The Dawn of Mass Information Warfare and the Reemergence of Russian “Agitprop” Operations
Over a hundred years ago, Prussian military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz defined war as “an act of violence intended to compel our opponents to fulfill our will.” Historically, war has been characterized by the large-scale organized use of coercive force, prepared and maintained by sovereign political entities unable to resolve differences nonviolently. It has been a means to achieve particular economic, political, or social ends. Strength in warfare has been traditionally determined by military size, offensive capability, coalition-building capacity, and strategic planning. However, in the past two decades, we have seen a steady decline of traditional militarized dyadic disputes, which has been supplanted by diffuse forms of non-kinetic warfare. This longitudinal change begs the question, has violence and coercive force become obsolete in achieving said national objectives? Furthermore, if kinetic war is now antiquated, through what new means will state actors begin to realize their ends?
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu explained, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” With the rise of the Information Age and the corresponding developments and proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT), actors have been presented with opportunities to do so. New modes of strategic planning will begin to appear, allowing states to meet their national objectives without ever needing to apply actual physical force. As we move through the 21st century, we will begin to see states (and sophisticated non-state actors) develop the capacity to destabilize countries from within. This will less likely take the form of disruptive and/or destructive cyberattacks on national critical infrastructure, but more frequently will operate as exploitation of social and traditional media platforms, that will not even require the mobilization of military personnel or use of a single stealth fighter to execute.
Blinded by our military primacy and conflation of exceptionalism, the Western world has willfully stayed steadfast to this Shock and Awe military doctrine, that emphasizes overwhelming offensive force and an overreliance on technological superiority. The real winners of 21st century warfare will not be the ones with the most sophisticated autonomous weapons or technically–skilled personnel, but the ones that develop new modes of thinking that suit the current information threat environment. Ultimately, we falsely believe that the threats of tomorrow will be technical in nature. In reality, the threat vectors will be citizens, exploiting our innate human biases, and expound upon misinformation campaigns, social engineering, and other psychological techniques to heighten confusion and erode trust.
While we are only at the precipice of this evolution, we are already beginning to see actors such as China, North Korea, and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) begin to adopt new asymmetrical modes of operation–fitting of this new environment–to achieve their own geopolitical objectives. The greatest harbinger of this trend is Russia’s modern adaptation of “agitprop” in its information warfare operations.
The use of information warfare to combat adversaries has been a recurring supporting cast member in Russian external affairs. The first employment of agitation and propaganda (agitprop) began with the creation of the Agitation and Propaganda Section of the Central Committee Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s. This agency was charged with controlling the content of all official information, administering political education in schools, and monitoring all forms of mass communication, all in use to mobilize public support for the party. During the Cold War, the KGB saw little value in prioritizing espionage and instead focused on controlling messaging that would have a nascent influence on media and political movements in less autocratic societies. Even after the Soviet collapse, information warfare still remained a fundamental component of Russian operations in the Baltic states (1990–1991), Transnistria (1990–1992), Chechnya and Dagestan (1994–2009), and the Russo–Georgian War of 2008.
It was not until the ascension of Vladimir Putin that we began to see a categorical shift in the strategic outlook on information warfare that is currently being utilized in Crimea, Western Europe, and the United States. As I surmise, over the past two decades, the Russian Federation has been developing, executing, and refining sophisticated and fundamentally different modes of strategic planning to disrupt, challenge, and undermine the stability, integrity, and legitimacy of its adversaries’ social and political institutions without ever needing use of kinetic force. The real advantage of this stratagem is the advantage of employing reflexive control, “a means of conveying to a partner or an opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action.” Not only is a low-level of technical sophistication needed for execution, but it increases their capacity to influence the populace of foreign nations without ever reaching the threshold of an “act of war,” according to established international statutes. We have already seen two prominent examples of Russia’s success: first, propaganda tactics to stir up hostility amongst Eastern Ukraine’s Russian minority on the onset of their annexation of Crimea in early 2014; second, with Operation: GRIZZLY STEPPE, a misinformation campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
While the extent of Russia’s impact on the presidential elections may never be known, without a doubt, the legitimacy of this election is still at question in the minds of millions of Americans. The issue has become bifurcated with Russia skeptics labeled as “unpatriotic” and “sore losers,” while the latter completely rejects the possibility of interference and some going as far to show Russia sympathy, dubbing it a conspiracy theory concocted by “liberals and the mainstream media.”
