I. Introduction

The concept of warfare has evolved significantly over the years, with the traditional notion of state-on-state conflict increasingly giving way to more complex forms of engagement. This essay explores the concept of hybrid and non-linear warfare, a strategy that systematically blurs the lines between war and peace, and its implications for international security. The Russo-Ukrainian War (2014-2023) and the Chinese approach to hybrid warfare, particularly regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea, serve as case studies to illustrate the practical application of these concepts.

Hybrid warfare combines conventional and unconventional methods, including military operations, cyber warfare, disinformation campaigns, and economic pressure. Non-linear warfare, on the other hand, refers to a strategy that disrupts the traditional battlefield, making it difficult to distinguish between combatants and civilians or between times of war and peace. These strategies have become increasingly prevalent in the 21st century as state and non-state actors seek to gain strategic advantages without resorting to full-scale conventional warfare¹.

The Russo-Ukrainian War provides a clear example of these tactics in action. The conflict, which began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, has been marked by a mix of traditional military operations, cyber attacks, and information warfare.² The war has also been characterized by its non-linear nature, with the front lines and the state of war and peace often blurred.

Meanwhile, China’s approach to hybrid warfare, particularly about Taiwan and the South China Sea, offers another perspective on these strategies. Chinese military theorists Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, in their work “Unrestricted Warfare,” have outlined a broad approach to conflict that includes not only military actions but also economic, informational, and other non-military means.³ This approach, evident in China’s actions in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan, reflects a strategic shift towards hybrid and non-linear warfare.

This essay aims to explore these issues in depth, examining the nature of hybrid and non-linear warfare, its implications for international security, and how it has been employed in the Russo-Ukrainian War and by China. In doing so, it seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of these complex and evolving forms of warfare.

II. Hybrid and Non-Linear Warfare: An Overview

Hybrid and non-linear warfare represent two of the most significant developments in conflict and warfare in the 21st century. Their complexity and fluidity characterize these forms of warfare and the blurring of traditional lines between combatants and civilians and between war and peace.⁴

Hybrid warfare is a type of conflict that blends conventional and unconventional methods, including military operations, cyber warfare, disinformation campaigns, and economic pressure. This form of warfare is not limited to a single shape or dimension and can involve a mix of regular and irregular tactics across all dimensions of war.⁵ The term ‘hybrid warfare’ has been in use since at least 2005 when it was employed to describe the strategy used by Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War.⁶

Non-linear warfare, on the other hand, disrupts the traditional battlefield, making it difficult to distinguish between combatants and civilians or between times of war and peace. This form of warfare utilizes a grand strategy approach, where force-on-force conflict is not the primary objective. Instead, the goal is to create a complex and fluid situation that exploits an opponent’s weaknesses.⁷

Several factors, including advances in technology, the increasing interconnectedness of the world, and the evolving nature of threats, have driven the rise of hybrid and non-linear warfare. These forms of action allow state and non-state actors to gain strategic advantages without resorting to full-scale conventional war. However, they also pose significant challenges to international security, as they can be difficult to detect and counter and have far-reaching impacts on societies’ political, economic, and social fabric.⁸

In the following sections, we will delve deeper into these concepts and explore their implications through the lens of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China’s approach to hybrid warfare about Taiwan and the South China Sea.

III. Case Study: The Russo-Ukrainian War

The Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014 and is a prime example of hybrid warfare. The conflict started with disguised Russian troops’ covert invasion of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea. This was followed by the seizure of territory in Ukraine’s Donbas region by Russians and local proxy forces, marking the expansion of the conflict.⁹

In the early stages of the war, Russia employed a blend of conventional and unconventional tactics to destabilize Ukraine. This included cyber warfare, propaganda, economic pressure, and the deployment of “little green men” – soldiers without insignia who were later confirmed to be Russian personnel.¹⁰

However, the war took a significant turn on February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.¹¹ This marked a shift from the hybrid warfare tactics used in annexing Crimea to a more traditional form of warfare. Despite initial gains by Russian forces, Ukrainian defenders repelled attempts to seize Kyiv and other major cities and soon launched counterattacks at Russian positions.¹²

The full-scale invasion was not executed in the same manner as the 2014 annexation of Crimea. The gradual escalation of tensions and the failure of Russia at a strategic level to achieve its objectives became evident. The invasion resulted in a significant loss of life and displacement of people, with millions fleeing Ukraine.¹³

The Russo-Ukrainian War demonstrates the complexities and challenges of hybrid warfare. While Russia initially succeeded in destabilizing Ukraine through a blend of conventional and unconventional tactics, the shift to a full-scale invasion marked a significant escalation of the conflict. The failure of Russia to achieve its strategic objectives despite this escalation highlights the limitations of hybrid warfare when confronted with a determined and resilient defense.

The Russo-Ukrainian War also underscores the international implications of hybrid warfare. The conflict drew widespread international condemnation and led to significant sanctions against Russia. It also highlighted the role of global alliances and partnerships in countering hybrid warfare tactics.¹⁴

IV. Case Study: China’s Approach to Hybrid Warfare

China’s approach to hybrid warfare, particularly in the context of Taiwan and the South China Sea, offers a unique perspective on applying non-linear warfare strategies. This section will analyze China’s hybrid warfare tactics, focusing on its maritime gray zone operations, cyber warfare capabilities, and information warfare strategies.

China’s hybrid warfare strategy combines military, economic, diplomatic, and informational means to achieve strategic objectives without resorting to open warfare.¹⁵ This approach is particularly evident in China’s maritime gray zone operations in the South China Sea. China has been using a combination of naval, coast guard, and militia forces to assert its territorial claims in the region.¹⁶ These operations are designed to incrementally alter the status quo in China’s favor without provoking a military response from other regional actors or the United States.¹⁷

China has developed significant capabilities in the cyber domain and has been accused of conducting cyber espionage and cyberattacks against foreign governments and corporations.¹⁸ China’s cyber warfare strategy is driven by its perception of other countries’ changing cyber warfare approaches and practices, especially those of the U.S. and Russia.¹⁹ The Chinese government views cyber warfare as consistent with its military strategy, which is modified according to the national security environment, domestic situation, and activities of foreign militaries.²⁰

China’s information warfare strategies also play a crucial role in its hybrid warfare approach. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been using information warfare to control the narrative within its borders and influence perceptions abroad.²¹ The CCP employs various tactics, including censorship, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, to shape public opinion and advance its strategic objectives.²²

In the context of Taiwan, China’s hybrid warfare approach is designed to isolate Taiwan internationally, undermine its political system, and gradually erode its will to resist unification with the mainland.²³ This strategy includes diplomatic pressure to reduce the number of countries recognizing Taiwan, economic coercion to make Taiwan more dependent on the continent, and military intimidation to demonstrate China’s resolve to achieve unification.²⁴

China’s approach is multifaceted and adaptive, reflecting its strategic objectives and the evolving security environment. This approach allows China to pursue its interests and assert its influence without resorting to open warfare, thereby minimizing the risk of escalation and international backlash.

V: Causes and Consequences of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid warfare, as a complex and multifaceted form of conflict, is driven by various causes and has significant national and international security consequences. This section will explore these causes and effects, drawing on various academic sources to provide a comprehensive analysis.

V.1 Causes of Hybrid Warfare

The causes of hybrid warfare are multifaceted and complex, reflecting the diverse nature of this form of conflict. One key driver is the changing nature of power in the international system. Monaghan notes that the diffusion of power away from states and toward non-state actors has created an environment where hybrid threats can thrive.²⁵ This is particularly true in the digital domain, where non-state actors can wield significant influence.

Another cause of hybrid warfare is the desire of states to achieve their objectives without resorting to conventional action, which is often costly and risky. Hybrid warfare allows states to exploit the “gray zone” between peace and war, using military and non-military means to achieve their objectives.²⁶ This is evident in the case studies of Russia and China discussed in the previous sections.

V.2 Consequences of Hybrid Warfare

The consequences of hybrid warfare are significant and wide-ranging. At the national level, hybrid warfare can undermine state sovereignty, security, and the rule of law. This is evident in the case of Ukraine, where Russia’s use of hybrid warfare tactics has resulted in a protracted conflict that has undermined Ukraine’s sovereignty and security.²⁷

At the international level, hybrid warfare can destabilize the global system and challenge the norms and principles that underpin it. This is particularly the case in the South China Sea, where China’s use of hybrid warfare tactics has challenged the principle of freedom of navigation.²⁸

Hybrid warfare also has significant implications for the conduct of warfare. As Baines and Edwards note, hybrid warfare blurs the lines between combatants and civilians and between war and peace.²⁹ This complicates the conduct of action and poses significant ethical and legal challenges.

VI: Rethinking Warfare: A New Framework

The evolution of warfare, particularly the rise of hybrid and non-linear warfare, necessitates a new framework for understanding and responding to these threats. This section will explore the need for a new framework, the critical elements of this framework, and how it can be applied to the case studies of Russia and China.

1. The Need for a New Framework
   The traditional understanding of warfare, which primarily focuses on conventional military conflict, is no longer sufficient to address the complexities of the contemporary security environment³⁰. Hybrid warfare, characterized by blending conventional, irregular, and cyber warfare, along with other non-military tools, has become a prevalent strategy for state actors.³¹ This necessitates a new framework that can effectively address the multi-dimensional nature of hybrid warfare.
2. Key Elements of the New Framework: The new framework should incorporate the following key elements:
   1. Comprehensive Understanding of Hybrid Warfare: The framework should provide a comprehensive understanding of hybrid warfare, including its various dimensions, such as conventional, irregular, cyber, and information warfare.³² It should also consider using non-military economic, diplomatic, and political tools.
   2. Recognition of the Role of Non-State Actors: The framework should recognize the role of non-state actors in hybrid warfare. This includes not only insurgent groups and terrorists but also cybercriminals, hackers, and other actors who state actors can co-opt to achieve their objectives.³³
   3. Incorporation of Technological Developments: The framework should incorporate the impact of technological developments on warfare. This includes using cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies.³⁴
   4. Focus on Resilience and Defense: The framework should emphasize the importance of resilience and defense in responding to hybrid threats. This includes not only military security but also strengthening societal resilience, cyber protection, and other non-military reasons. ³⁵
3. Application to the Case Studies of Russia and China: The new framework can be applied to the case studies of Russia and China to provide a more comprehensive understanding of their hybrid warfare strategies.
   1. Russia: The new framework can help to understand Russia’s use of hybrid warfare in Ukraine. It can shed light on Russia’s use of conventional and irregular warfare, cyber and information war, and non-military tools such as economic and political measures³⁶.
   2. China: The new framework can help to understand China’s use of hybrid warfare in its approach towards Taiwan and the South China Sea. It can shed light on China’s use of conventional and irregular warfare, cyber and information war, and non-military tools such as economic and political measures.³⁷

The continuous evolution of warfare necessitates a new framework for understanding and responding to hybrid threats. This framework should provide a comprehensive experience of hybrid warfare, recognize the role of non-state actors, incorporate technological developments, and focus on resilience and defense. It can be applied to the case studies of Russia and China to provide a more comprehensive understanding of their hybrid warfare strategies.

