Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2017 13:01:06 GMT -5
The Gerasimov Doctrine
It’s Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare. And it’s probably being used on you
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-foreign-policy-215538
September/October 2017
Lately, Russia appears to be coming at the United States from all kinds of contradictory angles. Russian bots amplified Donald Trump during the campaign, but in office, Kremlin-backed media portray him as weak. Vladimir Putin is expelling U.S. diplomats from Russia, limiting options for warmer relations with the administration he wanted in place. As Congress pushes a harder line against Russia, plenty of headlines declare that Putin’s gamble on Trump has failed.
Confused? Only if you don’t understand the Gerasimov Doctrine.
In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov—Russia’s chief of the General Staff, comparable to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—published a 2,000-word article, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight,” in the weekly Russian trade paper Military-Industrial Kurier. Gerasimov took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare—one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on. He wrote: “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.”
The article is considered by many to be the most useful articulation of Russia’s modern strategy, a vision of total warfare that places politics and war within the same spectrum of activities—philosophically, but also logistically. The approach is guerrilla, and waged on all fronts with a range of actors and tools—for example, hackers, media, businessmen, leaks and, yes, fake news, as well as conventional and asymmetric military means. Thanks to the internet and social media, the kinds of operations Soviet psy-ops teams once could only fantasize about—upending the domestic affairs of nations with information alone—are now plausible. The Gerasimov Doctrine builds a framework for these new tools, and declares that non-military tactics are not auxiliary to the use of force but the preferred way to win. That they are, in fact, the actual war. Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: Gerasimov specifies that the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state.
Does it work? Former captive nations Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania all sounded the alarm in recent years about Russian attempts to influence their domestic politics and security, as the Obama administration downplayed concerns over a new Cold War. But all three countries now have parties with Russian financial connections leading their governments, which softly advocate for a more open approach to Moscow.
In Ukraine, Russia has been deploying the Gerasimov Doctrine for the past several years. During the 2014 protests there, the Kremlin supported extremists on both sides of the fight—pro-Russian forces and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists—fueling conflict that the Kremlin used as a pretext to seize Crimea and launch the war in eastern Ukraine. Add a heavy dose of information warfare, and this confusing environment—in which no one is sure of anybody’s motives, and pretty much no one is a hero—is one in which the Kremlin can readily exert control. This is the Gerasimov Doctrine in the field.
The United States is the latest target. The Russian security state defines America as the primary adversary. The Russians know they can’t compete head-to-head with us—economically, militarily, technologically—so they create new battlefields. They are not aiming to become stronger than us, but to weaken us until we are equivalent.
It’s Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare. And it’s probably being used on you
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-foreign-policy-215538
September/October 2017
Lately, Russia appears to be coming at the United States from all kinds of contradictory angles. Russian bots amplified Donald Trump during the campaign, but in office, Kremlin-backed media portray him as weak. Vladimir Putin is expelling U.S. diplomats from Russia, limiting options for warmer relations with the administration he wanted in place. As Congress pushes a harder line against Russia, plenty of headlines declare that Putin’s gamble on Trump has failed.
Confused? Only if you don’t understand the Gerasimov Doctrine.
In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov—Russia’s chief of the General Staff, comparable to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—published a 2,000-word article, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight,” in the weekly Russian trade paper Military-Industrial Kurier. Gerasimov took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare—one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on. He wrote: “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.”
The article is considered by many to be the most useful articulation of Russia’s modern strategy, a vision of total warfare that places politics and war within the same spectrum of activities—philosophically, but also logistically. The approach is guerrilla, and waged on all fronts with a range of actors and tools—for example, hackers, media, businessmen, leaks and, yes, fake news, as well as conventional and asymmetric military means. Thanks to the internet and social media, the kinds of operations Soviet psy-ops teams once could only fantasize about—upending the domestic affairs of nations with information alone—are now plausible. The Gerasimov Doctrine builds a framework for these new tools, and declares that non-military tactics are not auxiliary to the use of force but the preferred way to win. That they are, in fact, the actual war. Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: Gerasimov specifies that the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state.
Does it work? Former captive nations Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania all sounded the alarm in recent years about Russian attempts to influence their domestic politics and security, as the Obama administration downplayed concerns over a new Cold War. But all three countries now have parties with Russian financial connections leading their governments, which softly advocate for a more open approach to Moscow.
In Ukraine, Russia has been deploying the Gerasimov Doctrine for the past several years. During the 2014 protests there, the Kremlin supported extremists on both sides of the fight—pro-Russian forces and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists—fueling conflict that the Kremlin used as a pretext to seize Crimea and launch the war in eastern Ukraine. Add a heavy dose of information warfare, and this confusing environment—in which no one is sure of anybody’s motives, and pretty much no one is a hero—is one in which the Kremlin can readily exert control. This is the Gerasimov Doctrine in the field.
The United States is the latest target. The Russian security state defines America as the primary adversary. The Russians know they can’t compete head-to-head with us—economically, militarily, technologically—so they create new battlefields. They are not aiming to become stronger than us, but to weaken us until we are equivalent.
