The book reveals that Russian officials—both political and military—have engaged in a lively and complex debate about what war is, its nature and its role in international politics. These are not the staid, anodyne, article-shaped press releases penned by the staffs of most U.S. officials and then published under their names. They are deep, philosophical discussions of meaning that reflect real engagement with the subject matter.

Controlled Chaos and The Management of Savagery

One important concept from Russian thinking is the idea of controlled chaos, a phrase used throughout Russian writings on war. It refers to the sowing of disorder and dissension in a target country through information, intelligence, diplomatic, or other means, including violence. Russian thinkers believe such controlled chaos is in most cases preparation for further action such as invasions that then achieve political goals. Others think controlled chaos can achieve policy goals without any further action.

This idea has parallels in Sunni jihad strategic theory, specifically The Management of Savagery by Abu Bakr Naji, which greatly influenced the Islamic State. For Naji, the sowing of controlled chaos does not just create an opportunity but also encourages capitulation and support to the entity strong enough to impose order and stability. The case of the Islamic State demonstrates this strategic logic as it attempted to be both agent of and solution to chaos in Syria and Iraq.[2]

This is not to say that Russia and the Islamic State are the same, or even that they have similar motivations for the sowing of chaos and disorder. But the fact that they both see chaos as a means and an opportunity rather than a problem is notable. Where Russia does see chaos as a problem is when it is imposed by someone else. Russian writers take it as a fact that any event in any country that does not conform to Russian interests is a clever American conspiracy to manipulate events.

Jonsson also illuminates how the Russian conception of information warfare consists of two parts: information-technical and information-psychological.[3] The former maps roughly to information-related capabilities that revolve around technology: electronic warfare, cyber warfare, signals intelligence, etc. The latter involves the influence of people through deception, disinformation, psychological warfare, and other means of changing minds. There is no such division in U.S. doctrine, where all of these capabilities and more are jumbled together under the titles “information warfare,” “information operations,” or “operations in the information environment” depending on time and service.

Fear and Loathing in Moscow

It is important to remember, however, that Russia’s focus on information warfare reflects not only its belief in its potential, but also its fear of its power. The outsized role of information in Russian military thought is a symptom of deep-seated nervousness that with free information comes domestic political revolution. It is not just that Russian writers worry a domestic political revolution would occur, but also that it would succeed. This Russian fear of western values goes back at least as far as Peter the Great, whose reforms drew conservative ire from the Russian nobility and at least one aborted coup attempt.

The United States is not the only one guilty of misunderstanding others. The U.S. and other western countries tend to see instability and chaos as inherently bad and as a problem to be solved. The Russians see it as an opportunity, and they think the United States thinks the same way.[4] This leads them to see American conspiracies in every global crisis and respond in kind to these hallucinated attacks.

The United States, for example, views funding for pro-democracy groups as benign, while Russian leaders see it as malign. Conversely, some things the U.S. see as an attack the Russians see as a response. For example, Americans view Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election as an attack. Russian leaders, however, view it as a response to American interference in the Russian parliamentary elections of 2011 and subsequent protests that lasted into 2012, which they believe then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally directed and orchestrated.[5] The fact that neither of those things is true is less important than the fact that Russian leaders believe them to be true.