Tag Archive for: Russia

Life less joyous

In a recent article in The Australian, Peter Jennings characterised the Putin regime, along with those of several other authoritarian leaders, as ‘Leninist’. This seems to me both historically inaccurate and unhelpful in understanding the nature of the regimes at issue.

The term ‘Leninism’ is no doubt capable of several interpretations. Nonetheless, if there’s an element that was repeatedly stressed by Vladimir Lenin himself, it was the central role of the revolutionary party, both as the vanguard of the working class and as the prime agent in the construction of a new social order.

Virtually every aspect of Lenin’s mature thought followed from that emphasis, including the key concepts of democratic centralism, the ‘correct line’ and the nature of the class struggle under socialism. It was, moreover, the defining element of Leninism as it was perceived by his closest comrades. The Belgian Trotskyite Marcel Liebman, in his fine intellectual biography of Lenin, wrote:

it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Lenin’s chief contribution to the political reality of our time was his creation of the Bolshevik Party [as] the tool for making revolutions.

Reflecting that emphasis on the centrality of the party, a Leninist regime is first and foremost a form of one-party state. That state is inevitably beset by constant tensions between the inconsistent elements of its ideology, notably the contrast between the bureaucratic, inefficient and corruption-prone nature of the party and its revolutionary pretensions. Despite those contradictions, the party itself provides for political continuity and defines a ‘selectorate’ that can manage leadership succession.

None of those features is present in the Putin regime, which is characterised by its high level of political informality. It’s clear that Putin himself has little interest in building a stable political party, which—among other threats—could provide a foundation for eventually replacing him.

Nor is Putin alone in that respect: it’s difficult to find anything that approximates conventional political parties in any of the other authoritarian successor states to the former USSR, much less a vanguard or cadre party of the Leninist kind. Even in successor states such as Azerbaijan and ‘the Stans’, where there was a very high degree of elite continuity from the USSR to independence, there’s no trace of a modern party structure, with power being shared—in a more or less unstable arrangement—between rival clans.

Rather, regimes such as Putin’s or those in most of the successor states are ‘personalist’ forms of authoritarianism (albeit of varying degree of repressiveness), much like the so-called small dictators who flourished in Central and Eastern Europe in the inter-war years. Indeed, that personalist character shapes both the nature of their on-going governance and the types of political crises to which they are subject.

In particular, the absence of any effective party structure that could buttress power in these regimes makes them heavily dependent on the charisma of the leader and increases their instability whenever the leader’s popularity declines.

It also makes it difficult for them to manage intra-elite conflicts and assure orderly leadership succession. When those difficulties become acute, ‘colour revolutions’ become likely, giving rise to short-lived bursts of liberalisation before the personalist style of rule re-establishes itself.

A more challenging question is whether China remains, in any meaningful sense, a Leninist state—as is arguably true of Cuba and Vietnam. The emphasis now being placed by Xi Jinping on strengthening the primacy of the party certainly suggests it is; but it’s Leninism entirely shorn of its revolutionary aspirations.

One indicator that suggests the persistence of that Leninist quality is the recurrence of cycles of reform and recentralisation, with the reform stage being denounced in the recentralisation stage as having weakened the role of the party and compromised the quality of its cadres. That cycle was evident in (what became) the CPSU as early as 1921, when the first ‘purge’ was launched (at a time when the term ‘purge’ hadn’t yet developed negative connotations).

It was at the heart of Lenin’s famous “Better fewer, but better” anti-corruption drive. And it became even more pronounced in the virulent reaction that followed the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, when the party—faced with the emergence of private wealth—moved to seize back control.

Equally, in China, that cycle began almost immediately on the CCP’s conquest of power, reaching a first peak in the Three-anti and Five-anti campaigns of the early 1950s. It has since recurred regularly, with particular ferocity in the immediate aftermath of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

What nonetheless makes China intriguing is that stripping away the revolutionary aspirations deprives the party of any clear basis for legitimacy. This is, in other words, Leninism without Marxism. Shorn of the eschatology of a glorious future that justifies the suppression of freedom, it can only legitimate itself by delivering ever-higher living standards. But rampant corruption, growing income inequality and rising economic insecurity all undermine the Chinese leadership’s claim that—as Stalin notoriously said in 1935, just as another set of purges loomed—‘life has become more joyous’.

In short, Leninism isn’t a synonym for authoritarianism. It’s a particular type of party-centred authoritarianism in which its combination of messianic pretensions and bureaucratic realities makes it subject to stresses and crises that differ from those of other authoritarian regimes.

Understanding those peculiarities, and contrasting them to the stresses and crises characteristic of other authoritarian regimes, is important if one is to analyse the future of regimes such as Vladimir Putin’s.

A rare insight into cyber espionage: Dutch intelligence and two Russian bears

In the European summer of 2014, cyber operators from the Dutch Joint Cyber SIGINT Unit—operated by Dutch intelligence and security services—gained access to APT29, better known as Cozy Bear. This well-known Russian hacker group targets Western governments and industry.

With front row access, the Dutch watched the Russians trying to gain access to the US State Department. Dutch authorities warned the Americans and helped the State Department defend its IT infrastructure. Later, the Russians gained access to the White House’s network and confidential information about President Barack Obama’s travels.

In April 2016, Fancy Bear—another Russian hacker group—gained access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) computer servers. The Dutch again warned the Americans.

A year later, the Fancy Bear hack became one justification for the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the US elections. US internet security company Crowdstrike, which had been contracted by the DNC, eventually attributed responsibility for the interference to the two Russian bears.

The Dutch digital spies not only watched the online activities of Cozy Bear, they also hacked a CCTV camera that let them watch everyone going into and out of its office. They were able to identify many as employees of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

But Dutch access to Cozy Bear’s activities dried up sometime between 2016 and 2017.

