For some background on recent U.S.-Russia tensions, The Cipher Brief spoke with expert and former member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service, Steven Hall. This is part of a regular series of webcasts allowing TCB members to engage directly with the experts.
BACKGROUND:
- Pompeo recently blamed Russia for interfering with the Venezuelan President's decision to leave his country in the midst of crisis. Russian officials denied it.
- President Putin held a recent meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un, and while we do not know what the two leaders discussed, the meeting was followed a few days later by a North Korean missile test. The missile that was fired appeared similar to an advanced Russian Iskander Missile, a highly accurate, short range weapon that can strike targets more than 150 miles away.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lovrov met recently in Moscow with Iran's Foreign Minister Javid Zarif, as Iran said it will no longer comply with some parts of a negotiated nuclear agreement that the U.S. abandoned in 2018.
THE BRIEFER
Steve Hall retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2015 after 30 years of running and managing intelligence operations in Eurasia and Latin America. He finished his career as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service, a very small cadre of officers who serve as the senior most leaders of the CIA's clandestine service.
Most of Steve's career was spent abroad overseeing intelligence operations in the former Soviet Union. As an executive at CIA Headquarters, he also focused on cyber threats, security, counterintelligence and counter terrorism. He has served as a chief of station overseas multiple times and has worked closely with the FBI, the U.S. military, the State Department, and a number of other government agencies, including working as the clandestine service’s senior liaison officer to the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee.
THE BRIEFING: RUSSIA’S GLOBAL AMBITIONS
The Cipher Brief: What is Russia’s overall goal with its actions in so many parts of the world right now?
Hall: When you take a look at what Russia is looking at geopolitically across the world, it breaks down into a number of different prioritizations. Almost sort of like a pyramid, if you will. At the very top, you have Vladimir Putin, who first and foremost is interested in Vladimir Putin. He's established an autocracy in Russia. His primary goal is to make sure that his autocracy is not disrupted. Putin wants to preserve his power structure now and into the foreseeable future.
The other thing he wants to do as you move down the pyramid, is to ensure that the west, and of course the United States is weakened and demoralized, and divided as much as possible. If you've got a divided western democratic system, if you've got a divided United States of America, if you have a NATO that is divided, then you strengthen Russia's hand, you strengthen Putin's hand, and that is something that is very attractive to him, so he's always going to be trying to do that.
Another thing that ties into all of that is that as the leader of Russia, Putin wants to convince the world that Russia remains a great power. That is the pipe dream that certainly Putin, and a lot of Russians sort of cling to - their historical position of being able to claim that they are a great power and able to project that power militarily, economically, and politically, worldwide. This is why you're seeing some of the things that we've recently seen in the news, such as Russia’s involvement in Syria, Venezuela, or North Korea.
The Cipher Brief: Understanding Putin’s mind set, what should the U.S. be doing as it considers Russia’s engagement strategy around the world?
Hall: If you look back over the past couple of decades, the U.S. has had a spotty record of being consistent when it comes to Russia. That stems from a number of different things. Some of it is just the natural democratic process. The U.S. has changes in Presidents and administrations, and members of Congress, all of whom have a little bit different skew on Russia. I’ve also seen a tendency for new Presidents to come into office thinking that because of their force of personality, they are going to be able to somehow reach out to Russia in a way that has not been done before and is going to basically change the nature of the U.S.-Russia relationship.
With the Obama Administration, you saw it with the reset. With previous administrations, you had Presidents looking into Putin's eyes. There are various iterations of this. It's kind of interesting to see President Trump, now that he at least is trying to convince himself and others that the whole Mueller Report issue is behind him, we’re beginning to see a little bit of the same comments from him and his administration. It’s almost as though after two years, he's trying to get into that honeymoon period.
One thing that the United States really needs to do, and has fallen down on recently, is to engage with Western allies to ensure that Russia understands that the west is unified and will be watching very carefully, Russia's activities, and will also deal with Russian misbehavior on the international scene.
That sort of thing is watched very carefully by Putin and by the Kremlin in Moscow. And when they see divisions in NATO or in the Western Alliance, they take that as a positive sign that what they're doing in terms of hybrid warfare, is proving successful in terms of dividing what Russia sees, as its enemies.
The Cipher Brief: What should we me making of the recent high-profile meetings that President Putin has held with foreign leaders lately? Will we continue to see more of that?
Hall: Yes, I think we will. I'm not sure that a big change from traditional Russian foreign policy. What has changed is now the Russians are exerting themselves and flexing their muscle a bit more internationally. The simplest way to think about it is Russian sees itself as the ambassador to, or the representative of the world's rogue states. So, you've got connections between Russia, obviously with Iran, with North Korea, and with the Maduro Administration in Venezuela.