VII. The Agile Approach to Hybrid Warfare

The agile approach to hybrid warfare is a strategic response that emphasizes flexibility, adaptability, and rapid decision-making in the face of complex and evolving threats. This approach is particularly relevant in hybrid warfare, where the lines between conventional and unconventional warfare are blurred, and the adversary’s tactics constantly evolve.

The agile approach is not a new concept in military strategy. It is rooted in maneuver warfare principles, which emphasize speed, surprise, and initiative to disrupt the enemy’s decision-making process.³⁸ However, applying these principles to hybrid warfare is a relatively recent development.

The NATO Alliance has recognized the need for an agile approach to hybrid threats. In its 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO leaders agreed on a strategy to enhance the Alliance’s resilience against hybrid threats, emphasizing the need for rapid decision-making, enhanced situational awareness, and improved strategic communications.³⁹

The U.S. Department of Defense has adopted an agile approach to hybrid threats. The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review highlighted the need for a more agile force that can quickly adapt to new threats and challenges.⁴⁰ This approach has been further developed in the concept of Multi-Domain Operations, which seeks to integrate capabilities across all domains (land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace) to create multiple dilemmas for the adversary.⁴¹

The agile approach to hybrid warfare also has implications for defense acquisition and technology development. Rapid technological change and the proliferation of advanced technologies to non-state actors and near-peer competitors have increased the complexity of the threat environment. Defense organizations must rapidly adopt more agile and flexible acquisition processes to field new capabilities.⁴²

However, the agile approach is not without its challenges. It requires high coordination and integration across different domains and agencies, which can be challenging to achieve in large and complex organizations. It also requires a cultural shift towards greater risk tolerance and a willingness to experiment and learn from failure.⁴³

An agile approach to hybrid warfare offers an intriguing framework for responding to the complex and evolving threats posed by hybrid warfare. However, its successful implementation requires significant organizational and cultural changes.

VIII. Policy Recommendations

The complexity and evolving nature of hybrid warfare necessitates a comprehensive and adaptive approach to policy-making. The following recommendations are proposed to counter hybrid threats effectively:

1. Strengthening International Cooperation: The international community must work together to counter hybrid threats. This includes sharing intelligence, coordinating responses, and developing joint strategies. In this direction, NATO has already taken steps, establishing the Hybrid Analysis Branch and the Hybrid Warfare Fusion Cell to enhance understanding and response to hybrid threats.⁴⁴ However, more can be done to strengthen these efforts, including expanding these initiatives to include non-NATO members and fostering closer cooperation with the private sector and civil society.
2. Building Resilience: Resilience is critical to countering hybrid warfare. This includes societal resilience, such as public awareness and media literacy to counter disinformation campaigns, and institutional resilience, such as robust cyber defenses and crisis management capabilities.⁴⁵
3. Investing in Research and Development: Technological advancements play a significant role in hybrid warfare. Therefore, investing in research and development in artificial intelligence, cyber security, and advanced weaponry can provide a competitive edge.⁴⁶
4. Enhancing Legal and Normative Frameworks: Hybrid warfare often exploits legal and normative gray zones. Therefore, enhancing international legal and normative frameworks to address these challenges is crucial. This includes clarifying the application of international law in the cyber domain and developing norms against the use of disinformation and other hybrid tactics.⁴⁷
5. Adopting a Whole-of-Government Approach: Countering hybrid threats requires a coordinated approach involving all government sectors. This includes the military and intelligence agencies and departments dealing with foreign affairs, domestic security, finance, and infrastructure.⁴⁸
6. Promoting Strategic Communication: Effective communication is crucial in countering hybrid warfare. This includes both internal and external communication within the government with the public and international partners. Strategic communication can help to counter disinformation, build public trust, and promote a unified response to hybrid threats.⁴⁹

Countering hybrid warfare requires a comprehensive and adaptive approach involving all societal sectors. By strengthening international cooperation, building resilience, investing in research and development, enhancing legal and normative frameworks, adopting a whole-of-government approach, and promoting strategic communication, we can effectively counter the complex and evolving threats posed by hybrid warfare.

IX. Conclusion

Hybrid warfare, characterized by blending conventional, irregular, and cyber action with other non-military tools, has emerged as a significant challenge in the contemporary security environment. This essay has comprehensively analyzed hybrid war, its causes and consequences, and the need for a new framework to understand and respond to these threats.

The case studies of Russia and China illustrate hybrid warfare’s diverse and complex nature. Russia’s actions in Ukraine and China’s approach towards Taiwan and the South China Sea demonstrate how state actors can exploit the “gray zone” between peace and war to achieve their objectives.^{50 51} These case studies underscore the need for a comprehensive understanding of hybrid warfare that includes both military aspects and non-military dimensions, such as economic, diplomatic, and political measures.

The causes of hybrid warfare are multifaceted and complex, reflecting the changing nature of power in the international system and the desire of states to achieve their objectives without resorting to conventional action.⁵² The consequences of hybrid action are significant and wide-ranging, undermining state sovereignty and security, destabilizing the international system, and complicating the conduct of warfare.⁵³

The agile approach to hybrid warfare offers a promising framework for responding to these complex and evolving threats. This approach emphasizes flexibility, adaptability, and rapid decision-making and incorporates the impact of technological developments on warfare.⁵⁴ However, its successful implementation requires significant organizational and cultural changes.

The policy recommendations proposed in This essay provide a roadmap for countering hybrid threats. These include strengthening international cooperation, building resilience, investing in research and development, enhancing legal and normative frameworks, adopting a whole-of-government approach, and promoting strategic communication.⁵⁵ However, the effectiveness of these measures will depend on the specific circumstances of each country and the nature of the threats they face.

Endnotes

¹ Smith, M. E. (2016). Hybrid warfare and its implications for defense and security policies. European View, 15(2), 223-234.
² Galeotti, M. (2019). The Russo-Ukrainian War: A Case Study in Non-Linear Warfare. In Non-Linear Warfare (pp. 45-64). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
³ Liang, Q., & Xiangsui, W. (1999). Unrestricted Warfare. PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House.
⁴ Hoffman, F. G. (2007). Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars. Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 1-72.
⁵ Kaldor, M. (2012). New and old wars: Organised violence in a global era. Stanford University Press.
⁶ Van Puyvelde, D. (2015). Hybrid war – does it even exist? NATO Review. Retrieved from https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2015/05/07/hybrid-war-does-it-even-exist/index.html
⁷ Hoffman, F. G. (2009). Hybrid warfare and challenges. JFQ: Joint Force Quarterly, (52), 34-39.
⁸ Kofman, M., & Rojansky, M. (2015). A Closer Look at Russia’s “Hybrid War.” Kennan Cable No. 7. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
⁹ Galeotti, Mark. “Russia’s ‘New’ Tools for Confronting the West: Continuity and Innovation in Moscow’s Exercise of Power.” Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, March 2016.
¹⁰ “Documents on Democracy: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.” Journal of Democracy, 2023.
¹⁵ Fravel, M. Taylor. “China’s Strategy in the South China Sea.” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs 33, no. 3 (2011): 292-319.
¹⁶ Erickson, Andrew S., and Ryan D. Martinson. “China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations.” Studies in Chinese Military Science (2019).
¹⁷ Yoshihara, Toshi, and James R. Holmes. “China’s Vision of Victory.” The Diplomat, June 6, 2019.
¹⁸ Segal, Adam. “What Are China’s Cyber Capabilities and Intentions?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 1, 2019.
²¹ Brady, Anne-Marie. “Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping.” Wilson Center, September 18, 2017.
²³ Chase, Michael S., and Benjamin S. Purser III. “China’s Long-Range Bomber Flights: Drivers and Implications.” RAND Corporation, 2015.
²⁴ Tsang, Steve. “Taiwan’s Impact on China: Why Soft Power Matters More than Economic or Political Inputs.” The China Quarterly 177 (2004): 25-44.
²⁵ Monaghan, Andrew. “The ‘War’ in Russia’s ‘Hybrid Warfare.'” Parameters 45, no. 4 (2015): 65-80.
²⁶ Hoffman, Frank G. “Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars.” Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007.
²⁷ Galeotti, Mark. “I’m Sorry for Creating the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine.'” Foreign Policy, 2018.
²⁸ Yoshihara, Toshi and Holmes, James R. “Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy.” Naval Institute Press, 2018.
²⁹ Baines, Paul, and Edwards, Nicholas. “The Art of Hybrid War: China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations.” Naval War College Review 73, no. 2 (2020): 1-37.
³⁰ Hoffman, F. G. (2007). Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars. Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
³¹ Johnson, R. (2018). Hybrid warfare and its countermeasures: A critique of the literature. Small Wars & Insurgencies, 29(1), 141-163.
³² Thiele, R. D. (2017). Hybrid warfare and the changing character of conflict. Connections, 16(2), 65-72.
³³ Popescu, N. (2015). Hybrid tactics: neither new nor only Russian. EUISS Issue Alert, 4.
³⁴ Kostyuk, N., & Zhukov, Y. M. (2019). Invisible digital front: Can cyber attacks shape battlefield events? Journal of Conflict Resolution, 63(2), 317-347.
³⁵ Baines, P. R., & Jones, K. (2019). Influence and interference in foreign elections: the real threat to the ‘free and fair’ election process? Intelligence and National Security, 34(5), 685-703.
³⁶ Galeotti, M. (2016). Hybrid, ambiguous, and non-linear? How new is Russia’s ‘new way of war’? Small Wars & Insurgencies, 27(2), 282-301.
³⁷ Cheung, T. M., & Thomas, J. (2018). The impact of China’s military modernization on regional stability. In China’s Evolving Military Strategy (pp. 1-30). Brookings Institution Press.
³⁸ Lind, William S. “Maneuver Warfare: Can We Make It Work?” Defense & Security Analysis 5, no. 2 (1989): 153-161.
³⁹ “Warsaw Summit Communiqué.” NATO. July 9, 2016. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/officialtexts133169.htm.
⁴⁰ “Quadrennial Defense Review 2014.” U.S. Department of Defense. March 4, 2014. https://archive.defense.gov/pubs/2014QuadrennialDefenseReview.pdf.
⁴¹ “Multi-Domain Operations.” U.S. Army. https://www.army.mil/standto/archive/2018/12/06/.
⁴² Gansler, Jacques S., and William Lucyshyn. “Defense Acquisition Reform: Where Do We Go from Here?” University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise. October 2014. https://www.csis.org/analysis/defense-acquisition-reform-where-do-we-go-here.
⁴³ Blanken, Leo J., and Jason Lepore. “Is the U.S. Military Ready for Agile Acquisition?” War on the Rocks. August 14, 2019. https://warontherocks.com/2019/08/is-the-u-s-military-ready-for-agile-acquisition/.
⁴⁴ “Hybrid Warfare,” NATO, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics156338.htm.
⁴⁵ “Hybrid Warfare: New Threats, Complexity, and Trust as the Antidote,” NATO Review, 2023, https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/11/30/hybrid-warfare-new-threats-complexity-and-trust-as-the-antidote/index.html.
⁴⁶ Andrew Monaghan, “The ‘War’ in Russia’s ‘Hybrid Warfare,'” Prism 8, no. 2 (2019): 104-120, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/prism/prism8-2/PRISM8-2Monaghan.pdf.
⁵⁰ Monaghan, Andrew. “The ‘War’ in Russia’s ‘Hybrid Warfare.'” Parameters 45, no. 4 (2015): 65-80.
⁵¹ Yoshihara, Toshi and Holmes, James R. “Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy.” Naval Institute Press, 2018.
⁵² Hoffman, Frank G. “Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars.” Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007.
⁵³ Baines, Paul, and Edwards, Nicholas. “The Art of Hybrid War: China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations.” Naval War College Review 73, no. 2 (2020): 1-37.
⁵⁴ Lind, William S. “Maneuver Warfare: Can We Make It Work?” Defense & Security Analysis 5, no. 2 (1989): 153-161.
⁵⁵ “Hybrid Warfare,” NATO, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics156338.htm.

