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Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

And as a result - Pre-emption

APRIL 27, 2017

The Unsettling View From Moscow
Russia's Strategic Debate on a Doctrine of Pre-emption

By Alexander Velez-Green
 
A rising number of Russia’s senior military strategists are advocating for the adoption of a doctrine of pre-emption for the defense of their nation. This doctrine would be intended to protect the territorial integrity and vital national interests of the Russian Federation. To achieve these fundamentally defensive aims, Russian military strategists argue that if an attack on Russian vital interests appears imminent, Moscow must be prepared to use strategic non-nuclear or limited nuclear force first in order to deter or defeat the United States or NATO. Pre-emption could occur in crisis or in the early stages of an escalating conflict. Russian advocates of pre-emption argue that the pre-emptive attacks on U.S. or NATO targets could serve one or more of three purposes.

1. Deterrence by cost imposition. Pre-emptive attacks on countervalue targets could provide a “punch in the nose” that deters U.S. or NATO aggression by communicating to Western policymakers and publics alike that the costs of attacking or escalating a military confrontation with Russia will outweigh any plausible benefits.

2. Deterrence by denial. Pre-emptive attacks on counterforce targets could degrade U.S. or NATO power projection capabilities, and change the “correlation of forces,” such that Washington and other NATO capitals no longer believe that they can prevail in a major war, at acceptable levels of escalation, against Russia.

3. Pre-emption as a defeat mechanism. Some advocates argue that pre-emptive attacks on key Western aerospace – and other – capabilities may allow the Russian armed forces to degrade or eliminate U.S. and NATO forces’ comparative advantages, such as long-range strike, thereby improving Russia’s relative military-operational position.


Russia’s potential adoption of a military doctrine based on pre-emption appears to remain in debate. The Kremlin does not yet appear to have shifted to a pre-emptive posture, based on open-source reporting. However, arguments for Russia’s shift to pre-emption seem to have gained traction in Moscow since the mid-2000s. And there is a significant likelihood that Moscow may ultimately endorse pre-emption for the defense of the Russian state in the coming decades.

Consideration of a pre-emptive military doctrine is motivated first by Russian policymakers’ dismal geopolitical outlook. Moscow sees the United States as the world’s sole remaining superpower, intent on maintaining its position by constraining aspirant powers and imposing its own will on other nations – chief among them Russia. The Kremlin has indicated as well its belief that the United States would be willing to use force to impose its will on Russia in the future, if Russia is not prepared to defend itself.

Simultaneously, a growing number of Russian military strategists forecast that defensive or retaliatory operations alone will soon be insufficient to protect Russia’s vital interests. They assess that a host of new military technologies are collapsing the battlespace and giving growing advantage to the side that escalates first. These systems will allow both Russia and the United States to act more rapidly across broader geographic expanses than before. Moreover, many of these emerging technologies – including cyber, counterspace, conventional prompt global strike (CPGS), and certain autonomous weapons – may hold Russia’s strategic nuclear forces at unprecedented risk in the coming decades.

From a Russian perspective, seizing the initiative will be the key to deterrence or if necessary military defeat of Western aggression in this collapsing battlespace. Pre-emption advocates contend that if Moscow does not escalate first in a future crisis or conflict, then the United States and its allies will. If that happens, they fear that Russian defenses will be unable to repel or absorb the U.S. or NATO attacks on Russian vital interests. They expect further that the Russian Federation will be unable to seize back the initiative once it is lost. Indeed, if the initial period of this future war is as devastating as many expect, the Russian armed forces may have limited retaliatory options left.

Russia’s adoption of a defensive doctrine of pre-emption would severely complicate efforts by U.S. and NATO policymakers to deter Russia or manage a future crisis or conflict on NATO’s eastern flank – such as a Baltic contingency – without triggering runaway escalation. It would deny Russian, U.S., and NATO officials the time required to determine whether an attack is actually imminent and enact a proportionate response. The result would be to increase the risk of rapid early military strikes and rampant escalation. This will be especially dangerous in the coming years. In view of the growing perceived fragility of Russian and U.S. nuclear forces, once war begins, it may prove difficult to contain at non-nuclear levels.

The United States should therefore take steps to dissuade Moscow from shifting to a doctrine of pre-emption. It is beyond the scope of this study to offer exhaustive recommendations to this effect. As a starting point, U.S. policymakers should seek to reduce both the expected value of and the perceived need for a doctrine of pre-emption, as seen by Moscow.

To reduce the expected value of pre-emption, as seen by Moscow, the United States should:

1. Seek recognition of “rules of the road” for cyber and counterspace operations.
2. Prioritize the development of more resilient U.S. and NATO operational concepts.
3. Demonstrate NATO’s emphasis on resilience in future military exercises.
4. Boost investment in cyber resilience.
5. Expand investment in space resilience.
6. Bolster conventional deterrence in Europe.
7. Sustain Third Offset technological, doctrinal, and organizational innovations.
8. Reaffirm the United States’ intent to respond forcefully to Russian aggression.
9. Engage the American public on the costs of inaction in the face of foreign aggression.
10. To reduce Moscow’s perceived need for pre-emption, the United States should take a complementary but distinct set of steps:
11. Restore U.S.-Russian military-to-military contacts.
12. Sustain engagement with Russia on NATO ballistic missile defenses.
13. Consider limitations on U.S., Russian, and Chinese CPGS forces.
14. Promote the responsible use of military autonomy.
15. Clarify the United States’ preference against pre-emption.
16. Engage Russia on geopolitical concerns.


