Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 78

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Since taking the reigns as Russia’s
leader, Putin has surprised the West
with a reinvigorated patriotic mobilization
and consolidation. The innerworkings
of which present “an unprecedented
challenge: a highly personalistic
authoritarianism, which is resurgent,
activist, inspired by a mission, prone to
risky behavior for both ideological reasons
and those of domestic political legitimacy,
and armed, at the latest count,
with 1,735 strategic nuclear warheads
...” (Aron 2016, 1). For better or for
worse, Putin is determined to control
Russia’s destiny personally. With the
unbendable components of authority
and nationalism, Putin considers his actions
justified and in the interest of Russian
society. He believes Russia’s “goal is
to reinforce our country, to make our
country better for life, more attractive ...
more valuable, to turn our country into
something that could respond swiftly to
the challenges of time. To strengthen it
from the internal political point of view,
and to strengthen our external political
stance as well. Those are the goals we
are pursuing. [Russia is] not trying to
please anyone” (Stone 2017, 205).
Whether a matter of fact or perception,
Putin has successfully resurrected
Russian legitimacy through a
series of domestic and international
successes. The transformational Russian
leader has forced the West to re-examine
and reconsider Russia’s relative power
and international standing. Moreover,
the entire Russian people now feel
that they have successfully provided the
world with a credible alternative to the
dominant and imposing liberal paradigm
(Nadskakuła‐Kaczmarczyk 2017).
Putin’s Propaganda Integration
“Although there are numerous
discussions between scholars
and military thinkers regarding
whether the Russian information
warfare is truly ‘a new way of war,’
a certain aspect of Russian strategy is
‘that information now has primacy and
operations, while a more conventional
military forces are in a supporting role’”
(Raţiu and Munteanu 2018, 193). Whatever
blend of information operations,
active measures, covert spying, political
warfare, or soft power initiatives
the Russian government sanctioned, it
was meant not only to influence policy,
but also to deliberately cause division
within a consolidated liberal Western
culture and security alliance (Chivvis
2017). Putin has ensured a “whole of
government” approach by forcibly and
deliberately integrating power politics,
propaganda methods, and select political
psychological theories. Through
a variety of mediums and modalities,
Russian propaganda once again has
tried to invade and cloud the cognitive
minds of a variety of target audiences in
an attempt to influence desired actions.
The new battleground, “from a Russian
perspective, is the people’s mind, the
necessity for hard military power being
minimized” (Raţiu and Munteanu 2018,
193). With this paradigm shift, the Russian
leadership has chosen to integrate
propaganda with calculated power politics
in its efforts to create tension, confusion,
doubt, and weakness by slowly
eroding faith in the institutions and systems
that have long served as the pillars
of liberal democracy (Chivvis 2017).
64