethattherearenoexternal threats to Russia,beyond terrorism or internalconflicts. That defenseexpenditures are too high.Thatthenotionofthedefenseof the Fatherland andcompulsory military servicehave lost their meaning…However, the fact is that thesecurity threats toRussia arenotonlynotdisappearing,butincreasingevermore.

- Gen. Makhmut Gareev,President of the RussianAcademy of MilitarySciences,20131

Western discussions of‘Russia’s hybrid war’ are inmany ways alien to theRussiansthemselves,evidentintheiradoptionofthedirecttranslation gibridnaya voina.It is not just that they say—and in the main believe—that it is actually the Westwhich pioneered suchdeniablemethodsintheArabSpring and the Color1 Makhmut Gareev, ‘Na“myagkuyu silu” naidutsyazhestkie otvety,’ Voenno-promyshlenny kur’er, 4December 2013 @http://www.vpk-news.ru/articles/18404

Revolutions. Indeed,prominent Russian defenseexpert Ruslan Pukhov haswrittenthat

it is obvious that theterm ‘hybrid warfare’ isused as a propagandadevice and not really aclassification. This isbecause any attempt todefine it ends with theconclusion that therereally is nothing verynewintheidea.2

Furthermore, when taken inthe round, Gerasimov’sarticle—which was anencapsulation of previousdebates more than a novelexegesis—presented ‘hybridwar’ not as an end in itself,butasastagewhichcouldorwould lead to chaos and theemergence of fierce armedcivilconflictinwhichforeigncountries could intervene.The aim for Russia, heasserted, was to be able tohave the kind of forces ableto shut out such externalintervention and fight and

2 Ruslan Pukhov, ‘Mif o“gibridnoivoine”’,Nezavisimoevoennoe obozrenie, 29 May2015

25

quickly win any conflicts,using massive and precisemilitaryforce.

Thus,Gerasimov’svisionwasin many ways an essentiallydefensive one for a chaoticmodern era, not of an armyof covert saboteurs butratherahigh-readinessforceable rapidly to mobilize andfocus firepower on direct,conventional threats. In this,he was reprising themeswhich had emerged inmuchrecent military theoreticalliterature and presenting asense of the comprehensivethreatsfacingRussia, threatswhich required an equallycomprehensive answer. 3After all, as AndrewMonaghan has perceptivelyobserved, facing whatappears to be a near-termfuture of unpredictabilityand instability, the Russianstate has adopted a strategyof mobilization involving‘what are in effect efforts tomove the country on to apermanentwarfooting.’4

3 See, for example, AlekseiKuz’movich, ‘Evolutsiyavsglyadov na teoriyusovremennoi voiny,’ Armiya iobshchestvo33,1(2013).4Andrew Monaghan, RussianStateMobilization:moving the

Of course, it would be naïvetoconsidertoday’sRussiaasapurelypeaceable,defensivepower. First of all, there is along-established trend ofdiscussing offensivestrategies and capacities inAesopian terms, not least byascribing them to the otherside. Nonetheless, not onlythe literature but alsoconversations with Russianmilitary officers andobservers underscores theextent to which they trulyconsider gibridnayavoina tobe an essentially Western—American—gambit. As onerecent retiree who hadserved in the General Staff’sMain Operations Directorateput it, ‘we only belatedlycame to see theweaponyou[Westerners] weredeveloping. Even then, firstwe thought it just applied inunstable, peripheralcountries. Then we saw youcouldpointitatus,too.’5

country on to a war footing(ChathamHouse,2016),p.3@https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/publications/research/2016-05-20-russian-state-mobilization-monaghan-2.pdf5Conversation, Moscow, April2014

26

Secondly, though, whetherthey believe themselveslearning a lesson ‘made inAmerica’ornot,theRussiansare naturally going toexplore the offensivepossibilities of this kind ofconflict, not just theirdefensive options, henceCrimea and the Donbas, andthe need for seriousconsideration of thepotential wider threat toEurope, Russia’s southernand eastern neighbors andbeyond.

HybridMilitaryThinking

All military doctrines are anevolution of previous ones,and influenced by thetechnical,political,socialandeconomic forces shaping thebattlefield at every level.Today’s Russian approach isbroadly rooted in somedistinctive characteristics oftoday’s Russia and pastpractice, but morespecifically is the product ofa series of military-politicaldebates and organizationaldevelopments that came tofruition following the 2008Georgian War.6The 1979-88

6 Marcel Der Haas, ‘Russia’smilitarydoctrinedevelopment2000-2010,’ in Stephen Blank(ed), Russia’s Military Politics

incursion into Afghanistanhad forced Soviet militaryplanners to come to gripswith asymmetric war, butmany of the lessons weredeliberately shelved at thetime, theresultofa foolishlyoptimistic assumption thatMoscowwouldbeembroiledinnomoresuchcampaigns.7Nonetheless, the experienceof that war did creep intosubsequent debates in the1990s,wheretheycombinedwithagrowingawarenessofthe sheer speed anddestructiveness of modernconflict. Longer-rangedweapons, computerizedguidance and launchsystems, advanced ISR(intelligence, surveillanceand reconnaissance)capacities, all these wouldmean that in full-scale war

and Russia’s 2010 DefenseDoctrine (Strategic StudiesInstitute,2011).7 Mark Galeotti, Afghanistan:the Soviet Union’s last war(FrankCass,1995),chapter11

‘We only belatedly came to seethe weapon you [Westerners]were developing. Even then,first we thought it just appliedin unstable, peripheralcountries. Then we saw youcouldpointitatus,too.’

27

thefrontlinewouldbedeep,and perhaps evenubiquitous,andthepotentialdevastationterrifying.

To some, the answerwas toputallthemoreemphasisonwinning the war before thefirst shot was fired. InMakhmut Gareev’sthoughtful 1995 study Eslizavtra voiny (‘If War ComesTomorrow’), for example, henoted that political andinformationoperationscouldbe used to spread ‘masspsychosis, despair andfeelings of doom andundermine trust in thegovernment and armedforces; and, in general, leadto the destabilization of thesituation in those countries’ready for directintervention.8

Nonetheless, the conflict inChechnya and the challengecoping in severelyconstrained budgetarycircumstances continued toconsume much of whateverscopetherewasfordoctrinal

8Makhmut Gareev, Esli zavtravoina (Vladar, 1995); Quotefrom English translation, IfWar Comes Tomorrow? TheContours of Future ArmedConflict (Routledge,1998),pp.51-52

innovation.ARussianofficerservingintheGeneralStaffatthe time recalled that ‘theintellectual case for changewas always accepted, then“temporarily” shelved untiltheday’scrisiswasresolved.But, there was alwaysanother crisis.’ 9 The 2000National Security Conceptdocument and new MilitaryDoctrine and a 2003 WhitePaperondefensedidplaceafar greater emphasis than inthe past on joint military-security agency cooperation,internal wars and irregularconflicts,butprimarilyinthecontext of dealing withpurely domestic insurgency.Many within the Russiansecurity establishment whogenuinely understood thatthe nature of war waschanging. However, all suchinstitutions tend towardsconservatism, and acombination of self-interested resistance withinthehighcommandandalackof a clear steer from theKremlin ensured thatpractice did not move asquickly as the theoreticaldiscussions.

Real progress would onlyfollow as a result of the9 Conversation, Moscow,January2014

28

GeorgianWar.Russianforcesoperated alongside localmilitias and auxiliaries, in apolitically-choreographedoperation designed toprovide a degree ofdeniabilityand legitimacybyprovokingtheGeorgiansintothe first overt act ofaggression. 10 Evenbeforehand, Moscow hadbeen exploring suchambiguous and arm’s-lengthoptions, but the practicalexperienceofthewarproveda crucial agent for change.The Russians won, but thatwas hardly in doubt giventhe massive disproportionbetween the two sides andthe relatively limitedobjectives, ‘liberating’ thealready-rebellious regions ofAbkhazia and South Ossetia.However,sufficientproblemsemerged to allow DefenseMinister Anatoly SerdyukovandaboveallhisChiefoftheGeneral Staff NikolaiMakarov finally to pushthrough sweeping reforms.Organizationally, the mainchangewas a transition to asmaller, more flexible10According to the EuropeanUnion’s IndependentInternational Fact-FindingMission on the Conflict inGeorgia (2009), the so-called‘TagliaviniReport.’

brigade structure—firstmooted, after all, back inSoviet times 11 —finallycarriedthrough,butthisalsounblockedthewaytodeeperdoctrinal debates within themilitary,notleastadaptingtothe notion of network-centricwarfare.12

Serdyukov, whose necessarybut brutal reform programwonhimtheloathingofmostof the officer corps, wouldnotsurvivelongpolitically;ascandal saw him sacked in2012, with Makarovfollowing in his wake.However, their successorscontinuedtheprocess,hencethe irony of Gerasimovgettingthecreditforwhat, ifit should be considered anyChief of the General Staff’sbrainchild, was closer toMakarov’s. Even so, thiswasstill very much a discussion11 See Robert Hall, SovietMilitary Art in a Time ofChange (Palgrave Macmillan,1990)12 See Roger McDermott,Russian Perspective onNetwork-Centric Warfare: theKeyAimofSerdyukov’sReform(FMSO, 2010) @http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/Collaboration/international/McDermott/Network-Centric-Warfare.pdf

29

about war, not the kind ofdeniable political operationstoo often regarded asRussia’s new ‘art of war,’morewarthanhybrid.

Meanwhile,though,aswillbediscussed below, a Russiathat increasingly felt itselfconstrained,eventhreatenedby a West too powerfuldirectly to challenge, waslooking for new instruments

of contestation. Havinglearnt his trade as a spy,having built his career oncorruption and behind-the-scenes politicking, havingforged a presidency throughpropaganda and hype, Putinalso saw the scope for‘political war’ rooted inSoviet practices. The twovariations of gibridnayavoinawerereadytobeborn.

30

PartTwo:TheRootsofDistinctiveness

ow to square the circlebetween the lack of any

seriousRussianthinkingandwriting about gibridnayavoina except relativelyrecently and in the contextprimarily of Westernoperations,andtheapparentobservabledistinctivenessofmuchRussianactivity?Isthisanother piece ofmaskirovka, deception,whereby Moscow is ableto keep an evolvingmilitary debate hidden?Hardly, not least becausefor it to be meaningfullyapplicable to the Russianmilitary it needs to bediscussedandmanifested,from training programs toprocurement plans. Rather,whathasbeeninterpretedassomething qualitatively newis instead the product of theRussians’ take on the waychanges in the world areinfluencing warfare,mediated through their ownparticularpolitical,historicalandculturalprisms.

In short, just as thePentagon’seffortstocometoterms with emergingchallengesandopportunitieshave led to the technology-driven Third Offset strategy,so too what the non-linearapproaches represent theKremlin’s response to fivekey issues. They are the gap

between Russian aspirationand capability, assumptionsabout Western ‘threats,’Moscow’s take on thechanging nature of modernwarfare, long-standingassumptions about therelationship of the kineticand the political, and theimpact of the shape of thecontemporary Russian state,and its de-institutionalizedandproteannature.

H

What has been interpreted assomething qualitatively new isinstead the product of theRussians’takeonthewaychangesin the world are influencingwarfare, mediated through theirownparticularpolitical,historicalandculturalprisms

31

4. The Gap between Aspiration andCapability

Russia has been a greatpower for centuries, andremainsso. Ithasalwayshadand still has legitimate zonesof interest ... We should notdropourguardinthisrespect,neither should we allow ouropiniontobeignored

- VladimirPutin,19991

Putin’s Russia is strong onambitions, weak onresources. From thismismatchcomesagreatdealof ingenuity, improvisationand introspection, as wellas—in a pattern visible overthecenturies—a justificationfor tight central control toallow a concentration ofresources on nationalsecurity. 2 After all, it isseekingnotonly tomaintaina significant global status asa great power, whose voice

1Speech to the State Duma,quotedinBBC,28March2014@http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-267694812This is a theme which wasbest expanded upon byRichard Pipes, notably in hisRussia Under The Old Regime(Weidenfeld&Nicolson,1974)

must be heard on allimportantmatters,butitalsohas specific aspirationstowards maintaining asphere of influence in post-Soviet Eurasia (with theapparent exception of theBaltic states, which aregenerally acceptedashavingbeen“lost”3).Itmustdothat,though, under sharplimitations:

1. Economic. In the finalanalysis, most power isdirectly or indirectlyeconomic in nature.Admittedly, anauthoritarian regime ismuchmoreable to focusresourcesonitsstrategicpriorities. Russia, forexample, officiallydevotesaround4%ofitsGDPtodefense,althoughdeeper analysis suggeststherealfigureiscloserto6%, compared with aEuropean NATO averageof 1.2%.4Nonetheless, it

3A phrase which cropped upindependently in severalconversations with MFA andmilitaryinterlocutors.4Paul Gregory, ‘Russia cooksits defense books, Politico, 17

32

isstillconstrainedbytheoverall size of itseconomy, whose rollingcrisis has actually forcedeffective cuts in 2016and talk of deeper ones,perhaps of 6%, over thenext three years. 5 Thisinevitably affectsmilitarystrengthdirectlyand indirectly, fromeating into procurementandtrainingprogramstomaking it harder to paythe salaries and providethe living conditionsneeded to attract andretaingoodpersonnel.

2. Technological. Despite aclear Kremlin co-mmitment to defense-related research anddevelopment for bothdomestic use and export

November 2015 @http://www.politico.eu/article/russia-cooks-its-defense-books-military-spending-2016-nato/5 Reuters, 6 March 2016 @http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-defense-budget-idUSKCN0W80TL; Bloomberg,12 September 2016 @http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/putin-picks-guns-over-butter-and-over-schools-and-hospitals-too

opportunities, economicweaknesses, and poorpast investmentdecisions have served toundermine Russia’stechnological capacitiesat a time when thenature of war is beingreshaped by rapid (andexpensive)advances.Inafew specific aspects,Russian technology isstill at the cutting edge.The S-400 surface-to-airmissile system is aformidable airdefense/area denial(A2/AD) asset, forexample. In the main,though, economic andorganizational lim-itations mean that notonly is Russiantechnologyfallingbehindthat of its peercompetitors, but alsothat its education andtraining is increasinglynot producingsufficiently well-skilledpersonneltouseitsmostadvancedsystems.

In fairness, the newestkit tomorrow is lessuseful than adequate kittoday, and Russia’scapacities should not bediscounted. Further-more, in classic styleingenuity has gone into

33

leveraging what partialstrengths it has, such asturning to hackers toaddress gaps in cybercapabilities. However,these are stopgapmeasures and cannotconceal—not least fromRussia’s own militaryplanners—a wideningtechnology gap with theUnited States are,perhaps even moreshocking toMoscow, theloss of a long-assumedadvantageoverChina.6

3. Demographic. There isconsiderabledebateastothe Russian population’slong-term trends.Nonetheless, theconsensus appears to bethat a crisis is looming.The 2010 censusregistered a populationdropofalmost3%inthepasteightyears,to142.9million, and a 2015reportfromRANEPA,theRussian Presidential

6It isworthnotingthat forallMoscow and Beijing may talkof strategic partnership andmount joint exercises—notleast to unnerveWashington—the Russiansstill update their contingencyplansforwarwithChinaonanannualbasis.

Academy of NationalEconomy and PublicAdministration, sugg-ested it could be down20%, to 113 million by2050.7This has all kindsof implications, from thelack of potentialconscripts and young,able-bodied workers,through to the need toencourage migrationfrom China and CentralAsia, which to many inthe government posessecurity and geopoliticalrisksinitsownright.

