The Lands in Between by Mitchell A. OrensteinRussia's stealth invasion of Ukraine and its assault on the US elections in 2016 forced a reluctant West to grapple with the effects of hybrid war. While most citizens in the West are new to the problems of election hacking, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, influence operations byforeign security services, and frozen conflicts, citizens of the frontline states between Russia and the European Union have been dealing with these issues for years.The Lands in Between: Russia vs. the West and the New Politics of Russia's Hybrid War contends that these "lands in between" hold powerful lessons for Western countries. For Western politics is becoming increasingly similar to the lands in between, where hybrid warfare has polarized parties andvoters into two camps: those who support a Western vision of liberal democracy and those who support a Russian vision of nationalist authoritarianism. Paradoxically, while politics increasingly boils down to a zero sum "civilizational choice" between Russia and the West, those who rise to thepinnacle of the political system in the lands in between are often non-ideological power brokers who have found a way to profit from both sides, taking rewards from both Russia and the West. Increasingly, the political pathologies of these small, vulnerable, and backwards states in Europe are ourproblems too. In this deepening conflict, we are all lands in between.
Call Number: 327.47 O66L 2019
ISBN: 9780190936143
Publication Date: 2019-05-03
Hybrid Warfare in the Baltics by Andrew RadinThere is significant concern about Russian use of "hybrid warfare" in the Baltics. To understand this threat, the author of this report analyzes three potential scenarios--nonviolent subversion, covert violent action, and conventional aggression supported by political subversion. The author finds that, given the growing integration of Russian speakers and high capacity of the Baltic states, the greatest threat comes from conventional aggression.
Call Number: 327.470479 R129h 2017
ISBN: 9780833095589
Publication Date: 2017-02-23
Russia, the Asymmetric Threat to the United States by John WoodExploring themes critical to understanding the current world order, this book lays bare the reality of the new Russia that emerged under Vladimir Putin.
Call Number: 327.73047090511 W876r 2009
ISBN: 9780313359415
Publication Date: 2009-06-22
Russian Hybrid Warfare by Ofer FridmanDuring the last decade, "Hybrid Warfare" has become a novel yet controversial term in academic, political and professional military lexicons, intended to suggest some sort of mix between different military and non-military means and methods of confrontation. Enthusiastic discussion of thenotion has been undermined by conceptual vagueness and political manipulation, particularly since the onset of the Ukrainian Crisis in early 2014, as ideas about Hybrid Warfare engulf Russia and the West, especially in the media.Western defence and political specialists analysing Russian responses to the crisis have been quick to confirm that Hybrid Warfare is the Kremlin's main strategy in the twenty-first century. But many respected Russian strategists and political observers contend that it is the West that has beenwaging Hybrid War, Gibridnaya Voyna, since the end of the Cold War.In this highly topical book, Ofer Fridman offers a clear delineation of the conceptual debates about Hybrid Warfare. What leads Russian experts to say that the West is conducting a Gibridnaya Voyna against Russia, and what do they mean by it? Why do Western observers claim that the Kremlin engagesin Hybrid Warfare? And, beyond terminology, is this something genuinely new?
Call Number: 355.020947 F898r 2018
ISBN: 9780190877378
Publication Date: 2018-08-01
Russia's Military Revival by Bettina Renz; Hanna SmithRussian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent air campaign over Syria took the world by surprise. The capabilities and efficiency of Moscow's armed forces during both operations signalled to the world that Russia was back in business as a significant military actor on the international stage. In this cutting-edge study, Bettina Renz provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Russia's military revival under Putin's leadership. Whilst the West must adjust to the reality of a modernised and increasingly powerful Russian military, she argues that the renaissance of Russian military might and its implications for the balance of global power can only be fully understood within a wider historical context. Assessing developments in Russian Great Power thinking, military capabilities, Russian strategic thought and views on the use of force throughout the post-Soviet era, the book shows that, rather than signifying a sudden Russian military resurgence, recent developments are consistent with longstanding trends in Russian military strategy and foreign policy.
