FactsOfADrunkenMan.com - Rebekah Koffler - Putins Playbook: Russias Secret Plan to Defeat America

The neo-Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin, in his terrifying 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics, which made him popular among Russian military and political elites, identifies America as “a total geopolitical rival of Russia.” He prescribes that Russia “counteract U.S. policy at all levels and [in] all regions of the earth.” Russia must “weaken, demoralize, [and] deceive, in order to win,” he writes. “It is especially important to introduce geopolitical disorder into America’s internal reality; to encourage separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts; actively support dissident movements [and] extremist, racist groups and sects; and to destabilize internal processes.”72 Dugin’s Eurasianist ideas have found their way into key Russian doctrinal documents.73 Evidently Dugin, who has been referred to by some as “Putin’s Brain,” has not only advised the Russian president but also the General Staff, which is in charge of developing Russia’s warfighting doctrine and strategy.

Kontr-razvedka was the Soviet and is now the Russian government’s tool of state control over its citizens.

This is the whole cloth from which Putin is made. “Traitors always end up badly,”13 Putin said in 2010, referring in this case to a Russian colonel who allegedly worked as a double agent and gave up ten Russian “deep cover” spies living in the United States, posing as Americans. “We know who he is and where he is,” said a senior Kremlin official of the Russian double agent. “Make no mistake; ‘Mercader’ has already been sent for him.”14 Ramon Mercader was a Spanish-born communist and agent of NKVD who in 1940, on Stalin’s orders, assassinated Stalin’s opponent Leon Trotsky in Mexico City with an ice axe to the head.

“It is important to establish a dialogue and activate the best in your partner. You want to achieve results; you must respect your partner, acknowledge that he is better than you in some way. You must make him your ally…make him feel that there is something that unites you, that you have a common cause.”

Growing up in the Brezhnev era, my parents—who strongly disliked the Soviet system—insisted on not trusting anyone and on not sharing what we talked about within our family.

Il’in specified in his writings that an independent Ukraine would be an unthinkable “madness.” Il’in died in Switzerland, but, in 2005, on Putin’s orders and at the Russian president’s own expense, Il’in’s body was exhumed and reburied in the prestigious Donskoy Monastery Cemetery in Moscow.

An aristocrat and a Russian Orthodox Christian, Il’in (1882–1954), whose father was the godson of Emperor Nicholas II, never accepted the new Soviet worker-farmer government.

Putin pays his respects to Il’in by visiting his grave.

Gumilev became an ethnographer and expert on the influence of Russian

ethnic minorities. He had two big ideas: passionarnost and “super-ethnos.” The former can be described as a combination of a large capacity for suffering, an irresistible inner urge for purposeful activity, and the capacity for heroic effort on behalf of a goal. The Russians, imbued with passionarnost, were not just a single ethnicity, but a “super-ethnos” encompassing influences of both Slavic people and the nomadic tribes from the eastern Eurasian steppe. Consistent with Eurasianism, Gumilev believed that Russia was its own civilization, a geopolitical and cultural phenomenon that is not European, but Eurasian.43 Gumilev and Il’in are not only quoted by Putin. Their ideas are part of Russia’s foundational strategic-planning documents, such as its Foreign Policy Concept, National Security Strategy, and Military

He spent years in labor camps until he was released by Khrushchev in 1956. Gumilev became an ethnographer and expert on the influence of Russian ethnic minorities. He had two big ideas: passionarnost and “super-ethnos.” The former can be described as a combination of a large capacity for suffering, an irresistible inner urge for purposeful activity, and the capacity for heroic effort on behalf of a goal. The Russians, imbued with passionarnost, were not just a single ethnicity, but a “super-ethnos” encompassing influences of both Slavic people and the nomadic tribes from the eastern Eurasian steppe. Consistent with Eurasianism, Gumilev believed that Russia was its own civilization, a geopolitical and cultural phenomenon that is not European, but Eurasian.43 Gumilev and Il’in are not only quoted by Putin. Their ideas are part of Russia’s foundational strategic-planning documents, such as its Foreign Policy Concept, National Security Strategy, and Military Doctrine, which codify Moscow’s official policy and strategy. Various concepts that underlie these documents, including the Russian World—the idea that all Russians belong to Mother Russia regardless of where they live—the Eurasian Economic Union, Russia’s “sovereign democracy,” and the reintegration of Ukraine and other post-Soviet states into a Russian-led union—something that is viewed as a matter of survival—are all built on the ideas of Gumilev and Il’in.

Putin’s message resonates with many Russians, who are used to sacrificing personal freedoms for security. With the exception of his plan to increase the retirement age, Putin’s anti-democratic actions—such as suppression of the press and even alleged assassinations of journalists, opposition leaders, and intelligence double agents—do not send the Russians into the streets. The Russians identify with Putin’s survivalist attitude, cool-headed image, abrasive style, and sometimes crude language. Most families in Russia have direct experience with and not-so-distant memories of surviving the Great Patriotic War, post-war hunger, and shortages during Soviet socialist era.