4. Soft Power. In themodern world, culturalcapital and economicweight are powerfulinstruments of geo-politics. The limitationsof a hydrocarbon statebecome all the morestriking when oil pricesare low, and Putin’spreviously-touted suc-cesses are revealed asbeing largely amatterofsimple good luck.

7 Ilan Berman, ‘Russia’sfraught demographic future,’Jamestown Foundation Russiain Decline Project, 13September 2016 @https://jamestown.org/program/ilan-berman-russias-fraught-demographic-future/

34

Russia’s soft power islimited, its image in theworld distinctlylackluster.8

Some dictators mayappreciate Putin’striumphs, some would-bestrongmenseehimasa figure to emulate, butinthemain,Russiaisnotconsidered a risingpower. It is telling, forexample, that the onlycountries Moscow could

persuadetorecognizeits

8The Pew Research Center’s2015 survey ofworld opinionfound only 30% ofrespondents viewing Russiapositively: only in Vietnam,China and Ghana do half ormoreof thepopulationhaveafavorable view of it. PewResearchCenter,‘Russia,PutinHeld in Low Regard aroundthe World,’ 5 August 2015 @http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/08/05/russia-putin-held-in-low-regard-around-the-world/

annexation of Crimeawere Afghanistan, Cuba,Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua,North Korea, Syria andVenezuela.

Put all these elementstogether,andRussia’sclaimstogreatpowerstatusanditsscope to assert the kind ofglobal role Putin claimsbegin to look threadbare. Ithas nuclear weapons, to besure, but these are tools oflimited utility. They may be

used in heavy-handedintimidation, such asthe threat made toPolandin2008thatifitwentaheadwithbasingUSanti-missilesystems,it was ‘making itself atarget. This is 100%certain.’9Theymay also

be used, conceivably, in alimited,tacticalattackto‘de-escalate’ a conventionalwar—in other words, tobring it to an end on termsfavorable to Russia. Theformerisoflimitedapparentutility, though,andthe latterextremely risky, and evenone General Staff officercalled it ‘the kind of idea

9Interfax,15August2008

Putin’sapparentaspirationsarenot simply to be a limitedregional power able to bullysmallerandpoorerneighbors....Rather, the intent, howeveroptimistic,istobeabletoassertameaningfulglobalrole

35

dreamedupbytheoreticians,notpractical.’10

Instead, Russia is leftwith amilitaryforcethatisstillonlypart-way throughmodernization, a processcoming under growingeconomic pressure. Itsarmed forces number some922,000, but the crucialGround Forces onlyrepresentaround300,000ofthese. Around half areconscripts, banned by lawfrombeing sent into combatotherthanintimesofformalwar, and serving terms ofjust one year, not enough totrain them properly andmeaning they are only trulyoperational for perhaps 3-4months of that year. Giventhat according to Ukrainianaccounts at least 40,000 andoften more are typicallystationed in Crimea and inand near the Donbas, othersneed to be stationed in theturbulent North Caucasus,and more scattered alongRussia’s lengthy border, thisis not as many as it maysound, especially given theneed to rotate forces whichhaveseenaction.

10Conversation,Moscow,April2014

This is by no means anegligible force, especiallyfor its post-Soviet neighborslacking the protections ofNATO membership. Evenaftertwoyearsofreformandrearmament, Ukraine’sentiremilitaryestablishmentnumbers 210,000 soldiersand 40,000 civilians, forexample, while Georgia bycontrast has but 37,000.11Nonetheless, Putin’sapparent aspirations are notsimply to be a limitedregional power able to bullysmaller and poorerneighbors. Indeed, whenPresident Obama describedRussia as such, Putinbristled, calling the claim‘disrespectful’anddownrightwrong.12Rather, the intent,11 Ukrainian Ministry ofDefense White Book 2015 @http://www.mil.gov.ua/content/files/whitebook/WB_2015_eng_WEB.PDF; GeorgiTskhvitava, ‘Boost to MilitaryReform in Georgia,’ IWPR, 19July 2016 @https://iwpr.net/global-voices/boost-military-reform-georgia12 In an interview with theGerman newspaper Bild, 12January 2016 @http://www.bild.de/wa/ll/bild-de/unangemeldet-42925516.bild.html

36

however optimistic, is to beable to assert a meaningfulglobalrole.

In this context, ‘hybrid war’isanattempttomakelimitedforces go further, degradingthedefensivecapacitiesofanenemy before the actualfighting. In Crimea, breakingthe chain of command,disrupting military moraleand creating temporaryuncertainty as to quitewhatwas going on meant theUkrainian soldiers on thepeninsula simply needed tobe penned, captured andexpelled, not fought to adefeat.

Likewise, ‘political war’ is asubstitute for having todeploy those overstretchedelite forces and the under-reformedrestofthemilitary,especially against an enemysuch as NATO. Instead, itbypasses most of theseobjective weaknesses ofRussia’s and insteadcapitalizes on the enemy’ssubjective ones, usinggamesmanship, corruptionand disinformation insteadofdirectforce.

37

5.PerceptionsandParanoiasaboutthe‘WesternThreat’

It isnecessaryto focusonthemain components of[Western] hybrid methods.The falsification of events,control of the media areamong the most effectivemethods of asymmetricwarfare. The effect can becomparable with the resultsof large-scale use of troopsandforces.

Illustrative examples are theincitement of nationalism inUkraine, the revolutionaryunrest intheArabworld.Themassive impact on themindsof people contributed to thegrowth of the protestpotential of the population,and the spread of “colormovements” in the states ofNorth Africa, which led to achangeofpoliticalregimes insomeofthem.

- Gen. Vitaliy Gerasimov,February20161

1In a speech to the annualgeneral meeting of theAcademy of Military Sciences,27 February 2016; his speechwas reproduced in Voenno-promyshlenny kur’er, 9 March2016 @ http://www.vpk-news.ru/articles/29579

In part, Putin’s anger atObama’s statement aboutRussiabeingamere‘regionalpower’ was simply asymptom of the widercollapse in Russian-Westernrelations, the product of anew conviction that Russiawasnotonlybetrayed inthepast, it is at threat today.Moscow genuinely believesitself working to try andcatchupindevelopingstate-wrecking and coercivecapabilities acquired andhonedbytheWest.Howeverwrong-headeditmaybe,thisperception shapes theRussian approach to hybridwar and the ways it isbuilding its capabilities andplanningtousethem.

Thereisnottheroomheretogo through the full Kremlinlitany of Western perfidies,from ‘betrayal’ over NATOexpansion, through‘organizing the colorrevolutions of Ukraine,Georgia and Kyrgyzstan,’ tothe ‘sponsoring’ anti-corruption and pro-democracy activism andopposition movements inRussiaitself.Thatwouldtakeareport in itsownrightand

38

in any case not actuallymattermuch.

Some have a certainjustice about them,others patently not.Whatisimportantisthatthis is not simply aconvenient politicalnarrative to demonize theopposition and mobilizenationalist sentiments—although it undoubtedly isthat—but it is also agenuinely-heldviewwithinasignificant fraction of thepolitical and especiallysecurity elite, most notablyVladimir Putin and hisclosestallies.

Security Council secretaryNikolai Patrushev, forexample, has bluntlyassertedthattheUSA‘wouldverymuch likeRussianot toexist at all—as a country.’2Former State Duma speakerandnowheadoftheForeignIntelligence Service (SVR)SergeiNaryshkinhasanevenmore florid take, claimingthat ‘Washington seeksinstability… to continue oldand launch new acts ofassault and plunder’ as itstirs ‘up anti-Russian

2Interviewed in Kommersant,22June2015

sentimentsinEurope’.3Putinhimselfhasclaimedthat

Our western partners,led by the United Statesof America, prefer nottobe guided byinternational lawintheirpractical policies, butbythe rule of the gun.They have come tobelieve in theirexclusivity andexceptionalism,thattheycan decide thedestiniesoftheworld, that onlytheycaneverberight.4

This has also become a self-sustainingprocess.Giventhe3 Sergei Naryshkin, ‘Avgustprovokatsiy: politicheskiyprognoz na samiy trevozhniymesyat,’ Rossiskaya gazeta, 9August 2015 @http://www.rg.ru/2015/08/09/naryshkin-site.html4Vladimir Putin, ‘Address byPresident of the RussianFederation,’18March2014@http://en.special.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603

Hence the belief that gibridnayavoina is a quintessentiallyAmerican invention, drawing onWestern economic andsoft powerto bring about political changethrough covert and deniablemeans.

39

Kremlin’s especially broadsense of quite whatconstitutes ‘war,’ forexample, the very measuresimposed by the West inorder to try and bring homecondemnation of Russianaggression, economicsanctions, are themselvesconsidered unilaterallyhostile acts. When AndreiKostin, chair of state-ownedVTB Bank, affirmed that‘sanctions, in other words,are economic war againstRussia,’ he was speaking fortheKremlin.5

Hence the belief thatgibridnaya voina is aquintessentially Americaninvention, drawing onWestern economic and softpower to bring aboutpolitical change throughcovert and deniable means.6

5CNBC, 30 January 2015 @http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/30/new-sanctions-on-russia-are-economic-war.html6There is a depressingly richbody of Russianwriting, fromserious military analysis toextremeconspiracytheory,onthis supposed struggle,including Sergei Tkachenko,Informatsionnaya voina protivRossii (Piter, 2011); MikhailZakharov, ‘Boitsy gibridnogofronta,’ Mir i politika, June

Thisnotonlycontributestoasense of being underconstant threat—and from acovertandsubtle threat thatcouldbebehindanyreversal,from labor unrest to losttrade opportunities—it alsoprovides a justification forRussia’s own ‘guerrillageopolitics’ and its non-lineartechniques.

2014; Sergei Glaziev, Ovneshnikh i vnutrennikhugrozakh ekonomicheskoibezopasnostiRossiivuslovyakhamerikanskoi agressii (2014);A. Manoilo, ‘Gibridnye voiny Itsverye revolyutsii v mirovoipolitike,’ Pravo ipolitika,7/2015; V. A.Nagornyi, ‘Sobytye na yugo-vostoke Ukrainy v kontekstekontseptsii “gibridnykh voin”’,Panorama 20 (2015); V. AKiselev and I. N. Vorob’ev,‘Gibridnye operatsii kaknovyivid voennogo protivoborstva’,Voennayamysl’,May2015

40

6.ModernWarfortheModernWorld

Nations have alwaysstruggled with one anotherwith the use of armed forcesand warfare capabilities,including intelligence andcounterintelligence,deceptionand stratagems, dis-information, and all otherrefined and deviousstratagems the adversariescould think up. It has alwaysbeen held that anyconfrontation without resortto arms is struggle andpursuitofpoliciesbyphysicalforce and armed violence iswar. Some of our …philosophers, though,maintain that all nonmilitarypracticesareacontemporarydevelopment and suggest, onthis assumption, thatfollowing these practices isnothingshortofwar.

- Gen. Makhmut Gareev,20131

Gareev, dean of Russia’smilitary theorists, has triedto steer a path betweenrejecting and too-easilyaccepting the notion that1 Makmut Gareev, ‘Voina ivoennaya nauka nasovremennom.’ Voyenno-promyshlenniy kur’er, 3 April2013

wars can be non-kinetic.Nonetheless, Moscow isawareofthelimitationsofitsmilitary power, whencompared with China andNATO rather than merelyeven more impoverishedpost-Soviet states. It alsobelieves that it faces whatcould be an existentialpolitical threat from theWest. Thus, it has had apowerfulincentivethanmosttotakefullandopportunisticaccount of the way that themilitary, political andeconomic battlespace ischangingdramatically.

Russians have been keenlyaware of the potentiallyrevolutionary impact ofadvanced long-rangesystems,fromsmartmissilesable to sink aircraft carriersand blast command centers,to the computer-guidedelectromagneticrailgunsthatcould one day claw themfrom the sky. In 2002, forexample, the influentialmilitary thinker MajorGeneral Vladimir Slipchenkosuggested that ‘any futurewar will be a non-contactwar.Itwillcomefromtheairand space. Guidance andcontrolwillcomefromspace,

41

and the strike will beconducted from the air andfrom the seas using a largequantity of precisionweaponry.’2

At the same time, whilepouringwhat resources theycould into developing theirown high-tech programs—with some successes andmany more dis-appointments—theyarealsojust as aware of thetechnology gap betweenthem and their peercompetitors, especially butnotonlytheUnitedStates.Asone General Staff officer putit, ‘we are still living ofupgraded legacy systems,and doing it quite well, butGod help us when the new-generation systems reallystart to spread across the

2 ‘Major-General VladimirSlipchenko Views Possible US“Non-Contact” War on Iraq,’Vremya Novostei, October 5,2002, cited in RogerMcDermott, RussianPerspectiveonNetwork-CentricWarfare: the Key Aim ofSerdyukov’s Reform (FMSO,2010) @http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/Collaboration/international/McDermott/Network-Centric-Warfare.pdf

world.’3However,this isalsoa style of warfare whichdepends heavily oncommunications, henceRussia’sparticularinterestinusing jamming, spoofing andhacking to interferewith theenemy’s ability to gather,transmit and useinformation. More generally,while Russia makes seriousefforts to adapt to network-centric warfare,4this is notjust about organization,technology and tactics, itdemands a much moredramatic redefinition of thewholegame.

Meanwhile, war becomesmore expensive. A WorldWar Two P-51 Mustangfighter cost around $51,000in 1945, equivalent toaround $675,000 today; thecurrent F-22 in service withthe US Airforce cost around

3Conversation, Moscow, April20164For an excellent analysis ofthis, see Roger McDermott,Russian Perspective onNetwork-Centric Warfare: theKeyAimofSerdyukov’sReform(FMSO, 2010) @http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/Collaboration/international/McDermott/Network-Centric-Warfare.pdf

42

$340 million apiece. 5 Ofcourse,thecapabilitiesofthelatter are similarly orders ofmagnitude higher, but thesimple fact that modern,high-tech war is pro-hibitivelycostly.

It also has a far greater andperhaps even moreimportant political price tagattached. Democraticelectorates—and thuspoliticiansseekingelection—haveshown themselveseverless willing to acceptcasualties lightly. The waythedeathsof241USMarinesin the 1983 Beirut barracksbombing, and 1993 ‘BlackHawk Down’ incident inMogadishu, contributedmarkedly to theearlyendofmissions in Lebanon andSomalia respectively wereseveral times raised byRussian analysts inconversation as evidence ofthis trend, magnified by theimpactofthemodernmedia.

Moscow thus had particularreasontolookatwaystousepolitical and information

5 The National Interest, 30August 2016 @http://nationalinterest.org/feature/revealed-how-the-us-air-force-almost-brought-back-the-p-51-17525

operations to capitalize on aperceived Western re-luctance to engage in openhostilities and to undermineany will to resist itsencroachments. In Savinkinand Domnin’s 2007collection Groznoe oruzhie:Malaia voina, partizanstvo idrugie vidy asimmetrichnogovoevaniya v svete naslediyarusskikh voennykh myslitelei(‘Terrible Weapons: smallwar,partisanandothertypesof asymmetrical conflict inlight of the legacy ofRussianmilitary thinkers’)they explored how statesmayuseguerrilla-like tacticsto bring pressure to bear onenemies while maintainingdeniability,forexample.6

Hence, the opportunities ininformation operationsbecame all the more centralto Russian discussions. In acrucial study in the journalVoennaya mysl’, ColonelSergei Chekhinov, head oftheGeneralStaff’sCentreforMilitaryStrategicStudiesand6 A. E. Savinkin and I. V.Domnin (eds), Groznoeoruzhie: Malaya voina,partizanstvo i drugie vidyasimmetrichnogo voevaniya vsvete naslediya russkikhvoennykh myslitelei (Russkiiput’,2007).

