Editors:

Łukasz Przybyło
Tadeusz Zawadzki

Cover design:

Teresa Oleszczuk

Maps:

Tadeusz Zawadzki

Copyright © 2022 by Phillip A. Petersen

Copyright for English edition © 2022 by Tetragon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN 978-83-66687-25-7

Wydawnictwo Tetragon Sp. z o.o.

kontakt@tetragon.com.pl

www.tetragon.com.pl

e-book typesetting
Epubeum

Table of contents

Preface

Wstęp - Łukasz Przybyło

Introduction - Łukasz Przybyło

Prefață - Silviu Nate

Foreword - Silviu Nate

Chapter 1. We Are At War, What’s Not To Understand! - Phillip A. Petersen with contributions from Jerzy Aleksandrowicz Mirosław Banasik, Hans Damen, and Gregory King Melcher

An Inconvenient War

The Smolensk Incident of 2010

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Russia’s Fifth Column

The Crisis in Liberal Democracy

European Theater Threat Perspective

NATO Resupply and Mitigation Options

The Climate Context

Post-Cold War Black Sea Security Initiatives

The American Interest in Black Sea Boarder Security

A Border Security Plan for the Black Sea Region

United States Naval Interest in the Black Sea Region

Reaching Out to Turkey

Building a Consensus on Black Sea Security

Chapter 2. Operational Assessment - Phillip A. Petersen With contributions from Michael D. Evans and Gregory King Melcher

Definitions

Military Doctrine

Strategy

Operational Art

Tactics

The Conceptual Framework Applied

The System of Strategic Leadership

Post-Soviet Operational-Strategic Planning and Exercises

Ethnic and Religious Divisions

Transformation to Highly Mobile and Rapidly Reconfigurable Forces

4th Generation Nuclear Weapons

Asymmetries in Opposing Operational Concepts

Zapad-1999

Zapad-2009

Zapad-2013

Zapad-2017

Zapad-2021

Snap Exercises

NATO and Partner-Nation Exercises

Information Warfare Scenarios

1. Encouraging Pro-Russian Interests in Latgale and Riga in Latvia; Narva in Estonia; and challenging the legitimacy of Romania’s borders (to include attempts to exploit Russian Old Believers in the Danube Delta).

2. Dividing NATO Allies (Coalitional Warfare)

3. Demonstration of Power (Bullying)

Chapter 3. Assessment of the Range of Threat Contingencies - Phillip A. Petersen and Jānis Bērzinš with contributions from Michael D. Evans, Frederick Benjamin Hodges, Łukasz Przybyło, and Gregory King Melcher

The Theoretical Development of Russian New Generation Warfare

Asymmetric Warfare

Low-Intensity Conflict

Sixth Generation Warfare

Network Centric Warfare

Reflexive Control

The Initial Period War: Context as the Key

Evaluation of the Threat Relative to Local Force Capabilities and Terrain Limitations

Terrain as the Context

Maneuver by Fires

Encirclement Operations

The Nuclear Threat

Unconventional use of unconventional weapons

Areas Where US Military Aid is Critical

High-Intensity Warfare Capability

Cyber

Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)

Maritime

Private investment for economic development

Societal Resilience

Air Power

Chapter 4. Battlefield Assessment - Phillip A. Petersen With contributions from Jerzy Aleksandrowicz and Gregory King Melcher

Active Measures and the Rise of Vladimir Putin

2000 Military Doctrine

2010 Military Doctrine

2014 Military Doctrine

Russian Digital Active Measures

DCLeaks

Guccifer Two

The New Focus of Applied Methods of Conflict

A Description of the Battlefield

The Russian Network and Donald Trump

Secondary Infektion

Russian Influence Operations on Twitter

Lessons from European Efforts to Secure Elections

The Hunt for Putin’s “Confidential Contacts” Among Us

Lessons Learned from the Donbas Conflict

Extensive use of new/current-generation Electronic Warfare

Significant deployment of UAVs

Massed fires of artillery and MLRS systems

Tanks once again dominate the kinetic battlefield

Importance of dispersion and maneuver

Importance of air superiority and supremacy

Lessons learned regarding NATO member states’ planning

Chapter 5. U.S. Options and an Action Plan for NATO - Phillip A. Petersen with contributions from Jerzy Aleksandrowicz, Frederick Benjamin Hodges, and Gregory King Melcher

The Traitors Within

The Enemies Without

Escaping Impunity: Restoring Consequences for Illiberal Aggression

The Authoritarian Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy

The Sham Second Impeachment Trial of Trump

Recognizing the Threat and Reaffirming Liberal Values

Perceptions and Misperceptions of Baltic and Black Sea Security

Importance of Terrain

Drawing upon Experience

Summary: Options and Actions

Epilogue:. Vladimir Putin’s Kinetic War on Ukraine

Index

Footnotes

About Author

Dedicated to

Frederick Francis Petersen

(1923–1979)

Having already been exposed to asbestos by his employer prior to enlisting in the United States Navy on 9 December 1942 at the age of nineteen, Frederick participated in combat actions in North Africa, Sicily (July 1943), Salerno (September 1943)—where he received two citations for bravery—and in Normandy (June 1944), where he participated in the assault on Omaha Beach. After surviving four amphibious landings in the European Theater, the Navy decided they could use his expertise in the Pacific Theater. Amphibious landings at Leyte in the Philippines (October 1944), Iwo Jima (February–March 1945), and Okinawa (April–June 1945) brought Frederick’s total to seven. Having fought German, Italian, and Japanese fascism without receiving so much as a scratch, Frederick returned to the home he defended only to prematurely die an extremely painful Asbestosis death and leave his widow to compel the industrial perpetrators through the courts to assume responsibility.

