Tag: Russia

Hybrid Warfare – Curtis L. Fox

Synopsis:

In Hybrid Warfare, Curtis Fox attempts to define a strategic tradition of Russian hybrid warfare within a three century context. The strategy hinges on interlocking components – e.g. information operations, network-centric warfare et cetera – which advance Russian geostrategic interests vis-à-vis great power competition. Similarly, effective application of hybrid policies tend to elevate a dynamic of convergence between the ways/means – as well as ends – of Russian strategy.

Excerpts:

“Russia’s unique experience in repelling Napoleon engrained the necessity of strategic barriers and buffer states into the political class. Kutuzov, a star pupil of eminent Russian Field Marshal Suvorov, demonstrated the efficacy of defeating sophisticated and numerically superior armies using indirect methods.

“Russia does not see hybrid warfare as an independent doctrine that departs in any way from traditional military practice. To the contrary, when the Russians plan what the West has come to call ‘hybrid wars’, they are merely deploying all available methods that maximize the chances of success for their conventional military forces.

“Non-kinetic operations create space: an opening where someone capable of organization amid chaos can make gains. Kinetic operations seize this space, using SOF to probe for footholds which can then be occupied through the rapid maneuver of elite ground forces.

“In a crisis and corresponding intervention, as envisioned by Gerasimov, Russia employs a wide variety of military and non-military measures, which are closely coordinated to achieve operational objectives… Likewise, subordinate doctrines like asymmetric warfare, reflexive control, information operations, low-intensity conflict, network-centric warfare, and fifth generation warfare fit neatly into Gerasimov’s model as a tool kit for escalating or de-escalating a crisis as needed.

“Russia would formulate the hidden-hand (fait accompli) strategy: establishing information dominance (both intelligence and propaganda), using intelligence operatives to raise friendly local partisans and militias, using special operations forces to quickly eliminate key targets and seize terrain; rapidly maneuvering heavy ground forces into the battlespace to entrench gains before the enemy can react.

*All excerpts have been taken from Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition and Conventional Military Conflict, -30- Press Publishing.

Keeping a World Intact – George F. Kennan

Synopsis:

George Kennan’s book Russia and the West chronicles early Soviet international politics under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin as well as Joseph Stalin. Russian diplomacy vis-à-vis the West is the emphasis, and Kennan offers keen analysis concerning Soviet intentionality. In his final chapter “Keeping a World Intact,” Kennan endeavors to harmonize points of friction with geopolitical realism to construct a workable American/Soviet diplomatic model for the Cold War.

Excerpts:

“Stalin was a dangerous man to the end; and almost to the end, he remained unchallenged in his authority. But the men around him served him, throughout those final years, in a sullen, guarded silence, expecting nothing and waiting only for the hand of Time to take him.

“By this opposition to the very institutions of the West, the Russian Communists offered to the will of the Western peoples a species of defiance for which they have had no patent other than their own unlimited intellectual arrogance.

“Russian governments have always been difficult governments to do business with. This is nothing new in kind – if anything is new about it – it is only a matter of degree.

“People who have only enemies don’t know what complications are; for that, you have to have friends; and these, the Soviet government, thank God, now has.

“The first to go, in my opinion, should be self-idealization and the search for absolutes in world affairs: for absolute security, absolute amity, absolute harmony. We are a strong nation, wielding great power. We cannot help wielding this power. It comes to us by virtue of our sheer size and strength, whether we wish it or not.

*All excerpts have been taken from Russia and the West: Under Lenin and Stalin, Mentor Book.