Category Archives: Political Psychology

FTAC: America – The Robust Democracy

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Old saw: “Democracies elect the governments they deserve.”

I’m with those invested in the “checks and balances” of our Democracy and hope that neither legislature nor judiciary cave to Administrative fiat in actions or policies inimical to an authentic political freedom.

Of course, I’m going to dig Moscow for the other kind of “freedom”.

🙂

The not-so-secret secret about politics anywhere / any context / any time: if or when it is discovered that it stinks, people will walk away from it.

The powerful of the Fourth Estate have proven time and again their tenacity for getting at the truth given sufficient import for motivation, so more will continue to emerge as regards the character of Trump’s Administration and the way he works it. The opposed public may have to accept his earnest goodness; his supporters may be forced to reconsider how they made their choice.

As noted elsewhere in this thread, WE have all got to tackle how we ourselves accept, evaluate, and redistribute / repackage information. Despite the hip claims, the world is not “post-fact”: the world may be bamboozled, confused, and driven toward extremes by its own continuous bombardment by or consumption of information, but we have also the opportunity to slow down, reflect, and research what ails us as we get down the road together.

One more cliche that I’ve come to call “Pogo Effect”: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”

If Americans hew to traditional true ideals and values and then read and write responsibly themselves, then, indeed, the system will survive whatever gets up in the cab and tries to jam its gears.

We’re all a little nervous about who’s getting up in the cab of the big freight liner “America”.

🙂

It’s not only President Elect Trump’s detractors that have cause for worry — and they certainly know their own worries — but Trump’s fans now have an investment in Trump’s defending their own best traditional American ideals, principles, and values, and if they find their own assumptions and freedoms, much less other interests, chipped away by the new president, those in the President’s middle ranks will also start to back away from any proto-fascist display of character that comes to pass.

However, as I type, nothing has come to pass in relation to a Trump Presidency.

The President Elect is not quite there yet (be patient) and all bets are off.

Senior Justice Writer for The New York Daily News Shaun King has had the following posted to his Facebook page since January 11, 2017:

I want you to view this video from 4 years ago in 2013 in light of recent events.

In it, Trump calmly, cooly, and confidently states that he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Then, it gets very weird. Trump then confidently states that Putin is following his every move, was likely even interested in the conversation they were having, and would likely be watching it later.

How did Trump know all of that?

See, this was off of the campaign trail, long before Trump announced his intentions to run. This was before he felt the pressure to say 6 different times “I don’t know Putin” and “I don’t know anything about Putin.”

This seems to be a clearer version of the truth. What’s going on here?

Posted by Shaun King on Wednesday, January 11, 2017


BackChannels regulars may wish to check out yesterday’s “Trust Putin?” post, where the same has been posted as an addendum.

Addendum: Additional Reference

Fandos, Nicholas.  “White House Pushes ‘Alternative Facts.’ Here are the Real Ones.”  The New York Times, January 22, 2017.

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Trust Putin?

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Russia

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Posted by MEMRI, January 18, 2017.

“These leaks are obviously fake,” said President Putin, but then he was to follow with this assertion: “He was just a businessman, one of America’s wealthy men.  Does anybody really think that our intelligence services chase every American billionaire?”

😀

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/kompromat-trump-dossier/512891/ – 1/11/2017.
https://news.vice.com/story/we-talked-to-an-ex-kgb-colonel-and-putin-critic-about-the-trump-russia-dossier – 1/17/2017
http://www.voanews.com/a/russia-kompromat-remains-alive-and-well/3677094.html – 1/15/2017.

Who said anything about “every American billionaire”?

In this next 10-minute or so video, Samantha Power offers some useful advice:

Posted to YouTube by PBS NewsHour, January 17, 2017.

Perhaps BackChannels is not to be trusted . . . well, there’s all of this (and much, much more) for obtaining background on today’s immediate “east-west” politics: “The Russian Section” (of the BC library).   For a primer on the cynicism now attaching to Putin’s Moscow enterprise, readers may shuttle over to “Moscow’s Rules“, a primer.

As noted yesterday, the Christopher Steele dossier remains difficult to either refute or verity, but in the opinion of former CIA staff Nick Dowling appears to continue to warrant investigation.

Addendum – January 19, 2017

Senior Justice Writer for The New York Daily News has had the following posted to his Facebook page since January 11, 2017:

I want you to view this video from 4 years ago in 2013 in light of recent events.

