Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 44

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
tentions, causing the opponent to make
wrong decisions and thereby playing
into one’s own hand” (Kamphuis 2018).
Essentially, Maskirovka is an art of deception
and psychological manipulation.
Russia applied Maskirovka on a
large scale and immediately utilized it
against the United States following the
end of WWII. Russia sought to control
the way the United States perceived Soviet
nuclear development capabilities
and allowed for the beginning of the
nuclear arms race (Ziegler 2008). In
summary, understanding Maskirovka is
integral for understanding how Soviet
doctrine incorporates deception and an
understanding of their adversary’s perceptions.
How does Maskirovka fit into
RCT? While Maskirovka on its own is
the integrated concept of deception,
RCT is more than “controlling the perceptions
of adversaries”—it is the process
to control their decision-making
process. Deception is just one piece of
the overall puzzle. RCT was founded
by Vladimir Lefebvre, who, in his own
words, believed the concept of disinformation
in military doctrine “seemed to
me too narrow, because the important
thing is not so much cheating an enemy
as controlling his decision-making,
and to conduct reflexive control, we
have to start with constructing an enemy’s
model” (Murphy 2018). Clearly,
Lefebvre’s formulation of RCT theory
required extensive understanding of its
intended victims, and the USSR did just
that. In 1982, James Phillips, a senior
research at the Heritage Foundation,
wrote an exposé on the Institute for US
and Canadian studies, a Soviet-based
organization that purported to be akin
to the typical independent, US, Washington-based
think-tank. The true story
was much more sinister. Far from being
an academic institution dedicated
to the furthering of cultural research
for the sake of academia, the Institute
primarily took direction from the
Committee of the Communist Party of
the USSR and, more specifically, their
International Affairs department. This
institute, rife with connections to the
Soviet Politburo, Soviet academia, and
the GRU, provided an excellent center
of information to enable true usage of
RCT (Phillips 1982).
Russia further applied RCT in a
concrete example at the height of the
Cold War. During a military parade and
international show of force, the Soviets
went out of their way to place deliberate
indicators among the show for Western
military attachés and other intelligence
collecting assets to observe. In particular,
the Soviets manufactured multiple
fake, larger intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs) that appeared to
support longer than currently believed
maximum ranges and the capability
of employing multiple warheads per
ICBM. Using the tenets of RCT, Soviet
planners did this with the understanding
that the gathered intelligence would
then make its way back to Western decision-makers
and lead them to decide
upon further intelligence gathering.
“Getting into the heads” of said decision-makers,
the Soviets had already
created multiple collateral intelligence
trails which would be picked up in other
intelligence avenues and corroborate
deliberately intended conclusions
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