Call Number: 355.033547 R424r 2018
ISBN: 9781509516148
Publication Date: 2018-05-29
Modern Russian Tanks and AFVs by Stephen Hart; Russell HartA colorful guide to the most significant Russian tanks deployed since 1990. Created from what was left of the gigantic stockpiles of Soviet armored fighting vehicles after the end of the Cold War, the Russian armored forces were reorganized in the early 1990s. Modern Russian Tanks & AFVs explores the main battle tanks, armored fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, self- propelled guns, and missile-launching platforms in service since then, when ground forces engaged in a series of conflicts in border states from Chechnya to the Crimea to the Ukraine. Organized by type and then alphabetically by manufacturer, the entries include the BMD-3, BMPT Terminator, T-90 and T-15 main battle tank, and the Buk missile system responsible for shooting down the Malaysian Airlines 777 jet over Ukraine in 2014. Expert profile artworks illustrate each entry, which also includes complete technical specifications, making this a must-have reference for anyone interested in modern military technology.
Call Number: 623.74750947 H326m 2019
ISBN: 9781782748694
Publication Date: 2019-10-01
The New Autocracy by Daniel Treisman (Contribution by)Corruption, fake news, and the "informational autocracy" sustaining Putin in power After fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat--at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia is neither a somewhat reduced version of the Soviet Union nor a classic police state. Corruption is prevalent at all levels of government and business, but Russia's leaders pursue broader and more complex goals than one would expect in a typical kleptocracy, such as those in many developing countries. Nor does Russia fit the standard political science model of a "competitive authoritarian" regime; its parliament, political parties, and other political bodies are neither fakes to fool the West nor forums for bargaining among the elites. The result of a two-year collaboration between top Russian experts and Western political scholars, Autocracy explores the complex roles of Russia's presidency, security services, parliament, media and other actors. The authors argue that Putin has created an "informational autocracy," which relies more on media manipulation than on the comprehensive repression of traditional dictatorships. The fake news, hackers, and trolls that featured in Russia's foreign policy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election are also favored tools of Putin's domestic regime--along with internet restrictions, state television, and copious in-house surveys. While these tactics have been successful in the short run, the regime that depends on them already shows signs of age: over-centralization, a narrowing of information flows, and a reliance on informal fixers to bypass the bureaucracy. The regime's challenge will be to continue to block social modernization without undermining the leadership's own capabilities.
Call Number: 947.0864 N532 2018
ISBN: 9780815732433
Publication Date: 2018-02-06
Theses & Reports
Deterrence and Escalation in Competition with RussiaThe deterrence of armed conflict has been studied intensively for decades, as have escalation dynamics along the path to such conflicts. The deterrence of forms of aggression below the level of armed conflict — such hostile measures as economic coercion, political subversion, and military intimidation — has received much less attention.
In this report, the authors investigate how the United States might use its military posture in Europe (specifically, ground forces) as part of a strategy to deter these Russian malign activities.
Deterrence in the human domain: a COIN framework to deterring unconventional warfare in shaping operations.Current adversaries of the United States are typically not willing to engage in a conventional conflict against a US partner nation without first shaping the environment by unconventional military action. This monograph examines how to deter such anticipated unconventional warfare threats, and argues that military activities involving operations to increase the popular will, such as information operations, positioning of forces and resources, and limited conflict, will have a deterrent effect within the human domain. Using the counterinsurgency framework of shape, clear, hold, build, and transition to conduct deterrence during shaping operations, this monograph provides an operational approach for friendly deterrence of an adversary’s unconventional threat. To test this framework, this monograph analyzes a case study of how Russia will likely use unconventional forces and information operations to attempt to shape the human domain and legitimize a limited conventional action in Eastern Europe before the United States can react. This study of the contemporary Eastern European situation shows that the shape, clear, hold, build, and transition framework provides a better understanding of how the United States can organize operations to deter unconventional warfare. These operations can include the forward positioning of forces and resources, using IO to build the national will of a partner nation, and enabling limited conflict within the partner nation in the form of policing actions. The monograph concludes by analyzing the benefits and risks to applying the shape, clear, hold, build, and transition framework to UW deterrence.
