Tag Archives: Russia

A Note on Moscow and Political Manipulation

03 Saturday Sep 2016

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When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad elected to bomb noncombatants and combat then moderate revolutionary forces like the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in preference to eliminating at the outset the al-Qaeda-type organizations (like al-Nusra), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi could not have known his own enterprise, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was being groomed to first blackmail the western powers (political theatrical: “Assad Or The Terrorists”) and would later (about now: “Assad vs The Terrorists”) become exposed to Moscow’s most advanced, devastating, and lethal conventional firepower.

 When in 1964, the Soviet KGB established Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the refugees of 1948, first caught between armies and then abandoned between states, could not have known of the Soviet mechanics behind what they would perceive as their own deeply anti-Semitic and violent “Palestinian” liberation movement, nor could they have known then that another 52 years of wasting enslavement to the Middle East Conflict, which they themselves have been made to sustain, would lay ahead of them.

The hidden hand in the more dramatic and recent history of despotism turns out that of a dark “privileged of the Party” (the Soviet State then) or “new nobility” (Putin’s state now) intent on producing conflict that it may then claim to control.

Between them, Moscow and Tehran appear to advise, fund, or otherwise influence Hamas and Hezbollah, whose leaders have done well for themselves — Ismael Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal have developed reputations as billionaires — while those they purport to represent continue to suffer their constraints and their plundering.

In the medieval mode, power may be expected to be capricious and self-aggrandizing.

In reference, the reader will find a BBC Radio piece by Alex Last telling of the Soviet urging Somali militia in the 1970s into war with Ethiopia, then an American client state, over possession of the Ogaden.  While doing that, Moscow was developing influence in Ethiopia, and as it succeeded in that purpose, it chose to betray Somalia, which troops had by then effectively conquered 90 percent of the contested space.  Backing Ethiopia, its new client state, Moscow then produced for it a greater and more powerful army, one including thousands of Cuban troops and all the hardware necessary to push Somalia’s military out of the Ogaden.

Why?

Arms sales?

The pleasure of having displaced American influence in Ethiopia (for a while)?

For the pleasure of feeling in control?

While Moscow today may claim to be more concerned with Syria than with Jerusalem, Gaza, and Ramallah, one may ask to what extent Moscow appears concerned with the suite of UN-acknowledged human rights and values, for in Syria and just as with the “Palestinian Liberation Struggle” (and in the 1970s, Somali justice in the Ogaden), Moscow’s genuine concern seems very small for those whose interests it claims to have taken to heart.

Related on BackChannels

“Cold War? –> Cold Struggle.”  May 15, 2016.

“Quote — Manipulation — About the PLO Leader — Pacepa and Rychlak (2013).”  December 2, 2014.

“Syria — “Assad vs The Terrorists” — How ISIS Defends Assad.”  October 2, 2015.

General Reference

Last, Alex.  “The Ogaden War.” Interview with General Mohamed Nur Galal.  BBC Radio, April 7, 2016.

Strokan, Sergei and Vladimir Mikheev.  “Why Moscow is in no hurry to mediate Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  Russia Beyond the Headlines, October 29, 2015.

Westcott, Lucy.  “U.S. Accuses Assad of Aiding ISIS Through Airstrikes.”  Newsweek, June 2, 2015.

Wikipedia.  “Palestine Liberation Organization”.

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Also in Media – “Russia’s ministries and central bank test readiness for wartime operation mode”

29 Monday Aug 2016

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A surprise combat-readiness check of the Russian Armed Forces began on August 25 and is due to finish on August 31. As part of the exercises, the southern district troops, part of the troops of the western and central districts, as well as the northern fleet, the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the high command of the Airborne Troops were put in full combat-readiness mode.

Source: Russia’s ministries and central bank test readiness for wartime operation mode – 8/29/2016.

Books – Excerpts – Shultz lectures Gorbachev – Gaddis’s The Cold War & New Era Begun – Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy

25 Thursday Aug 2016

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Shultz began by lecturing Gorbachev, as early as 1985, on the impossibility of a closed society being a prosperous society: “People must be free to express themselves, move around emigrate and travel if they want to . . . Otherwise they can’t take advantage of the opportunities available.  The Soviet economy will have to be radically changed to adapt to the new era.” “You should take over the planning office here in Moscow,” Gorbachev joked, “Because you have more ideas than they have.”  In a way, this is what Shultz did.  Over the next several years, he used his trips to that city to run tutorials for Gorbachev and his advisers, even bringing pie charts to the Kremlin to Illustrate his argument that as long as it regained a command economy, the Soviet Union would fall further and further behind the rest of the developed world.

