1-12. Russia approaches international relations in a deliberate and opportunistic manner. It perceives that the United States is weakening and forecasts a shift in power distribution that would result in more equal power sharing between the United States and rising powers like China and Russia. To capitalize on this perception, Russia, for the foreseeable future, will continue to seize on global opportunities to achieve situational advantage to further its strategic objectives and to confront the United States in the diplomatic, military, economic, and information domains. Russia will combine this approach with its long-established stratagem of competition and confrontation with the United States and NATO in the states on the periphery of its borders.
1-13. Conditions will enable Russia to compete with the United States and other Western nations, as well as to create opportunities for Russia to achieve a competitive advantage against its rivals. Paragraphs 1-17 through 1-25 describe key considerations about Russia's influence and exploitation of the future environment:
1-14. Russia's analysis of how the United States fights and its own experience in recent conflicts lead it to the understanding that information management is critical for successful actions. Russia uses information manipulation, deceptions, and disruption to achieve information dominance during competition and conflict. It also continues enhancement of automation of the command and control (C2) process coupled with integration of its military complexes to provide real-time battlefield visibility and awareness.
1-15. Russia will manipulate the objective reality favorable to its opponents to create a subjective reality favorable to itself. To accomplish this, it will employ reflexive control methods and use deception and influence to manipulate the perceptions of an "aggressor." Reflexive control is a methodology initiated by the Soviets in the 1960s. In plain terms, it is a process of transmitting cunningly designed information to the aggressor which will cause it to willingly make decisions beneficial to the Russians. Russia sees its actions as successful when it achieves cognitive dominance over its targets and leaders of aggressor states voluntarily make decisions favorable to Russia.
1-16. Russia will actively challenge the relative position of U.S. influence in the global order while avoiding direct confrontation with the U.S. military. Russia seeks to integrate its military, technological, information, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and other powers to achieve its strategic goals. Through integration of these methods and collaboration with its regional partners, Russia will create situations in which U.S. power is severely constrained. By using nonmilitary elements of power short of armed conflict during competition with the West it will avoid direct conflict with the United States but will still act to counter U.S. interests whenever it is to Russia's advantage to do so. This approach will be constrained by Russia's economic, demographic, and technical limitations.
1-17. An expanding spectrum of contentious issues will continue fueling future competition and conflict between Russia and the West. The number and intensity of friction points—some enduring and others new— will increase competition between Russia and the West and possibly bring them closer to overt conflict. Russia will continue to compete with the West for nuclear and missile supremacy, while newer theaters of competition open or intensify in the Arctic. That competition and conflict will take new and very different forms involving all domains and elements of national power.
1-18. Russia will continue to fight while maintaining deniability. Russia gains plausible deniability and a degree of diplomatic cover in carrying out proxy wars using criminal and militant groups, or special operations troops and other military or paramilitary forces (such as the Wagner Group and other aligned private military contractors). Russia will continue to use these proxies with covert conventional forces to achieve outcomes that would otherwise be untenable in the strategic arena. These actions allow Russia to further its objective of improving its world power status while avoiding direct military conflict with U.S. and NATO military forces.
1-19. Scientific and technological progress will provide Russia and its surrogates' militaries with increased precision, speed, range, adaptability, survivability, and effectiveness. Russia will continue to seek technologies that improve these characteristics to achieve overmatch using both developments from the civilian sector as well as direct military advances. It will continue using specific niche weapons systems, such as hypersonic missiles; unmanned aerial vehicles; precision-guided artillery; electromagnetic warfare; directed-energy weapons; and unmanned aircraft, vehicles, marine craft, and systems, directed at perceived U.S. vulnerabilities.
1-20. Russia will expand its capabilities to operate in and influence urban environments that are increasingly interconnected. The rapidly growing interconnection of economic and information systems will link populations at the individual level. Russia's use of information warfare (IV) will allow it to exploit these conditions.
1-21. Russia has less restrictive rules of engagement regulating competition and conflict than does the United States. Using unconventional methods, it will avoid condemnation and sanction by other nations during competition. As a result, use of proxy forces, information confrontation (IPb), or cyber-attacks in the competitive domains of land, air, maritime, space, and information will be more common than open military confrontation. In military conflicts, Russia actively plans for and practices the use of nuclear, chemical, and flame weapon fires at the strategic to tactical levels.
Note. Distinctions between the Russian categories of information confrontation ɢɧɮɨɪɦɚɰɢɨɧɧɨɟ ɩɪɨɬɢɜɨɛɨɪɫɬɜɨ— informatsionnye protivoborstvo— IPb) and information ZDUIDUH ɢɧɮɨɪɦɚɰɢɨɧɧɚɹ ɜɨɣɧɚ—informatsionnaya voyna—IV) are debated within official Russian references. Information confrontation is presented in this ATP but the primary focus for tactical actions will be on information warfare.
1-22. Russia will exploit trends such as its youth, increased urbanization along major bodies of water, and technological advancements. While these trends do not define the entire list, their convergence will result in regional and international turbulence that Russia will likely exploit to its advantage. Other naturally occurring conditions, such as natural disasters, extreme weather events, and their second- and third-order effects will have significant impacts on an OE due to resulting competition and conflict between Russia and other nations.
1-23. Russia likely will target vulnerable countries or regions strategically important to achieving its objectives. Such areas with divided populations, especially those with ethnic Russians living in them, are the most vulnerable to Russian exploitation. Other areas with critical natural resources or those considered locations of strategic importance will also be of interest to Russia.
1-24. Russia will seek to contest the global commons. The global commons—the Earth's domains or areas that no one state controls, but on which all rely, such as oceans, atmosphere, and orbital space—will be increasingly contested in the future. Land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace domains will continue to be targeted by Russia to achieve its objectives.
1-25. All these factors will create conditions U.S. forces must be prepared to encounter when conducting multi-domain operations against Russia or a Russian proxy force. Russia will use all its instruments of national power in an integrated campaign to further its strategic goals and objectives. It will direct, control, and integrate the actors and actions that impact tactical-level U.S. forces from the Russian national strategic level.