43

his colleague Lt. GeneralSergei Bogdanov noted in2011that

strategic informationwarfare plays animportant role indisrupting military andgovernment leadershipand air and spacedefense systems,misleading the enemy,forming desirablepublic opinions,organizing anti-government activities,and conducting othermeasures in order todecrease thewill of theopponenttoresist.7

7Sergei Chekinov and SergeiBogdanov, ‘Vliyanienepriamykh deistvii nakharaktersovremennoivoiny,’Voennayamysl,June2011

Rather than a tacticalresponse to a specificsituation, though, as notedabove this can be located inlong-standing Russiandiscussions about the waythat the fog of war and themorale on the home frontcan be weaponized duringthe prelude to battle. It alsodraws on a long tradition ofRussian interest inemphasizing the politicaldimensionofwar.

44

7.TraditionsofPoliticalWarfare

Where force is necessary,there it must be appliedboldly, decisively andcompletely. But one mustknowthe limitationsof force;onemustknowwhentoblendforcewithamaneuver,ablowwithanagreement.

- LeonTrotsky1

From the tsars through theBolsheviks, the Russianshave long been accustomedto a style of warfare thatrefuses to acknowledge anyhard and fast distinctionsbetween overt and covert,kinetic and political, andembracesmuchmoreeagerlythe irregular and thecriminal, the spook and theprovocateur, the activist andthe fellow-traveler.Sometimes,thishasbeenoutofchoiceorconvenience,butoften it has been a responseto the time-honoredchallenge of seeking to playas powerful an imperial role

1 Leon Trotsky, What Next?(1932) @https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1932-ger/

aspossiblewithonly limitedresources.

In the West, for example,there has been a habit oftreating counter-insurgencyandstate-to-statewarfareascognate but different. TheRussians have long provenmore comfortable applyingthe political lessons of theformer to the latter. Indeed,theirterm‘smallwar,’whichin literal terms the same as‘guerrilla,’ has a distinctlydifferent sense, as it appliesto limited and deniableoperations by governmentforces just as much as theactivities of insurgents.Under theBolsheviks, it alsoacquired a more explicitlypolitical dimension: thedivision between the

From the tsars through theBolsheviks, the Russians havelongbeenaccustomedtoastyleof warfare that refuses toacknowledge anyhard and fastdistinctions between overt andcovert,kineticandpolitical,andembraces much more eagerlythe irregular and the criminal,the spook and the provocateur,the activist and the fellow-traveler.

45

government with its plansandthegeneralsexpectedtoaccomplish the militarydimensionofthoseplanswasintentionally blurred. TheRedGuard and then theRedArmy was expected to befully engaged in addressingthe ideological intent ofnational strategy and beaware of the political intentofitsactions.

As a result, the Bolsheviksundoubtedlyhada relativelymoderntakeon ‘smallwars.’Although there is literaturedating back to the tsaristera,2contemporary Russianwritings about ‘small wars’tend explicitly to trace theirpedigreebacktoearlySovietworkssuchasM.A.Drobov’sMalaya voina: partizanstvo idiversii (‘SmallWar:partisancombat and diversionaryattacks’) from 1931. TheEstonians, after all, rightlynotethattheSovietsusedthesamekindofmixofforcesas

2Notably including I. V Vuich,Malaya voina (1850), I. P.Liprandi, Nekotoryezamechaniya po povodu dvukhvyshedshikh pod zaglabiem‘malaya voina’ (1851), N. D.Novitskii, Lektsii maloi voiny,chitaniye v Elisaveter (1865),and F. K. Gershel'manPartizanskayavoina(1885).

in Crimea—troops withoutinsignia, local proxies andthethreatofafullinvasion—in a failed but not forgottenoperation in 1924. 3Furthermore, the counter-insurgencyapproachappliedin Central Asia by Lenin’sCommission on TurkestanAffairs,Turkkommissiya, wasin many ways ahead of itstime in the integration ofmilitary and politicaloperations, governmenttroops, militias and covertoperators.4

Likewise, Soviet militarythinkers had been ahead ofthe curve in understandingthat warfare was moving

3Merle Maigre, ‘Nothing Newin Hybrid Warfare: TheEstonian Experience and.Recommendations for NATO,’German Marshall Fund of theUnited States Policy Brief,February20154I explore this in more detailin ‘Hybrid, ambiguous, andnon-linear? How new isRussia’s “new way of war”?’,SmallWars&Insurgencies, 27,2(2016)

Far from new ways of war, inmany ways both hybrid andpolitical war can be seen asrevivals of Soviet-era methods,adaptedtothemoderncontext.

46

beyond the front line andinto an enemy’s rear. Thiswas central to MikhailTukhachevskii’s concepts ofDeepBattleinthe1920sand1930s, also pickedupbyhiscontemporary GeorgiiIsserson, who argued thatpastnotionsofwarfarewereoutdatedbecauseofthis:‘theneutralization and attack ofthe defense were conductedonly along the front line ofdirect combat contact. Thedefensive depths remaineduntouched.’5Combined withthe interest inguerrilla-styleoperations noted above, andalso the strong role of boththe intelligence services andalso the Communist Party’sactive measures arms 6

5 Georgii Isserson,Evolutsiyaoperativnogoiskusstva (1936), quote fromThe Evolution of OperationalArt, (2013), translation byBruceMenning,p.98.6Between1921and1939, theeuphemistic InternationalLiaison Department (OMS) oftheMoscow-basedCommunistInternational, Comintern, wasa clandestine service engagedin running agents, subversionand if need be sabotage. Evenbefore the Comintern wasabolished in 1943, the OMShad been disbanded, but theinternational Communist

helped ensure thatwhat themilitary emphasis onattacking the enemy’s rearalso extended to politicaloperations.

When they did, they werealso able to draw on anespecially rich experience ofinformation operations, inwhich many have seen theroots of today’s activities.7ToomuchismadeofRussia’ssupposed commitment to‘reflexive control’—described as a means ofconditioning an opponent‘voluntarily’ to make thedecision you want him tomake—which is neitherespecially unique noractually central to itsplanning and operational

movement continued to beused as a front and supportbasefortheSovietintelligenceservices.7 See, for example, MariaSnegovaya,Putin’sInformationWarfare in Ukraine, ISWRussiaReportNo.1(2015),@http://understandingwar.org/report/putins-information-warfare-ukraine-soviet-origins-russias-hybrid-warfare;andTimothyThomas,‘Russia’s Reflexive ControlTheory And The Military,’Journal of Slavic MilitaryStudies17,2(2004)

47

cycles. Nonetheless, theSoviets were especiallyconcerned with propaganda,misinformation and politicalmanipulation, oftenwith thesame goal of maskingunderlying weaknesses. 8This tradition also lives on,enriched by theopportunities in the new,diffuse and lightning-speedmediaage.

8SeeVictorMadeira,Britanniaand the Bear: The Anglo-Russian Intelligence Wars,1917-1929 (Boydell, 2014);Ion Pacepa, Disinformation(WND, 2013); Steve Abrams,‘Beyond Propaganda: SovietActive Measures in Putin'sRussia,’Connections 15, 1(2016)

Farfromnewwaysofwar,inmany ways both hybrid andpolitical war can thus beseenasrevivalsofSoviet-eramethods, adapted to themoderncontext.

48

8. Modern Russia’sDeinstitutionalization

…what distinguishes thecurrent Russian governmentfrom the erstwhile SovietleadersfamiliartotheWestisits rejection of ideologicalconstraints and the completeeliminationofinstitutions.

- RussianOligarch-turned-dissident MikhailKhodorkovsky1

Finally, while Moscow haspractical reasons and anhistoricalbiasencouragingitto adopt the kind ofwarfighting approach underdiscussion,italsoreflectsthepoliticaldefinitionsofPutin’sRussia. One distinctiveaspect of its recentcampaigns, from politicalones against the West tomilitaryones inUkraine,hasbeen a blurring of theborders between state,parastate, mercenary anddupe. The importance of

1Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ‘PlanforlifeafterPutin,’Politico,10June 2016 @http://www.politico.eu/article/life-after-vladimir-putin-eu-russia-relations-sanctions-kremlin-moral-boundaries-mikhail-khodorkovsky/

national mobilization,discussed below, extends tominingsocietyasawholeforsemi-autonomous assets,whethereagerinternettrollsand ‘patriotic hackers’ orCossack volunteers andmercenarygangsters.

When Nemeth originallyposited the notion of hybridwarfare in thecontextof theChechen war, it was rootedin his belief that Chechensociety was itself a hybrid,stillsomewherebetweenthemodernandthepre-modern,where traditional forms ofsocial organization, notablethefamilyandtheteip(clan)couldbeusedtomobilizeforwar in ways that need notdistinguishbetween‘regular’and ‘irregular’ forms of war.Hence, a hybrid societyfoughtahybridwar.

The ‘hybridity’ of Russianoperationslikewisereflectsaconceptuallyanalogous,evenif operationally very

The ‘hybridity’ of Russianoperations reflects aconceptually analogous, even ifoperationally very different‘hybridity’oftheRussianstate.

49

different ‘hybridity’ of theRussian state. Through the1990s and into Putinism ithas, however you choose todefine it, either failed toinstitutionalize or activelydeinstitutionalized. This is apatrimonial, hyper-presidential regime char-acterizedbythepermeabilityof boundaries betweenpublic and private, domesticand external. Lackingmeaningful rule of law orchecksandbalances,withoutdrawing too heavy-handed acomparison with fascism,Putin’s Russia seems toembody, in its own chaoticand informal way,Mussolini’s dictum ‘tuttonello Stato, niente al di fuoridello Stato, nulla contro loStato’: everything inside theState, nothing outside theState, nothing against theState.2

Given that, after all, stateinstitutions are so oftenregarded as personal2 As a point of interest,Mussolini sent what could becalled ‘littleblackshirtmen’toSpain in 1936-39 to fight onFranco’s side during the civilwar, notionally all volunteers(as the Voluntary TroopsCorps) and initially withoutinsignia…

fiefdoms and piggy banks,officials and even officersfreely engage in commercialactivity, and the RussianOrthodox Church ispractically an arm of theKremlin, theinfusionofnon-military instruments intomilitary affairs was almostinevitable. Beyond that,though, Putin’s Russia hasbeen characterized—in thepast, at least3—by multiple,overlapping agencies, a‘bureaucratic pluralism’intended as much to permitthe Kremlin to divide andrule as for any practicaladvantages. This is clearlyvisiblewithintheintelligenceand security realm, from theintrusion of the FSB—originally intended as apurely domestic agency—into foreign operations, tocompetition overresponsibility for info-rmation operations. At anearly stage in thedevelopment of theargument on ‘information3The proposal in 2016 of anew ‘Ministry of NationalSecurity’—still, as of writing,unconfirmed—wouldrepresent a distinct breakfrom tradition and aconsolidation of multipleservicesintoonesinglesuper-agency.

50

troops’ following theGeorgian war,4for instance,theFSBappearedpubliclytodenounce plans by themilitarytodeveloptheirowncapability, stating that thiswas their preserve. Under a2013presidentialdecree,theFSB was tasked withsecuring national inform-ation resources, but thisapparentmonopolyseemstohavebeeneroded,asthereismuch anecdotal evidencesuggesting GRU units activein information warfare inUkraine.

As a result, it is not simplythat Moscow chooses toignore those boundaries weare used to in the Westbetween state and private,military and civilian, legaland illegal. It is that thoseboundaries are much lessmeaningfulinRussianterms,andadditionallystraddledbya range of duplicative andeven competitive agencies.This can get in the way ofcoherent policy and createproblemsof redundancyandeven contradictory goals,such as the 2016hack ofUS4 Keir Giles, ‘InformationTroops: A Russian CyberCommand?,’ in ThirdInternational Conference onCyberConflict(CCDCOE,2011)

Democratic NationalCommittee servers, whereFSB and GRU operationsappeartohavebeenworkingat crosspurposes.5However,it also creates a challengethat is complex, multi-faceted and inevitablydifficultforWesternagenciesto comprehend, let alonecounter.

5Dmitri Alperovich, ‘Bears inthe Midst: Intrusion into theDemocratic NationalCommittee,’ CrowdStrike, 15June 2016 @https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/; Thomas Rid, ‘AllSigns Point to Russia BeingBehind the DNC Hack,’Motherboard, 25 July 2016 @http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-signs-point-to-russia-being-behind-the-dnc-hack

51

PartThree:WeaponsoftheNewWar

ccepting that Moscowhas by nomeans turned

its back on conventionalwarfare,nonethelessthereissomething to the undoubtedhype.Russiadoesnotbelievewarsinthemaincanbewonwith misdirection anddisinformation. After all,even Crimea needed thedeployment of special forcesto ‘seal the deal’ and turneffective preparation into afait accompli. Instead, it hasdeveloped, as much throughmisunderstanding Westernapproaches as anything else,a distinct and bifurcatedapproach to theuseof thesenon-linear, sometimes-covert, sometimes-ambiguous, sometimes-brazen military-politicalmethods both to bringpressure to bear on otherstates as an accompanimentto more conventionalgeopoliticsorelsetopreparethe battlefield beforeoutright intervention. Thereis the out-and-out non-

kinetic ‘political war,’ andthen the kind of war whichmay start that way but thenescalateintothe‘hybrid’andpotentially thence into theregular military con-frontation.

Others have looked at theovert military capabilities.Here, it is therefore worthexploring Russia’s currentand emerging capabilities infour main areas in whichtheir practice differs fromthe West’s: the use ofmilitary personnel inpolitical operations; the roleof non-state and deniablearmed auxiliaries; theintelligenceagencies;andthegrowing importance ofcivilianassets.

A

There is the out-and-out non-kinetic ‘political war,’ and thenthekindofwarwhichmaystartthatwaybut then escalate intothe ‘hybrid’ and potentiallythenceintotheregularmilitaryconfrontation.

52

9.‘PolitePeople’:ConventionalMilitary,UnconventionalUses

Crimean self-defense forceswere of course backed byRussian servicemen… Theyactedveryappropriately

- VladimirPutin,20141

As Michael Kofman hasnoted, ‘Ukraine was decidedby large-caliber artillery,[Multiple Launch RocketSystems], and tanks; notinnovative hybridapproaches.’ 2 Whateverother means may beused, armed forceremains crucial inRussia’s approach,whether in conventionalengagements (such astheairstrikesinSyriaorthe surges into theDonbas to defeat

1 In televised question-and-answer session, reported byRT on 17 April 2014 @https://www.rt.com/news/crimea-defense-russian-soldiers-108/2 Michael Kofman, ‘Russianhybridwarfareandotherdarkarts,’ War On The Rocks, 11March 2016 @http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/russian-hybrid-warfare-and-other-dark-arts/

governmentoffensives)orassymbols of political control,as in Crimea. WhateverRussia’s regular militarycapabilities,3what is worthexploring here is how theRussians are developingforces able to operate in theearlier, not-quite-war,preparatory stages of ahybrid conflict and maybeeven in some limited andspecific ways in a political

3 See in particular, JakobHedenskog et al, RussianMilitary Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective—2013 (FOI,2013) and Alexander Golts &Michael Kofman, Russia’sMilitary:Assessment,Strategy,and Threat (Center on GlobalInterests, 2016) @http://globalinterests.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Russias-Military-Center-on-Global-Interests-2016.pdf

TheSpetsnazareheirtoatraditiongoingback to the experience of theNKVD secret police in the SpanishCivil War and working withpartisansintheSecondWorldWar,beingtaskedwithcovertlytraining,mobilizing, supporting and leadingirregularforces

53

one,too.