In it, Trump calmly, cooly, and confidently states that he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Then, it gets very weird. Trump then confidently states that Putin is following his every move, was likely even interested in the conversation they were having, and would likely be watching it later.

How did Trump know all of that?

See, this was off of the campaign trail, long before Trump announced his intentions to run. This was before he felt the pressure to say 6 different times “I don’t know Putin” and “I don’t know anything about Putin.”

This seems to be a clearer version of the truth. What’s going on here?

Posted by Shaun King on Wednesday, January 11, 2017


 

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Jihadi Talk – The Dictionary by Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Religion

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Jihadi Dictionary cvr.jpg

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt.  The Jihadi Dictionary: The Essential Intel Tool for Military, Law Enforcement, Government and the Concerned Public.  Mamaroneck, New York: MultiEducator Press, 2016 (Amazon – Paperback).

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt.  The Jihadi Dictionary: The Essential Intel Tool for Military, Law Enforcement, Government and the Concerned Public.  Mamaroneck, New York: MultiEducator Press, 2016 (Amazon – Kindle).

From the introduction:

The purpose of this dictionary is to explain the confusing and terrifying behavior of the jihadis by bringing to light their unconscious motivation. What is missing in their mental development that makes an entire group enact such vicious crimes not only against humanity but even their own people? The reservoir of their rage arises from problems nested in early maternal attachment in shame–honor cultures ― the early mother/infant bonding attachment, the first relationship in life. This is the real driver of the terrorism. While there has been a voluminous amount of material written about terrorism, little hinges on how to decode the meaning of the terrorists’ aberrant behavior from the perspective of early childhood development and trauma.

One has to be cautious not to “diagnosis” an entire group of people, but given the amount of destruction, cruelty, sadism, and revenge leading to heinous crimes against humanity, in this case I make an exception. Daesh, The Islamic State, helped me uncover a borderline psychotic diagnosis for jihadis because their behavior is so out of bounds in terms of morality and ethics that it has revealed its own psychosis. Others in the Arab world are aware of this and realize that they have created a tiger whose tail they are now bound to ride. Hezbollah and Iranian extremism has also been blatant in its wanton destruction and, in fact, has been a major funder of Sunni violence even though they are Shia. Almost worse than the terrorist attacks themselves is the jihadis’ lack of empathy and concern for the pain they cause. Jihadis are incapable of walking in the shoes of others. They may appear to be empathic, but it is only what I refer to as pseudo-empathy.

Kobrin’s writing is as entertaining as its interpretations of language are educating and loaded with insight.

Here’s a portion from the first “A” — for “Acting Out”:

Acting out is a process frequently seen in play therapy, where children have the opportunity to play out their most violent behavior and repressed fantasies.  Often these acts are attacks against the mother, who is seen as the source of painful dependency needs and nurturing.  The breast that is needed is also the breast that needs to be destroyed — e.g., beheadings, rage against their mothers, the need to get rid of her, to violently separate from her.  Jihadis manifest extreme attention-seeking behavior . . . .  “watching somebody else doing an action is just like doing the action yourself.”

On a late page (271-272) — and all between appears just as well grounded and rich in perspective — comes this gem associated with “Neoteny”:

The Islamic suicide terrorists and all their accessories to the crime — the engineer bomb maker, the recruiter, the sender, the escort, the charismatic leader, their mothers and fathers, their uncles, the clan, the tribe, the umma — are terrified because they, too, have been “neotenized”.  They are developmentally arrested and have never been allowed to separate, individuate, mature, or be free, independent, self-sufficient, confident, and competent human beings.  They live their early lives in the throes of terrorizing and shaming child-rearing practices.  If one never separates psychologically, they are left with group think, a kind of herd mentality.  The family, the community, and the culture embody and accept bad behavior as normative . . . .

For all curious as how it is that Islam, the Religion of Peace seems to be somewhere always wading in blood and unimaginable cruelty, The Jihadi Dictionary delivers answers and explanations aplenty — and they would seem to work.

BackChannels Aside

BackChannels has long maintained that Moscow today “plays” the Jihadists by using their own motivations, proclivities, tendencies, and weaknesses to incite, manipulate, and position the same in service to Moscow’s own medieval ends.  As much fits with Soviet Russia’s long history of involvement with terrorism and certainly this blog’s observation of Assad’s engineering the incubation of ISIL.

If the jihadist were not so predictable, the same would not be so useful to the politicians, like Assad, who have figured out how to get some use out of them.