Ending the war: considering war termination in a conflict with Russia.The return to great power conflict has led to a recent shift in focus for the joint force back to large-scale combat operations. As such, professional military education and joint exercises have focused on overcoming the immense challenges of deploying a force to Europe to counter Russian aggression since their seizure of Crimea in 2014. While strategists concern themselves with developing a flexible deterrent for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the joint force focuses on winning the "next first battle." However, there is worryingly little discussion of how we might terminate a conflict with Russia once one is started. Imagining war termination is a difficult topic as it inevitably involves hypothetical scenarios. However, this monograph argues that international relations theory provides a framework to consider war termination. Specifically, the bargaining model of war provides the variables of credible commitment, information gaps, and vital interests of identity as reasons why countries escalate disputes to military conflict as a form of bargaining over political goods. This monograph argues if these variables form a cause for war, so too will the easing of these variables lead to its termination. Additionally, this monograph blends broad international relations theory with Russia's unique strategic culture, finding that Russia's identity formation interacts with the bargaining model's variables. This blended model is evaluated through two case studies, the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05 and the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969. The resulting discussion provides a pathway to address current gaps in joint doctrine's operational design elements of termination and military end states.
EU-Russian cooperation in the return to great power competition.Deception has long been practiced by military leaders. The ability to disguise and deceive has been a vital portion of a campaign plan from the Trojan War to modern times with the use of technology. This monograph focuses on the Russian military deception theory called maskirovka and how the Russian Federation actioned this technique against the countries of Georgia and Ukraine. The United States and its allies are currently at a crossroads against this Russian capability. Russia has the training environment, technology overmatch, and determination to remain relevant as the world continuously becomes more complex. Reviewing Russian doctrine, theory, and actions in Georgia and Ukraine, a scenario emerges of how Russia might utilize this timeless tactic again.
Fear, honor, interest: an analysis of Russia's operations in the near abroad (2007-2014).In recent years, Russia has conducted several operations in former Soviet states, attempting to halt NATO expansion and protecting ethnic Russian minorities in those states. Western analyses have focused either on traditional military means in these operations or on novelties in the cyber domain, but rarely have they used these approaches with others. They focused especially on what lessons Russia learned from them to reform their armed services. This is a very narrow analysis, based on Western assumptions on the Russian way of war. Instead, Russia has created a new operational concept, which it refers to as "the fifth period of operational art," especially designed for its near-abroad policy. This new operational concept uses traditional domains with military means, non-traditional domains such as the human, information, and cyber domain, and non-military means such as (cyber) proxy forces linked to the social conditions of Russians living as minorities outside Russia. This monograph reviews the changes, their background, and practical application, together with their links to the social conditions of ethnic Russian minorities in former Soviet states. First, it describes the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fate of the 25 million displaced ethnic Russians, their marginalization, regional tensions, and the strategy that Russia has developed to protect these ethnic Russians and its interests in the near abroad. Next, this monograph reviews the theory on the fifth period of operational art and creates an operational framework based on the theory and case studies of the 2007 Estonia crisis, 2008 Georgia war, and 2014 Ukraine conflict. Finally, it reveals how this framework uses non-military means linked to social conditions.
How the United States can exploit the Sino-Russian relationship to gain a strategic advantage in the mid-twentieth-first century.Many in academia and the military view the existing Sino-Russian partnership as a threat to the United States' global hegemony but provide few courses of actions that the United States can take to weaken the Sino-Russian bond. With an appreciation of the political and military events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the United States can exploit policy differences between China and Russia which may allow the United States to gain a strategic advantage in the mid-twenty-first century. Encouraging cooperation between India and Russia, in addition to highlighting long-term border disputes between China and Russia, combined with favorable policies toward China by the United States in the Artic can further divide the Sino-Russian dentate. Using international organizations, allies in Asia, and information operations, the United States can create distance between China and Russia while providing an opportunity for the United States to compete with China and Russia independently vice as co-belligerents.
