Hall: If you just look over the past week or two in international affairs, it's been a really, really good period of time for Vladimir Putin and for Russia. Putin is likely to see recent events as vindication of all the planning and the work and the efforts that he has made over the past couple of years to disrupt and influence not just U.S. politics but also politics in Western democracies.
If you were to start ticking off a list, we’ve effectively witnessed the collapse of American efforts in Syria. That, of course, is a big win for Putin because for many years now, he's been a big supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And now we've gone from basically looking at how is Assad going to leave Syria and us talking to the Russians about how that could happen, in the 2012 timeframe, to the present, where we have the Russians and Assad's forces are now running all over the country and entering former abandoned U.S. military bases. The Russian flag is now seen as Russian military police patrol along the Northern border with Turkey. So that's a pretty big shift in not too many years. And that's all for the good as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. It's also really symbolic in the minds of many Russians, about Russia's return to being a world power in the Middle East. And regardless of whether that ends up being true in the long run – and I have my doubts - it's at least a good day or a good time for Putin and Russia. The next logical topic as a result of the collapse of the U.S. plan in Syria is that you now have the United States and NATO partner Turkey, at serious odds, with each other.
The threatening of sanctions by President Trump, and his threats to shut down Turkey's economy and the Turkish president's complete ignoring of that threat says something. Nevertheless, from Vladimir Putin's perspective, he's got NATO fighting against itself, which is a key goal of his. Putin was almost giddy if you look at some of the footage, at hosting the Turkish president in Moscow recently.
NATO is probably the most significant military threat that Russia faces. So that's a big win. You've also got the continuing de-evolution of American politics.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
Just recently, we’ve seen members of the House of Representatives crashing meetings that the intelligence committees are holding. It reminds me of some of these feistier parliaments where you see people charging over their desks and getting into fisticuffs with each other. It's starting to look more like that in Washington and that's a big deal for Putin too, because, at least in his view, it signals the weakening of American democracy and the groundwork on which that's based.
You've also got the UK going at it with the EU as they've been doing for so long on Brexit and all of these things are validation of what Vladimir Putin set into motion when he started using cyber and kinds of hybrid warfare methodologies against the West. It seems to be working quite well. And that's a big deal for Putin.
The Cipher Brief: Putin obviously has some big goals on the world stage and against the West, but Russia has also recently suffered some embarrassing military setbacks and accidents. How much of what you see today as a win for Putin signals better branding and PR, and how much do you attribute to Russia's capability being on the rise in a way that the U.S. needs to further act on?
Hall: Those are excellent questions. Taking the PR question first, in terms of branding and PR and public affairs, those are Western ideas that in Russia, given their system, translates into things like active measures, influence operations, and propaganda. So, it's the same tool set, but used at a nation state level as opposed to at a corporate level. And that is very important to the Russians. I believe that although Russia and Putin right now are understandably crowing about their successes in Syria, the most important thing for them is to show the world and to show the domestic audience in Russia, that Russia is a great power. That is psychologically, what drives Putin.
As to Russia’s capabilities, well, the Russian military is to be taken seriously. But it's never going to be a match for NATO, and probably not for any individual NATO nation state, or at least the significant ones. Russia is not going to win a conventional military conflict with NATO. It's not going to win one with the United States or Germany or France or the UK. And certainly not with them all joined together under NATO. But nevertheless, they are making progress, and one of the places that they're making progress is in hybrid warfare. So, not necessarily conventional tanks and rifles, but their ability to leverage cyber operations, their ability to leverage information operations. That is working out much better than they expected. And Putin is sitting back and saying, “Yes, our return on investment in that particular part of our strategic defense is indeed paying off”.
