According to a federal indictment unsealed in Florida last week, Russian intelligence agencies chose to use several American political groups as part of a “bad influence campaign” to sow strife, spread pro-Russian propaganda and interfere in elections in the United States. Officer, I understand the strategy, and it shows the escalation of hostility that Moscow doubled down on with the attack on the US Capitol and US support for Ukraine on January 6, 2021. Unlike bots and remote hackers, this is an on-the-ground covert operation at work.
This tactic is nothing new to Russian security services: it has been used since the czars and is often referred to as “social engineering” or zubatovshina, a reference to the czar’s spy chief, Sergei Zubatov, who successfully executed it for a time. The tsar used this method as part of his efforts to weaken revolutionary groups. Zubatov’s agents secretly infiltrated revolutionary groups, falsified their speeches, and used financial support to direct their activities. Now, according to this federal indictment, Russia is doing just that on American soil with American political groups. The consequences, if not corrected, can be significant.
Russia has turned to these methods in times of crisis. When Zubatov launched his covert action campaign, the tsarist empire was reeling from several significant security problems: in 1878, the governor-general of St. Petersburg was shot and the head of the secret police was killed. In the year In 1880, a bomb exploded in the Winter Palace, where the Tsar regularly dined. And in 1881 Alexander II, the so-called liberator of the Tsar, was assassinated. After the Tsar’s assassination, his successor, Tsar Alexander III, used several methods of attack before turning to Zubatovshina in the early 20th century.
The Russian leadership sees the present as a time of crisis. In Ukraine, her plan to win has been thwarted by unexpected and intimidating opposition, and she has become an international pariah struggling under a growing sanctions regime. And imagine what conclusions Vladimir Putin may have drawn from the intelligence report he unquestionably received with his morning coffee on January 7, 2021: The United States is vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation beyond imagination.
Zhubatovshchyna Tsarist did not save Russia from revolution – and there is no reason for America to reduce its support for Ukraine. But the U.S. national security establishment has to carefully consider the extent of hostility between Moscow and Washington, and it bears similarities to the early Cold War animosity.
American diplomat George Kennan, who advocated containment policies to limit Soviet expansion, warned that a more hostile Soviet Union would require the United States to come to terms with it. As Keenan explained in 1948, “The Kremlin’s character of political warfare has become more sophisticated and effective than any in history.” But we are handicapped by our popularity with the concept of the fundamental difference between peace and war… If we engage in the Kremlin’s political warfare with full force, we cannot afford to abandon our uncollected resources to covert political warfare.
Lt. Gen. James Doolittle, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading the daring Doolittle raid on Japan in World War II, agreed with Kennan and concluded that the United States must employ more powerful covert action techniques to survive. Doolittle realized that many Americans would be disgusted by his comment, but he concluded that it was necessary.[h]If it is not accepted, the rules of human conflict do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fair-play’ must be revisited. We must develop effective intelligence and intelligence services and learn to destroy, neutralize and destroy our enemies using more intelligent, sophisticated and effective methods than those they use against us. It may be important for the American people to recognize, understand, and support this fundamentally repulsive philosophy.
Memories of the Cold War need not guide all responses or prompt us to act hastily, but they are instructive, and it would be naïve to ignore the seriousness of Russian intelligence’s acquisition of US political groups through a clandestine covert campaign. America. Unfortunately, we may all need to familiarize ourselves with Kenan and Doolittle’s basic offensive philosophy.
Michael Richter is a former intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and is now a private practice attorney. The views expressed here are his own.