Hybrid warfare: how to shape special operations forces.The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its allies are faced with hybrid threats, which frame Europe's and NATO's current and future security environment. One of the significant aims of the current hybrid threats posed by Russia is to create a situation where NATO and its allies cannot succeed. The thesis examines and discusses hybrid warfare with the effort to identify the general characteristics of hybrid threats and warfare to provide crucial understanding of the current security environment and reflect on possible required instruments that play significant roles in the hybrid war. The thesis mainly reflects on events that took place since the millennium and focuses on the effectiveness of efforts concerning potential hybrid warfare threats. The thesis does not provide ideal solutions to the problem, nor does it propose very concrete and narrow approaches to the issue. The thesis does not suggest any doctrinal changes for hybrid warfare. Neither does it suggest any direct changes to the current force structure within NATO Special Operations Forces (SOF). This paper seeks relations between hybrid warfare and NATO SOF as the primary, but not lone, military means of hybrid warfare.
Hybrid warfare: the 21st century Russian way of warfare.In 2014, Russia unleashed a new form of warfare, the likes of which had yet to be seen on the international stage. The form of warfare, called a variety of things to include, hybrid warfare or new generation warfare, is a whole-of-government approach to war that links the elements of national power and small-scale tactical action. Russian hybrid warfare, examined throughout this monograph, is a whole-of-government approach to warfare that seeks to operate covertly or through the use of partisan forces, but is more than capable and willing to operate overtly with conventional combat power to achieve its ends. To do so, Russian hybrid warfare synergizes conventional, unconventional, information, and cyber operations into an effective effects package that enables tactical formations to generate far greater battlefield effects than comparable formations in other armies. Russia uses the Russian Identity—ethnicity, language, religion, geography, and history—to build consensus and justify its provocations. The idea of hybrid warfare germinated in the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, but came into its own during the Russo-Ukrainian War, of which the annexation of Crimea and the seizure of the Donbas are the two most visible campaigns. Hybrid warfare, as demonstrated by Russia in Ukraine, is a powerful tool for an era of limited war, and is arguably the modern Russian way of warfare.
Little masquerade: Russia's evolving employment of Maskirovka."A little masquerade" is the literal English translation of the Russian maskirovka. Synonymous with deception, maskirovka is a complex Russian cultural phenomenon that defies easy definition. Despite the West's lack of interest in its former protagonist, the Russian Federation Armed Forces enjoyed continuity with its former Soviet character. The Russian Federation Armed Forces carried forward military theory, doctrine, and thought in the intervening years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and resurgence of Russian assertiveness. This included the importance of deception in the achievement of military objectives. Maskirovka is culturally rooted in Russian society and an important facet of Russian military operations. This monograph analyses the evolution of Russia's employment of maskirovka from the Second World War through the invasion of Ukraine in 2014. It argues that Russia's employment of maskirovka has evolved from a concept employed by the military to a concept employed by the whole of government. Once a means used to create advantageous conditions on the battlefield, maskirovka evolved to create ambiguity and uncertainty in the operating environment to enable freedom of action for achievement of Russian military and political objectives.