Contributors:

Jerzy Aleksandrowicz

E&Y Poland

COL (Ret.) Mirosław Banasik

Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Poland

Dr. Jānis Bērzinš

Latvian Defence College

BG (Ret.) Hans Damen

INSPARCOM Strategy and Logistics

Dr. Michael D. Evans

Concept Materials, Inc.

LTG (Ret.) Frederick Benjamin Hodges

former Commander of United States Army Europe

Charles Preston Long

Centre for the Study of New Generation Warfare

Gregory King Melcher

Chief of Operations, Centre for the Study of New Generation Warfare

Dr. Łukasz Przybyło

War Studies Academy, Poland

Introductions:

Dr. Łukasz Przybyło

War Studies Academy, Poland

Dr. Silvu Nate

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania

Preface

Happy is the country

in which the despicable

will at least be despised.

Nadezhda Mandelshtam[1]

This volume is the first of two. Volume 1 examines what is, in effect, a Third World War currently being waged between modern (cosmopolitan) and non-modern (traditional) socio-economic forces. Although this war against modernity is being led by Vladimir Putin, the decisive battlefield is within the United States. Since America is the indispensable leader of the liberal democratic world, Putin has attempted to forge a bond with that fraction of the American electorate “that has no respect for non-conformism, but is based upon a relentless demand for conformity.” To describe this fraction, Richard Hofstadter borrowed the term pseudo-conservative from the study of The Authoritarian Personality by Theordore W. Adorno:

(…) because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism (…). Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways—a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.

From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests (…) the pseudo-conservative (…) shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere (…). The pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”

Who is the pseudo-conservative, and what does he want? It is impossible to identify him by class, for the pseudo-conservative impulse can be found in practically all classes in society, although its power probably rests largely upon its appeal to the less educated members of the middle classes. The ideology of pseudo-conservatism can be characterized but not defined, because the pseudo-conservative tends to be more than ordinarily incoherent about politics.[2]

In orchestrating what has been described as mobilizing passions,[3] Vladimir Putin has shaped what can increasingly be called fascist action by these American pseudo-conservatives. Successfully employing recently-emerged communication tools (primarily social-media), Putin has unleased what Robert O. Paxton refers to as “emotional lava” to support his war to destroy America and the liberal democracies it leads.

At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one’s own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and nationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community.[4]

Putin has elited a “mood” among a substantial proportion of the American masses and created a hierarchical order within this mass movement wherein one either participates in the hierarchy or accepts subordination as a member of the masses. In the United States, this social mobilization is driven by demands to expand the system from an elitist to a mass state.

As one part of the nation moves ahead and the other falls behind, an increasingly dual society and economy is created with the political system the major, but totally insufficient link between the two worlds. What results is a nation within a nation, isolated with its own rules and preoccupations, resentful of the modern sector and of its own conditions, ignored and despised in its turn.[5]

The resulting political mobilization of this minority alternative nation of largely Christian white supremacists is an expression of discontent in the less-educated lower middle class in which nationalism is exploited to glorify violence for its own sake as an attack upon the bourgeois virtues of compromise and the give and take of pluralistic society.[6] Politics has increasingly become two intertwined conflicts between modernization and non-modernization and between classes, races, and religions as part of a global struggle that is characterized and explained in this first volume as war.

The follow-on to Volume 1 will address many of the operational-strategic and operational-tactical issues of the kinetic elements of Russian New Generation Warfare discussed in Chapter 2 of this volume. Volume 2 will focus on military geography and its impact on operational art, from the High North to the Baltic States and the northeast quadrant of Poland[7] to Romania. It will also examine concrete aspects of movement within the European Theater of Strategic Military Action (referred to as a TVD by Russian General Staff planners) and the challenges of logistics within the three Strategic Directions comprising the European TVD.

Initially, these volumes were intended as a single integrated means by which to provide structure to a European-American Security Dialogue event in Romania. Its initial design also reflected a more traditional examination of kinetic operations in Russian military planning, even though it was intended to examine all nine elements of Russian New Generation Warfare—to include nonkinetic and nuclear elements. As the research for the book proceeded—and the Covid-19 Epidemic-induced postponements of the event allowed the time for much more of the story about Russia’s 2016 intervention in Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the American presidency to emerge—the nonkinetic subjects in the volume continued to expand, reshaping the volume substantially. Truthfully, the study became something that original contributing Romanian colleagues, in particular, “did not sign on for.” This is, for me, precisely the point, however; while it might be necessary to begin with a framework for a study, the results of the research should always determine the conclusions reached. Intelligence analysts—whether working with open-source materials or those of the “burn before reading” category—have an intellectual obligation to follow where the evidence leads them. This is true, in my opinion, even when the materials reveal uncomfortable truths—perhaps, especially when the facts that emerge contradict conventional wisdom or touch politically sensitive matters. But beyond laying out the facts as they emerge, it is critical in my view to explain the relationships between those facts, as well as to explain—to the best of one’s ability—how these realities came to be.

Despite the rather dramatic reshaping of what became this volume, I have decided to keep some aspects of the original text despite their less critical role to the new narrative because they provide context that will be of value to the reader. For example, in Chapter 1, Greg Melcher and I (at the recommendation of Mirosław Banasik) decided to retain a section entitled “Post-Cold War Black Sea Security Initiatives” as evidence that the current tense Black Sea environment can be laid at the feet of those countries—Turkey and Ukraine—which should bear principal responsibility for allowing the situation to evolve the way it did. Had we not made the decision to retain this section we might, in a way, be contributing to the usual blame the aggressive Russians or the provocative Americans game. Ukrainian corruption promoted by Moscow, and the destruction of Kemalism—wherein the only Turkish institution truly committed to secular democracy was the military—by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proved a toxic combination during a period when there was a genuine opportunity to extend the geographical boundary of Europe beyond the eastern shore of the Black Sea. Unfortunately, at the time only Georgia and Romania perceived this possibility, and the moment passed.

