'..If governance is therefore the new battlespace, then its war fighting forces and measures are thus very different: effective counter-intelligence services, proper oversight over the flow of funds and serious policing of corruption at home, media awareness for a new generation of citizens to render them less susceptible to manipulation from whatever the source, and above all efforts to increase the effectiveness and thus legitimacy of existing political structures.''The answer is that although soldiers have been thinking how best to integrate new forms of contestation into their battle plans, so too the ‘politicals’ – national security theorists and practitioners, the security and intelligence community, and the Kremlin – have been exploring their new options. Having learnt his trade as a spy, having built his career on corruption and behind-the-scenes politicking, having forged a presidency through propaganda and hype, Putin also saw the scope for a ‘political war’ rooted in Soviet practices. Thus, the second variation of
gibridnaya voina was born.
These political wars, where the end goal is to be achieved by entirely non-military means, are very much how the Kremlin sees its current campaign against the West. Russia has reached back and re-learned a particular Soviet lesson, that political effects are what matters, not the means used to achieve them. Instead of trying to contest NATO where it is strongest, on the battlefield – it is worth remembering that NATO has a combined defence budget of $946 billion to Russia’s $47.4 billion (2.84 trillion roubles) – it is instead an example of asymmetric warfare, using gamesmanship, corruption and disinformation instead of direct force.
After all, here Russia has real strengths. Russia’s intelligence community has enjoyed Putin’s favour, and steadily growing budgets, sharpening their ability to conduct covert political but also terrorist attacks outside Russia’s borders, as well as not just cyberespionage but active cyberattacks. Their networks in the West are now considered generally to be as active, aggressive, and extensive as at the height of the Cold War. The huge government foreign media operation, spearheaded by the RT multi-lingual TV network, has been mobilized in an effort to undermine the will and capacity of the West to resist Russian operations. Meanwhile, the role of Russian money in supporting disruptive and divisive political movements in the West and infiltrating strategic economic sectors remains not just a concern, but one in which European intelligence agencies are seeing growing signs of strategic coordination. In and of themselves, none of these instruments are decisive, but together – and especially if Moscow manages to coordinate them more effectively – they form the basis for a formidable machine for fighting on the political front.
..
The ‘hybridity’ of Russian operations likewise reflects a conceptually analogous, even if operationally very different ‘hybridity’ of the Russian state. Through the 1990s and into Putinism it has, however you choose to define it, either failed to institutionalize or actively deinstitutionalized. The result is a patrimonial, hyper-presidential regime characterized by the permeability of boundaries between public and private, domestic and external. Lacking meaningful rule of law or checks and balances, without drawing too heavy-handed a comparison with fascism, Putin’s Russia seems to embody, in its own chaotic and informal way, Mussolini’s dictum ‘tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato’: everything inside the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.
As a result, it is not simply that Moscow chooses to ignore those boundaries that we are used to in the West between state and private, military and civilian, legal and illegal. It is that those boundaries are much less meaningful in Russian terms, and additionally straddled by a range of duplicative and even competitive agencies. This can get in the way of coherent policy and create problems of redundancy and even contradictory goals, such as the 2016 hack of US Democratic National Committee servers, where FSB and GRU operations appear to have been working at cross purposes.
However, it also means that it is much easier for the Kremlin to instrumentalize all kinds of other actors, from the Russian Orthodox Church and organized crime to businesspeople. Millionaire Konstantin Malofeev, for example, played a crucial role in the seizure of Crimea and destabilization of the Donbas. Since then, he has been an active agent of Russian influence in the Balkans. Likewise, former Russian Railways head and still close Putin ally Vladimir Yakunin is a vigorous supporter of Moscow’s interests and allies abroad, including supporting Edgar Savisaar’s divisive Centre Party in Estonia.
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..The Soviets were especially concerned with propaganda, misinformation and political manipulation, often with the same goal of masking underlying weaknesses. This tradition also lives on, enriched by the opportunities in the new, diffuse and lightning-speed media age.
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..In many ways, the best deterrence against the ‘political war’ form is not so much direct responses – though they undoubtedly have their place – but in creating sufficient societal resistance such that subversion is likely to fail Whatever else, the Kremlin is pragmatic, and it will not squander political and economic resources on quixotic operations doomed to embarrassing failure. If governance is therefore the new battlespace, then its war fighting forces and measures are thus very different: effective counter-intelligence services, proper oversight over the flow of funds and serious policing of corruption at home, media awareness for a new generation of citizens to render them less susceptible to manipulation from whatever the source, and above all efforts to increase the effectiveness and thus legitimacy of existing political structures.
..
After all, Russia (and potential future hybrid war antagonists) exploit and rely on weaknesses and vulnerabilities. At present, Moscow is capitalizing on a generalized legitimacy crisis in the West, one which has empowered populists, alienated voters, and catalysed the rise of sensationalist and partisan media voices. Without this crisis, the roots of which are outside the scope of this paper, Putin’s options for political war would be vastly more limited. Perhaps then this is the final lesson, that hybrid aggression of whatever form ultimately stems from weaknesses: a challenger without the strength to turn to direct confrontation, and a defender with sufficient divisions and shortcomings, whether military or socio-political, to be vulnerable. Given the two forms of
gibridnaya voina in Russian thinking, the challenge for the West is not to concentrate on one at the expense of the other.'
- Mark Galeotti,
(Mis)Understanding Russia’s two ‘hybrid wars’, November 29, 2018
Context'..the emerging "Global Magnitsky" regime..'Holacracy – ‘..to fully harness the power of every human sensor..’(Haptopraxeology)(Bazaarmodel - To Heal - Teal) - Holacracy '..to fully harness the power of every human sensor..' - 'A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.'Russia) - '..the wounds inflicted by the Soviet experiment have never healed..''..modern societies have not fully taken on board the lessons of the Holocaust..'1914 - 'Reminder - The Killing Fields' - 'Carl Menger [1840-1921] .. saw .. all civilizations rushing toward the abyss.'(To Heal)(Management innovation) - '..Teal Organizations to start healing the world..'Loving Your Enemies - By Martin Luther King, Jr'Mozi believed in love for all mankind.'-
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