You may not be interested in Russia. But Russia is interested in you. Russia's 2022 attack on Ukraine saw confrontation between Moscow and the West spill over into open conflict once again. But Russia has also been waging a clandestine war against the West for decades. Hostile acts abroad, from poisoning dissidents to shooting down airliners, interfering in elections, spying, hacking and murdering, have long seemed to be the Kremlin's daily business. But what is it all for? Why does Russia consistently behave like this? And what does it achieve? In this book, Keir Giles explains how and why Russia pushes for more power and influence wherever it can reach, far beyond Ukraine - and what it means not just for governments, but for ordinary people. Bringing together stories from the military, politics, diplomacy, espionage, cyber power, organised crime and more, Giles describes how Moscow conducts its campaigns across the globe, and how nobody is too unimportant to be caught up in them. By lifting the lid on the daily struggle going on behind the scenes to protect governments, businesses, societies and people from Russian hostile activity, Russia's War On Everybody shows how Moscow's hostile intentions for the rest of the world are far broader and more ambitious, and the ways it tries to achieve them far more pervasive and damaging, than we realise.

At the time of this writing, the events during the 2016 presidential election campaign have focused intense attention on the dangers of hostile cyber and information operations by foreign powers. The legality under international law of this kind of interference in another state s information space has been the subject of long discussion, both bilaterally between the United States and other major cyber powers, and internationally at the United Nations (UN) and elsewhere. In this Letort Paper, completed in late 2015, British researcher Keir Giles provides a guide to the various and conflicting trends in this debate. As a long-term scholar of the Russian approach to cyber policy and legality in cyberspace, Giles places the discussion, and U.S. concerns, in an international context. In particular, he explains the deep ideological divides on the correct course of action to take between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and a large group of nations led by Russia and China on the other.

Russia s military interventions in Ukraine from 2014, and Syria from 2015, caused widespread surprise among Western policy communities, including in the United States. However, as the British scholar of Russia, Keir Giles, explains in this Letort Paper, these interventions represented the culmination of two well-established trends that had been clearly identified by Russia-watchers over preceding years. These were first, a mounting perception of direct threat against Russia from the West, and second, Russia s own greatly increased capability for military or other action to respond to this perceived threat. Mr. Giles highlights the specific security preoccupations of Russian leaders over decades, not always perceptible outside Russia, which lead them to entirely different interpretations of current events from those taken for granted in the West.

In November 2014, tense negotiations over the status of Iran's nuclear program resulted in a 7-month extension of a compliance deadline. In June 2015, negotiators will once again be grappling with the same intractable issues, where neither Iran nor the United States and its allies appear able to make the substantive concessions that would be necessary for a permanent agreement. This monograph, completed ahead of the November 2014 deadline, examines some of the underlying factors which will be constant in dealing with Iran under President Hassan Rouhani, and which will help determine the success or failure of talks in 2015. It surveys Rouhani's eventful first year in office in order to provide pointers to what may be possible-and to some key limiting factors-for Iran under his leadership. During that time, Rouhani was forced to balance his own progressive instincts with the instinctual caution of more conservative elements of the Iranian ruling elite.

In a time of rapid change for the U.S. Army, it is essential to retain awareness of how potential adversaries are also developing their concepts of Landpower. This Letort Paper, written by an influential Russian general, lays out an authoritative view on the importance of substantial conventional land forces, as seen from Moscow. The year 2014 was an eventful one for the Russian military, opening with the seizure of Crimea, continuing through ongoing operations in and near Ukraine, and culminating with the issue of a new Military Doctrine reflecting what Russia describes as new security realities in Europe. All of these circumstances have drawn attention back to the challenge to U.S. interests posed by the Russian military. The issue of this Paper is therefore especially timely. The author, Major General Aleksandr Rogovoy, is a professor at the Russian General Staff Academy with a substantial record of academic and operational experience, and a direct contributor to the drafting of Russia's 2014 Military...

The focus on Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014-15 has obscured other areas of contention which previously were prominent and problematic in relations between the United States and Russia. One such area is the strenuous Russian objection to U.S. plans for ballistic missile defense, most recently in the form of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). At some point in the near future, the issue of missile defense will once more be on the table with Russia; whether as a result of a relaxation of tensions allowing renewed bilateral discussion of security issues, or indeed because of an immediate threat of Russian escalatory action in response to the United States rolling out missile defense capabilities. In either case, U.S. policymakers and negotiators need to be prepared and fully acquainted with the wide range of issues at stake. In this respect, both the current monograph and its predecessor, European Missile Defense and Russia, provide an essential grounding...

Because of the seamlessly international nature of the Internet, effective cyber security demands close cooperation with allies and friends overseas. Yet, because of the relatively young status of the discipline, national approaches to organizing and providing for cyber defense vary widely even among those countries whose interests are most closely aligned with those of the United States. The result is that the bodies and structures responsible for cyber defense, and their affiliations and mandates, can be difficult to understand. In this Letort Paper, British cyber policy researcher Keir Giles and German computer security specialist Kim Hartmann provide an overview of four different national approaches to cyber defense: those of Norway, Estonia, Germany, and Sweden. While providing a useful guide for engagement with the relevant governmental and other organizations in each of these countries, the Paper also compares and contrasts the advantages and drawbacks of each national approach.

