A two-day practical seminar “Strategic Communications in the Context of a Hybrid War” for experts took place in Kyiv the other day. The event, which was organized under the aegis of Information and Documentation Center, is very timely for our country, which now suffers from Russia’s aggression in eastern Ukraine. The Day managed to talk to one of the seminar participants Christopher DONELLY, director of the Institute for Statecraft, Great Britain. He is an author of a number of publications dedicated to security and defense issues.
“THIS WAR IS OLD AND NEW AT THE SAME TIME”
There are a lot of opinions in Ukraine and the West that the war, unleashed by Russia against our country, is new, even though some experts state that the “new” is the long forgotten “old,” that a similar war had already been waged by bolsheviks at the beginning of the previous century. What do you think about it?
“It’s old and it’s new. It’s old in principle and it’s new in practice. In one sense, all the features of modern hybrid war or ambiguous war, whatever you call it, have been seen before. But in practice today, they are new tools, and they are coming out in a new form, and in a new combination. The issue is that classic warfare is now seen by many nations as a bit unproductive, is not an effective means of achieving an objective in the face of the technological superiority of the US, for example, or in the face of the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. So, that’s the first point.
“The second point is that the world is no longer divided into blocs of two warring sides, in which the major element of power was very crudely military phenomena. The world is now best described as an ecology, like Darwin’s idea of an ecology, in which all the animals compete against one another and against the environment. So, think of the world as an ecology, in which all the players, the nation states, the networks, the substate actors, like terrorist organizations, huge companies, commercial organizations are all competing with one another, sometimes violently, and themselves competing against the environment. That’s the world as you see it today. So, if you think of it, Ukraine, like Britain, like Russia, like any other country, is striving in this environment. Now, in this new environment, the weapons that the different players are using, the equivalent of the claws, and beaks, and horns of animals in an ecology, are different from those which we had in the classic Cold War or World War II military confrontation. All things can be used as a weapon, so we have economic weapons, finance, money as a weapon, money used as investment is a weapon, money used as bribe is a weapon, corruption is a weapon, energy security, energy supply is a weapon, cybernetics is a weapon, all of these things are used now by states to achieve their objectives aggressively. And Russia, for example, has put the function of coordinating these weapons, these tools of competition coherently in the hands of the General Staff in Moscow, given them the building on Naberezhnaya Street, which used to belong to the army’s main Staff, and told the head of the General Staff to weaponize these tools, give them the capacity to use them more coherently and effectively. That’s a recognition that this is a new kind of war. So, if you think, during the past 20 years, we’ve gone from Cold War to ‘hot peace.’ We have changed the paradigm of conflict.”
In your article “Grand Strategy, or Strategic Thinking,” which was published in 2012, you wrote about the importance of countries’ clear understanding of their own national interests. Do you think Russia understands that aggression against Ukraine is not a part of its long-term interests?
“That’s an interesting question, because firstly, once a paradigm of conflict is changed, you have to engage in this conflict. If someone is using it against you, you have to be aware of it, you have to fight back, you can’t say: ‘It’s not in my long-term interest.’ It is a war, it is a conflict, it is a competition, and it uses classic military weapons, as well as part of the process is non-violent. That’s the first thing, you can’t ignore it. So, if you’re in competition in the world, you have to compete. You have to have something, what gives you a competitive edge, if you go into pursuing your national interest.
“Secondly, is it wise for Russia to wage this war against Ukraine at the moment? Well, of course, Russians would say, yes, it is, because what the Russian leadership wants, which is to prevent Ukraine from becoming the normal westernized country. That’s the objective.”
So, is it Russia’s short-term or long-term goal?
“From my personal opinion, it seems to me that this is not in Russia’s long-term interest. We think it would be in Russia’s long-term interest to collaborate, to be part of the Western system. But Russia has a different view, Putin has a different view, he is defining Russia as separate from the Western system, different from it. And he is saying to the West: ‘We don’t need you. We don’t need the West. We are self-sufficient, we can manage on our own, we have a different culture, we have our own Slavic traditional culture, and we are not interested in what the West has to offer.’ Is he right? Is he wrong? It’s an important difference of opinion.”
“WE HAVE NOT DEVELOPED OUR MECHANISMS FOR WAGING THIS KIND OF WAR”
What can you say about the West’s reaction to the aggression against Ukraine? Are sanctions implemented by the West against Russia enough to stop Putin, or is it necessary to lay the military option on the table, as it happened with Iraq or Milosevic’s Serbia?