Wherever they can, they will engage with those countries, because they know that's a counterpoint to U.S. and western liberal democracies’ power worldwide. The other thing the Russians are expert at doing, is either causing problems, or involving themselves in problems specifically with those countries, which then makes Putin the ‘go-to guy’, that the world has to turn to in order to resolve that situation. We saw a little bit of that in Syria. The Russians love to be in that position, because it checks all the boxes of all of the things Putin is interested in. So, yes, I think we're going to see more of that.
The Cipher Brief: President Trump had a phone call recently with President Putin. The two have had a number of private meetings, which obviously means the President is engaging in a very different strategy on his approach to Russia. The intelligence community however, continues to issue warning after warning about Russia's activities and their negative impact on U.S. national security. Is this something, knowing what you know about Russian leadership, that has any chance of being successful? Are there any opportunities here that might be being created by the strategy? Or is it more downside?
Hall: In my view, I think you've got a little bit more of a downside situation. You do have this very interesting situation whereby you have folks who are traditionally, and from their track record, considered to be more hawkish, for lack of an unpolitically scientific word. Guys like Bolton, and others, who have a tendency to be very skeptical with regard to our relationship, but by the same token, want to be very strong, vis-a-vis Russia, and some of our traditional adversaries out there.
And yet, you have a president who has not come very close to being publicly critical of Vladimir Putin. I think the Russian interpretation of that, and perhaps we're all a bit guilty of this, is to look at it from their perspective and say, ‘Well, okay, how are things in Russia?’ Well, until Vladimir Putin, or one of his really senior lieutenants comes out and makes a point or says something, it's all taken with a grain of salt. And I think that they project that view onto the United States.
So Bolton can say all sorts of things publicly against Russian behavior, but until the president of the United States actually makes these comments and says things critical of Russia very specifically, then I don't think it's going to be taken completely serious by Putin.
The Cipher Brief: We're still hearing warning after warning that Russians are planning to meddle in the 2020 elections. I'm assuming that this is also not surprising for you. However, again, based on what you know about Russian intelligence and Russian activities like this, what should we be thinking about, in terms of our posture going into those elections?
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"I think that as the Kremlin looks back on the 2016 campaign, its active measures, influence, operations, whatever you want to call them - the attack on democracy here in the United States is how I think of it - I think there are a lot of lessons learned. The Russians are very disciplined, especially their when it comes to their special services. Their intelligence services, I'm sure, have gone back and done significant analyses as to what worked, what didn't work, and what they could have done better."
Hall: But by and large, I cannot imagine that Vladimir Putin isn’t extremely pleased on his return on investment on that particular covert action operation. He has deepened the divides in the United States, politically, socially, and otherwise, probably more deeply than anytime in the past couple of decades. He has very, very cleverly manipulated and used social media and taken sort of the old dark arts approach that the Russians and Soviets developed, using propaganda and active measures, which they’ve done for decades, and he has expanded on that using media, social media, and other mechanisms.
It worked out really well for him. The candidate he wanted to get elected, got elected. And Putin really didn't pay that big of a price for his actions. I think going forward into 2020, it would be naïve to think the Russians aren't going to at least try something, based on the lessons they learned during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Member Question: Russia has been, and continues to be, comfortable with publicizing or weaponizing intelligence information, while the U.S. still uses intelligence collection and analysis in the traditional sense. Is the U.S. at a disadvantage when trying to fight traditionally against an opponent willing to oppose in every way asymmetrically and unconventionally?
Hall: I would entirely agree, and this is something that many folks miss, when you talk about the very nature of intelligence collection and if you compare and contrast how the United States, and arguably many of our Western allies, use intelligence, versus how the Russians do it, my experience has been that in the American system, our primary goal is to obtain secret information against foreign adversaries, and provide that information to our democratically elected policy makers, so that they can, hopefully, come up with well-informed foreign policy.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"The Russians view things quite differently. I have had a number of humorous conversations with Russian intelligence officers over the years, when I say, "Look, we provide information primarily to Washington to make better decisions," they sort of chuckle quietly and say, "We, of course, use intelligence much more aggressively." For them, it's not a matter of just the collection of information to provide to the Kremlin. They're much more inclined, indeed, to weaponize that information and use it that way."
Hall: Some of that is just the way that the systems are set up. For CIA, for example, to engage in a covert action, there is all sorts of congressional oversight as well as internal oversight. It's not as easy as it is in the Russian system, to simply use that information.
