In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with Kiran Sridhar about his article “Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Strategy and How to Combat It,” from Telos 193 (Winter 2020). An excerpt of the article appears below. Their conversation addressed the ways in which Putin’s Russia, guided by the Gerasimov Doctrine, has mounted an effective asymmetrical challenge against the West through the spread of mendacious information online and in social media, thereby empowering elements of society distrustful of democracy and fomenting conspiratorial thinking; the launching of cyberattacks against the West’s technological infrastructure; and the use hybrid forces that operate at the behest of the Russian government without being directly controlled by it. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 193 are available for purchase in our store.
Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Strategy and How to Combat It
Kiran Sridhar
In 2013, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces and a close confidant of longtime defense minister Sergey Shoygu, published an article in a narrowly circulated military journal, Military-Industrial Courier. The article had an anodyne title: “The Value of Science in Prediction.” But this article was not abstruse. It begins with a bold proclamation: that the “rules of war” have fundamentally changed.[1] No longer was there a sharp discontinuity between warfare and peace. Instead, there were gradations, and nations could further their own aims by undertaking measures—propaganda campaigns spreading mendacious information; hacks and leaks designed to undermine the legitimacy of governments and populations; providing material support to opposition elements—that undermine opposing countries and systems. In this new paradigm, nations could use “internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”[2] He predicted that in the future, conflicts would be waged with a four-to-one ratio of nonmilitary to military means.[3] Such dramatic pronouncements were not coming from inside the ivory tower or from a peripheral figure in the Russian military; this article was written by a key driver of Russian national security and military policy.
The Gerasimov Doctrine is a conception of foreign policy that stands firmly in the national interest: it is a revanchist blueprint for returning Moscow to preeminence and reviving its rivalry with the United States and the West. It calls on Russia to repeatedly and brazenly impinge on the sovereignty of other nations. But it leverages technology as a labor-saving means for adopting a constant war footing with the West. Indeed, technology and globalization present an opportunity for the Russian government. The Western defense apparatus—NATO, the U.S. military, and the U.S. government—currently lacks the means to respond to this type of hybrid warfare. It will need to develop new strategies to respond to and deter Russian actions.
Under Vladimir Putin, the irredentist Russian Federation has sought to once again present a viable challenge to liberal democracies, as the Soviets did during the Cold War. After all, from the 1940s to the 1980s, Soviet apparatchiks and Kremlin leaders were convinced they would triumph against the West and its anachronistic capitalist system. However, in the 1980s, it was impossible for the penurious Soviet Union to keep pace with the United States, especially as Reagan swelled the Pentagon’s budget by 20 percent within his first year.[4] In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union was already a garrison state, spending two to three times more on defense than the United States relative to the size of its economy.[5] Hawkish members of the Kremlin wanted to maintain support of the military, but the reformist Gorbachev saw that grain shortages were becoming more acute as Soviet agricultural production stagnated. As a result, unrest was starting to form in the periphery: the Solidarity labor movement in Poland was bringing into sharp relief the Warsaw Pact’s floundering economy. For Gorbachev, cutting military expenditure was unavoidable. As he told the Politburo in 1988, “Yes, we achieved military-strategic parity with the United States. . . . [But] it is clear that without significant reductions in military expenditures we cannot resolve the problems of perestroika.”[6] As part of the sharp cut in defense spending, he abjured the Brezhnev Doctrine—which held that an attack on any Eastern Bloc state was an attack on all Eastern Bloc states—and withdrew 500,000 troops from Central Europe, effectively ceding control over much of the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. This led to the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War. The 1990s were a period of further humiliation for the Russian populace. The Soviet Union collapsed, and draconian shock therapy measures, imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions, turned Russia into a kleptocracy with high inflation, a devalued currency, and stagnant wages.[7] Meanwhile, NATO laid the groundwork to expand to former Warsaw Pact states, including, eventually, the Baltics, as democracy spread throughout the world.
Putin took office within this context, promising to return Russia to preeminence. Although he was imperious, consolidating control of many of Russia’s oil and financial assets, he brought stability and—aided by high commodity prices—prosperity. However, by 2012, when Putin was elected to a third term, Russia’s economy was flagging—and he had failed to thwart the expansionism of the West or to reignite a true rivalry with the United States.[8] Well-educated urbanites in Moscow and St. Petersburg staged protests against Putin’s rule. With tensions at home and diminished influence abroad, Russia was in danger of no longer posing a credible threat to its enemies. The Gerasimov Doctrine, laid out in a publication widely read by the Kremlin and the military’s top brass, was intended to assuage this concern among the government. Russia had a plan. . . .
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1. Valery Gerasimov, “The Value of Science in Prediction,” trans. Robert Coalson, Military-Industrial Courier, January–February 2013.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Leslie Gelb, “Reagan’s Military Budget Puts Emphasis on a Buildup of U.S. Global Power,” New York Times, February 7, 1982.
5. Franklyn Holzman, “Soviet Military Spending: Assessing the Numbers Game,” International Security 6, no. 4 (1982): 78.
6. William Wohlfort, “Realism and the End of the Cold War,” International Security 19, no. 3 (1994–95): 112.
7. Ivo Daalder, “Responding to Russia’s Resurgence: Not Quiet on the Eastern Front,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 6 (2017): 31.
8. Ibid., p. 33.
