A US Army study commissioned by the former President’s Secretary of the Army warned that a global information war launched by Putin in 2014 could escalate into a display of Russian power in Eastern Europe
A US Army study commissioned by the Trump administration four years ago not only anticipated escalating Russian aggression in Eastern Europe but described in detail how Putin’s ‘information war’ against the West – including “election interference” and “mass-produced misinformation” – could escalate into a Russian “demonstration of global power” in Eastern Europe.
The study, carried out by the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, was commissioned in 2018 by President Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, who would go on to serve as Trump’s Secretary of Defense.
Published in July 2020, the extraordinary study commissioned by the Trump administration concluded that Russia was engaged in a long-term military strategy against the West focusing on the use of worldwide information warfare as a mechanism to weaken Western institutions and extend Russia’s sphere of influence.
The UK’s approved 2016 Brexit referendum to separate from the EU is seen by many as the first step in unravelling that European order.
US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute
While President Trump had already gone on record in early 2018 downplaying Russian election meddling and claiming that “the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever”, the Trump administration’s own US Army study would go on to describe a whole host of Russian disinformation methods as an integral part of its wider military strategy.
The study vindicates journalist Carole Cadwalladr’s claim, which went viral on Twitter on Monday, that the invasion of Ukraine is an escalation of the “first Great Information War” launched by President Vladimir Putin in 2014.
The study referred to evidence of “interference in political processes” in relation to both the Trump and Brexit elections, suggesting that Britain’s departure from the European Union was “the first step in unravelling that European order” – a longstanding ambition of Putin. It warned that Putin would likely escalate Russian aggression in Eastern Europe as a way to try to ward off inevitable economic and military decline.
The Great Information War
According to the 2020 US Army study, Putin’s strategy has been focused on using information warfare to undermine Western power rather than a direct military confrontation:
“Russia will avoid military operations that involve direct armed conflict with the West. Instead, Russia will focus on informational activities to discredit NATO, the EU, and member organisations and governments. Examples of these information-based operations include election interference, malign cyber activities, propaganda, and exploiting internal differences.”
The study refers to a statement from General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, who equated the expansion of Russian information operations as an integral dimension of a military strategy to weaken the enemy.
“The information space opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy,” he wrote in 2016. “It is necessary to perfect activities in the information space, including the defense of our own objects.”
The biggest danger of Russian information warfare is that it is “incredibly difficult to counter”, partly because it is almost impossible to recognise when and how an information war is actually being fought.
“Messages consist of outright fiction or partial truths, which enable Russian propagandists to create false narratives much faster than targets can counter them,” the study noted, acknowledging that Russia believes with good reason that NATO deploys similar techniques of disinformation against Russia.
Citing the former head of US European Command, the study argued that the escalation point of the Russian military strategy was from 2014 onwards – a year in which Russia launched “the mos