This policy approach is not without risks. Yet, the evolving security environment demands a more active U.S. strategy. If the Russian Federation officially adopts a defensive doctrine of pre-emption, it will signify the opening of a deeply concerning chapter in U.S.-Russian relations. That chapter would be defined by more acute fear, hastening timelines, and perilous risk-taking in a security environment defined by uncertainty. It would constitute a return to Cold War–level tensions, only this time with more ways for the United States and Russia to stumble into potentially catastrophic escalation than before.

The Unsettling View from Moscow

Russian policymakers believe their nation is under siege. The eastward march of liberalism in post–Cold War Europe is seen by the Kremlin to pose an existential threat to the Russian state. Meanwhile, rapid shifts in the military-technological environment are simultaneously exposing Russia to U.S. or NATO military coercion. These trends inform arguments by Russia’s top military strategists in favor of what they perceive to be a defensive doctrine of pre-emption.

A Dismal Geopolitical Outlook

Moscow has identified the United States and its NATO allies as the Russian Federation’s greatest threats today and for the foreseeable future.1 This pronouncement is rooted in Russian policymakers’ understanding of U.S. hegemonic intent. Russian officials believe that the United States is actively working to weaken the Russian state in order to fortify its own position as the world’s sole remaining superpower.2

They cite a host of U.S. policies as evidence of this intent. For instance, Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, often characterize NATO expansion in the 1990s and 2000s as an effort to isolate and subordinate Russia.3 They argue similarly that U.S. activities in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria are motivated by a desire to cultivate U.S. proxies in Russia’s near abroad. Russian analysts say the United States ultimately hopes to use these proxies to stir dissent within Russia itself.4

These attempts to co-opt or reorient regional actors to disadvantage Russia are not isolated events, according to Russian analysts. Instead, they sit within a long history of U.S.-backed “color revolutions” in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.5 U.S. analysts often characterize Russian military-operational art as “hybrid warfare.” Yet, Russian political-military thinkers are clear in their assessments that it is the United States that is using a combination of political, economic, information, and other non-military instruments to destabilize foreign nations.6

Vladimir Putin speaks in July 2015. He has forcefully criticized what he characterizes as the United States’ ongoing efforts to impose its will on weaker nations.

Lastly, Russian policymakers find little reason to expect that future U.S. interference in other nations’ domestic affairs will remain non-military. The Russian Federation has repeatedly highlighted and condemned what it has seen as the United States’ unlawful use of force to impose its will on weaker nations in the post–Cold War era. Frequent citations to this effect include U.S. actions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya.7 The regularity and severity with which Russian officials criticize the United States’ alleged overreliance on military force strongly imply their belief that the United States would be willing to use force to impose its will on Russia, if Russia is not prepared to defend itself.

In this context, some Russian officials believe that President Donald J. Trump’s election may offer new opportunities for bilateral political engagement.8 Yet Moscow also knows that U.S. skepticism of Russia has strong and lasting bipartisan support. This means that any gains achieved through U.S.-Russian engagement over the next four or eight years may prove limited or subject to reversal after Trump leaves office. As a result, Russian policymakers assess that the United States and its allies will remain a serious and lasting threat to Russian national security for the foreseeable future. Senior Russian officials thus say quietly that “Cold War 2.0” has begun between the United States and Russia.9

A Collapsing Battlespace

Rising U.S.-Russian geopolitical tensions are paralleled by rapid shifts in the military-technological environment. Russian strategists forecast that a host of novel or improved military technologies will allow both parties to act more rapidly across broader geographic expanses than before. At the same time, new weapon systems integrating greater autonomy and harnessing new physical principles promise to inject even further uncertainty into the U.S.-Russian correlation of forces. These shifts threaten to erode Russia’s ability to deter or defeat future U.S. aggression by defensive or retaliatory operations alone. In this regard, they constitute a primary reason why a rising number of Russia’s senior military strategists endorse a doctrine of pre-emption.

Russian analysts in Military Thought and other outlets consistently forecast that major wars in the future will be fought across all domains – not just in the land, sea, and air.10 They write that fighting will occur in outer space as adversaries attack one another’s space-based military architectures in order to cripple space-dependent air, sea, and land forces.11 And fighting will take place in the information domain – a domain unto itself – the “high ground” of modern warfare upon which all else rests.12

Russian forecasts stress equally that fighting in these domains will occur at once-unfathomable speeds.13 As Major General I.N. Vorobyov (Ret.) writes, “Its Majesty Time has sped up its flight.”14 Novel informational capabilities will allow belligerents to coordinate action by widely dispersed strike units with unprecedented synchrony and precision.15 At the same time, high-precision weapons – particularly conventional prompt global strike assets – will allow belligerents to strike one another’s vital targets faster than ever.16 And, as many analysts predict, novel attack methods – leveraging dramatic advances in military autonomy, directed energy, electromagnetics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and even the ability to control geological and climatic phenomena – may put the defense at a significant disadvantage relative to an increasingly diverse and deadly array of offensive tools.17

Russian authors posit that enemy targets will no longer be engaged successively in major wars.18 Traditional notions of the front and the rear, strong points, flanks and junctions, and combat-contact lines will be largely outmoded.19 Where is a nation’s flank when the enemy can hold its entire territory at risk through a combination of an expansive array of advanced sensors; exquisite information networks capable of synthesizing large amounts of targeting data in real time; and a balance of long-range precision strike assets that outmatch enemy air defense capabilities? Where is the front line when the objective in future wars will be to ensure that no enemy soldiers ever make it close to a defending nation’s borders?20

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/the-unsettling-view-from-moscow

Comment:  A 16 point priority list of things the Yanks need to do to manage Moscow?  That's not a strategy.  I don't know what to call it - perhaps just a statement of how bad things are.