Whether called ‘little greenmen’ (the Western term) or‘polite people’ (the Russian),the deployment of Russianspecial forces in Crimea inFebruary and March 2014,clearlyrecognizablebutbareof insignia and at the timedeniedbyMoscow,createdanew trope. The less elegantuse of Russian troops in theDonbas since hasconsolidated a belief that acentral element of thepurported ‘newRussianwayofwar’ involvesthedeniableuse of such forces. Not thatthis is really new; theRussians’ traditional faith inmaskirovka makes suchtactics fair game in thefuture, as they were in thepast. 4 Besides which,

4 See, for example, V. A.Matsulenko, Operativnayamaskirovka voisk (Voenizdat:1975); John Erickson, ‘TheSoviet Military Potential forSurprise Attack: Surprise,Superiority and Time,’ inRobertPfaltzgraff,UriRa'anan& Warren Milberg (eds),Intelligence Policy andNational Security (PalgraveMacmillan, 1981); TimothyShea, ‘Post-SovietMaskirovka,Cold War Nostalgia, and

although their gambit wonthem a few hours’ confusionin Crimea (admittedlyessential ones), preciselybecause it flew in the faceofdiplomatic, if not militaryetiquette,5this is not a tacticeasy to repeat. Estonianarmy commander Gen. RihoTerrasspokeformanyfront-line officers when hedescribedthenewlessonforNATO: when faced witharmed men of uncertainprovenance crossing yourborder,‘youshouldshootthefirstonetoappear.’6

The Russians have certainlybeen building and honingscalable interventioncapabilities that span themilitary and intelligencerealms and which can beused effectively inconjunction with politicaland economic instrumentsand in deniable operations.Peacetime Engagement,’MilitaryReview82,3(2002).5 Roy Allison, ‘Russian“deniable” intervention inUkraine: how andwhy Russiabroke the rules,’ InternationalAffairs90,6(2014)6 Interviewed in FinancialTimes, 13 May 2015, @https://www.ft.com/content/03c5ebde-f95a-11e4-ae65-00144feab7de

54

Firstandforemost, thesearethe Spetsnaz (‘SpecialDesignation’) special forces,but also elements of theVDV—paratroopers—andtheNavalInfantrymarines.

The Spetsnaz have recentlybeen expanding, in partbecause of the perceivedneed to secure the 2014Sochi Winter Olympics. 7 Anew brigade and regimenthas been added to theirstrength and, mostimportantly, all existingbrigades have been broughtto full establishmentstrength. There are thussome 17,000 of them, butwhilethissoundsimpressive,they are not all true specialforcesintheWesternsense.8Some 20% are stillconscripts serving one-yearterms (in theory these units7AlthoughonemilitaryinsidertoldmethatSochiwasmerelythe excuse given by theGeneral Staff to convince aKremlin desperate to ensuretheGamespassedsmoothly.8 Mark Galeotti, Spetsnaz:Russia’sspecialforces (Osprey,2015). See also Tor Bukkvoll,‘Military Innovation UnderAuthoritarian Government—the Case of Russian SpecialOperations Forces,’ Journal ofStrategicStudies38,5(2015)

will be all-volunteer by theend of 2018), and Spetsnazare trained for larger-scaleoperations, making thembest considered exped-itionary light infantrycomparablewith theUS75thRangers or the UK’s 16th AirAssaultRegiment.

Appreciating the need fortruly ‘special’ special forces,abletomountsmall,complexand deniable operations, in2012 the General Staffformed a new SpecialOperations Command (KSO)on the basis of an existingtraining center, built aroundthe elite (but regimental-strength) 346th Brigade andits air and support assets.9TheKSOmustbeconsideredmuch more closelycomparable toWestern ‘TierOne’ special forces such asDelta and the SAS. It is alsosupplemented by otherspecialist elements attachedto the other intelligence andsecurityagencies.

9 Izvestiya, November 27,2012;DmitryTrenin, ‘Russia’sNewTipoftheSpear,’ForeignPolicy, May 8, 2013 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/08/russias-new-tip-of-the-spear/

55

These various units haveseen considerable denied orcovert activities of late.Spetsnaz alongside NavalInfantry seized Crimea. 10Spetsnaz have beenoperating since 2014 in theDonbas11andnow inSyria.12This does not detract fromtheir traditional functions oflong-range reconnaissance,sabotageandsubversioninamajor war as well as

10See Alexey Nikolsky, ‘Little,Green,andPolite:thecreationof Russian special operationforces’ and Anton Lavrov,‘Russian Again: the militaryoperationforCrimea,’inColbyHoward & Ruslan Pukhov(eds),BrothersArmed:MilitaryAspectsoftheCrisisinUkraine,2nd edition (EastView Press,2015)11See Igor Sutyagin, ‘RussianForces in Ukraine,’ RUSIBriefing Paper 9 (2015) @https://rusi.org/publication/briefing-papers/russian-forces-ukraine; Tor Bukkvoll,‘Russian Special OperationsForces inCrimeaandDonbas,’Parameters46,2(2016)12 See Mark Galeotti, ‘Thethree faces of RussianSpetsnaz in Syria,’WarontheRocks, March 21, 2016 @http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/the-three-faces-of-russian-spetsnaz-in-syria/

counter-insurgency op-erations. Rather, as militaryforces with an explicitsecondary political andsometimescovertdimension,whose missions also includeeverything from assass-ination to liaison with localinsurgents(akinto,albeitnotthesameastheGreenBeretsin Vietnam), they have aseries of roles, somethingemphasized by their returntotheGRU:

1. ‘Tip of the Spear.’ Theprimary mission for theSpetsnaz as a wholeremains to supportconventional militaryoffensive operations.This ranges from seizingairfields to allow otherforces to deploy (as inPrague 1968 and Kabul1979; in the latter casethe so-called ‘MoslemBattalion’ was made upofcommandosofCentralAsian appearance suchthat they were trulydeniable) to providingdeep reconnaissance(such as their currentrole as forward aircontrollersinSyria13).

13‘Peskov podtverdil Reutersgibel’ pyatogo voennogo voperatsii v Sirii,’ RBK, March

56

2. ‘Agents of Chaos.’ TheKSO in particularrepresents a force offlexible operators inpolitical operations,including creatinginstability which can inturnbeusedasapretextfor more overt andintensive intervention.As Gerasimov put it in2013 article, there isscope for the “open useof forces— often underthe guise ofpeacekeeping and crisisregulation…’ 14 Morebroadly, special forcescanalsobeusedasforcemultipliers for otherforms of attack. InCrimea, forexample,oneof their key objectiveswas the early seizure ofthe Simferopol internetexchange point (IXP),accompanied bytargeting thetelecommunicationscables linking the

17, 2016 @http://www.rbc.ru/politics/17/03/2016/56eac8b09a794743b2d1a69114 Valeryi Gerasimov,‘Tsennost’ nauki vpredvidenii.’ Voenno-promyshlennyi kur’er,February27,2013

peninsula with themainland.15The result ofphysical control of theinternet and telephoneinfrastructure wascompleteRussiancontrolof the informationenvironmentinCrimea.16From this,wider lessonshave been drawn aboutthe information warfarevalue of seizing physicalcontrol of strategicallysignificant internetinfrastructure, includingsatellites, subsea cables,IXPs andmore. After all,this permits thedestruction, interdictionor modification ofinformation passingthrough theinfrastructure, a keyfacilitator forinformationdominance.

15‘V AP Krim nevidomimi uviis’kovyi formi povtornozablokovano dekil’ka vuzlivzv’yazku,’Ukrtelekom,1March2014, @http://www.ukrtelecom.ua/presscenter/news/official?id=12038916Shane Harris, ‘Hack Attack.Russia's first targets inUkraine: its cell phones andInternet lines,’ Foreign Policy,3 March 2014 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/03/hack-attack/

57

3. ‘Covert Controllers.’ TheSpetsnaz are heir to atradition going back tothe experience of theNKVDsecretpoliceintheSpanish Civil War andworking with partisansin the Second WorldWar, being tasked withcovertly training,mobilizing, supportingand leading irregularforces. This is currentlyespeciallyrelevantintheDonbas, where the GRUappears to have primaryresponsibility formarshaling the‘volunteers’—discussedbelow—and also bothsupporting and some-times disciplining localmilitias. A spate ofmysterious assassinationof especially in-convenient or in-dependent militiacommanders in theDonbas, for example, iswidely assumed to havebeen carriedoutbyGRUorFSBSpetsnaz.17

17 Including ‘Batman’(Alexander Bednov) andAlexei Mozgovoi in 2015 and‘Motorola’ (Arsen Pavlov) in2016, along with a slew oflesser figures, although it isdifficult sometimes to know

Special forces are at oncepowerful and fragile. Theycan strike quickly, areflexible, and find it farmoreeasily to operate covertlyand deniably thanconventional units. Theycannot, though, seize andhold targets for long or lastin toe-to-toe combat withregular forces. Their use asother than tactical assets isthus typically in conjunctionwith wider intelligenceoperations or militaryassaults.

exactlywheretodrawthelinebetween politicalassassinations and murdersstemming from personal andcriminalfeuds.

58

10. ‘Impolite People’: Militias andGangsters

I won’t deny that there werevolunteers fighting there [inthe Donbas], the best of theRussian army. I had severalofficers in my brigade whospent their vacation fightingforNovorossiya.

- Igor Strelkov (Girkin),former‘defenseminister’of the unrecognizedDonetsk People’sRepublic,20141

One way of deploying bothpolitical and coercive poweris to employ sometimescovert, sometimes deniableirregular assets. TheRussians, especially throughthe GRU, have beenespecially assiduous in thisapproach, also visible inTransnistria and Georgia, tothe point that it has becomemore than just an ad hocsituational option, as isgenerallythecaseinWesternoperations.

1 In a video statementsummarized @http://www.interpretermag.com/is-colonel-strelkov-making-a-comeback-or-has-he-been-tamed/

One of the roles of theintelligence agencies is tohelp mobilize and controlauxiliary forces in localconflicts. They providepolitical cover, cannonfodder, forces fordisruption,and muscle for local proxyregimes. In Crimea, forexample, while the real taskofsecuringthepeninsulaandblocking off UkrainiangarrisonsfelltoeliteRussianforces, ‘local self-defensevolunteers’ drawn largelyfrom local organized crimegroups loyal to Moscow’slocal premier-in-waitingSergei Aksenov—himselfgang-connected 2 —providedmuch less professional butveryvisiblegunmentoguardgovernment buildings. Sincethen,suchforceshaveplayedthe primary role in theDonbas, heavily supportedby a mix of regular Russian2 Spiegel, March 25, 2014;Taras Kuzio, ‘Crime andpolitics in Crimea,’ oD:Russia,March 14, 2014 @https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/taras-kuzio/crime-and-politics-in-crimea-Aksyonov-Goblin-Wikileaks-Cables

59

units, ad hoc collections ofnationalistsandadventurers,and everything in between.These auxiliaries havelargely been organized bythe GRU, operating out of aregional headquarters inRostov-on-Don, close to theborder.3

These kinds of forces fallbroadlyintothreecategories,each with their owndistinctive strengths,weaknesses and modalitiesofuse:

1. Volunteers andMercenaries. First, thereare Russians officiallyoperatingwhollyoutsideKremlin control, yetmaking no bones abouttheir origins. A classicexample would includethe Cossacks. They havebeen used as deniablegovernment assets sincewellbeforethePutinera,whetherduring the anti-Jewish pogroms beforethe 1917 Revolution orin the Transdniestriansecession war of 1992.4Under Putin, though

3UNIAN,October10,20144 This was confirmed by aformer GRU officer inconversation in February2016

there has been aparticular allianceformed and Cossacksfought in Chechnya, inGeorgia, and now in theDonbas. 5 Beyond them,there are individualRussian soldiers‘volunteering’ in theDonbas while ‘on leave’(even though this istechnically againstmilitary law), ormembersofparamilitaryand violent groups suchas the Night Wolvesmotorcycle gang.6Thesemercenaries, nationalistsand adventurers aregenerallyofquestionable

5SeeTomášBaranec, ‘RussianCossacks in Service of theKremlin: RecentDevelopments and Lessonsfrom Ukraine,’ RussianAnalyticalDigest 153 (25 July2014) @www.css.ethz.ch/publications/pdfs/RAD-153-9-12.pdf;Christopher Gilley,‘Otamanshchyna?: The Self-Formation of Ukrainian andRussian Warlords at theBeginning of the Twentiethand Twenty-First Centuries.’AbImperio2015,3(2015)6The Estonians, for example,have openly labeled theNightWolvesasecurity threat.EestiPäevaleht,27June2013

60

military value butconsiderable enthusiasmand also useful political-propaganda tools,demonstrating thealleged popular supportforoperations.

2. Deniable Instruments.Then there are Russiansin deniable, notionallyindependent butessentially state-controlled structures.Some of the Russiansoldiers ‘volunteering’ intheDonbas, for example,or the Cossacks, are notindividuals attachingthemselves to differentlocalmilitias somuch asformed elements thatappear directly orindirectly under Russiancontrol. They offersomething of a balance,less deniable but moredisciplined and effective.We may eventually seemercenariesworking forother Russian privatemilitary and securitycompanies filling thisrole. Putin has given hissupport for the creationof a legal basis forRussian private militarycompanies, but alreadymercenaries have beendeployed in Syria. First,as the distinctly

ineffective SlavonicCorps who had a short-lived tour there in 2013,butsincethentherathermore effective unitknown as Wagner. 7 Inthe future, this maybecomemore common ameans of projectingKremlin power. Theseforcesmaybemarshaledby the FSB or the GRU,andmaywell as a resultbe working to differentdetailagendasincounty.

3. Warlords. Finally,Moscow clearly makesfull use of autonomouslocal militias and otheragents of coercion,control and co-

7Michael Weiss, ‘The case ofthe Keystone Cossacks’,Foreign Policy, November 21,2013 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/11/21/the-case-of-the-keystone-cossacks/; ‘Onisrazhalis’ za Pal’miru,’Fontanka, March 29, 2016 @http://www.fontanka.ru/2016/03/28/171/; Mark Galeotti,‘Moscow’s mercenaries inSyria,’WarontheRocks, April5, 2016 @http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/moscows-mercenaries-in-syria/.

61

llaboration, as proxiesandclients.

TheSecondChechenWarwas to a considerableextent won thanks to‘Chechen-ization’andtheincreasing use of localwarlords and militias tofight Chechen withChechen.InGeorgia,bothAbkhaz and SouthOssetian fighters playedsignificant roles. InCrimea and amongst thefirst fighters in theDonbas were defectorsfrom theBerkutspecial police,organized crimegroups seeing achance toconvert muscleinto territorialpower, streetgangs and personalfollowings. Again, whilegenerally controlof suchassets would be a GRUrole, in Ukraine wherethe FSB also has anhistoricstake,thiscanbea disputed issue.However, as isdiscussedbelow, the level ofcontrol the Kremlin canassert is sometimeslimited.

