In 1946, Hans J. Morgenthau, a German-Jewish émigré, burst onto the American intellectual scene with “Scientific Man vs. Power Politics.” The book demolished the illusion that international politics could be reduced to technocratic reason. What you get in global life, he argued, is the will to power writ large. He soon became the father of Cold War realism. As Henry Kissinger remembered: “nobody could ignore him.”
The realists who knew better
That same year, George F. Kennan sent his Long Telegram from Moscow. His message was equally stark: To understand Russia, one had to think in psychoanalytic terms. Strategy is not just about counting tanks but about grasping the pathologies of power. Kennan’s interest in psychoanalysis was not casual. In 1942 he sought out Anna Freud in London, following in the footsteps of Walter Lippmann, who had met her father Sigmund in Vienna two decades earlier. The great realists took human nature seriously because they knew politics was never only material. It is irrational, too.
Eighty years on, that lesson has been forgotten. Nowhere is this clearer than in today’s discussions of Russian “hybrid threats” or “gray zone strategies.” In Western capitals these are defined narrowly: a mixture of diplomatic, military, economic, technological tools. Drones most recently. True enough, but superficial. Such lists describe the instruments while missing the target. What Russia really strikes is us: our confidence, our trust, our sense of reality.
When the mind is broken, the rest follows.
The East German Stasi perfected the technique of corroding opponents from within: isolating them, disorienting them, and eroding trust until victims doubted themselves and everyone around them. It was called Zersetzung, a word with no neat English equivalent. It meant psychological decomposition. When the mind is broken, the rest follows.
As a young KGB officer in Dresden from 1985 to 1990, Putin saw firsthand both the Stasi’s methods and the sudden collapse of empire. He has since scaled up this sinister logic from individuals to societies and the international order. Hybrid threats are Zersetzung writ large: a strategy of corrosion that spreads mistrust and fear across borders, paralyzing states, alliances, and institutions.
The grey zone around Ukraine
The method is clearest around Ukraine. One might think it the most clear-cut of cases: one country invades another. It should be obvious who is the aggressor and who the victim. On the battlefield it is equally clear who destroys and who fights for survival. Even for realists, there is good and evil out there.
And yet, across Europe and beyond, Russian disinformation and malign influence confuse more than they persuade, leaving citizens unsure whom to trust. On the global stage, Moscow invokes sovereignty at the UN while violating it in practice, posing as both aggressor and mediator to paralyze diplomacy. Even seasoned policymakers fall into the trap.
By corroding confidence, Moscow strikes at the very foundations of prosperity as well as security.
The same corrosive method is turned inward. Independent voices in Russia are branded “foreign agents.” Laws are kept deliberately vague so that anyone can be targeted at any time. Loyalty to the Kremlin is equated with loyalty to the nation; dissent is cast as treachery. The tragic irony is that those who claim to defend Russia dismantle its social fabric from within.
Hybrid threats are not abstractions confined to government or the military. They reach directly into boardrooms and households. Disinformation is not only toxic for politics. It creates uncertainty in which businesses must operate, and investors must decide. Markets depend on trust, clarity, and predictability. By corroding confidence, Moscow strikes at the very foundations of prosperity as well as security.
The realism we need
What must be done is clear. Defending against hybrid threats requires more than armies, firewalls, or drone walls. It calls for a new grammar of response. Leaders must treat resilience as core security: training staff to spot manipulation, building trust inside organizations, closing information gaps, and refusing to let cynicism fester. They must support independent journalism, media literacy, and civic trust. Defending open societies is not charity. It is the operating system of democratic polities and stable markets alike.
Putin’s Russia exports fear, mistrust, and disorientation. That means the defense must begin with us. Were Morgenthau, Kennan, and Lippmann alive, they would say to us that hybrid threats are not only moves on a chessboard of real interests, but they are also operations on our collective psyche. Yes, protect your systems with technocratic rigor.
But above all, protect your people, strengthen their democratic minds. For it is you, me and us who are the targets, and it is we who must stand tall as the shields of democracy – prepared, if need be, with one foot in heaven and the other in hell. That is realism for our time.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.