Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Jan-June 2017).

[Azor]

As is with many Russian analysis articles and yes they looked at thousands of words...that is in fact the core problem...I would point to the simple fact that the "Russian words" are in fact a form of disinformation and camouflage designed to create a smokescreen from which to operate...If one took literally all Russian "words" and then compared them against Russian "actions" since 2003 you actually see a disconnect between the "words and actions"...

I don’t disagree.

However, all leaders tend to say one thing and then do another. For instance, despite Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009, he actually disengaged from the Muslim world and pursued a rather ruthless strategy of containment and attrition in failed Muslim states with no real efforts made at reconstruction or development.

The next item that the authors totally missed is the ability of both the SU and now Russia to follow a longer term effort once a leadership position has been decided…something totally foreign to the way the US does business with a Presidential election every four years thus FP changes and or the continuation of existing policy until the next President comes in…then sudden and usually complete changes of directions. Here is the advantage of an authoritarian system...

Yet conversely, such authoritarian states see patterns in the chaos of democratic foreign policy. To Moscow and Beijing, Operation Odyssey Dawn in 2011 is merely a continuation of Operation Allied Force in 1999: NATO being used as an offensive military alliance in pursuit of American imperialism. They do not believe in or understand the dynamics of democracy, much as they doubtless believe that spontaneous peaceful protests never occur without a hidden foreign hand.

Next problem they did not address is the internal power structures of the old SU vs the new Russia....in some ways if one looks closely there has been little difference...but there is as the power players are much stronger now and are much more vocal in their defense of their individual power structures...take the Russian Orthodox Church…viewed under the Soviets as undermined by the KGB and distrusted by Russians and a haven for military draft dodgers is now a major FP player both internally and externally...and carries a major voice in all political over the border Russian decisions as well as setting the ideological stance inside Russia...Same goes for the Russian transnational gangs that were largely controlled and used by the KGB, but now have their own internal and external power foundations and are an accepted part of Russian decision making...and used to extend Russian overseas reach especially in the areas of black money...black ops and hacking...

Agreed. Russian power is now based upon a dynamic, fluid and inherently unstable blend of various state and non-state actors and special interests. It is difficult to say whether this fusion has strengthened or weakened the state. What happens when the consensus breaks down?

You will notice that during the SU their actions were far more controlled and measured actually far more conservative in nature...now Russian actions are not...they are used as a political war driver...In some aspects I miss that simple fact that the writers totally overlooked the Putin single driver right now…a political war against what Putin views to be neoliberalism in all its forms as represented by the US...that he has voiced a number of times since Crimea…why that was missed in their "words review" is also interesting...

This is where it becomes clear that Putin is no grand strategist. He should have known from the outset that cooperation with the West was impossible, because free, democratic, prosperous and secure societies were a threat-in-being to the unfree and undemocratic society that Putin wanted to build on the assumption that such a society was necessary for prosperity and security. Putin’s early flirtations with the West were opportunistic and tactical. He finally realized that conflict was inevitable and expressed his concerns at Munich in 2007, using his words. He later conveyed his concerns with action in Georgia in 2008.

I do believe that Putin was wrong-footed by the Western reaction to the Russo-Georgian War, particularly the media portrayal of Russia as an invader and war criminal, whereas Georgia was fighting to uphold Western values. By the time that the dust had settled and T’bilisi’s less-than-innocent role as instigator became clear, months had passed and the West no longer cared whether Georgian tanks had fired into basements or the Georgians had used cluster munitions. I believe that this public relations disaster in 2008 was the impetus for the well-oiled propaganda machine that Putin subsequently built.

Or can the authors actually state that Assad with massive Putin military support has been totally focused on the destruction inside Syria of both IS and AQ...

Indeed. I noted this major flaw in my introduction to the article.

Apparently the authors overlooked the repeated statements by both Russian FM Lavrov and Putin since 2004 that envisioned a geo political economic/political zone running from the coastline of Portugal to the Russian Far East...ALL under the sphere of Russian influence...it is there and it must have been overlooked by the authors...BTW also repeated after their military annexation of Crimea...

I doubt that the talk of forming a Eurasian union including Europe, Russia, Central Asia and China will ever lead to anything. The cultural, linguistic, geographic and political barriers are simply too high. Russian isolationists compete with "Europeanists" and "Eurasianists", whilst the EU and SCO steadily advance. How can the “Third Rome” possibly compete with Brussels and Beijing? In addition to these two fronts, there is also a southern Muslim front...

Currently, Russia sees the western threat as more immediate than the eastern one. Arguably, Moscow would believe itself in conflict with the EU and NATO regardless of whether it sought to re-establish its former empire or whether it sought to be surrounded by neutral buffer states. Yet vacuums get filled and international relations is never static, so if the EU and NATO were dismantled tomorrow, Russia would inexorably fill the void. Therefore, one can conclude that Russia’s actions are at once defensive and offensive.