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Trump vs Steele – An Emerging Credibility Gap

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Journalism, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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Fusion GPS had been hired by Republican opponents of Mr Trump in September 2015. In June 2016 Mr Steele came on the team. He was, and continues to be, highly regarded in the intelligence world. In July, Mr Trump won the Republican nomination and the Democrats became new employers of Mr Steele and Fusion GPS.

In the same month Mr Steele produced a memo, which went to the FBI, stating that Mr Trump’s campaign team had agreed to a Russian request to dilute attention on Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. Four days later Mr Trump stated that he would recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. A month later officials involved in his campaign asked the Republican party’s election platform to remove a pledge for military assistance to the Ukrainian government against separatist rebels in the east of the country.

Sengupta, Kim.  “Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months.”  Independent, January 14, 2016.

This scandal that has come out of the shadows — by way of the findings of the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as a consultant of highest repute; by way of the associated imprimatur of the highly experienced and respected former British ambassador Sir Andrew Wood — may not be returned to them.

The story appears to be taking off, a BackChannels’ opinion based on so many options for searching up the “Trump Kompromat” story.

The political mobs, among other interests, seldom appreciate hearing how they have been snookered, but they may have to hear as much as more comes to light.

As well acknowledged by the press, American President Elect Trump has moved to dismiss Steele’s report as fiction concocted by his political enemies, first within the Republican Party, and after his nomination, then in the Democratic Party that picked up on the availability of the consulting firm Fusion GPS (URL references Daily Mail, January 13, 2017).

Be that as it may, British MI6 — in fiction and film, James Bond’s outfit — has, as may America’s CIA, the deepest imaginable investment in producing for the state’s highest and most information privileged officials, clear, accurate, and complete intelligence in service to the state’s defense and interests.  The highest integrity — and loyalty — may be expected of such agents.  It is against that tradition that Trump throws chafe.

Trump and others may have been better off citing Moscow’s KGB history of “Active Measures” and “Disinformation” as a potential cause for Steele’s findings, i.e, Steele had been “played” by Moscow.  That  would have taken the story into the parallel universe of espionage and just as well — at the some future date — into the theaters.

This day may be too late for merely dumping Steele’s outrageous claims — ah, but Steele has behind him a terrific reputation for integrity — on Moscow’s prowess at playing “Spy vs Spy”.

President Elect Trump may be counted on to play “Trust me” with his developing authority as an American president, but there’s an old guard too of Federal government employees and an American Press — the “Fourth Estate” — known for its extraordinary tenacity when challenged by an especially curious political scandal and mystery.

Reference

The response to the information from the FBI, he recalled, was “shock and horror.” After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau. These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources. But he said, “My track record as a professional is second to no one.”

Corn, David. “The Spy Who Wrote the Trump-Russia Memos: “Hair-Raising” Stuff.”  Mother Jones, January 13, 2017.

Goodman, Alana.  “Meet the espionage firm which ordered Trump ‘dirty dossier’ – a secretive D.C. firm which has aided Planned Parenthood and attacked Mitt Romney’s friends.”  Daily Mail UK, January 13, 2017.

After he left the spy service, Steele supplied the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with information on corruption at FIFA, international soccer’s governing body.

It was his work on corruption in international soccer that lent credence to his reporting on Trump’s entanglements in Russia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

Hosenball, Mark.  “Former MI6 spy known to U.S. agencies is author of reports on Trump in Russia.”  Reuters, January 12, 2017.

Hughes, Laura.  “Former British ambassador to Russia warned US of Donald Trump ‘dirty dossier’.”  The Telegraph, January 13, 2016.

To some, the dossier’s errors and far-out claims stand in stark contrast to Steele’s usual approach to intelligence-gathering. West noted that only one intelligence officer was listed as a direct source.

“Nobody is saying he believes in any of this,” West said. “What he was hired to do was write a series of reports based on info he could glean from his contacts. His contacts are very good but they’re more in the business community than the intel community.”

Neubert, Michele, Ken Dilanian, Cassandra Vinograd, and Tracy Connor.  “Christopher Steele, Trump Dossier Author, Is a Real-Life James Bond.”  NBC News, January 13, 2017.

