By Sheldon Greaves

Gerasimov to the Rescue?

Recent news stories about the Russian invasion of Ukraine report that Vladimir Putin has tapped General Valery Gerasimov to lead the Russian forces in an effort to rescue what has become an utter fiasco. This probably should have happened much sooner, since Gerasimov is widely regarded as one of the very few–perhaps the only–truly astute strategic mind in the Russian military.

One reason for this reputation is his association with the so-called Gerasimov Doctrine, a kind of hybrid warfare that essentially takes the famous dictum of Karl von Clausewitz to its logical conclusion, namely that politics is itself an instrument of warfare to be combined with more familiar tools of armed conflict. One ingredient of this is a variation on the old Soviet propaganda playbook dealing with the use of disinformation and psychological warfare. Where in the past propaganda was aimed at supporting friends and targeting enemies, Russian disinformation campaigns seek to support both friend and foe. The idea is to create a situation in which ordinary people come to believe that it is impossible to know what is actually going on. The resulting apathy and cynicism allows domestic politicians to get away with pretty much anything they want, because in such as atmosphere accountability is nearly impossible.

One can see this disinformation strategy at work in Russian efforts to disrupt the American electoral process, aided by their allies here in the U.S. who constantly tell their audiences that the news is unreliable while at the same time publishing unreliable news and giving credence to fanciful and even dangerous conspiracy theories.

The Downside of Disinformation

But while the application of this new disinformation strategy has worked well to insulate Putin against domestic accountability for his legal and ethical excesses, it has created a weakness that only became apparent after the initial setbacks in the invasion of Ukraine. The problem is that manufacturing industrial quantities of national cynicism comes with a high price tag paid for in national unity and trust. It a country embarks on something that requires a united national effort, unless there is sufficient trust in the government and its leadership, that effort is doomed to fail unless they enjoy immediate, overwhelming success.

Putin probably weighed those factors and decided that a quick victory was the most likely outcome, but obviously that did not happen. He now faces growing domestic resentment and opposition to the war at home and even faces the possibility of losing previous gains made in the Crimea. Much of this is not merely due to the incompetence of the Russian military and endemic corruption of a procurement process run by self-serving oligarchs.

There is a lesson here for parties here at home who draw political advantage from disinformation and propaganda campaigns aimed at creating and maintaining information bubbles for their supporters. Given the right set of circumstances, information environments decoupled from reality can undergo a kind of cascade failure that endangers both those targeted by disinformation, but those who spread it.