Interesting thoughts about front and rear and cyberspace.  Where does an anti-Russian server located in Toronto sit on the Priority Target list?
 
Interesting developments ...
  • "Russian diplomat reproaches US media for heavy bias during Lavrov’s visit to US" (TASS)
  • "Trump Bars U.S. Press, but Not Russia’s, at Meeting With Russian Officials" -- When President Trump met with top Russian officials in the Oval Office on Wednesday, White House officials barred reporters from witnessing the moment. They apparently preferred to block coverage of the awkwardly timed visit as questions swirled about whether the president had dismissed his F.B.I. director in part to squelch the investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Moscow.  But the Russians, who have a largely state-run media, brought their own press contingent in the form of an official photographer. They quickly filled the vacuum with their own pictures of the meeting with Mr. Trump, Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Sergey I. Kislyak, Moscow’s ambassador to the United States.  Within minutes of the meeting, the Foreign Ministry had posted photographs on Twitter of Mr. Trump and Mr. Lavrov smiling and shaking hands. The Russian embassy posted images of the president grinning and gripping hands with the ambassador. Tass*, Russia’s official news agency, released more photographs of the three men laughing together in the Oval Office. The White House released nothing..."  (NY Times)

And while #POTUS45 was meeting with Lavrov ...
@VP  Today I met with Foreign Minister @PavloKlimkin & emphasized unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
C_gcW52XcAA_oSi.jpg

He did get a photo with #POTUS45, though ...
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Mentions of this meeting @ whitehouse.gov?  Not so much yet ...

* - I'm sure the TASS photographer in the White House couldn't possibly be linked to any RUS intelligence agency ...
 
At the risk of being accused of spamming - but convinced of the value of a good map in any discussion

gdp2015.jpg


Just a reminder of the States with whom Russia shares a direct land or maritime boundary.

US, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, North Korea, Japan.

That is 23 sovereign nation-states with which Moscow has to concern itself.  Any one could be a direct threat, a failed state or an unreliable ally.  It probably doesn't make for restful nights.  With or without Gen Mattis.  And we haven't mentioned internal ethnic, religious and political dissent.

I am not apologizing for Russia. 

I am just working on the same principle that I was taught when setting up any defensive position: once the COPPED analysis was complete from my side, get out and walk the ground and do the same analysis from the other side.

I think Russia has grounds for paranoia.

I understand why Russia may feel the need to try and keep the neighbours off balance - it can't afford to build a wall along all its borders. 
I believe that it is likely that it sees itself as a fencer - unarmoured and lightly armed - facing 23 opponents on the piste.  It can never let its guard down.  It must always keep moving.  It must always keep backing its opponents up. 
It is a tiring, and wasting, strategy but I doubt if it can see any other.

At the same time I don't think Russia can launch a major invasion of anywhere - especially not an invasion that would impact Western Europe.

 
Chris Pook said:
US, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, North Korea, Japan.
Facing Canadian troops on TWO flanks;  how can they not feel threatened?  :o

/self-congratulatory jingoism  ;)

 
Journeyman said:
Facing Canadian troops on TWO flanks;  how can they not feel threatened?  :o

/self-congratulatory jingoism  ;)

Seen.  ;D
 
When WILL Russia's oppression end?
Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokesperson Maria Zakharova said at a summit of world news agencies (at an international economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia) on Friday the bullying of Russia in Western mass media was akin to informational holocaust.

"We’ve read in textbooks about the events of the end of the 1930’s in Europe and in Poland and it seemed unfathomable to us that a single people could be accused of all the woes*," she said. "How could it be that people got deaf instantaneously and began to trust everything that was peddled to them as truth at that moment?"

"The result was World War II and Holocaust," Zakharova said.

"Doesn’t it seem to you that what we’re going through today, and particularly when it comes down to Russia, resembles an informational holocaust when Russia is used as a scarecrow without proper facts, rabidly, totally mindlessly on every other occasion that comes their way?" she said.

"The mainstream media are setting the tune to it and then this wave, as the nuclear wave, spreads further and rules out an opportunity to ask the question, what facts do you have and why are you doing it?" Zakharova said ...
* - Pretty ballsy Russia comparing itself to Jews in pre-WW2 Germany, given it's own record on such things ...
 
jollyjacktar said:
Uncle Joe was just misunderstood  :nod:
Indeed ...
 

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Countering propaganda without "counter propaganda". an interesting concept, but requires a much longer time horizon than we normally employ:

http://euromaidanpress.com/2017/06/16/ways-of-combatting-propaganda-without-counter-propaganda/

25 ways of combatting propaganda without doing counter-propaganda
counter-propaganda not the only way to combat propaganda
2017/06/16 - 20:42

The Director of the French Institut de recherche strategique de l’Ecole militaire (IRSEM), which is part of the French Defence Ministry, took to a subject little researched: how to combat pro-Kremlin propaganda without falling into the trap of doing counter-propaganda? Counter-propaganda would be an ill-suited means for Western democracies to fend off the effects of disinformation activities, argues Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer. It would also require more means than “any European government is ready to bring up”.

Director Jeangène Vilmer makes 25 proposals for countering pro-Kremlin disinformation without doing counter-propaganda:

Clearly distinguish between disinformation, propaganda and public diplomacy to avoid the argument that “everything is propaganda”. While every country can defend their points of view, the author argues, the “intentional falsification of information” must be condemned.

Do not demonize Russia, but focus on fighting disinformation.

Raise awareness of the importance of the issue.

Recognise there can be information activities that straddle the preconceived divisions between information warfare and military action, including cyber-attacks, political communication, election interference and disinformation.

Strengthen the research on this issue from all sides, including ministries, universities, think-tanks and the press.