The Cipher Brief: If you look at what's happening right now inside the United States as it relates to Russia, there's an incredible amount of contention. Politically, we're at odds. We have a president who, in terms of his messaging on Russia frankly confounds a lot of people in the national security space. We've got half of the population that perhaps does not think clearly enough about Russia and the other half that is maybe a bit too focused on Russia for all sorts of different reasons. You've talked about this dynamic before other and said that we “don't have our eye on the ball right now” as it relates to Putin. How big of an advantage is this for Vladimir Putin and why do you not think we're making any more progress on understanding the real threat that Russia presents?
Hall: You can probably write a book about all those topics. Certainly, one of the costs of being so divided is having to deal with populism and nationalism and emerging autocracies, again, whether you're talking about Viktor Orban in Hungary, or Donald Trump in the United States, or perhaps Boris Johnson in the UK. Every day the news cycle is dominated by some new strange thing. That of course was set in motion, at least partly, by Vladimir Putin's attempts to begin these destabilizing measures against the West.
The cost of us focusing on those things is taking our eye off the ball on a lot of other things that are going on overseas. The Syria example is probably the clearest one vis-a-vis Russia. But you can be sure that the nation states that are not friendly with the United States, or don't have the U.S. interests at heart in the long run, places like Russia and China, are taking advantage of this.
So, you've got Russia now essentially claiming victory for its efforts in Syria as we continue to withdraw troops and abandon our allies along the border. That's something that we can't really focus on enough because of our domestic situation. You've got China ever expanding, slowly but surely, across the world. And again, we don't have the wherewithal to focus on that as a government and as a society as close as we should be because we're focused on all the shenanigans that are going on in this country. It's distracting, and it's distracting not just to us, but to all of our NATO allies as well.
That all contributes to what you're asking, which is why aren't we taking Russia more seriously? Russia has become an element in the polarization in this country. So, one of several long-term and damaging effects that is being caused by Trump administration policy on Russia is that when somebody raises Russia as a problem, you're going to get a partisan response. You're going to get a whole bunch of people probably along the right side of our political spectrum who are going to say, “Ah, you're raising the specter of Russia again. When are you guys on the left wing of the United States political spectrum going to get away from this Russia thing?”
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
It's become politicized into a political issue, and it shouldn't be. It should be an American issue. It should be how can we pay closer attention to what Russia is doing against not Republicans or Democrats, but against the United States? Why is Vladimir Putin being aggressive, not against Republicans or Democrats, but against the United States of America? That's going to be a problem for us for years to come.
The Cipher Brief: Any predictions on the U.S.-Russian relationship over the next six months? And what opportunities, given everything happening in the world, but in particular with Russia, does this present for America right now?
Hall: There are a number of different problems that I think we're confronted with right now in the United States with regard to Russia. Unfortunately, few of them are actually substantive problems. Russia sees it as a zero-sum game. If we lose, they win, and if we win, they lose. So, when you're starting from that position, there isn’t a whole lot that can be talked about. But there are things that we ought to be paying close attention to, arms control being a significant one. We're not focusing as much as we should be on that because we're distracted with all of these other things.
Steven L. Hall, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
Between now and next November, when we see what happens in our elections, I think it's going to be extremely difficult to engage with Russia in a way that benefits the United States. As of right now, we don't even know when our president talks to Vladimir Putin. It kind of leaks out a couple of weeks after a phone call or a discussion with him. So, it's difficult to know where we're going when you don't know what is actually happening between the chiefs, the heads of state of the United States and Russia.
In terms of a silver lining in all of this, it might be Pollyanna-ish or naive to hope that once we get past all of this domestic political stuff that is poisoning our thinking about Russia, maybe everybody will realize that we need to sit back and seriously look at the relationship with Moscow given all that they have done over the past couple of years and really come up with a strategic long-term Russia policy for how we can deal with them effectively. That's the brass ring. But maybe when we have a better understanding of what Russia has been up to and what they're capable of doing in this country and in the West, perhaps that will provide the impetus, not just in the United States, but with our Western allies, to say we have to take this new hybrid warfare threat seriously.
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