Putin often incorporates Russian street language and vulgarities, even in his official appearances, when he wants to get someone to back off by intimidating or insulting them.

Shaped by two catastrophic events, World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin has embarked on a personal mission never to allow another calamity to strike Russia again. His life experience has taught him that strength, physical and mental, is the key to survival and respect. “The stronger you are, the less likely people will be tempted to mess with you,” is a maxim he applies to himself and to ruling his people and positioning Russia in the world.

“Let’s be candid,” said Putin, speaking to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. “In the modern world, if you are weak, there will always be someone who will want to arrive or fly over to give you advice about which way you should go, which policy you should pursue, which path you should choose for your own country.” Russia, Putin asserted, must become strong to avoid diktat from the outside—that is, from the United States.

adjudicated without Moscow now. He finds common language with dictators like China’s Xi Jinping, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, Iran’s Ayatollahs, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, and the

The Kremlin’s most recent National Security Strategy from 2015 directly accuses the United States of pursuing a policy of containment against Russia, blames the United States and European Union for supporting an unconstitutional coup d’état in Ukraine, and identifies “regime change” by way of “color revolutions”—meaning popular uprisings such as the ones that took place in Georgia, Ukraine, and other countries—as a primary threat to Russia’s security.54 Both of these key documents were crafted by the Russian security establishment when implementation of Putin-directed interference by Russian intelligence services in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was underway. As

The Kremlin’s most recent strategic planning documents, approved by the Russian president, codify this agenda. Russia’s 2016 Foreign Policy Concept designates as one of Moscow’s primary goals the “strengthening of Russia’s position as one of the most influential centers in the modern world” and the pursuit of its “unique, centuries-old mission” to serve as a “balancing factor” and “central coordinator in international affairs and world civilization.” According to the document, Russia “will defend the rights of the Russian citizens living abroad,” will “harshly respond…with mirror[ing] and asymmetric measures” to “America’s unfriendly actions,” and “will not allow military interventions into sovereign states conducted under the pretext of [the] responsibility to protect.”53 “Responsibility to protect”—sometimes referred to as R2P—is a human rights concept that the United States frequently invokes to remove tyrannical regimes when they commit atrocities against their own people. The Russians believe that state sovereignty supersedes R2P. Therefore, countries have no right to interfere in other states’ affairs, no matter how despotic their governments are. The Kremlin’s most recent National Security Strategy from 2015 directly accuses the United States of pursuing a policy of containment against Russia, blames the United States and European Union for supporting an unconstitutional coup d’état in Ukraine, and identifies “regime change” by way of “color revolutions”—meaning popular uprisings such as the ones that took place in Georgia, Ukraine, and other countries—as a primary threat to Russia’s security.54 Both of these key documents were crafted by the Russian security establishment when implementation of Putin-directed interference by Russian intelligence services in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was underway.

The wartime concept of yedinonachaliye has found acceptance with the Russian people even in civilian life. Associating weak governance with what they refer to as “the times of trouble,” Russians have come to view absolute power as an antidote to chaos. Many believe a certain level of dictatorship preserves stability, while others tolerate dictatorship as a necessary evil.

The Russian language doesn’t have a word for “fun.” Russians believe that to live means to struggle and suffer. The Kremlin leaders rely heavily on these traits of Russian character, knowing that when it comes to war, the Russians will out-suffer and out-sacrifice the enemy.

Russia’s high tolerance for war casualties was as difficult for me to explain to policy officials, not attuned to foreign cultures and mindsets, as it was to answer the question of why the Russians keep voting Putin in as president.

The Russians, shaped by their history and culture, view civilian suffering and fatalities as a natural part of war. Counterintuitively for an American and Western mentality, the Russian doctrine envisions infliction of civilian casualties as a way of de-escalating conflict. Russian military planners believe they can compel an adversary to sit down at the negotiating table by targeting civilians and concluding a cease-fire on terms favorable to Russia, because the Westerners cannot stand seeing imagery of human suffering on CNN.

“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy resistance without fighting,” wrote sixth-century BC Chinese strategist Sun Tzu.

So, for the war against its “main enemy,” America, Putin’s generals are heeding the ancient Chinese general’s wisdom that the smartest way to fight was by stratagem, a scheme used to outwit an opponent in order to achieve your ends. On Putin’s orders, the General Staff devised a strategy that would turn America’s perceived weaknesses into Russia’s strengths to win.

The same report recommended the Russian government to stay away from “frontal confrontation” with the U.S. government in favor of using lobbying as a method of influencing U.S. policy and politics. It said that under U.S. law, foreign governments can lobby the federal government through agents, which is not considered interference in U.S. domestic politics. Using emotionally charged language, biblical themes, and arguments related to the defense of human rights and individual freedoms were recommended as narratives that would resonate with Washington’s elites.