History is replete with “I didn’t know” excuses,[8] but most of the time it’s simply either that people didn’t want to know the truth or that those truths were in one way or another inconvenient. This is precisely why I believe that it is the intelligence analysts’ responsibility to document both the “warnings” as well as the “warnings ignored.” I, myself, will forever be humbled by the fact that I stood silent at the podium in the Pentagon’s “tank” before the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having had my briefing “gutted” by my Defense Intelligence Agency boss—Gordon Negus—and lacking the courage to explain why the briefing that set NATO in disarray at Supreme Allied Commander Bernie Rogers’ behest didn’t seem so controversial. Understanding the forces that can tug at one’s conscious when weighing what might be societal existential consequences against what are the very real personal and immediate consequences of truth-telling does not, however, make us less responsible to future generations for the consequences of our actions or inactions—neither for what my old co-author John Hines used to call “the willfully ignorant” who simply refuse to be moved by the weight of evidence against their threat or policy preference and do the bullying, nor those they successfully cowed.

For my entire professional life, I have approached the production of intelligence as involving “all source” work to ensure that the product was correct (and couldn’t be attacked by opponents on the basis of “if you knew what I know” arguments) and the production of unclassified products (always taking into consideration the protection of sources that could be “at risk”) so that the knowledge gained from the research actually gets to, and may be employed by, the people who need it most—the operators. During this professional life, I have focused on “operational-strategic” issues: how is the Soviet/Russian General Staff organized; how does it organize its thought processes to reach professional conclusions regarding the organization and execution of operations; and how are the conclusions reflected in practical operations. But even the role of the Russian General Staff—and even that of the Russian Armed and Intelligence Forces—have changed in this current war of a new type, and this volume will explain these changes. This explanation relies, understandably, upon numerous Russian military sources as well as the research of many social scientists who have examined the populist political phenomenon, but also draws heavily upon many American conservative political commentators whose insight concerning the subversion of the Republican Party has proven critically important to a student of Soviet/Russian military theory. Contributors Greg Melcher and Łukasz Przybyło argued the importance, particularly for European readers who may not be familiar with the political leaning of many of the American political commentators whose insights are exploited in this volume—such as George F. Will and Max Boot—and be misled because their articles and commentaries are referenced in The Washington Post.[9]

Over the decades, I have been pleased to see how intelligence thinking (both inside and outside of government) moved from Order of Battle (“bean-counting”) to broader operational net assessments (probably reflecting the legacy of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and its late director, Andrew Marshall).[10] Even prior to meeting Andy Marshall, however, I learned “the hard way” concerning the consequences of not starting with a proper understanding of the opponent’s perspective. In the early years of my career in analysis, I was fortunate to have partners such as John Clark (Air Force) and John Hines (Army) with whom I co-authored numerous studies that tied the “beans to the bacon.” Together with our British colleagues—led by Christopher Donnelly—we were able to persuade blue-side operators (NATO) to attack the Soviet plans rather than focus on tactical-level issues such as the number of divisions and aircraft the enemy had deployed.[11] This experience needs to be replicated by avoiding getting trapped in an action–reaction cycle in our attempts to constrain contemporary Russian plans. For example, Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine unless the West rolls back the integration of East European states into European institutions needs to focus less on protecting the status quo and more on aggravating the problems Putin is trying to deal with. Since Putin doesn’t want his people to see economic success across the border in Ukraine, the West needs to seek out means by which to make the economic gap between Ukrainians and Russians even greater. The starting place must be by cutting off all Russia’s energy sales to Europe, and this will require creativity among Western states to find ways to subsidize energy in Europe. It will be challenging, but far less costly that fighting a kinetic war in Europe. Russia cannot resolve a boycott of its energy with military force; it cannot compel European states to purchase its energy with tanks.

In the post-Soviet era we are, understandably, confronted with a much altered political and technological environment. The hope that liberal democracy would rapidly spread around the globe fell victim to greed and corruption in the liberal democracies,[12] and the information revolution turned out to drive the information ecosystem towards “polarizing and misleading content”[13] giving authoritarian foreign states and domestic authoritarian personalities new opportunities to drag the American republic (as well as European democracies) back into a more primitive socio-economic past. Not all political analysts, however, see the current populist movements generated by the widespread decline in upward mobility and the resulting cultural erosion in the working-class and lower-middle-class hit hard by globalization leading to an era of authoritarianism. Although Joel Kotkin, for example, predicts a coming neo-feudalism he envisions it not as portrayed by George Orwell in 1984 or by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale, but more like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley’s New World consisted of five artificially bio-engineered classes kept narcotically-compliant outside of a family structure, and Kotkin perceives this future in Mark Zuckerberg’s description of his ideal Facebook employees: “We may not own a car. We may not have a family. Simplicity in life is what allows you to focus on what’s important.”[14]

Since fascist systems never seem to outlive their original leaders—ignoring the fact that both the Hitler and Mussolini regimes were pounded-down from the outside—Kotkin might be correct about where the future is leading but, at the very least, he too quickly dismisses the possibility of an Orwell/Atwood interregnum stage. On most everything else, I tend to agree with Kotkin’s assessment, starting with his observation of the critical role played by land-ownership in creating the middle-class foundation of democracies:

(…) today a new generation, in the United States and much of the high-income world, faces diminishing prospects of owning land or advancing into a comfortable middle-class life. Instead of a progressive, woke, egalitarian age, we may be entering an era that is more feudal in its economic and social structure.[15]

Observation of the recent past also makes it difficult to challenge Kotkin’s prescription for avoiding a mass insurrection in the making:

Democratic capitalist societies need to offer the prospect of a brighter future for the majority. Without this belief, more demands for a populist strongman or a radical redistribution of wealth seems inevitable. A form of “oligarchic socialism,” with subsidies or stipends for working people might stave off destitution while allowing the wealthiest to maintain their dominance. But the issue boils down to whether people—not just those with elite credentials and skills—actually matter in a technological age. Wendell Berry, the Kentucky-based poet and novelist, observed that the “great question” hovering over society is “what are people for?” By putting an “absolute premium on labor-saving measures,” we may be creating more dependence on the state while undermining the dignity of those who want to do useful work.[16]

As noted in Chapter 3 of this volume, Artificial Intelligence (AI) not only threatens the entire concept of work and humanity’s relationship to it, but will become weapons of first resort in war and, more broadly, every-day instruments in the pursuit of power.

