WORKING PAPERJANUARY 2023 No Water’s Edge: Russia’s Information War and Regime Security Gavin Wilde and Justin ShermanNo Water’s Edge: Russia’s Information War and Regime Security Gavin Wilde and Justin Sherman© 2022 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved. Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Please direct inquiries to: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Publications Department 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036 P: + 1 202 483 7600 F: + 1 202 483 1840 CarnegieEndowment.org This publication can be downloaded at no cost at CarnegieEndowment.org.Contents Summary 1 The Soviet Era and the “Hidden Hand” 1 After the Fall: The Compensatory Myth 4 Russian Information Doctrine Under Putin 6 Ukraine Tips the Scales 13 Conclusion 15 About the Authors 17 Notes 19 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 251 1Summary To the extent that any unified theory of Russian information warfare actually exists, its core tenet might well be that regime security has historically been indivisible from information warfare in Russian strategic thought. Rather than an aggressive or expansionist expression of Moscow’s foreign policy, the Kremlin’s so-called information war should primarily be viewed through a domestic and regime security prism—it’s as much a counterinsurgency as an expeditionary strategy, less an escalation than a projection. Analysts and decisionmakers should therefore avoid reflexively casting the United States and the West as Russia’s primary antagonists in its information war, as doing so risks reinforcing these insecurities and exaggerating Moscow’s degree of power in the information ecosystem. The Soviet Era and the “Hidden Hand” U.S. diplomat George Kennan, in his famous 1947 article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” suggested an interesting duality to the idea of information threats to the state—that they serve simultaneously destabilizing and legitimizing functions. Kennan wrote that “it lies in the nature of the mental world of the Soviet leaders, as well as in the character of their ideology, that no opposition to them can be officially recognized as having any merit or justification whatsoever. Such opposition can flow, in theory, only from the hostile and incorrigible forces of dying capitalism.” 2 | No Water’s Edge: Russia’s Information War and Regime SecurityHe then wrote, however, that: “As long as remnants of capitalism were officially recognized as existing in Russia, it was possible to place on them, as an internal element, part of the blame for the maintenance of a dictatorial form of society. But as these rem - nants were liquidated, little by little, this justification fell away; and when it was indicated officially that they had been finally destroyed, it disappeared altogether. And this fact created one of the most basic of the compulsions which came to act upon the Soviet regime: since capitalism no longer exist - ed in Russia and since it could not be admitted that there could be serious or widespread opposition to the Kremlin springing spontaneously from the liberated masses under its authority, it became necessary to justify the retention of the dictatorship by stressing the menace of capitalism abroad.”1 In accordance with that worldview, Kennan said, “all internal opposition forces in Russia have consistently been portrayed as the agents of foreign forces of reaction antagonistic to Soviet power.” At once, Kennan seemed to be suggesting that Soviet portrayals of foreign information threats were genuine—Communist Party officials did, in fact, believe that any information countering s