Why, as the New York Times accurately reported on Friday, would Russia’s GRU intelligence service pay the Taliban to kill Americans in Afghanistan? Doing so risks outsized consequences for unclear strategic gains.
It seems that way to Americans, probably. But to Vladimir Putin, the United States is Russia’s “main enemy,” and the GRU is predisposed toward aggressive action against us.
Putin finds his greatest obstacle in the U.S., which undergirds NATO and thus the protection of states that Putin would otherwise attempt to turn into Soviet-style feudal subjects. The U.S. most undermines Russian client states, such as Syria, and undercuts Russian economic interests with innovations such as fracking.
So, Putin wants to weaken us. That explains why he seeks to diminish U.S. democratic civil society (a la the 2016 election interference campaign and active measures to drive Americans apart) and to diminish our security by supporting China, Iran, and other U.S. adversaries. Sometimes it means diminishing our very existence.
That’s where the GRU and plots like that in Afghanistan enter the fray.
A pathologically aggressive organization with a penchant for extreme brutality, the GRU is designed to be Russia’s silent knife around the world. Of course, as with this most recent GRU plot in Afghanistan and the 2018 Salisbury poisoning plot, sometimes this knife isn’t silent. Partly a result of declining recruitment and training standards, and partly the result of a culture that prioritizes results at all costs, today’s GRU can be rather shoddy.
Regardless, where the GRU can hit American interests, it revels in doing so. Few things will earn Putin’s praise as much as GRU Director Igor Kostyukov being able to walk into his office with news of an action that has damaged the U.S.
The GRU also sees killing Americans as fair game in a larger competition. In Libya, for example, the U.S. is providing intelligence in support of Turkish operations against Khalifa Haftar and the GRU’s Wagner Group deniable combat force. This effort has also provided the U.S. with access to high-grade Russian weapons systems. The GRU also sees the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan as a just response to the CIA’s support for the Afghan resistance during the 1980’s Soviet occupation of that nation.
The GRU will also want revenge for an incident in 2018 in which more than one hundred Wagner operatives were killed after they attacked U.S. forces in Syria and were then bombed.
These justifications are ridiculous, of course. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is trying to stabilize a democracy for the benefit of its people. The Soviet occupation was about dominating those people under tyranny. And the GRU’s losses in Syria were the result of U.S. defensive rather than offensive action.
But that cuts to the heart of the issue here. When it comes to the U.S., Putin wants very much to be on the offensive.
