On ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’: Why the West Fails to Beat Russia to the Punch

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?