Russia doesn’t really do, or indeed understand, soft power, beyond causing mischief with disinformation operations. In the Russian strategic mindset, winning the hearts and minds of a population is unacceptably inefficient compared to the alternatives, such as bribing local gangsters to become a fake popular movement, cultivating useful idiots among the far left and/or right, flooding the field with disinformation, or just massive invasion.
The world is never going to be listening to R-pop on their Art.Lebedev phone in the queue at the hip new piroshki truck and wishing they were in Moscow where things are happening.
True. I’ll admit my primary thought was about the Chinese Belt and Road initiative, but I didn’t want to discount other aspiring neocolonialists trying their hands at it.
Russia doesn’t really do, or indeed understand, soft power, beyond causing mischief with disinformation operations. In the Russian strategic mindset, winning the hearts and minds of a population is unacceptably inefficient compared to the alternatives, such as bribing local gangsters to become a fake popular movement, cultivating useful idiots among the far left and/or right, flooding the field with disinformation, or just massive invasion.
The world is never going to be listening to R-pop on their Art.Lebedev phone in the queue at the hip new piroshki truck and wishing they were in Moscow where things are happening.
counterpoint
True. I’ll admit my primary thought was about the Chinese Belt and Road initiative, but I didn’t want to discount other aspiring neocolonialists trying their hands at it.
ahem Little Big