The talk comes from writer Nigel West, the nom de pen of Rupert Allason, whose Wikipedia entry notes the following:

In 2001 Allason sued Random House, the publishers of The Enigma Spy, the autobiography of the former Soviet agent John Cairncross. Allason claimed he had ghostwritten The Enigma Spy in return for the copyright and 50 per cent of the proceeds. However, Allason lost the case and was ordered to pay costs of around £200,000. In passing judgment the trial judge said that Allason was “a profoundly dishonest man” and “one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen”.[9][10][11] In September 2005, Allason was threatened with prison for contempt of court in relation to paying the damages from the 2001 case.[12][13][14]

Sigh.

In an alarming Twitter post, the Russian embassy in London suggested Steele was still working for MI6 and ‘briefing both ways’ against Mr Trump and Moscow.
A Russian embassy spokesman said the tweet – which said ‘MI6 officers are never ex’ – ‘reflected the mood in Russia’.

Robinson, Martin.  “‘I don’t think he made it up… but he doesn’t always draw the correct judgement’: Ex-UK Moscow ambassador admits he was middle man who tipped off John McCain to Trump ‘dirty dossier’.”  Daily Mail, January 12, 2017.

Sengupta, Kim.  “Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months.”  Independent, January 14, 2016.

Townsend, Mark and David Smith.  “Senior British politicians ‘targeted by Kremlin’ for smear campaigns.”  The Guardian, January 14, 2017.

BackChannels Thematic Update

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/01/17/address-christopher-steeles-2016-report-involving-president-elect-donald-j-trump/

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FTAC – Middle East Conflict – A Little Wisdom

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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BackChannels editor means to turn some attention to writing fiction, but not on this post, which responds to the political cant that has been spinning off the concept of “The Occupation” for decades.

At this point, some 69 years about from 1948, the very term, “The Occupation” should morph into what it has been always: “The Preoccupation”.

A little bit of anti-Semitism, a lot of anti-Zionism, a bit informed by Russo-Soviet anti-Semitism and a murderous medieval politics that while claiming to protect the Palestianians and advance the cause of their dignity and freedom has instead robbed them for decades of both.

If there are BackChannels readers — frankly, there are 🙂  — I suggest we prepare to say goodbye to the Orwellian world that has handled — and intellectually poisoned — the refugees of 1948 for absolutely breathless sums of money that have been reliably skimmed away from them and their needs as people.

“The fact that the occupation is immoral, that military occupation has elicited violent resistance since time immemorial, that Israel has faced terrorism for decades or that home-grown terrorists were running over Israelis with cars and trucks way before ISIS was even born is conveniently overlooked in Israel’s eternal quest to absolve itself of culpability and to gloss over its failure to do anything substantial to bring it to an end. Palestinian violence, in this scenario, can only be quelled by force, never eradicated at its source.”

The true underlying source of so much violence has been and remains at this moment old Soviet-style (earlier: medieval) information control and incitement.

End the Preoccupation.

There’s nothing else to do but turn Arab eyes and minds toward the manipulations of the KGB, including the invention of Yasser Arafat and the engineering for the long term of a disingenuous People’s Struggle designed to bolster Arab Pride while actually controlling and exploiting the Palestinian People.

I watched a classic last night — _The Little Drummer Girl_ — and found it sad how little has changed.

The course Moscow chose decades ago continues to sustain the Middle East Conflict. When the lying stops and the truth dawns, when the incitements stop — and the encouragement of extremism loses drifts into absurdity and loses its energy — then there will be peace — and justice for the Palestinians who may need other than the manipulations of despots.

What some writers in this field do in defense of the Palestinians is actually condemn the Palestinians by defending the concept of “The Occupation”.  None argue that checkpoints and martial law — or rules appropriate to low-intensity conflict — persist so long as the terrorism business persists, but one may now argue the utility of “The Occupation” in the Arab mind.  What is it doing in there, in the head, but repeating over and over a perception of circumstance that has become with amassed Hamas and PA wealth an ugly absurdity?

Links frequently cited on BackChannels in relation to the Middle East Conflict:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
– 10/3/2016.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/
– 11/23/2016.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels
– 7/25/2014.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/28/gazas-millionaires-and-billionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/
– 7/28/2014.

This appeared on my desktop a few minutes ago, and published on December 9, 2016, it’s recent, and it too focuses on the institutionalized incitement to murder in relation to the Middle East Conflict:

I am going to describe for you this ecosystem of incitement to terrorism. I use the word “ecosystem” on purpose. Incitement has evolved. Incitement is no longer about a specific action or statement; it’s about participation in the ecosystem of hate which is intentionally aimed at bringing about the result of terror – violent, brutal murder with an endgame of genocide (first Israel, eventually the rest of the Western World). It’s about participating in, and strengthening, the feedback loop which eventually brings children to murder innocent civilians.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-ecosystem-of-incitement-to-terror/ – 12/9/2016.