But I do think that the Russians' use of hybrid warfare, like we saw during the 2016 presidential election, necessitates that our intelligence community - to include the U.S. military, to include really everybody, in that community - needs to be looking at different ways to counter the type of hybrid warfare that I think we're going to see much more of from Russia in the coming years.
The Cipher Brief: Do you have particular thoughts on effective ways to counter that hybrid warfare? It seems a bit difficult.
Hall: It's a really tough issue for a number of different reasons. First of all, the hybrid warfare that the Russians undertook is really startling in terms of its breadth. You have so many different sub-disciplines in what they were doing. You have the Internet Research Agency going out and manipulating social media. You have just broadside propaganda, which the Russians, of course, have always done. There's also a military element to part of this, from the Russian side. It's a safe assumption, and a good one, to assume that the Russians are looking at our election infrastructure and our critical infrastructure, in terms of electricity, water, air traffic control, that sort of thing, to consider what they can do.
Part of it is just the breadth of the problem. How do you address all of those interests or all of those issues? In Moscow, you've got this thing that I think we only dream about in Washington, which is a sort of a whole-of-government approach. I mean, the whole-of-government approach in Russia is what Vladimir Putin thinks ought to be done. In the United States and other Western democracies, it's much more complicated than that. But those are all issues that have to be dealt with individually.
Member Question: What is Putin's benefit to continuing a presence in Venezuela?
Hall: It's a good question. We need to be careful not to look at things through a Western lens. I think there is some application of that principle in the Venezuela situation.
First of all, I'm not sure that Vladimir Putin is horribly concerned about the resources expended. He obviously does have to keep an eye on military expenditures, but this is really a no-brainer for him. This is the ability for Russia in the Western Hemisphere, pretty close to the United States, to get involved and to cause problems and difficulties and divisions in Latin America.
There are a couple of benefits to Russia on the Venezuela situation. First, as part of the pyramid that I was talking about at the very beginning, Vladimir Putin is really convinced that the United States is serious about regime change and the proof of that is the Arab Spring, the color revolutions, and the United States administration saying things like ‘Maduro has to go’ and there might be a military option on the table to do that. The real reason, of course, Vladimir Putin fears that is because he thinks that that's going to end in Moscow. He's convinced that there's going to be some sort of American-driven, regime change in Russia. So, wherever he can push back against the policy or the idea that the United States and the West might be trying to engage in regime change, he will push back on that.
The other nice thing about Venezuela is that - and I think frankly that John Bolton may have fallen into this trap when he commented the other day that this is sort of our sphere of influence – is that that allows Putin to come back and say, "Well, if you want me out of Venezuela, then you need to stop interfering in Eastern Ukraine or Crimea," or any of the other places that Russia, in its perceived area of influence, sphere of influence, is active.
So, for Russia, there are a number of positives to being involved in Venezuela. But all of them, I don't think, necessarily are focused on Venezuela, they're focused more on the United States.
Member Question: Please expand on the relationship between Russia and China and Russia's ambition in the far east.
Hall: There is sort of a love hate relationship, would be one way to describe it between Russia and China. On the love side, you've got Russia's position as sort of the ambassador or one of the central organizers of all of these rogue states.
China's interests are oftentimes at odds, especially geopolitically, with the United States. So that offers an opportunity for Russia to engage with China in a coordinated fashion to thwart U.S. interests, or at the very least, expand and forward the issues that Russia and China are most interested in.
That said, there has been a long and historical tension between Russia and China. Some of its geographic, in the sense that beyond the Ural Mountains in Russia as you travel east towards the Russian far east, there's a whole lot of step and not a whole lot of Russians. When you move just a little bit south, you've got a whole lot of Chinese.
So I think in the back of any historically-minded Russian leader, and Putin is certainly one of those, you've got concerns about making sure that the Chinese don't become too assertive and decide, "Hey, maybe we can move a little bit north," and engage some of the southern Russian cities and towns and start to erode and chip away in a very long-term fashion, as the Chinese are wanting to do, against the Russian state itself.
So there's that. The other interesting angle to this is that if you look at the differences between Russia and China, China of course is a very meaningful trade partner with the United States. Russia is not, and that affords China some leverage and a different approach with the American. Russia is actually economically a relatively small power. In one sense, U.S. policy ought to take that into account and afford Russia a lot less flexibility, simply because it's really not that big of a state, economically, anyway.
Member Question: How do you rate the time horizons of the Russian leadership compared to that of China, whose timeline on any strategy seems to be measured more in decades and not years?