Putin's political philosophy: implications for future Russian military activity.President Putin practices the Conservative school of political philosophy. The philosophy acknowledges the existence of a governing body, individual ownership of property, and the rule of law. These are balanced against the central concern of this school, which is the stability of the core governing body. Adherents guard against political or popular dialogue that could upend the existing government order. Seeking an alternative reality to Russia's profoundly conservative political philosophy will elicit an uncooperative and violent spirit. Three vectors of research and analysis balanced against Russia's persistent security dilemmas and employed across multiple historical periods supply the means to assess Putin's political philosophy. Poor geography, a harsh and restrictive climate, and distance plus time—the security dilemmas—each contribute to the maintenance or lack thereof of national accord, national pride, and national prestige, each core concerns of Conservative political philosophical thought. Putin's security decisions will reflect the same historical determination to mitigate or remove the risks associated with the dilemmas. Japan and China contest Russia's access to the Pacific Ocean; Putin will nurture his relationship with Beijing. Littoral states contest Russia's decision space in the Caspian Sea; Putin will prioritize Tehran. Putin will nurture his relationship with Ankara to undermine NATO and reduce Black Sea southern area threats. Beijing, Tehran, and Ankara are alliances of convenience. Controlling the Strait of Sicily is the next step in the Mediterranean Sea to assure sea access and improve political position. In the Baltic region, he will emphasize deterrence with Western Military District ground forces, strategic strike capability, and A2/AD.
Russian military deception post-Soviet Union.Deception has long been practiced by military leaders. The ability to disguise and deceive has been a vital portion of a campaign plan from the Trojan War to modern times with the use of technology. This monograph focuses on the Russian military deception theory called maskirovka and how the Russian Federation actioned this technique against the countries of Georgia and Ukraine. The United States and its allies are currently at a crossroads against this Russian capability. Russia has the training environment, technology overmatch, and determination to remain relevant as the world continuously becomes more complex. Reviewing Russian doctrine, theory, and actions in Georgia and Ukraine, a scenario emerges of how Russia might utilize this timeless tactic again.
Russian weaponization of information and influence in the Baltic States.Russian soft power and non-military information influence pose significant threats to the integrity of NATO in the Baltic States. Russian media, disinformation, and propaganda, manipulation of political processes, infiltration of Russian language education, and organization of ethnic Russians through formal and informal foreign policy structures may destabilize the Baltic States to the point that Russia can justify military intervention, presenting NATO with a strategic dilemma in the Baltics leading to protracted warfare or dissolution of the alliance. Soviet-style "Active Measures" present challenges reminiscent to those faced during the Cold War, with an asymmetric advantage wielded by a regime intent on maintaining domestic stability while conducting propaganda and disinformation campaigns, thus increasing control over domestic information content and flow. Free societies in the West must account for independent media and for the likelihood that observers will believe the disinformation. These challenges require nuanced and comprehensive strategies that address nefarious influence while preventing escalation between the US and NATO against a revanchist and increasingly authoritarian Russia.
US-Russian cooperation in the Post-Cold War environment.At a time when many are considering how the United States will fight the Russians, this monograph explores, instead, the history of US-Russian cooperation in the post-Cold War era and analyzes the acceptability of US-Russian cooperation, the substance of US-Russian cooperation, and the elements of US-Russian cooperation for the year 2017 and beyond. The author begins by recounting the many examples of cooperation during the Cold War and continues with a summary of cooperation during the administrations of George H.W. Bush through Barack H. Obama. He proceeds to answer three questions related to the prospects of future cooperation between the United States and the Russian Federation: Should the United States cooperate with Russia? On what should the United States and Russia cooperate? What principles should guide United States cooperation with Russia? Through his analysis, the author finds that despite the often tumultuous and increasingly adversarial relationship, cooperation has remained a consistent feature of US-Russian relations. Moreover, he identifies a number of characteristics of Russian behavior and foreign policy, some in evidence during the tsarist period, which continue to influence the United States' dealings with Russia today. As the author describes, US-Russian cooperation since the end of the Cold War has steadily deteriorated to the point at which some now characterize the relationship as being even worse than it was during the Cold War. Nevertheless, the author concludes that both countries will continue to seek ways to cooperate, but after forging a new relationship during the first two decades of the post-Cold War era and striving to preserve a troubled relationship during the third, the United States now must reinvent the relationship amid a significantly changed operating environment