The four-stage program, which was implemented by the vast network of KGB agents highly trained in psychological warfare, aimed to change the mindset and behavior of young Americans by exposing them to Marxist-Leninist ideas, such as equality of outcome, intolerance of dissent, and rejection of religion. Intelligence operatives infiltrated academia, media, government institutions, labor unions, and Hollywood to portray socialist ideas as desirable and humane, and capitalism as evil and unjust.

“Impose damage to the information and communication systems [and] critical infrastructure; conduct massive psychological influence on the population to alter countries’ politics; confuse the opponent; disrupt his plans and policies; sabotage the political process; and create an internal opposition within an adversary state.”

Fomenting a crisis and bringing about the collapse of the U.S. government and democratic system are goals Putin is pursuing, beyond ideological subversion.

According to the unclassified 2017 intelligence assessment, in the runup to the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the Russian government–sponsored, English-language channel RT News helped stir discontent by alleging election fraud, voting machine vulnerabilities, corruption of the U.S. “ruling class,” lack of democracy in America, “corporate greed,” and other inflammatory messages.60 RT also advocated that Americans “take back” the government and change the U.S. system through a “revolution.”61 Russian strategists believe that “helping” Americans manufacture their own crisis is a low-cost way of keeping us distracted and focused internally rather than externally on what Putin does to achieve his strategic ambitions. Fearing superior U.S. forces, Russia’s preferred way of “neutralizing the American threat” is without resorting to what we analysts euphemistically call the “kinetic” component—i.e., things that “go bang,” such as missiles, tanks, jets, submarines, and all other traditional means of warfare.

Russia knows firsthand the devastating effects of domestic instability, which is exactly why Russia believes internecine strife is the best weapon to turn America on itself.

Russian senior military officers and strategists’ views are published in unclassified professional military journals like Voyennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought) or specialized newspapers like Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). Red Star is the “official newspaper of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” and Military Thought is the main publication of Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

This was like the strategy that the USSR pursued against the United States during the Cold War. Moscow was to pursue closer ties with India, China, and Iran, and strengthen its position in the Middle East. Primakov looked to reduce U.S. influence in Eurasia and re-establish Russia’s dominant role in the region.

upstaged NATO peacekeeping forces by arriving earlier, unannounced, and

This dangerous move could have resulted in a broader confrontation between the Russians and NATO forces, as shown by the response from British general Michael Jackson to American general and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Wesley Clark. When Clark wanted to send paratroopers to prevent an advance of the Russian forces, Jackson responded, “I will not start a Third World War for you.” Russia’s willingness to take the risk of a military clash with NATO forces in Kosovo was an early sign of Moscow’s deep anti-NATO sentiment and serious disagreement with its policies.

He pronounced America’s “economic and power dominance” as a threat to Russia’s national interests. Putin’s first Military Doctrine of 2000 chose “military blocs and alliances”—implying NATO—as one of the external threats. The doctrine also said that NATO countries close to Russia’s borders resulted in an imbalance of forces threatening Moscow.

The FBI had just arrested its own agent Robert Hanssen, a 20-year spy for the KGB, in 2001. The most damaging spy in modern history, Hanssen sold some of the most sensitive U.S. secrets to the Russians, including our nuclear secrets, the existence of a secret, American-built tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the identities of Soviets who spied for America.

“By inserting disinformation in publications, advocating extremist ideas, inciting racist and xenophobic flashmobs, conducting interstate computer attacks on the critical infrastructure targets that are vital for the functioning of a society, it is possible to ‘heat up’ the situation in any country, all the way up to the point of social unrest.” —Major General Igor Dylevsky, deputy chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

I loved every minute of my job. Well, except those minutes, which added up to hours, days, and weeks, when I had to deal with the bean counters and other types of bureaucrats. Everything you’ve heard about the government’s being a giant, immovable, redundant bureaucracy is true. Regrettably, this also applies to the Intelligence Community, which should instead possess the flexibility and efficiency it needs to secure the country.

Russia has the most sophisticated and destructive arsenal of cyber weapons of any foreign nation. In the hands of President Vladimir Putin, who ultimately controls this cyber arsenal as part of what is called the State System of Information Confrontation,2 these cyber weapons present a grave threat to America.3 Having been in the offensive cyber business for the past three decades, Russia has developed a set of potent tools that are superior in stealth, programming power, speed of attack and penetration of the adversary’s network, and creativity. The Russian president’s toolbox rivals that of American cyber warriors, and Russia’s highly innovative cyber doctrine has given Putin the ability to outplay the U.S. government and manipulate American citizens’ attitudes and perceptions of reality.

The Russians believe, consistent with the teachings of Sun Tzu, that the surest way of winning the conflict is to dupe the adversary into abandoning his plans to fight or to defeat him by outfoxing him without a fight.

there is a presupposition of conflict in the Russian mindset based on its turbulent history. In addition, based on Russia’s perception of U.S. policies, warfighting campaigns in the last two decades, military exercises, weapons development, support of NATO expansion to include former Eastern Bloc countries, and democracy promotion in Russia’s perceived sphere of influence, Moscow has concluded that sooner or later it will face Washington in an all-out kinetic war.

