In other words, it is highly unlikely that there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia as a result of this deterioration in relations. It may even have the opposite effect: the West’s latest accusations play into the Kremlin’s long-term strategy of creating an image of Russia as an unpredictable and dangerous player, one that breaks all the global rules and therefore should be feared. Clearly, neither the shooting down of MH17 nor the bombing of civilian targets in Syria were actions planned in advance by Russia; but they come out of that high-risk environment created by Moscow in the post-Soviet space and in the Middle East, and are inevitable consequences of the hybrid war that Russia is waging around the world. Yet another act of this war was the decree signed by Vladimir Putin suspending the work of the intergovernmental agreement with the USA on the use of plutonium. Russia raises the stakes in the geopolitical game, showing everyone that it is willing to hold the West to nuclear blackmail (like the television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov – one of the Kremlin’s main propagandists – talking about reducing American cities to ‘radioactive ash’) and to dismantle all the agreements reached about nuclear weapons.
The Kremlin’s hybrid war is a policy of weakness and cunning in the information age. Having insufficient military, economic and diplomatic resources to achieve victory in Ukraine or Syria, Russia carries out precise operations so as to destabilize the situation in these two countries and provoke a confrontation with the West that it shies away from at the last moment. It conducts a powerful campaign of disinformation and propaganda with the aim of distorting the picture of what is going on and blurring the position of the West, which itself appears unclear and indecisive. The aim of hybrid warfare is the projection of unpredictability, chaos and fear; the creation of an unstable environment in which it is much easier to bluff when you hold weak cards in your hands.
In the twenty-first century, Russia’s principal export has become not oil and gas, but fear: the price of the former will fall over time; the price of the latter will rise. In the risk society that the leading contemporary philosophers and sociologists write about, from Ulrich Beck to Anthony Giddens, the winners are those who can create and capitalize on fear, turning it into a political and economic resource. In this, Russia is a leading player and provider. The manufacture of fear is part of the very essence of Russian history, both in Russia’s relations with the West and in the day-to-day relationship of the individual and the state. The system of international relations in the twenty-first century dates from 11 September 2001 (in Russia, slightly earlier – from September 1999, with the mysterious bombings of apartment blocks in Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, in which many saw the hand of the FSB). The structure of this system fits the scenarios laid out by Thomas Hobbes, who predicted anarchy in interstate relations and a ‘war of all against all’; but not that of Immanuel Kant, who sought ‘eternal peace’ in Europe. Putin’s Russia is one of the producers and beneficiaries of this Hobbesian world, in which its main resource – fear – and its main services – security measures – are in great demand. This is the classic strategy of the racketeer, who symbolically creates a threat, and then suggests ‘protection’ at a decidedly non-symbolic price.
The key word here is ‘weakness’. Having lost the Cold War and the postwar world, and having squandered its oil profits and the remaining shreds of its reputation, Russia is incapable of constructively solving the world’s problems. Instead, it prefers to make them worse. It doesn’t welcome and settle refugees from the Third World on its own territory; instead, it sends wave after wave of them into Western Europe across its land borders with Finland and Norway, using them as an instrument of hybrid warfare in order to deepen the migration crisis in Europe and provoke anti-immigrant sentiment there. It doesn’t solve humanitarian and political problems in Syria, but meddles in an already existing conflict with selfish geopolitical aims, thus taking it to an even higher level. It doesn’t assist the objective international investigation of the shooting down of MH17, but tries to knock it off course, constantly putting forward versions that contradict each other. And Russia didn’t cooperate with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and international sporting federations in order to eliminate the epidemic of doping in modern sport, but tried to discredit and destroy WADA with information overload and attacks by hackers.
And it has to be said that for now it is all working out well for Russia. The combined efforts of the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Ministry, the Russia Today (RT) television channel and the individual assault squads of ‘people’s diplomacy’ – from football fanatics in European stadiums and so-called ‘Orthodox bikers’ touring Europe to hackers and Internet trolls flooding Western networks – are ensuring that the export of fear and uncertainty is growing at maximum volume with minimum cost. The Russian threat seems to loom over the West on every corner: in the movement of Assad’s forces and the provocations of the Donetsk separatists; in any cyberattack, be it breaking into the servers of the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the USA, to attacks on Yahoo’s servers (which, the Internet company confirmed, were linked to Russian government agencies); in the unidentified submarines in the Baltic Sea; in the waves of migrants in European cities; and in the financing of Donald Trump and Marine le Pen. It no longer matters to what extent Moscow is linked to each of these episodes, or whether it was a carefully planned special operation or simply the actions of individual patriotic citizens. Russia has created a shimmering space of uncertainty in which its role is demonized and, most likely, exaggerated; but that’s exactly what Putin is trying to do.
The amount spent on the production of fear is minimaclass="underline" according to the RBK news agency, Russia’s operation in Syria came in at under one billion dollars: chickenfeed by Russian standards, the cost of just a few hours of the Sochi Olympics. As President Putin said cynically about Syria: ‘We can train our army there for quite a long time without having any real effect on state finances.’[17] Add in the cost of the Russia Today information agency, the work with the various Russian diasporas in the West and with politicians like Gerhard Schroeder and Silvio Berlusconi, and aid to right-wing populist and separatist parties in the West, and you still get a comparatively small sum; certainly, one that cannot be compared to the ruinous investments in the infrastructure of fear during the Cold War.
On the other hand, compared to thirty years ago the West today simply does not have either the necessary organization or the will to resist. Relaxed by a long period of peace, and demoralized by the postmodern, ‘post-heroic’ era, the West is passive, disunited and too dependent on consumerism: Russia exploits this weakness. Minimal funds were dug up to deal with the archetypal Russian threat, which had been dozing in the back of the West’s consciousness since Gorbachev’s time; but this threat has raised itself once more to its full height, like an emaciated bear coming out of hibernation in the spring. It is no coincidence that whenever their team plays away, Russian football fans – in the front row of Putin’s hybrid war – take with them huge banners with a roaring bear, or that the group of hackers who broke into the WADA server call themselves Fancy Bears. On their logo they have a bear wearing the Anonymous mask. Thirty years on, the symbolic economy of the Cold War has returned to its starting position: Russians blame Obama for everything, and Americans look for the Russian threat under the bed.