Eerik Kross and Dr Greg Mills
‘A wolf circling sheep’ is how Christopher Steele once described Vladimir Putin’s relationship with the West.
Steele’s case has itself become part of the Russian president’s cognitive warfare strategy. The former MI6 officer compiled the 2016 dossier alleging that Donald Trump had been cultivated and supported by Moscow for years before his first presidential victory. Just as the dossier contained – in all likelihood – Russian disinformation crafted to split readers between those demanding more and those dismissing the entire text, Putin has pursued a broader strategy of injecting toxic doubt into Western minds. He has sown uncertainty not only over America, but across every country and in every domain where trust and unity matter.
The world has since tilted in favour of autocracies and their malign agendas, with disruption of the rules-based international order a reality, and with it an increase in the frequency of geopolitical upsets such as the transatlantic rift. Democracy remains in retreat in the face of authoritarianism. Freedom House, which since its creation in 1941 has been tracking the state of freedom, found 2025 to be the 19th year of declining freedom, due to political repression, armed conflict and authoritarianism.
Russia is a main protagonist in a new pattern of conflict, defined by the term ‘hybrid warfare’, a format which allows the Kremlin to overcome its power asymmetry to destabilise Europe, build alliances worldwide, including in Africa, and pursue its imperial ambitions in Ukraine by undermining support for Kyiv.
But others are learning from Moscow’s experience – and the West’s response – not least on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. These lessons should be learned quickly, particularly in the fight for democracy and against authoritarianism.
The Lessons of Grey Zone Conflict
‘Hybrid warfare’, otherwise known as the ‘grey zone’, describes a spectrum of hostile actions below the threshold triggering a military response, from political interference at one end, to cyberattacks, assassination and non-conventional conflict – such as the covert invasion of Crimea in Ukraine – at the other. The frog is heated slowly enough as not to risk it hopping out of the pot.
No comments:
Post a Comment