A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors.
—ANDREI SAKHAROV
THE UNITED States and Europe were ill-prepared for Russia’s toxic combination of disinformation, denial, dependence, and disruptive technologies. Responses to the Kremlin’s sustained campaigns of subversion not only were slow and inadequate, but also tended to aid and abet those who sowed dissention and division. In her November 21 testimony before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Dr. Fiona Hill observed that “when we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, to degrade our institutions and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.”1 When we are considering how best to counter Russian aggression, Hill’s admonishment is the best starting point. Putin seeks to divide; Americans and Europeans should not divide themselves. Putin employs disinformation; Americans and Europeans should restore trusted sources of information. Putin cultivates dependencies; Americans and Europeans should depend more on each other and like-minded nations. Putin employs disruptive technologies to compensate for Russia’s weaknesses; Americans and Europeans should counter those efforts and maintain their considerable competitive advantage. The United States and European nations should be confident.
When I met Patrushev in Geneva, the combination of fear and injured pride was palpable. He appeared tough, but his was the kind of toughness that comes from bitter disappointment, in his case, in a system he had spent his whole life defending. The Soviet Union was corrupt to its core, but Patrushev had been taught to look—from the inequality in a system that professed egalitarianism; from the brutality that belied the Soviet concept of social justice for workers as a fraud; and from the cynical patriarchy in the Stalinist order that during and after World War II killed six million of its people and put approximately one million others in barbaric prisons in which many more perished.2 Patrushev’s long face carried his disappointment and anger over the collapse of the corrupt system he had worked so hard to perpetuate. And since 2000, he had joined Putin in an effort to recreate that system—but not exactly. He, Putin, and the Siloviki dropped all pretense of egalitarianism, doubling down on nationalism and pride in Mother Russia. And they added a strong dose of greed, as both Putin and Patrushev became personally wealthy at the top of their corrupt system. Blaming the United States for their failings became a habit, and competition with the United States and Europe was necessary to distract the Russian people from those failings. It was also natural. Putin, Patrushev, and the Siloviki define themselves and their system, as they did during the Cold War, based on a perceived threat from the West.3
Because the Kremlin’s base motivation is unlikely to change while Putin is in power, the United States, its allies, and like-minded partners must parry Putin’s playbook and, in particular, its critical components of disinformation, denial, dependence, and the use of disruptive technology. Because the Kremlin’s objective is to divide and weaken the United States and Europe from within, defeating Putin’s sophisticated strategy will require strategic competence and a concerted effort to restore confidence in democratic principles, institutions, and processes.
Putin’s aggressive behavior and Patrushev’s tough demeanor mask Russia’s underlying vulnerability and diminishing power relative to the United States and Europe. In 2019, Russia’s GDP was roughly equivalent to that of the state of Texas and smaller than Italy’s.4 After Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine, NATO countries finally increased defense spending. Excluding the United States, their combined $299 billion budget in 2019 compared favorably to Russia’s 2018 defense budget of $61.4 billion. The U.S. defense budget alone was eleven times larger, at $685 billion in 2019.5 But although Europe and the United States enjoy tremendous comparative advantages over Russia, parrying Putin’s playbook requires mobilizing those advantages and remediating vulnerabilities that the Kremlin exploits.
AFTER TWO decades of Putin’s rule, Russian aggression itself may be most effective at restoring trust in democratic principles and institutions. As the historian and author Timothy Garton Ash observed in 2019, Europe recognizes that it faces an existential threat of disintegration, “like the prospect of death, that concentrates minds.”6 Concentrating minds might lead to the abandonment of flawed assumptions that have, in the past, masked the growing threat. Because of flawed assumptions, the United States and its European allies, in spite of all good intentions, have allowed and, at times, encouraged Russian aggression.
I return here to the idea of strategic narcissism, for America’s failure to develop an effective response to Russian aggression was based in it and, in particular, in a kind of wishful thinking: that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian leaders would accept the status quo. Multiple U.S. administrations neglected the emotional drivers behind Putin’s actions. Even after the pattern of Russian attacks and subversion of European nations was undeniable, over-optimism about prospects for change in Russian policy delayed effective responses.