The Dutch daily newspaper Volkskrant and news show Nieuwsuur broke the story in January this year, interviewing Dutch and American officials.

That’s not the end of the story.

Without being explicit, the journalists suggested that indiscrete remarks by senior US government officials cost Dutch intelligence its coveted access to Cozy Bear. At a 2017 Aspen Institute event, NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett had said ‘there is no question that Russian were behind the hacks … the proof is irrefutable’.

He also referred to the attack on the State Department, claiming that the NSA was ‘able to see [the hackers] teeing up new things to do’. He considered that ‘a useful capability to have’. The Washington Post later reported that the US could see the hackers thanks to ‘a Western ally’.

It’s possible this tipped off the Russians. But experts also note that such digital access comes and goes. Signals intelligence uses an unattended open door to gain access; it doesn’t break a window. So, when someone locks the door again, access is lost. It might not have been the Americans’ fault.

Indiscretion also occurred on the Dutch side. Sometime in 2017, someone tipped off journalists about the cyber coup and then many more officials were prepared to talk about it, albeit anonymously.

This is a rare situation where the attribution of cyber meddling—in this case to the Russian state—is unquestioned. But a situation where the evidence is more ambiguous is easy to imagine. Public disclosures could easily be part of a strategic influence operation.

In this case, there were also domestic reasons that the Dutch government might want to make the information public.

Very soon after taking office, Kajsa Ollongren, the new Dutch Minister for Home Affairs—which oversees the AIVD—warned parliament about Russian operations to influence public opinion in the Netherlands. Because she couldn’t provide many details, MPs and journalists questioned the credibility of her claims. Members of the government  may have wanted to make the evidence public.

Also, legislation giving the intelligence and security services new powers will become law on 1 May. Popularly described as the ‘dragnet law’, it will allow the services to intercept networked/cabled communication from large, imprecisely defined areas such as an entire suburb.

Civil rights watchdogs like Bits of Freedom and Amnesty International argue that the law doesn’t safeguard against invasions of privacy and indiscriminate surveillance. They campaigned for a consultative referendum. Supporters of the new law may have believed that publicising the intelligence coup would boost their case. On 21 March a 49.4% majority voted against the law and 46.5% voted in favour.

And then there’s the Russian–Dutch relationship which was quite cool before 2014, but the downing of MH17 took the temperature to well below freezing. Since then, the Netherlands has been a strong supporter of EU sanctions against Russia. The Netherlands is also one of a handful of NATO members deploying troops in Eastern Europe.

Public disclosures of cyber espionage are rare and unlikely to pass without repercussions. Dutch researcher Sergei Boeke noted a few days after the Nieuwsuur–Volkskrant story that Dutch security services were concerned about ‘how and where retaliation will take place’. Very soon after that, the main Dutch banks, the tax authority and the government’s Digital ID system fell victim to sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The Central Bank issued a warning of a flood of phishing emails, which tend to follow such attacks.

Commentators immediately pointed to Russia as the likely culprit but an 18-year-old Dutch citizen was detained by authorities.

However the information was leaked, the disclosure also caused ructions in US–Dutch relations. The same week as the disclosure, the head of one Dutch intelligence service acknowledged that significantly less information is shared with the current US administration.

Furthermore, Max Smeets wrote in the Washington Post that there may be a backlash in the US. The hack provided critical evidence in the FBI investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 elections—an investigation that President Donald Trump wishes would just go away.

In 2015, a UN group of governmental experts agreed on a set of norms for ‘responsible behavior of States’. One of these says that ICT incidents should be considered with all relevant information. That includes the larger context of breaches and the challenges of identifying and declaring who’s responsible. That’s good advice when considering leaks as well.

European security in the Trump era

At last year’s Munich Security Conference, the mood of fear and apprehension among European security officials was palpable. Three years earlier, Russia had annexed Crimea and launched incursions into Eastern Ukraine. And in the previous year, a narrow majority of British voters had decided to take their country out of the European Union, and Americans had elected a president who was critical of NATO and openly admired Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Still, the West has so far survived the age of Donald Trump. And, despite the ongoing confusion over Brexit and German leaders’ difficulty in forming a new government, the EU seems to have bounced back. Most member states’ economies are doing well, and French President Emmanuel Macron’s administration is breathing new life into the European idea.

Although the Trump administration has continued to send mixed signals about its willingness to uphold American commitments, the US has nonetheless delivered on former President Barack Obama’s pledge to strengthen NATO’s military posture in the Baltics and Poland. And in the run-up to a NATO summit later this year, the US has indicated that it will do even more to ensure the territorial integrity of Baltic and Scandinavian member states.

Moreover, fears that Trump might try to forge a new Yalta-style agreement with the Kremlin—in which Eastern European countries would be abandoned to their fate—have all but disappeared. If anything, the greater concern now is that US–Russian relations are becoming increasingly acrimonious, even irrationally so.

Russia, meanwhile, seems eager to disengage its military from an intractable situation in Syria, where it has so far played its cards right. The same cannot be said for Ukraine, where the Kremlin has learned that invasions are not a good way to make friends. By alienating that country for generations to come, Russia has suffered a geopolitical setback of historic proportions.

Sooner or later, Russia will want to cut its losses and disengage from Eastern Ukraine, too. It has already floated the idea of a limited United Nations peacekeeping operation there. And while Russia has not yet expressed a willingness to cede control of the Ukraine–Russia border, nor made progress in talks with the US, Putin surely knows that the status quo is unsustainable.

