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20.500.12592/7t6c62
Russia’s ‘New’ Tools for Confronting
the West: Continuity and Innovation
in Moscow’s Exercise of Power
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21 Mar 2016
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Vladimir Putin visits the English-language service of Russia Today, now
renamed RT. Photo: Getty Images. Summary In the last two years, Russia
has demonstrated its return to an assertive foreign policy by successful
military interventions in Ukraine and Syria. The capabilities it employed to
do so surprised the West, despite being well advertised in advance and
their development described in detail by the Russia-watching community
in Western nations. The distinctive Russian approach to operations in
Ukraine gave rise to an impression among some observers that its military
had employed fundamentally new concepts of armed conflict. The
widespread adoption of phrases such as ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘Gerasimov
doctrine’ reinforced this perception of novelty, and was indicative of a
search for ways to conceptualize – and make sense of – a Russian approach
to conflict that the West found at first sight unfamiliar. Nevertheless, the
techniques and methods displayed by Russia in Ukraine have roots in
traditional Soviet approaches. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia’s
military academics have displayed an unbroken and consistently
developing train of thought on the changing nature of conflict and how to
prevail in it, including – but certainly not limited to – the successful
application of military power. As a result, despite modern technological
enablers, Russia’s intentions and actions throughout the Ukraine conflict
have been recognizable from previous decades of study of the threat to
the West from the Soviet Union. Today, as in the past, Western planners
and policy-makers must consider and plan not only for the potential threat
of military attack by Russia, but also for the actual threat of Moscow’s
ongoing subversion, destabilization and ‘active measures’. Two specific
tools for exercising Russian power demand close study: the Armed Forces
of the Russian Federation; and the state’s capacity for information warfare.
In both of these fields, Russia’s capabilities have developed rapidly in
recent years to match its persistent intentions. The most visible
demonstration of this has been the unprecedented near-total
transformation of Russia’s armed forces since 2008. This transformation
and the accompanying rearmament programme are continuing, and the
Russian military is benefiting from ongoing ‘training’ under real
operational conditions in Ukraine and Syria. Russia has now demonstrated
both the capacity of its conventional military capabilities and willingness to
use them. The trend of the past 10 years appears set to continue – the
more Russia develops its conventional capability, the more confident and
aggressive it will become. Despite the perception of Russian operations in
eastern Ukraine as irregular warfare, it was a large-scale conventional
military cross-border intervention in August 2014 that brought to a halt
the previously successful Ukrainian government offensive, and stabilized
the front line close to the one currently holding under the Minsk
agreements. This readiness to use military force will only have been
heightened by the experience of campaigning in Syria from October 2015
onwards. The February 2016 Syrian ceasefire agreement, concluded on
Russian terms, in particular confirms for Moscow once again that assertive
military intervention is an effective means of achieving swift and positive
foreign policy results. Russia’s practice of information warfare has also
developed rapidly, while still following key principles that can be traced to
Soviet roots. This development has consisted of a series of adaptations
following failed information campaigns by Russia, accompanied by
successful adoption of the internet. Misconceptions about the nature of
Russian information campaigns, and how best to counter them, remain
widespread – in particular the notion that successful countermeasures
consist in rebutting obvious disinformation wherever possible. Russian
disinformation campaigns continue to be described in the West as failing
due to the implausibility of Russian narratives. But by applying Western
notions of the nature and importance of truth, this approach measures
these campaigns by entirely the wrong criteria, and fundamentally
misunderstands their objectives. Russia continues to present itself as being
under approaching threat from the West, and is mobilizing to address that
threat. Russia’s security initiatives, even if it views or presents them as
defensive measures, are likely to have severe consequences for its
neighbours. Russia’s growing confidence in pursuing its objectives will
make it even harder for the West to protect itself against Russian
assertiveness, without the implementation of measures to resist Russian
information warfare, and without the availability of significant military
force to act as an immediate and present deterrent in the front-line states.
In short, Russian military interventions and associated information warfare
campaigns in the past two years have not been an anomaly. Instead they
are examples of Russia implementing its long-standing intent to challenge
the West now that it feels strong enough to do so. For Western
governments and leaders, an essential first step towards more successful
management of the relationship with Moscow would be to recognize that
the West’s values and strategic interests and those of Russia are
fundamentally incompatible.
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russia
russian foreign policy
russia and eurasia programme
Authors
Keir Giles
Published in
United Kingdom
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