Recognise the limits of a purely state-driven response to disinformation. It will always be suspected of being biased. Civil society must also be involved.

Acknowledge the limits of debunking. Establishing the facts is necessary, but it itself not sufficient. This is particularly true given that the aim of pro-Kremlin disinformation has been described as “undermining the notion of objective truth and the very possibility of doing journalism”.

Develop programmes to educate citizens in media literacy.

Promote a widely shared convention of journalism ethics.

Adapt the response to the audience. Respond with infotainment-style content for those who can only “consume entertaining information”.
Encourage independent Russian media.

Translate the articles written by independent Russian voices. This could contribute to showing that RT and Sputnik are not the only Russian points of view.

Build up networks with independent Russian journalists.

Use the testimony of whistleblowers who have left the propaganda machine. They can reveal the methods used.

Make use of the latest technology to research how fact-checking and identification of online trolls can be automatized.

Reinforce the EU’s East StratCom Task Force with funds and staff and distribute its products more widely.

Encourage EU Member States to develop national mechanisms to combat disinformation. While some have already starts this endeavour, having a national centre against disinformation facilitates the quick response to disinformation stories.

Reinforce the cooperation between states, the European Union and NATO in this field. Avoid overlap and duplication of efforts.

When debunking disinformation, also expose the propaganda methods used. Familiarise users with those methods so they can detect them elsewhere.

Track the financing of “anti-European propaganda”.

Create an international NGO dedicated to the fight against disinformation, like Reporters without Borders or Transparency International. It could rank media according to the trustworthiness of their reporting.

Consider, if needed, more restrictive counter measures, including fines, sanctions and blocking in certain cases.

Combat also the effects of disinformation by strengthening EU and NATO solidarity, social cohesion, democracy and respect of human rights.

Communicate more in Russian, especially on social media.

Defend European values and develop a positive narrative about the European Union.
 
Russia unveils a supposed next generation combat uniform, complete with exoskeleton and full face helmet etc.  Very GI Joe or Halo looking.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4653886/Russia-unveils-generation-Star-Wars-combat-uniform.html
 
More on breaking Russia's energy stranglehold over Europe:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/07/08/trump_has_putin_over_a_barrel_134415.html

Trump Has Putin Over a Barrel
By Lawrence Kudlow
July 08, 2017

A few years back, in one of his finest moments, Sen. John McCain said on a Sunday talk show, "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." It was right when he said it, and it's even more right today.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's circle of corrupt oligarchs gouge whatever money they can from the impoverished Russian economy and move it to bank accounts overseas. And they do this after giving Putin his cut, which he apparently also sends overseas.

Many say Putin is the richest man in Russia, worth billions and billions. So the old Soviet model of nomenklatura communist bureaucrats getting rich while the rest of the country declines is still in place.

But with energy prices falling, Putin's Russia has essentially been in a recession over the past four years. With oil at $50 a barrel or less, Russian budgets plunge deeper into debt. It's even doubtful the Russians have enough money to upgrade their military-energy industrial complex.

Through crafty media relations and his own bravado, a deluded Putin struggles to maintain the illusion that Russia is a strong economic power. But it ain't so. Not even close.

Now, Russia still has a lot of oil and gas reserves. And it uses this to bully Eastern and Western Europe. It threatens to cut off these resources if Europe dares to complain about Putin power grabs in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, the Baltics and elsewhere.

But enter President Donald Trump. In his brilliant speech in Warsaw, Poland, earlier this week, he called Putin's energy bluff.

It may well have been the best speech of his young presidency. Trump delivered a stirring leadership message, emphasizing the importance of God, freedom, strong families and democratic values.

And while unambiguously pledging to uphold NATO's Article 5 -- which commits the members to protect one another -- Trump went even deeper. "The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive," he said. "Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? ... if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive." He also spoke several times of the religious leadership and bravery of Pope John Paul II.

It was a bold strike for the West.

But in an absolutely key part of the speech, he took direct aim at Putin's energy bullying.

Trump said, "we are committed to securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy."

President Trump has quickly made it clear that former President Barack Obama's war on business is over. He's also made it clear, through regulatory rollbacks of breathtaking scope, that the Obama war on fossil fuels is over.

Trump wants America to achieve energy dominance. He withdrew from the costly Paris climate accord, which would have severely damaged the American economy. He directed the EPA to rescind the Obama Clean Power Plan, which would have led to skyrocketing electricity rates. He fast-tracked the Keystone XL pipeline. He reopened the door for a modernized American coal industry. He's overturning all the Obama obstacles to hydraulic fracturing, which his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton would have dramatically increased. And he has opened the floodgates wide to energy exports.

Right now, U.S. oil reserves are almost in parity with those of Saudi Arabia. We have the second most coal reserves in the world. There are enough U.S. gas reserves to last us about a century. We have already passed Russia as the world's top natural gas producer. We are the world's top producer of oil and petroleum hydrocarbons. And exports of liquefied national gas are surging, with the Department of Energy rapidly approving new LNG projects and other export terminals.

All these America-first energy policies are huge economic-growth and high-wage job producers at home. But in the Warsaw speech, Trump made it clear that America's energy dominance will be used to help our friends across Europe. No longer will our allies have to rely on Russia's Gazprom supplies with inflated, prosperity-killing prices.

In short, with the free market policies he's putting in place in America's energy sector and throughout the U.S. economy, the business man president fully intends to destroy Russia's energy-market share. And as that takes hold, Russia's gas station economy will sink further.

And as that takes hold, Bully-boy Putin will have to think twice about Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics. He'll have to think twice about his anti-American policies in the Middle East and North Korea. And he'll have to think twice about his increasingly precarious position as the modern-day Russian tsar.