The Changing Face of Conflict: What is Hybrid Warfare? was originally published on Global Security Review.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 undermined the liberal world order. NATO’s failure to defend Georgia, a NATO aspirant country, emboldened Moscow and triggered Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014. By attacking Georgia, Russia undermined NATO’s enlargement policy and damaged Georgia’s prospects for political and economic development. In order to avoid the mistakes of the past, NATO should offer full membership to Georgia—to prevent further Russian aggression, expand democratic values, and increase U.S. credibility on behalf of security and peace.

Georgia’s NATO membership will stop Russian aggression. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was the first time since World War Two that one sovereign state in Europe crossed the border to invade another. Russia founded it easy to invade Georgia because Georgia was neither a NATO member nor a U.S. military treaty ally. Georgia’s NATO membership will send the right message to Moscow and deter Russia’s further aggression. The Baltic States’ successful integration into NATO is a good case in point.

NATO membership will help Georgia accelerate its democratic development. Russia views the expansion of democracy into the post-soviet space as a threat to its national security. It is poised to roll back democratic breakthroughs around its borders. By expanding the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Union, Moscow intends to create NATO’s alternative, a powerhouse of authoritarian regimes to balance the West.

Georgia does not intend to join the Russian-led club of autocracies. Instead, it aims to integrate into the West and consolidate its democracy. In this regard, Georgia has made visible progress. Since the Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia has gone from the brink of failed statehood to the region’s poster child for democracy. Despite its remarkable success, Georgia’s democratic development is doomed to remain incomplete and far from consolidation unless it joins NATO and completes its political and economic integration into the West.

Georgia’s NATO membership increases U.S. credibility as a reliable partner.  It will reassure U.S. allies and partners facing similar threats. Allies in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are worried that the U.S is no longer interested in their security and stability. By offering NATO membership to Georgia, the U.S will not only uphold its international obligations and commitments, but it will also increase its credibility and reputation as a dependable partner.

Skeptics in the West worry that such a step will lead NATO to end up getting involved in direct conflict with Russia. They argue that Russia has a bigger interest in Georgia than NATO does and it can always afford to out-escalate conflict with NATO over Georgia. Notwithstanding division within NATO about its Russia policy, NATO forces remain larger, better equipped and more powerful than Russia’s. Therefore, given NATO’s military and economic superiority, Russia is less likely to go to war with NATO over Georgia. A strong alliance deterred the Soviet Union during the Cold War and will deter a much weaker Russian Federation in the future.

Georgia’s NATO membership will deter aggression, strengthen democracy and increase U.S. credibility. As George Kennan wrote in the now famous Long Telegram, “Russia is impervious to the logic of reason and it is highly sensitive to the logic of force.” By the same token, Kennan’s belief that “Russia would back down when encountered strong resistance at any point” remains more relevant today than ever before. Consequently, it is time for NATO to act, and act quickly. By pushing Georgia’s speedy membership in the Alliance and sending a clear message of resolve to Moscow, NATO will contain Russia’s geopolitical thrust and make the region stable, peaceful and more democratic.

NATO Membership and Georgia’s Democratic Future was originally published on Global Security Review.

In 2017, Catalonia held an illegal referendum on independence from Spain, despite it having been declared unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court. While 92% of referendum voters supported independence, only 43% of registered voters voted. Amid police crackdowns and massive protests, the Spanish National Court ordered the imprisonment of Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez, two Catalan separatist leaders. In spite of this, Catalonian MPs voted to declare independence. In response, Spain imposed direct rule over Catalonia. However, the situation is not as straightforward as many commentators make it seem, as vital information key to understanding the unrest has been overlooked.

Both the United States Senate and an independent study conducted by the George Washington University have claimed that Kremlin-connected media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik created “zombie accounts” or bots to perpetuate a negative perception of Spain in the days leading up to the referendum. Half of the stories shared by RT highlighted police violence to deliberately disrupt internal cohesion in Spain.

Spain is not Moscow’s only target, however. Over the last year, the E.U. East StratCom Task Force reported 993 reports of disinformation cases, 152 of which targeted the E.U. and originated from Russia. Furthermore, eighty-three percent of Europeans believe “fake news” is a danger to democracy.  Disinformation is on the rise, and there is ample evidence that Russian disinformation is part of an orchestrated campaign to overwhelm democracies and free media outlets. Coined by Russian expert Mark Galeotti, the “Gerasimov doctrine” is a colloquial term that refers to the employment of non-kinetic or non-military methods to achieve political ends—to destabilize the E.U. and NATO from within through the exploitation of existing social, ethnic, and religious divisions.  The so-called “Gerasimov doctrine” merely describes an operational concept and isn’t a reference to a Russian military doctrine.

For decades, the trans-Atlantic alliance has remained stable, but history is no guarantee of stability in perpetuity. Despite mostly positive support for NATO amongst the citizens of its member states, Russia seizes upon existing dissatisfaction felt by a minority of citizens and pushes messaging that employs terms like “occupying power” to describe the alliance. The same goes for the European Union. Member states regularly disagree over issues such as refugee resettlement, Russian sanctions, and the resurgence of nationalism across the continent. Such subjects are prime targets for Russian disinformation campaigns, which are disseminated by Kremlin-controlled media outlets like RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, as well as on fringe websites and social media accounts to amplify the message further.

Disinformation is challenging to counter, despite increasing and widespread awareness. Some European states like France have enacted laws that compel social networks to disclose the source of funding for sponsored political content and allow for candidates to sue for the removal of contested news reports during elections. In 2018, the E.U. enacted a non-binding disinformation code of practice, aimed at targeting “fake news” in upcoming European elections.

Such measures, however, are merely reactive and fail to anticipate the continually adapting strategies of disinformation purveyors. To avoid laws that target foreign influence campaigns, state-sponsored actors are buying political ads in local currency. Actors are increasingly adept at masking their locations and are moving towards image-based disinformation campaigns, which are less regulated and significantly more difficult to legislate.

Rather than perpetually being one step behind, Europe should emulate the strategies of states like Estonia that have been dealing with Russian disinformation campaigns for years. Rather than allow for Russian disinformation campaigns to gather steam, the websites such as the Estonia-based Propastop continuously debunk disinformation. The Estonian government also operates a Russian-language news channel to serve as an alternative to RT. Moreover, all Estonian politicians and public administration officers do not give interviews to Russian state-controlled media outlets. This strategy of national resilience is also strengthened by Estonia’s National Center for Defense and Security Awareness (NCDSA), a non-governmental organization that aims to foster a society that is resilient and resistant to hostile foreign influence.

France: The Yellow Vests

Counter-disinformation tactics must be adaptable because disinformation comes in many different forms. Catalonia and Estonia are not the only case studies by far. France, for example, is currently dealing with an enormous surge of anti-government protestors who disagreed vehemently with an increase on the gas tax. These protestors are better known by their moniker “yellow vests.” Although the demonstrators’ original demand of suspending the gas tax increase was met, the next day, more than 125,000 yellow vest protestors took to the streets, clashing with police and looting stores as they went.

According to New Knowledge, 340 pro-Kremlin accounts created and magnified “the brutality of the French police, Macron’s inability to lead the nation, and anti-NATO or anti-migrant sentiments more than 20,000 times.” Since late October 2017, these accounts have posted at least 1,600 times a day on Twitter, retweeting false information to increase its believability. These accounts, as well as others, impersonated journalists and legitimate news outlets to craft a narrative of France being embroiled in a civil war and blaming Macron for its onset.

What does the Kremlin hope to accomplish through its disinformation campaigns in France? Ultimately, Russia wants to undermine the French government’s ability to govern effectively. If the French government’s focus is entirely domestic, it can no longer point fingers at Russia, continue its sanctions regime, and pose any serious threat to Russia. By amplifying societal discontent in France with disinformation through social media, Russia is creating a reality where French democracy is indeed under threat. As the yellow vest protests continue, it remains to be seen whether or not Russia has achieved its goals.

Georgia: Disinformation as the Status Quo

Unfortunately, Russian disinformation in Georgia is nothing new. During the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, the former launched an intense pro-Russian propaganda campaign to spread claims that the Georgian government was violating the human rights of Russian speakers in Georgia. Although the accusations were widely discredited, they were used by Russia to justify the invasion and subsequent occupation of the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. While Georgian politicians are aware of threat Russian disinformation poses, they lack the political will to enact meaningful countermeasures.

According to the Georgia-based Media Development Foundation (MDF), this lack of response may be problematic given that almost 2000 anti-Western messages were detected throughout Georgian media outlets in 2017. In contrast to 2016, when most of the Russian disinformation campaign was centered on human rights, the dominant topic in 2017 was the polarization of the Georgian domestic political landscape. Pro-Kremlin actors focused on targeting everyday Georgian’s perceived loss of national identity paired with demonizing rhetoric of the U.S., NATO, and the E.U.