Gorbachev was surprisingly receptive.  He echoed some of Shultz’s thinking in his 1987 book, Perestroika:  “How can the economy advance,” he asked, “if it creates preferential conditions for backward enterprises and penalizes the foremost ones?”

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. P. 233.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2005.

Ah, were those not the days?

Times changed and perhaps in ways the West would not have anticipated nor intended.

Call this a bonus quote from another book listed in the “Russian Section” of this blog:

Khodorkovskiy moved to establish links with the West, but those financial circles recall that when they first met him and his team, the Russians didn’t how to use a credit card, they didn’t know how to write a check, and they didn’t have money enough to stay even in a hostel.  They were quick learners, but as Anton Surkov, an independent security expert who had previously served in Soviet military intelligence and who knew Khodorkovskiy and those like him in the late 1980s, stated, “It was impossible to work in the black market without KGB connections and without protection from the KGB.  Without them, no shadow business was possible. . . .  The creation of the oligarchs was a revolution engineered by the KGB, but then they lost control.”  As to whether Khodorkovskiy’s Bank Menatep was indeed one of the many vehicles used to launder CPSU money, as the legend goes, one of the five major initial shareholders, Mikhayl Brudno, who fled to Israel when Khodorkovskiy was arrested under Putin in 2003, simply said, “It can’t be ruled out that some companies that belonged somehow to the Communist Party were clients, but we were not able to identify them as such.”

Posted to YouTube by the Woodrow Wilson Center, October 23, 2014.

Referenced: Dawisha, Karen.  Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

While Karen Dawisha’s book covers the development of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle from seemingly earliest acquaintance, BackChannels would have to re-read old and read “unreads” from the “Russian Section” of this blog’s library to note and gather together the hints of transition planning in the five to ten year span preceding the official dissolving of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991.

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Also in Media – “Russia-Iran-Turkey Alliance Could Change Energy Dynamics For Good” | OilPrice.com

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

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Turkey’s resentment towards the European Union is nothing new. Erdogan has been vocal about his negative reactions to some requirements in Turkey’s EU accession process. He is also in a position to pull the strings on much of Europe’s migrant policy, and is making good use of this position. What Turkey’s President has made even better use of is the anti-Western rhetoric and the visions of a “great-again” Turkey. The former has been instrumental in diverting public attention away from a lawsuit in Italy against his son for money laundering.

Apparently, the Greater Turkey vision cannot be realized with the EU constantly demanding things from Ankara that Ankara does not want to do, such as synchronizing its anti-terrorism policies with the EU, for example. It can, however, be realized if Turkey gets on the anti-West bandwagon driven by Russia and Iran, both survivors from Western sanctions, and both having their own regional ambitions.

Source: Russia-Iran-Turkey Alliance Could Change Energy Dynamics For Good | OilPrice.com – 8/22/2016

Also in Media – From 2014 – Anton Shekhovtsov’s blog: “Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign”

21 Sunday Aug 2016

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3 February 2014

Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign

Read this article in German, French, Russian and Ukrainian.

There has been a huge tide of false, incorrect and bloated reports that exaggerate or overemphasize the significance of the far right in the current Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. A Moscow-based journalist Alec Luhn writes in The Nation about “the Ukrainian nationalism at the heart of ‘Euromaidan’”, a leftist Seumas Milne argues in The Guardian that “in Ukraine, fascists, oligarchs and western expansion are at the heart of the crisis”, while a self-styled “independent geopolitical analyst” Eric Draitser, in his nauseatingly misleading piece for his own Stop Imperialism (later re-published by The Centre for Research on Globalization), even goes so far as to claim that “the violence on the streets of Ukraine […] is the latest example of the rise of the most insidious form of fascism that Europe has seen since the fall of the Third Reich”.

These and many other similar articles are all written according to the same pattern, and their aim is to discredit the Euromaidan protests as the manifestations of fascism, neo-Nazism or – at the very least – right-wing extremism.

Read More at the Source: Anton Shekhovtsov’s blog: Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign – 2/3/2014

FTAC – Dictatorships – They Devour Themselves

12 Friday Aug 2016

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“Different Talks – Same Walk” is the conclusion I’ve come to with “malignant narcissists”.

The Hamas leaders don’t care about the Palestinians at whose expense — and the expense of lives — they have aggrandized themselves. We’re numb to the labels: “autocrats”, “dictators”, “kleptocrats”. Each — Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Orban, Erdogan, Haniyeh, Mashaal, et al. — starts from a different positions, but using criminal means, each winds up a tyrant.

