Discolored Revolutions: Information Warfare in Russia’s Grand Strategy

By Ben Sohl, Alum of The Fletcher School at Tufts University

The democratic West and the Russian Federation are in the midst of an information war. Or to be more precise, the Russian government is waging an information war against the West. While the notion that Moscow has been using information tools to undermine the West will not be new to most readers, what may be surprising is that Russia perceives this as a defensive conflict. In Moscow’s perception, Western governments have long been waging information warfare by using a grand strategy centered on democratic values that seeks to overthrow authoritarian regimes by creating and controlling democratizing civil resistance movements, also known as color revolutions. Unbeknownst to many in the West, the Kremlin believes that Western governments are deploying this strategy against Moscow to topple the regime of Vladimir Putin and replace it with a Western-style democracy. In response, the Kremlin has sought to develop its own color revolution weapon by copying what it believes the West is doing, except in its political inverse: instead of promoting liberal values to topple authoritarian governments, Moscow has engaged in a grand strategic pivot that centers illiberal, or what it calls “traditional” values—including racism, homophobia, and misogyny—in an information warfare strategy designed to undermine and eventually overthrow democratic systems…

Click to read the entire piece from The Washington Quarterly.