And the world may yet become a safer place.

Trump has Putin over a barrel.
 
The pressures described in the article apply to the ruling class in Canada, the US, China and pretty much everywhere else, so this article could be I'm multiple threads. such as Brexit, Grand Strategy for a Divided America, or even Deconstructing Progressive Thought. The creation of parallel structures is part of the replacement of existing structures which are no longer functioning. Lots to ponder:

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2017/07/14/unconventional-wisdom/

Unconventional Wisdom
BY RICHARD FERNANDEZ JULY 14, 2017 CHAT 132 COMMENTS

Conventional Wisdom

During the Cold War the Soviets were contained by physically surrounding them with allies (NATO) while pelting its firewall with messages from the Voice of America, Newsweek and CNN.  Precious little got through.  Just how total this exclusion in the pre-Internet and BC (Before Cellphone) days was is illustrated by the story of defector Viktor Belenko and the American supermarket.  Traveling through suburban Virginia he noted the vast array of goods and absence of rotten smells in these establishments and suspected Fake News.

"I congratulate you," Belenko said en route back to the mansion. "That was a spectacular show you put on for me."
"What do you mean?'

"I mean that place; it's like one of our show kolkhozes where [our government] takes foreigners."

Nick laughed, but not Peter. ["Belenko], I give you my word that what you've just seen is a common, typical shopping center. There are tens of thousands of them all over [the U.S.A.]. Anywhere you go in the United States, north, south, east, west, you will see pretty much the same. Many of the shopping centers in the suburbs of our cities are bigger and fancier and nicer."

But it wasn't fake; just that Belenko's mind couldn't take in the new paradigm.  Forty years later the Internet, cellphone and a shift "from a centrally planned economy to a globally integrated market economy" made the sight of consumer goods familiar in Russia.  But finding the money to buy these goodies depended on oil.  Oil is the lifeblood of Putin's ambitions and his Achille's heel.  Obama's reset with Russia may have failed to slow Putin but the lack of money caused by sanctions and the collapse of oil prices worked just as advertised.

The Russian economy experienced two major shocks in 2014 ... the first shock was the sharp decline in oil prices during the third and fourth quarter of 2014, exposing Russia’s extreme dependence on global commodity cycles. ... The second shock was the economic sanctions resulting from geopolitical tensions, which negatively affected investor appetite for Russian investments.

Lack of money was a powerful restraint.  The oil crash collapsed the ruble and forced a 27% reduction in the Kremlin's military budget in 2016.  With oil prices set to stay flat the Russians have to keep drilling and investing simply to stay level as the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies notes.  The Kremlin doesn't make any real spending money until world oil price gets above levels before the great oil crash of 2014, which may not happen any time soon. As the Oxford study explains:

The correlation between upstream spending in ruble terms and oil production is ... an R-square of 0.96. However, companies would not spend their money on increasing output without some commercial incentive, no matter how much the Kremlin might urge it [without] ... the Russian tax system ...

these taxes ... are also calculated relative to the oil price and have a sliding scale. The rate of export tax, for example, changes when the oil price goes above $15, $20 and $25/barrel. As a result, as the oil price rises the government take increases significantly, but when it falls it is government revenues that take the largest hit.

You would think this a Eureka moment: to contain oil prices is to contain Russia (and Islamism). But cheap fossil fuels are not everyone's cup of tea.  "Drill, baby, drill" is not popular on the left.  Even though liberals understand the power of cheap energy -- one of Hillary's supposedly hacked emails even alleged anti-fracking and environmental causes were a Russian plot to depress oil production -- to advocate it is bad progressive politics. This probably led the Saudis to Hillary's camp in 2016. "According to Bob McNally, president of consulting firm Rapidan Group, countries in the oil-producing Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, are hoping for Hillary Clinton to become president."

"It is no secret that the Saudis and other Gulf Sunni powers are rooting for Mrs. Clinton," McNally told CNBC from Vienna ahead of Thursday's widely eyed OPEC meeting.

"(There is) a lot of concern and anxiety about what Donald Trump would mean," he said.

If second marriages are the "triumph of hope over experience"  perhaps environmental policy is the victory of lobbying over common sense.  The Russians stymied on the physical front had to resort to the virtual world to equalize.  Despite the depiction of Russians as uber-hackers, they actually saw themselves as coming from behind the West in cyberwarfare. The Russian General staff was inspired by the role social media played in the Arab Spring to create a cyberwarfare capability. Nor had the Kremlin forgotten the traumatic role soft power played in the downfall of the Soviet Union. "In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, many western nations continued to utilise soft power initiatives to consolidate the spread of western liberal ideas and culture. ... For Russia, this extensive dispersal of western liberal influence was viewed as a potential threat. Citing events like Color Revolutions, the Maiden Protest in the Ukraine and uprisings of the Arab Spring, Russia believed America was using soft power as a weapon in a new form of hybrid warfare."

So they tried a little soft power themselves.  Little did they imagine how successful they would be against the former information warfare gurus. The Russian hacks of the 2016 election are regarded as such epic victories that Keith Olbermann broadcast an online plea for help to the world's intelligence agencies to help prevent a Russian coup in Washington. Significantly more measured is former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright description of the shocking reversal of fortune.

In the 1970s, I wrote my dissertation on the role of the Czechoslovak press in the events of Prague Spring. In the early 1980s, I traveled to Poland to study the underground press of the Solidarity movement. I met with dozens of journalists, who told me that while they started out by delivering typed news sheets to workers in factories, they found they could increase their speed of communication and the reach of their messages by using what was then considered a cutting-edge technology — audiocassettes.

