{"id":2651,"date":"2019-07-08T02:43:36","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T02:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackopspartners.com\/?p=2651"},"modified":"2019-07-08T02:43:36","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T02:43:36","slug":"pentagon-report-russian-leaders-believe-they-are-already-at-war-with-the-united-states-in-the-gray-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/pentagon-report-russian-leaders-believe-they-are-already-at-war-with-the-united-states-in-the-gray-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon report: Russian leaders believe they are already at war with the United States\u2014in the gray zone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A group of governmental, military, and outside experts published a white paper urging the US government to jump fully into the so-called gray zone\u2014the conceptual space in which countries take action that lies somewhere on the continuum between warfare and peaceable relations.  Russia, they say, is exploiting it effectively. It\u2019s in the gray zone that Russia meddles with elections, launches online disinformation campaigns, and uses a host of other means to gain greater leverage in places ranging from the former Soviet states to Latin America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian leaders understand warfare differently from people in the United States, Nicole Peterson writes in the report\u2019s executive summary. They already believe they\u2019re at war with the United States and the West, the analyst, who works at consulting-firm NSI Inc., continues. For the Russians, winning this war requires the \u201cintegration of all instruments of state power.\u201d To counter this, Peterson writes, the authors of the report believe the United States must use \u201call instruments of national power.\u201d The gray zone is so important, she suggests, that \u201conce defined, a federal agency dedicated to gray zone activities may be required in order to implement a true whole of government approach to combating Russian influence activities abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 151-page report<\/a>, titled Russian Strategic Intentions<\/em>, was published as part of a Pentagon program called the Strategic Multilayer Assessment. <\/a>A recent Politico <\/em>article on the report<\/a> suggested it hadn\u2019t been widely shared. Some of the approaches the report\u2019s 23 authors recommend the US government undertake share similarities to well-known Russian tactics like using social media to inflame societal divisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A popular Russian technique in the run up to the 2016 US presidential election involved creating fake activist profiles on social media that called attention to the grievances<\/a> of one racial or political group or another. In a section on the Middle East, one of the report\u2019s authors appears to call for a social media-based information campaign to \u201cdiscredit Russian messaging and to boost US influence.\u201d In a paragraph about the prevalence of social media and the importance of the \u201cinformation space as an element of national power,\u201d Adam Dyet, a major in the US Army, recommends the US government use unspecified \u201cmedia venues\u201d for highlighting Russia\u2019s treatment of Muslims, human rights abuses in Syria, and Russian casualties in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States needs to prevent Middle Eastern countries from shifting to a \u201cless morally- or legally-conscious power,\u201d Dyet writes. That means sucking it up and accepting \u201cunpalatable\u201d behavior like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates\u2019 military campaigns in Yemen. Dyet also emphasizes diplomacy as a means of achieving US objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another report author advocates an even more aggressive social media effort to counter Russia, seemingly recommending that the US government target Russian personnel by infiltrating their social media orbits. Retired US Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding III references a recent NATO experiment in which researchers showed they could disrupt an alliance exercise using social media to manipulate soldiers to \u201cinstill undesirable behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe use of multimedia and social networks combined with AI can be a powerful combination,\u201d  Spalding wrote. \u201cTargeting Russian operating [sic<\/em>] in the near abroad as well as Russian citizens would be helpful in creating opposition for continued coercive actions in the near abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the report\u2019s prefaces argues that it\u2019s important to understand how countries like Russia pursue their strategic interests at low-grade levels because, as noted in recent US military doctrine like the National Defense Strategy, \u201cfuture confrontations between major powers may most often occur below the level of armed conflict.\u201d It\u2019s at this level where \u201ceconomic competition, influence campaigns, paramilitary actions, cyber intrusions, and political warfare will likely become more prevalent,\u201d Navy Rear Adm. Jeffrey Czerewko writes. According to the preface, the report is for government stakeholders in the intelligence, law enforcement, military and policy areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s already doing well in this sub-military conflict space. \u201cOverall, Russia\u2019s influence abroad is growing, and the Kremlin has mastered the use of \u2018hybrid warfare\u2019 in driving Russia\u2019s foreign policy\u2026 Russia utilizes a variety of gray zone tactics   around the globe. These include the use of paramilitary forces and other proxies, interference in political processes, economic and energy exploitation (particularly in Africa), espionage, and media and propaganda manipulation,\u201d Peterson writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Russian leaders believe they are in some kind of war with the United States, some of the contributors to the report don\u2019t appear to see things all that differently. \u201cThis white paper provides a comprehensive deep dive with respect to the Russian Federation and addresses the challenges and opportunities for the United States and its network of alliances to succeed in the fight we are in,\u201d Jason Werchan, a staffer with the United States European Command, writes in another prefaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more at <\/em>The Bulletin<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of governmental, military, and outside experts published a white paper urging the US government to jump fully into the so-called gray zone\u2014the conceptual space in which countries take action that lies somewhere on the continuum between warfare and peaceable relations.  Russia, they say, is exploiting it effectively. It\u2019s in the gray zone that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}