“Counter-struggle” also has the connotation of defensive action, which Russia views as important for the perceptions of domestic and foreign audiences. Russian leaders believe that their citizens are more likely to fight harder if they think that they are defending the motherland in a struggle against a foreign enemy than if they think that they are acting as an aggressor, even in the information sphere. They also believe it is to their advantage to portray to foreign audiences that their military doctrine is defensive, and therefore they have moral superiority over the adversary.

The Russians continue to view democracy as chaotic and unstable based on their experiences of the societal breakdown in the 1990s, in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the disastrous Yeltsin years.

When the Russians talk about information security, they mean not just security of the software and hardware, but security of the actual content from external influence, especially Western. The Russian government believes that the concept of a nation’s sovereignty extends to the information domain. Russia has even coined a term for the Russian internet—RUNET. Putin wants to keep Western ideology out of the Russian information space because it is harmful to Russia. The Russians continue to view democracy as chaotic and unstable based on their experiences of the societal breakdown in the 1990s, in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the disastrous Yeltsin years. The Russian government’s leaders believe democracy and individual freedoms threaten the country’s stability because they foster an antagonistic relationship between the state and its citizens, between individuals and the collective.

The Kremlin has always believed that to retain power and regime continuity, it must keep a firm hold on its population, both in what they think and how they behave. Having control of the information flow that goes in and out of the country has always been a priority. During Soviet times, censorship was especially strict. Those who did not have the “correct opinion” were persecuted, even jailed. There is a word in Russian, the noun inakomyslyashchiye, which means “those who think differently.” Thinking differently was not allowed when I was growing up in the USSR.

Regrettably, I am seeing similar alarming tendencies emerging in America. Today, the ideas and values that used to serve as the cornerstone of American democracy, such as diversity of thought and freedom of expression, are no longer cherished by many Americans. There are emerging a different “correct” way and “incorrect” way of thinking about such issues as patriotism, racial equality, ethnic and cultural differences, freedom of religion, immigration, the mission of police, how much government involvement in people’s lives is appropriate in a democracy, and even capitalism.

Putin and his cyberwar squad are acutely aware about this “new normal” in American society, and they are “cyber-gaming” and exploiting it for all its worth to weaken and defeat us. One of Russia’s most recent covert intelligence operations, which followed the Putin-ordered intervention in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, is the spreading of the QAnon conspiracy theory, amplified by Russian cyber spies. As part of Putin’s playbook, Russian intelligence services are always on the lookout for clever ways to incite social unrest in America.

And the third is focused on cyber-enabled influence operations designed to change how Americans think about its government and one another and to influence U.S. policy towards Russia in the Kremlin’s favor.

A 2017 unclassified DIA intelligence report entitled Russia Military Power characterizes information confrontation as a “holistic concept for ensuring information superiority during peacetime, crisis, and wartime.”15 Information confrontation envisions the weaponization of information to neutralize an adversary’s actions by achieving two measures of influence: an information-technical effect and an information-psychological effect. “Information-technical effect” refers to cyber operations, such as computer network defense, exploitation, and attack. Examples include the Russian government’s hackers’ breaching DNC servers and exfiltrating internal DNC communications as part of the Kremlin’s attempt to disrupt the 2016 election. The technical effect was thus achieved by Russians’ compromising of the DNC computers. “Information-psychological effect” refers to the change of the target’s perceptions, beliefs, or behavior in favor of the Russian government’s objectives. Such an influence can be achieved by publicly revealing false, distorted, unfavorable, or embarrassing information. Information confrontation is an instrument of Russia’s statecraft that Moscow employs against its adversaries—especially against its “main enemy” the United States—at all times.

The psychological effect on Americans that Putin wanted to achieve was the perception that the U.S. electoral process is not fair and honest, as Americans believe and as the U.S. government portrays to the rest of the world. Putin’s goal was, among other things, to discredit American democracy and send a message to U.S. leaders that they have no business lecturing Russia about the unfairness of its elections.

Russia and America are already engaged in a conflict that is largely non-kinetic in nature but that has the potential to escalate into a real war. The higher the tensions, the more likelihood for misunderstanding or miscalculation given the fundamental differences in the cultures, values, and worldview between Russia and America. Fighting two proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria and a shadow war in the U.S. homeland, which the Russians seek to tear apart with racial, ethnic, religious, and political divisions, there is plenty of opportunity for the conflict to go hot between nuclear-armed Moscow and Washington.

As the United States continues to try to peel off Ukraine from Russia’s orbit, it may be prudent to make a thorough intelligence assessment as to whether Putin would invade Ukraine if Washington pushes too hard.