Does all of this mean that the fears of a year ago have dissipated? Far from it. The strategic shocks of recent years have left deep and lasting wounds, and pushed Europe into new and uncharted waters. A decade ago, EU leaders talked confidently about projecting stability abroad. Today, their priority is to prevent instability from spilling over into Europe.

At the same time, there is a growing awareness that while the US is still the main guarantor of European security, it might not be forever. Even if some of the rhetoric accompanying proposals for an EU defence union has been vastly overblown, the bloc’s leaders are right to focus more on defence and security issues than they have in the past. Whether it is through ‘defence industrial policies’ or something else, the EU needs to develop its capacity to marshal joint responses to future hard-power threats.

This is true even if the Kremlin has come to regret its actions in 2014, which led to Western military forces being deployed on its borders. After all, Russia is still holding on to Crimea, where it has long maintained key military bases. And, apart from Russia, Europe is surrounded by ongoing conflicts. Tensions are increasing from the Indus to the Nile and across North Africa, where any turmoil will have an immediate impact on European security. As Europeans well know, there is no way to build a wall in the Mediterranean.

Moreover, it is worrying that the Trump administration hardly ever talks about upholding the post-war liberal international order. Instead, it views the world as a zero-sum strategic competition in which the US should look out only for itself. Unfortunately, in a world without common institutions to restrain sovereign states from escalating conflicts with one another, the risks of all-out war will increase substantially.

To be sure, the US says that it is stepping up its commitment to European security. But, given China’s growing military might and the strategic importance of the Asia–Pacific region, the US will have no choice but to pivot to the East. In fact, despite all of Trump’s complaints about America’s oversized contribution to NATO, the US already directs the bulk of its military spending to the Asia–Pacific region.

So, while the immediate fears of 2017 have subsided, and some sense of normality has returned, Europeans can no longer avoid taking responsibility for their own defence. Even after Trump is long gone, soft power will not suffice in a world of hard-power conflicts.

The Strategist Six: Thomas Mahnken

Welcome to The Strategist Six, a feature that provides a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, government officials, military officers, reporters and interesting individuals from around the world.

1. As both an international affairs specialist and a historian with a strong interest in the world’s navies, how do you view this time of rapid change and strategic tension?

The historian in me says that from the not too distant future we’ll look back and see 2017 and the time around it as a turning point in the way we think about navies and warfare. The world is increasingly characterised by peacetime great-power competition. China is aggressively pursuing its interests on its periphery and beyond, Russia is active on its periphery and beyond. They are investing in new capabilities and working in many ways to challenge the world order that’s prevailed for decades. Such changes are already driving the size and composition of the US Navy and other fleets.

2. How serious is the threat of great-power war?

While this world is characterised by peacetime competition between the US, China and Russia, competition isn’t the same thing as conflict. Nor does competition necessarily lead to conflict. But while the possibility of great-power war is remote, it’s not inconceivable, and the possibility is growing. The consequences could be enormous, with implications for world order. This situation is largely outside the professional experience of senior civilian policymakers and military leaders. Few of those now in uniform were serving in 1989.

As a historian, I am perfectly comfortable thinking in terms of large numbers of years or small numbers of decades. But for a military, a quarter of a century is a professional lifetime. Expertise works its way out of the system fairly rapidly. The lessons of the past can both inform and mislead. We can’t ignore the past, but neither should we be captured by it. And the fleets that the United States and its allies possess today were developed for very different circumstances than we face today and will face in the future. The need for presence, deterrence, reassurance and warfighting will endure, but they may look much different than they do now.

3. How did we get to this?

The current situation can only be fully appreciated if we look back over the past quarter century. The US experienced a period of geopolitical dominance after the end of the Cold War that’s rare in world history. It possessed unilateral military advantages, particularly in precision-strike and information capabilities. In the 1991 Gulf War, the US was able to assemble a large and capable multinational coalition and use its military advantages to great effect to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. The quarter century that followed can be divided into two parts—the 1990s, a period of ‘hyperpower’; and from 9/11 on, a period with a focus on irregular warfare. US advantages have eroded at the strategic, operational and tactical levels as economic and military power has diffused. We now face a more level playing field, at the strategic, operational and tactical levels.

4. Where are we going, and what does that mean for navies?

For the first time in decades, a strong argument can be made that the requirements of great-power war should be the most important test of the adequacy of our force structure and posture. It would feature adversaries armed with nuclear weapons, precision-strike systems, and cyber and space capabilities.

5. How would that war be fought and what would its consequences be?

Such a war would likely look much different from recent wars. Among its likely features would be high attrition, and consequently the need for social and industrial mobilisation to support the war; non-kinetic and potentially kinetic attacks on homelands; and disruption of the global economic system. It would require forces with depth and resilience to fight, accept damage and recover; an industrial base capable of supporting protracted operations, including producing munitions; and a logistical system able to operate in contested environments and defence of the homeland, including networks and military bases. Great-power war is just a possibility, albeit one that is marginally more likely today than in the past. I would argue that we are not well prepared for the situation of sustained great-power competition that we find ourselves in.

6. How do we prepare to deter, or to fight, such a conflict and would it be survivable?

First, there’s a need to become reacquainted with old concepts: deterrence, risk and political warfare waged by others who attempt to influence our populations directly and covertly. Second, there’s a need to adapt traditional concepts to 21st-century conditions, to include interdependence, globalisation, media, unmanned platforms and artificial intelligence among them. It will require that we think more consciously about the time dimension of strategy—what we show to the outside world and when, and conversely what we choose to conceal and when; that we think strategically about maritime geography and how we can use it to our advantage; that we deepen allied interoperability to deter and reassure, as well as to make us more effective if we have to fight side by side; and that we think anew about how navies can effectively deter great-power aggression by denying a competitor the prospective fruits of aggression.