Nearly eight years before I met Nikolai Patrushev in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met her counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in that same city. Only seven months had passed since Russia’s invasion of Georgia, the first war in history in which cyber attacks were used in combination with a military offensive and a sustained disinformation campaign. Clinton presented Mr. Lavrov with a “reset button” meant to symbolize a fresh start in the relationship. She described her reset attempt as “a very effective meeting of the minds” that she hoped might lead to “more trust, predictability, and progress.”7 Optimism about the reset policy grew as work progressed on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which reduced the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers by half and limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads. Also positive was Russian support for the expansion of a Northern Distribution Network to supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan and new sanctions on Iran. In March 2012, President Obama was caught on an open microphone whispering to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev—Putin would return to the presidency from the position of prime minister two months later—that he would have “more flexibility” after the U.S. presidential election in November of that year. Obama was referring to the potential for a new arms agreement, but his comment also communicated to Medvedev a willingness to overlook Russia’s transgressions in the interest of making progress on that and other priorities.8 Seven months later, during his reelection campaign for president, Obama mocked his opponent, Senator Mitt Romney, for describing Russia as a geopolitical foe: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”9
Over-optimism led to complacency as the Obama administration pursued a Russia policy based on its hopes to work with the Kremlin rather than the needs to deter and defend against Russian aggression. Those hopes soon vanished when Russia annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, intervened in Syria, hacked the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and attacked the 2016 presidential election. In the 2000s, as the Russian threat grew more complex and sophisticated, the United States wrongly assumed that Russia’s goals aligned with those of the United States. It believed that diplomatic efforts could bring the Kremlin in from the cold to join the community of responsible nations and abandon its disruptive behavior. Psychologists define optimism bias as the tendency of those beginning a treatment to believe in the success of the treatment even if the result is uncertain. President Obama and Secretary Clinton were not the first to succumb to optimism bias and wishful thinking while pursuing improved relations with Russia, nor would they be the last.
In the summer of 2001, President George W. Bush met with President Vladimir Putin and reported that “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciate so very much the frank dialogue.”10 Putin’s talent for deception and manipulation was on full display as he told President Bush a fabricated story about how he had saved from a fire in a dacha a cherished Russian Orthodox cross given to him by his mother and worn around his neck. As he would later do with the Clinton Foundation and the Trump organizations, he tried to do a favor for President Bush by arranging a lucrative job in a Russian oil company for one of Bush’s friends.11 By the end of his second term, Bush was forced to revise his assessment of Putin. In August 2008, as both presidents were in the receiving line to greet Chairman Xi Jinping at the opening of the Beijing Olympics, Russian forces were invading Georgia.
President Donald Trump continued this trend of U.S. presidents believing that they could appeal to mutual interests, build personal rapport with Putin, improve the relationship between Washington and Moscow, and change Russian strategic behavior. Trump often stated that improved relations with Russia “would be a good thing, not a bad thing.” The candidate was appreciative of Vladimir Putin’s flattery, stating in December 2015, “When people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.”12 Trump treated some of Putin’s most brazen criminal actions with dismissiveness and moral equivalency. For example, in 2017, when asked by Bill O’Reilly in a Fox News interview if he respected Vladimir Putin even though, as O’Reilly stated, “he’s a killer,” the president responded, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”13 President Trump, in public statements made before and after his election, appeared to waver in his determination to hold Russia accountable despite policy decisions that strengthened Europe’s defenses and imposed significant costs on Putin and those around him, mainly in the form of sanctions. Indeed, the president seemed at times to abet Russian disinformation and denial. For example, after U.S. intelligence agencies determined unequivocally that there had been a Russian attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, President Trump described his conversation with Putin: “He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. But I just asked him again, and he said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they’re saying he did.” Commenting further in Helsinki, Finland, in July 2018, after a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Putin, the president stated that “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”14
While some speculated that President Trump sometimes appeared to be an apologist for Russia and Mr. Putin because the Kremlin was extorting him with damaging evidence of business improprieties or embarrassing personal conduct, Trump’s over-optimism about improving Russian relations fit a pattern of optimism bias and wishful thinking across two previous administrations.15 And the unreciprocated efforts to improve relations with Putin left U.S. presidents vulnerable to the KGB case officer’s subterfuge. At the 2018 press conference in Helsinki, when asked directly by a reporter if he had “compromising material” on President Trump, Putin did not give a direct answer. He responded, “Well, distinguished colleague, let me tell you this, when President Trump was in Moscow back then, I didn’t even know that he was in Moscow. I treat President Trump with utmost respect, but back then when he was a private individual, a businessman, nobody informed me that he was in Moscow. . . . Do you think that we try to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it’s difficult to imagine utter nonsense on a bigger scale than this. Please disregard these issues and don’t think about this anymore again.”16 Putin was never going to be Donald Trump’s friend. He used the Helsinki summit to undermine the U.S. president and keep alive speculation about the slanderous contents of the Steele dossier.