The strife originated with protests on account of a white police officer who employed excessive use of force against a black criminal suspect, George Floyd, resulting in Floyd’s tragic death. Infamous for its egregious abuse of the rights protected by the U.S. constitution, Russia expressed “concern over human rights violations in America” through Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov’s CNBC comments on the protests and civil unrest. Peskov’s comments followed those of the Russian foreign ministry, which alleged that the United States “has certainly accumulated systemic human rights problems: race, ethnic and religious discrimination, police brutality, bias of justice, crowded prisons, and uncontrolled use of firearms and self-defense weapons by individuals, to name a few.”25 This was meant to help stir the pot through “information confrontation.”

They are surprised that despite the relatively low casualty rate in the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, thanks to the United States’ superior command of precision warfare, the American people are still very critical of the U.S. military and political leaders for allowing loss of life of their soldiers and occasionally of foreign civilians. Russia’s high tolerance for casualties was evident in World War II when they lost twenty million lives.

The thinking goes that if Americans are precluded, even temporarily, from withdrawing money from ATMs, filling their cars with gas, receiving treatment in the hospital, flying to a coveted vacation spot, or even watching cable TV, they may change their minds about helping stage Putin’s removal from power, returning Crimea to Ukraine, or otherwise engaging in a high-stakes conflict with Moscow. The Russians think that Americans have low tolerance for surviving without their usual creature comforts and would eagerly place pressure on their government to stand down from a planned military action against Russia, should Moscow telegraph with a cyber strike its resolve to escalate conflict to the next level.

Prior to unleashing Putin’s 2016 covert influence operation targeting the U.S. election, Russian cyber legal experts thoroughly studied the U.S. legal framework to ensure they wouldn’t cross the line and provoke a military response from Washington. Russia’s brazen intervention in the 2016 U.S. election was not an act of war based on the legal principles codified in the Tallinn Manual 2.0, which serves as a reference for attorneys whose job is to apply international law to cyber.41 It turns out that hacking the DNC and releasing the emails into the U.S. public domain through WikiLeaks did not violate the UN Charter’s prohibition of the use of force. It did not constitute an initiation of armed conflict and therefore and did not merit a U.S. military response in self-defense, according to a British law professor who led the team that developed the Tallinn Manual.42 It pays to understand your opponent—even his legal framework.

“It is necessary to inculcate in the psyche of intelligence agents who conduct clandestine operations the belief that morals and social norms mean absolutely nothing for intelligence work.” —from the section on the “Qualities of an Intelligence Agent” of the Russian Manual on Operational Tradecraft and Clandestine Activities of Special Services

Sun Tzu taught that the most effective way to defeat the adversary is to

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu taught that the most effective way to defeat the adversary is to “attack by stratagem”—that is, “to avoid what is strong and strike what is weak.”

The iconic ancient Chinese strategist admonished, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

An illegal agent must know the history of his target country very well…especially its moral, political, psychological, cultural, and historical values.32 …An illegal officer must know his new legend-based biography better than his real one. He can forget the name of his real aunt’s cousin or the date of his college diploma, but he does not have a right to forget any fact, detail, event, or date related to his second biography.

It is necessary to inculcate in the psyche of intelligence agents who conduct clandestine operations the belief that morals and social norms mean absolutely nothing for intelligence work. The intelligence agent [razvedchik] in his work cannot constrain himself by any ethics. Purely practical factors play a decisive role in clandestine operations: Is this needed? Is this achievable? Can this operation be kept secret?

“All warfare is based primarily on deception of an enemy. Fighting on a battlefield is the most primitive way of making war. There is no art higher than to destroy your enemy without a fight—by subverting anything of value in the enemy’s country.”

“Politicians from foreign lands blame Russia for interfering in elections and referendums of all kinds across the word. In reality, things are even more serious—Russia has interfered with their minds, and they don’t know what to do with their new consciousness.”

Typically offensive in nature, these counterintelligence operations incorporate deception (maskirovka), disinformation (dezinformatsiya), forgeries (fal’shivka), blackmail via compromising information (kompromat), provocation (provokatsiya), intimidation, and even assassinations.

In the 1970s, the Soviets ran a multi-part series of articles in its propaganda outlet New Times that implicated the CIA in the killing of President John F. Kennedy and accused the Agency of conducting subversion operations and political assassinations.22 In the 1980s, the Soviets launched a disinformation operation, code-named Infektion, which spread the falsehood that the HIV virus was an experimental biological weapon developed by the U.S. military.23 The typical tactic for this type of active-measure operation was to place an article containing an anti-American accusation in an obscure foreign newspaper, usually in a third world country where the Soviets had news organizations controlled by the KGB.24 The Western press would pick up the article containing a false claim, and it would eventually find its way to a major U.S. publication.

“The deaf mutes will believe us. They will even be delighted and will open their doors wide to us,” Lenin said. “Through this door,”

“Hence the general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”

The Russians accurately assessed how polarized American society was on issues like race, religion, and immigration. They were able to manipulate these societal divisions and whip up upheaval on U.S. soil. The Russian active-measure masterminds also had a good grasp of the level of antipathy that existed among American elites toward candidate Trump and his personality.

