Are the strategic doctrines of the Russian Federation ready to respond to new challengesHybrid warfare is increasingly being mentioned by politicians, diplomats and the Russian military as a real threat to national security.
President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are talking about waging a total hybrid war against Russia.
Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Stanislav Zas noted in an interview with the Belarusian media in November that the organization, which was created as a purely military-political alliance to repel military threats, is currently not quite ready to repel hybrid attacks. "The CSTO is not fully ready for this kind of counteraction now," he said.
Thus, at a high level, the insufficiency of analysis, proactive forecasting and, most importantly, taking into account the security threats emanating from the GW as a new form of interstate confrontation is recognized. And the fault in this is not only and not so much the military. Confrontation in a hybrid military conflict requires the integration of the capabilities of the entire state, the creation of an interdepartmental body capable of leading a set of measures for the development and implementation of strategies and tactics of the military, covering all areas of multi-vector aggression: political, diplomatic, economic, socio-ideological (acquiring national-racist features), aggressive cyberinformation, Russophobic propaganda, intelligence andsubversive, military-forceful.
THE SURPRISE FACTORSpecial attention is required by the plans of the United States and NATO to ensure the surprise of an attack on Russia and its allies, providing for the achievement of victory by military force through the quantitative and qualitative buildup of troops (forces) and their provocative activity in the immediate vicinity of the borders of the Russian Federation.
According to Mikhail Frunze, for us "it should be clear that the side holding the initiative, the side having a moment of surprise at its disposal, often thwarts the will of the enemy and thereby creates favorable conditions for itself."
The underestimation in Russia of the surprise factor in the Civil War allowed our opponents to achieve complete control over the consciousness of the population of Ukraine. And to involve Ukraine as a proxy agent in the implementation of US plans to weaken and collapse Russia in the war by someone else's hands. Next in line are the states of Transcaucasia, Central Asia, China, Iran, Serbia.
Academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrei Kokoshin, Sergey Glazyev and some others have long drawn attention to the fact that the concept of GW has turned from a theoretical concept into a real threat to the national security of the Russian Federation. The United States and NATO have been conducting military operations against Russia and its allies for many decades, using proven tools of interstate military conflict – information and psychological warfare, proxy war and color revolution, for systemic subversion. GW is included in the USA in the "Fundamentals of classification of modern military conflicts".
LAWS AND PRINCIPLESThe analysis carried out in Russia and abroad of the use of the strategy of civil defense and its tools in the field of foreign policy allowed us to formulate new specific laws and principles of this type of military conflict based on the synthesis of factors of time, space, surprise, strategic mobility, vulnerability of the state, "acceleration" of war, "friction" and "wear" of civil defense, a wide the use of scientific achievements in various fields (psychology, anthropology, history, cybernetics, brain science and the creation of artificial intelligence, etc.)
The emergence of a unique group of laws of hybrid warfare of the United States and NATO against Russia is influenced by the following features of the GW:
– global geopolitical character, as the United States seeks to defeat Russia as its main geopolitical opponent, the only one capable of destroying America by armed means;
– civilizational character, as the United States seeks to destroy its only ideological opponent – the one who, within the framework of his cultural paradigm, is able to create his own ideological project that can become the moral core of human civilization and defeat the United States and radical liberalism in the war of meanings;
– permanent and universal character, since the GW is constantly being conducted, with increasing intensity in all spheres in specially created gray zones at the theaters of the GW;
– diffuse (hybrid) character, since all known means and methods of war are used in the GW, including the ability to use the technologies of the color revolution as a catalyst for the operations of the GW in order to accelerate the collapse of the state.
Laws and principles of hybrid and proxy warfare have been developed, which are important for the strategy and tactics of interstate confrontation.
The analysis of the phenomenon of GW as a hidden and undefined conflict with a complex internal structure, proceeding in the form of an integrated confrontation, is complicated by the fact that its wider development takes place in conditions of forced transformation of the world order. The aggravation of the interstate struggle and, accordingly, the emergence of new – hybrid – forms of confrontation are largely due to the technological revolution unfolding today.
The universal nature of the laws of civil defense in relation to this type of military conflict is determined by the following factors:
– the main dimension of GW is covert subversive activity, which is used against the object of aggression as the main means to undermine the enemy's ability to resist and impose his will on him;
– the leading motives of subversive activity – the struggle for the resources of the target country and/or for the possibility of using its geopolitical position in confrontation with other opponents; socio-cultural problems (religious factor, nationalism and ethnic identity);
– the comprehensive nature of the conflict, in which forceful and non-forceful means of influence are used, with an emphasis on information and psychological technologies reflected in models of cognitive warfare and "controlled chaos";
– the war is based on the strategy of starvation, which gives the conflict a protracted, permanent character;
– the norms of international law defining the concept of "aggression" are not applicable to the GW, there are no concepts of "front" and "rear" in the GW, the GW is not declared and is conducted throughout the country, in space and cyberspace.
These factors put forward hybrid and proxy war among the military conflicts of the XXI century as phenomena that have a largely decisive influence both on the formation of a new world order and on the state of Russia's national security.