We need to explore ways to create uncertainty and impose costs on our competitors in peacetime and to develop new ways of war to regain a competitive advantage. We need to seek ways to remove the level playing field to our benefit. We have to be very serious about it—even if all we seek to do is deter. If you want peace, prepare for war. I do think forces will be able to survive if they adapt the right way. Part of that is striking the right balance between a platform’s lethality and its size and visibility. A lot of navies are underinvested in lethality or overinvested in size, so you’ve got big, lucrative targets. I think the US Navy, with its distributed lethality, is trying to right that balance. We’re purchasing more small surface combatants, more frigates, but we want them to be more lethal than the littoral combat ship currently is. You want to force an adversary to expend lots of ordnance to destroy a relatively unlucrative target.

We need to study the history of great-power competition and conflict and assess thoughtfully the similarities to and differences from the past. We need to rebuild (and, in some cases, just build) intellectual capital and capabilities to deal with the era that we are in, and are likely to be in for the foreseeable future.

Tanks: out with the old, in with the new

Tanks are back in vogue. Russia unveiled its new T-14 Armata tank in 2014, the first new tank-type produced since the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s set to enter service in 2020, but production issues mean that Russia will still rely on its olderT-90 tanks for now. Meanwhile, China continues to modernise its huge 7,000-tank fleet (of which only around 2,000 are modern) with the introduction of the latest version of its ZTZ-96 main battle tank (MBT), the ZTZ-96B, last year. Those modernisation efforts now render the US Army’s M1 Abrams MBT, introduced in 1980, the oldest modern MBT in service in a major power. With other militaries’ tanks reaching ‘parity’ with the Abrams, the US has now begun the process of designing its replacement.

Having suffered more than a decade of financial and political turbulence, Russia is now embarking on a major revitalisation of its land forces. The T-14 is just one of the projects it’s developing as it aims to replace all of its armoured fighting vehicle types with completely new, modern forms. The T-14 continues to use Russia’s standard 125 mm gun but the turret design seems capable of accommodating a gun of up to 152 mm. Notably, its main weapon is fed by an auto-loader in the turret, which is uniquely completely crewless. Protecting the tank is the new ‘Afghanit’ active protection system, which, aside from defending against missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, is allegedly able to protect against modern kinetic rounds such as the latest M829A4 depleted uranium sabots used by the US Army.

The ZTZ-96 MBTs are slated to make up the bulk of China’s tank modernisation program. They’re equipped with a 125 mm main gun and are protected by a combination of composite and explosive reactive armour (ERA) similar to the ‘Kontakt-5’ system used on Russian T-90s. China’s current strategy seems to be to continue to replace older tanks with the T-96, particularly its latest 96B variant, rather than increase production of the more expensive but more advanced T-99s. While less radical than Russia’s design overhaul, it represents a serious modernisation effort, especially given the size of China’s tank army.

The venerable M1 Abrams tank probably remains the most dominant MBT, although it’s now showing its age. The Abrams wields a highly accurate and ammunition-flexible 120 mm gun and is protected by the ‘Chobham’ composite armour, which proved capable of withstanding multiple rocket-propelled grenades and older Russian anti-tank missiles during the first Gulf War. The urban terrain of the Iraq War led to the ‘TUSK’ upgrades to the Abrams, giving it remote weapons systems, better belly armour, and ERA on the sides. The most recent round of upgrades has replaced the wiring and added new networks to the tanks, but the US military is now pushing the limits of what can be done with the Abrams. The tank’s main problem is its weight; at more than 70 tonnes, it’s one of the heaviest MBTs in service. Australia recently found that to be an issue when it discovered that the tanks were too heavy for the landing craft assigned to the new Canberra-class helicopter landing docks.

Repeated US Army attempts to replace the Abrams were cut due to cost blowouts, and the latest major update for the M1, the M1A3, failed to materialise. The most recent attempt, the next-generation combat vehicle, remains in the conceptual stage, and is primarily aimed at replacing the Bradley fighting vehicle, not the Abrams. The Abrams is currently slated for upgrades in around 2022, which have been deemed more cost-effective than trying to develop a full replacement.

Australia’s fleet of M1A1 Abrams has kept pace with the American upgrades, most recently with a series of upgrades meant to extend the platform’s life to 2035. The Plan Beersheba reforms divided the Abrams fleet between the three combat brigades as part of an ‘armoured cavalry regiment’. That has maximised their combined arms potential, as the tanks can better practise and deploy with other army elements. But the small number of tanks in each regiment means that they are too few to carry out effective armoured warfare against enemy tanks or an independent breakthrough role against enemy lines. To remedy that, the goal is to increase the fleet from 59 tanks to 90, as well as provide a number of support vehicles based on the Abrams chassis.

In recent years, US Army Abrams have seen more action in infantry support against insurgents, menaced by infantry anti-tank missiles and IEDs rather than enemy tanks. From Australia’s perspective, it’s not clear whether or where we’d deploy our Abrams in a traditional armoured warfare role, especially considering that we’ve never deployed the current fleet at all. A more likely role is support for Australian infantry against unconventional enemies, rather than slugging it out on the Eurasian steppe. If that’s the case, does Australia need another Abrams-style tank, or should we be looking at other armoured vehicles that are better suited for infantry support? The advance of Russian and Chinese armoured initiatives notwithstanding, Australia needs to begin looking at the future of the Abrams, and probing America’s plans for it, with an eye for a lighter and more flexible armoured platform.

A ‘common European home’

For Russia, the great prize is a Europe where it’s accepted on equal terms with other European nations and can share in Europe’s economic and technological progress. A ‘common European home’ was a core element of the Gorbachev revolution and remains an objective today.