The basis for Trump’s persistent optimism bias, even as Putin undermined him publicly, had an added dimension. For some of the self-proclaimed strategists around President Trump, the pursuit of improved U.S.- Russian relations despite continued Russian aggression was based mainly on two rationalizations: first, a misunderstanding of history and an associated nostalgia for the alliance with the Soviet Union during World War II; and second, a peculiar sense of kinship with and affinity for Russian nationalists. This latter rationalization is based on a perceived commonality of interest in confronting Islamist terrorism and protecting what these Trump strategists regarded as wholesome and predominantly Western, Caucasian, and Christian cultures from dilution through multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious immigration.17 In a July 2018 interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News, President Trump said that the characterization of Russia as an adversary was “incredible” because of the country’s tremendous sacrifices during World War II. “Russia lost 50 million people and helped us win the war,” President Trump said. Some Americans and Europeans view Russia as the repository of a purer version of Christianity and, under Putin, a bastion of conservatism that is protecting Western civilization from postmodern ideas that are anathema to some conservatives.18
But both rationalizations are fundamentally flawed. The alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II was an “alliance of necessity.” In the midst of that war, Russia had initially tried to stay out of the conflict by signing the cynical Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which resulted in the brutal dismemberment of Poland and the inevitable annexation by the Soviet Union of the three Baltic states. It was only when Nazi Germany turned on its accomplices that the Soviets found themselves unexpectedly fighting on the side of the Western Allies and (after the Pearl Harbor attacks of December 1941) the United States. It was an alliance that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had tried his best to avoid; he had been hostile to the governments and people of the West.19 The only factor that held the unlikely allies together was Adolf Hitler. And while it is true that the Soviet Union bore the largest sacrifice of fighting in terms of lives lost, once the war ended, the alliance of necessity dissolved and gave way to a cold war between the two powers.
Despite the U.S. desire to regard Russia as an erstwhile ally grateful for American bloodshed for a common cause and the $11.3 billion in U.S. assistance under the Lend-Lease policy, Russia’s memory of the alliance in World War II does not evoke warm feelings among Kremlin leaders.20 Some Russians view U.S. and U.K. delays in opening a second front in France as an intentional effort to allow the Soviets and the Germans to bleed each other to death on the Eastern Front. And they believe their exclusion from the joint American-British effort to build an atomic bomb was part of a plan to dominate the Soviet Union and the postwar world. If the prospect of improved relations with Putin relied on a natural confluence of interests with respect to Europe or to Russian nostalgia for the World War II alliance against Nazi Germany, that prospect was dim.
Ignorance of history combined with bigotry to generate another source of delusional thinking about Putin’s Russia. Some Americans were easy targets for Russian disinformation because they felt a kinship with and a cultural affinity for Russia as a defender of social conservatism and Christianity. That basis for optimism about improved relations with the Kremlin was not confined to the United States; it was even more prevalent in parts of Europe. For example, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban expressed alignment with Russia, declaring that Hungary would be “breaking with the dogmas and ideologies that have been adopted by the West” in order to build a “new Hungarian state.” Some saw Putin as a modern-day crusader who was protecting Christianity from Islamist terrorists after U.S. interventions in the Middle East made the world less secure. The Russian Orthodox Church, which acts as an arm of the Kremlin and Russian intelligence services, praised Putin’s intervention in Syria as part of the “fight with terrorism” and a “holy battle.” Russia actively cultivates these feelings of racial and religious kinship to further polarize and weaken Western resolve to confront the Kremlin’s aggression.21
ONCE SPECIOUS rationalizations for seeking improved relations as an end in themselves are rejected, we can develop a consistent strategy designed not only to defend against Russia’s ongoing campaign and deter further aggression, but also to set conditions for a post-Putin era in which Russian leaders recognize that they can best advance their interests through cooperation rather than confrontation with the West. The public and private sectors both have an important role to play. Because Putin’s playbook depends so heavily on disinformation and denial, defense begins with exposing the Kremlin’s efforts to sow dissension within and between nations.