These categories are, ofcourse, broad and

overlapping. An interestingtwist on this model wasprovided by the VostokBattalion, a forcepredominantly of Chechensoldiers, leavened withOssetians and othervolunteers from theCaucasus. It was formedaround a core of veteransfromtheoriginalbattalion,aunit of Chechens whichfoughtintheSecondChechenWar and the Georgian Warfor the GRU before beingdisbanded. The GRU formedthe second iteration of the

battalion in 2014and sent it intoDonetsk, where asits first act it seizedthe rebel head-quarters in whatappears to havebeen a pointed

reminder that they operatedon Moscow’s sufferance. Inshort order, a Ukrainian,AlexanderKhodakovsky,wasappointed to head thebattalion and many of theChechens were withdrawn,replaced by locals. In thisrespect,Vostokwasathinly-deniable Russian force thatthen became a local militia,

The moredeniable theforce, typicallythe moretenuous thecontrol.

62

bridging the two varieties ofparamilitaryused.8

Eitherway,itisimportanttonote, though, that there aresevere limitations to suchunits.Insomecases,theyarehard to control. RamzanKadyrov,leaderofChechnya,whose ‘Kadyrovtsy’ servedbothhisfatherandthenhim,helped crush the rebels butin the process has become avirtually independent ruleroftherepublic,fundedbythefederal budget. 9 The moredeniable the force, typicallythe more tenuous thecontrol. As independentactors, they can and dodemand that Moscowaccommodate their politicaland economic agendas, fromproviding subsidies andpayoffs through to shapingpolicy. They are also8ClaireBigg,‘VostokBattalion,A Powerful New Player InEasternUkraine,’RFE/RL,May30, 2014 @http://www.rferl.org/content/vostok-battalion-a-powerful-new-player-in-eastern-ukraine/25404785.html9 Tomáš Šmíd and MiroslavMareš, “‘Kadyrovtsy’: Russia’sCounterinsurgency Strategyand the Wars of ParamilitaryClans,” Journal of StrategicStudies38,5(2015)

frequentlyundisciplined,andthis also can createreputational costs, some-thing most starkly visiblewith the shooting down ofMalaysian Airliner MH17over the Donbas, almostcertainly by local militiasusingaRussian-suppliedSA-17 Buk SAM, yet not onRussianorders.

Secondly,theyareoftenofatbestindifferentquality:thereis an inverse relationshipbetween deniability andeffectiveness. In the Donbas,the conflict really began inApril 2014, with the bulk ofinsurgent operations carriedoutbylocals,supportedbyarelative handful of Russianparamilitaries. Only in lateMay, as government forcesand their irregular allieslooked likely to be able totriumph on the battlefield,did Moscow begin seriouslyto infiltrate its ownconventional forces deniablyinto the conflict, along withsuch elements as Vostok. ByAugust, a new approach hadbeen adopted, and Russianregularcontingentsincludingarmored units andparatroopers were beingdeployed. 10 Although the10 See Michael Kofman,‘Russian hybrid warfare and

63

conflict remains ‘hybrid’ inthat Moscow continues todeny its role, and terroristand other non-militaryattacks are being launchedregularly, the true ‘hybrid’phase of the conflict lastedonly a few months, andended precisely becausemethodseffectiveincreatingchaos were ineffective inharnessingit.11

other dark arts,’ War On TheRocks, 11 March 2016, @http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/russian-hybrid-warfare-and-other-dark-arts/11Sergey Minasyan, ‘“Hybrid”vs. “Compound” War: lessonsfrom the Ukraine conflict,’PONARS Eurasia Policy MemoNo. 401 (2015) @http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/hybrid-vs-compound-war-lessons-ukraine-conflict

64

11. The Intelligence Agencies: Russia’sStrongLeftArms

‘For the past ten years, theWesthasbeentryingtobringusdown,andwe[intelligenceofficers] have been the front-linesoldiers.’

- A recently-retired,formerSVRofficer1

Russia also has a distinctiveway of using its intelligenceand security apparatus.These agencies are notsimply or primarilygatherers of information:active measures fromblackmail and subversion toassassination and sabotageare central to their mission.In the West, we havehistorically failed tounderstand them bymirroring our own services,when the best models areprobably wartime sabotageand diversion services suchas World War Two’s USOffice of Strategic Services(OSS) and Britain’s SpecialOperations Executive (SOE).Russia’sintelligenceservices,after all, operate in effect ona permanent wartimefooting. Indeed, this to a1 Conversation, Moscow,January2016

considerable extent eventpre-dates Putin. In his 1999autobiography, formerspymaster Evgeny Primakovwrote that ‘All of us in theleadership of the ForeignIntelligence Service realizedperfectly well that theconcept of the enemywouldnotdisappearwiththeendofthe “Cold War”,’ not leastbecause theWestwas tryingto‘disruptthetrendtowardsthe increasing ra-pprochement with theRussian Federation’ of theotherpost-Sovietstates.’2

2 Evgeny Primakov, Gody vbol’shoypolitike (Sovershennosekretno,1999),pp.133,135

In the West, we havehistorically failed tounderstand Russia’sintelligence services bymirroring our own, when thebest models are probablywartime sabotage anddiversion services such asWorld War Two’s US Office ofStrategic Services (OSS) andBritain’s Special OperationsExecutive (SOE). Russia’sintelligence services, after all,operate in effect on apermanentwartimefooting.

65

The implications of thismindset are serious. 3 Itstrengthenstheservices’roleand self-imagenot simply assources of intelligence forothers, but as active armsofthe state. Believing thatRussia faces a serious, evenexistential threat, they areforward-leaning, believing inthemainactionisbetterthaninaction, and they are muchlessconcernedwithpotentialdiplomatic fallout that theirWestern counterparts.Combined with theencouragement and oper-ationalcoverprovidedbytheKremlin—which appears toheed them much more thanits own ministry of foreignaffairs4—they are prone toengage in active measuresfrom assassinations to3I explore this more in myreport for the EuropeanCouncil on Foreign Relations,Putin’s Hydra: inside Russia’sintelligence services (ECFR,2016), @http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/putins_hydra_inside_russias_intelligence_services4Mark Galeotti, ‘Free SergeiLavrov!,’ Foreign Policy, 17February 2016 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/17/free-sergei-lavrov-putin-russia-syria/

propaganda campaigns, all,as Gerasimov put it,‘nonmilitary means ofachieving political andstrategicgoals.’

All Russia’s ‘true’ specialforces are connected withintelligence agencies: themilitary Spetsnaz aresubordinated to the GRUmilitary intelligence service,with other smaller elementsalso under the ‘SpecialDesignation’rubricinawiderange of other security andintelligence agencies. 5OperatorsfromtheAl’faanti-terrorist groups of theFederal Security Service(FSB) conducted the cross-border kidnap of EstoniansecurityofficerEstonKohverin 2014,6for example, whiletherehavebeenreportsfromSyria of operators from thehighly-secretive Zaslon(‘Barrier’) group of theForeign Intelligence Service(SVR), broadly comparable5See Mark Galeotti, RussianSecurity and ParamilitaryForces since 1991 (Osprey,2013)6Telegraph,19August2015@http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11811729/Russia-jails-Estonian-security-officer-in-top-secret-case.html

66

totheCIA’sSpecialActivitiesDivision or JSOC’sIntelligence SupportActivity.7

The intelligence community—andtheFSBinparticular—also plays a centralcoordinating role incyberwarfare, as well asworking covertly withcriminals, paramilitaries andsimilar non-state actors.Overall, while still primarilyintelligence-gathering assets,theyperformthreekeyrolesintermsofactiveoperations:

1. Pretext. In the age of‘lawfare’ (the deliberateabuse of legal processesto justify aggression orprevent responses) andinformation operations,it becomes especiallyimportant to createnarratives supportive ofRussian activities. Theintelligence agencies areuseful for creating the

7‘Rogozin opublikoval foto sboitsami “Zaslona” v Sirii’,Vzglyad, 24 May 2014 @http://vz.ru/news/2014/5/24/688286.html; ‘”Zaslon” otvrazheskikh agentov’, TV-Zvezda, 22 October 2015 @http://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201510220804-ln18.htm

pretexts for operations.They were, for example,important in en-couraging and su-pporting South Ossetianmilitias to launch theattacks that provoked aGeorgian response in2008, allowing Moscowto claim it was acting todefend its ownpeacekeepers and thecivilian populations. Thepotential penetration ofRussophones in BalticStates primarily by theFSB, and theencouragement ofprotest at theirtreatment, couldconceivably be a futuresimilar excuse for somekind of intervention,although this seemsincreasingly unlikely.While many have theirgrievances, especiallyover native languagerequirements, few showany enthusiasm to swapcitizenship of a rule-of-law-based EuropeanUnion for the RussianFederation.8

8Especially amongst youngerRussophones, the level ofintegration in Estonia—thefront-line state—has beensteadily increasing, for

67

2. Preconditions. Aspreviewed inGerasimov’s article, theagenciescanbepowerfulforcemultipliers used tocreate preconditions forsuccessfulovertorsemi-overt operations. In thecaseoftheannexationofCrimea, for example, notonlydidtheFSBandGRUhelp scout out thebattlespace andmobilizelocal ‘self-defensevolunteers’, they alsohelpeddisruptUkrainiancommandandcontrol,toensure no coherent ortimely response.Likewise, they appear tohave been behindterrorist acts andcyberattacksagainstKievin support of operationsintheDonbas.9

example, according to a 2015survey. ‘Young EstonianRussians feeling moreintegrated,’ Estonian PublicBroadcasting,15 June2015@http://news.err.ee/v/news/politics/society/afe89d41-660d-4e89-a6c7-3672721cf6e2/young-estonian-russians-feeling-more-integrated9 Taras Kuzio, ‘Ukrainereignites,’ Foreign Affairs,January25,2015

3. Paralyzers. Theintelligence agencieshave a significant role indisrupting externalforces that mightotherwise interfere withtheir operations throughstrategic informationoperations,asChekhinovand Bogdanov noted.Dividing NATO and theEuropean Union andcreating suchdistractions as to pre-venttheseagencies fromcountering Moscow’sactivities is a politicalpriority,andtheagencieswork alongside suchover agencies as theMinistry of ForeignAffairs and the state-controlled media to thisend. Estonia’s SecurityPolice, for example,accuse the FSB of notonly penetrating theRussian-speaking pop-ulation but also ofseeking to suborn andcorrupt politicians andopinion-formers ingeneral.10This is a claimechoed elsewhere in theBaltics and, indeed,across Europe as awhole. Close ties with

10EstonianWorldReview,April21,2011

68

Rossotrudnichestvo, theFederal Agency for theCommonwealth ofIndependent States,Compatriots LivingAbroadandInternationalHumanitarian Coop-eration, attest to aparticular interest inusing Russian diasporacommunitiesaspotentialinstruments, even if it isopen to question justhow useful a tactic thiswillprove.11

11 See, for example, OrysiaLutsevych, Agents of theRussianWorld:proxygroupsinthe contested neighbourhood(ChathamHouse,2016)

Theoldclichéthatwhenyouhave a hammer everyproblem looks like a nail ismore than a littleappropriate here. UnderVladimir Putin, the securityand intelligence communityhas done very well, withsteadily growing budgets,ever-broader powers, andthe indulgence and supportof a president who regardsthem fondly as his greatestsupport base. That givesthem a strong political voiceandalsoareasontolobbyfora significant executive role.Both ‘hybrid’ and ‘politicalwar’ grant this community aparticularly central role, andso they are inevitablyamongst their advocates.And so, in circular process,capacity shapes policy, andpolicy shapes investment infurthercapacity.

69

12.WeaponizingCivvy Street:Hackers,BusinesspeopleandBankersasSoldiers

ImustsaythatIdon’tlikethetermhybrid warfare, itsounds far too nice… I wouldliketobringyourattentiontoCRIMINALITYas an aspect ofthenewhybridwar.

- Aivar Jaeski, deputydirector, NATOSTRATCOM Center ofExcellence1

The logic of Russia’smobilization of state andsocietyisthatthisisnotonlyto defend against theperceived Western ‘hybridoffensive’ but also to usenon-military structures,forces and individuals foroffensive politicaloperations. The intelligenceservices, for example, oftenact not alone but inconjunction with other

1AivarJaeski, ‘HybridWarfareon the Rise: A NewDominantMilitary Strategy?, NATOSTRATCOMCOE,24November2015 @http://www.stratcomcoe.org/article-deputy-director-aivar-jaeski-hybrid-warfare-rise-new-dominant-military-strategy (capitals in theoriginal)

bodies, some state, someprivate, some voluntary. Ofcourse,aswithallaspectsofcontemporary Russia’splaybook,thisisbynomeanswholly new. Coercivediplomacy, the support ofuseful parties andindividuals in othercountries, propaganda andeconomic leveragehave longbeen accepted instrumentsof geopolitics. Putin’s Russiais, rather, distinctive in thescaleoftheiruse,andalsointhe seamless integration ofstate and theoretically non-stateactors.

In particular, if today’sRussian style of contestationis described as hybrid warfor the way it blends overtand covert, kinetic andpolitical, then Moscow mustalso be considered themaster of ‘hybrid business,’of developing commercialenterprises—legal andillegal—that ideally makemoney,butatthesametime,whether technically privateconcernsornot,canbeusedfor the state’s purposes. 2

2For more on this, see MarkGaleotti and Anna Arutunyan,

70

Overall, such hybridbusinesses becomeintegrated intotheKremlin’sgeopolitical warfighting inthreemainways:

1. Information warriors: Ihave heard Russiansecurityofficialsdescribethe Russian state-controlled media as‘warriors of the politicalbattleground,’ a termwhich would seem toapply especially directlyto its external networkssuchastheSputniknewsagency and RT multi-lingual TV foreign newsservice. Not only is theRussian TV media—stillthe way most Russiansget their news—directlycontrolledbythestateorelse heavily influencedby it, but there is anextensive array of overtand covert statepropaganda armsoperatingabroad.3There

‘HybridBusiness—therisks inthe Kremlin's weaponizationof the economy,’ RFE/RL, July20, 2016 @http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-commentary-hybrid-business-weaponization-economy/27869714.html3For an excellent study, seePeter Pomerantsev & Michael

is also an array of otherways this is carried out,from the ‘troll farms’adding suitablecomments toweb pages,through the activities ofopen political and socialorganizations4and eventhe suborning andsupporting appropriateopinion shapers, fromjournalists and publicfigures to think tanksand political parties. 5Where possible, variousforms of information

Weiss, The Menace ofUnreality: How the KremlinWeaponizes Information,Culture and Money (IMR,2014)4Foragoodstudyofovertandsemi-overt soft powerorganizations, see OrysiaLutsevych, ‘Agents of theRussian World: Proxy Groupsin the ContestedNeighbourhood’, ChathamHouse Report, April 2016, @https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/agents-russian-world-proxy-groups-contested-neighbourhood5 Fredrik Wesslau, ‘Putin’sfriends in Europe,’ ECFRCommentary,19October2016@http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_putins_friends_in_europe7153

71

warfarearecombined.In2014, for example,Russian media reportedthat Dmitry Yarosh,leader of the UkrainianRight Sectororganization, had usedsocial media to ask theChechen rebels to stageterrorist attacks withinRussia. 6 Yarosh laterstated that his socialmedia account had beenhacked in order to placetheappeal,but theeffectonpublicopinionbothinRussia and Ukraine hadalreadybeensubstantial.They also, wherepossible, use the law tomuzzle critics, withexpensive libel andslandercases.Theroleofthese ‘informationwarriors’ is to disrupthostile and inconvenientmessages through theirown narratives,something especiallyvisibleoverbothUkraineand Syria, but this is along-running theme ofRussian informationoperations.

