Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 20 – Russia’s power
does “not even come close” to that of the US, Andrey Manoylo says; but Moscow
has an advantage “right now” because it understands the value of “asymmetric
action” and because “the US clearly has difficulties with predicting Russia’s
activities,” because of Washington’s overly simplistic models of Russian
behavior.
“We already know perfectly well how
Obama and John Kerry will act even before they get into a situation,” the
former FSB officer who now advises the Russian defense ministry and Security
Council tells Estonia’s “Diplomaatia” journal; but “nobody knows Putin will
act,” despite the fact that “there is a pattern for [his] behavior” (diplomaatia.ee/en/article/fsb-information-warfare-specialist-russia-will-quickly-establish-private-military-units/).
“Unpredictable behavior is also in
fact an element of predictability,” Manoylo argues, and “Putin’s behavior
always remains within the confines of logic.” If one examines his actions in
the past, one can see “a very simple logic,” one in which “he has applied the style
of domestic policy from the 2000s where he often made seemingly very unexpected
decisions to making foreign policy.”
“In today’s circumstances,” according
to the widely published expert (for a hypertexted listing of his key works, see
istina.msu.ru/profile/Manoylo/),
“where all warfare is already hybrid, the Americans are still betting too much
on brute force, on the [notion] that force can resolve any kind of issue. But
it is no longer the most important thing in the world.”
“It is no longer important to strike
a mighty blow from the outset; instead you need to have very fine fencing
skills.” And that is what Moscow has and
the West doesn’t, the Russian expert suggests.
In the first decade of this century,
Manoylo worked as an FSB information warfare specialist and then began to focus
on color revolutions. Since 2012, he has been employed as a political science
specialist at Moscow State University and serves as an advisor to both the
Russian Security Council and the Russian General Staff.
He has been involved in the
development of Russian thinking about hybrid warfare as articulated over the
last three years by General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff.
(For a discussion of this, see Andrew Monaghan, “The ‘War’ in Russia’s ‘Hybrid
Warfare,’ at
In his “Diplomaatia” interview,
Manoylo expands on Gerasimov’s ideas and suggests how the general sees the
military playing a role in countering color revolutions in the post-Soviet
space, a role that is driven by Moscow’s assumptions about the nature of such
revolutions and how they differ from other kinds of public protest.
According to Manoylo, Gerasimov
believes that “when people protest spontaneously, there are never immediate
massive protests as in color revolutions; instead, people initially gather in
small groups, which start to create larger groups until they form
demonstrations. This takes at least a month.”
But in the case of “color
revolutions,” the general believes, the situation is different: “as soon as the
incident occurs, it signals the protesters to take to the streets all over the
city led by their activists, which means that this protesting electorate has
been formed earlier and is only waiting for the signal.”
“This is preceded by recruitment and
building of a city-wide hierarchy of protest cells, where each cell has its own
leader, who does not know the leaders or members of other cells, only his
direct superior,” he continues. “This system is very similar to how Al-Qaeda is
structured or how the underground boyevik units operated in the Northern
Caucasus.”
Consequently, Gerasimov thinks, “it is
very difficult to fight such organizations, which act as networks, because
destroying one cell does not take you to the next.” And he further understands that
“there is no warfare that is not
hybrid. Such wars begin long before war is officially declared and end long
after a peace treaty has been signed.”
These
wars “begin in the form of information warfare, diversionary acts and guerrilla
warfare, and this is what the headquarters level proceeds from in planning
modern warfare,” and that in turn means, Manoylo says, that “defense attaches
need to be excellent specialists in information warfare, influencing the public
and psychological operations.”
As a
result of this understanding, the Moscow hybrid war specialist says, “the
proportion of people without epaulettes is growing fast in the [Russian]
military,” including a new push for private military corporations that can be
deployed with deniability because it allows governments to “participate in
military conflicts in their active face while not risking military involvement
at the state level.”
“Not
risking the lives of the soldiers of your own army,” Manoilo points out, “is a
typical hybrid-warfare tactic … This guarantees that they will not clash with
each other, until a certain moment of course. An ideal future war would be two
PMCs doing the fighting” because they are a screen that effectively “legalizes”
mercenary forces.
According
to the Russian expert, “hybrid warfare without PMCs is probably not even
possible anymore … direct confrontation between the main opponents is only a
worst-case scenario. In hybrid warfare, world powers monitor each other’s
strength, potential, and readiness to protect their interests, usually on the
battlefields of the developing world.”
At
present, he suggests, “Ukraine and Syria are typical” of this, “but they are
not the only ones.” Asked by his
Estonian interviewer whether the Baltic countries fit into this category,
Manoylo responds: “the Baltic States are too small for that. I don’t want to
offend anyone, but the Americans are very good at manipulating the Baltics. As
the Baltic States are very small, they can be easily scared. This panic will
later spread to larger European countries as well. Then they of course turn to
the US for help, which
enables the Americans to set the condition for the Europeans that they finally
need to pay the famous two percent” on national defense.
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