Hall: I'm not a China guy, but my understanding is that the Chinese are very strategic. They're very long-term. They're prepared to wait decades, if not hundreds of years, to get where they want to end up. Of course, you contrast that with the United States, where we're much more short-term and much more aggressive, and of course, both of those approaches have their pros and cons.
Steven L. Hall, Former member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"Russia, I think, is somewhere in between. Russia hopes to have longer-term goals and ambitions, and right now, I think Putin assesses that it's going pretty well for them. Putin himself, of course, has a relatively long-term time horizon. He's not going to face meaningful elections anytime in the near future, so he's got some time to deal with this. But that's kind of how I see that hierarchy breaking down."
Member Question: Let's talk about the economic impact of Russian activities on American investment in some of these places around the world where Russians are working hard to undermine U.S. presence. What do you see coming next?
Hall: The real power that the United States wields, and this expands to our western allies, is an economic - democratic one. Both of those things are threats to Putin.
Putin understands that the Russian economy is not a large one if you compare it worldwide. It's also under considerable stress. It's been under considerable stress for a number of years, and of course, western sanctions don't help.
The United States remains the strongest economy in the world, and from that drives a lot of power. I think that is something that probably causes Vladimir Putin to grind his teeth on a regular basis, recognizing that Russia is a system in decline, whereas the United States and the west remain these sort of economic powerhouses. I think Russia's probably also jealous of China in that regard. China has figured out the economics of this, so it's sort of an interesting dynamic.
Member Question: The DOD is pursuing a multi-domain operations approach to security, which is sort of an evolution of combined arms warfare, to improve the ability of military forces to conduct decisive operations. How is this playing out in terms of civil military relationships, and in particular, can we have a multi-domain, all instruments of power approach so we can have a superior strategy compared to authoritarian regimes?
Hall: One way to answer the question is clearly, the United States would like to take more of a whole-of-government approach to things. Some administrations are better at it than others, and of course, that involves the behemoth that is the U.S. military. It's obviously critical that the United States not has a whole-of-government approach, but a whole-of-alliance approach, too.
We really have to be in lock step and in a leadership position with NATO so that Russia understands that there will be significant downsides on every imaginable level, if it were to go badly in terms of conventional war between Russia and the NATO allies.
I think Putin recognizes that. Although he has done a lot to modernize the Russian military, I think the assessment still is that at the end of the day, NATO and the United States would prevail in a conventional setting, but Putin now has seen the amazing success that he's had with hybrid warfare, which is again, much harder to even define, let alone figure out viable defenses for. So my bet is that Putin is going to continue to push along the lines of hybrid warfare, always understanding that the conventional warfare part is important, but that the hybrid warfare has been extremely effective for him.
Member Question: In your opinion, what is Russia and Putin's greatest vulnerability that the U.S. could actually target or focus on when developing a strategy?
Hall: If I flip that around and sort of theorize, what do the Russians think their greatest vulnerability is? I think that in his darkest moments, Vladimir Putin realizes that Russia is a diminishing power. They're no longer a great power. So, to the extent that the west empowers them by involving them in certain policy issues, geopolitical issues, that plays well for him.
So perhaps one of the ways that the U.S. should be thinking about dealing with Russia is not to deal with them in so many parts of the world. That's a real vulnerability for Russia. If the U.S. decided not to engage, I think would be a serious blow not just to Russia's geopolitical goals, but also to Vladimir Putin and his perception of what he thinks Russia should be in terms of a leader in this world.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Steven L. Hall, Former member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
"In terms of projecting forward, there's no doubt in my mind that Russia will continue to attempt to be a thorn in the side of the United States and the west. We see a Russia that is newly re-expanding, re-asserting, attempting to show folks, whether it's in Syria or Venezuela or elsewhere, North Korea, that they're a serious power."
Hall: My hope is twofold. First, getting back to the western approach to things, my hope is that the U.S. really takes a very cold, hard look at Russia and that our policy will derive from that cold, hard look.
I think we also need to look at negotiating nuclear treaties and the implications of moving away from the INF. That is an important area of engagement, but there's also a lot that we don't need to engage Russia on because Russia just loves it. They love to be the spoiler. They love to be the country that can resolve a difficult issue. So although Russia, for example, does have a relatively small border with North Korea, do they really need to be involved in that situation? I don't think so.
Finally, we need to look carefully at where we decide to engage Russia, but more importantly, where we ought not to engage Russia, and just try to stay away from our knee-jerk western reaction of, "Oh, well, they're an important country. Let's engage them." I'm not sure that that's still true. So I hope in the future, some of our policies will begin to reflect that.
ED NOTE: This briefing was slightly edited for length and clarity
Read more from Steve Hall in The Cipher Brief
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