With the New Administration operating under the shadow scrutiny over alleged Russian collusion, and the recent announcement that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will forgo the NATO Summit next month but will instead meet with Russia, the U.S. commitment to NATO will now be called further into question. If this was the intended objective of the Kremlin, then we can be certain they would be ecstatic with the outcome. NATO has always been a thorn in Moscow’s side. And this information operation strategy may be viewed in Moscow as a suitable method to combat this existential threat. (Assuming Russia’s role in the American elections is true) it is to be expected that with Putin’s growing confidence, Germany and France will need to be on high alert come election time later this year.
However, we should be worried that this may be the initiation of mass information warfare that inevitably will come. A recent research paper from the NATO Defense College touches on this topic. Author Deborah Yarsike Ball stated, “Whereas previously information warfare was an adjunct to Russian statecraft, today it is the regime’s governing modus operandi.” She goes on to say that we must be very hesitant to underestimate the centrality and ubiquity of agitprop in the current conduct of Russian statecraft.
“As Putin aggressively pursues Russia’s geopolitical revival, his reliance on information warfare will only increase, as he moves from success to success,” states Bell. She warns us of potential Russian information operations in the Baltics as a case for concern. With the “obligation” to protect Russians abroad and the large ethnic Russian minority populations in Estonia (25%), Latvia (27%), and Lithuania (6%), it could give Moscow a pretext for intervention. Russian analysts have gone as far as to say that the Russian Federation has “officially — not privately, informally or covertly, but officially — equated its own security with the limited sovereignty of its neighbors.”
Specifically, Ball is concerned that if Russia finds it in its interest to violate the Baltic country’s territorial integrity, it would easily employ the same operations like the ones in Ukraine. Such efforts could include issuing Russian passports to Baltic Russians, thereby creating more “Russians” needing protection and a stronger Baltic Russian allegiance. This is a dangerous game to be played, but without NATO cohesion, there is no adequate deterrent.
It is time that U.S. policymakers take it upon themselves to become fully educated on the dynamics and implications of this innovative warfare framework. While a silver bullet is not currently within arm’s reach, this is an issue I will begin to tackle personally. Hopefully, I can find others out there who are willing to put aside their strident partisan leanings and assess the threat for what it is. While this issue should not be conflated, it is neither to be overlooked or understated.
Vladimir Kvachkov, a former Russian military intelligence officer, made the statement, “A new type of war has emerged, in which armed warfare has given up its decisive place in the achievement of the military and political objectives of war to another kind of warfare - information warfare.” With confidence, this type of warfare is here to stay. Therefore, we must act united to mitigate and deter it.
The single biggest threat to American stability will not derive from a direct external threat; it will stem from the inherent biases, fears, and distrust that we already have amongst each other.
If you are interested in the topic, here are some further readings:
Dr. A. Foxall, Putin’s Cyberwar: Russia’s Statecraft in the Fifth Domain, Policy Paper No. 9 (2016), Henry Jackson Society Russia Studies Centre, May 2016. (Provides a convenient list of recent targeted Russian cyber attacks.)
T. Thomas, Thinking Like a Russian Officer: Basic Factors and Contemporary Thinking on the Nature of War, Foreign Military Studies Office, April 2016, http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/Thinking%20Like%20A%20Russian%20Officer_monograph_Thomas%20(final).pdf (A guide to key elements of the framework of Russian planning and evaluation at the strategic and operational level, in information warfare and beyond.)
K. Giles, “Russia’s Public Stance on Cyberspace Issues,” in C. Czosseck et al (eds.), 2012 4th International Conference on Cyber Con ict, NATO CCDCOE, Tallinn, June 2012, https://ccdcoe.org/publications/2012proceedings/2_1_Giles_RussiasPublicStanceOnCyberInformationWarfare.pdf
“Stage 5: Information Warfare” in A. Grigas, Beyond Crimea: e New Russian Empire, Yale University Press, 2016, pp. 44–56.
Unwala and S. Ghori, “Brandishing the Cybered Bear: Information War and the Russia-Ukraine Con ict,” Military Cyber A airs, Volume 1, Issue 1, http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/mca/vol1/iss1/7
J. Weedon and L. Galante, “Intelligence Analysts Dissect the Headlines: Russia, Hackers, Cyberwar! Not So Fast,” FireEye Blogs, March 12, 2014, https://www.fireeye.com/blog/executive-perspective/2014/03/intel-analysts-dissect-the-headlinesrussia-hackers-cyberwar-not-so-fast.html
J. Darczewska, “Russia’s armed forces on the information war front. Strategic documents,” OSW Studies, 27 June 2016, http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/ publikacje/osw-studies/2016–06–27/russias-armed-forces-information-war-front-strategic-documents