Governments have powerful tools available to identify malicious cyber actors and act against them. Law enforcement and sanctions against individuals and organizations engaged in political subversion have proven effective. Because most of the evidence that underpins indictments and sanctions is public, the results of law enforcement investigations, such as the Mueller Report in the United States, are particularly valuable in pulling back the curtain on Russian cyber-enabled information warfare. Named after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the report on the two-year investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election exposed the level of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and the overall effort to divide Americans through cyber-enabled information warfare.22 Armed with the Mueller investigation and other sources of information, on March 15, 2018, the Trump administration placed sanctions on Russian individuals and companies, including those associated with the IRA and GRU.23 The U.S. Department of Justice also announced criminal counts against twenty-six Russian nationals and three Russian companies.24
In the fight against Putin’s playbook, citizens and their representatives in government have an important role to play. As Fiona Hill suggested, they might resolve, at the very least, not to be their own worst enemies. The reaction to the Mueller Report among President Trump, his supporters, and his opponents demonstrated how political divisiveness can mask what all sides should have agreed upon: that Russia attacked the U.S. election and that the attacks continued beyond the election to divide Americans and reduce confidence in democratic principles, institutions, and processes. Some glossed over that point of agreement to either echo President Trump’s description of the investigation as a “witch hunt” or to claim that the report did not go far enough to reveal either “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russians or obstruction of justice on the part of the president. As Hill observed in her testimony before the impeachment inquiry committee in November 2019, Russia’s goal was to put the U.S. president, no matter who won the election, “under a cloud.” She warned that those who support fictional narratives reinforce the Kremlin’s campaign.
Sadly, Hill’s observation seemed to fall on deaf ears. February 2020 revelations that Russia was using disinformation to bolster the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spurred President Trump to fire Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire as the president dismissed Russia’s continued subversion of America’s democratic process as a “hoax.” Meanwhile, some Democrats resurrected the already investigated allegations that Trump was somehow in collusion with the Kremlin. Putin could not have written a better script. Social media remained the Kremlin’s weapon of choice.25
Deterring Russian aggression in cyberspace requires more than a purely government response. While the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has exquisite capabilities to attribute actions in cyberspace, it is often reluctant to do so because attribution might reveal its tools and methods. The scale of the problem alone demands efforts across the public and private sectors. Social media and internet companies must continue the work they began after the 2016 election to expose and counter disinformation and propaganda. Facebook, which took the most blame for the vulnerabilities its system created, identified and deleted Russian bots on both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook also had Cambridge Analytica (the UK-based firm that harvested data from millions of people’s Facebook accounts without consent) delete Facebook data and improve users’ awareness of how to strengthen their privacy features. Twitter identified and deleted bots as well. But Russian bots and trolls adapted, trying to stay ahead of those protecting infrastructure, exposing disinformation, or countering denial. Moreover, these defensive actions did not adequately address the safeguarding of personal data that Russian or other malign actors might use in cyber-enabled information warfare or the economic incentives that drive users toward extreme content.
Because social media companies have economic incentives to gather and use personal data to generate revenue (mainly through advertising), regulation may be necessary. A combination of removing the cloak of anonymity for some users (such as advertisers), protecting individuals’ personal data, and requiring internet and social media companies to be held liable for damaging compromises of data or blatant abuse of their platforms are all actions that could shift industry incentives in favor of protecting against disinformation and denial. Regulation may also help ensure that those companies do not become the arbiters of freedom of speech in democratic societies.
Private-sector efforts can be particularly valuable in countering Russia because they are unclassified and can be released to the media, the public, and law enforcement. For example, a private company helped attribute responsibility for the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, United Kingdom. Bellingcat, an international research and investigation collective, conducted an open-source investigation to identify the attackers and connect them to their GRU offices. Combinations of government and private efforts counter Russian denial in the physical as well as the cyber world. Private-sector efforts can create a firehose of truth to counter the Kremlin’s firehose of falsehoods. Still, no combination of private- and public-sector efforts to expose and defend against RNGW activities will solve the problem once and for all. As attacks on the 2020 presidential election made clear, Russian agents will adapt continuously to avoid detection, circumvent defenses, and launch new offensives.