WORLD HYBRID WARThe scale of the intercivilizational conflict, covering large areas of the globe, requires the development of new approaches to the strategy of the civil war, which, from the type of confrontation between individual states and their coalitions, is transformed into a global hybrid war (MGW).
This trend is created by a combination of factors inherent in the foreign policy of the ruling elites of the United States.
First, it is the preservation of the potential for forceful pressure and military intervention in countries and regions of interest to Washington. It is in this context that GW is viewed as a new kind of interstate confrontation based on the use of combinations of conventional, irregular and asymmetric means combined with constant manipulation of political and ideological conflict.
Secondly, it is Washington's policy of creating situational coalitions in various parts of the globe: for example, the formation of AUKUS – a trilateral military alliance consisting of the United States, Australia and Great Britain, the prospects for creating a quadrilateral security dialogue (Australia, India, the United States and Japan).
Thirdly, in parallel, the concept of MGV is being formed, providing for global coverage. MGV is entering a crucial phase, the peak of which is expected in two to three years. According to Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Glazyev, "in 1941, the country's leadership underestimated the power of the mechanized military machine of the Germans. Today we underestimate the military art of the Americans in manipulating the monetary and financial system and public consciousness."
During the next stage of the MGV, the United States is creating a network of headquarters of special operations forces in many regions of the world. In this context, today the focus is on the European states bordering Russia, the Balkans and Ukraine. In the end, the whole world becomes the theater of military operations of the MGV. The conduct of a special military operation by Russia in Ukraine is the first decisive step aimed at preventing the development of the MGV.
The MGV is proposed to be understood as a multidimensional intercivilizational military conflict, during which the parties resort to the purposeful adaptive use of both military-force methods of struggle and economic strangulation of the enemy, the use of subversive information and cyber technologies.
In a broad sense, the meaning of the MGW is the struggle for influence and access to resources in the spaces of Greater Eurasia, the Greater Middle East, Africa and Latin America, instead of the competition for technological leadership between the West and the East in previous years.
In a narrow sense, the meaning of the MGV of the United States and its allies against Russia is the elimination of Russian statehood, the fragmentation of the country and the transfer of its parts under external control. The next step will be to establish control over China, India and other states that are still acting as observers.
What has been said urgently requires defining Russia's goals for countering the MGV. The main ones are:
– protection of humanity from dehumanization carried out by the political leadership of the United States and most other NATO countries;
– elimination of threats to the development and use of biological weapons, including coronaviruses, by the United States, violating the 1975 International Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction;
– stopping the interference of the United States and other NATO member countries in the internal affairs of sovereign states;
– termination of the use of world reserve currencies by issuing countries in the interests of robbing the rest of the world through unequal economic exchange and sanctions threats.
An important condition for achieving these goals is the speedy transition of the BRICS, the SCO and the EAEU to a new world economic order based on the principles of mutual respect for national sovereignty, equality, mutual benefit and justice in international relations, strict observance of international law.
Russia, relying on the strategy of advanced development of our country developed at the Russian Academy of Sciences, could initiate the creation of a coalition of states interested in ending the MGV and moving to a new architecture of international monetary and financial relations.
DOCTRINAL DOCUMENTSThe systematic preparation of the country and the Armed Forces for confrontation in military conflicts of our time requires taking into account the factors of civil defense in the doctrinal documents of the Russian Federation (the Law on Defense, National Security Strategy, Military Doctrine, Foreign Policy Concept and some others).
It seems logical to include in section I "General Provisions" of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation the definition of the GW and its tools – proxy war, information and psychological warfare and color revolution - in the following wording:
1. GW is a type of interstate confrontation involving the coordinated use by the aggressor country of numerous types (tools) of violence aimed at the vulnerable places of the target country, covering the entire spectrum of social functions in order to achieve a synergistic effect and subjugate the enemy to his will.
2. Proxy war is a form of interstate confrontation between two countries (coalitions of countries) that are trying to achieve their goals through military actions taking place on the territory and using the resources of a third country under the guise of resolving an internal conflict in this third country.
3. Information and psychological warfare is a set of operations involving a complex impact on the consciousness of the country's population, political and military leadership in order to manipulate behavior, which would lead to the adoption of favorable decisions and actions of large masses of people for the initiator of information and psychological warfare.
4. The Color Revolution is an instrument of civil defense based on non–violent technologies of organizing coups d'etat by provoking mass civil disobedience actions in order to overthrow the government and transfer the country under external control.
Section II of the doctrine "Military dangers and military threats of the Russian Federation" should be supplemented with the definition of hybrid threats in the following wording:
Hybrid threats are a combination of diplomatic, military, economic and information and communication methods of influence that can be used in an armed conflict by State or non–State actors to achieve special goals, without reaching a formal declaration of war.
The process of implementing hybrid threats is a purposeful and accelerated transformation by the aggressor of potential destructive GW factors into real ones.
The complex of hybrid threats is formed according to a predetermined plan and provides a flexible adaptive impact on a wide range of military and civilian targets of the enemy, including the population of the target country.
The reality of new types of threats requires improving Russia's ability to withstand and win in hybrid conflicts. The successful solution of this task depends on the unity of the Russian people, the power of the Armed Forces, border protection and territorial defense, the new quality of public administration, the availability of reliable allies and partners.
Alexander BartoshAlexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences.