Kotkin argues that “a civilization can survive only if its members, especially those with the greatest influence, believe in its basic values.”[17] Given the cultural deconstruction taking place in Europe and the United States, vast numbers of their citizens are becoming ignorant of the foundational principles of democracy. The United States, in particular, is confronted with a zero-sum domestic politics in which social peace is being held hostage to the will of one-third of the population that wants to impose its fundamentalist religious and bigoted racial beliefs on the nation. For the most part, this one-third of the population can be described as either authoritarian dominators or authoritarian followers—and have absolutely no interest in genuine democracy (referred to in this volume as liberal democracy).[18] They, in turn, are manipulated by an ever-growing-smaller percentage of the population controlling the wealth of the United States who have already bought their own politicians: some of which are prostitutes and other are just plain stupid people (examples of both types are easily identified in the United States Congress—nothing new there). In reality, this wealthy minority is becoming part of a global mafia of sorts; one that has far more in common with its members than the people of the country in which they made or stole their wealth.[19] The Russian mafia state is focused on stimulating, if not provoking, this political polarization, and will be able to do so to good effect so long as America remains committed to preventing majority rule. As is noted in Chapter 4, however, proximity made London preferable over New York City and the state of Florida as a location for Russian oligarchs wishing to stash their families abroad.

To those who have and those who will question why so much type is devoted in this volume to domestic—particularly American—politics in a volume examining Russian New Generation Warfare (NGW), I offer the Russian perspective that that is where the struggle will be won or lost. The contributors to this volume agree that the United States is the indispensable leader of the liberal democracies—despite the fact that America is not a liberal democracy. The first battle in this struggle against Russian illiberal democracy is the expansion of liberal democracy in the places that it already exists or at least has a foothold. Nowhere is this more important than in the United States, and this is the reason for a sense of urgency for publishing this volume. Trump Cult Republicans are preparing a political coup for the 2024 Presidential Election, and organizing weak-minded retired military leaders[20] in an attempt to split the American Armed Forces in support this planned coup.

The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines—from the top of the chain to squad level—is significant should another insurrection occur. The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the “rightful” commander in chief cannot be dismissed.

Imagine competing commanders in chief—a newly reelected Biden giving orders vs. Trump (or another Trumpian figure) issuing orders as the head of a shadow government. Worse, imagine politicians at the state and federal levels illegally installing a losing candidate as president.[21]

And we shouldn’t limit our concerns to a political coup by the Radical Right Trump Cult. If a Democratic candidate for president should win the popular vote by 12 million but lose the Electoral College vote—even if it were not disrupted by Trump Cult shenanigans such as having state legislatures overruling their popular vote to name their own Electors—it should not be considered unreasonable, having experienced the unprincipled behavior of the Republican leadership in Congress such as Mitch McConnell, if the popular American majority simply refused to accept the results and shut down the country. In three years the peoples of the United States and the world should expect to be confronted by a political crisis that will not allow them to stand on the sidelines hoping the crisis will not lead to a civil war in a nuclear-armed state. If you want to understand the emerging crisis and help prevent it from metastasizing, then read this book.

Unfortunately, the empathic personality of President Joe Biden and the judicious nature of his Attorney General Merrick Garland are not well suited to the greatest sedition since President Abraham Lincoln occupied the White House. What is called for is someone with the fortitude to preserve the Union—something like what has been demonstrated by Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who is at least suggesting charges be filed against Trump and others who inspired the January 6th Insurrection. People that claim that Biden stole the election through fraud need to be charged with sedition and be required to prove their claims before a jury of their peers—if they fail, let it be prison—starting with Donald Trump, himself. Such an effort would be challenging given that the Radical Right has captured much of the judiciary and other ostensibly neutral institutions, but nothing good will come from either doing nothing as treason unfolds or of ignoring the fact that the Republican Party has already packed the courts with radical and sometimes anti-democratic judges.[22] This volume describes this rising threat, as well as explains the Russian role in promoting it.

None of the discussion of the non-kinetic threat in this volume is to denigrate nor downplay the more traditional kinetic or nuclear threats, but no matter how well the liberal democracies prepare for and conduct kinetic operations they will be out-maneuvered by non-kinetic operations if they don’t understand that Russian non-kinetic aggression is already actively undermining human rights, the rule of law, and the ability of majorities to influence how they are governed. The conservative commentator George F. Will likes to cite “Thomas Jefferson’s warnings against large undertakings based on ‘slender majorities,’” so I think that he would agree large undertakings based on minorities are even more preposterous. The liberty and freedom of minorities—even be they white and Christian—cannot be obtained at the expense of denying the same to majorities.

The greed and corruption that makes liberal democracies vulnerable to Russian NGW is exposed in this volume. The central focus in this regard is on England and the United States because these are the two most significant pressure points in the Western coalition. Russian mobilized minorities in these two countries, in particular, insist on the right to defy the majority such that chaos will permit Russian kinetic means to predominate. It is a strategy for the minority or the weak to conquer the majority or the strong. If the purpose were not so malign, it would almost seem elegant. This volume connects the dots that so many refuse to recognize, or at least are prohibited from acknowledging. If majorities in the United States and the liberal democracies are denied political equality and social justice so that Vladimir Putin may undermine support for collective defense of international legal norms—as was done during the Trump Administration—then no amount of kinetic warfare capabilities will be sufficient to bring strategic stability and security to the liberal democracies.[23] Donald Trump, himself, has admitted that Democratic Party-supported efforts to make it easier for Americans to vote will make it harder for the Republican Party to win elections[24]—hence, the Republican Party’s effort to deny American citizens the ability to vote (all in the name of “election security”, of course). Chapter 5 documents the American Radical Right’s initiative to undermine democracy by suppressing voting rights.