I remember thinking about those tapes in 2011, as I watched activists in Tunisia and Egypt use social media to organize, communicate, and ultimately topple two entrenched regimes. It was easy, in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring, to believe that these new tools of communication had only transformed politics for the better, and that the spread of @Twitter and @Facebook would inevitably lead to more open and democratic societies.

But as our agenda today attests, those views did turn out to be too optimistic — because like so many other things, technology is a double-edged sword. In recent years, democracy’s enemies have become adept at polluting social media platforms with rumors, disinformation, and anti-democratic propaganda. And has let some of the same people who once heralded the birth of the social media age to wonder whether democracy can survive it. ...

The Oxford researchers also showed how authoritarian governments are using these tools on their own populations as a form of social control, with some 45 percent of twitter activity in Russia coming from automated accounts.

We are now Viktor Belenkos to be protected from the contagion of subversive thought.  This amazing turnabout partly explains the media's bitterness for Donald Trump.  Their downfall seems so sudden it can only be due to some evil Trumpian witchcraft or infernal magic, for nothing else can explain it.  But Albright to her credit understands that what changed since the day Viktor Belenko walked into a suburban Virginia supermarket wasn't Trump:  what changed was the implosion of the information hierarchy.

What is interesting to me is comparing this to how information got transmitted during communism.
In the days of the Soviet Union, people largely knew that official sources of information could not be trusted, so they built unofficial channels that were more reliable, for example talking to friends and family.

In the internet age, it is these unofficial channels that are becoming less reliable, as computational propaganda is able to more easily infiltrate these networks. At the same time, people do not seem to have yet developed a healthy skepticism about what others are sharing online.

Our trust hierarchies have collapsed. As with Soviet Russia, the "official" media sources are now distrusted as purveyors "fake news".  To fill the gap a peer-to-peer grapevine, similar to the "friends and family", a samizdat is emerging to pick up the slack. Sonya Mann at Inc uses a startup to illustrate the growing division of society into trust groups. "Pax Dickinson wants to fund the revolution. Not a blood-in-the-streets revolution, but one where hardcore right-wingers can economically secede from the parts of society they vehemently dislike. "We need parallel everything. I do not want to ever have to spend a single dollar at a non-movement business."

In conversations with Inc., Dickinson explained that he sees CounterFund as the linchpin of a parallel far-right economy. The alt-right movement shouldn't fund or depend on platforms that are hostile to their goals, he believes. CounterFund's website sports endorsements from Richard Spencer, the suit-wearing white supremacist who went viral after being punched in the face, and comedian Sam Hyde, whose divisive show Million Dollar Extreme was kicked off the air by Adult Swim.

Dickinson is pitching CounterFund itself as a new kind of political party, one that cares for its community rather than pouring money into candidates' campaigns. It's hard to overstate the degree to which he's willing to take this project beyond mainstream acceptability. Dickinson compared CounterFund to Hezbollah: "Hezbollah is a government within a government. They collect garbage, they operate hospitals, they're an economy within an economy, and a government within a government."

The Resistance is probably embarked on the same process of internal secession themselves.  How long can this mutual escalation of mistrust continue without effect?  The challenge to hierarchy probably arose independently of Putin.  He just happened to come along at the right time to ride the wave and take credit for it.

The Chinese government, less apoplectic than the humiliated Washington elite, is collected enough to realize they too are at risk from the forces of entropy engulfing the West and they are damping down on it.  "China will completely block access to much of the global internet as part of a sweeping crackdown aimed at suppressing dissent and maintaining the Communist party’s grip on power. The government has ordered China’s three telecommunications companies to completely block access to virtual private networks, or VPNs."

The Chinese aren't afraid of Putin, but they are terrified of what they perceive as chaotic process. In the West it's just the opposite.  No one fears a chaotic process.  They're all afraid of a man.

Conventional wisdom posits the chief challenges facing the post-Cold War World are Global Warming and the decline of international institutions. But maybe that assurance is a species of Fake News.  Suppose the most pressing problems in the next decade is finding new energy supplies to 1) keep the price of oil low enough to contain Russia (and Islamism); and 2) adapting to a disruptive information revolution no one can seem to control.  Who will hand you that unconventional wisdom unless you come to it yourself?
 
A few reasons why the U.S.-Russia relationship may not get better anytime soon, shared under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42) ...
https://nobsrussia.com/2017/07/29/trump-cant-deal-the-problem-of-improving-usrussian-relations/
Trump Can’t Deal: The Problem of Improving US/Russian Relations
Russia Without BS blog
29 July 2017


Long before he got elected, Trump talked about having better relations with Russia. Of course he also talked about shooting down Russian planes for buzzing US Navy ships, but generally his attitude was “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?” Many people on both sides of the political spectrum and with little knowledge of Russia or its ruling class have asked the same question. Is it really so bad to want better relations with Russia? Honestly the answer is no, it’s not bad at all, but the devil is in the details.

First of all, people who tend to advance this argument tend to put all the blame and responsibility on the United States for the breakdown in relations. NATO expansion was “provocative” to Russia, they often say. More brazen defenders of Putin *COUGH*MARK AMES*COUGH* claim that the US was responsible for the Maidan “revolution” in Ukraine which “sparked a civil war.” All of this betrays the mentality that the Kremlin is promoting. All of this is hypocritical and wrong, as well.