Russia’s disinformation campaigns in Georgia are based on a three-part strategy. First, create a threat. Second, foster distrust of Georgia’s Western allies and partners. Third, reinstate and reinforce the belief that Russia is the sole trustworthy partner. Russian disinformation campaigns in Georgia used fake photos and videos to encourage conspiratorial thinking and increase radicalism in groups like Georgian Neo-Nazi parties. One example of this tactic is the “lab of death” narrative, where it was claimed that a U.S.-funded laboratory in Georgia which was giving untested drugs to Georgians, causing them to die.

In Georgia, the goal of such disinformation campaigns is quite different than in France. As Georgia is not presently a member of the E.U., the bulk of Russian messaging is intended to ensure that will never happen. Russia sees Georgia as lying within its sphere of influence, and any attempt to align with the West is seen as a threat. The 2008 Russian-Georgian war, for example, is primarily seen as the driver behind Georgia’s push to receive a NATO Membership Action Plan.

Despite the troubled relationship between the two countries, Georgia has adopted a pragmatic approach for its foreign policy, where it has downplayed tensions with Russia and even is in talks to create trade corridors through the frozen conflict zones of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Again, Russia’s disinformation campaigns are having the desired impact. Despite Georgia’s westward orientation, Tbilisi continues to adopt a less aggressive and more pacifist tone towards Moscow.

Europe Needs to Fight Back

From Western Europe to the Eastern Neighborhood, disinformation campaigns are having a severe impact on societal cohesion. In France, the “yellow vest” protests are ongoing. In Georgia, right-wing radicalism is on the rise, threatening Georgia’s turn to the West. Disinformation is even suspected to be involved with Brexit, and the recent German parliamentary election. In this hostile environment, Europe must reorient itself and learn from the E.U. East Stratcom Task Force and Estonia. Otherwise, the E.U. risks further fragmentation within itself and other Western democracies.

Russia’s campaigns are succeeding within Europe because countries are not adopting the appropriate countermeasures. Instead of simply acknowledging that disinformation is a problem, European countries must take proactive measures to debunk Russian propaganda. The E.U.’s East Stratcom Task Force is already doing much of this work, but it could receive further funding and publicity from all E.U. member states.

Counter-disinformation efforts can only be successful if they are marketed effectively. Furthermore, European countries ought to create more societal resilience programs, modeling them off the Estonian model. While not every European country has a Russian-speaking minority, each has segments of disenfranchised people who are vulnerable to disinformation. Put bluntly, the best way to combat the current successes of Russian disinformation is to fight back.

How Russia’s Disinformation Campaigns are Succeeding in Europe was originally published on Global Security Review.

The European Neighborhood Policy—the program’s predecessor—was initiated in 2004 to promote cooperation and stability in former Soviet European states. Five years later, the Eastern Partnership Program was inaugurated. The program encourages countries—specifically Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—to undertake democratic reforms in return for economic incentives.

As the program is getting older, the E.U. High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (the bloc’s de facto foreign minister) and the six participating countries will meet in May 2019 to discuss the Eastern Partnership Program beyond 2020. This may perturb Russia, which has expressed concerns that the program is detrimental to Russian interests.

The Contentious Eastern Partnership Program

Although the goal of the EPP was ostentatiously to bring the six countries mentioned above closer to the E.U., Russia sees the situation differently. Rather than seeing these partnerships as an effort toward stabilization in the region, Russia considers the E.U. to be trespassing within its sphere of influence. In essence, Russia sees any policy that is “without Russia” as “against Russia.”

Russian concerns are not without merit. Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine have all struck association agreements with the E.U. since the start of the EPP program—and Azerbaijan is expected to do so as well in the near future. While each country has its reasons for taking part in the EPP, Russia sees a concerted effort to impede its influence.

In response, Russia has taken steps to ensure that these countries remain in its orbit. In Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, Russian troops continue to occupy territory with separatist militants, while Russian troops are actively stationed in Azerbaijan and Armenia. Moreover, Russia has enacted politically-motivated economic sanctions against Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

What does the future hold for the EPP?

While some countries have treated the EPP as the first stepping stone to full European Union membership, it’s clear that the E.U. doesn’t consider these as potential member-states. No consensus exists over whether these post-Soviet states should have the opportunity of joining the E.U. Furthermore, corruption in many of the EPP states is often ignored in favor of closer relations to further the promotion of democracy and free markets.

Any Western promise of Georgian and Ukrainian NATO membership serves to further destabilize the region and suggests that the EPP is only symbolic. With no actual proof that NATO or E.U. membership is forthcoming, many of these country’s populations become disillusioned with Western values. Such rhetoric also provides a rationale for Russia to act aggressively against these countries.

In Ukraine, the Russian occupation of Crimea and the Donbass regions suggest that the Kremlin wanted to act before any further NATO or EU membership was adopted. In Georgia and Moldova, the presence of Russian troops force both countries to consider possible Russian reactions before taking any serious steps towards integrating with western institutions.

While diplomats will meet in May to discuss the future of the EPP, the program’s future success is heavily reliant upon how Russia and the E.U. choose to act going forward. The E.U. must acknowledge that these countries are far from meeting the requirements for joining the E.U. and NATO. At the same time, Russia must be led to perceive stabilization as a positive development rather than as a threat to its sovereignty and sphere of influence.

What’s the Future of the E.U.’s Eastern Partnership Program? was originally published on Global Security Review.

After a contentious election and subsequent runoff, Salome Zurabishvili claimed victory as the next President of Georgia. The 2018 Georgian Presidential Elections mark the final stage in a process introduced by former President Mikhail Saakashvili that aims to shift Georgia’s system of governance from a presidential to a parliamentary-based state. Georgia’s new president, Zurabishvili, will be the last elected via a direct popular vote. From this point on, executive power will rest almost exclusively with the Prime Minister.

Why is Georgia’s introducing constitutional reforms?

Changing the system of governance is meant to stop some of the more flagrant abuses of power that were formerly exercised by the ruling elite. The constitutional reforms effectively transfer executive power from the president to parliament. In Georgia, however, this will result in the ruling Georgian Dream party having substantial political power. Georgian Dream currently holds 115 out of the 150 seats and the next parliamentary elections are set to be held in 2020.

Additionally, the constitutional reforms will change how the president and members of parliament elected. The president, until now, were elected via popular vote. Going forward, Georgian presidents will will now be elected from a college of political officials, somewhat similar to the Electoral College in the United States.

Members of parliament will no longer be allowed to form electoral blocs, making it difficult (if not impossible) for smaller parties to meet the five percent threshold required for a party to be seated in parliament. Even more controversial is a new rule that will give unallocated seats to the majority party if the five percent threshold isn’t met by the party that won those seats.

Despite the loss of the presidency’s political authority, the elections garnered significant attention worldwide.

While the presidency will lose much of its power, the opposition party contends that the election was ‘stolen.’ Even with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker supporting the results of the election, Grigol Vashadze, the opposition candidate, refused to accept the results.

Around 25,000 gathered in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, to protest Zurabishvili’s election to the presidency and demanding snap parliamentary elections. More than 60 percent of Georgians claimed that they either did not understand the constitutional reforms or they did not agree with them. Former President Saakashvili, who now lives in the Netherlands, claimed the vote was rigged. There were allegations of fraud while others complained that by purchasing the debts of 600,000 people, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and funder of the Georgian Dream, was essentially buying votes for his candidate of choice.

International observers characterized the election as “free but unfair.” The main cause of concern? The 600,000 people whose debt was purchased by Ivanishvili. Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze personally announced the policy, which applied to nearly one-third of the entire adult population of Georgia. In essence, Ivanishvili offered to buy back the debt of much of the Georgian voting population. However, even while domestic politicians claim that the vote was rigged, no international observers have stated that the election itself was illegitimate.

Going forward, it’s likely international observers will call for peaceful protests but will urge acceptance of the result. The opposition will continue to fight against what it perceives was an unfair and illegitimate election. While there has been negligible signs of interference, Western governments should closely monitor for any malicious or hostile interference. Such a possibility isn’t unlikely, given Russia’s history of exploiting internal divisions in the post-Soviet space.

Georgian Constitutional Reforms Alter Presidency was originally published on Global Security Review.

The E.U. first decided to impose sanctions in the wake of the March 2014 annexation of Crimea, which were expanded a few months later after Russia began a destabilizing hybrid war in eastern Ukraine, and after a Russian-made missile destroyed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukrainian territory controlled by separatist forces backed by the Kremlin.

In 2018, E.U. members states joined the United Kingdom and the United States in expelling a record number of Russian diplomatic and intelligence personnel in response to the reportedly Kremlin-ordered attempted assassination of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, in which the nerve agent Novichuk was used on U.K. soil.

At the turn of the century, Russia saw itself as European. However, as E.U.-Russia relations have steadily deteriorated over the past decade, Russia has turned away from Europe, identifying instead as a Eurasian power. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Russian President Boris Yeltsin promoted the idea of E.U. integration for Russia, and upon becoming president in 2000, Vladimir Putin pursued a similar path.

Russian-European Integration

The 2000 Russian Foreign Policy Concept, a whitepaper produced by the Kremlin that defines Russia's foreign policy, identified the E.U. as being critically important for Russia as one of Moscow's primary "political and economic partners." While the Kremlin still perceived NATO and the U.S. as Russia's foremost national security threats, in addition to impeding Russia's long-term goal of restoring its status as a "great power," the European Union was viewed favorably.

However, this perception did not last. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by the U.S., Putin became increasingly vocal about the necessity for Russia to reestablish itself as a "great power" to adequately defend its interests in the post-Cold War era. Concurrently, the Kremlin, in both rhetoric and action, became increasingly assertive about what it considered its right to dictate the foreign policy of neighboring states, located in what Russia historically regards as its sphere of influence.

In 2004, the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia (former Soviet republics) joined the E.U. along with multiple former members of the Warsaw Pact, such as Poland. In response, the Kremlin denounced the E.U.'s expansion, accusing the bloc of creating divisions across the European continent.

The expansion of the E.U. into what Russia viewed as its sphere of influence, combined with the wave of "color revolutions" in several former Soviet republics between 2003 and 2005, led the Kremlin to begin regarding the E.U. as a power with expansionist ambitions that threatened Russian sovereignty and strategic foreign policy aims.

European Expansionism

Under Putin, Russia grew convinced that both the E.U. and the U.S. played a part in the "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, which either could have—or did—shift the alignment of those states towards Europe, at Russia's expense.

The perception in Moscow of the E.U. as a distinct and separate entity from NATO and the U.S. faded between 2004 and 2008. From Russia's point of view, all three actors were working to impede Russia's foreign policy, and undermine its sovereignty by imposing on Russia an international order that was at odds with Russia's interests.

