The Changing Nature of Modern Warfare (original) (raw)
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By highlighting informational threats and giving them a military dimension, the authors of the Russian Federation's military doctrine have outlined the concept of information warfare. It is a kind of combat conducted by both conventional and indirect methods, open and concealed, using military and civilian structures. It has two dimensions: broader ("non-nuclear containment", i.e. combat waged on various levels - political, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian, military) and narrower (as an element supporting of action). An analysis of these issues enables us to identify several rising trends over the period 2000-2014 in Russian security policy. These boil down to a blurring of the boundaries between internal and external threats, introducing non-military methods and organisational structures to armed combat, and conferring an ideological character on this combat. This leads to a blurring of the contours of inter-state conflicts, which allows Russia to take part in armed conflicts in which it is not officially a party.
Land Forces Academy Review
In this paper we will throw a close look on the recent and contemporary military and hybrid phenomenons that curently shape both European and world security structure. In terms of security, seeing through the lens of intellingence and, at the same time, having a deep empirical and epistemological knowledge about the military events that occured near the European border, the world has had serious concerns regarding the russian foreign policy and its geostrategic plans. We will analyze the premises of the Russian military intervention, the hybrid methods used and most importantly what conclusions and valuble lessons Europe, NATO and the West had learned for the future. Moreover, we will see what policies led to these consequences and which strategies will be intended to support decisions and governance regarding the current threats. Systematically, we will try to reveal an efficient physiognomy of the risks, dangers, and threats and what could have been done to stop the current Russia...
PUTIN'S INFORMATION WARFARE IN UKRAINE SOVIET ORIGINS OF RUSSIA'S HYBRID WARFARE
Russia has been using an advanced form of hybrid warfare in Ukraine since early 2014 that relies heavily on an element of information warfare that the Russians call “reflexive control.” Reflexive control causes a stronger adversary voluntarily to choose the actions most advantageous to Russian objectives by shaping the adversary’s perceptions of the situation decisively. Moscow has used this technique skillfully to persuade the U.S. and its European allies to remain largely passive in the face of Russia’s efforts to disrupt and dismantle Ukraine through military and non-military means. The West must become alert to the use of reflexive control techniques and find ways to counter them if it is to succeed in an era of hybrid war. Reflexive control, and the Kremlin’s information warfare generally, is not the result of any theoretical innovation. All of the underlying concepts and most of the techniques were developed by the Soviet Union decades ago. Russian strategic theory today remains relatively unimaginative and highly dependent on the body of Soviet work with which Russia’s leaders are familiar. Russian information operations in Ukraine do not herald a new era of theoretical or doctrinal advances, although they aim, in part, to create precisely this impression. Russia’s information warfare is thus a significant challenge to the West, but not a particularly novel or insuperable one. It relies, above all, on Russia’s ability to take advantage of pre-existing dispositions among its enemies to choose its preferred courses of action. The primary objective of the reflexive control techniques Moscow has employed in the Ukraine situation has been to persuade the West to do something its leaders mostly wanted to do in the first place, namely, remain on the sidelines as Russia dismantled Ukraine. These techniques would not have succeeded in the face of Western leaders determined to stop Russian aggression and punish or reverse Russian violations of international law. The key elements of Russia’s reflexive control techniques in Ukraine have been: • Denial and deception operations to conceal or obfuscate the presence of Russian forces in Ukraine, including sending in “little green men” in uniforms without insignia; • Concealing Moscow’s goals and objectives in the conflict, which sows fear in some and allows others to persuade themselves that the Kremlin’s aims are limited and ultimately acceptable; • Retaining superficially plausible legality for Russia’s actions by denying Moscow’s involvement in the conflict, requiring the international community to recognize Russia as an interested power rather than a party to the conflict, and pointing to supposedly-equivalent Western actions such as the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo in the 1990s and the invasion of Iraq in 2003; • Simultaneously threatening the West with military power in the form of overflights of NATO and non-NATO countries’ airspace, threats of using Russia’s nuclear weapons, and exaggerated claims of Russia’s military prowess and success; • The deployment of a vast and complex global effort to shape the narrative about the Ukraine conflict through formal and social media. The results of these efforts have been mixed. Russia has kept the West from intervening materially in Ukraine, allowing itself the time to build and expand its own military involvement in the conflict. It has sowed discord within the NATO alliance and created tensions between potential adversaries about how to respond. It has not, however, fundamentally changed popular or elite attitudes about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, nor has it created an information environment favorable to Moscow. Above all, Russia has been unable so far to translate the strategic and grand strategic advantages of its hybrid warfare strategy into major and sustainable successes on the ground in Ukraine. It appears, moreover that Moscow may be reaching a point of diminishing returns in continuing a strategy that relies in part on its unexpectedness in Ukraine. Yet the same doctrine of reflexive control has succeeded in surprising the West in Syria. The West must thus awaken itself to this strategy and to adaptations of it.