Hamas may be sold as a Utopian movement, but . . . it’s a criminal enterprise, and its idea of power is the power to impose suffering on others with impunity.

Our democracies are fragile by comparison to feudal kingdoms, but as they have their differences between them, we — North America, Europe, for the most part, and others — have been able to navigate between them as peace pays off with prosperity. What the dictatorships do please the privileged, but they don’t really pay for themselves. They don’t shift for themselves. They, in fact, devour themselves.

There’s no need to defend this post.

The privileged of Russia know how much they depend on Putin for favor — and the “outer rings” (“rings” referring to driving belts around Moscow) know that no matter what they do if they’re out of favor — complete unknowns — there isn’t much new for them.  The economy simply hasn’t fare well under kleptocracy — golly gee — and the distribution of capital and gains from capital remains deeply skewed.

Read all about it in today’s Moscow Times:

Investment continues to decline, both industrial and in residential construction. Private consumption declines as well, while Russian people say they are cutting their purchases of goods and services to survive. Then again, industrial production is stable, agriculture continues to grow, export is growing slightly in physical terms, despite the drop in commodities prices.

This economic dialogue will continue for a long time, but the main conclusion we can make is already visible.

From the Kennan Institute this month — same thing: “An Economy That Did Not Want to Grow“:

The difference between the two strategies is fundamental. Kudrin’s formula is “business environment first, private investment later,” while his opponents want “public investment first, business environment later or never.” The two visions cancel each other out and this is exactly what Vladimir Putin seems to like about it. Both projects emphasize domestic growth based on either private initiative (Kudrin) or public spending (Titov). The first path means backpedaling on aggressive foreign-policy projects and depends on reviving and empowering the urban middle class. This poses a problem however, since the Kremlin is convinced that professionals who are paid more than 1500 U.S. dollars a month are a potential threat as proved by the protest movement of 2011-2012. The second path, exemplified by large public-works projects, will inevitably lead to even more corruption than currently exists in Russia.

Was “Vegas” better in its wild mafia days?

I don’t know.

I was too young for all that.

I didn’t exist.

🙂

“Moscow” — used here as a metonym — has suffered years of capital flight and frankly fearful foreign investment.

The state appears to leverage other states amenable to a medieval worldview of competition and political absolutism; it certainly has projects like “Turkish Stream” and a few hefty nuclear programs going with Turkey’s Erdogan and Hungary’s Orban, but get right down to it, the “good” despise “the criminal” and wear out on coughing up payola.

Ukrainians tired of Yanukovych — and Yanukovych, so guilty or suspicious with guilt, threw his black book and other records into a pond before fleeing his position.

Web pages and sites like these two were in the news four years ago, and I doubt much has changed since then:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/explosive-video-documents-depth-putins-mafia-state – n.d., circa four years ago judging by comments.

Posted to YouTube 6/26/2012.

Bill Browder on Putin, posted to YouTube May 22, 2014:

Here’s a related lively quote from an article by Masha Gessen in The New York Review of Books (March 14, 2016):

“This is not a hybrid regime!” shouted Andrei Illarionov as the conference wrapped up. Illarionov is an economist who was an economic advisor to Putin in 2000–2005—though he was never fully integrated into the regime—and now lives in Washington. “Thinking about it that way is a mistake, and analytical mistakes like that can have long-term tragic consequences.”

Capital flight from Russia looks dramatically reduced this year from where it was last year, but the prior years of losses may anchor the greater “longitudinal” picture in time.

These words appeared last fall in Business Insider (October 27, 2015):

In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.

And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren’t rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin’s regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

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Also in Media – “An Economy That Did Not Want to Grow” – The Russia File, Kennan Institute Blog

12 Friday Aug 2016

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Russian economic officials seem to be working to instill a sense of quiet resignation in the population. They readily admit the economy is not in good shape and promise nothing. They habitually talk expectations down, not up. Their favorite debate subject is whether the recession has bottomed out. Their favorite expression is “the new normal” of lower oil prices and sluggish growth.

Get the rest of the story –  An Economy That Did Not Want to Grow – The Russia File – August 2016.

FTAC -Interpreting the Iraq War Through the Filter of the Cold War and Awareness of Soviet / Post-Soviet Manipulation

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

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(In addition to having been a brutal dictatorship — one that stooped so low as to rob children of food to fund the building of palaces — and state sponsor of terrorism, Hussein’s Iraq had related to the Soviet through the Baath Party and Pan-Arab Nationalism. The dissolving of the Soviet — a murderous system of Party patronage and privilege — may have set up client states for regime change in some form. The Cold War label is well known but 25 years after is was over, it may be regarded as ancient history on campus when in fact it continues to resonate in foreign affairs. Recommended reading for any who may wish to catch up with the near past: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-New-History/dp/0143038273.