6 See, for example, the RTreport from 1 March 2014 @https://www.rt.com/news/yarosh-nationalist-address-umarov-380/

2. Economicwarriors: Evensetting aside directeconomic warfare suchas the use of the so-called ‘energy weapon,’something outside thescope of this paper,Russian corporationslobby in their own right,and encourage thosewho work with andbenefit from theiroperationsalsotopushasuitable message. Theyalso use political andpublic relations firms,penetrate businessesusinginvestmentswhosesource and beneficiariesare shrouded behindmultiple shell companiesand obscure offshorejurisdictions and theoutright cooptation oflocal figures (Estonia’sformer presidentToomas Ilves calls this“Schröderizatsiya,” afterthe lucrativeemployment of formerGerman ChancellorGerhard Schröder byGazprom).

Businesses actingnotionally on their owninitiativearealsousedtoprovidefinancialsupportto political and socialmovements Moscow

72

deems convenient,7fromMarine Le Pen’s anti-EUFront Nationale inFrance(whichreceiveda€9 million loan from abankrunbyaclosePutinally 8 ), to the CzechRepublic’s RussophilePresident Miloš Zeman(whose election waspartially bankrolled bythe local head of theRussian oil companyLukoil, allegedly as apersonal donation9). The

7For a useful survey of someactors in Europe, see SusiDennison & Dina Pardijs ‘Theworld according to Europe’sinsurgent parties: Putin,migration and people power,’ECFRReport, 27 June 2016@http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/the_world_according_to_europes_insurgent_parties70558‘Les prêts russes au Frontnational inquiètent leParlementeuropéen,’EurActiv,4 December 2014 @http://www.euractiv.fr/section/europe-de-l-est/news/les-prets-russes-au-front-national-inquietent-le-parlement-europeen/9CzechRadio,23January2013@http://www.radio.cz/en/section/marketplace/if-elected-how-would-milos-zeman-or-

most dangerous use ofsuch tactics is in activeand potential targetterritories, such asUkraine and Moldova,where oligarchs andbusiness groupsdependent on Russiabecome useful localallies.Again,theaimistosway policy towards amore favorabletreatment of Russianadventures.

3. Underworld warriors:Russia is especiallywilling to use organizedcrime as a source ofresources, operationalcapacity andintelligence.10

karel-schwarzenberg-influence-czech-economy. Fora thoughtful assessment ofZeman’s potential value toMoscow, see SławomirBudziak, ‘Czech Echoes of theKremlin's Information War,’NewEasternEurope,30March2015 @http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/articles-and-commentary/1538-czech-echoes-of-the-kremlin-s-information-war10The use of organized crimeas an instrument abroad haslong been an established

73

TheGRUappearstohavebeen themost assiduousin developing suchconnections abroad, butit is not alone.11Whenthe FSB snatched EstonKohver,forexample,thatwas while he wasinvestigating a cross-border cigarette

Russian practice; according toaUSdiplomaticcablereleasedby Wikileaks, Spanishinvestigative magistrate JoséGrindaGonzaleznotedbackin2010 that it is willing to “use[organized crime] groups todowhatever the [governmentof Russia] cannot acceptablydo as a government.” (@http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/247712). ThecrucialroleoftheGRUintheseoperations has emergedmorerecently. For their recoveryand role in the Ukrainianoperations, see Mark Galeotti,‘Crime And Crimea: CriminalsAs Allies AndAgents,’RFE/RLNovember 3, 2014 @http://www.rferl.org/content/crimea-crime-criminals-as-agents-allies/26671923.html11See Mark Galeotti, Putin’sSecret Weapon,’ ForeignPolicy, July 7, 2014 @http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/07/putins-secret-weapon/

smugglingoperationthatis likely to have beenoperating with theRussians’ sanction inreturn for a share of theprofitsbeingprovidedasoperational funds withno ostensible Kremlinconnection. Morestrikingly, freelancecomputer hackers (somemercenary, some‘patriotic hackers’) tendto be the primary forcebehind majorcyberattacks, simplyencouraged anddirectedby, typically, the FSB.Grey and black marketdealers can also armnon-state actors directlyor indirectly working toRussia’sadvantage(oratleast causing trouble forRussia’sfoes).

Eventuallytheremayemergeafourthcategory,mercenarysoldiers. 12 As noted above,

12 Mariya Butina, ‘Rossiyazhdet svoyu Blackwater,’Voenno-promyslennyi kur’er, 8October 2014 @ http://vpk-news.ru/articles/22169; Mark

Russia is especiallywilling to use organizedcrime as a source ofresources, operationalcapacityandintelligence

74

Moscow has dabbled withthe use of what could becalled ‘pseudo-mercenaries’in both Donbas and Syria.Although under Russian lawprivate military companies,unlikesecurityproviders,arestill banned, the use offoreign registration and thegovernment’s habitualdisregard for inconvenientlawshaveallowed these testcases to be run. So far, theresultshavebeenmixed,butthe potential to createmilitary assets which aredeniable and yet controlledand effective, as tools of thestate, is something that hasbeen recognized for sometime. In 2011, Putin notedthat such companies are away of implementingnational interests withoutthedirectinvolvementofthestate’ and the next year firstdeputy prime ministerDmitriRogozin again floatedGaleotti, ‘Moscow’smercenaries in Syria,’Waronthe Rocks, April 5, 2016 @http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/moscows-mercenaries-in-syria/; ‘Na rossiiskikhnaemnikov v Sirii potratili do10mlrd rub.’,RBC, 25 August2016 @http://www.rbc.ru/politics/25/08/2016/57bd8ddd9a794799c6f816ac

theidea.13Onlyin2014,withthe rapid deterioration ofrelations with the West andthe war in Donbas did thisget anywhere, though.However, at present keeninterest continues to bedevoted to the question ofwhether Russian PMCs withRussianrecruits(andcloselymanaged by Russianintelligence officers) mightbe the answer to the wholedeniability-versus-effectivenessconundrum.

Of course, there is blurringeven within these blurredcategories.‘Patriotichackers’mobilized or hired by thestate, may target mediasources as part of theinformation war, attackbanks and companies foreconomic reasons, or beinvolved in more directcriminality. 14 Businesses

13RIANovosti, 13 April 2011;RIA Novosti, 19 September201214 See, for example, JörgBecker, ‘The greatGeorgian/Russianmediawar,’Media Development 59, 1(2012);RickFawnandRobertNalbandov, ‘The difficulties ofknowingthestartofwarintheinformation age: Russia,Georgia and the War overSouth Ossetia, August 2008,’

75

may be used to bankrolluseful political movements,launder criminal funds, andexert leverage,allatonce. Inmany ways this is thequintessence of the Putin‘total war’ approach togovernance: the absence oflegal, ethical and practicallimitations on the state’scapacity openly or covertlytoco-optotherinstitutionstoitsownends.

European Security 21, 1(2012); Irina Borogan &Andrei Soldatov, ‘TheKremlinand the hackers: partners incrime?’,OpenDemocracy:Russia, 25April 2012 @https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irina-borogan-andrei-soldatov/kremlin-and-hackers-partners-in-crime

76

PartFour:Recommendations

he current Russianregime has staked its

political credibility on itsrevisionist program, and thepresent atmosphere oftension and confrontationwillthuscontinue,regardlessof the outcomes of thecurrent struggle in Ukraine.Anover-reactionwillplay toPutin’snarrativeofgrievanceand may force the Kremlinintomoreovertaggressioninits neighborhood andmischief-making beyond it.On the other hand, under-reaction,oraresponsewhichfails adequately to addressthechallenge,willencouragefurther adventures—andnotsolely by Russia. The stakesare high, and a properunderstanding of the natureofthethreatiscrucial.

The following sectionsoutline some possibleresponses and re-commendations. First of all,it is crucial to think inRussian—inotherwords, tounderstand Moscow’smotivations, and itsunderstandingofthecurrentconfrontation. While ‘non-linearwarfare’maynotbeanofficial Russian term of art,by understanding how it

works and the subtledistinctions between what Icall proper ‘hybrid warfare’as visited upon Ukraine andGeorgia, and the ‘politicalwarfare’ waged against theNATO powers, we can tailorappropriate and meaningfulresponses.

In part, this will meanconsideringtheWest’sownhybrid warfighters: howcan the military best beconfigured and deployed inthese conflicts? But to aconsiderable extent it willmeantargethardeningandhybrid defense, addressingtheweaknessesthatMoscowis seeking to exploit, andwhich encourage Russianadventurism by their verypresence. Fortuitouslyenough,thisisalsoanareainwhich the European UnionandEuropeanstatescanplayamuchmore important rolethantheyhaveinthepast. 49i

After all, whether weconsider themnewwars,ornew ways of fighting old

wars, this is not simplyabout the currentconfrontation with Putin’sRussia. There will be otherchallengersandchallenges. 53

T

77

13.Intellectual:thinkinginRussian

The problem you Americanshaveindealingwithusisthatyou think you understand us,butyoudon't.YoulookattheChinese and you think:‘They'renot likeus.’ You lookatusRussians,andyouthink,‘They’re like us.’ But you'rewrong.Wearenotlikeyou.

- Quote attributedoriginally to VladimirPutin1

The modern West—networked, globally-integrated, concerned withmultiple real and perceivedthreats, and facingunderlying crises ofconfidence and legitimacy—has specific vulnerabilitiesthe Russians are eagerlyexploiting. The fundamentalchallengesaretounderstandquite what this involves,what Russia’s capabilitiesare,andwhatcanbedonetodeterandrespondtoit.

1Fiona Hill & Clifford Gaddy,‘The American Education ofVladimir Putin,’ The Atlantic,16 February 2015 @http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/the-american-education-of-vladimir-putin/385517/

Lt. General David Barno,former commander ofCoalition forces inAfghanistan,haswarnedthat

Thecomplexdemandsoftoday’swarssuggestthatUS defense budget andplans for the futuremaybe significantly out ofbalance for the fast-changing shape ofconflict.Thewarsof thiscenturyare less and lesslikely to resemble thewars of the last. And amilitary thatwas largelydesigned and built forthe last century mayneed serious re-structuring in order tosuccessfully win thewarsofthisone.2

This isentirelytrueas farasit goes, but the threat facingthe West is likely ‘political,’not ‘hybrid war,’ unless wemake some especially baddecisions. As a result, this isnot just amilitary issue and

2David Barno, ‘The ShadowWarsofthe21stCentury,’WarontheRocks, July 23, 2014@http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/the-shadow-wars-of-the-21st-century/

78

the challenge of respondingto the non-kineticinstrumentsofthisnewstyleof conflict are even moreintractable. Shouldinformation warfare basedon propaganda and spin becounteracted with morepropaganda, or with fact-checkers and mediaawareness classes inschools?3For countries withpotentially fractiousminorities which Moscow

could exploit, is the mosteffective way of buyingsecurity to spend more oncounter-intelligence officers,police, and social inclusionprograms rather than buytanksormissiles?

Thereare,ofcourse,allkindsof conceptual andinstitutional obstacles torewriting the West’s3PeterPomerantsev&MichaelWeiss, The Menace ofUnreality: How the KremlinWeaponizes Information,Culture and Money (IMR,2014)

defensiveplaybook,notleastthe money invested inextremelyexpensiveleading-edge weapons systemsoptimized for conventionalwarfare. However, Russia—and other revisionistpowers—are well aware ofthe impossibility at presentof challenging the USA’sconventional warfightingcapabilities and as such areexploring alternative,asymmetricresponseswhich

shift the field of battleaway from thosewherethe West is strongest.There is a clearneed toexplore just what theRussiansthemselvesarethinking, planning andbuildingfor,ratherthan

assuming they see ‘war’ oreven‘hybridwar’inthesametermsastheWest.

The2014WalesSummitsawNATO grappling with thenewchallengeandproducedsome welcome initiativessuch as the approval of theReadiness Action Plan.However,theproblemisthat‘non-linear war’ explicitlyoperates across traditionalboundaries between themilitary and the political. Asa military alliance, NATO iswell placed to respond todirect kinetic threats, andPutinwasprobablyspeaking

The modern West—networked,globally-integrated, concerned withmultiple real and perceived threats,and facing underlying crises ofconfidence and legitimacy—hasspecific vulnerabilities the Russiansareeagerlyexploiting.

79

for his entire security elitewhen he said ‘I think thatonly someone who has losttheir mind or in in a dreamcould imagine that Russiawould one day attackNATO.’4Forthisveryreason,though, it is unlikely thatMoscow would even poseany such challenge, at leastnot unless the politicalcontext had already beenmanipulatedtomakeaNATOresponse difficult. Instead,Russiacoulduseintelligence,politicalandeconomictacticsbeyondNATO’sremit.

This dilemma reflects afundamental point: that theWest continues to try andunderstand Russia throughits own perspectives, ratherthan trying to see the viewfromtheKremlin’swindows.Totakeonespecificexample,theFSB’s16thCenterandtheGRU’s 5th Department,believed to be their

4‘Putin al Corriere della Sera:«Non sono un aggressore,pattoconl’EuropaeparitàcongliUsa»,’CorrieredellaSera, 6June 2015 @http://www.corriere.it/esteri/15_giugno_06/intervista-putin-corriere-non-sono-aggressore-patto-europa-ab5eeffe-0c0a-11e5-81da-8596be76a029.shtml

respective offensiveinformation operationscommands,and theFSB’s8thCenter, responsible forinformation security, alloperate in a range ofdifferent kinds of activity,from propaganda to directhacking or even destructivecyberattacks, in defiance ofthekindofsiloingonewouldsee in the West. This isbecause‘cyber’asusedintheWest is not a Russianconcept. 5 Rather, theRussians considerinformation to be a domainof warfare. 6 Instead ofthinking only in terms ofdata held within andtransmitted betweencomputers and otherelectronicsystems,theyviewinformation as an all-encompassing whole, ofwhich only part is held inelectronic media. So, forexample, Russian planners5Notably, a glossary of keyinformation security termsproduced by the MilitaryAcademy of the General Staffincludesnoentryfortheterm‘cyber warfare.’ Slovar'terminoviopredeleniivoblastiinformatsionnoi bezopasnosti(Voeninform,2008)6 Georgii Pocheptsov,Informatsionnye voiny (Refl-buk,2001)

80

will consider propagandaand hacking as part of thesame domain. To theirWestern counterparts,though,thisdefiestheirbasicnotions as to howinformational warfighting isstructured.7

Onamorefundamentallevel,very few Western analyses8consider how the Russiansthemselves expect wars tounfold. A survey of thecurrent state of Russianmilitary thinking byChekinov and Bogdanov in2011isstill theclosestthingto a blueprint for howMoscow sees amodern, full-scale conflict developing.Theysaythat

A new-generation warwill be dominated byinformation andpsychological warfarethat will seek to achievesuperiorityintroopsandweapons control anddepress the opponent’sarmed forces personnel

7For good primer, see UlrikFranke, War By Non-MilitaryMeans(FOI,2015)8 There are, of course,honorable exceptions, butmore likely tobe found in thecivilian than unformed world,iftruthbetold.

and population morallyand psychologically. intheongoingrevolutionininformation tech-nologies, informationand psychologicalwarfare will largely laythe groundwork forvictory.9

They then describe a pre-conflict stage dominated bywhat would be described as‘hybrid’operations,as

the aggressor [implicitlythe West] will make aneffort to involve allpublic institutions in thecountry it intends toattack, primarily themassmediaandreligiousorganizations, culturalinstitutions, non-governmental org-anizations, publicmovements financedfrom abroad, andscholars engaged inresearch on foreigngrants.

