[Angela Stent, Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest. Twelve. New York, 2019. 433 p.]

review / Ángel Martos

Angela Stent, director of Georgetown University's Center for Eurasia, Russia and Eastern Europe programs of study , presents in this book a profound analysis of the nature of Russia at the beginning of the 21st century. In order to understand what is happening today, she first sample us the historical outlines that shaped the massive heartland that Russian statesmen have consolidated over time.

Russia took advantage of the global showcase provided by the organization of the 2018 World Cup to present a renewed image. The operation to sell Russia's national brand had some success, as reflected in surveys: many foreign viewers (especially Americans) who visited the country for the soccer tournament came away with an improved image of the Russian people, and vice versa. However, what was presented as an opening to the world has not manifested itself in the Kremlin's domestic or international policy: Putin's control over the hybrid regime that has ruled Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has not been loosened in the slightest.

Many experts could not predict the fate of this nation in the 1990s. After the collapse of the communist regime, many thought that Russia would begin a long and painful road to democracy. The United States would maintain its status as the sole superpower and shape a New World Order that would embrace Russia as a minor power, equal to other European states. But these considerations did not take into account the will of the Russian people, who understood Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's management as "historical mistakes" that had to be corrected. And this perspective can be seen in Vladimir Putin's main speeches: a nostalgic feeling for Russia's imperial past, the refusal to be part of a world ruled by the United States and the need to bend the sovereignty of the once Soviet republics. The latter is a crucial aspect of Russia's foreign policy that, to varying degrees, it has already applied to Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and others.

What has changed in the Russian soul since the collapse of the Soviet Union? Have relations with Europe gone through ups and downs throughout the history of the Russian Empire? What are those relations like now that Russia is no longer an empire, having lost almost all of its power in a matter of years? The author takes us by the hand through these questions. The Russian Federation, as we know it now, has only been ruled by three autocrats: Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, although we could argue that Medvedev does not even properly count as president, since during his tenure Putin was the intellectual leader behind every step taken in the international arena.

Russia's complicated relations with European countries have a notorious example in the case of Germany, which the book compares to a roller coaster (an expression that in Spanish is especially eloquent). Germany is the door of the Federation to Europe, a metaphorical door that, throughout contemporary history, has been ajar, wide open or closed, as at this moment. After the seizure of Crimea, Merkel's Germany's relations with Moscow have been strictly limited to trade issues. It is worth highlighting the huge differences we can find between Willy Brandty's Ostpolitik and Angela Merkel's current Frostpolitik. Although Merkel grew up in East Germany, where Putin worked as a KGB agent for five years, and the two can understand each other in both Russian and German, this biographical link between them has not been reflected in their political relationship.

Germany went from being Russia's biggest European ally (to the point that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, after leaving the position, was appointed after leaving the position of chairman of Rosneft's management committee ), to being a threat to Russian interests. After sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014 with the support of the German government, relations between Putin and Merkel are at their worst. However, some might argue that Germany is acting hypocritically given that it has accepted and financed the Nordstream pipeline, which heavily damages Ukraine's Economics .

Besides the EU, the other main opponent for Russian interests is NATO. At every point on the map where the Kremlin wishes to put pressure NATO has strengthened its presence. Under U.S. command, the organization follows the U.S. strategy of trying to keep Russia at bay. And Moscow perceives NATO and the US as the ultimate obstacle to regaining its sphere of influence in "near abroad" (Eastern Europe, Central Asia) and in the Middle East.

Putin's fixation with the former Soviet republics has by no means faded over time. If anything, it has increased after the successful annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the civil war that flared up in the Donbass. Russia's nostalgia for what was once part of its territory is nothing more than a pretext to try to neutralize any dissident government in the region and subjugate as much as possible the countries that make up its buffer zone, for security and financial reasons.

The Middle East also plays an important role in Russia's international affairs diary . Russia's main goal is to foster stability and combat terrorist threats that may arise in places that are poorly controlled by the region's governments. Putin has been fighting Islamic terrorism since the separatist threat in Chechnya. However, his possible good intentions in the area are often misinterpreted due to his support in every possible way (including aerial bombardments) to some authoritarian regimes, such as Assad's in Syria. In this particular civil war, Russia is repeating the Cold War proxy war game against the US, which for its part has been supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Kurds. Putin's interest is to keep his ally Assad in power, along with the financial aid of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Angela Stent draws an accurate picture of Russia's recent past and its relationship with the outside world. Without being biased, she succeeds in critically summarizing what anyone interested in security should keep in mind when approaching the topic of Russia's threats and opportunities. For, as Vladimir Putin himself declared in 2018, "no one has succeeded in stopping Russia." Not yet.

[Jim Sciutto, The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America. Hasper-Collins. New York, 2019. 308 p.]

review / Álvaro de Lecea

With the end of the Cold War, which pitted the former Soviet Union against the victorious United States of America, the international system went from being bipolar to a hegemony led by the latter. With the United States in the lead, the West focused on the spread of democracy and commercial globalization, and if anything concentrated its geostrategic concern on the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11, so the focus shifted and today's Russia was put on the back burner. However, Russia continued to slowly reconstitute itself, in the shadow of its former enemy, which no longer showed much interest in it. Russia was joined by China, which began to grow by leaps and bounds. At this point, the United States began to realize that it had two great powers nipping at its heels and that it was engaged in a war it did not even know existed, the Shadow War.