“I’ll tell you a secret. Yes, we’ll definitely intervene,” Putin had said. He made the ostensibly tongue-in-cheek promise in response to a reporter’s question whether Russia would meddle again in U.S. politics in 2020.

Whom, do you think, Russia was rooting for in 2020 as the next occupant of the White House? A presidential candidate who is an ailing and confused former vice president with the most liberal track record in the Senate? Or a hard-nosed, “America-First” businessman who ordered the bombing of three hundred Russian mercenaries in Syria, authorized cyber strikes on Russia’s agency that did the hacking of 2016 elections, and set up American Space Forces to fight “star wars” with Moscow?

The art of Soviet intelligence tradecraft displayed in Operation Trust, the 2016 “Translator Project,” and 2020 covert-influence active measures hinges on the deceiver’s ability to access and read the mind of the victim, to understand the victim’s psychology. It is only by entering the victim’s mindset and understanding his likes and dislikes, his biases and dreams, that the aggressor can manipulate the victim, step by step, into misperceiving reality, coming to wrong conclusions, and taking steps—predetermined and desired by the aggressor—toward his own destruction. It’s all about psychology.

James Jesus Angleton described the psychology behind the art of perfect deception by using a firefly and beetle analogy. Female fireflies signal their “availability to mate” by flickering their lights. “The assassination beetle, the natural predator, has learned over time to imitate those signals,” he wrote. The “male firefly, responding to the mating call, instead of finding a mate…is devoured by the beetle.”

“Treason is the biggest crime on earth, and traitors must be punished.” —Vladimir Putin

While the Kremlin officially denied responsibility, later that year in December 2019, Putin, during a press conference with German Der Spiegel, called Khangoshvili “an absolute blood-thirsty killer” who “eliminated 98 people in [the] Caucasus alone.”

The German government has concluded that Russia was behind the “state-sanctioned” assassination of Khangoshvili, who was living in exile in Germany, having served as a mid-level commander leading Chechen separatists in combat against the Russian forces during the Second Chechen War.136 While the Kremlin officially denied responsibility, later that year in December 2019, Putin, during a press conference with German Der Spiegel, called Khangoshvili “an absolute blood-thirsty killer” who “eliminated 98 people in [the] Caucasus alone.”

The man placed two shots in Khangoshvili’s head in broad daylight. The German government has concluded that Russia was behind the “state-sanctioned” assassination of Khangoshvili, who was living in exile in Germany, having served as a mid-level commander leading Chechen separatists in combat against the Russian forces during the Second Chechen War.136 While the Kremlin officially denied responsibility, later that year in December 2019, Putin, during a press conference with German Der Spiegel, called Khangoshvili “an absolute blood-thirsty killer” who “eliminated 98 people in [the] Caucasus alone.”

The two “wet affairs” operations Russian intelligence has carried out in Britain—the murder of Aleksandr Litvinenko in 2006 by hard-to-detect radioactive agent Polonium-210 and the attempted murder of Sergey and Yulia Skripal with a military-grade nerve agent Novichok in 2018—effectively amount to two attacks with weapons of mass destruction (nuclear and chemical) by Putin’s Russia on the British soil.

At the time of this writing, another Russian opposition leader and Putin critic, Alexey Navalny, is struggling for his life in a Russian prison.129 Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow after he drank some tea at the airport. After the Russian doctors said they could not find the cause of his condition and did not identify any poison in his body, Navalny was medically evacuated to Germany, where the doctors announced that he had indeed been poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent called Novichok.

In March 2007, former CIA officer and staffer for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Paul Joyal survived a brutal attack near his home in Maryland.141 The attackers shot Joyal in the groin four days after he implied during a Dateline NBC broadcast that Putin and the Kremlin were responsible for Aleksandr Litvinenko’s death. Although the FBI was originally involved in the case, five years after this highly likely murder attempt, the criminals had not been found. Paul, with whom I spoke briefly about the “incident” at an invitation-only gathering for security professionals a couple of years after it took place, was convinced that the “incident” was the work of Russians.

After my departure from the DIA, my husband and I decided to report to the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office a few bizarre visits to our house. The FBI agents, who were trained counterintelligence officers with expertise in Russian tradecraft, were quite sober in their guidance to us. In Russia itself, U.S. intelligence officers experience harsh harassment. They are under constant surveillance by the FSB, the domestic security and counterintelligence agency. Their temporary houses in Russia get searched. Sometimes toilets are left unflushed to signal that they were there, in your house. In some more extreme cases, your pets get poisoned. The more tense U.S.-Russian relations are, the more hostile the FSB is towards U.S. intelligence officers in Russia.

“If you don’t want to feed your own army, you will be feeding someone else’s.” —Vladimir Putin during his 2019 annual “Direct Line with the President” press conference

Analysts, working to solve intelligence puzzles, prefer quiet isolation to a noisy “collaboration” environment, which the management thinks we want.