Less than eight years after desiring greater integration with Europe, Putin regularly accused the U.S. of unipolar hegemony and argued that the post-Cold War order was unfair. In a speech delivered at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin asserted that the U.S. "overstepped its boundaries in all spheres—economic, political, and humanitarian." As a consequence, he stated that Russia would follow an "independent foreign policy."

The Russian Foreign Policy Concept released in 2008 subsequently downgraded the E.U. from a "main political and economic partner" to "one of the main trade-economic and foreign policy partners." In the same year, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied the regions of Abhkazia and South Ossetia, situated along Georgia's border with Russia.

In response, the E.U. halted negotiations on what would be a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement that would define Moscow-Brussels relations. In 2009 the E.U. launched its Eastern Partnership initiative with six former republics of the Soviet Union.

The following year, the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) was formed by Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The ECU was intended as a counterweight to the E.U. and was designed to consolidate Russia's influence in the post-Soviet space to guarantee its national interests better and increase its global standing.

Russia Turns Away from Europe—to Eurasia

In 2012, Moscow was overwhelmed by large-scale protests over the reported rigging of the 2011 parliamentary elections. The Kremlin, again, saw the protests as being part of a Western plot to destabilize Russia's political system and foment regime change. Putin, having returned to the presidency that year, began instituting structural reforms that would impede Western influence within Russia, while simultaneously promoting Russia as the conservative defender of traditional values.

The 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine that toppled the pro-Russian government of President Viktor Yanukovych was seen by Putin as yet another example of Western interference in Russia's historical sphere of influence. Just months after Yanukovych fled Ukraine, Russia annexed the territory of Crimea from Ukraine and stoked a devastating civil war in eastern Ukraine.

In recent years, Russia has gone on the offensive against the West, interfering in multiple elections and exploiting political divisions in Europe and the United States. From the Russian perspective, this is only logical. The Kremlin maintains that the E.U and the U.S. were engaged in a plot designed to destabilize and weaken Russia, so it attempts to do the same.

Relations between the E.U. and Russia largely reflect the broader relationship between Russia and the West. Russia's 2016 Foreign Policy Concept eliminates any reference to the European Union, instead emphasizing "Eurasian integration," a reference to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the successor to the ECU. Currently, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan are members.

The EAEU is intended to facilitate the economic integration of former Soviet republics into a single economic entity. Russia's reorientation towards Eurasia through the EAEU is a signal that it now sees the E.U. as something that, instead of cooperating with, must be confronted.

As Russia Identifies as a Eurasian Power, It Turns Away from Europe was originally published on Global Security Review.

The status of U.S.-Russia relations is often explained by commentators as a “second Cold War.” This, however, is a misstatement. The Soviet Union and the United States were nowhere near as interconnected as Russia and the U.S. today. Even despite Western sanctions, Russia remains deeply integrated into the global trading, financial, and political systems—and it has exploited them.

American (and European) institutions, civil society, and social discourse—at all levels—have been caught almost entirely off-guard by the Kremlin’s strategic exploitation of a rigid military taxonomy.

Failure to accurately conceptualize war threatens national security and risks destabilizing the rules-based global order. Changing the perception that cyber and traditional warfare are distinct—or even mutually exclusive—entities is a prime example of a necessary step forward.

21st Century Wars Are Fought in all Domains

U.S. leaders have struggled to conceptualize asymmetric measures of influence-projection,  like the Russian concept of nonlinear warfare. In the aftermath of the U.S.-led NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, Russian military planners recognized that—a considerable nuclear arsenal notwithstanding—Russia’s conventional forces would have no means of matching NATO in terms of conventional force parity.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the U.S. military underwent a restructuring based on its experience fighting mostly insurgents and other non-state actors in the Middle East. Meanwhile, an increasingly emboldened Russia embarked an multi-domain campaign to counter what it perceives as the threat of NATO encirclement.

First and foremost, the U.S. must restructure the civilian and military components of its national security apparatus. Accordingly, the core notions of national security and warfare as legal, practical, and existential concepts that have been maintained for over seven decades are no longer applicable. Policymakers and strategists must regard warfare in an entirely new light.

Western military strategists over-rely on a rigid structure of categories or taxonomies in their effort to build a useful model for various types of conflict. Cyber operations have been treated as a distinct domain—a domain of lower strategic importance than warfare in the traditional sense.

Changing the perception that cyber and traditional warfare are distinct entities is a prime example of a necessary step forward.

In contrast—to the detriment of U.S. strategic interests—adversarial powers have learned to rely on a nuanced mixture of conventional forces, cyber warfare, and the dissemination of strategic communications (propaganda) through traditional, digital, and social media outlets to deliberately sow confusion and dissent within a target territory or state.

Agile Warfare

With a perpetual “innovation-cycle,” Russian nonlinear tactics are strikingly similar to the Agile development methodology used by engineering teams in the technology sector.

The iterative cycle of establishing a hypothesis, experimentation (also known as a/b testing), analysis, and iterative review, repeated endlessly, has been a remarkably efficient way of creating disorder.

Such chaos makes it difficult for dissenters both outside and inside the country to effectively mobilize their compatriots, overloading social media and data streams with information and traffic from botnets and trolls.

The Age of Nonlinear Combat

Nonlinear warfare has been described by some “the Gerasimov doctrine”—following the publication of an essay by General Valeriy Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff —this is a misnomer. In contemporary parlance, nonlinear warfare is synonymous with hybrid warfare. The U.S. Department of Defense uses the term “hybrid threat.”

The notion of hybrid or nonlinear warfare is also incorrectly associated with the concept of asymmetric warfare, which originated following the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the insurgencies that arose in the aftermath.

The U.S. had limited experience with long-term combat against non-state actors and lengthy counter-insurgency campaigns prior to the 2001 and 2003 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. The term asymmetric warfare was used to define this new paradigm.

However, the system of classification has, yet again, proved to be the United States’ achilles heel. Without a doubt, the United States possesses insurmountable conventional military strength and continues to pose an undoubtedly credible threat of mutually assured destruction through its strategic nuclear arsenal.

Both Russia and China realized early that technological advancements in the fields of information technology and population or market research and analysis could be effectively weaponized and integrated into a multichannel offensive military strategy that would have far-reaching advantages when it came to confrontations with the less-agile policies pursued by U.S. military planners.

Moscow’s success stems from its total or “all-in” conception of war. The Kremlin has been heavily investing in modernizing its outdated soviet-equipped military. This model depends on the blurring of lines between state and non-state actors, alliances and adversaries; even war and peace.

Starting in 2008, Russian special and conventional forces were assisted by political subversion, information warfare, and other active measures in simultaneous and complementary assault on Georgian infrastructure and territory. As a result, the Georgian state was paralyzed and unable to act to prevent the de-facto secession of the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

A similar scenario occurred in Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, with an executed apparatus of plausible deniability using information warfare, insurgent funding, and economic warfare to utilize proxy “local actors” to achieve individual goals. In the Crimean campaign, Russia’s non-kinetic operations—information, economic, and cyber attacks—laid the groundwork for a complementary military operation.

Nonlinear Thought and Military Planning

Linear thinking has long-dominated military planning and has dominated Western military strategy until the end of the twentieth century. In a linear thought model, a strategy is laid out through detailed planning, established processes, step by step detail management tips, and stakeholder expectations.

To combat foreign influence operations, all levels of the private and public sectors must develop and implement strategic plans to protect intellectual property, secure sensitive information, and deter acts of aggression. This requires a substantial degree of nonlinear thought. Nonlinear thought is less constrictive than linear thinking. A nonlinear combatant employs a range of tactics and measures across domains to gauge what is effective and what isn’t.

The ability to project force through a multitude of mediums is tantamount to U.S. national security interests—particularly if those means are utilized by a foreign adversary to subvert or threaten the interests of the United States.

To Counter Hybrid Threats, U.S. Must Redefine Conception of Warfare was originally published on Global Security Review.

For nearly a decade, peacekeepers backed by the European Union have kept watch over a shaky peace at the far corner of Europe – along the contested boundary left after the Georgian-Russian war. The patrol is the EU’s only peace mission of its kind. It also remains the only dispassionate witness and deterrent to flare-ups in a region taut with ethnic tensions, unpredictability, and unclear borders.

When the EU brokered the ceasefire between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, it also took upon itself the task of monitoring compliance, setting up a 200-person contingent known as the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM). But Russia developed its own plan: It declared the disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia independent states, gave them its full military protection and effectively barred all international monitoring inside them.

Moscow’s veto ended the consensus-based, long-standing peacekeeping operations in the two Soviet-era administrative regions. Until 2008, the regions – which broke away from Georgia just after Georgia broke away from the crumbling USSR – had been monitored by both the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“Now we are the only international presence, which means that we […] are the eyes and ears of the international community in a wider sense,” Erik Høeg, head of the EUMM, told Eurasianet.

But unlike the previous missions, the EUMM is not allowed into Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It does its monitoring from the Georgian-controlled side. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Georgia in late August and joined the patrol, she, just as the patrollers do, had to peek through binoculars to take a look at South Ossetia.

Georgia: A solitary peacekeeping mission on the edge of Europe was originally published on Global Security Review.

Russia has been threatened by invasions for centuries. The country’s western borders have always been distinctly vulnerable, with no mountain ranges, bodies of water, or other geographical features to serve as natural defenses.

The European landmass that borders western Russia is a large peninsula that lies between the Baltic and North Seas in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and the Black and Mediterranean Seas in the south.

In contrast to its European neighbors, Russia has few maritime access points. Its few ports are mostly unusable during the winter, and even during warmer months, the Arctic Ocean is far from Russia’s major population centers. Turkish waters to the south, much like Nordic waters to the north, can be easily blocked.

During the Cold War, airbases in the United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland, and Greenland gave NATO air superiority which would, in the event of a conflict, enable the alliance to block Russian access to the Atlantic ocean through the strategic GIUK Gap.

The concept of containing Russian expansion wasn’t limited to the Cold War. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, both France and Britain made concerted efforts to contain Russian activities in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Asia. With limited defensive options available, Russia’s military doctrine has historically been offensive, with the aim of dominating its neighbors to prevent borderlands from being used against it.

Whereas the West views Russia’s fear of invasion as baseless, history has shown otherwise. The view in the Kremlin is that each era brings a fresh existential threat, be it overt or covert, conventional or asymmetric.

Russia’s history and geography have fostered the existence of a highly centralized and autocratic political system, with leaders obsessed with both internal and external security.

After World War II, Moscow saw the encirclement of the Soviet Union by the U.S. and its western allies as a strategic threat. The incorporation of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states into the Soviet Union, along with the creation of buffer states in Eastern Europe like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, bolstered Russia’s feelings of security at the expense of the West’s.

NATO expands as the Soviet Union disintegrates.

