Russian Hybrid Warfare: How to Confront a New Challenge to the West

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Executive Summary

In 2013, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s Armed Forces, publicly unveiled a fresh idea. In what came to be called the Gerasimov Doctrine, he described “new-generation” warfare — pre-emptive operations employing a mixture of nonmilitary and military measures to achieve political goals, deploying all elements of society.

Gerasimov suggested that such mobilization was urgent because Russia was already behind its enemies — implicitly the West, which was wielding a strategy that it called “hybrid warfare.” Technically, he was right — the United States does enjoy considerable global reach in cyber espionage, for example. But Gerasimov found hybrid warfare where there was none, such as the West’s insistence on a no-fly zone in Libya and in Syrian humanitarian missions, operations that Gerasimov called camouflaged strategies of aiding one side (the rebels) for political gain. Russia, Gerasimov said, needed not only to catch up, but to get out well in front.

The Russian general’s appraisal of Moscow’s combat readiness in the new age was disingenuous: Russia began to build up cyberspace expertise in the 1990s, when its Soviet-era military capability had wilted, and it embarked on a determined hunt for an arena to confront the West.

This paper examines the threat posed by Russia’s new generation warfare to the interests and security of the U.S. and its allies — in the military arena, and in technology, economics, and culture. It is the first in a three-part series on the dynamics and specific contours of the intensifying financial, hybrid, and geopolitical conflict between the West and Russia.

An End to a Largely Peaceful Post-Soviet Period

When the worst of the Balkan wars ended almost two decades ago, a period of general European calm unfolded, disturbed only in 1999 by brief fighting in Kosovo. Because of the relative quiet, the West came to expect a lasting return of its prior post-World War II insulation from major combat. European militaries dialed back and came to resemble more of an international policing force than a well-oiled fighting machine prepared to defend the NATO alliance.

But the Putin era — and the pursuit of a restoration of Moscow’s international stature — has forced a recontemplation of the historical arc.

Since his rise to power, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly surprised the West with demonstrations of an emboldened Kremlin, and revived some of the most troubling aspects of Cold War politics. But most recently, he has pursued his political goals through hybrid warfare.

In what is effectively a permanent state of war, Putin holds together a Russian national consensus through tightly scripted, state-controlled media that sustain a drumbeat against a morally bankrupt and power-obsessed West. The instruments of this asymmetrical battle often involve major regime-linked corporations, cyber weapons, and propaganda. Wielded by a nimble, opportunistic Putin, they pose a long-term policy challenge to the United States and Europe.

On December 31, 2015, Putin named the United States a national security threat, the first time Russia has so designated Washington since the Soviet collapse about a quarter-century ago. The U.S. has done the same — the Department of Defense’s updated Cyber Strategy names Russia as the top threat to American interests and security.

Putin, who has served alternately as prime minister or president since 1999, launched his new brinksmanship four years ago when he returned to the presidency for the second time. His apparent new objective has been to revive Russia’s strategic global parity with the United States.

This is not new: Since the Soviet disintegration, Moscow has relentlessly sought, generally without success, to recover its lost role as an essential superpower. But Putin’s recent actions — from military offensives in Ukraine and Syria to a confrontation with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the SWIFT banking system — demonstrate a new sense of determination. Taken as a whole, Putin is attempting to overturn pillars of the post-World War II political and economic order.

Some analysts attribute the current tensions to NATO enlargement and a supposed Western disregard for Moscow’s voice in international affairs. But the brinksmanship with Putin more accurately fits into a much longer history of conflict with the West, one rooted in a narrative of victimhood, resentment, and “encirclement.” In Putin’s mind, the U.S. has embarked on an imperious campaign to humiliate and unseat him — a conspiracy whose “color revolutions” have already taken down governments in Georgia and Ukraine, along with those of several Arab states, and whose next target is him. Much of the Russian leader’s tension with the U.S. has flowed from his inability to shed that conception.

In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea and destabilized eastern Ukraine. The West responded with punishing economic sanctions on Russia’s next-generation oil production in the Arctic and Siberia. Yet Putin has doubled down with an air-led offensive into Syria — 3,400 miles from Russian territory — Moscow’s first venture outside its former imperial realm since the Soviet collapse.

Amid a show of hybrid tactics, Putin has awarded financial support to fringe political movements in Western Europe, launched cyberattacks and espionage in Europe, and ordered probing and actual attacks on U.S. and European energy and communications infrastructure. He has continued to attempt to use control over energy — pipelines, nuclear plants, natural gas supplies — to wield influence across Europe. Western intelligence reports say Russia has exacerbated the Syrian migrant crisis. And, compounding the threat, Russia has formed a growing alliance with Iran and China, countries that possess their own hybrid toolboxes of proxy warfare and cyber infiltration.

To Western queries about Russian intentions, Putin has replied that he has consistently made Moscow’s interests clear, but that the West has ignored him. That history is beyond the scope of this report. Suffice it to say, however, that while Russia is going through the diplomatic motions, it is resorting to hybrid war tactics as a first order of geostrategic business.

What Is Hybrid Warfare?

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Pasi Eronen is the lead researcher for FDD’s Russia project, where his work focuses on economic coercion, hybrid threats, and their nexus with cyber and information warfare.

Read and download the full “Russian Hybrid Warfare” report.