In the event that Moscow’s strategic nonmilitary destabilization campaign against America is insufficient to counter what Putin views as Washington’s long-term effort to impair Russia’s economy through sanctions and erode Moscow’s sphere of influence in Eurasia, the Russian General Staff, on Putin’s orders, has developed a more traditional statecraft instrument—the military option.1 It includes a brand new doctrine,2 innovative warfighting concepts,3 modern weaponry, command and control systems, and of course, the nuclear Armageddon scenario.

Russian military strategists envision a small local conflict within its “strategic buffer zone”—Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, the Baltics, and the North Caucasus—as a potential pathway to war between the U.S. and Russia.

“Escalation dominance” was conceptualized by the iconic American thought leader on nuclear warfare Herman Kahn as a way to compel the adversary to concede in a conflict by demonstrating a superior position over him so that the adversary would perceive any further escalation as a losing bet.18 Through “escalation dominance,” the Russian General Staff targets America’s will to initiate, engage in, or continue to fight with Russia.

In other words, Russians can “out-suffer” Americans, which would enable the Kremlin to up the ante in a war with the United States. A hypothetical example would be if Russia were to deploy military forces into Belarus to “assist” the “Union State” (i.e., the Union State of Russia and Belarus) member in response to the Lukashenko regime’s collapse. Russia would view the collapse as U.S.- and NATO-assisted and react if one or both declared a “no-fly” zone over Belarus (like in Libya)—something that Russia would interpret as a precursor to a kinetic conflict. In response, Russia might retaliate and paralyze U.S. hospitals in a massive cyberattack—not unlike in 2017 when some U.S. healthcare systems were shut down as a result of Russia’s broader cyber attack NotPetya.20 Moscow’s highly escalatory move would be intended to signal that if the U.S. and NATO do not stand down from “meddling” in the “Union State,” then Russia would break through the “no-fly” zone and invade Belarus and establish control. In this situation, Moscow relies on its assumption that Washington would find it hard to respond to Russia’s action proportionately without triggering another even more escalatory act by the Kremlin.

“If you don’t want to feed your own army, you will be feeding someone else’s,” Putin said during one of his annual press conferences, called “Direct Line with the President.”

Putin introduced six new weapons and demonstrated video animations of these systems targeting the United States. “It is not a bluff,” warned Putin, fully aware that U.S. and Western intelligence would be dissecting the address’s every word.

In April 2016, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, who later became President Trump’s national security advisor, warned the Senate that in the next war, U.S. forces may be “outgunned and outmanned” unless the United States stops “shrinking the Army before it’s too late.”40 Any advantage that Putin may perceive is more likely to provoke his aggression within Eurasia rather than decrease his appetite for restoring the losses that Russia has incurred in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR.

They learned an important lesson during the Soviet era about keeping their leader ready. According to declassified debriefings of the Soviet General Staff officers, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev “trembled” when he was asked to push a button in a hypothetical war with the United States, during a 1972 command-post exercise. According to the scenario, a “U.S. attack would kill 80 million Soviet citizens and destroy 85 percent of the country’s industrial capacity.” Brezhnev kept asking Soviet defense minister Grechko, was this “definitely an exercise?”

Russians believe that regular practice of authorizing a nuclear-weapon release keeps their leader psychologically prepared for this action. They learned an important lesson during the Soviet era about keeping their leader ready. According to declassified debriefings of the Soviet General Staff officers, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev “trembled” when he was asked to push a button in a hypothetical war with the United States, during a 1972 command-post exercise. According to the scenario, a “U.S. attack would kill 80 million Soviet citizens and destroy 85 percent of the country’s industrial capacity.” Brezhnev kept asking Soviet defense minister Grechko, was this “definitely an exercise?”

On June 2, 2020, Russia also adopted a new nuclear policy, “Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Sphere of Nuclear Deterrence.”48 The document, while consistent with the 2014 Military Doctrine, outlines the Kremlin’s specific red lines, which, if crossed, would trigger Moscow’s nuclear response. Among the four conditions that would call for a Russian nuclear strike is “the adversary’s influence on and disruption of the critical infrastructure facilities belonging to the Russian government or military.”

in September 1983, during a very tense period in U.S.-Soviet relations, the Russian missile warning system registered U.S. nuclear missiles heading toward Russia, which required the duty officer to launch a counterattack. Coincidently, NATO was conducting a military exercise. A single individual, Colonel Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet Air Defense Forces officer who was on duty monitoring the Soviet early warning system, decided that it was a mistake.51 Contrary to the Soviet understanding of the U.S. doctrine of mass, not limited, nuclear strike, the Russian system “detected” only a few “U.S. missiles” that were heading toward Russia. This knowledge of the U.S. doctrine helped Petrov make the decision not to alert any of his superiors, taking the heroic risk of being wrong. He suspected that the Russian missile warning system was broken and so avoided a retaliatory response and nuclear catastrophe.

politics is only a continuation of war.

