As the Kremlin plays the West, we see it extend the tactics it uses at home to foreign affairs. The Kremlin courts the West’s financial elites, including the German and American business lobbies that opposed new sanctions; backs anticapitalist shows like Abby Martin’s
“Breaking the Set” on the broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today); and encourages the European far right with money and support to parties such as France’s National Front. The Kremlin can’t hope to dominate the West as it does the domestic situation, but its aim is to sow division, to “disorganize” the enemy through an information war.
At the core of this strategy is the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth. This notion allows the Kremlin to replace facts with disinformation. We saw one example when Russian media spread a multitude of conspiracy theories about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July, from claiming that radar data showed Ukrainian jets had flown near the plane to suggesting that the plane was shot down by Ukrainians aiming at Mr. Putin’s presidential jet. The aim was to distract people from the evidence, which pointed to the separatists, and to muddy the water to a point where the audience simply gave up on the search for truth.
Sadly, this mind-set resonates well in a post-Iraq and post-financial-crisis West increasingly skeptical about its own institutions, where reality-based discourse has already fractured into political partisanship. Conspiracy theories are prevalent on cable networks and radio shows in the United States and among supporters of far-right parties in Europe. President Obama, responding to Russian aggression in Ukraine, pointed out that Russia is not the Soviet Union. “This is not another Cold War that we’re entering into,” he said. “Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology.” But perhaps he was missing the point.
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