Russia

After WWII, Soviet Communists played an outsized role in American Intelligence operations, threat analysis, and defense budgets. If America didn’t have the Soviets or Russians as straw men, we probably wouldn’t have much of an “existential” threat to talk about at all. Throughout, we never seem to do any honest comparative analysis of American and Russian relative effectiveness in the worlds of intelligence threat analysis, operations, or policy.

To date, there are dozens of scholarly articles speculating on the nature of Russian unconventional actions. This debate has only led to further inaction. Rather than debate over the appropriate response to a new generation of warfare, policymakers should recognize that the Russian government is conducting a form of warfare that has been firmly rooted in U.S. military doctrine for over 50 years.

The U.S. military has re-orientated its efforts to countering and deterring Russia abroad. While American counterintelligence and law enforcement has focused on information warfare from Russian assets both abroad and in country, the military has re-shaped its training and deployment to reflect near-peer armed conflict in Europe. Commanders have lost sight of counterinsurgency theory and counterterrorism, replacing it with understanding the Russian way of war.

Citing a litany of abuses ranging from election meddling to targeted assassinations, Russia’s conduct over the last several years has clearly not been up to par with Western standards of democracy, human rights, and open markets. Diplomats, intelligence agencies, and pundits provide varying degrees of explanations for Russia’s conduct, some simple, some complex. But one dimension of causation is left almost entirely unexplored: national character.

America lacks both serious consideration about the ends America seeks in deploying its sons and daughters across the globe and the way it is achieving our stated ends.

The evolving power of cryptocurrency, the threat behaviors enabled by the technology, and some ways to counter threat activity while preserving the possibilities for healthy innovation.

Given a Russian invasion scenario, the Baltic States would have no choice to preserve their independence but to fight a guerrilla war against occupying forces.

“Political warfare” is a form of strategy that leverages diplomatic, informational, military, and economic capabilities to achieve strategic objectives.

The success of Russian hybrid war is predicated on its espionage, technical intelligence collection, influence operations, and intelligence activities.