As the Kremlin lost control over territory across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, its sense of security was eliminated entirely. At the end of the twentieth century, Russia’s security buffer had ceased to exist, and its western border was the farthest east it had been since the eighteenth century.

Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russian objections left few options when it came to NATO expansion in Eastern Europe. One option was for a robust expansion of NATO, under the logic that Russia would always attempt to dominate its neighbors if not deterred by the threat of military force.

Alternatively, the NATO expansion could be delayed until Russia reneged on its pledges to respect the sovereignty of its neighbors. However, NATO proceeded with its eastward expansion, arguing that it had done so on the premise of avoiding a confrontation with Russia, rather than preparing for a new or expected Russian threat.

After the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in March 1999, the alliance commenced a three-month bombing campaign against Serbia, a state with deep historical and cultural ties to Russia.

The campaign demonstrated the efficacy of NATO’s advanced conventional weaponry at a time when Russia was struggling to rebuild itself. Additionally, the concurrent NATO expansion into former Warsaw Pact countries all but ensured that Russian leaders would once again be able to seize upon the tried-and-true narrative that NATO, led by the United States, was an existential threat to Russia.

Russia’s perpetual fear of invasion has always been a significant driver of its foreign policy.

While military conflicts in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine have been attributed to aggressive Kremlin efforts to reestablish elements of the Soviet empire, it should be noted that, with the exception of Crimea (which houses the Russian Black Sea Fleet), Russia has not officially annexed any territory belonging to the states in which it has engaged in hybrid conflicts.

The Kremlin’s motives in Ukraine aren’t merely plausible deniability, the annexation of pro-Russian territories would only have the counter-productive effect of encouraging pro-Western forces to escalate their efforts.

Annexation would undermine Russia’s primary goal, which is to prevent countries in what the Kremlin considers to be its sphere of influence from joining NATO, essentially a strategy of reverse-containment.

The alliance typically rejects aspirants with unresolved border disputes, internal territorial conflicts, and insufficient military capabilities to provide for credible national defense. The presence of frozen conflicts in the Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine effectively blocks them from joining NATO.

Recommendations for Policymakers: Contain and Modernize

During the Cold War, the NATO alliance worked because the United States understand the reality of a Russian sphere of influence with which it had to balance to maintain global stability and security.

In the cases of Georgia and Ukraine, the timing of the Russian interventions coincided with those states’ respective overtures to both NATO and the European Union, entities viewed as inherently hostile to Russia’s interests.

The combined separatist territories, under de-facto Russian control, now form a protective barrier along Russia’s southwestern border. Just as Stalin used the countries of Eastern and Central Europe as a security buffer against the perceived threat of western encirclement, Putin has done the same.

NATO members and partner states can better inform their view of Russian strategy by analyzing the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine. Russia has employed hybrid warfare in both conflicts to great effect, in the form of conventional cross-border assaults accompanied by a combination of unconventional operations, information operations, cyber tactics, economic coercion, and political influence.

NATO requires a multi-faceted modernization strategy that goes beyond merely padding the frontlines with additional troops and assets. To effectively contain Russia in the twenty-first century, the transatlantic alliance urgently needs looking to modernize its maritime forces, as well as improve non-frontline capabilities such as cyber, information warfare, and missile defense.

Russian Expansionism is a Consequence of Geography was originally published on Global Security Review.

In the South Caucuses, the Republic of Georgia is caught in the middle of a geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Nestled on the Russian border between the Caspian and Black Seas, Georgia finds itself in a position of strategic significance. Georgia, a former Soviet republic, has embarked on a path towards liberal democracy and is actively pursuing membership within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 

International organizations such as the United Nations Development Program and numerous European research centers have been embraced by the Georgian government as it works to increase the rule of law, political transparency, human rights, civil liberties, and economic security in Georgia.

Simultaneously, Georgia is caught in a territorial dispute, claiming that the two northern territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are under illegal Russian occupation. The Russian government, however, refutes this claim. 

Though the 2008 five-day war between Georgia and Russia resulted in a ceasefire, it left Abkhazia and South Ossetia under Russian protection while legally remaining within Georgian territory. After the war, Georgia withdrew its position as a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose re-grouping of former Soviet Union member states, including Russia.

Georgia is strengthening political and security ties with the West.

One of the most significant developments of late are remarks made May 2018 by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a joint press conference with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili. In his remarks, Secretary Pompeo issued a call for Russian troop withdrawal from the occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in accordance with the 2008 ceasefire agreement. 

Secretary Pompeo’s condemnation of the occupation as a “violation of international peace and security” and contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act is a firm position against Russian regional aggression. 

Furthermore, Secretary Pompeo’s charge against Russia’s involvement in Georgia is essentially an ultimatum that Russia has violated international law. Given the degree to which Russian leadership has employed concepts of international law in its endeavors, this ultimatum has significant implications for the legitimacy of Russia’s foreign policy.

In addition to the continued strengthening of U.S.-Georgian security and economic ties, Secretary Pompeo highlighted Georgia as a “steadfast partner” with the United States and NATO in safeguarding “common security interests,” emphasizing U.S. support for Georgia’s acceptance as a NATO member. 

The European Parliament has since called upon Russia to renounce its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent from Georgia. Syria, in the meantime, has joined Russia in its support of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence. The Georgian government has severed diplomatic ties with Syria in response. Moscow has dismissed such claims as politicized and biased, and that Russian involvement in Georgia has been one of peacekeeping.

Tensions are growing over Russia’s troop presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In late June, representatives from Russia, the United States, Georgia, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia engaged in somewhat fervent consultations that were co-chaired by the U.N, the E.U., and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The United States reiterated the call for a Russian withdrawal of forces and its support for maintaining the integrity of Georgia’s territorial sovereignty.

The Russian representatives emphasized the threat to regional security presented by the growing presence of NATO forces, and that any chance at increased productivity is dependent upon Georgia’s willingness “to engage in a direct and respectful dialogue with the representatives of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to abandon any confrontational rhetoric and behavior.” 

Ultimately, the consultations increased frustrations between Russia as the defender of Abkhazian and South Ossetian sovereignty and the United States as the proponent of Georgian territorial integrity. With the increase in geopolitical tensions between Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia exhibited by these developments, the United States and Russia face decisions of profound significance toward regional stability as crucial allies of opposing blocs. 

The upcoming summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump may very well shed light on what the future holds for the South Caucuses. Nevertheless, one would do well to keep a weather eye on Georgia.

Georgia Realizes Strategic Significance Amidst Tense Russia-NATO Relations was originally published on Global Security Review.

The Russian flag was raised by residents of Crimea, not Russian soldiers. Russian forces were stripped of any identifying markers or insignia. Cyber attacks launched at Ukrainian infrastructure and internet domains were structured in a manner that obfuscated Russia’s involvement.

It’s widely understood that Russia was responsible for the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. However, the confusion spawned by the disinformation campaigns, cyber attacks, and unmarked special forces, and the later actions in eastern Ukraine, would see the west committing further inaction allowing the Kremlin to consolidate, and then normalize the acquisition of Crimea by the Russian Federation.

After the conspicuous invasion of Georgia in 2008, the 2014 Crimea operation employed subtle paramilitary and special forces to seize critical points of interest while securing internal order. Russia applied a  broad swath of non-military, hybrid or “non-linear” warfare tactics designed to foster the rapid integration of the Crimean political, security, media, and financial sectors with those in Russia.

The period between the initial “invasion” of information and cyber attacks and the eventual referendum deciding Russian sovereignty over the peninsula was little more than a month.

The military involvement served as a deterrent to Ukrainian troops, while the lack of insignia or identifying features on Russian special forces provided a degree of plausible deniability. Accordingly, the NATO powers in Europe and North America would not have apparent cause to intervene.

Simultaneously, the political, economic, and information warfare campaigns that had been set in motion were masked by the threat of a full-scale Russian invasion in other parts of Ukraine.  Russian troop mobilizations and activity near the Ukrainian border diverted international attention from Crimea while pro-Russian non-military measures were implemented to politically, socially, and economically integrate the Crimean peninsula with Russia.

Having learned the mistakes of overt military action, and the risks that such action has for becoming embroiled in a heated civil war, Russian military strategists employed a mixture of both state-sponsored actors, state actors, and pro-Russian Crimean civilian protestors and militia groups.

All state-actors in Crimea were bereft of identifying marks that would associate Russia with the incursion.

All that was required for the Kremlin to deny any responsibility was for their special forces to show up wearing un-flagged uniforms. Regarding ensuring the viability and legitimacy of their actions in Ukraine, Russia proceeded to launch an aggressive campaign in the United Nations. As they had done before their 2008 invasion of Georgia, their disinformation campaign extended to Russian delegates at the United Nations.

Russia’s ambassador repeatedly—and forcefully—asserted that Ukrainian authorities were threatening and committing acts of violence against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Superficially, the carefully crafted (artificial) legal context for this argument was structured similarly to the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

It must be noted that the latter was to ensure the security and existence of critically vulnerable civilians. This is a stark contrast to the underlying reason for Russian aggression, which is to provide the continued hegemony of Russia in the post-Soviet space.

The efficacy of the Crimean campaign (and Russian non-linear warfare as a strategy) is evidenced by two factors.

One is the degree to which Russia was able to normalize the annexation. The other is the masterful execution of diplomatic and legal rhetoric which rendered the West inability of Western military intervention, to realize a controlled process of de-escalation and normalization.

The ongoing exploitation—and arguably weaponization—of International law and legal framework by State actors posits a critical urgency to reform theoretical conceptualizations of international law governing conflict, especially since purely conventional battles will be the exception in the 21st century. The blending of non-linear tactics with plausibly deniable conventional forces actively threatens the rule of law in the international order.

“Plausible Deniability” in Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine was originally published on Global Security Review.

In the early autumn of 2016, a Ukrainian hacker collective calling itself CyberJunta obtained and subsequently published emails reportedly belonging to Vladislav Surkov, a senior advisor and personal aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

CyberJunta stated that its efforts were undertaken in conjunction with other hacker collectives; specifically, groups referred to as “FalconsFlame,” “RUH8,” and “Trinity.” This grouping refers to itself the Cyber Alliance. Oft-referred to as the” Gray Cardinal of the Kremlin,” Surkov is considered the be the architect of Russia’s contemporary political system.

Who is Vladislav Surkov?

From 1999 to 2011, while serving as the First Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration, Surkov acted as the Kremlin’s main ideologist; proposing and subsequently implementing the concept of “sovereign democracy” in Russia. Surkov is perceived by many—both in Russia and in the West—as a key figure with considerable influence in the Kremlin. According to The Moscow Times, this power is independent of any official title Surkov has held within the Putin administration or in the Russian government.

