The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and his Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West
by Malcolm W. Nance
View on GoodreadsFormer Navy intelligence officer Malcolm Nance's 2018 case that Russia is running a coordinated, decades-old influence operation against Western democracy — recruitment of agents, kompromat collection, information warfare, financial leverage — with US politics as a primary target.
Core ideas
- The "active measures" framework — Soviet/Russian doctrine for influence operations short of open conflict — is the book's organizing concept; current operations are continuous with KGB-era practice with technological updates.
- The Trump-Russia connections are treated as one node in a much larger network — Putin's "useful idiots" framework, agents of influence, paid pundits, and amplification networks across multiple Western countries.
- The hybrid-warfare claim: Russia treats information operations, cyber attacks, financial manipulation, and selective use of force as a single continuous instrument, while the West treats them as separate domains with separate response thresholds.
Published2018
Pages352
ISBN9780316484817
ReadSep 2024