Countering cyber attacks such as data theft or damage to systems must go beyond the “perimeter” defense or even so-called defense in depth, in which multiple layers of security controls are placed throughout an information technology system. Because capable state actors such as Russia can penetrate elaborate defenses given adequate time and resources, defense requires a good offense. Organizations like the NSA in the United States conduct continuous reconnaissance in cyberspace to identify and preempt attacks before they can penetrate the system perimeter. Furthermore, the creation of U.S. Cyber Command in 2010 marked crucial efforts to “direct, synchronize, and coordinate cyberspace planning and operations to defend and advance national interests in collaboration with domestic and international partners.”26 The command is tackling the problems of integrating and scaling capabilities to the magnitude of the threat under the concept of “increasing resiliency, defending forward, and constantly engaging.”27 This form of active defense appeared successful during the U.S. midterm elections in 2018. In keeping with U.S. Cyber Command’s doctrine of persistent engagement and causing problems for adversaries before they penetrate our systems, cyber operators reportedly blocked internet access to the IRA on the day of the elections.28 In the future, private-sector firms are likely to participate in active defense. Attribution and punishment after attacks will remain important, but these have proven inadequate to deter or prevent attacks designed to cripple critical systems or infrastructure, extort victims, or wage cyber-enabled information warfare. Amplified sharing of information and expertise within government and between government and industry should help provide protection to the dot-com, dot-gov, and dot-mil internet domains.
Just as the GRU and SVR learned from early attempts to undermine Western democracies, the United States and other nations might learn from countries on the Russian frontier that were on the receiving end of Putin’s playbook. In 2007, Estonia came under a sustained cyber offensive that included disinformation, denial, and cyber attacks on infrastructure. Its disagreement with Russia over the relocation of a World War II statue sparked an offensive that began with distributed denial-of-service attacks, a flood of internet traffic that overwhelms servers and shuts down websites. Estonians lost access to news outlets, government websites, and bank accounts. Russian media stoked the crisis with disinformation, such as false reports that Soviet war graves were being destroyed. Russia has continued this sustained campaign of disinformation and propaganda for over a decade.29 Recognizing that it needed improved and sustained defenses, Estonia, under the direction of President Toomas Henrik Ilves, formed a civilian cyber defense reserve unit, attained a high level of security through end-to-end encryption and two-factor authentication, and constantly monitored systems for potential threats. Estonia demonstrated that a clear understanding of the problem, determined leadership, a comprehensive strategy, and close cooperation across public and private sectors can defend successfully against malicious actors. Estonia’s cybersecurity now includes high-functioning e-government infrastructure, digital identity, mandatory security baselines, and a central system for identifying and responding to attacks. Private-sector service providers are reviewed to assess and reduce risk. President Ilves recalled that citizen and private-sector involvement is essential to effective defense and that the keys to success were incentivizing online security measures, implementing cybersecurity public education programs, and constantly monitoring cyberspace and power grids.30
In Finland, the government sought the participation of its citizens in an effort to track, fight, and prevent cyber attacks. Mandatory cyber education is meant to “bolster Finland as an information society” and contribute to cyber research. The National Cyber Security Centre is accessible to all. It provides information, posts vulnerabilities, and runs “exercises” that include simulated cyber attacks to increase awareness of vulnerabilities and motivate organizations to protect themselves. The goal is to achieve comprehensive security.31
Although it is challenging to scale up efforts of small countries like Estonia and Finland to a country the size of the United States, their examples demonstrate the potential for collaboration not only between government and industry, but also with academia and civil society.
