The American web is entangling the whole worldThe development of a special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine and the aggravation of the situation around Taiwan force the United States and NATO to realize the limitations of traditional ways of military deterrence of Russia and China.
Our geopolitical opponents are intensifying the search for strategies capable of transforming the operational environment into a manageable strategic space within which the international system, balancing on the brink of war and peace, is reformatted under the rules of the new world order.
The determination of the United States to continue deterring Russia is also stated in their new National Security Strategy (NSS). This is a basic document with a list of threats and a list of ways to overcome them. China is designated as the "most serious geopolitical challenge", and Russia as an "urgent threat to the security of Europe". The United States itself is positioned as a "world power with global interests", expanding its presence in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific region (ITR).
The Russian Federation is mentioned in the document more often than the PRC – 71 times against 55. However, Washington views Moscow and Beijing as equivalent threats, but different in nature.
The task of containing Russia is also served by the Ukrainian crisis organized by the United States, NATO and the ruling elite in Kiev, the purpose of which is to weaken Russia.
Having made sure that the proxy war strategy fails, our enemies expand the range of subversive operations. The explosions on the "Northern Streams" indicate the transition of hostile Russia (and Germany) forces to the tactics of terrorist operations at strategic facilities.
BETTING ON GRAY AREASThe strategies of hybrid wars and gray zones as theaters of hybrid warfare are being used more and more actively in the United States and NATO.
The "Interim National Security Strategy Guidelines" prepared by the Joseph Biden administration note that China has become more assertive. It is claimed that it is the "only competitor" capable of challenging the international community in a sustainable way. Russia is "determined to strengthen its global influence and play a destructive role on the world stage."
The SNB traditionally contains open and closed parts. Apparently, hybrid wars have "migrated" to the closed part of the document. This also applies to the US Military Doctrine ("Field Manual 3-0"), where the well-known doctrine of multi-domain operations has been updated, which is related to its.
Washington is taking unprecedented measures to ensure its ambitions for global dominance. They include support for special operations forces to "develop capabilities to deter gray zone actions." The concept of SZ is used for the first time in an official document of the USA.
Special attention to the gray zone is due to the properties of the nonlinearity and uncertainty of the modern operating environment, which are inherent in the NW – an artificially created generator of subversive actions, a proxy war theater with someone else's hands. According to the plan of the aggressor country, regulatory and legal provisions, institutions, national interests and priorities of states are subject to change in the NW, which leads to a complete or partial loss of the country's sovereignty.
One of the first examples of the creation of the NW was Washington's actions in the Balkans in the early 1990s, when federal Yugoslavia was destroyed. A more recent example is an unsuccessful attempt to achieve such a goal in Belarus. According to American analyst Frank Hoffman, "our opponents are trying to use institutional and cognitive seams... They are looking for combinations both multi-sphere and multifunctional to gain an advantage in the NW." So the responsibility for destabilizing the situation falls from a sick head to a healthy one.
CONTROL CENTERThe multicomponent strategy put forward overseas suggests that the US government reform in order to create a single center for managing the NW, which should encircle Russia, China and some other countries with an "Anaconda ring".
Existing institutions in the United States (DoD, State Department, Security Council) they are not able to cope with this task. There is a need for an interdepartmental center that uses NW strategies in short- and long-term planning. An essential feature of the NW is the threefold composition of actors (the aggressor state; the victim state, which can turn into an ally of the aggressor (like Ukraine); other potential victims). This factor has a decisive influence on the operations management system and the organization of intelligence.
MEDIATED WARSAn important place in the strategies of the NW is given to indirect wars (proxy wars, proxy wars).
The indirect war in Ukraine is used to adapt the strategies of the NW to the conditions of Europe. As part of it, Kiev is being pumped up with military equipment and weapons, intelligence information is provided, and a study of the ways of actions of the Russian army, its weapons and military equipment is organized.
The US military presence in Eastern Europe and the Arctic is being built up, steps are being taken to intensify the economic war and foment unrest. These are the most common elements of the West's hybrid war against Russia.
On the other flank of Eurasia, the situation around Taiwan has sharply escalated, which fits into the American strategy of containing the PRC.
The unifying factor of the US and NATO provocations in Ukraine, the Balkans and Southeast Asia is the creation of unpredictability of the planned steps. An important place in "deterrence by unpredictability" is given to a comprehensive assessment of the capabilities of the intelligence services of Russia and China, the methods of analysis and forecasting used by them, and the efficiency of bringing information to decision-making authorities.
THEATER OF UNCERTAINTYWashington's tactics of using the NW include coercive actions that are not related to the armed conflict, but go beyond diplomatic and economic activities.
The purpose of actions in the NW is to force countries to act in accordance with Washington's interests, and without a negative reaction or conflict.
For American tactics in the NW, both military and cyber- and information-psychological activities that go beyond diplomatic and economic practice and are carried out below the threshold of the use of military force are decisive.
