In his famous essay “The value of science is in the foresight“, Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov declared that international conflicts had taken on a new character, where wars are not declared, where assymetric means can support military objectives, and where actual “boots on the ground” engagement is limited to later stages in the conflict, often under the guise of humanitarian causes. Gerasimov said: “Frontal engagements of large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past. Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational goals. The defeat of the enemy’s objects [objectives] is conducted throughout the entire depth of his territory. The differences between strategic, operational, and tactical levels, as well as between offensive and defensive operations, are being erased.”
As we continue to view the behavior of suspected Russian trolls in online forums, and examine the nature of the Russian influence on the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections, and how they’ve engaged in promoting anti-vax propaganda within the US, it has become absolutely clear that Russian intelligence agencies have engaged in an extensive study of how to craft radicalizing propaganda, and how to distribute it effectively amongst the population of an opponent state. “The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures—applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population,” Gerasimov writes.
Given such clearly stated goals, we must admit to ourselves that the events of January 6th represent the fulfillment of a key military goal of the Russian military against the United States. Vladimir Putin and his generals looked at the United States of America and recognized that the greatest weapon that could be used against the United States wasn’t some incredible bomb or advanced fighter-jet, but the corruption inherent within the Republican Party. Russian intelligence agencies leveraged the extreme costs of political participation in the United States to get the attention of GOP lawmakers, utilized the Five-Factor Model of personality and the reach of Facebook to distribute agitative propaganda, elected a gas-lighting demagogue as President of the United States, and ultimately drove the native population to attack our seat of government, and even after all those insults to US Sovereignty, many Republican Party members are trying to cover up what the Russians did, and present excuses and conspiracy theories that clearly constitute “offering aid and comfort” to an enemy of the United States.
The essay above is a brief introduction to several topics that I’l be addressing more fully in my upcoming book “Leveraging Populism: How Russian Intelligence Agencies turned the Republican Party of the United States into an intelligence asset”. I’ve hinted at several of the topics addressed in the above editorial in comments, but am still in the process of assembling all of my thoughts into a complete argument. My decision to fast-track this manuscript to try to have it done by the one year anniversary of the Trump insurrection means that the other two titles I’m currently working on: The Real Deep State (a piece of historical fiction describing how a group of political activists decide to interfere in a US Presidential election) and The Unified Theory of Fascism (a comprehensive examination of the problem of fascism that addresses matters of rhetoric, economics, authoritarian psychology and media influence) will be postponed until later in 2022, or possibly 2023.