Russia west of the Urals accounts for 38% of Europe. Nearly 80% of Russia’s population (roughly 112 million people) lives on the Great European Plain that extends from the Pyrenees to the Urals and from the Arctic Basin to the Black Sea. It was a key concern of Cold War strategists when it was dominated by the Warsaw Pact, and it remains of great strategic importance to both NATO and Russia.

The Cold War was over when Gorbachev spoke to the Council of Europe in July 1989. He envisioned Soviet states with genuine democratic socialism—characterised by greater freedom and openness and with modern economies—competing peacefully with their neighbours in a ‘common European home’. Gorbachev spoke of ‘the emergence of a vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals where Eastern and Western parts would be strongly interlocked’. He said, ‘It is in such a Europe that we visualise our own future.’

Gorbachev then lost control of the forces he had unleashed. His new synthesis of socialism and democracy in Eastern Europe based on ‘universal values’ evaporated as communist regimes were overthrown, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in July 1991 and the Baltic states were granted independence in September. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was gone. The former Warsaw Pact nations began joining NATO in 1997, and 10 Central and Eastern European nations joined the EU in 2004. These weren’t Gorbachev’s new updated socialist states but democratic nations with market-oriented economies.

The period from 1989 into the 1990s is crucial to understanding Russia’s policies and actions towards the EU today. The Russians see it as a time of betrayal, when solid assurances fundamental to the security of Russia—given in the context of German reunification—were abandoned by the US and its European NATO allies. The Russians firmly believe that in 1990, at the ‘highest levels’, a pledge was given not to enlarge NATO to Central and Eastern Europe. There was scope for misunderstanding, but there’s evidence to support Russia’s grievances.

In Understanding conflict between Russia and the EU (2006), Sergei Prozorov points out that, until the late 1990s, EU expansion (in contrast to NATO expansion) into the former Soviet satellites was seen in Russia as beneficial. But with the intervention in Kosovo and EU criticism of Moscow’s policies in Chechnya, some Russian doubts about the EU emerged before 2000. Then the Schengen area was expanded in 2003 to include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. That greatly complicated Russia’s dealings with its former allies and drew a clear line excluding Russia from Europe.

However, in 2005, Vladimir Putin still declared ‘above all else’ that Russia was ‘a major European power’. He also observed that ‘The Russian nation has always felt part of the large European family’ and supported ‘a single Greater Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals’. He emphasised ‘Russia’s efforts to develop integrationist ties with both EU countries and CIS states’ in pursuit of ‘a significant expansion of common, harmonious spaces of security, democracy, and business cooperation’.

But the EU is ‘an inherently normative project’ that ‘rejects the delinking of its technical and socio-political norms’. It has made clear that ‘Russia cannot modernise its economy and become part of a wider shared economic and human space with the EU without also conducting political reforms’.

The increasingly nationalistic turn in Russia’s foreign policy, and illiberal domestic developments, have made closer EU relations less likely in the short term. A marked turning point in Russian attitudes to the EU followed the imposition of sanctions over Ukraine. For Russia, EU demands and actions infringe its sovereignty and threaten its culture and autonomy. Putin made that clear at Munich in 2007.

Russia came to see the EU as the threat and a barrier to closer relations with the individual European nations. The Russians have found allies among many ‘insurgent’ parties in Europe, and many of Europe’s right-wing or Eurosceptic parties are pro-Russian. So-called European populism is a complex political, social, ethnic and cultural phenomenon that presents the Russians with opportunities to undermine the EU. Europe’s populists routinely ‘channel subversive Russian propaganda and help erode Europeans’ trust in the EU, NATO, and liberal democratic politics at large’.

The EU project requires consensus among the member states on economic, security and social policy. Russia understands that to destabilise the EU it doesn’t have to alienate all of the member states from the EU—which explains Russian encouragement of and moral and financial support for Eurosceptic parties.

This makes the success of the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, and the looming success of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, a significant strategic development for Russia. In addition to the pro-Russian regime in Hungary, their very presence in national assemblies and the European Parliament shifts the debate to areas favourable to Russia and makes Europe-wide consensus more difficult to achieve on many issues. They provide Russia with a very low-cost tool for pursuing a long-range strategic objective in Europe to the detriment of the EU as an institution.

In ‘Europe as seen from Russia’, Vladimir Baranovsky and Sergey Utkin argue that Russia still sees great advantages in being accepted as a normal European country, but in a common European home where the EU is seriously weakened or, preferably, gone.

Trump is making it too easy for Putin

Geopolitics must look easy to Putin. Undermining US global leadership is an important Russian strategic objective. The new US president has already eroded US global leadership through his own efforts. The prospect of a Trump presidency in 2016 probably presented the Russians with a previously unimagined opportunity to progress their core policy objectives. Trump’s victory has been delivering for the Russians in ways that they could’ve hardly dared hope for.

Russian intervention and possible collusion during the US presidential election are potentially enormous issues, especially if impeachment is the outcome. But internationally two things will be important—the extent to which having his domestic agenda confounded will intensify Trump’s focus on foreign affairs, and his ability to prevail over Congress on foreign policy.

Under the US Constitution, foreign policymaking power is shared between the executive and the legislature. Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and declare war, and the president has the power to make treaties (with the Senate’s approval) and is commander-in-chief. In practice, those roles and responsibilities are not neatly and separately exercised.

Edwin Corwin famously observed that the US Constitution is ‘an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy’. Since 9/11 in particular, the advantage has been with the executive branch. A combative, frustrated and defensive Trump administration—especially if facing little prospect of re-election—might embark on an ambitious and aggressive foreign policy in its last years even against the views of a Republican-controlled Congress.

