Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe

Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe
Author:
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1510739882

The official U.S. government report on Russian interference in democracy around the world! Most Americans were surprised to learn of Russian efforts to manipulate the results of the 2016 presidential election, and have become increasingly concerned about the vulnerabilities of our democracy. Here for the first time in an official U.S. government report is the fascinating and detailed account of how ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin has used computer hackers, official state spy agencies, and even Russian organized crime thugs over the past thirty years to achieve his policy agenda?not only for Russian political domination, but also for his own enrichment and the enrichment of the oligarchs who control almost all aspects of the Russian economy. This complete report includes chapters on: Putin’s Rise and Motivations Manipulation and Repression Inside Russia Old Active Measures and Modern Malign Influence Operations Weaponization of Civil Society, Ideology, Culture, Crime, and Energy Kremlin Interference in Semi-Consolidated Democracies and Transitional Governments Kremlin Interference in Consolidated Democracies Multilateral and U.S. efforts to Counter the Kremlin’s Asymmetric Arsenal In Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe, we learn about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power through the KGB to mayor of St. Petersburg and eventually as head of the Russian state. We discover the history of how Putin used classic Cold War KGB tactics by weaponizing civil society, culture, ideology, and Russia’s criminal element against the nascent Russian democracy by cultivating and using ties to NGOs, thinktanks, extremist political groups, the Russian orthodox church, industrial and energy policy, and the Russian Mafia. We also see how the Kremlin then exported this political extortion, intimidation, and monetary corruption first to its Eastern European neighbors, then their western partners in the European Union, and how it has now landed on America’s shores. Just as certain people in the intelligence community became increasingly alarmed at the growing strength and sophistication of Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s, the senators and staffers of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations are giving the nation fair warning of a 9/11-level assault on the United States, this time by Russia’s spy agencies. Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe reveals not only the history of Russia’s devastating tactics, but how to recognize and counter them.

Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe

Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe
Author: Committee on Foreign Relations United St
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-01-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781983764868

For years, Vladimir Putin's government has engaged in a relentless assault to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin's Kremlin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes military invasions, cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, and the weaponization of energy resources, organized crime, and corruption. The Kremlin has refined the use of these tools over time and these attacks have intensified in scale and complexity across Europe. If the United States fails to work with urgency to address this complex and growing threat, the regime in Moscow will become further emboldened. It will continue to develop and refine its arsenal to use on democracies around the world, including against U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020. The threat posed by Mr. Putin's meddling existed before the current U.S. Administration, and may well extend beyond it. The Russian government's malign influence operations can be deterred. Several countries in Europe took notice of the Kremlin's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election and realized the danger posed to their democracies. They have taken steps to build resilience against Mr. Putin's aggression and interference, and the range of effective measures implemented by European countries provide valuable lessons for the United States.

Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe

Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe
Author: Sampson
Publisher: Student Study Guides
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2019-01-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781643542515

In Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe, we learn about Vladimir Putin's rise to power through the KGB to mayor of St. Petersburg and eventually as head of the Russian state. We discover the history of how Putin used classic Cold War KGB tactics by weaponizing civil society, culture, ideology, and Russia's criminal element against the nascent Russian democracy by cultivating and using ties to NGOs, thinktanks, extremist political groups, the Russian orthodox church, industrial and energy policy, and the Russian Mafia. We also see how the Kremlin then exported this political extortion, intimidation, and monetary corruption first to its Eastern European neighbors, then their western partners in the European Union, and how it has now landed on America's shores.

Ill Winds

Ill Winds
Author: Larry Diamond
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0525560645

*Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award* From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count. In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."

Mr. Putin REV

Mr. Putin REV
Author: Fiona Hill
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2015-02-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 081572618X

Fiona Hill and other U.S. public servants have been recognized as Guardians of the Year in TIME's 2019 Person of the Year issue. From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West. Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go? The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order in decades. Russia's 8,000 nuclear weapons underscore the huge risks of not understanding who Putin is. Featuring five new chapters, this new edition dispels potentially dangerous misconceptions about Putin and offers a clear-eyed look at his objectives. It presents Putin as a reflection of deeply ingrained Russian ways of thinking as well as his unique personal background and experience. Praise for the first edition: “If you want to begin to understand Russia today, read this book.”—Sir John Scarlett, former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) “For anyone wishing to understand Russia's evolution since the breakup of the Soviet Union and its trajectory since then, the book you hold in your hand is an essential guide.”—John McLaughlin, former deputy director of U.S. Central Intelligence “Of the many biographies of Vladimir Putin that have appeared in recent years, this one is the most useful.”—Foreign Affairs “This is not just another Putin biography. It is a psychological portrait.”—The Financial Times Q: Do you have time to read books? If so, which ones would you recommend? “My goodness, let's see. There's Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy. Insightful.”—Vice President Joseph Biden in Joe Biden: The Rolling Stone Interview.