Indeed,

9 This and the quotes thatfollow are from SergeiChekinov and SergeiBogdanov, ‘Vliyanienepriamykh deistvii nakharaktersovremennoivoiny,’Voennayamysl,No.6,2011

81

Months before the startofanew-generationwar,large-scale measures inall types of warfare—information, moral,psychological, ideo-logical, diplomatic,economic, and so on—may be designed andfollowed under a jointplantocreateafavorablemilitary, political, andeconomic setting for theoperations of the allies’armedforces.

However, once theinformation operations,cyberattacks, 10 mis-directions, and even‘nonlethal new-generation

10Their use especially in thispre-warphaseisalsoexploredin Pavel Antonovich, ‘Osushchnosti i soderzhaniikibervoiny’, Voennaya mysl’No. 7, 2011. In addition, seeTimothy Thomas, ‘Russia’sInformationWarfare Strategy:CantheNationCopeinFutureConflicts?’ Journal of SlavicMilitaryStudies27,1(2014)

genetically engineeredbiologicalweapons’havehadtheir day, they see the warmovingintoitskineticphase,a ‘shock and awe’ offensiveclearly inspired by DesertStorm, startingwithmassiveaerial attacks and movingeventually into a groundcombatphasethat isalreadya foregone conclusionbecause of the aggressor’stechnological andinformationaledge,as

in the closing period ofthewar,theattackerwillroll over the remainingpoints of resistance anddestroy surviving enemyunits by specialoperations conducted byreconnaissance units tospot what enemy unitshave survived andtransmit their co-ordinates to theattacker’s missile andartillery units; firebarrages to annihilatethe defender’s resistingarmy units by effectiveadvanced weapons;airdrop operations tosurround points ofresistance; and territorymopping-up operationsbygroundtroops.

This is a far cry from theimagined semi-covert,

It is crucial for theWest to breakaway from both mirror-imaging,assuming the Russians see theworld as we do, but alsocaricature, seeing in themsomething wholly andextravagantlydifferent.

82

spooks-and-trolls ‘hybridwars’ often imagined in theWest, which are bestconsidered ‘politicalwars.’ Itis crucial for the West tobreak away from bothmirror-imaging, assumingtheRussiansseetheworldaswe do, but also caricature,seeing in them somethingwholly and extravagantlydifferent.

Russiahasreachedbackandre-learnedaparticularSovietlesson, that political effectsare what matters, not themeansusedtoachievethem.Within non-linear warfareare means either to win amilitaryconflict—suchasthedecapitating arrests of theHungarian high commandthatpreparedthewayfortheSoviet invasion in 1956—orelse to make themunnecessary.

DrawingonRussianstrategicthinking, though, whatimplications does this havefor present security calculi?If anything, theWest shouldagain turn to Gerasimov’swords,thistimefroma2014speech to the RussianAcademy of MilitarySciences. He called for a‘comprehensive set ofstrategic defense measuresembracing the entire stateapparatus… to convincepotential aggressors of thefutility of any forms ofpressure on the RussianFederation and its allies.’11TheWestought todo takealeaf from Moscow’s book,and see how, withoutsacrificing its democraticvalues and liberties, it toocan mobilize to deter ordefeatanygibridnyethreats.

11 Valery Gerasimov,‘Generalnyi shtab i oboronastrany,’ Voenno-promyshlennyikur’er,February5,2014

83

14.HybridWarfighters: Soldiers of theNewBattlefield

I describe the role of themilitary, … is to make usimmune from coercion, makethe nation immune fromcoercion.

- Gen. Martin Dempsey,former Chairman of theUS Joint Chiefs of Staff,20141

Considering Russia’sperceptionofhybridwarasacomplement or prelude toconventional, high-intensityconflict, it is essential thatthe USA and its alliesmaintainforcesabletodeterandcountersuchoperations.Russian operations in theDonbas, in particular, havedemonstrated how they aredeveloping their capacity totarget massive long-rangefirepower, not least throughthe enthusiastic use ofdrones, to deliver shatteringblows to enemy troopconcentrations. To a largeextent these engagements

1Interviewed in War On TheRocks, 25 February 2014 @http://warontherocks.com/2014/02/a-conversation-with-the-chairman-general-martin-e-dempsey/

have been defensive,preventing the Ukrainianarmy from being able tomake advances against theseparatist militias, but theygive a senseof theRussians’offensive capacities, and theplannedrecreationofcertaindivision-strength formationsis in part intended to formunits able to exploit localsuccessesintheattack,too.

This is not a council ofdespair,though.WhileNATOisfacedwiththeneedatleastpartlytoreverseitspreviouspivot towards light, mobileout-of-area interventionforces, it has massiveunderlying strengths inresources, technology, andunity. Given that there is noevidence Moscow plans orseeks any direct militaryconfrontation with NATO,there is the time to addressany specific shortfalls.Furthermore, we should notfall into the trap of over-stating Russian capacities.Moscow’s maskirovkafrequently seeks tointimidate and over-awethrough projecting anexaggerated sense of itsstrength, hoping to

84

demoralize and thusencourage concessions. Sofar Russia’s actual militaryadventures have, we mustremember, largely beenunder ideal or favorablecircumstances and againstfar-from-peeradversaries.

In 2009, the Russians—supported by thousands ofAbkhazian and SouthOssetian militias—faced thearmy of Georgia, just 35,000strong, withsome of its besttroops servingat the timealongside theCoalition inAfghanistan.Even so, on atactical level theGeorgians wereoften able tooutfight the Russians on aone-for-one basis. 2 Crimeawas Moscow’s for thepicking, especially given thedisinclination on Kiev’spart—sadly, encouraged by

2 Ariel Cohen & RobertHamilton,TheRussianMilitaryand the Georgia War: lessonsand implications (StrategicStudies Institute, 2011) @http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub1069.pdf

Washington3—not to orderitstroopstoresist.InCrimea,as in the Donbas, theRussians have only sentprofessionals,andoftenfromthe elite units, at that. As is,the constant search forprofessionals is behind theuse of scratch-built,compound battalion tacticalgroups in the war, withinevitable challenges to unitcohesion. In Syria, the

Russians arestill largelyfighting an airwar against anenemy withminimal anti-air capacity. Inshort, thesewars of choicehave also beenfought with astacked deck,

and there is no reason tobelieveMoscow iswilling tofightonothertermsifithasachoice.

When looking at a range ofoperations in other theatres3Josh Rogin & Eli Lake, ‘U.S.ToldUkrainetoStandDownasPutin Invaded,’Bloomberg, 21August 2015 @https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-08-21/u-s-told-ukraine-to-stand-down-as-putin-invaded

While NATO is facedwith the need at leastpartly to reverse itsprevious pivot towardslight, mobile out-of-area interventionforces, it has massiveunderlyingstrengthsinresources, technology,andunity.

85

in which an aggressor hastried to use covert ordeniable military force, DanAltman has noted that theyusually fail, and they failbecause of conventionalforce:

In each instance, thedefender counteredhybrid tactics in thesame way. Theyaccepted the fictitioustermsoftheconflictandmobilized enoughstrength to defeat thedeniable forces on thebattlefield. They soughtto engage the deniableforces without alsoattacking anyuniformed forces of theaggressor or strikingtargets in theaggressor’s territory,keeping the fightingcontained. On thebattlefield(althoughnotin their rhetoric), bothsides maintained thefiction that the conflictwassomethinglessthanan open attack by theaggressor.4

4 Dan Altman, ‘The longhistory of “green men”tactics—and how they weredefeated,’ War On The Rocks,17 March 2016 @

Thus, the correct Westernresponse is to consider andaddress the four ways inwhich its military forcesinteract with Russianplanning and any potentialhybridwarthreat:

1. Conventional MilitaryDeterrence. First andforemost, the USA andits NATO allies need tobe able clearly andcredibly to be able todemonstrate thecapacity to resistthreats from across thekinetic spectrum, up toand including full-scalewar. This remains thefundamental basis ofNATO’s defense, and itis worth noting that inmy contacts withRussian officers andsecurity staffers, timeand again it becameclear that howeverworried Westernersmay be about the valueof NATO’s Article Fivemutual defenseguarantee, the Russiansappear to take it veryseriouslyindeed.

http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/the-long-history-of-green-men-tactics-and-how-they-were-defeated/

86

2. Political Reassurance.Part of the rationale forRussia’s aggressiveposturing, fromthreatening nuclearattacks on Poland tobuzzing Western shipsand prowling on andover the edges of NATOairspace, is precisely thehopeof intimidating anddemoralizing. To thisend, moves such as thebasing of multi-nationalNATO battalions in theBaltic States and Poland,whether or not theywould have a seriousmilitary impact in anyfuture conflict, provide atangible signal of thealliance’scommitmenttomutual defense. ThiscertainlydoesnotescapeplannersinMoscow.OneGeneral Staff officer toldme—after the requisitefulminationsaboutNATO‘aggression’ and‘provocation’—that ‘ofcourse the thought ofshooting anAmericanora German is somethingwe much take moreseriously than a Pole oran Estonian.’5 To thisend, military

5 Conversation, Moscow,March2016

deployments are alsopolitics by other means,instruments ofdiplomacy and signaling.There obviously is acorrelation betweentheir deterrent capacity,but it is only partial;reassurance must bevisible, take a formwhichhas themost localimpact, and may alsoneed to be reasserted orreconfigured as thepolitical needs of themomentchange.

3. Indirect deterrence. Theprimary goal of NATO isthemutualdefenseof itsmembers, but US andWestern interests andbroader than that.Russian interventionsabroadhavehadadirectand often deeplyproblematic impact onthe West, whetherpushing refugees fromthe bombed-out cities ofSyria to challenging theintegrity of a globalorder based oninternational law andnational sovereignty.This is especiallydangerous given thatperceived Russiansuccesses may inspireother current andpotentially revisionist

87

states. To this end, evenif as a subsidiary goal,consideration needs tobe given as to whetherand how forces can alsobe used to dissuadeRussia from hybridadventures outside theNATOarea,suchasintheSouth Caucasus orCentralAsia.

4. Hybrid warfighters.Soldiers are also hybridwarfighters—justnottheonly ones, and in manycircumstances not thebest. Their organization,equipment, and training

should therefore alsoprepare them for themessy operations thatmight be involved, fromhunting saboteurs tofacingmobilizedmobsofangrycivilians.Ofcourse,they are and mustremain optimized forcombat operations and,as will be discussedbelow, ought to beconsidered in their owntermsas justonekindofhybrid warfighter, asother assets may proveat leastasrelevanttoUSand Western security inthepresentenvironment.

88

15. Resistance: Target Hardening andHybridDefense

What the Russiansunderstood in Crimea is thatit’seasytotakeoverterritorywhenits’peopledon’twanttostay. We should have foughtfor Crimea, but we shouldhave fought for its peoples’loyalty in the twenty yearsbefore, too. Then, they mighthavefoughtforus.

- Ukrainian securityofficial,20151

Hybrid war depends onexploiting vulnerabilities,especially ones relating tounity, will, and the capacitytoresist.HowcantheUSand

1 Conversation, London, July2015. When asked to clarify,he launched into a lengthycritique of Ukrainiangovernment policy towardsCrimea under successiveadministrations.

its allies address these, tominimize the riskofRussianadventurismand itscapacityto operate ‘under the radar,’at least until it feels it hasshapedabattlefieldthatsuitsit? 2 As András Ráczobserves,

Hybrid warfare is builton capitalizing on theweaknessesofacountry,on flaws in its politicalsystem, administration,economy and society. Ifan adversary cannotdetect sufficientweaknesses,thennofull-scale attack can be

launched, meaningthat hybrid warfarenever reaches thesecond, attackphase. Hence, thebestdefence against

2This section draws heavilyon my ‘Time to think about“hybrid defense”’,WarOnTheRocks, July 30, 2015 @http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/time-to-think-about-hybrid-defense/

Hybrid war depends on exploitingvulnerabilities,especiallyonesrelatingtounity,will,andthecapacitytoresist.How can the US and its allies addressthese, to minimize the risk of Russianadventurism and its capacity tooperate‘undertheradar,’atleastuntilit feels it has shaped a battlefield thatsuitsit?

89

hybrid warfare is goodgovernance.3

These instruments are thusmost applicable to countriesexperiencing political andsocialturmoil,withlowordiminishing legitimacy ofthe existing order, andalso weak securitystructures.MostEuropeancountriesmay suffer fromone or two of these fromtimetotime,butrarelyallthree, at once. The moreplausible targets are withinRussia’s ‘Near Abroad’.Georgiahasalreadybeenthetarget of kinetic-politicaloperations and may still befacing information- andeconomic-vectoredaggression.Moldovaremainsvulnerable, and Kazakhstanmay prove so in the futuregiven the presence of ethnicRussians in the north, if thelong-awaited Nazarbaevsuccession dismays Moscowand creates domesticdisarray. Another potentialtargetnowwouldbeTurkey,which has a powerfulsecurity structure and is aNATO member, but a seriesof domestic fault lines—not3András Rácz, Russia’s HybridWar in Ukraine (FinnishInstitute of InternationalAffairs,2015),p.92

least theKurdishminority—could offer the Russiansopportunities to stir uptrouble short of openoperations.4

Nicu Popescu has suggestedthathybridwarisdangerousbecause ‘it iseasyandcheapto launch for externalaggressors, but costly invarious ways for thedefenders.’5Thisis,however,questionable. The historicallesson is actually that suchtactics are unlikely tosucceed unless the target4 I explored some of theoptions in ‘Will Putin strikeback at Turkey from theshadows?’,WarOnTheRocks,2 December 2015 @http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/will-putin-strike-back-at-turkey-from-the-shadows/5 Nicu Popescu, ‘HybridTactics:NeitherNewNorOnlyRussian,’ European UnionInstitute for Security Studies,January 2015, @http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Alert_4_hybrid_warfare.pdf.

The main defense against suchformsofwarfareispre-emptive,to‘targetharden’byshoringupgovernance and legitimacy—ahybrid defense to resist hybridwar—sufficienttodenyMoscowthehopeofaneasyvictory

90

has,toaconsiderableextent,already lost—at least intermsoflosingitscapacityorwill to resist. In the 1924Estonian incident, forexample, local communistsstiffened and organized bySoviet intelligence officerslaunched a coup, which wasthenintendedtobethebasisfor an ‘invitation’ for ‘Sovietassistance.’ Soviet navalforces were already at sea,and ground forcesmobilizedon the pretext of a trainingexercise near the border.They initially managed toseize several key locations,but then the governmentgalvanized itself anddeclared a state ofemergency, the anticipatedworking class support failedto materialize, and thesecurity forces began toreassert control. 6 Whilethere isnoquestionbut thatthe Red Army could haveconquered Estonia in a fullinvasion, rather than engagein an openly imperialventure, Moscow backeddown. It pulled its covert6Merle Maigre, ‘Nothing Newin Hybrid Warfare: TheEstonian Experience andRecommendations for NATO,’German Marshall Fund of theUnited States Policy Brief,February2015

operatorsfromEstoniawhenit could, and disavowed anyroleintheattemptedcoup.