Information Warfare as a Geopolitical Tool
Since Russian annexation of Crimea, in March 2014, international community experiences massive use of information warfare in international affairs. In last 3 years, informational warfare became one of the most challenging issues not only for Europe and European Union, but also for the United States. Information warfare can be considered now as a very powerful tool, by which political integrity of states and alliances can be influenced. It is used by not only state actors (national states), but also non-state actors, such as ISIS to achieve various goals.
Russian Information Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine
‘Information is now a species of weapon’, write Russians Maj. Gen. (R) Ivan Vorobyev and Col. (R) Valery Kiselyov. Closer to the truth is that Russia has a long history of using information as a weapon – both in the context of mobilising its own population and in demonising foreign powers. Therefore, it is only natural that Russia has employed Information Warfare (IW) in Ukraine: from the onset of the ‘Euromaidan’ demonstrations, to the annexation of Crimea, and as a dimension of ongoing military operations in eastern Ukraine. And it is equally unsurprising that, in the internet era, Moscow has developed effective tactics for waging IW in cyberspace. This chapter discusses contemporary Russian IW theory and analyses Russian IW activities on the ground in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine. While the dynamic and diffuse nature of IW makes it difficult to gauge its precise impact, this chapter argues that Russian IW in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine has been highly successful, and that the West is currently playing catch up vis-à-vis Russia in this arena.
Hybrid Warfare: From 'War during peace' to 'neo-imperialist ambitions'. The case of Russia
Online Journal 'Modeling the New Europe', 2017
The term " hybrid warfare " has been used to refer to the combined usage of unconventional military tactics such as conventional warfare with irregular warfare and cyberwarfare, as well as the employment of other instruments and tactics (subversive elements), to achieve a double goal: first to avoid responsibility and retribution, and second to weaken and destabilize the enemy without direct involvement. The rigidity of the current international system pertaining to the usage of non-peaceful methods of solving an international dispute and/or furthering state interests, have made it increasing difficulty, without the support of the international community (humanitarian interventions and UN-sanctioned interventions) to employ the 'classical methods' which pre-date the provisions of the UN Charter, relevant to what we now consider as " acts of aggression ". Discussing the resurgence of the Russian Federation as a great power, we argue that because of the innate historical and traditional factors of Russian geopolitics, it was only a matter of time until the Kremlin's military doctrine pivoted from the defensive phase it entered after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the pro-active involvement at the limit of international law: Georgia in 2008, East Ukraine in 2013, Crimea in 2014, and Syria in 2015. Therefore, in this article we will contend, firstly, by discussing the example of the perception of the so-called Russian " Gerasimov doctrine " , that hybrid war can have two different connotations: " war during peace " and " neo-imperial ambitions ". Secondly, we will try to argue that the NATO military doctrine of deterrence has become obsolete, still envisaging the possible threats posed by a future Russian involvement in the Baltic and Eastern Europe in cold-war terms and not in terms relevant to the shifting international security environment.
The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2022
The fusion of disinformation, propaganda, cyberattacks, and other forms of covert power can be a coercive tool against an opponent, both in times of peace and during conflicts. The Russian Federation has used those methods to achieve political objectives in countries that are geopolitically important to Moscow. Russia’s information operations in Ukraine were crucial to the annexation of Crimea and expansion into the Donbas region. Russia deploys disinformation propaganda and cyberattacks to influence Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The impact of these activities has been amplified by technological advancements. How to win the new information war? This article analyzes the influence of Russian information operations and assesses existing and potential responses to counter such threats.