I feel strongly that citizens of open democracies should be familiar with how the Soviet worked to disinform “the masses” and abuse, manipulate, meddle, misguide, and, in a sense, master others, including Muslims, in the Party’s ambition to impose its will on the world. https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/ & a contemporary analysis of one facet of Russian manipulation and control in “information space” — http://cimsec.org/cutting-fog-reflexive-control-russian-stratcom-ukraine/20156

Because international affairs are complex in their history and political science and because popular media, from early broadsheets and flyers to this day’s immense array of online information, reduced the image of issues — like “regime change in Iraq” — the on-campus and public perceptions of many conflicts have been crude compared with the knowledge of nonpartisan academics and professional analysts in government and research. I try with Back-Channels, my blog, to bridge that gap while continuing to educate myself in these areas.

Whether Iraq or Vietnam, the free publics of the open democracies — not subject to state-controlled press — should be able to “see” — interpret and perceive — the Cold War, Vietnam, and Iraq and other struggles with much, much greater accuracy. I’ve had some personal leisure and the ability to purchase used books on Amazon, and the experience has shifted my views toward the conservative center).

The passage was written as an aside within a thread focusing on America’s new Muslim war hero Humayun Khan, a casualty of the war in Iraq, and the Muslim world’s view of American intercession as an invader.  Conservative Australian politician Sherry Sufi — Policy Chairman, Liberal Party of Australia — posed the question this way:

Muslims view George W Bush’s Iraq War as a foreign invasion to usurp the nation’s oil under the pretence of neutralising Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. I’m curious about Muslims that are now hailing American soldier Humayun Khan as a hero who died in Iraq while serving American interests after his parents used his death to boost support for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. Does this mean he wasn’t a foreign invader?

BackChannels may either keep its own counsel as regards America’s 2016 election season or take the middle of the road approach to either “he” or “she” being elected.

As a blog about conflict (culture, language, and psychology), dealing with the dissension and polarization evident in American politics seems at once both too near and too ugly for short address.

What seemed a component missing in the responses to Sufi’s question was the Cold War Era and America’s possible approach to Russia and related post-Soviet foreign policy, which would be to see the dictatorships replaced with nascent modern democracies.  Although Iraq and Libya may be contested and war torn states, they are no longer established tyrannies, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi having long made their passage into history.

At Syria, Putin made public (in a kind of gambit with Obama) the switching of course from modern democracy to a post-modern medieval system of centralized power, patronage, and privilege.

BackChannels believes Orwell would recognize Putin’s World and its encouragement of Far Right and Far Left politics — Black, Red, Brown, and Green — and, as happened elsewhere in the 1960s and beyond, promote war without end but to its own advantage in the twin promotions of fear and and power.  Along those lines, BackChannels readers may wish to take note of Soviet political manipulation associated with the Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s.  This piece published by the BBC on that war gets at the agitation developed to get the war started for Somali militia and later the Russian rescue of the Ethiopian Army with arms sales sufficient to turn back Somali gains:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 (April 7, 2016).

In the broad and crazy retelling of the story in Wikipedia, Russia, the Soviet, found itself backing both states in the contest for the Ogaden, but the BBC interview goes down into the details of how Somali forces were moved into action in the Ogaden at the urging of renowned Admiral Sergey Gorshkov who told Somali General Mohamed Noor Galal (still living) that he wanted the imperialists (western interests) out of the Horn of Africa.

“Grand Game” politics, Soviet style?

Are these wars a part of a dance taking place between antagonists for resources plus political control and power?

Without that BBC interview, one returns to a more general interpretation of events.

Echoing Wikipedia, the Polynational War Memorial page for “Ethiopia vs Somalia” summarizes the politics this way:

The Ogaden War was a conventional conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978 over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Fighting erupted as Somalia sought to exploit a temporary shift in the regional balance of power in their favor to occupy the Ogaden region, claimed to be part of Greater Somalia. In a notable illustration of the nature of Cold War alliances, the Soviet Union switched from supplying aid to Somalia to supporting Ethiopia, which had previously been backed by the United States, prompting the U.S. to start supporting Somalia. The war ended when Somali forces retreated back across the border and a truce was declared.

 

For all the death and wreckage involved, who got what out of the Ogaden War?

Who profited?

BackChannels doesn’t have the answer but knows the maneuvering and manipulation repeatedly produce bloody results that don’t seem to translate into broad local, national, or regional lifestyle improvements.

In fictional language, one might write, “There was a war that changed nothing.”

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