Moreover, in November 2018, all 435 congressional districts across the US will go to the polls. There’s only a loose correlation between presidential popularity and the performance of the president’s party in congressional elections, and the Democrats will need double-digit swings to secure the House. Still, the prospects for the Republicans are worsening. The accompanying Senate election is even more problematic for the Democrats, but they are not without a chance. If the Democrats gain the House, the Senate or both, domestically Trump is likely to be a lame-duck president before the end of his first term.

As Thomas Wright observed, even before the election it was well known that Trump’s ‘core beliefs are opposition to America’s alliance arrangements, opposition to free trade, and support for authoritarianism, particularly in Russia’. In the absence of any personal animosity towards Hilary Clinton for real or imagined slights or any residual resentment of Obama’s attitudes towards Putin, a Trump presidency would still have been an attractive prospect for the Russian leader.

Schadenfreude aside, there was a clear alignment of Russian strategic objectives with Trump’s ‘core beliefs’. Wright predicted, as Putin would have, that under Trump the US would go ‘from the leader of a liberal international order into a rogue superpower that withdraws from its international commitments, undermines the open global economy, and partners with Putin’s Russia’. On cue, Trump has already unnerved NATO with contradictory and reluctant messages of commitment, killed off the Trans-Pacific Partnership, confounded multinational support for the Paris climate agreement, and withdrawn funding for anti-Assad forces in Syria.

While Russia will have a range of different attitudes to each of these developments, its overarching strategic interest is in the extent to which collectively they represent a US retreat from global leadership. Weakening US dominance is the central step in Russia’s strategic priority to rebalance the international system away from what it perceives to be an abnormal unipolar arrangement into an equilibrium between the great powers and a recognition of spheres of influence.

Under Trump, positive perceptions of America and its leadership role in the Indo-Pacific region have nosedived. Assessments of the influence of the US and the benefits the US brings have diminished dramatically. The United States Study Centre found the 61% of Australians thought the influence of the US in the Indo-Pacific region was negative under Trump. That result is repeated across most of the Indo-Pacific region, except in China.

Putin would have been particularly pleased to see the results of the Pew Research Center’s June 2017 report U.S. image suffers as publics around world question Trump’s leadership. A survey across 37 countries found that nearly three-quarters of respondents expressed ‘no confidence’ in President Trump. (It’s worth noting that the survey was conducted before Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.) In Europe, 52% now view the US unfavourably. There’s been a significant drop in favourable views of the US in almost all surveyed nations since Trump replaced Obama, but in Russia the number of respondents viewing the US favourably has increased by 26%.

It’s likely that foreign policy will become increasingly attractive to the Trump administration if its room to manoeuvre on domestic policy becomes restricted. On the evidence so far, that would play further into Russian desires to see US leadership and influence fall away as Trump increasingly pursues an ‘America First’ foreign policy.

In his wildest dreams, Putin could not have anticipated such stunning strategic success. Building public support for US-led strategic initiatives and for involvement in alliance coalition operations is going to become increasingly difficult. Undoubtedly these new circumstances will embolden a more confident Russia and see aggressive moves—particularly in the Middle East, Balkans and Central Asia—to leverage Russia’s soft and hard power into increased regional and global leadership and influence.

The West needs to talk about Russia

The place Russia occupies in the political maelstrom in Washington, the recent sanctions bills in Congress and Putin’s cuts to the American diplomatic presence in Russia are driving the US’s relationship—and hence the West’s relationship—with Russia from bad to worse.

However, the following thoughts—from a Russia neophyte after a trip to Moscow and road journey to Archangel on the Arctic circle—are thrown into the mix, if only to colour reflections on what might, one day, make sense.

First, for an educated country which is militarily strong, Russia remains poor. Outside central Moscow or St Petersburg, or more modest cities such as Petrozavodsk or Archangel, the urban backstreets of smaller towns are unpaved and the housing ramshackle—akin, say, to small towns in Chile or Argentina.

Russia’s GDP (measured conventionally and not in purchasing power parity) is not much more than Australia’s and a lot less than Spain’s. Russia needs economic change.

Second, the West needs to be cognisant of the sheer strength of Russian nationalism. This is manifest in many forms.

At one end of the spectrum, the Russian Orthodox Church is a force for such nationalism. In the early years of this century, it canonised the last Romanovs (in part as a gesture to Russia’s imperial history) and it continues to accord the family reverence. It’s ironic that in this same country there are also moves to revive Stalin’s legacy. But, seen as reflections of and stimuli to Russian nationalism, these parallel developments are not perhaps so surprising.

Russia also shares America’s fascination with military reenactments. Exhibitions testifying to Russian heroism in war are ubiquitous. Less nobly, the fashion of military camouflage fatigues as leisure wear is more pronounced in Russia than in even the shopping malls of the American South—a curious but telling association with militarism.

A third observation is that, while the cynicism of ordinary Russians towards their politicians and the system as a whole doesn’t spare Putin and his friends from blame for economic failure and corruption, Putin remains admired by most Russians for standing up to the West and for restoring Russian national self-respect. That view is reflected in serious polling, including by the Pew Research Center.

That leads to a fourth point, which was well captured recently by the Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in an interview with the Financial Times.

Alexievich observed that what worried her more than Putin was the ‘collective Putin’ in Russia—a deep sense of wounded national pride and contempt for liberal values. In 2015, she had described Russia as in a state of amnesia about its past. Alexievich now saw things as getting worse: ‘But it’s not Putin … the initiative is coming from the grassroots.”

Travelling on from Russia to the US and Europe in the midst of the northern midsummer’s flurry of international meetings, one could not help but be struck by the fact that in the West we are fascinated by Putin—albeit from a variety of different perspectives.

