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The first week of March 2019 was very exciting for Western experts on Russian military affairs. On March 2, the Russian Academy of Military Sciences held its annual defense conference with Chief of the General Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, giving the keynote address. Two days later, official Ministry of Defense newspaper Krasnaya Zvesda published the main outlines of Gerasimov's speech, igniting a new wave of discourse on Russian military affairs among Western experts.1 The New York Times' claim that "Russian General Pitches 'Information' Operations as a Form of War" was augmented by an interpretation claiming that Gerasimov had unveiled "Russia's 'strategy of limited actions,'" which was "a new version of the 'Gerasimov Doctrine'" that was to be considered the "semi-official 'doctrine' of the Russian Armed Forces and its General Staff."2 Interestingly enough, this echo chamber-style interpretation of Gerasimov's speech emphasized only the one small part of it that discussed information/ propaganda/subversion/nonmilitary aspects of war. The main question, however, is whether this part deserves such attention-after all, this topic was discussed only in one short paragraph entitled "Struggle in Informational Environment." Was there something in his speech that deserved greater attention? And if so, why was it missed?
Did Russia Surprise the West? Or Was the West Surprised by Russia?
Since 2014, Western experts on Russian military affairs have been trying to understand the Russian discourse on the character of war in the 21st century, as it manifested itself in Ukraine and later in Syria. These attempts produced several terms, such as "Gerasimov Doctrine" and "Russian hybrid warfare."3 While these terms were initially popular in the professional and academic communities, they failed to endure. After all, Mark Galeotti, who introduced the term "Gerasimov Doctrine," publicly apologized for coining the phrase, and, as Dmitriy Adamsky predicted, an attempt to utilize the Western concept of hybrid warfare to define the Russian approach to war resulted in an inaccurate analysis of Russian modus operandi.4 This attempt to understand Russian military thought through the Western conceptual prism has had two main interconnected consequences. First, the West has been constantly failing to read the message coming from Moscow. Second, as an outcome of this failure, it has been repeatedly surprised by Russia. Fiona Hill, director of the Brookings Institution's Center...