When contributor Polish Colonel (ret.) Miroslaw Banasik read the entire initial draft of this volume, he commented that it was crucial to read the entire book prior to making any judgment about it. I asked my friend “Mirek” to provide me with a written explanation of what he meant, and he responded with the following text that I include for its clarifying cognitive effect:

The structure of the monograph is designed so that the reader is provided with basic empirical knowledge of regional security determinants. The monograph also presents the dependencies of international interactions in systemic, functional and structural terms that have been studied in the past and present, which constitutes the epistemological value of the publication. Based on this framework, it is possible to identify phenomena, mechanisms and regularities that will accompany the future.

It is important to emphasize that the accumulated knowledge is presented in a holistic manner. However, one should not succumb to the suggestion that individual chapters can be treated separately. To understand the real intentions of the Russian Federation and the ways of their implementation in the strategic dimension it is necessary to read the whole publication. Then, too, one can learn the logic of the content presented by the authors.

Phillip A. Petersen, Ph.D.

15 February 2022

Wstęp

Łukasz Przybyło

Po przeczytaniu książki Phillipa A. Petersena przypomniał mi się długi telegram Kennana z Moskwy, w którym amerykański dyplomata pisał do prezydenta Trumana:

[rosyjscy władcy] obawiali się, co by się stało, gdyby Rosjanie dowiedzieli się prawdy o świecie poza granicami, a cudzoziemcy prawdy o świecie Rosjan. Rosyjscy przywódcy nauczyli się więc szukać poczucia bezpieczeństwa tylko w cierpliwej, ale śmiertelnej walce o całkowite zniszczenie konkurencyjnej potęgi, ale nigdy w zawieranych z nią umowach i kompromisach[1].

Nie ma znaczenia czy w Rosji panuje car, Politbiuro, czy Putin – cele imperium się nie zmieniają, choć otoczka ideologiczna tak. Polacy, a także byli mieszkańcy demoludów i republik sowieckich w Europie Środkowej i Wschodniej, są specjalnie wyczuleni na rosyjską politykę zmierzającą do ponownego uzależnienia i zniewolenia naszych krajów postrzeganych jako „strefa bezpieczeństwa”, a nie suwerenne państwa. Przez dekady, nieufne podejście do Rosji, uważane było za fobię nie znajdującą uzasadnienia w faktach. Podejście takie miała nie tylko Europa Zachodnia ale i USA ogłaszające kolejne resety i szukające jakiegoś modus vivendi z Rosjanami.

Dopiero agresja na Ukrainę w latach 2014–2015 otworzyła (choć cały czas nie w pełni) oczy Zachodowi. Morderstwa dysydentów, wojna informacyjna z Zachodem (Brexit, Katalonia, wybory w USA, itd.), wspieranie wszelkich ruchów mających niszczyć nasze społeczeństwa od środka, zbrodnie wojenne i terror na Krymie oraz w zajętej części Ukrainy – wszystko to wzbudza tylko ograniczoną reakcję USA, NATO i UE. A przecież:

[Władza sowiecka] nie postępuje według ustalonych planów. Nie ryzykuje, jeśli nie jest to konieczne. Jest odporna na logikę rozumu, ale bardzo wrażliwa na logikę siły. Z tego powodu może z łatwością się cofnąć – i tak zazwyczaj robi, jeśli napotka silny opór. Zatem jeśli przeciwnik ma wystarczającą siłę i jasno pokazuje gotowość jej użycia, rzadko musi się do niej uciec[2].

Nadzieja Zachodu na ułożenie się z Rosją, wciągnięcie ją w demokratyczne, międzynarodowe struktury, ucywilizowanie, spełzły na niczym. Rosjanom udało się natomiast skorumpowanie elit europejskich, czego najlepszym przykładem są Gerhard Schröder, Marie Le Pen, François Fillon[3], czy szefowa austriackiego MSZ Karin Kneissl na której ślub jako gość przybył Putin razem z chórem Kozaków[4]. Czym innym niż korupcją i głupotą tłumaczyć można traktowanie Rosji, której obroty handlowe z Niemcami w pierwszych trzech kwartałach 2021 r. są trzy razy mniejsze od Polski, jako poważnego partnera ekonomicznego[5]? Chyba że elity europejskie liczą na stworzenie z Rosji kolonii surowcowej? To by była jednak skrajna naiwność. „Stacja benzynowa posiadająca broń atomową” nigdy na to nie pójdzie.

Kilka dekad „znieczulania” przyniosło swoje efekty, dopiero od niedawna Federacja Rosyjska znów postrzegana jest w swojej prawdziwej postaci – brutalnego imperium, kierującego się swoją odmianą racjonalności niekompatybilną z liberalną demokracją. Wieloletnie inwestycje w siły zbrojne i narzędzia wojny informacyjnej uczyniły z Rosji, po raz kolejny na przestrzeni wieków, groźnego przeciwnika. Wydaje się, że jest to jednak ostatni przybór fali, ponieważ taki poziom zbrojeń jest nie do utrzymania w perspektywie zmiany paradygmatu energetycznego, który w perspektywie dekady lub dwóch całkowicie zmieni świat. Na pewno zaś zmieni Rosję z jej uzależnieniem od eksportu ropy i gazu. Oczywiście kraj ten może się zmienić i przyjąć te wartości, które dzisiaj hołubi tylko mała część społeczeństwa rosyjskiego – oznaczałoby to jednak krach kleptokracji rządzącej dziś Federacją Rosyjską. Nie byłby to proces bezbolesny – czego obawiają się wszyscy sąsiedzi Rosji. Wydaje się jednak, że trzeba oddzielić rosyjską oligarchię od społeczeństwa, bo:

[Rosjanie] w większości są przyjaźnie nastawieni do świata zewnętrznego, który chętnie by poznali, są też chętni sprawdzić w tym świecie swoje talenty, ale przede wszystkim chcą żyć w pokoju i cieszyć się z owoców własnej pracy[6].