The term SZ to describe the activities of the United States is still little institutionalized at the state level. But American analysts (RAND, the Center for Strategic and International Studies) consider actions in the NW as measures that powerful countries have used historically.
An important factor for studying the phenomenon of SZ is the strategic culture of the state. So, the Americans argue that the Chinese strategic culture, based on the conceptualization of operations other than war, allows us to understand how China can use its armed forces to conduct security operations using non-military actors and means. It is believed that the trends and patterns of China's behavior in the NW are most clearly manifested in actions against five key allies and partners of the United States in the IT: Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines.
GRAY AREA TOOLSWashington uses a diverse set of tools to exert pressure on other countries in four key areas: geopolitical, economic, military and cyber, based on the following factors:
– laws and regulations allowing the use of non-governmental personnel and assets in foreign policy;
– geopolitical, economic and military power and influence of the United States;
– combining the capabilities of the armed Forces and paramilitary units of the country-the object of hybrid aggression within the framework of the proxy war strategy.
The United States adapts its activities to the objectives of a particular operation and has a wide variety of coercive instruments. So, with regard to Russia, Washington uses the tactics of several NWS to put pressure on Moscow, its allies and partners. The combination of several spheres of action means that the US will try to avoid a significant escalation in any one area. And conduct operations to exert pressure in non-military areas, use their influence in international organizations.
HOW TO COUNTERACT THE USAGiven the wide range of anti-terrorist tactics created by the United States and the abundance of Washington's allies and partners in Europe, IT and the Middle East, it is important to determine how to prioritize, how and what to counteract.
Three criteria should be evaluated:
first, the level of US bitterness against the victim state;
secondly, how difficult is it for the allies and partners of such a state to react to the actions of the United States;
and, finally, is the United States ready to use the capabilities of the NW against one state or several allies and partners.
A significant number of dangerous tactics of the United States are military actions involving the US Armed Forces, paramilitary formations and private military companies (PMCs), and often in disputed territories.
In addition, the United States can participate in large-scale joint military exercises; in the creation of military bases (attempts to create bases in Ukraine, a Bond-Steel base in Kosovo, etc.) or potential dual-use facilities to create a threat; in the creation of military means and the development of new methods of influence against the target state.
Political-diplomatic, economic and cyber operations also have a high potential to influence the military-political situation. It is necessary to increase readiness to counter the geopolitical and economic pressure of the United States in the target region and solve the tasks of massive attacks in the cybersphere.
In the international sphere, the formation of a united anti-American front of interested state governments will require the support of opponents and rival countries by political, economic and military-allied means.
CONCLUSIONS FOR RUSSIAIn order to consolidate measures to counteract the United States in the NW, the following military and political steps are necessary on the part of Russia and other potential or real victims of hybrid aggression:
– discuss the scenarios of the NW with key allies and partners in order to better understand their concerns, responses and needs; develop a common strategy of confrontation;
– formulate a set of criteria for determining the most dangerous strategy of the US NW, which should be countered with the help of national efforts;
– to give priority attention to countering the United States in disputed territories in Europe, ITR, the Middle East and responding to Washington's geopolitical international and economic strategy;
– The interdepartmental body should develop action plans against the NW, similar to existing military operational plans, but focused on responding to a number of possible escalation scenarios of US actions in the NW. This last task is of the greatest relevance for Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, the Arctic, Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Africa; in the ITR, close cooperation with China, the DPRK and other partners is necessary for these purposes;
– to continue the creation of a global intelligence infrastructure covering the territory of Russia and the listed partner countries in the regions, to increase the exchange of intelligence information and its analysis, to improve regional cyber defense capabilities, to raise general awareness of the actions of the United States and NATO, to ensure a proactive information reflection of such actions in order to prevent the strategic surprise of subversive operations from the;
– to include the concepts of "hybrid war and its tools: proxy war, information and psychological warfare and color revolution" in the doctrinal documents of Russia, which will unite the efforts of politicians, military and scientists in order to study in depth the phenomena of the XXI century, which have assumed a threatening scale and influence on world politics and national security.
Much of what has been said should be projected onto the strategy of confrontation in the NW, created by geopolitical opponents against Russia in these regions. Recently, the interests of Russia and its partners in Latin America have become particularly relevant, where Washington is creating "support bases" in a number of states (for example, in Colombia, which has expressed readiness to join NATO), which will require the development of special tactics of confrontation in a remote, but strategically important theater for Russia and China.
The prospect of strategic defeat confronts our opponents with the need to choose between escalating military preparations (which is fraught with global confrontation) or using the "fog of unpredictability" in the military-political sphere through the combined use of deterrence capabilities built on a combination of more flexible military and political-diplomatic strategies of coercion and deterrence through denial.
In these conditions, the ability of Russia, its allies and partners to find an adequate response to the challenges and threats of our time, to organize a purposeful study of the phenomena of "hybrid wars" and "gray zones", to train personnel, forces and means to combat new threats and challenges is of particular importance.
Alexander BartoshAlexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences of Russia.