Putin is rightly criticised by Western foreign policy and security establishments (particularly in the US and the UK) for being behind the involvement of Russian agencies in Western elections, Russian activities in Ukraine and Russian callousness in Syria.

Those on the right like him as a role model, and the old left like to see Western security establishments discomfited by him.

Putin is as tough as they come and unblushingly mendacious, but he is not a James Bond villain and is clever and on top of his brief. On some issues, such as the adverse impact on Russia of Western triumphalism at the demise of the Soviet Union, he is a convincing advocate. And he is a better politician than anyone in the West except Angela Merkel.

But we are focusing so much on Putin that we may be ignoring the deep chasm that is increasingly being opened between Russia—the people, not just the leadership—and the West.

Russia was hopeful that it could make progress with Trump, but was quickly disabused of that aspiration when the Russian issue started dominating Washington politics after the inauguration. Moreover, as one widely respected Russian interlocutor argued in Moscow, the US is seen as suffering from its most serious political divide since the Civil War—a divide that would circumscribe its diplomatic capacity even if there were a serene political climate between Washington and Moscow.

Some argue that Russia is the bigger loser from current tensions. It is suffering from lower energy prices and from sanctions. It may have gained self-respect from its Ukraine and Syrian adventures, but at a cost when it needs the means to emerge from poverty.

But irrespective of Russia’s travails, the West is also losing:

  • NATO may be going through its most serious crisis since its inception. That’s due not just to Trump’s ineptitude and the circus in Washington but to different perceptions in Europe of how to handle Russia.
  • It is of no benefit to either the West or Russia that the impasse on nuclear issues, particularly the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, remains.
  • While Russia suffers from the cost of Ukraine, ongoing political uncertainty also saps confidence in Central and Eastern Europe.
  • Any genuine solution to the Middle East wars will need Russian involvement.
  • And it is not in the Western interest that, notwithstanding their rivalries, China and Russia might make more common cause as both face challenges from the West.

There are some in the US, most of whom belong to a tough-minded but more constructive era in East–West relations, who argue for the return to a realistic and interest-driven approach in dealing with Russia. This is a difficult time to engage on such a course. But a continued impasse will harden attitudes. It is in the West’s interest—as it is in Russia’s—to break the logjam as soon as there is a modicum of political space to allow a serious effort.

Russia, the East and the experts

Professionals and experts are often heard with dissonance today. Two contrasting recent studies concerning European views on Russia shine a partial light on why that’s so. They also may point to future issues of strategic significance.

The RAND Corporation interviewed academics, researchers, and journalists from Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Poland and Sweden, together with EU, NATO and US officials for its 2017 research report European Relations with Russia. The other study by the Pew Research Center, Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe, reported on a 2016 population survey of 18 countries, including Russia.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and interventions in Donbass and Georgia provided the context for the RAND study. RAND’s experts concluded, ‘Most NATO members bordering Russia regard it as potentially posing an existential threat and feel that this threat can best be addressed by the deployment of US and NATO troops on their territory.’ RAND’s conclusion that ‘Russia’s behaviour requires a strong response is widely accepted by most European countries’ seems to capture the position of expert and political elites.

The expert consensus highlighted proximity to Russia as central to threat perception and that Eastern Europeans saw the need for NATO troops on their territory as a priority. While Western Europeans emphasised illegal people movements and extremist violence over a Russian threat, the study also observed that ‘officials interviewed emphasized the critical importance of US leadership in NATO’.

The national security experts’ assessment of the existential nature of the threat was perhaps predictable. Russia was seen as the aggressor and the situation in Eastern Europe was a ‘crisis’. The consensus was that European relations with Russia has changed ‘irremediably’, tensions will continue, and Russia will need to change its behaviour to improve the situation.

By contrast, a majority of respondents to the religiously framed Pew survey agreed with the statement, ‘A strong Russia is necessary to balance the influence of the West.’ In the predominately orthodox countries of Armenia, Serbia, Belarus, Greece, Moldova, Bulgaria, Georgia and Romania agreement was high. Majorities also agreed in Catholic Croatia (50%) and religiously mixed Bosnia (55%). Notably, in Georgia, which has experienced a Russian military intervention, 52% of those surveyed responded positively to the question. Not surprisingly, 85% of Russians also concurred.

Substantial minorities agreed with the statement in Catholic nations Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland as well as in the religiously mixed or predominantly unaffiliated countries Latvia, Estonia and Czech Republic. However, overall there was a closer correlation between those respondents self-nominating as being of orthodox religion and the desire for a strong Russia.

Those results aren’t a simple rejection of the West. Except for Bulgaria, the majority believed working with the US and the West was in their country’s interests. However, the study also revealed that a preference for democracy was weak everywhere apart from Greece and Lithuania. In 11 of the 18 populations surveyed, less than 50% said democracy is always preferable to other forms of government.

A disconnect with other core European Union values emerged. Roughly half of total respondents agreed that there’s a conflict between their country’s ‘traditional values and those of the West’. Secularism, pluralism and multiculturalism have limited appeal in orthodox countries where 42% believe governments should actively support religious values and encourage belief. Pew results on moral issues mirror Russian orthodox positions—opposition to homosexuality and same sex marriage, and conservative views on the family, gender roles and gender equality.

Among the NATO countries surveyed—Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Latvia and Estonia—only in Romania and Estonia a did a majority believe NATO would intervene militarily if they got into a serious conflict with Russia. The survey revealed ‘widespread skepticism’ over the military commitment of the US.