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FTAC – “Active Measures” – Spinning it Up on the EU

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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Source of my aggravation:

https://capx.co/the-european-union-is-heading-for-the-dustbin-of-history-2016/

Is it really?

The contemptuous tone and upside-down spin says something about the writer or about ignorance as regards the Moscow-Tehran nexus in the development of the conflict managed by Damascus. Those who know the truth — and thank God it’s not myself along! 　 — know that Assad had to work to create “The Terrorists” with which to blackmail and goad the west, and the “producers” would have known that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” would promote a reflexive response (it’s a term of art) in patriotic nationalist sentiment.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

The eight-year-long show of weakness on Washington’s part with regard to Syria and Ukraine and other matters should tell the European Union (and NATO) that it’s not time to fail but rather to get it together to confront the waves of disinformation, propaganda, and spin coming off a kind of “active measures” front.

“Netizens” around the world will have to swim through an ocean of assumptive remarks, confusion, disinformation, and plain old ugly propaganda before picking up the intellectual cudgels themselves and checking claims and narratives for themselves.

Loosely Related Online – Fast Links

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/ – 9/30/2016.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/putins-real-long-game-214589 – 1/1/2017

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FTAC – Short Note on News Evaluation in the New Age of “Active Measures”

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology

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Whatever the motivation, the demonizing of Obama formed a part of the ugly polarizing of American politics and, perhaps, clouded the ability of most Americans to develop a more data-rich and reasoned analysis of states of affairs. “Framing” serves the passions, but it’s framing and practically by definition skewed from the surface and into the mix that sustains what we call “attitudes” — a collection of beliefs, their primacy and valence (good thing / bad thing, how much so?) that feed up to our conclusions. As we accumulate information, both beliefs and attitudes may be adjusted to suit what we also believe to be — and may prod and test ourselves — valid and reliable new data.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/regions/eurasia/russia/

Putin’s Administration today represents a complete KGB revanche but with the banner of “State Capitalism” in place of “Communism” and in place of socialist equality a new ultra-nationalist and neo-imperial ambition for dominating and looting others under the cover of “protection”.

Perhaps up to this now tense time in history — see “Cold War?  Cold Struggle” — the western public, by and large, has been spared the necessity of revisiting history lessons, learning about state-sponsored evil (start that with state-controlled press), and summoning the energy to apply research and critical thinking skills to a thorough evaluation of information for its integrity in the delivery of both factual data and in reasoning.

BackChannels has worked for some time now collecting, analyzing, compressing, and telegraphing observations in the region of foreign affairs.  It knows it may not surprise the specialists, those hands who have embraced an appropriate enthusiasm in their teen years, picked up one or more languages, majored in a relevant field, and sallied forth for decades as policy makers and scholars.  However, that community forms a lofty and healthy choir.  What about those becoming involved in such events as the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy or the “Euromaidan” and the effort to produce a modern democracy in Ukraine?  For that, BackChannels pieces provide numerous portals into related fields and topics.

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Also in Media: “Putin’s Real Long Game” – POLITICO Magazine | Molly K. McKew | January 1, 2017

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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What both administrations fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.

Those on the Russian frontier, like my friends from Ukraine and Estonia, have already seen the Kremlin’s new toolkit at work.

Reading highly recommended: Putin’s Real Long Game – POLITICO Magazine – 1/2/2017.

Related in Media

4. Don’t listen to “realists.” Self-described “realists” have suggested that Russia be given a free hand in the former Soviet republics in return for cooperation on issues that are vital to U.S. and Western security. This call to make a “deal,” in addition to its blatant immorality, ignores the fact that it makes sense to reach an understanding only with those who will keep their side of the bargain. The fact that the Russians are seeking to deny the former Soviet republics their rights as sovereign nations is all the indication one needs that an unenforceable “gentleman’s agreement” to cooperate with the West will be violated the minute it ceases to be to Russia’s advantage. The rejection of a moral framework for relations, meanwhile, will set the stage and help provide the justification for new and more outrageous Russian demands in the future.

Satter, David. “Obama and Russia.”  Forbes, November 24, 2008.

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