The Grand Game for Hearts and Minds remains in play between America and Russia.
Searching up video title “Five Decades of Lies and Wars” will take you to the prompt for the following text.
Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
It was the Soviet Union that poured $1 billion itself into America’s domestic Vietnam Era anti-war movement. Its cause: totalitarian perceptual control.
The SU had also funded a host of organizations within the World Peace Council with interest in the seduction and leveraging of the same. When Soviet tanks started appearing in the SU’s satellite state, many organizations withdrew from the WPC and Soviet support. They had gotten the sweet picture — the sweet words — on their way into business with the Soviet but had gotten a clear picture of how Moscow really worked as east-west politics, essentially authoritarian “political absolutism” v democratic liberalism, really worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
The phantoms of the Soviet, which dissolved in bankruptcy and much reviled in Russia some 26 years ago, remain in the character and spirit of Russia’s political administration today, while terms like “active measures” — also “information warfare”, “hybrid warfare”, “reflexive control”, etc. — remain obscure.
When will the world wake up from the control of dictatorships?
Today’s Moscow has been arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. How that center of power feels about people is on full display in Syria, where its air force has been bombing hospitals. How the RF may regard Pakistan may be seen along the daily bloodied front line where its army sits poised to invade democratic Ukraine.
Related for background on BackChannels:
https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/
It appears that the Phantom of the Soviet — capitalized and singular, there can be only one — wishes to replay WWII and the end of the Cold War with KGB methods in political (and perceptual) control intact.
Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat . . . .
Moscow’s direction looks a little crazy to BackChannels.
The host of self-defeating dictatorships should leave the 20th Century and move forward with liberal modernity and related responsive and responsible democratic governance.
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