Karen Edwards, a Silicon Valley executive who helped build the Yahoo brand, one of the prime internet companies, knew that defensive measures were inadequate to counter Russian disinformation. She was angry about what was happening to her country as Russians and extremist groups polarized society and created a crisis of confidence in democratic processes and institutions. Present at the creation of the first Silicon Valley boom in the 1990s, Edwards was, even then, both enthusiastic about the promise of the internet and wary about how it might be abused by nefarious actors. Two decades later, the Stanford University and Harvard Business School graduate had an idea of how a good offense in the presentation of information might extend beyond defense and preempt elements of cyber-enabled information warfare. Edwards and her business partner, Raj Narayan, started a company called Soap AI in Palo Alto, California. The company is based on an innovative solution that combines the positive potential of the internet with emerging artificial intelligence technologies to defeat those using disinformation and propaganda to polarize American society. After diagnosing the problem as information overload, mistrust of media, and a lack of diverse perspectives, Edwards, Narayan, and their team designed a machine-learning platform that allows users to understand better what is happening in the world by accessing verified sources of information, reducing the clutter associated with clickbait, and ensuring access to a range of perspectives.32 Soap AI uses a “scrub cycle” in which artificial intelligence sorts stories from verified sources across a range of perspectives. Soap presents multiple opinions on an event or story so readers can make their own judgments based on correct information.33 A dynamic combination of offensive, defensive, and preemptive solutions to the disinformation dimension of Putin’s playbook could turn what the Kremlin and other authoritarian governments consider a vulnerability—that is, America’s inherent decentralization and resistance to authoritative direction from the center—into a strength.34
Education is vitally important, not only to alert citizens to the dangers of Russia’s disinformation campaigns but also to restore confidence in democratic principles, institutions, and processes. A Russian proverb describes education as light and ignorance as darkness. A public informed about challenges to national security and to issues that adversaries use to sow dissension, such as race, gun control, and immigration, will prove less vulnerable to manipulation. Education inoculates society against efforts to foment hatred and incite violence on the basis of race, religion, politics, sexual orientation or any other sub-identity.
Finally, education combined with the restoration of civility in public discourse can reduce the vitriol that widens the fissures in society that Russia and others exploit. A renewed focus on civics education in the United States and other Western societies is important to deter and defeat Russia’s campaigns of disinformation and denial. While keeping in mind the importance of self-criticism, civics curricula in Western nations might emphasize the virtues of those nations’ free, open, and democratic societies. For example, while acknowledging that the American experiment is flawed and incomplete, curricula in the United States might ensure that citizens appreciate the nobility of an unprecedented multi-century effort to ensure democracy, individual rights, equal opportunity, and liberty for all. Political leaders and the media have a vital role in that connection; as do citizens, who might resolve, whenever they discuss points of disagreement, to give at least equal time to points of agreement. Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, initiated a program to promote civility in public discourse. As in cyber defense, improving education and restoring civil discourse will take broad public involvement.
All these efforts are especially critical on the European continent, which remains on the front lines of Putin’s aggressive ambitions. The United States and European and other democratic nations must recognize that parrying Putin’s playbook requires strong collective action. The first step is to regain self-respect not only within individual nations, but also among them as free and open societies.
Europe needs to regain psychological as well as physical strength. The European Union will be only as strong as its members. Europe’s larger states could and should lead; in the next decades, Germany and France are particularly critical to the strength of Europe and the strength of the transatlantic alliance. So are the states that won freedom after the Iron Curtain fell. Will European culture sustain the common identity essential to generating the will to defend itself? The Kremlin is betting that the answer is no. In 2019, Putin declared that liberalism had “become obsolete.”35 It will depend on European leaders and their citizens to prove him wrong.
AS THE United States, NATO, and others counter Russian efforts that fall below the threshold of a military response, they should not underestimate the danger of Russian conventional military and nuclear capabilities. NATO conventional and nuclear strength remains an important deterrent of further aggression, as an emboldened Kremlin could miscalculate and take actions that spark a disastrous military confrontation. It is for this reason that NATO member states should fulfill the pledge made at the Wales Summit in 2014 to invest the equivalent of 2 percent of their GDP in defense. After the end of the Cold War, Europe’s military power atrophied because of the belief that great power competition was a relic of the past. Because Putin is trying to collapse the alliance, it is possible that he could, based on an assessment of weak resolve within NATO nations, precipitate a crisis in the Baltics or elsewhere. He might actually want a target nation to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which states that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” and then attempt to dissuade other NATO nations from recognizing the attack. That failure would deliver a hard psychological blow to the alliance.