In this timely monograph, British authors Mr. Keir Giles and Dr. Steve Tatham fuse key lessons from two disparate theaters to argue persuasively for greater education of Army personnel in human terrain disciplines. Dr. Tatham, an expert in strategic communications and influence operations with extensive experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mr. Giles, a long-term scholar of Russian military and political decisionmaking processes, both contribute a wealth of accessible examples and anecdotes to argue their case for greater investment in human domain skills, both as an insurance against future conflict and in order to prevail in that conflict should it be joined. Drawing on a range of sources across social science and linguistics, they make the crucial point that both commanders and junior personnel must be not only prepared but also educated to set aside their cultural, social, and even linguistic preconceptions in order to accurately assess the options open to an adversary.

The recent history of the conversation with Russia over plans for European missile defense has been one of repeated and unsuccessful attempts to allay strongly worded Russian concerns. None of these attempts has mitigated Russia's trenchant opposition to U.S. plans. At times, this opposition can appear based on grounds which are spurious or incomprehensible. In this monograph, Mr. Keir Giles, a British academic and long-term scholar of Russia, examines the history of missile defense, and the current dialogue, from a Russian perspective in order to explain the root causes of Russian alarm. He presents specific recommendations for managing the Russia relationship in the context of missile defense. Important conclusions are also drawn for the purpose of managing the dialogue over missile defense plans not only with Russia as an opponent, but also with European North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies as partners and hosts.

While conflict in cyberspace is not a new phenomenon, the legality of hostile cyber activity at a state level remains imperfectly defined. While there is broad agreement among the United States and its allies that cyber warfare would be governed by existing law of armed conflict, with no need for additional treaties or conventions to regulate hostilities online, this view is not shared by many nations that the United States could potentially face as adversaries. A range of foreign states use definitions for cyber conflict that are entirely different from our own, extending to different concepts of what constitutes online hostilities and even a state of war. This leads to a potentially dangerous situation where an adversary could be operating according to an entirely different understanding of international law to that followed by the United States. In this Letort Paper, Mr. Keir Giles uses Russian-language sources and interviews to illustrate the very distinct set of views on the nature of conflict...

The questionable performance of the Russian armed forces in the conflict in Georgia in 2008 provided the impetus for a program of far-reaching reform in the Russian military. The progress of this reform has been the subject of intensive study, including in a number of monographs issued by the Strategic Studies Institute. But as Mr. Keir Giles and Dr. Andrew Monaghan describe in this Paper, the most recent phase of military transformation in Russia allows conclusions to be drawn about the final shape of the Russian military once the process is complete-and about the range of threats, some of them unrecognizable to us, that is guiding that process. In this monograph, the authors use a wide range of Russian language sources and interviews to illustrate not only the Russian threat assessments highlighting the United States as a potential aggressor, but also the many unique challenges facing Russia in renewing and rearming its military.

An apparent lack of interest by Russia in Sub-Saharan Africa over recent years masks persistent key strategic drivers for Moscow to re-establish lost influence in the region. A preoccupation with more immediate foreign policy concerns has temporarily interrupted a process of Russia reclaiming relationships that were well-developed in the Soviet period in order to secure access to mineral and energy resources which are crucial to Russia's economic and industrial interests, as well as both existing and new markets for military arms contracts. Russian policy priorities in Africa provide both challenges and opportunities for the U.S. nuclear nonproliferation, as well as energy security for the United States and its European allies. Russian development of key resources in southern Africa should be observed closely. Russian trade with the region is significantly underdeveloped, with the exception of the arms trade, which Russia can be expected to defend vigorously if its markets are challenged, including...

From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world and its place in it that the West can best meet the Russian challenge.Russia and the West are like neighbors who never seem able to understand each other. A major reason, this book argues, is that Western leaders tend to think that Russia should act as a "rational" Western nation even though Russian leaders for centuries have thought and acted based on their country's much different history and traditions. Russia, through Western eyes, is unpredictable and irrational, when in fact its leaders from the czars to Putin almost always act in their own very predictable and rational ways. For Western leaders to try to engage with Russia without attempting to understand how Russians look at the world is a recipe for repeated disappointment and frequent crises. Keir Giles, a senior expert on Russia at Britain's prestigious Chatham House, describes how Russian leaders have used consistent doctrinal and strategic approaches to the rest of the world. These approaches may seem deeply alien in the West, but understanding them is essential for successful engagement with Moscow. Giles argues that understanding how Moscow's leaders think not just Vladimir Putin but his predecessors and eventual successors will help their counterparts in the West develop a less crisis-prone and more productive relationship with Russia.