The main defense againstsuchformsofwarfareisthuspre-emptive, to ‘targetharden’ by shoring upgovernanceandlegitimacy—a hybrid defense to resisthybrid war—sufficient todenyMoscowthehopeofaneasy victory. 7 Of course,spooks, Spetsnaz andsympathizers will remainuseful instruments in peace,for gathering intelligence,inspiring video games andinfluencing policy,respectively. Furthermore,when Russia does engage inconflict, it will employ thefull spectrumofmeansat itsdisposal. However, thecrucial point tomake is thatnone of these can fully

7 See, for example, AapoCederberg and Pasi Eronen,‘How can Societies beDefended against HybridThreats?’,GCSPSecuritySectorAnalysis, September 2015 @file:///Users/mark.galeotti/Downloads/GCSP%20Strategic%20Security%20Analysis%20-%20How%20can%20Societies%20be%20Defended%20against%20Hybrid%20Threats.pdf

91

substitute for essentialweaknesses in military andeconomic strength. They arepowerful means ofmagnifying existing weak-nesses in will and capacityandtakingfulladvantagesofany opportunities that mayemerge as a result, but theyare still asymmetric assets,weaponsoftheweak.8

Ofcourse, thecorollary foraform of warfare in whichsoldiers are the last, not thefirst into the breach, onlyappearing once the war hasbeen all but won throughpolitical and economicsubversion, division, anddemoralization, is thatWestern countries need theresources and conditions todeter Russian adventurismwhen possible, and defeat itbeforeitskineticphasewhennecessary.

That means adequate, well-trained, and well-regardedpolice forces able to dealwith genuine ormanufactured protests. Riotcontrol is a specializedbusiness,andpoliceneednotjust today’s panoply of8AtermpopularizedbyJamesC. Scott in hisWeaponsof theWeak: everyday forms ofresistance(Yale,1985)

intimidating armor andequipment, but the trainingand seasoning to stand infront of a jeering, jostlingmob and neither back downnor overreact. 9 It meanscounter-intelligence serviceswith the powers, budgets,and skills to identify andturn,convict,orexpelagents,provocateurs, politicaloperators, and those whowould fund and stir updivisivelocalmovements.

Itmeanssocialoutreachanda strong emphasis ongovernance and legitimacy.After all, corruption, theexclusion of minorities andcommunities—not justRussian-speakers—andpublic disillusion all createopportunities forMoscow toexploit.

9 Martin Zapfe notes thepolitical risks should NATOsoldiers, because of humanfailings or an aggressor’smachinations, cause civiliancasualties. ‘”Hybrid” Threatsand NATO’s ForwardPresence,’ Policy Perspectives4/7, September 2016 @http://www.css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/PP4-7.pdf

92

Blocking or underminingRussian propagandacampaigns designed tospread division anduncertainty is a matter ofnational security in thiscontext, as is resistingpressure on domestic andinternational media. AsJames Sherr affirms, ‘A freemedia should not bedefenceless in the face oftrolling, state-sponsoredmanipulation andcyber attack’. 10Maintaining socialcohesioninthefaceofRussian covertassaults is not just apassive measure, as awillingnesstousecivildisobedience andother non-violent protestscanalsobeusedasaweaponagainsthybridaggression,asLithuania is alreadyproposing.11

10James Sherr, TheNew East-West Discord. RussianObjectives, Western Interests(Clingendael:2015),p.7411 Maciej Bartkowski,‘Countering hybrid war: civilresistance as a nationaldefence strategy,’openDemocracy, 12 May 2015@https://www.opendemocracy.net/civilresistance/maciej-

It means proper controls onthe flows of money fromRussia, even if launderedthrough thinly-veiled frontcompanies in third-partyjurisdictions. This moneyotherwisecanbeusedtobuyinfluence, support localpolitical movementsintended to stir up trouble,and take over strategicbusiness sectors.No countrylikes turning away business,

but in the modern world,money is weaponized, andMoscow understands thiswell.12

Noneofthesearenewandallare being tackled to greaterorlesserextentbyallNATO’sbartkowski/countering-hybrid-war-civil-resistance-as-national-defence-strateg12Elena Holodny, ‘2015 CouldBe The Year WeWitness The“Weaponization Of Finance,”Business Insider, 5 January2015 @http://www.businessinsider.com/weaponization-of-finance-eurasia-group-2015-1

Themost powerful defenses againstRussian mischief-making andmanipulation are social cohesion,effective law enforcement, anindependent and responsiblemedia,and legitimate, transparent andeffectivegovernance.

93

frontline states. However,theyarerarelyconsideredaspart of a comprehensivenational security strategy.Nor do they fall withinNATO’s traditional remit.That isunderstandable, as isthe generals’ preference tostick to familiar measuressuch as the creation of thenew Very High ReadinessJointTaskForce.ItcannotbeNATO’s job to auditcampaign contributions inLatvia, say, or push socialinclusioninRomania.

Instead, this creates anopportunity for theEuropean Union, which haslongbeenmoreinterestedingovernance than war.13Themost powerful defensesagainst Russian mischief-making and manipulationare,afterall, socialcohesion,effectivelawenforcement,anindependentandresponsiblemedia, and legitimate,transparent and effectivegovernance. Beyond the13SeePeterPindják,‘Deterringhybrid warfare: a chance forNATO and the EU to worktogether?,’NATOReview 2015@http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2014/also-in-2014/Deterring-hybrid-warfare/EN/index.htm

existing Joint Frameworkadopted in April 2016,14amore strategic and urgentapproach to ensuring theseare found throughout theEuropean Union is thus asecurity necessity and notjustapublicgood.Alongwithits External Action Service,responsible for commonforeignpolicy, there is scopefor structures not trying toparallel or challenge NATOonthekineticsideofdefense,

14Aprogramdirectedtowardsraisingawarenessoftherisks,building resilience byaddressing potential strategicand critical sectors (includingcybersecurity, criticalinfrastructures, protection ofthe financial system,protection of public health,and supporting efforts tocounterviolentextremismandradicalization), crisisresponse, and increasedcooperationwithintheEUandbetween the EU and NATO. Itis, however, still a relativelyvague commitment involvingsharing papers and jointmeetings more than anythingmore concrete. EuropeanCommission, ‘Security: EUstrengthens response tohybrid threats,’ 6 April 2016@http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1227_en.htm

94

butrathertocoordinatenon-military defenses,incorporatingbodiessuchasEuropol and the new EastStratCom counter-propagandagroup.

Member states need to beimaginative and flexiblewhen they consider thechallengestheyfaceandhowbest they can be resisted. Asimple increase in thedefense budget may notalways in itself be the mostappropriate response. Forexample, maybe a countryneeds forensic accountants,media analysts, or languageteachers more than trigger-pullers.Attheriskofmakingthe generals unhappy, thismay even mean that NATO

should scrap its goal ofhaving all members spend2%ofGDPon(conventional)defense, so long as theydemonstrably are spendingthe shortfall on othersecurityobjectives.

It is, however, through suchhybriddefensethatthelong-term challenge from theKremlin will best beneutralized. And given thatmodern conflict is as muchabout politics andinformation management, itisworthnotingthateventhemost hawkish Russiannationalist can hardly claimto see a threat to theMotherland from socialworkers and communitypoliceofficers.

95

16. Conclusions: New Wars, or NewWaysofWar?

Ofcourse,there’snothingnewin hybrid war. It’s as old asthe Trojan Horse. Whatdistinguishesitisthefactthatits scale is bigger, its speedand intensity are higher, andit’s taking place on ourborders.

- NATO Secretary-GeneralJensStoltenberg,20151

Like itor(probably)not, theWest is at war, but notnecessarilythekindofwaritimagines or with which it isaccustomed. It is already atwar with Russia for thesimple reason that it takesonlyonesidetomakeawar,and the Kremlin has alreadymade the decision that theWest has started it. TheRussians’reasoningisdeeplyquestionable;wemaydebatehow far Western naivety,cynicism, self-deception, orhypocrisyaretoblame;thereis scope to consider whatcouldandwillbe theway toend this civilizational and

1Speech at the openingof theNATO TransformationSeminar, 25 March 2015 @http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_118435.htm

geopolitical clash. There iseven ample room forscholars, semanticists, andphilosophers to decide if weevencancall it ‘war’whenitis almost certainly not goingto involve open conflict,ratherthanashadowytussleof politics, values,propaganda and mobilizedand manipulated self-interest.

However on one level, noneof that matters. For themoment,thetaskistodecidehow best to respond to thispolitical challenge, not leastto keep it from everbecoming kinetic, but alsobecausethisisunlikelytobethe last time the West mustaddress such non-linearmethods.

Toaconsiderabledegree,theoverarching conclusions ofthis study are that whilethere is indeed somethingspecificanddangerousaboutRussia’s current non-linearapproach to war, theinstruments they use are, inessence, nothing new.Deception and propaganda,coercive diplomacy andeconomic leverage,

96

subversion and deniableauxiliarieshavebeentoolsofstatecraft so long as therehave been states. What isnew is the world in whichtheyarebeingemployed,andthus it may well prove thatwhere Russia leads, we allfollow.Asaresult,regardlessofwhat happens inMoscow,whether or not Russiacontinues to be a strategicchallenge(anditwill,atleastas long as Putin remains inpower), this is an issue thatneedsseriousattention.

Covertandambiguousforcesand agencies such asdescribed above shouldtherefore be consideredsimplyoneofmanypotentialweapons in the arsenal; asone Russian General StaffAcademy instructor put it ina conversation, ‘when theenemy already has aregimentinthefield,youuseartillery; when you want tostrike before the enemy candeploy that regiment, orwithout his knowing heneeds to, you usegibridchiki’—‘hybridists,’ nota term, it is worth noting, I

have come across before orsince. 2 However, exploringRussian discussion of such‘sub-military’options,aswellastheiruse,whatemergesisan understanding is thatthere are sharply limitedcircumstances inwhich suchinstruments and approachesaretrulyuseful.

Their main value is to leveropen fault lines alreadypresent and exploit thosefailures of governance andsecurityleftbygovernmentalblunder, inaction or

incapacity. 3 In Crimea,the annexation was notsimply a matter of bluffand surprise, somuchastaking advantage of analmost uniquely

advantageous situation. Thepresence of Black Sea Fleetbases on the peninsulameant that forces werealready in place. Decades ofneglect had left aRussophone population2 Conversation, Moscow,January20163 For an interestingexploration of Russians’successes and limitations, seeJames Sherr, Hard diplomacyand soft coercion: Russia'sinfluence abroad (RoyalInstitute of InternationalAffairs,2013)

IfinCrimeatheaimwastocreateaneworder,intheDonbassitwasasmuch as anything else to createchaos, albeit a controlled,weaponizedchaos.

97

alreadydisposedtoachangein status, with a largeorganized crime communityalready closely linked toRussia.Kievwas indisarray,its chain of commandcompromised andmistrusted (not least due toFSBpenetration).

Although the long-termstrategic success of theDonbas operation is stilldebatable, in the immediateterm the Russians againexploited weaknesses inlocalcontrolandgovernance.Besides, if inCrimea theaimwastocreateaneworder,inthe Donbass it was as muchas anything else to createchaos, albeit a controlled,weaponized chaos. 4However, the lessons of theDonbas are also that relyingon non-kinetic methods anddeniable auxiliaries workwell enough in the initialstagesagainst anenemystilladapting and, in this case,recovering fromvirtualstate4Mark Galeotti, “‘Hybrid War’and ‘LittleGreenMen’:HowItWorks,andHowItDoesn’t.”InUkraine and Russia: People,Politics, Propaganda andPerspectives, AgnieszkaPikulicka-Wilczewska &Richard Sakwa (eds) (e-IRPress,2015)

collapse. However, theyquickly become much lesseffective, and it is Russianartillery and armor, albeitlargely based over theborder, that represents thereal force keeping theDonbas contested, notmercenariesandmilitias.

TakingtheHypeoutofHybrid

So is talk of a ‘new way ofwar’ simply alarmisthyperbole?Toanextent,butnot entirely: thedistinctiveness appears notso much in essence, but indegree.Furthermore, itmustbeemphasizedthattherearetwo, cognate phenomena atwork: the essentiallybloodless, if no less ruthless‘political war’ which isessentially what is currentlybeing waged on the West,and the political-military‘hybrid war’ experienced inUkraine.

The fragilities of thecontemporary state systemand the impact of social,technological and economicchange provide ampleopportunities for arevisionist state like Russia,in which a culture of ‘totalwar’ still informs doctrinalthinking and a smalloligarchyessentiallycontrols

98

national military, politicaland also economic andinformational resources. Thelessons of Russia’s recentadventures—much likeWesternonesintotheMiddleEast and North Africa—arethatitisfrighteninglyeasytocreate chaos, even ifunexpectedly hard tomanage it. While Moscow isunlikely togetwhat itwantsfrom such adventures, theconsequences of its simplylaunching them are oftenalmost as serious for theWest.

Addressing this challengecan no more be the solepreserve of the soldier asitisofthediplomatorthecounter-intelligenceofficer. Instead, what willbe needed is acoordinated, all-of-governmentresponsethataddresses legitimacy gapsand media awareness asassiduously as militarycapabilities and spycatching.As former SACEUR Gen.PhilipBreedloveputit,

In Ukraine, what we seeis what we talked aboutearlier, diplomatic toolsbeing used,informationaltoolsbeingused,militarytoolsbeingused, economic tools

being used againstUkraine…We, I think, inthe West, shouldconsider all of our toolsinreply.5

Finally, though, the risksought also to be consideredin context: a weak Russiamay be looking to use suchmethods to leverage its ownstrengths, and above allWestern weaknesses, butthis is by nomeans a magicbullet. As of this writing,

Moscow is bogged down inthe Donbas and likely Syria,politically isolated,economicallysanctioned,andwith fewoptions to improveits lot. Furthermore, as the

5 Jim Garamone, ‘NATOCommander BreedloveDiscusses Implications ofHybrid War,’ DOD News, 23March 2015 @http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/604334

Addressing this challenge can nomore be the sole preserve of thesoldierasitisofthediplomatorthecounter-intelligenceofficer.Instead,what will be needed is acoordinated, all-of-governmentresponse that addresses legitimacygaps and media awareness asassiduously asmilitary capabilitiesandspycatching.

99

impact sinks in of alleged(and highly likely) Russianhackingof theHilaryClintoncampaign and theDemocratic NationalCommittee’s servers and thesubsequent leaks ofembarrassing emails, thecalls for a more robustWestern response grows.Evenasconcernscontinueasof writing about how far aTrump presidency will bewilling to confront Moscow,therecanbenoquestionbutthat the US and widerWestern national securityestablishment is becomingmoreandmoreawareof thepotentialthreatfromRussiannon-linearwarfare.

Moscow rationalizes its‘political war’ by claimingthat the West started it. Intelling irony, it may be thatits very ‘counter-attack’ willactually spark such aWestern campaign, albeitpolitical rather than hybrid.This may legitimize Putin’snarrative,but it isalso likelyto demonstrate just howvulnerable an over-geared,under-invested, over-securitized and under-legitimateRussiamaybethevery same tactics it uses soprofligately. Fromcyberattacks to deeper andbroader sanctions, launchingpropaganda campaigns toencouraging eliteconspiracies, should theywant to, the United Statesanditsallieshaveformidableopportunities to fight theirown ‘political war’ insideRussia. Alarmist rhetoricaside, the ‘new way of war’maywellprovetobemoreofathreattoRussiathantotheWest.