For one thing, whatever you think about NATO (and I have my complaints as well), Russia long since recognized the rights of sovereign nations (including those which were in the former Eastern Bloc) to join whatever international alliances or organizations they wanted. It is indeed interesting how these non-interventionists are quick to jump on any example of the US violating the sovereignty of foreign nations, yet they never consider that joining NATO or the EU is also exercising a nations sovereignty. Maybe, just maybe, a better question to ask is why nations like the Baltic states (the only NATO members which actually share a border with the bulk of Russia) wanted to join NATO in the first place. In any case, if you look at NATO spending and US military deployments in Europe up till about 2015, you’ll see how ludicrous it is to claim that NATO was somehow threatening Russia, so much so that it justified invading Ukraine and annexing a part of it just because a corrupt would-be dictator pissed off his own people and then ran instead of abiding by the agreement he signed.

There’s also the argument that the West screwed over Russia during the Yeltsin years. There are certainly real grievances here, particularly economic advice that emphasized free market dogma at the expense of human lives, and looking the other way while Boris Yeltsin illegally and violently constructed an authoritarian system which he would later hand over to Vladimir Putin. But this also ignores the other side of the coin. For one thing, Western governments also provided humanitarian aid during this period. Could they have done more? Definitely. But it’s simply a lie to assert that all the West did was send free market missionaries and sex tourists. Second, this argument about the 90’s totally removes all agency from Russians. The United States didn’t force dishonest people to form organized crime gangs (some of which dated back to late Soviet times), nor did it force people to rob and cheat their fellow citizens so they could become unbelievable rich. The West was, at worst, an enabler in this business. It was not the initiator.

The West did not “humiliate” Russia. In fact it was quite the opposite. It looked the other way as Russia helped create pseudo-states in Moldova and Georgia. It helped negotiate a deal with Ukraine, whereby that country gave up its nuclear weapons and entrusted them to Russia. It acknowledged Russia as the successor to the Soviet Union, thus allowing Russia to take over the USSR’s permanent position on the UN Security Council. Over my long time in Russia, I learned that what many Russians considered humiliating about the 90’s wasn’t what I considered humiliating. If you asked me what was humiliating about that period I would have said the poverty, the crime, and most of all the sexual exploitation, which became so widespread it led to the name “Natasha” becoming a slang term for prostitute in many countries. But the humiliation that many Russians think about today largely ignores that, and instead focuses on the loss of their empire. It was humiliating to have to acknowledge the independence of countries like Kazakhstan or Ukraine. It was humiliating that Russians would have to start learning the language of the titular nationality instead of the latter having to use Russian all the time. If that’s humiliation, then the West is under no obligation to alleviate it.

Lastly there’s the idea that Putin made overtures toward the West, only to be snubbed. I’d say there’s some truth to this argument. I believe that at least in the beginning, Putin did have a sincere desire to bring stability and prosperity to Russia, as well as closely integrate it into the West. You could argue about the Chechen war or the crackdown on media (whose owners were not necessarily objective nor innocent) that took place in the early Putin presidency, but I would say that literally anyone taking over from Yeltsin in that period would have been forced to make tough decisions. The system was already corrupt and authoritarian. I still believe that Putin could have taken a different route in the early 2000s, then if he left power he could have retired as true modernizer and savior of Russia, albeit with controversy. We would look at him the way we look at figures like Pilsudski or Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Yet not only did Western leaders, after a brief flirtation, give Putin the cold shoulder, but this was also the time when Western media seemed to criticize everything Putin did. Things that were ignored under Yeltsin, who was portrayed as the father of Russian democracy, were suddenly controversial and ominous under Putin. And of course, the press almost never failed to identify Putin as the “former KGB officer.”

At the same time, Putin came of age if you will, during the beginning of the War on Terror and more specifically, the war on Iraq. The latter, and especially the Bush doctrine behind it, had huge implications for Putin. For one thing, it ignited massive anti-American sentiment throughout the world, which would remain fresh for exploitation long after the initial invasion. Second, he learned that if you have the ability to project military power, you can do it so long as you make up some supposedly humanitarian pre-text. Bush had WMDs, whereas Putin would later use the excuse of protecting Russian speakers in the Crimea. Lastly, it confirmed a view held by Putin and many of his generation, that the United States doesn’t really believe in human rights or national sovereignty, but that it simply invokes these things as it pleases in order to serve its own interests. While Putin and others who believe this are wrong to think that the United States hasn’t grown and evolved from the monster that it was in the Gilded Age or during the Cold War, there are still plenty of examples of American hypocrisy when it comes to human rights- most notably the war in Yemen.

But the argument that Putin was snubbed by the West can’t totally explain away his own actions and decisions since that time. So Western leaders didn’t accept him as he wanted- did that mean he needed to construct an authoritarian, centralized system of kleptocracy? Wouldn’t it have been better for Putin to simply brush off the cold responses and busy himself with modernizing Russia, creating stable democratic institutions, and establishing rule of law? What better way to get back at leaders like Blair and Bush than by turning Russia into an economic powerhouse, one which actually stood by the principle of respecting national sovereignty? That, sadly, is not what Putin chose to do, of course. He and his cronies decided to use Russia’s natural wealth to enrich themselves at the expense of the country’s future, and rather than build a stable democratic system he created a cult of personality that revolves around him personally. And while Putin would love to point fingers at the West, the whole time he and his pals were robbing Russia, the West was more than happy to accept the dirty money and even invest massive amounts of capital into Russia. So in the end, the argument that Putin became Putin because he was rejected by the West ultimately fails.

