New generation warfare
[1] Numerous analysts cite the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas as specific examples that followed the guidelines of new generation warfare.
He defined hybrid threat as an adversary that "simultaneously and adaptively employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism and criminal behavior in the battle space to obtain their political objectives".
At first, the term was not used in Russia, but has recently been adopted and undergone its own shifting usage: before the Russo-Ukrainian war it tended to refer to trends in American military thinking, but after 2014 Russia views hybrid warfare as entirely emanating from the West, in that every conflict anywhere in the world, from hot wars to sports to vaccination to the Eurovision song contest are all aspects of "hybrid warfare" waged against them by the West.
The Soviet Union was one of the Allied powers of World War II fighting on the same side as the United States to defeat the Nazis.
[15] Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized the opposition, which was met by a harsh crackdown in 1981.
[22] Tensions subsided; the START I arms control treaty was signed,[23] Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
[27] The 1989 revolutionary wave swept across Central and Eastern Europe and peacefully overthrew all of the Soviet-style east-European states;[citation needed] Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently.
The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin seized power in the aftermath of a failed coup that had attempted to topple reform-minded Gorbachev.
Phillip Karber at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency identified 1999 when former KGB agent Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia as a "pivotal turning point in European security".
"[30] Ever since, Putin has labored to reestablish Russia as a world power and dominance in Eastern Europe, and pushed to restructure the armed forces, and introduced new tactics in the 2000 Second Chechen War.
"[30] Many analysts consider the Gerasimov doctrine the best description of Russia's modern strategy of total warfare, which uses politics as well as war, and attacks on multiple fronts at once including hackers, business, media, disinformation, as well as military means.
The internet has made available the possibility of new tools and approaches to destabilize or influence foreign actors, and the Gerasimov doctrine describes a framework for using them, and says that they are not just adjuncts of military force, but are in fact, the primary or preferred means to victory.
Chambers views the Gerasimov/new generation warfare doctrine as having been formulated specifically to exploit the weaknesses of large enemy bureaucracies such as the United States.
The Gerasimov doctrine is a foreign policy doctrine named after a February 2013 publication of an article by Valery Gerasimov, Russian chief of the General Staff, which laid out a new theory of modern warfare combining old Soviet tactics and strategic military thinking about total war which was based more on societal aspects than traditional military ones.
The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.
One analyst wrote:[34] Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population.
These tactics and techniques are particularly effective against the United States in the gray zone due to laws and regulations affecting our ability to act in Phase 0.
"[36] In New generation warfare, communications and the media are used to uphold a narrative aimed both at the international community as well as at a domestic audience, using the language of law to evade the usual deterrence and whip up support at home for operations they characterize as legal uses of force to support "protection and self-defense of Russian nationals" living in Donbas and Crimea, and an invitation for intervention by local leaders there who have been the object of years of softening up by the Russians in the preparatory phases.
[30] Karber stated that "As practiced in Ukraine, Russia's new generation warfare is manifested in five component elements: political subversion, proxy sanctuary, intervention, coercive deterrence, and negotiated manipulation.
In just three weeks and with less than 10,000 troops, Russia managed to dislodge Crimea from Ukraine and annex it, without a shot being fired, and the surrender of 190 Ukrainian bases to the Russians.
[34] It does the same thing domestically, with its vast control of local print media, but especially via television reporting, which is very dominant news source for most of the population of the country.