Wydaje się że w tym trudnym momencie dziejowym, kiedy „czasy znów stały się ciekawe” najważniejsze dla Polski i państw naszego regionu przetrwanie rosyjskiego wzmożenia imperialnego poprzez budowanie odstraszania militarnego i zacieśniania więzów gospodarczo-politycznych z Zachodem. Ze względu na swój potencjał ekonomiczny i militarny Stany Zjednoczone są i będą liderem wolnego świata – naszym kluczowym sojusznikiem.

Nowa Generacja Wojny, której genezę i główne założenia przedstawiono w niniejszym opracowaniu, jest dla świata euroatlantyckiego niezwykle groźna, bo żeruje na słabościach społeczeństwa demokratycznego zwielokrotnionych przez rewolucję informacyjną i internet. Wydaje się jednak, że demokracja, która przeszła już kilka prób dziejowych, może i powinna stanąć do walki o swoje wartości. Jednak w pierwszej kolejności trzeba zrozumieć strategię przeciwnika, a potem pokonać ją własną. Dlatego książka Phillipa A. Petersena jasno pokazująca mechanizmy jakich używa Putin i Federacja Rosyjska do walki z Zachodem, jest tak ważna. Uświadomienie sobie zagrożenia i jego kształtu może umożliwić politykom, społeczeństwom i narodom podejmowanie właściwych decyzji i obronę przed rosyjską agresją na nasze wartości, wolność i przyszłość naszych dzieci.

Łukasz Przybyło, Ph.D.

Introduction

Łukasz Przybyło

After reading Phillip A. Petersen’s book, I was reminded of Kennan’s famous long telegram from Moscow in which the American diplomat wrote to President Truman:

[the Russian rulers] have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct conduct between western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about the world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.

It does not matter whether Russia is ruled by a tsar, Politburo, or Putin—the goals of the empire do not change, although the ideological envelope does. Poles, as well as former residents of communist countries and Soviet republics in Central and Eastern Europe, are especially sensitive to the Russian policy aimed at making us again dependent and enslaved, with our states perceived as a “security zone”—not sovereign entities. For decades, a distrustful attitude towards Russia has been considered an unjustified phobia. Such an approach was taken not only by Western Europe but also by the USA announcing further resets and looking for some modus vivendi with the Russians.

Only the aggression against Ukraine in 2014–2015 opened the eyes of the West (though not fully). The murders of dissidents, information warfare with the West (Brexit, Catalonia, US elections, etc.), supporting all movements aimed at destroying our societies from the inside, war crimes and terror in Crimea as well as in the occupied part of Ukraine—all this arouses only a limited response from the US, NATO, and the EU. But:

[The Soviet power] does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw—and usually does—when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so.

The hope of the West to come to terms with Russia, to involve it in democratic, international structures, to civilize it, has failed. The Russians, on the other hand, managed to corrupt the European elite, the best examples of which are Gerhard Schröder, Marie Le Pen, François Fillon, or the head of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Karin Kneissl, at whose wedding Putin came as a guest with a choir of Cossacks. What other than corruption and stupidity can explain the treatment of Russia as a serious economic partner? Its trade turnover with Germany in the first three quarters of 2021 was three times smaller than Poland’s. Unless the European elite is dreaming of creation a resource colony from Russia? However, that would be an extreme naivety. Russia—“a gas station with nuclear weapons” would never go for that.

Several decades of “anesthesia” have brought their effects, only recently has the Russian Federation been once again perceived in its true form—a brutal empire, guided by its kind of rationality incompatible with liberal democracy. Many years of investment in the armed forces and information warfare tools have made Russia, once again over the centuries, a formidable enemy. However, this seems to be the last possible effort, as such a level of defense spending is unsustainable with the prospect of an energy paradigm shift that will completely change the world in a decade or two. And it will change Russia with its dependence on oil and gas exports. Of course, this country may change and adopt the values that today only a small part of Russian society cherishes—but this would mean the collapse of the kleptocracy that rules the Russian Federation today. It would not be a painless process—which is what all Russia’s neighbors are afraid of. It seems, however, that the Russian oligarchy needs to be separated from society because:

[Russians] are, by and large, friendly to outside world, eager for experience of it, eager to measure against it talents they are conscious of possessing, eager above all to live in peace and enjoy fruits of their own labor.

It seems that at this difficult historical moment, when “times have become interesting again,” the most important thing for Poland and the countries of our region is to survive the Russian imperial frenzy by building military deterrence and tightening economic and political ties with the West. Due to its economic and military potential, the United States is and will be the leader of the free world—our key ally.

The New Generation of War, whose genesis and main assumptions are presented in this study, is extremely dangerous for the Euro-Atlantic world because it preys on the weaknesses of a democratic society multiplied by the information revolution of the Internet. It seems, however, that a democracy that has already undergone several historical trials can and should stand up to fight for its values. However, to be effective, one first needs to understand the opponent’s strategy and then defeat it with one’s own. That is why Phillip A. Petersen’s book, clearly showing the mechanisms that Putin and the Russian Federation use to fight the West, is so important. Being aware of the threat and its shape may enable politicians, societies, and nations to make the right decisions and defend themselves against Russian aggression on our values, freedom, and the future of our children.