The United States and its NATO allies must also develop and field capabilities that counter Russia’s disruptive military technologies, including its new nuclear weapons. The United States and NATO are behind in countering Russian capabilities in electronic warfare, layered air defense, and a range of other disruptive capabilities designed to close the gap in advanced military technologies.36 Important conventional capabilities include missile defense, long-range precision fires, and air defense against drones. The U.S. withdrawal from the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in response to Russia’s violation was necessary to maintain deterrence in Europe and make clear that Russia’s irresponsible doctrine of escalation control could only lead to catastrophe for all parties. And should Russia and other nations, such as China, agree to negotiate a treaty limiting or eliminating types of intermediate-range weapons, as the INF Treaty did in 1988, or to preserve New START, the treaty signed in April 2010 (and the follow-up to START I, which reduced the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers by half and established an inspection and verification regime), the United States should remain ready to enter into verifiable agreements that limit the scale and scope of the most destructive weapons on earth. As the United States and NATO invest in future military systems, they should keep Russian countermeasures in mind and design simple, less expensive systems that degrade gracefully, rather than complex, expensive systems susceptible to catastrophic failure.
The combination of actions, initiatives, and capabilities to parry Putin’s playbook should aim to deter Russia by denial—that is, by convincing the Kremlin that it cannot accomplish its objectives through its pernicious form of aggression, the use of military force, or nuclear extortion under its doctrine of escalation control. Should Russian aggression continue or expand, however, the United States and like-minded nations should be prepared to exploit the Kremlin’s many vulnerabilities. Those include Putin’s and the Siloviki’s personal vulnerability to public scrutiny, the Russian people’s growing desire for a say in how they are governed, and the frailty of an economy overburdened by corruption, self-imposed isolation, and a demographic time bomb.
TRUTH AND transparency are important offensive as well as defensive weapons to defeat the Kremlin’s use of lies and obfuscation. Putin’s brash actions internationally belie both his weakness and his fear of losing power. His rule, extended by sham elections, has grown old. When he returned to the presidency after a break as prime minister that was meant to give the illusion that he respected the Constitution, he encountered massive protests. People were angry in part because Putin raised the retirement age even as more Russians became aware that he had become a billionaire many times over only by looting the country.37 By 2019, protests were a regular occurrence in Russian cities as Putin’s popularity dropped. In regional elections in September of that year, Alexei Navalny, an anticorruption activist and lawyer, developed what is known as a “smart-voting” strategy. Creating a list of candidates across the country who he believed could defeat those backed by Putin’s United Russia party, he urged opposition-minded citizens to vote for those on that list. The strategy resulted in victories for a record 160 candidates across the country38 and showed that, even as Putin controls the media and restricts the opposition, elections still matter in Russia.39 Exposing Putin’s personal finances and the finances of the Siloviki who surround him may further embolden a Russian opposition movement that has survived despite brutal Kremlin repression and absolute control of the media, parliament, courts, and security services. Support for opposition groups, anticorruption organizations, and surviving investigative journalists in Russia is an appropriate counter to Putin’s playbook and a way to communicate support for the Russian people while countering Kremlin aggression.
It is likely that opposition to Putin will grow with time as he enters his third decade in power. In January 2020, Putin proposed changes in the Constitution designed to extend his rule beyond 2024. The changes stripped power away from the presidency and empowered the Parliament and the State Council. Prime minister Dmitry Medvedev resigned. Medvedev was given a new position that had not existed previously, deputy chairman of the Security Council. Putin’s choice for Medvedev’s successor as prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, is a technocrat previously tasked with modernizing the Russian Federal Tax Service. Without his own political base, Mishustin seems unlikely to impede Putin’s authority. Indeed, the choice is broadly seen as a way to allow Putin to retain de facto power, perhaps by making policy though the newly empowered State Council.
Putin is very sensitive to the truth, especially about his personal life and his finances. When a small Moscow paper reported that he had divorced and was engaged to a famous gymnast, he had the paper shut down. When the vast data leak known as the Panama Papers revealed in 2016 how he had secured lucrative deals for his friends in exchange for a cut of the profits, he deflected attention from this by accusing Hillary Clinton of inciting protests in his country.40
RUSSIAN ECONOMIC dependence on its energy sector is another key vulnerability, and the European nations should take advantage of it. Reducing dependence on Russian oil and gas presents an opportunity to impose costs greater than Putin and the stagnant Russian economy can bear. And because it is possible that, faced with continued economic stagnation, Putin will precipitate another crisis to stoke Russian nationalism and distract the Russian people from their discontent, dependence on Russian energy could prove to be a security as well as an economic liability for Germany and other European states.