Russian Information Warfare

Russian Information Warfare
Author: Bilyana Lilly
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1682477479

Russian Information Warfare: Assault on Democracies in the Cyber Wild West examines how Moscow tries to trample the very principles on which democracies are founded and what we can do to stop it. In particular, the book analyzes how the Russian government uses cyber operations, disinformation, protests, assassinations, coup d'états, and perhaps even explosions to destroy democracies from within, and what the United States and other NATO countries can do to defend themselves from Russia's onslaught. The Kremlin has been using cyber operations as a tool of foreign policy against the political infrastructure of NATO member states for over a decade. Alongside these cyber operations, the Russian government has launched a diverse and devious set of activities which at first glance may appear chaotic. Russian military scholars and doctrine elegantly categorizes these activities as components of a single strategic playbook —information warfare. This concept breaks down the binary boundaries of war and peace and views war as a continuous sliding scale of conflict, vacillating between the two extremes of peace and war but never quite reaching either. The Russian government has applied information warfare activities across NATO members to achieve various objectives. What are these objectives? What are the factors that most likely influence Russia's decision to launch certain types of cyber operations against political infrastructure and how are they integrated with the Kremlin's other information warfare activities? To what extent are these cyber operations and information warfare campaigns effective in achieving Moscow's purported goals? Dr. Bilyana Lilly addresses these questions and uses her findings to recommend improvements in the design of U.S. policy to counter Russian adversarial behavior in cyberspace by understanding under what conditions, against what election components, and for what purposes within broader information warfare campaigns Russia uses specific types of cyber operations against political infrastructure.

House of Trump, House of Putin

House of Trump, House of Putin
Author: Craig Unger
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1524743518

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The story Unger weaves with those earlier accounts and his original reporting is fresh, illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier.”—The Washington Post House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin’s long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and Mafia kingpins had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991—that it merely evolved, with Trump’s apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump’s sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia’s phoenix like rise from the ashes of the post–Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world. The appearance of key figures in this book—Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and Felix Sater to name a few—ring with haunting significance in the wake of Robert Mueller’s report and as others continue to close in on the truth.

The Lands in Between

The Lands in Between
Author: Mitchell A. Orenstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190936169

Russia's stealth invasion of Ukraine and its assault on the US elections in 2016 forced a reluctant West to grapple with the effects of hybrid war. While most citizens in the West are new to the problems of election hacking, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, influence operations by foreign security services, and frozen conflicts, citizens of the frontline states between Russia and the European Union have been dealing with these issues for years. The Lands in Between: Russia vs. the West and the New Politics of Russia's Hybrid War contends that these "lands in between" hold powerful lessons for Western countries. For Western politics is becoming increasingly similar to the lands in between, where hybrid warfare has polarized parties and voters into two camps: those who support a Western vision of liberal democracy and those who support a Russian vision of nationalist authoritarianism. Paradoxically, while politics increasingly boils down to a zero sum "civilizational choice" between Russia and the West, those who rise to the pinnacle of the political system in the lands in between are often non-ideological power brokers who have found a way to profit from both sides, taking rewards from both Russia and the West. Increasingly, the political pathologies of these small, vulnerable, and backwards states in Europe are our problems too. In this deepening conflict, we are all lands in between.

Fallout

Fallout
Author: John Solomon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1642935727

"This book is a MUST BUY!" – President Donald J. Trump "The Russia and Ukraine scandals are unraveled, corruption and greed exposed. No one is better at uncovering the truth than these two investigative journalists." – Gregg Jarrett, FOX News legal analyst and author of the #1 NYT bestsellers The Russia Hoax and Witch Hunt An exhaustively researched book that reads like an investigative thriller, Fallout reveals how Obama’s “Russian Reset” led to corruption, scandal, and a desperate bid to impeach Donald Trump. In 2015, a major story broke exposing Hillary Clinton’s role in approving the sale of American uranium assets to the Russian state nuclear agency, Rosatom. Not only did the sale of Uranium One put 20 percent of America’s domestic uranium supply under the control of Vladimir Putin, there was also evidence that the Clintons themselves had hugely profited from the deal. When presidential candidate Donald Trump made Uranium One the centerpiece of his “Crooked Hillary” attacks, the Clinton team feared its potential to damage Hillary’s campaign. Others in the Obama-Biden camp worried that if elected, Trump would expose their role in selling out America’s security to Putin. Their desperate need to neutralize the issue led them to launch an unprecedented investigation into the Trump campaign’s purported ties to Russia. The infamous Steele dossier, produced by Clinton-connected Fusion GPS, sparked an investigation under FBI Director James Comey. Instead of ending after the election, the investigation grew bigger, eventually leading to Comey’s firing and the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. When Mueller failed to find grounds for impeachment, Democrats seized on an ambiguous phone call with the Ukrainian president as a pretext to remove Trump from office. This gambit blew up in their faces when it exposed the secrets that Democrats tried hard to keep buried. An indispensable guide to the hidden background of recent events, Fallout shows how Putin’s bid for nuclear dominance produced a series of political scandals that ultimately posed one of the greatest threats to our democracy in modern American history.

Digital Dictators

Digital Dictators
Author: Ilan Berman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2018-11-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538119919

The 2016 elections in the United States exposed a massive campaign of subversion and interference carried out by Russia and aimed at undermining the inner workings of American democracy. But that disinformation offensive represents just one part of a larger challenge now confronting the United States - the weaponization of news and views, both real and fabricated, by repressive regimes and radical non-state actors in order to advance their strategic objectives. In this volume, leading scholars and experts chart the rise of this "authoritarian media" phenomenon and explore its implications for U.S. foreign policy and America's standing in the world.