Łukasz Przybyło, Ph.D.

Prefață

Silviu Nate

Pentru statele aflate pe frontiera estică a NATO, agresiunea Rusiei sub diverse forme reprezintă o realitate cotidiană. Sunt destul de rare ocaziile când analiști occidentali surprind esența provocărilor strategice din Marea Baltică și Marea Neagră. Phillip Petersen este exponentul acestui culoar distinct de expertiză care ne oferă o înțelegere comprehensivă nu doar asupra fenomenului în sine, ci datorită evaluării analitice de tip net assessment oferă celorlalți contribuitori oportunitatea de a furniza opțiuni de securizare.

În loc să se alăture curentului principal al evoluției socio-economice și politice europene după prăbușirea Uniunii Sovietice din 1991, Moscova a ales să se întoarcă la paradigma imperială rusă pre-sovietică. Drept urmare, Moscova a continuat să se situeze în opoziție cu implicarea americană în Europa și s-a opus promovării valorilor democratice liberale de către Uniunea Europeană.

Doctrinele ofensive bazate pe ideologia și valorile feudale al Kremlinului ne-au aruncat într-un război cognitiv cu efecte implacabile în plan socio-cultural asupra politicii, care au condus prin exploatarea ecosistemelor informaționale și operații de influență la polarizare socială și accentuarea extremelor politice în lumea occidentală. Instrumentele cognitive și non-cinetice utilizate de Rusia au împins vecinătatea comună către veritabile zone gri – împânzită de state cărora Moscova le-a generat conflicte sub false pretexte, dar atentează în același timp la stabilitatea și valorile fundamentale ale membrilor Alianței.

Deși preocupările pentru analiza mediului de securitate al Mării Negre au fost periferice sau marginale pentru multă vreme în spațiul de reflecție occidental, complexitatea tendințelor de distribuire a puterii la Marea Neagră indică rolul critic și indispensabil al acestui nod geopolitic de securitate transatlantică. Consolidarea ofensivă strategică rusă pune accent pe mutarea centrului de greutate de la nord la sud, iar realitățile geostrategice actuale sunt percepute acum de către Statul Major al Federației Ruse ca integrând Marea Neagră sub controlul Rusiei. Anexarea ilegală al Crimeii de către Rusia și utilizarea unui avanpost militar naval în Sevastopol întreține și aprovizionează conflictele din Siria și Libia, cu implicații de problematizare a securității Flancului Sudic European în Marea Mediterană, alimentând dorința mai largă a Rusiei de a accesa facil Oceanul Atlantic.

Phillip Petersen aduce o perspectivă de substanță și produce relații determinante între modelul de analiză a fenomenului operațional rusesc și Războiul de Nouă Generație al Rusiei ce reflectă influența și interpretarea Kremlinului asupra strategiei militare occidentale. Preocupările analiștilor dedicați înțelegerii organizării militare ruse, dar și preocupările noastre la Centrul de Studii Globale pentru integrarea expertizei internaționale și formularea de recomandări politice care au contribuit la creșterea prezenței aliate în Marea Neagră, se intersectează avantajos cu vocația lui Phillip Petersen pentru evaluări operaționale și experiența sa bogată în jocuri de război (wargaming). Acest demers analitic plasează autorul pe un palier distinct al expertizei americane, fiind unul dintre puținii specialiști care pătrund în esența Frontului Estic al Alianței și operaționalizează agil rolul critic pe care îl joacă Marea Baltică și Marea Neagră pentru securitatea transatlantică. Viziunea imperialistă a lui Vladimir Putin, pe fondul recuperării teritoriilor „pierdute” în urma destrămării Uniunii Sovietice, plasează Marea Neagră și Marea Baltică în centrul preocupărilor cu potențial de confruntare. Orientarea spre practicitate a cărții contextualizează evaluări strategice, lecții învățate, scenarii și opțiuni de consolidare a regiunii Marea Baltică – Marea Neagră, evidențiind rolul statelor din prima linie, respectiv România și Polonia ca centre de gravitație pentru stabilitatea Europei de Est, ce se confruntă direct cu realitatea geostrategică a frontului estic al NATO.

Sprijinul SUA în cadrul Inițiativei celor Trei Mări poate contribui semnificativ la creșterea și consolidarea infrastructurii necesare pentru îmbunătățirea mobilității militare, a desfășurărilor de urgență și a prezenței operaționale. În același timp, are rolul de a spori interdependențele economice și poate oferi randament investițiilor americane în regiune. Un angajament ferm al SUA nu va asigura doar un ascendent defensiv al statelor din prima linie a NATO, dar va crește și profilul socio-economic coercitiv al acestora în raport cu Rusia.

Marele rezultat al acestei lucrări constă în fuziunea dintre personalitatea intelectuală și experiența directă a principalului „modelator” al acestui volum colectiv, în calitatea sa de fost analist de informații al Defense Intelligence Agency, cu idei colectate de-a lungul timpului din cercetări, analize și cercuri de reflecție consacrate. Cartea oferă recomandări utile pentru viitorul Concept Strategic al Alianței și reprezintă un suport valoros pentru construcția politicilor de securitate, apărare și diplomație publică. Capacitatea de a granula percepțiile Est-Vest pun în centrul hărții Marea Neagră – un nod geopolitic situat între: perspectivele aliate, speranțele statelor aspirante și agenda Rusiei.

Sunt convins că, după parcurgerea acestei lucrări, introducerea unui model multidisciplinar care examinează un set mult mai larg de variabile analitice și perspective decât în mod obișnuit – o abordare care reflectă în mod clar un nou tip de război – cititorul va înțelege mult mai bine amploarea confruntării în NATO și Uniunea Europeană se regăsesc angajate. Europa de Est nu este doar un flanc, este frontul unui război desfășurat la scară largă cu implicații globale care se poartă deja în profunzimea noastră colectivă, nu doar în capitalele și societățile noastre, ci în mintea fiecărui cetățean în căutarea libertății și justiției socio-economice.