Finally, despite Putin’s 2020 proposal to change the Constitution and create a position from which he can continue to wield power, the United States, Europe, and other like-minded nations should think comprehensively about a post-Putin Russia. It is important to recognize that Russian society is still emerging from a traumatic period of transition that witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the birth of a new Russian state, changed borders, and transformation of its economic and political systems. It was, as former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice observed, simply “too much to overcome.”41 Although the West will have limited influence over how the transition from Putin to a new order occurs and how that new order addresses the challenges and opportunities facing Russia, the United States and other nations might prepare now to play a supportive role.
Lessons from Russia’s failed transition should inform that support. A post-Putin government would have three options: repression, serious reform, or an incompetent execution of the first two options. The West should approach a post-Putin Russia with the goal of welcoming it into a Euro-Atlantic security system that aims to preserve peace and promote prosperity. If the “power vertical” (i.e., the recentralization of the power of the presidency and federal center) that Putin helped to create collapses, America and other nations, informed by failed efforts in the 1990s, should support democratic and institutional development in Russia.42 Preparation might begin with an expansion of grassroots programs, exchanges, and education programs (such as the Fulbright scholarship) that circumvent Putin’s repression of civil society to reach the Russian people directly. And the failed effort to promote reform in Russia in the 1990s should also lead to the recognition that reform in Russia will depend on the Russian people. Still, as Secretary Rice observed, “Russia is not Mars and the Russians are not endowed with some unique, anti-democratic DNA.”43
The West must remain open to the possibility, however, that a new government may not abandon the Kremlin’s aggressive policies and may instead perpetuate Putin’s playbook. Under Putin, the Kremlin’s fears are about losing power internally; a rush to allay imagined Russian fears of the West would be foolhardy. Deterrence should remain a top priority for the United States and NATO, so that it is clear to whoever follows Putin that further expansion and continued subversion would be too costly.
IN THE near term, Putin and Russia have forged a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Chairman Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. President Putin described China as “our strategic partner.” Chairman Xi reciprocated with “We’ve managed to take our relationship to the highest level in our history.” Additionally, he referred to President Putin as his “best friend and colleague.”44 The two authoritarian regimes aid and abet each other in their mutual effort to collapse the postwar political, economic, and security order.45 In 2017, joint military exercises in the Baltic Sea signaled to the world the start of this new partnership. In 2018, China joined Russia’s annual military exercise in Siberia for the first time. The following year, India and Pakistan were also invited to join the exercise otherwise known as Vostok, meaning “East.” Also, in 2019, hundreds of Russian and Chinese military flights violated U.S. allied airspace from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan. On July 23, 2019, a joint Russian-Chinese flight of bomber aircraft entered the air defense identification zone of South Korea and Japan, triggering intercepts by fighter jets from both countries.46 In December 2019, Russian and Chinese ships joined the Iranian navy for an exercise in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman. Also, trade between Russia and China increased significantly, growing from $69.6 billion in 2016 to $107.1 billion in 2018, with the increased trade even conducted in the nations’ own currencies as a step toward reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar.47
The two countries’ warming relationship has resurrected discussions of the Nixon administration’s triangular diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China. Under triangular diplomacy, the United States endeavored to have a closer relationship with each nation than each nation had with the other. Under Putin and Xi, however, the prospects for improved relations are dim. A Russian grand alliance with China is unnatural because Russia would be a minor and weaker party. Putin’s playbook has made clear that great power competition is not a relic of the past. He and Xi are drawn together, in part, because they are both authoritarian leaders who are determined to undermine free and open societies. Despite Putin’s dangerous aggression against the United States, Europe, and the rest of the free world, the danger from Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party is greater based on the scale of the challenge and the pernicious nature of China’s strategy. For all Putin’s brazen attacks against our country, it is China that in many ways presents the larger, and more complicated, threat to the United States.