“Firstly, Russians have been developing this understanding of the world, and this way of waging this conflict, for at least 15-20 years. During most of that time Western nations have been trying to bring Russia into our family of nations, trying to make Russia a partner. Alas, we failed. I’ve spent 10 years of my life trying to make Russia a partner, and I failed.”
In your opinion, why did the West fail?
“Given that the Russians have been moving in this direction, the West, many countries and many groups of people in the West have not studied it and do not understand this is a change of paradigm and the carriage of the conflict, they do not understand what’s happening, they are only just beginning to realize this. So, we have not developed our mechanisms for waging this kind of war. And we have indeed run down our military structures, we have reduced them in size and scope considerably. So, when it comes to a conflict becoming a violent conflict, the West has not developed its capacity to respond militarily to the same extent that the Russians have in that area. And we are not ready for what happened, we are not ready to respond. So, the Russians achieved a success here before you could get an effective Western reaction.
“Now that the West wants to react effectively, the issue is how to do so. Putting it crudely, do you want to invade Crimea? Is that a realistic option? From a military view, it is not.”
“SANCTIONS WILL BE A VERY EFFECTIVE TOOL AGAINST RUSSIA, IF THEY ARE MAINTAINED FOR A LONG TIME”
So, what should we do?
“Well, the idea of sanctions is to put pressure on Russia, to try and dissuade it not to pursue this kind of separatist violent activity. And sanctions will be a very effective tool against Russia, if they are maintained for a long time, and if they are effectively enforced. If they are only used for a short time, as a gesture, then they are useless.”
Why isn’t the military option offered to make Putin retreat?
“If the Russians persist, then the Russians will have created a new division in Europe, and it could become a more permanent division. Now, the European countries and, I think, nobody wants this, nobody wants to give upon Russia, everybody wants to try and hope that the Russians will, again, not persist in this course of activity. But under the present leadership, that’s where they are going. I think we will see a grand view: rearming of Russia and a change in the nature, the structure of our own military systems, and the development of our capacity to wage war in this new character that war has taken on.”
“THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MAKE UKRAINE’S MEMBERSHIP IN NATO TODAY FRANKLY UNLIKELY, TOMORROW MAY CHANGE”
Don’t you think that the decision to dismiss Kremlinologists after the collapse of the USSR was a mistake, because the West failed to notice Russia’s dangerous development tendencies on time?
“It’s true, most Western countries no longer have a lot of people studying Russia, and those people have turned to studying the Middle East, the Arab world, Iran, or terrorism. And we need to revive our understanding and our study of what Russia does. Ukraine, too. Ukraine has great opportunities which it doesn’t use: to study and understand what is going on in Moscow.”
Perhaps, you know that the new Ukrainian government will cancel the nonaligned status and will set joining NATO as a goal. Do you find statements by some foreign leaders that Ukraine will not become a NATO member appropriate, considering that the Bucharest Summit resolution, made in April 2008, says that Ukraine and Georgia will become Alliance members in the future?
“Firstly, it is unwise to predict the future. Secondly, it is unwise, and it is not good statecraft, to rule out any possibility. I can remember distinctly, nearly 20 years ago, when it was unthinkable that NATO would ever get involved in using force in a military conflict when its members had not been attacked. And years later we were bombing Serbia. So, things change, things change very radically. And there are a lot of countries in NATO today, that 15 years ago would have been unthinkable that they would be members. So, firstly, never rule anything out. The second point is, as I said, that the world changes very rapidly, and the circumstances which make Ukraine’s membership in NATO today frankly unlikely, tomorrow may change. That’s the reality of the situation.”
“YOU HAVE TO PROTECT YOURSELF”
What do you think Ukraine and the West should do to cope with Russian propaganda and win this hybrid war?
“Ukraine, just like Britain and other countries, has to create its capacity to fight hybrid warfare, to wage competition in this new world, it just has to do it, it has no choice. We are talking about strategic communication. To fight a war requires strategy and strategic thinking. You have to understand the enemy, you have to understand yourself, you have to understand your own vulnerabilities, you have to protect yourself. In this world that means governance. The key to success in a hybrid warfare is having an effective government that the population trusts. So that’s the first thing the country has got to do. As an element of that, the leadership has to be able to think strategically, and then it has to communicate that strategy to the population, because information is one of the most important tools, or weapons, in this war. So, strategic communication requires firstly strategy, and then communication. If you have this communication and no strategy, you fail. What you have to have, is the strategy which you communicate. So, it would be foolish to think you can simply have public relations or propaganda. It won’t work. It will be hollow. The population won’t follow.”
