The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss A Special Report presented by The Interpreter, a project of the Institute of Modern Russia imrussia.org interpretermag.com The Institute of Modern Russia (IMR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization—a think tank based in New York. IMR’s mission is to foster democratic and economic development in Russia through research, advocacy, public events, and grant-making. We are committed to strengthening respect for human rights, the rule of law, and civil society in Russia. Our goal is to promote a principles- based approach to US-Russia relations and Russia’s integration into the community of democracies. The Interpreter is a daily online journal dedicated primarily to translating media from the Russian press and blogosphere into English and reporting on events inside Russia and in countries directly impacted by Russia’s foreign policy. Conceived as a kind of “Inopressa in reverse,” The Interpreter aspires to dismantle the language barrier that separates journalists, Russia analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from the debates, scandals, intrigues and political developments taking place in the Russian Federation. CONTENTS Introductions ...................................................................... 4 Executive Summary ........................................................... 6 Background ......................................................................... 8 The Kremlin Tool Kit ........................................................ 14 The Weaponization of Information ...................................... 14 The Weaponization of Culture and Ideas ........................... 18 The Weaponization of Money ............................................... 22 The New, Non-Linear Internationale ............................. 24 Ukraine and the Advent of Non-Linear War .................. 29 Responses to 21st-Century Challenges ......................... 34 Defining Western Weak Spots ............................................... 34 Best Practices ........................................................................... 38 Recommendations ........................................................... 40 For Weaponization of Information ....................................... 40 For Weaponization of Money ................................................ 42 For Weaponization of Ideas ................................................... 42 Introductions am a journalist. Like most people in my profes- sian Orthodox Church and compatriot organiza- I sion, and indeed most who value liberal democ- tions abroad as elements of a belligerent foreign racy, I consider freedom of speech and freedom policy that aims to subvert other countries? And of information to be sacred. More debate, more things get even more complex when we come to polyphony, will eventually lead to new ideas and the idea of financial interdependence. The global- generate progress. The story of the 20th century ization of markets, the theory goes, will lead to was also the story of the battle against censor- the sublimation of conflict into peaceful com- ship. But what happens when a powerful actor merce. But rather than seeing globalization as a systematically abuses freedom of information to chance for all to rise together, the Kremlin sees spread disinformation? Uses freedom of speech it as a mechanism for enabling aggression and an in such a way as to subvert the very possibility of opportunity to divide and rule. a debate? And does so not merely inside a coun- try, as part of vicious election campaigns, but as The challenges the Kremlin is posing are dis- part of a transnational military campaign? Since tinctly 21st-century ones. Feeling itself relatively at least 2008, Kremlin military and intelligence weak, the Kremlin has systematically learnt to thinkers have been talking about information not use the principles of liberal democracies against in the familiar terms of “persuasion,” “public them in what we call here “the weaponization of diplomacy” or even “propaganda,” but in wea- information, culture and money,” vital parts of ponized terms, as a tool to confuse, blackmail, the Kremlin’s concept of “non-linear” war. The demoralize, subvert and paralyze. danger is that these methods will be copied by other countries or strong, malevolent non-state Like freedom of information, free dialogue be- actors. New ideas and tools are needed to deal tween cultures is key to the liberal vision of glo- with this. Such is the purpose of this paper. balization. The more cultural exchange we have, the more harmony we will have. But what should we do when the Kremlin begins to use the Rus- Peter Pomerantsev ne of the stranger aspects of 21st-century of the US-Russian “reset” in 2009. “Let me tell Ogeopolitics has been the West’s denial that you that no one wishes the re-election of Barack it has an adversary or enemy in Vladimir Putin. Obama as US president as I do,” the placeholder Whether out of wishful thinking, naiveté, or president Dmitry Medvedev told the Financial cynicism, a useful myth was cultivated over the Times as recently as 2011; today, Prime Minister last fourteen years: namely, that the United States Medvedev wonders if Obama suffers from an and Europe had an honest partner or ally in the “aberration in the brain.” Kremlin, no matter how often the latter behaved as if the opposite were true. This myth blanket- If the ongoing catastrophe in Syria and the ed everything, from counterterrorism to nuclear Edward Snowden affair weakened the myth that de-proliferation to energy security to global fi- Russia desired true partnership or alliance with nance. And in spite of rather naked periods of dis- the West, then Putin’s annexation of Crimea and ruption—the pro-democracy “color revolutions” his invasion of eastern Ukraine destroyed it. Now in Europe and the Caucasus in 2004–2005, the the United States and Europe have been forced gas wars with Ukraine in 2005–2006, the Rus- to face the reality of a revanchist and militari- sian-Georgian War in 2008—the myth endured ly revitalized Russia with imperial ambitions. and was actually expanded upon with the advent International treaties that were meant to govern 4 the post–Cold War order have been torn up. Land The wisdom of Orwell must be combined with that was not so long ago the cynosure of the the savvy of Don Draper. worst atrocities of modernity has once again be- come an active war zone, above which commer- Russia combines Soviet-era “whataboutism” and cial airliners filled with hundreds of foreign-born Chekist “active measures” with a wised-up, post- innocents are blown out of the sky with impunity. modern smirk that says that everything is a sham. A former KGB lieutenant-colonel, rumored to be Where the Soviets once co-opted and repurposed the wealthiest man in Europe, stands an excellent concepts such as “democracy,” “human rights” chance of outstripping Josef Stalin’s tenure in and “sovereignty” to mask their opposites, the power and now speaks openly of invading five Putinists use them playfully to suggest that not separate NATO countries. As if to demonstrate even the West really believes in them. Gitmo, the seriousness of his threat, he dispatches fighter Iraq, Ferguson, BP, Jobbik, Schröder—all liberal- jets and long-range nuclear bombers into their ism is cant, and anyone can be bought. airspaces on a near weekly basis. A mafia state as conceived by an advertising Putin is many things, but he is no fool. The executive is arguably more dangerous than a inviolability of NATO’s Article V is now being communist superpower because ideology is no debated or questioned in major NATO capitals longer the wardrobe of politics but rather an with the underlying assumption being that one interchangeable and contradictory set of acces- day, this supposedly sacred covenant might be sories. “Let your words speak not through their torn up at the pleasure of an unpredictable and meanings,” wrote Czeslaw Milosz in his poem inscrutable authoritarian leader. Meanwhile, “Child of Europe”, “But through them against those same capitals, having queasily acceded to whom they are used.” sanctions against Russian state institutions and officials over Crimea and the Donbas are now How does one fight a system that embraces signaling their desire to help the Russian presi- Tupac and Instagram but compares Obama to a dent save himself from further misadventures so monkey and deems the Internet a CIA invention? as to return to business as usual, as quickly as That censors online information but provides possible. Where Lenin once spoke of capitalists a happy platform to the founder of WikiLeaks, selling him the rope by which he’d hang them, a self-styled purveyor of total “transparency”? Putin sees them happily fastening the noose That purports to disdain corporate greed and cel- around their own necks. ebrates Occupy Wall Street while presiding over an economy as corrupt as Nigeria’s? That casts This paper has one aim: to help those in gov- an Anschluss of a neighboring country using ernment, civil society and journalism assess the the grammar of both blood-and-soil nationalism nature of a powerful adversary in anticipation of and anti-fascism? This is why American social future conflicts with him. There is no better place reactionaries, Australian anarchists, British to start than in understanding how Putin seeks to anti-imperialists and Hungarian