Mark Galeotti

Hybrid, ambiguous, and non-linear? How new is Russia’s ‘new way of war’?

Abstract Russia’s recent operations in Ukraine, especially the integrated use of militias, gangsters, information operations, intelligence, and special forces, have created a concern in the West about a ‘new way of war’, sometimes described as ‘hybrid’. However, not only are many of the tactics used familiar from Western operations, they also have their roots in Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian practice. They are distinctive in terms of the degree to which they are willing to give primacy to ‘non-kinetic’ means, the scale of integration of non-state actors, and tight linkage between political and military command structures. However, this is all largely a question of degree rather than true qualitative novelty. Instead, what is new is the contemporary political, military, technological, and social context in which new wars are being fought.

Turkish Organised Crime: From Tradition to Business

Turkish organised crime has traditionally been defined in terms of its cultural legacies, ethnic and clan loyalties and the failings of a state still going through a difficult transition to modernity and all-too-willing to co-opt gangsters into the ‘deep state’ dominating politics behind the facade of democracy. However, a colourful and increasingly mythologized underworld of ‘old men’, feuds and blood oaths is being swept away by the pressures and opportunities of the contemporary world, especially one in which Turkey’s location makes it an ideal bridge to and from the European Union. While Turkish-based gangs have been involved in trafficking a wide range of illegal commodities, from human beings to stolen cars, they are above all connected with the narcotics business, especially Afghan heroin. Having become Europe’s wholesale suppliers of heroin, they have diversified into a range of associated activities, from money laundering to other drugs, including methamphetamine, cannabis and Latin American cocaine. In the process, the pursuit of profit has eroded old loyalties and clan- and family-based forms of organisation, leading to the rise of a business-minded criminal elite willing and able to forge alliances across ethnic and national divides (including old splits between Kurds and ethnic Turks). While still powerful, the Turkish gangs are thus much less distinctive in the modern, globalised underworld.

Transnational Organized Crime: Law Enforcement as a Global Battlespace

As society becomes more complex, organized, transnational and interconnected, so too do criminals, and we are witnessing the globalization and inter-penetration of organized crime. As ‘old’, and ‘new’, security worlds merge, transnational organized crime will represent a threat to the state on a variety of levels: as force multiplier, to terrorists and insurgents; as covert weapon in inter-state conflicts; degrading security assets; and subverting national morale, identity and financial and political structures. One of the defining security issues of the 21st century will be the struggle between an ‘upperworld’, defined by increasingly open economic systems and democratic politics and an underworld willing and able to use and distort these trends for its own ends. This struggle will be played out within a battlespace as indefinite as it is ubiquitous, ranging from cyberspace, through the campaign to shape the ideals and habits of generations, to the overt struggles between states and criminals.

Policing Economic Crime in Russia. From Soviet Planned Economy to Privatization

Ukraine and Western Belarus. Machiavelli is cited to convince the reader that when it comes to defending the fatherland, what is important is not morality but effective measures to save and support the state. In addition, Stalin’s skilful diplomacy ensured the creation after 22 June 1941 of the anti-Hitler coalition. He played an important role in the big three in which Stalin participated as an equal. The role of Stalin in international affairs enabled the Soviet people to feel that they lived in a great country, a feeling that was lost with the arrival of ‘freedom and democracy’. In addition, his post-war nuclear programme provided the USSR with security for many years. Moreover, after the war Stalin realised the Pan-Slav goal of creating an alliance of Slav peoples headed by Russia. The basic message of the book is that ‘the events of the Stalinist epoch are for us not just vivid events from the past, but also beacons for the future—that future for which Russian Communists struggle’ (p. 268). This book was published in an edition of 12,000 and may well find plenty of readers. It will appeal to those nostalgic for the USSR. Whether the book is nationalist or imperialist is a matter for debate. The author repeatedly stresses the importance of Russia, its traditions, culture and achievements, but favours the revival of the USSR round the Russian nation and stresses the continuity of Stalin’s USSR and the Russian Empire while opposing the imposition of Soviet-style socialism elsewhere. Currently, for both economic and political reasons, the economic integration of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan is desirable but the ultimate goal is the voluntary recreation of a single union state for the peoples of the former USSR. Zyuganov’s book is significant for understanding the ideology of the CPRF. It is also additional evidence for the proposition that the Russian debate about Stalin, his life and activities is likely to persist for a long time. It is based partly on current politics, partly on feelings and emotions, partly on interests, partly on the experiences of millions of people now and in the past, partly on documents and is not confined to professional historians. Although about the past, the debate is influenced by perceptions of the current situation and is closely linked to the future evolution of Russia.

Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979–89

THE SPECTACLE OF WESTERN FORCES MIRED IN AFGHANISTAN, fighting a counter-insurgency they appear unable to win, and propping up a regime with only marginal authority and legitimacy in the country it claims to run, has given the Soviet Union’s 10-year adventure there a new relevance and poignancy. The brash claims by some within the Soviet elite that their troops would be out within six months, the sombre concerns of others that they might not really grasp the Afghans’ visceral mistrust of foreign invaders and interventionist central governments alike, the prevailing belief that ultimately Moscow had no choice but to act and then to escalate—all these seem disconcertingly familiar today. That said, it is striking how many myths about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan are still in circulation to this day, from overblown assertions that it was a war driven by expansionist intent, or which brought down the USSR, through to specific claims that the provision of American Stinger anti-air missiles reversed the tide of the war. Sir Rodric Braithwaite—in his time ambassador to Moscow and more recently the author of the excellent Moscow 1941—has a historian’s zeal in exposing these fallacies through this wide-ranging study of the war. In this, he draws on a wide survey of the Russian studies of the war, as well as conversations with Russians and Afghans with personal experiences of that vicious decade. The latter provide an interesting personal touch, even if they generally embellish rather than challenge the assessments found in the writings of analysts such as Les Grau and Artemy Kalinovsky in the West and Aleksandr Lyakhovskii in Russia. To say that there is not much new here, though, is technically accurate but also thoroughly disingenuous and fairly churlish, at that. The essential details covered in the book can all be found elsewhere, but nowhere else have all these numerous accounts been collected, compared, dissected and evaluated, let alone brought together into such a comprehensive and elegant narrative. If this is essentially a work of synthesis, it is a perfect example of how synthesis, at its highest level, can create something qualitatively different. From the nuts and bolts details of life and death in the Soviet 40th Army, to the fate of both veterans and their bereaved relatives, and the political–military calculations in Kabul and Moscow, Braithwaite has much to offer. This book is—and this is unlikely to surprise anyone who has read either of Braithwaite’s previous books—supremely well written, deftly navigating the treacherous path between bloodless detachment and impassioned dismay (more often at the thoughtlessness and clumsiness of the Kremlin rather than any malice). There is the occasional world-weary touch of irony that befits someone with many years’ experience as a Russia hand, but also an underlying humanity and compassion. This is especially evident in his treatment of the eponymous afgantsy, the veterans of the war. Despite the title, the book does not focus on their experiences, nor does it neglect them. While it is built around a chronological spine, there are also more thematic chapters that explore the lives of the soldiers, both during the war and afterwards. The war was EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Vol. 64, No. 2, March 2012, 369–388