Books by Keir Giles

You may not be interested in Russia. But Russia is interested in you.Russia's 2022 attack on Ukraine saw confrontation between Moscow and the West spill over into open conflict once again. But Russia has also been waging a clandestine war against the West for decades. Hostile acts abroad, from poisoning dissidents to shooting down airliners, interfering in elections, spying, hacking and murdering, have long seemed to be the Kremlin's daily business. But what is it all for? Why does Russia consistently behave like this? And what does it achieve?In this book, Keir Giles explains how and why Russia pushes for more power and influence wherever it can reach, far beyond Ukraine - and what it means not just for governments, but for ordinary people. Bringing together stories from the military, politics, diplomacy, espionage, cyber power, organised crime and more, Giles describes how Moscow conducts its campaigns across the globe, and how nobody is too unimportant to be caught up in them. By lifting the lid on the daily struggle going on behind the scenes to protect governments, businesses, societies and people from Russian hostile activity, Russia's War On Everybody shows how Moscow's hostile intentions for the rest of the world are far broader and more ambitious, and the ways it tries to achieve them far more pervasive and damaging, than we realise.

RussiaÕs military interventions in Ukraine from 2014, and Syria from 2015, caused widespread surprise among Western policy communities, including in the United States. However, as the British scholar of Russia, Keir Giles, explains in this Letort Paper, these interventions represented the culmination of two well-established trends that had been clearly identified by Russia-watchers over preceding years. These were first, a mounting perception of direct threat against Russia from the West, and second, RussiaÕs own greatly increased capability for military or other action to respond to this perceived threat. Mr. Giles highlights the specific security preoccupations of Russian leaders over decades, not always perceptible outside Russia, which lead them to entirely different interpretations of current events from those taken for granted in the West.

At the time of this writing, the events during the 2016 presidential election campaign have focused intense attention on the dangers of hostile cyber and information operations by foreign powers. The legality under international law of this kind of interference in another stateÕs information space has been the subject of long discussion, both bilaterally between the United States and other major cyber powers, and internationally at the United Nations (UN) and elsewhere. In this Letort Paper, completed in late 2015, British researcher Keir Giles provides a guide to the various and conflicting trends in this debate. As a long-term scholar of the Russian approach to cyber policy and legality in cyberspace, Giles places the discussion, and U.S. concerns, in an international context. In particular, he explains the deep ideological divides on the correct course of action to take between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and a large group of nations led by Russia and China on the other.

Describes how Russian leaders have used consistent doctrinal and strategic approaches to the rest of the world. These approaches may seem alien in the West, but understanding them is essential for successful engagement with Moscow. Keir Giles argues that understanding how Moscow's leaders think will help the West develop a less crisis-prone and more productive relationship with Russia.