This is the term used by Jim Sciutto, CNN's chief national security correspondent, to designate what he describes in detail throughout his book and which has largely come to be known as hybrid or gray zone warfare. Sciutto prefers to speak of Shadow War, which could be translated as war in the shadows, because this better denotes its character of invisibility under the radar of open or conventional warfare.

This new war was started by Russia and China, not as allies, but as powers with a common enemy: the United States. It is a subject of hybrid warfare, so it contains both military and non-military methods. On the other hand, it does not contemplate a direct military confrontation between the two blocs. In The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America, Sciutto explains seven situations in which one can clearly observe the strategies that China and Russia are following to defeat the United States in order to become the major world powers and to be able to impose their own international rules.

First of all, it is important to note that Russia and China, while pursuing similar strategies, are different types of adversaries: on the one hand, China is a rising power, while Russia is more of a declining power that is trying to return to what it was before. Nevertheless, both share a number of similarities. First, both seek to expand their influence in their own regions. Second, they are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy within their borders. Third, both seek to right the wrongs of history and restore what they perceive as their countries' rightful positions as world leaders. And finally, they possess great national unity, so the majority of their people would do whatever it takes for their nation.

In the shadow war, thanks to the rules established by Russia and China, any major player can win, regardless of the power it has or the influence it exerts on the other international players. Following the theories of international relations, one could consider that these rules follow a very realistic patron saint , since, in a way, anything goes to win. The power of lies and deception is the daily bread, and lines that were thought to be unthinkable are crossed. Examples of this, as the book explains and elaborates on, are the militarization of the artificial islands built by China in the South China Sea when Xi Jinping himself had promised not to do so, or the hacking of the Democratic Party's computer system in the 2016 US election campaign by Russian hackers, which could have helped Donald Trump to emerge victorious.

To all this must be added an essential part of what is happening in this context of non-traditional warfare: the particularly mistaken idea that the United States has about everything that is happening. To begin with, the first mistake made by the United States, as Sciutto explains, was to set aside Russia as a relevant focus in the international arena. It believed that, having defeated it in the Cold War, the country would no longer re-emerge as a power, and so it failed to see the clear clues that it was slowly growing, led by President Vladimir Putin. Similarly, it failed to understand the true intentions of the Chinese government in situations such as the South China Sea or the submarine degree program . All this can be summed up by the fact that the United States believed that all international actors would play by the rules established by Washington after the Cold War, without imagining that they would create a new scenario. In conclusion, the United States did not understand its opponents.

In his latest chapter, Sciutto makes it clear that the United States is currently losing the war. Its biggest mistake was not realizing the status until it was in front of it, and now it finds itself playing on a disadvantaged stage. It is true that the United States is still the world leader in many respects, but Russia and China are overtaking it in others, following the new rules they themselves have set. However, a change of attitude in U.S. policies could turn the tables completely. Thus, the author proposes a number of solutions that could help the United States get back in the lead.

The solutions he proposes focus, in the first place, on total knowledge of the enemy and his strategy. This has always been their great disadvantage and would be the first step to begin to control the status. In the same way, he recommends a greater unity within the allied block, as well as an improvement of their own defenses. He also recommends a better understanding of the new scenario in which the whole conflict is taking place, so that a series of international treaties regulating these new spaces, such as cyberspace, would be of great financial aid. Further on, he proposes setting clear limits on enemy actions, raising the costs and consequences of such actions. And finally, he encourages the United States to exercise clear leadership.

In conclusion, Sciutto's thesis is that the United States finds itself fighting a war whose existence it has just discovered. It is a subject of a war it is not accustomed to and with a set of rules that are alien to what it preaches. Although it is still the leader of the current international system, it finds itself losing the game because China and Russia have been able to discover its rival's weaknesses and use them to their advantage. The biggest mistake of the United States was to ignore all the signs of this shadow war and to do nothing about it. New scenarios have been introduced and the rules of the game have been changed, so the United States, if it wants to turn the status quo around and once again emerge as the victor, the author argues, will have to unite more than ever internally as a nation and strengthen its alliances, and know its enemies and their intentions better than ever before.

As for an evaluation of the book, it can be stated that it manages to convey in a clear and concise manner the most relevant points of this new contest. It manages to make clear the strengths and weaknesses of each actor and to make a general assessment of the current status . However, the author does not manage to be too goal in his judgments. Although he admits the failures committed by the United States, he offers a negative image of its rivals, taking for granted who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. That objectivity is lacking in some cases, since neither the good guys are always so good nor the bad guys are always so bad. That said, Sciutto does a great analysis of the current international status of the world's major powers.

DOC. DE work / A. Palacios, M. Lamela, M. Biera[English version].

SUMMARY

The European Union (EU) has been particularly damaged internally by disinformation campaigns that have questioned its legislation and its very values. The various disinformation operations and the inability of the EU institutions to communicate have generated a sense of alarm in Brussels. Barely a year before the European Parliament elections, Europe has concentrated many of its efforts on tackling the disinformation challenge, generating new strategies and work groups such as the Stratcom Task Force or the European Commission's group of experts.

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