Russian leaders, however, saw the Arab Spring and color revolutions as part of the United States’ new way of warfare: an attempt to increase US influence indirectly and discreetly through clandestine means.49 As Gerasimov explained, a color revolution was “a form of non-violent change of power in a country by outside manipulation of the protest potential of the population in conjunction with political, economic, humanitarian, and other non-military measures.”50 What particularly concerned Gerasimov was the speed of state collapse that the United States, in his view, could engineer.51