Having gotten those arguments out of the way, there’s the ultimate obstacle to better US/Russia relations, which is Putin and his system. They want bad relations with the West and they need bad relations with the West, because the oil boom is over, their gas leverage is waning, and they squandered much of the wealth Russia produced over roughly a decade- the West is the scapegoat. The West, its dastardly fifth column and ultra-secret sixth column is necessary to explain why, in spite of being one of the richest nations in the world in terms of natural resources, Russia has only managed to achieve the economic power of Italy or Spain, but with much lower living standards, salaries, pensions, etc. People have been angry since 2011, and they need to be suppressed, ergo the must be labeled as Western-backed agents of revolution. Putin is literally fighting for survival, and the cult of personality built up around him doesn’t allow him to blink or make concessions. There’s nothing he can really offer in any negotiations.

This is why in the past I have criticized the so-called “realists” who say that the West needs to negotiate with Russia, yet never articulate what exactly Russia is going to give the West in exchange. Vague promises of cooperation are useless. Likewise Russia has shown that its word on treaties is essentially worthless (ask Ukraine). If the Kremlin is really so eager to engage with its “Western partners,” it needs to explain what it can offer in concrete terms.

Since the reality is that Putin will not and cannot actually offer anything of value to the West, and US president wishing to improve relations would have to talk over his head, to the Russian people. This would require a US president with actual knowledge of Russia, its history, and its culture. Ideally it would be a presidential candidate who can actually speak some Russian. But most of all it would have to be a president who is ready to acknowledge the many bad foreign policy choices of the United States so as to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy and head off the Kremlin’s attempts to use its favorite weapon whataboutism.

This US president needs to be sincere, and explain how the United States, over the years, has had to acknowledge the reality of sovereign states, and how it has often failed to be consistent in its application of human rights. They would have to stress that if Russia is serious about being a partner with other leading nations, it must abandon dreams of empire and spheres of influence and join those other nations in securing a world that respects international law and sovereignty. Of course these words must also be backed with action, for example in regards to Saudi Arabia and its war in Yemen. This president could invoke that example to show how the United States is ready to change and isn’t just trying to trick Russia into unilateral concession, as many Russians no doubt suspect. This hypothetical president would have to do all this and more, while also remaining firm about what the West demands of Russia- that it take responsibility for its own condition and stop undermining its neighbors like Ukraine.

Do I even need to point out at this point that Donald Trump is not the president who can do any of that, ever? Hell, I can’t imagine anyone in DC that I know of who could possibly do that. Hillary wouldn’t have been able to do it. Bernie couldn’t have done it. Anyone that has those skills and that knowledge probably has no shot of ever being elected president (I’m not announcing my candidacy at this time).

Therefore someone like Trump has no choice but to accept the same “deal” that the Kremlin has been offering for years now- let us do what we want, and we give you nothing but vague cooperation on “terrorism” and maybe something involving plutonium or missile quantities. Knowing Trump, the master deal-maker, it’s easy to see why his handlers in the White House, State Department, and intelligence communities are careful to limit and monitor his contacts with Putin and other Russians. Not only would he easily be manipulated by a far more intelligent individual like Putin or Lavrov, but he’d probably throw in Alaska if they gave him a gold fidget spinner or something. Then he’d go tweet about how the fake news media and the Dems are criticizing his master deal just because they’re still upset about his big electoral college win.

So to reiterate. Better relations with Russia are just fine, but actually achieving that goal is easier said than done. It would take a very special kind of negotiator, a rare type of politician. It would also require the Russian side to accept responsibility for the deterioration of relations. The West didn’t invade Ukraine and start a war- Russia did that, period. Repairing relations between countries is a two-way street.
 
Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies annual symposium, Ottawa at Canadian War Museum--Dick Fadden, former CSIS Director, DM at DND, and PM's National Security Advisor, will be keynote speaker:
http://www.casis-acers.ca/annual-symposium/

CASIS Annual Symposium
Preliminary Program
Friday, September 29, 2017
RUSSIA AND THE WEST: TEMPORARY STALEMATE OR
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES

REGISTRATION:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/casis-annual-symposium-russia-and-the-west-temporary-stalemate-or-irreconcilable-differences-tickets-35345045984?

8:15              Registration, Coffee, Networking

9:00              Opening Remarks (Welcome and Program Overview)

President CASIS

9:15                Keynote Speaker: Richard Fadden, Former National Security Advisor, Privy Council Office

10:15              Break

10:30            Drivers of Russian Foreign Policy

Aurel Brown, University of Toronto: Domestic Drivers of Russian Foreign Policy

Tim Frye, Columbia, Russian Foreign Policy from an Economic/Market Perspective

Paul Robinson, University of Ottawa, Russia and Ukraine.

Presentation and Questions

12:00            Lunch

1:00                Russian Influence Operations

                      Clint Watts, Foreign Policy Research Institute. Russian Influence Operations.

Presentation and Questions

2:00              Russian Military and Security Services

Greg Smolynec, Canada DND: The Russian Military

Margarete Klein, SWP: Russia’s military and security services

Presentations and Questions

3:00                Break

3:15                Russia and the US/Canada

Kimberly Marten, Columbia: Russia and the US

TBD: Canada and Russia: is there a Canadian role?

Presentations and Questions

4:15                Closing Speech/Overview

Irvin Studin, Global Brief

4:45              CASIS Annual Meeting and Election of Board

All speakers listed are confirmed. Titles for Presentations will be added.
Breaks and lunch are included in the Registration fee.

Final Summary Highlights from the CASIS 2016 Annual Symposium ["The Cyber Challenge"]
http://www.casis-acers.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Final-Summary-Highlights-from-the-CASIS-2016-Annual-Symposium.pdf

Mark
Ottawa

 
I know it's a great deal of smoke, mirrors and showmanship but Naval Day in St Petersburg is a good show nevertheless.

https://youtu.be/1bKTJ44GS5o
 
Apparently the Cardinals of the Kremlin are trying to elect a new Putin. :)
 
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