Observers have credited Surkov’s keen ability to manipulate public perception through an intricate blend of theater and managed politics with keeping Putin in power since 2000. As First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Surkov sat a desk laden with phones labeled with the names of nearly all of Russia’s “independent” or “opposition” political party leaders, “calling them and directing them at any moment, day or night.”

The Puppet Master of Moscow

Rather than directly oppressing opposition as traditional authoritarian governments had done, Surkov’s strategy was more complex. Under Surkov’s direction, dominant ideologies and movements were infiltrated with propaganda and misinformation, sewing chaos by exploiting their internal disagreements, rendering them ineffective.

This strategy is exemplified by Surkov funding civic forums and foreign non-governmental organizations while simultaneously providing support and encouragement to Russian nationalists who would accuse NGOs of being “tools of the west.” By placing itself at the center of all forms of political and ideological discourse, the Kremlin effectively owns any narrative an independent movement might try to seize.

In December of 2011, Surkov was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. In May of 2013, Surkov forced to resign his position within the government, returned to the Presidential Administration to serve as a personal adviser to Vladimir Putin on Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and Ukraine. Surkov has since been placed on U.S. and E.U. sanctions lists for his role in orchestrating the Crimean annexation.

The Kremlin Plot to Normalize Ukraine

The hacked emails detailed a Kremlin plan to further destabilize Ukraine in an effort favor Russia’s interests, by pushing for early Parliamentary elections through the extensive use of cyber and information warfare tactics, and through increased financial support to separatist or “pro-Russia” politicians.  Also published by hackers were copies of passports that are alleged to belong to Surkov and members of his family, which have been verified as authentic.

The plan detailed in Surkov’s purported emails states that de-escalating the conflict in eastern Ukraine on Russian terms is possible—if the Kremlin can fundamentally shift the Ukrainian political landscape in its favor. De-escalation and normalization would then create favorable circumstances for the integration of the Donbass with Russia—Russian-armed separatist militias, and “little green men”—widely known to be Russian troops in unmarked uniforms continue to wage war against the Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbass and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine.

The campaign detailed in the alleged Surkov emails would increase non-kinetic tactics—i.e. active measures (subversion, kompromat, propaganda, economic influence)—that would bolster support for Russian interests in Kiev. If more pro-Russia or “separatist” politicians were elected to the Ukrainian parliament,  Russia’s influence would undoubtedly increase exponentially, allowing it to “de-escalate” the conflict on its terms.

Oleksandr Tkachuk, the chief of staff to the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (the SBU), said on Television Tuesday that after a thorough examination by experts, Ukraine’s intelligence services believe the emails to be authentic.  At the time, Tkachuk reiterated that the SBU only has access to documents that were released to the public and does not have any connections with CyberJunta or related hacker groups.

The Ukrainian presidential administration and the SBU declined requests for comment from domestic and international media regarding the alleged hack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Surkov’s participation in any Russian plot to further destabilize in Ukraine and insisted that the documents released by the hacking group were forgeries.

Analysis: Kremlin Timeline Coincides with Political Disorder and Confusion in Post-Election U.S.

The leaked documents allege that the optimum time to proceed with the initiative was from November of 2016 through to March of 2017. Just as the United States’ presidential election was ending. In hindsight, one can note that this timetable perfectly coincided with increased dysfunction and divisions within the United States government.

This may indicate that senior Kremlin officials were anticipating a U.S. government in chaos, distracted by domestic issues and by the well-documented Russian-directed disinformation campaigns and cyber operations designed to damage the integrity of the United States’ democratic process and institutions. Surkov was—at the time—confident in the detrimental effect Russia’s interference would have on the U.S. political system, and in the U.S.’s ability to deter normalization in Ukraine that would favor Russia’s interests.

Top Putin Aide’s Hacked Emails Reveal Secret Plan to Invade Ukraine was originally published on Global Security Review.

In February, 2018, MIkhail Saakashvili was detained, flown to Poland, and eventually to the Netherlands, His wife’s home country. Saakashvili has responded defiantly, saying that he will ignore the ban and return to Ukraine claiming, “I will return home to Ukraine very soon now, much sooner than in three years.” That may be difficult seeing as Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship was stripped in July 2017, after allegations were made charging him with corruption and poor governance.

How did Saakashvili come to get banned from Ukraine?

The former Georgian president was chosen to lead the fight against corruption in the Odessa region of Ukraine by his former friend, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Just a few years later, Saakashvili would be banned from yet another country he formerly called home.

Although he was known for his strong stance against Russia and anti-corruption position, Saakashvili is not as popular as he once was in the early 2000’s. In Georgia, his presidency lasted from 2004-2013. During that time, he presided over the 2008 Georgia-Russia war, in which Georgia lost control over the disputed territory of South Ossetia. In 2012, Saakashvili’s party lost the parliamentary elections and he was further term limited out of office in the following year.

Since losing that election, Saakashvili looked to university friend, Petro Poroshenko for help. Poroshenko was elected as the Ukrainian president in 2014. Saakashvili became an advisor to Poroshenko, and in 2015 became governor of Ukrainian region of Odessa region.

To become governor, he needed to become a Ukrainian citizenship. This meant Saakashvili needed to renounce his Georgian citizenship. This was no great loss for him, considering that he is convicted of abuse of power in relation to a 2006 murder case and sentenced to three years of prison in-absentia. He maintains his innocence, however, saying that the charges are politically motivated.

The following year, Saakashvili was again out of work. He resigned from his post as governor in November 2016, claiming that members of the Ukrainian government, Poroshenko in particular, were undercutting his efforts to fight corruption.

In the year that followed his resignation, Saakashvili became an outspoken critic of Poroshenko. He and his supporters claim that Poroshenko is a pawn of Putin, and that all of his political acts are purely motivated towards Russian dominance. His movement, however, is not particularly popular and is not expected to be particularly successful in the 2019 Ukrainian elections.

Why does Saakashvili have difficulty gaining support from Ukrainians?

In short, Ukrainians are tired of turmoil. From the Euromaidan protests to the Russian annexation of Crimea, Ukraine has been in a constant state of flux for over four years. Saakashvili’s own history is not one of stability. His past leadership is marred with unpredictable behavior and populist tendencies. Further complicating his reputation is a pending money laundering case in the Ukrainian courts that alleges that Saakashvili conspired with ousted president Viktor Yanukovych.

Although his Ukrainian citizenship was stripped from him in July 2017, Saakashvili succeeded in crossing the border illegally from Poland in September of 2017. He has organized and led anti-government protests. In response, the Ukrainian government has accused Saakashvili of working with a criminal organization. They further state that the anti-Poroshenko protests are a “Russian plot against the government in Kiev.”

Saakashvili appears at the Munich Security Conference to push his own agenda

Saakashvili made an appearance at the Munich Security Conference in February of 2018. Instead of joining the broader security discussion, he spent his time speaking out against the Ukrainian government. His claims of crooked business dealings and anti-democratic measures ring hollow against his own attempts to work with the Svoboda party and Azov Battalion, both of which are right-wing, xenophobic groups.

Although his supporters in Georgia and Ukraine would prefer otherwise, Saakashvili’s star seems to have waned. He will undoubtedly continue to speak out against perceived injustice, but the former president seems to have been reduced to a stateless agitator.

The Decline of Mikhail Saakashvili was originally published on Global Security Review.

U.S. Special counsel Robert Mueller on Feb. 16 indicted Russian individuals and entities for interference in the U.S. presidential election.

This is not a one-off act of Russian interference. In the previous nine years, Russia has invaded its neighbor Georgia, annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea and supported rebels in Eastern Ukraine.

As a historian of Russian history, I find the most interesting question to be this: Are these actions a sign that Russia is returning to aggressive foreign policies or are they part of an entirely new direction in Russian foreign policy?

The answer to this question is important for the U.S. and countries throughout the world. If these policies are a return to deep Russian tradition, it will be difficult to reverse Russian aggression.

To answer it, let’s look at patterns of Russian policy stretching back over three centuries.

Buying off nobles

At the beginning of the 17th century, Poland was a great power that not only meddled in Russian politics but even sent an army to Moscow in 1610 and put a Polish prince on the throne. However, Russia grew in power through the next hundred years. By the early 18th century, Russia was routinely meddling in internal Polish electoral politics. At this time, the Polish king was elected by the noblemen. Peter the Great and his successors bribed nobles to vote against attempts of the king and central government to strengthen the central government and national army.

At the end of that century, Russia, Austria, and Prussia – three states that had overridden Polish noble resistance and heavily taxed their subjects to fund powerful armies – partitioned the Polish state among themselves, wiping it off the map entirely. Indeed, Poland remained part of the Russian Empire until it regained independence during World War I.

The other direction of Russian expansion was to the southwest. In 1774, Russia defeated the Ottoman Empire, a major empire that dominated the Mediterranean from Morocco through the Middle East and Turkey into the Balkans. In the punitive peace, Russia preserved a right to intervene in internal Ottoman affairs on behalf of Christians. In 1814, after Alexander I pushed Napoleon out of Russia, the tsar’s troops marched to Paris and brokered the European peace. In 1848, in an uncanny precursor to the Soviet invasion in 1956, Russian troops quashed the Hungarian noble uprising against Habsburg rule.

In the late 19th century, Britain, France, Germany and other European powers engaged in the great “race for colonies” in Africa and Asia. Russia’s imperial expansion in this era was relatively limited. Although it conquered sparsely populated lands in Central Asia, when it tried to expand in the Far East, Japan defeated Russia in a humiliating war.

The Soviet era

From its very birth in 1917, the Soviet regime sought to turn its communist revolution into a global communist revolution. But it was really the only victory in World War II that gave the Soviet Union superpower status and the ability to intervene in other countries on a global scale.

The USSR tightly controlled and forced the Soviet communist model upon all of East Europe and supported communist and nationalist anti-colonial radical movements throughout the world. The Soviet Union tried to create its own alternative to the U.S. and European-led post-World War II international economic system, the European Union and NATO.

Now Russia supports nationalist opponents of the international economic system, the European Union, and NATO. Although on the surface, communism and today’s nativist right-wing populism are ideological opposites, they actually share quite a lot in common. Both reject the international status quo, normal modes of party politics, and attitudes toward facts and the media. Both are animated by an underlying hostility toward the Western world.

However, we should keep a few important things in mind before concluding that Russia is inherently or uniquely oriented toward empire and expanding its influence abroad.

First, Soviet-controlled East Europe broke away in 1989 in remarkably peaceful fashion. Two years later, the Soviet Union was dissolved by none other than the leader of the Russian Federation along with the Kazakh, Belarusian and Ukrainian leaders. Although there were a few clashes and small wars of succession, it was arguably the most peaceful and rapid dissolution of a major empire in history.