The resurgence of the Orthodox church in post-Soviet Russia and its close association with the Putin government is well documented. While some view the Russian Orthodox church as Putin’s tool, the position is more complex. There is, however, a substantial overlap in their views on Russia’s historical role and exceptionalism. Pew found that, where there’s no national orthodox patriarch, most orthodox believers acknowledged the primacy of the Russian patriarch.

RAND’s experts gave no weight to the salience of the religious, moral and social world shared between Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. To the contrary, they assumed the legacy of Russian occupation and domination—from Czarist to Soviet times—was the primary factor in popular ‘perceptions of current relations with Russia’. The expert consensus was, ‘negative bilateral images persist in many of these countries at the popular level’.

The divergence revealed by these studies doesn’t indicate that governments in Central and Eastern Europe will fall because of differences over Russia. The domestic politics are too complex and particular for that. But Russia is well positioned to take advantage of, or manipulate, any serendipitous situation that arises. Putin’s Russia has the ability to leverage off the affinities with Central and Eastern European populations afforded by shared religious, moral and social values to its advantage and to the detriment of Europe.

The results show not only the cleavages in values in Europe and the lack of confidence in NATO and the US. They also reveal the outlines of a dormant Russian strategic advantage in the blinkered view of the experts. The views of elites and officials are well off the mark about the drivers of attitudes of many Central and Eastern European citizens toward Russia.

Elite misunderstanding could lead to political missteps. Therein lies scope for serious strategic miscalculation.

Cyber wrap

Image courtesy of Flickr user Jay Divinagracia.

Prime Minister Turnbull issued his national security statement in Parliament yesterday, again calling on cooperation on decryption from social media and messaging platforms when countering violent extremists. The topic is set to be the key focus of an upcoming Five Eyes meeting in Canada this month, and Attorney-General George Brandis has announced that the government intends to improve warrant-based powers to compel technology companies to decrypt communications, mirroring steps taken in the UK to introduce formal ‘technical capability notices’. The government has pushed the message that these are reasonable adjustments to the current framework of warranted collection, but the move has re-ignited privacy debates regarding ‘backdoors’ dating back to the infamous Apple vs. the FBI case.

Australia has continued to sign cyber diplomacy agreements in the Asia–Pacific region, with Australia and Thailand’s national-level policing forces agreeing to cooperate in building digital forensics and digital technology capability.

The government’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has seen 35 of its employees quit as a result of changes to the agency late last year. Most of the departing staff are developers, designers and architects. The high-profile departure of Office head Paul Shetler and internal frustrations over stalled government IT integration projects are thought to be contributing factors. For an agency that has just over a hundred workers, of whom 71 are  Public Service members, the loss of in-house technical subject matter expertise could jeopardise ambitious plans unveiled in this year’s Federal Budget to make the DTA an authoritative office for all things digital, including cyber security.

At the Emerging Cyber Threats Summit in Sydney there were renewed calls to expand the remit of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to provide cybersecurity advice from ‘basement to boardroom’. The Victorian audit office has expanded its cyber security back office audit and assurance role, announcing it will undertake an ambitious series of eight audits across central government agencies in Victoria, to improve public confidence in the security and privacy protections of state government IT systems. As well, former Atlassian exec and Australian Cyber Security Growth Network CEO Craig Davies has argued that customers need to demonstrate more confidence in Australian cyber security businesses, lambasting the current market for forcing Australian firms overseas before they’re seen as ‘good enough’ to buy from domestically, thus stunting the growth of Australian cyber security innovation and collaboration.

Two sets of research into the cyber attack-induced blackouts in Ukraine last December have found that, once again, hackers with ties to Russia are to blame. More ominously, the tooling used in that attack, Industroyer by ESET and CrashOverride by Dragos, demonstrates a growing maturity compared to tools used in a 2015 attack on Ukraine’s electricity grid. The new malware is being described as a modular and holistic ‘swiss-army knife’ that has automated the attack process end-to-end, including infection, propagation and clean-up. Moreover, the malware can disable or cause physical damage to any electric grid that uses similar industrial control software, making the threat of a ‘cyber storm’ on critical infrastructure more likely.

On the other side of the offense spectrum, a report has found that decision makers have been largely disappointed by the limited effect of US offensive cyber measures against Islamic State’s online recruitment networks. The terrorist organisation has demonstrated significant resilience and adaptation against cyber weapons, leaving their ‘global reach largely intact’. Similar limitations were found in the use of Stuxnet against Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges, which, despite successive iterations and upgrades to the Stuxnet virus, saw Iran’s nuclear program continue to reach new milestones. North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons program have reportedly demonstrated similar resilience against cyber offensives, suggesting that while cyber weapons can delay weapons development programs and generate opportunities for policy solutions, they only produce temporary setbacks and must be part of a broader set of tools.

The UK’s general election has wrapped up, resulting in a surprise hung parliament and probably a coalition government between the Conservative party and the Democratic Unionist Party. The good news is that, so far, there’s been little to suggest that cyberattacks affected the integrity of the election, despite earlier concerns, offering a welcome respite from the hacks that punctuated the French and US Presidential elections.

For fans of the duct-tape approach to webcam security, which include members as distinguished as Mark Zuckerberg and James Comey, new research suggests that anything with an indicator light on it might need the same treatment. Researchers have developed methods for exfiltrating data using the rapid blinking of indicator LEDs on network routers. Try your binary skills at deciphering the message in this demonstration (video). The technique builds on previous exfiltration methods using drones and disk drive LEDs. Let this serve as a reminder that any device that signals can be co-opted to become a monitoring device!

Researchers have found that Britney Spears’ Instagram profile has been used by Turla, a cyber-espionage group linked to Russian intelligence agencies, to communicate with a backdoor trojan. While early analysis seems to indicate this was only a test run, it highlights a wider concern that almost any communications channel can be used to control and command malware.