Carl von Clausewitz on its head—that politics is only a continuation of war.

Putin’s invoking of the “special period” is a troubling development. Being in a continuous state of mind of expecting an adversary’s attack carries substantial risks. You are likely to see things that you expect to see, even if they are not there. For Russia, whose strategic culture is already predisposed for the expectation of conflict, once you declare a preparation for war, the risk of overreacting to some policy or activity of its “main enemy,” the United States, is much higher, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What is revealing is that at no time did the Soviets try to identify the aircraft they had shot down. Having been sensitized to the possibility of a U.S. attack, they assumed that any intrusion was deliberate rather than a mistake.

Russia ascribes the worst possible motives to U.S. leaders, while Washington traditionally dismisses the Kremlin’s mindset because it simply doesn’t fit into standard North American thinking and culture. We can never rely on the chance of cooler heads’ prevailing should a crisis unfold between Russia and the United States. We were often lucky in the past. But luck isn’t a strategic concept—only a random set of events.

If we are not capable of thinking like the adversary, we will not be able to disrupt his plans and protect the United States. Putin is counting on our ignorance to win.

“He, thinking that I was about to kill him in self-defense, was about to kill me in self-defense, so I had to kill him in self-defense.”

Why does MMA attract me? Chiefly because it epitomizes the nexus of intelligence, warfare, and strategy. Attaining victory in an MMA fight requires a deep understanding of your opponent. The bout, which can last anywhere from a few seconds to fifteen minutes (twenty-five minutes for championship fights), is a culmination of months and years of extreme physical and mental training, scrupulous study, analysis of your rival’s technique, and careful development of your own strategy. Brute force is not a guarantee of victory in mixed martial arts. You must understand how your strengths and weaknesses stack up against your opponent’s.

It could have sent Estonia into complete darkness when it launched a twenty-two-day long cyberattack in 2007 targeting commercial and government networks, including such vital services as online banking, to express its displeasure with the relocation of a Soviet-era monument in Tallinn.

“Every nation gets the government it deserves.”

We are not learning from these failures or putting America’s security first. Instead, we are trying to ensure the well-being of distant Eurasian peoples, only repeating our mistakes. In Ukraine, we are pumping in foreign aid to one of the most corrupt countries in the world in a misguided attempt to turn another oligarchic system into a beacon of liberty and symbol of prosperity. We are even sending highly sophisticated anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukrainian forces, risking further escalation with Russia—policies that please our consciences but will not stem Russian aggression or lower hostilities. Members of Congress are even willing to go so far as to impeach, try, and remove our president from office over Ukraine—a president whose only sin was a patriotic desire to prevent American taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars from falling into the corrupt hands of Ukrainian apparatchiks and oligarchs bred in the same 1990s tradition of pillaging Russian oligarchs. We have seen this Russian movie before. Do Americans really need another decade-long sequel in Kiev?

No, I’ll say it: Ukraine is not a vital security interest of the United States. Stability in Eurasia and Russia, which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal outside of America, is though.

There is no knowledge that could supply them with bread as long as they remain free. So, in the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: “Enslave us, but feed us!” And they will finally understand that freedom and the assurance of daily bread for everyone are two incompatible notions that could never coexist! They will also discover that men can never be free because they are weak, corrupt, worthless, and restless.

coalesced around a different analytic line that used to be anathema

First, really know your target. Study it. Don’t expect Russians to think and behave like Americans. They don’t, and they won’t.

Second, armed with the knowledge of your strategic opponent, set realistic expectations, based on the art of the possible, with security and stability being the overarching goal. America and Russia will never become BFFs, but it doesn’t mean that they cannot be transactional parties.

Third, stop ignoring the threat by politicizing the Russia issue. From the Mueller investigation, we learned that no American citizens conspired with Moscow operatives to “fix” the 2016 election results.

Fourth, don’t expect quick results. Americans think in hours and days, while Russians think in decades and centuries.

Fifth, prepare for a fight and have a war plan ready.

While the American ethical system mostly excludes “compromise between good and evil, even as a means of achieving good ends,” under the Russian ethical system, the opposite is true.

Socialists and communists are hell-bent on creating hierarchies of power to replace hierarchies of competence that are built into the capitalist system, which embraces the natural desire to compete, pursue knowledge, and strive for dignity and freedom.

by a Kremlin-affiliated think tank of “International Threats” (Mezhdunarodnye Ugrozy) from 2018: “The [United States] will simultaneously weaken and dismember the rest of the world, and first of all, Big Eurasia. This strategy is pursued by the [United States] regardless which conservative or liberal administration occupies the White House or whether there is consensus regarding this policy among the elites or not. The only difference is how closely and steadfastly this course of action is pursued and which measures are adopted to make this goal a reality.”

Best quotes from Rebekah Koffler - Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America