The Chinese threat may be at the forefront of Western leaders’ minds this fall, but Putin’s Russia cannot be pushed safely to the far side and forgotten. Western political and military leaders need to assess Moscow’s ideas on contactless warfare and the use of high-precision weapons. Russia may have moved the country out of communism, but communist thinking has not moved out of the country. Roger McDermott, in a Jamestown Foundation report published this week, suggests that Moscow’s thinking about credible conventional hard-power capabilities remains preeminent among its military planners. “Unlike Western militaries, Russian military thought never abandoned its interest in large-scale inter-state warfare, which also features as part of the war types rehearsed and trained for in Russia’s annual strategic military exercises. This focus on the potential for large-scale inter-state conventional military conflict equally translates into Russian military thinking about the wars of the future,” he says. McDermott also points out that Putin is moving warfare to the next stage by adding capabilities beyond those needed for kinetic conflict.
Soviet military theorists typically planned for future wars. They are very good at it and this has not changed under Putin. Starting almost 13 years ago, Russia began a broad, conventional military modernization and reform program. Themes since that time, notes McDermott, have focused on how the character of war is evolving and, in particular, the roles played by high technology in the information age. Understanding Russian military policy and planning is taking on new significance in the US post-Afghanistan period. Moscow’s perception of the strategic threat it faces today is governed by two main concerns: information warfare (informatsionnoe protivoborstvo) and the application of advanced information technology in support of conventional war-fighting. This is the keystone for its network-centric warfare going into 2022.
The late Russian Major General Slipchenko developed a 6th generation of warfare concept for fighting future wars. He argued for using precision weapons and information and electronic warfare to undermine or destroy the enemy’s economy with distance no-contact warfare. In proposing the idea, he moved Russian thinking from the concept of information warfare to information confrontation. Understanding the distinction is important as the United States faces increasing challenges from a belligerent China and other potential adversaries. Russia is raising information confrontation to a “category” of warfare and making it part of a constant and ongoing process. While it does not take away from Russia’s historic fear of invasion and the potential of facing a two-front war on its own territory or that of a nearby state. It alters the nature of conflict to a global scale. That should give democratic nations pause for concern.
“Using information networks and assets, a planetary aggressor can provoke technogenic catastrophes in large economic regions and sections of the world. It is possible that after 2050, ecological weapons may also be developed for directed effects against countries’ mineral and biological resources, local areas of a biosphere (atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere), and climate resources in local areas of the Earth. It is important to mention that in next-generation warfare, starting with the sixth, man will not be the main target of a strike. He will be defeated indirectly, through other structures and systems associated with his life support,” according to Slipchenko. Russia’s highest form of military thinking encompasses the concept of non-contact warfare, McDermott says. Russian military thinking in 2022 will no longer be based on an understanding that war is only when people are fighting, and peace is when they are not. Russian military planners are preparing for future wars where there is no kinetic fighting. Forecasting war is seen by Russia as an increasingly complex process of gaining superiority over an adversary through modern advances in technology. Putin will continue to build his conventional and nuclear forces, but they are only part of the equation. Democratic nations must prepare for an ongoing threat from the former communist state.
In a Russian article on the evolution of the country’s military art in the 21st century, entitled “The Development of Modern Military Art in Terms of Military Systemology” its military authors say that “In future wars, their nature and substance will be impacted by weapons designed on new physical principles. The nature and substance of future wars will be changed radically by space-based attack weapons, orbiting battle space stations (platforms), new weapons of improved destructive power, range, accuracy, and rate of fire, greater capabilities of reconnaissance and robot-controlled assets, automated weapons control, communication, and information warfare systems…
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The West can no longer be concerned solely about a nuclear attack from Russia. The probability of information confrontation is a real and present danger and here to stay for the foreseeable future.
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Thursday, she presents key updates on Russia.
Photo: Submarines of the Northern Fleet practice torpedo firing at underwater targets in Barents Sea. (Russian Defence Ministry photo)