Working Brief: Non-Exhaustive List of Russia’s Active Measures Objectives
(1) Defeat the USA, supplant it worldwide in axial partnership with China, tolerating competition with China, divvying-up future-conquests and acquisitions of influence, real estate, and or natural resources;
(2) Get close to selected elites and revolutionaries in all main western parties, charm them, compromise them, then later cut their political throats via various means, while promoting and using the most compliant and easily controlled to further Putin’s and his oligarchs’ national goals;
(3) Using Putin’s popularity & brand, cultivate, & promote extreme, corrupt, & amoral allies abroad regardless of affiliation (exploitable, sympathetic) & infuse them with Putin’s amoral boldness;
(4) Incite/drive global economic conflict of many kinds b/w USA & allies, & b/w USA and competitors (make USA a pariah consistent with Kremlin narratives) driving US competitors and allies together;
(5) Exhaust USA’s governing, economic, & social resources by pushing it toward internal and global conflict at once, gradually drawing it into guarding behaviors, over-extension, and isolation;
(6) Via information warfare, influence USA’s aggrieved groups to promote radical and delusional elements while influencing elites-in-residence to provoke them more;
(7) Aid proxies in checking, diversionary, distractive, and if necessary, disabling, deniable attacks on USA assets and/or infrastructure during times of extremity to trigger human stress, resource stress, internal panic, and internal conflict primed to turn hot by decades of information warfare.
This has been a slow-motion, particulate, tactical demolition project with a long term strategy and occasional intense phases with extreme operational uptempo. Think slow-motion Syria, with an ultimate goal of fostering the dismantling and sell-off of US territories after a civil war causes governing collapse in the US. The boldness of these tactics is part of their unbelievability from the standpoint of a nation accustomed to taking national security for granted, and thus their covert effectiveness, occurring in plain sight.