Considering the violent history of conflicts between three of the largest populations in the region – Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians – it is remarkable that the area did not descend into wars of succession. The popular book “Armageddon Averted” captured the sense that the peaceful Russian acceptance of the loss of empire and global influence in the 1990s was something of a miracle, especially given nuclear weapons and a massive army spread across the region.

Second, it is also easy to forget the history of the “democratic West.” Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain and Portugal all built and ruled massive overseas empires from the 16th through the second half of the 20th centuries. Turkey built a huge multi-ethnic empire around the Mediterranean from Morocco to the Balkans, and Austria assembled dozens of nationalities into a major continental European empire.

The U.S. conquered much of its western territories from Spain, Mexico and Native Americans in the 19th century. It established a sphere of influence in South and Central America, where it often intervened in elections and even coups.

These empires broke apart in two waves: in the aftermath of World War I and in the decades following World War II. The breakup of the Soviet Union and its East European satellite empire is basically the last chapter in the story of this global phenomenon. Nowhere has the process of imperial dissolution been fully peaceful, and in places like the Middle East, it has been the nexus of extended violent civil wars.

The third point to keep in mind is that while Russian intervention in the U.S. election is unprecedented in the history of American elections and is rightly a cause of great concern, it is not unprecedented in the history of international relations. In fact, the U.S. has a long record of putting its finger on the scales in elections in other countries. According to a database compiled by Dov Levin, the U.S. attempted to influence the outcome of 81 presidential elections around the world from 1946 to 2000.

With these caveats, let us return to the question: Do recent Russian actions mean a return to traditional Russian aggressiveness after an uncharacteristic decade of retreat between 1989-1999?

With the exception of Syria, Russia’s interventions since 1991 have been limited to its immediate neighborhood. Meddling in elections and supporting right-wing parties in Europe and the U.S. is perhaps a sign that this is changing.

But Russia is not a rising great power as it was from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries. As a relatively weak state that is declining in relative power, its foreign policy ventures have arguably been more oriented toward winning domestic support for a regime lacking in electoral legitimacy. In this sense, perhaps recent Russian foreign policy is more like the British action in the Falklands and the U.S. in Grenada in the 1980s than the long string of Russian acts of expansion and intervention abroad during its three-century period of growth as a great power.

Every former empire has struggled to come to grips with the loss of empire, and Russia is no different. Whether it reverts to 300-year-old patterns of expansion and intervention abroad or leaves its traditions behind will be one of the big questions in international relations in the coming years.

A Brief History of Russian Interference in Foreign Elections was originally published on Global Security Review.

On January 18, 2018, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that labels names both the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as “temporarily occupied territories,” a moniker shared by the Crimea peninsula.

Ukraine continues to deal with the occupation of its Luhansk and Donetsk regions, along with occasional outbreaks of skirmishes along the border separating territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists from areas controlled by the Ukrainian military.

The Chairman of the Russian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachyov, responded to the passage of the bill by saying, “Kyiv has gone from sabotaging the Minsk agreements to burying them.” The bill outwardly labels Russia as an aggressor. However, it neither claims there is a current state of war nor specifies when said conflict began.

While this might seem like a small oversight on behalf of backers of the bill, which include Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, it might cause difficulty later in international criminal proceedings against Russia. The law also gives the President more direct power over Ukraine’s armed forces while eliminating the need for the support of the Ukrainian parliament. Lastly, it calls for banning trade and all forms of transport to the regions in question.

Failures of the Minsk Accords

The bill fails to address anything concerning the Minsk accords. After the first agreements failed, Minsk II was agreed to in February 2015 but has yet to be fully implemented. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spent 16 hours negotiating the Minsk II ceasefire agreement for the Ukrainian region in February of 2015. As comprehensive as the deal is, it relies heavily on a yet-to-be-implemented bilateral ceasefire. The Minsk II agreement called for:

• An immediate, bilateral ceasefire
• Withdrawal of heavy weaponry
• OSCE Monitoring and Verification for both the ceasefire and the removal of armaments
• Dialogue on holding local elections
• Amnesty for all figures involved in the Donetsk and Luhansk conflict
• The release all hostages and detained individuals
• Access to humanitarian aid
• Restoration of economic and social links
• Withdrawal of all foreign armed groups from Ukrainian territory
• Ukrainian government control through the conflict zone
• Constitutional reform in Ukraine with a new constitution to be in place by the end of 2015

In other words, beyond a simple ceasefire, the accords agreed to compelled Ukraine to give autonomy to the separatist-held regions, which they did by passing a law giving “special status” to Donbas and Luhansk in March of 2015.

Ukrainian Opposition to a Diplomatic Solution

To complicate matters further, President Poroshenko faces domestic opposition against any diplomatic move giving Russian a foothold in their territory. Despite this and other measures taken by both sides, fighting continues in the conflict zones. Minor skirmishes continue to take place along the border, and U.S. State Department officials have claimed that heavy weaponry continues to flow into both regions from Russia.

There have been various attempts at further ceasefires in the last two years. One attempt in September 2016 lasted for a few days before reports emerged of violations by parties on both sides of the conflict. Heavy fighting restarted in January 2017, with a subsequent ceasefire negotiated in February 2017. In December of 2017, another temporary ceasefire was attempted. With the occasional exception, it was more-or-less observed. 2017 ended with a prisoner exchange. 73 Ukrainian soldiers were exchanged for 200 separatist fighters.

As the conflict nears its fourth year, the conflict joins the ranks of other frozen conflicts in the former Soviet sphere of influence such as the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Ukraine’s new parliamentary bill suggests that the government will attempt to escalate the conflict in the upcoming year. The continued failure of ceasefire agreements lends legitimacy to the argument that military escalation is the only solution for Ukraine to regain or maintain control over its eastern regions.

Ukraine’s “Occupied Territories” Law is Enacted as Donbas Conflict Persists was originally published on Global Security Review.

While eastern European leaders are certainly justified in their concern, it is the job of military leaders all over the world to ensure that their forces are prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios. Zapad and other large-scale war games are intended to test the readiness of military forces to deal with such situations.

History, and Russia’s military doctrine, tells us that for the Kremlin to legitimately consider the use of force against a sovereign state—under the guise of aiding Russian-speaking separatists, military drills, or otherwise, the Russian military and political leadership must perceive a legitimate threat to Russia’s national interest—largely the interests of its ruling oligarchic elite.

Additionally, the Kremlin must be sure of its ability to prevail in any forceful confrontation or to, a minimum, ensure a stalemate. Neither condition seems present.

Since last year’s strategic Caucasus-2016 exercise, no Russian allies or client states are under greater threat than they were last year. A few, like Bashar al Assad of Syria, have seen threats to their rule decrease in the past year.

How Likely is it that Russia Will Attempt a Crimea-Style Operation Against the Baltics?

NATO is now keeping a much closer eye on the Russian military techniques, particularly since the  Zapad-2013 exercises featured simulations of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Sweden.

Western countries were caught unaware as Russia employed hybrid tactics to hide its deployment of forces to Crimea.

NATO has beefed up its presence in its Baltic and Eastern-European Union member countries, further reducing the already slim chances that Russia will want to attempt an incursion in Baltic or E.U. states.

NATO is now keeping a much closer eye on the Russian military techniques, particularly since the  Zapad-2013 exercises featured simulations of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Sweden.

Preparing for a conflict doesn’t mean the Kremlin is planning to commence one.

The Russian military has been holding large scale strategic exercises each year of the twenty-first century, as the Russian economics has rebounded from the lows of the early 1990s. Preparing for such a conflict doesn’t mean the Kremlin is planning to commence one.

It is also worth noting a correlation between Russia’s economic state and its military spending and training. This would imply that the Russian Armed Forces have a tendency to train as far because they can afford to.

Until 2015, Russia’s military expenditures and the number of war games it conducted, both large- and small-scale, had been increasing at a faster rate than the rate of economic growth.

Russian Troop Deployments in Military Training Exercises

Russian GDP figures, Military Exercise Data, and Troop Numbers

Given the degree of attention focused on Russia’s military deployments, it’s highly unlikely that that Zapad-2017 will escalate into a full-scale or partial military conflict with NATO.

Even though Russia’s Gross domestic product grew to 2014, its costs grew by 300 percent at the exact same period and the number of war games increased by 157 percent from 2008 to 2014.

It should be noted that this precludes any so-called “black money” that would not appear on a publicly available balance sheet.

Security Analysis: Although Possible; War with NATO is Unlikely.

The biggest risks stemming from the Zapad drills are possible errors, including stray shots, local attempts to test responses through other measures, moderate or temporary escalation in existing conflict zones (such as in Ukraine, Abkhazia, or South Ossetia).

Additionally, due to regional geopolitical developments in the Russia-Belarus relationship, Russia may attempt to use “nonlinear” warfare tactics (asymmetric tactics) in order to further consolidate the Russia-Belarus “Union State.”

Zapad-2017: Analyzing Troop Numbers & Economic Factors was originally published on Global Security Review.

The natural environment of Russia gives it many advantages over many other countries. Russia has land along five different coastlines. Russia has coastlines on the Arctic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and also the landlocked Caspian Sea. Russia also has significant amount natural resources, including oil and timber. In fact, Russia is the top producer of oil in the world.

Economy Of Russia:

Russia is the successor state to the Soviet Union, and the former Soviet Union was a communist nation. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia moved closer to being a free market economy. However, there is still quite a bit of government control over the Russian economy.

The Russian economy is significant, but it’s not large compared to other countries in Europe. The Russian economy is around half the size of California’s economy, but Russia’s population is around four times that of California.

Also, there is a highly uneven distribution of wealth. Corruption is extremely prevalent in Russia. Organized crime is known to have a strong presence throughout the country.

Government Of Russia:

While Russia is a democratic country, the fairness of their elections has been called into question by many people within Russia and outside the country. It appears that forces of corruption have a strong influence on elections in Russia.

Also, the government of Russia has been known to silence protesters and dissidents. In fact, some journalists have been killed by the Russian government. One of the most recent instances of a dissident being targeted by the Russian government was the nearly fatal poisoning of Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Russia Foreign Policy:

A key part of Russia’s foreign policy is an interest in regaining control over independent countries that were once part of the former Soviet Union. The Russian government currently meddles in the affairs of many regions of the world, and it often appears that the nation seeks to create a Russia global order of some kind.

Russia foreign policy can be quite subversive in its attempts to create Russia global order. Russia information warfare is a primary method the Russian government uses to influence the politics of other countries. One major part of Russia information warfare is spreading false information online.

Russia military action has occurred in recent times. Some examples of Russia military action include the invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea and advances of Russian troops into Georgia.

Russian Military, Politics, and Foreign Policy was originally published on Global Security Review.