There is continuity in Russian views of warfare, although information warfare is more potent in an Internet world that Russia has embraced:
Jonsson’s thesis is convincing: the Russians clearly believe the nature of war has changed. There is a strong consensus that war can now be made without recourse to organized military means and that policy goals can now be achieved by offensive political warfare. The Russians themselves, though, fail to make the case. They uniformly interpret Clausewitz’s definition of war as resting on the use of military forces for political goals. However, Clausewitz’s definition does not require formal military force, just violence. The writers covered in this book have a habit of conflating the definitions of violence, organized violence, and military force all as one and the same when in fact they mean different things This is ironic, since Russia does not shy away from employing violence in peace or in war, whether it be through proxies in a high-intensity conflict like Ukraine or through assassinations in countries like the United Kingdom. The subtitle of the book is therefore well-chosen. Clausewitz defines war as the pursuit of political goals with the addition of violent means. There have always been other means of achieving political goals, and those means are used in peace and in war. War, though, features the use of violence alongside those other means, and that violence can take many forms, not just the military one.
Information war is certainly easier to wage. But is it really decisive?
I have not been a fan of thinking that Russia's "hybrid" warfare is anything new. Western analysts need to stop being panty-flinging fangirls when Gerasimov's name is mentioned.
But do the Russians really believe the nature of war has changed to more decisive non-military means?
Or do the Russians just recognize that their conventional military weakness means that they must rely more on non-military means and that the Internet is a cheap and convenient method of waging information operations to sow chaos among enemies? Is all their theorizing simply justifying their reliance on non-military means?
Really, who thinks Russia actually prefers long, drawn-out conflicts over rapid conventional conquests?
And while the Internet and social media make propaganda easier to disseminate, is it really more effective given the short attention span of viewers and lifespan of any news at all in the 24/7 firehose blast of new information coming at people in this era?
As I've said, when you Twitter a king, kill him. Eventually military power is needed to exploit the information war chaos that could well be fleeting and which could rebound back on the sender in collateral damage.
But an interesting book review.