Dr. Silviu Nate

Director al Centrului de Studii Globale

Universitatea „Lucian Blaga” din Sibiu, România

Foreword

Silviu Nate

For NATO’s eastern border states, Russia’s aggression in various forms is a daily reality. It is quite rare for Western analysts to capture the essence of the strategic challenges in the Baltic and the Black Sea. Phillip Petersen is the exponent of a distinct area of expertise that gives us a comprehensive understanding not only of the phenomenon itself but also, because of his net assessment analytical approach, offers his other contributors the opportunity of providing security options.

Instead of joining the mainstream of European socio-economic and political evolution after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow chose to return to the pre-Soviet Russian imperial paradigm. As a result, Moscow found itself still in opposition to American involvement in Europe and opposed to the European Union’s promotion of liberal democratic values.

The offensive doctrines based on the Kremlin’s ideological and feudalist values have plunged us into a cognitive war with relentless socio-cultural impact upon politics that, through the exploitation of information ecosystems and influence operations led to social polarization and stressing of political extremes throughout the Western world. The cognitive and non-kinetic instruments used by Russia have pushed the common neighborhood to veritable gray areas—littered with states within which Moscow has generated conflicts under false pretenses, simultaneously undermining the stability and the fundamental values of Alliance members.

Although concerns for the analysis of the Black Sea security environment have been peripheral or marginal for a long time in the Western space of reflection, the complexity of power distribution trends in the Black Sea suggests both a critical and indispensable role for this geopolitical node of transatlantic security. Russia’s strategic offensive consolidation focuses on shifting the center of gravity from north to south, while current geostrategic realities are now perceived by the Russian Federation’s General Staff as integrating the Black Sea under Russian control. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the use of a naval outpost in Sevastopol to maintain and supply the conflicts in Syria and Libya, having implications on the security of the European Southern Flank in the Mediterranean and fueling Russia’s wider desire for easy access the Atlantic Ocean.

Phillip Petersen brings a substantial perspective and displays decisive relationships between the analytic model of the Russian operational phenomenon and Russian New Generation Warfare, which reflect the Kremlin’s influence and view of Western military strategy. The concerns of analysts dedicated to understanding the Russian military structure, but also our preoccupations at the Global Studies Center for integrating international expertise and formulating policy recommendations that have contributed to increasing the allied presence in the Black Sea, intersect with Phillip Petersen’s vocation for operational assessments and his rich experience in wargaming. This analytical approach places the author on a distinct level within American expertise, being one of the few specialists to penetrate the essence of the Alliance’s Eastern Front and to agilely operationalize the critical role that the Baltic and the Black Seas play for broader transatlantic security. Vladimir Putin’s imperialist vision, based on the recovery of “lost” territories following the collapse of the Soviet Union, places the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea at the center of concerns for potential confrontations. The book’s orientation towards practicality contextualizes strategic assessments, lessons learned, scenarios, and options for consolidating the Baltic–Black Sea region, highlighting the role of frontline states, namely Romania and Poland as gravity centers for the stability of Eastern Europe, as the two of them are directly faced with the geostrategic reality of NATO’s eastern front.

US support for the Three Seas Initiative can make a significant contribution to increasing and strengthening the infrastructure needed to improve military mobility, emergency deployment, and operational presence. At the same time, it has the potential to increase economic interdependence and can provide a return on US investment in the region. A strong US commitment will not only ensure a defensive ascendancy of NATO frontline states, but it will also increase their coercive socio-economic profile vis-à-vis Russia.

The great outcome of this work is the fusion between the intellectual personality and the direct experience of the principal “shaper” of this collective volume, in his capacity as a former intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, with ideas collected over time from established research, analyses, and reflection groups. The book provides useful recommendations for the Alliance’s future Strategic Concept and is a valuable support for the construction of security, defense, and public diplomacy policies. The ability to granulate East-West perceptions puts the Black Sea at the center of the map—a geopolitical node between Allied perspectives, aspiring states’ hopes, and Russia’s agenda.

I trust that after reading this work introducing a multi-discipline model examining a far wider than normal set of analytical variables and perspectives—an approach that clearly reflects a new type of warfare—that the reader will much better understand the magnitude of the confrontation in which NATO and the European Union find themselves engaged. Eastern Europe is not just a flank, it is the front of a large-scale war with global implications already being waged in our collective depth—not just in our capitals and societies—but in the minds of each of our citizens seeking liberty and socio-economic justice.

Dr. Silviu Nate

Director of the Global Studies Center

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania

Chapter 1
We Are At War, What’s Not To Understand!

Phillip A. Petersen with contributions from Jerzy Aleksandrowicz Mirosław Banasik, Hans Damen, and Gregory King Melcher

The narrative this book lays out is, essentially, one of inconvenient truths. Contrary to the foolishness articulated by Vladimir Putin about the collapse of the Soviet Union being some sort of tragedy, the collapse has been correctly described as the result of self-inflicted “ecocide.”[1] Primitive feudalist exploiters destroyed the Soviet Union, and they are now back in power attempting to extend their destructive behavior around the globe with the assistance of White Christian Racists everywhere.[2] Furthermore, the resentment towards the West for the collapse of this giant prison is an equal falsehood! The truth is that the United States Government (USG)—particularly Dr. Condoleezza Rice—did everything it could to save Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. The Bush Administration greatly feared the potential consequences of a collapse of the central government in Moscow—so much that President George H. W. Bush went to Kyiv and warned against “suicidal nationalism.”[3] While Bush may have been guided by legitimate concerns about the potential dangers of “loose nukes,” I have no doubt that he was greatly influenced by the “Soviet experts” around him who were familiar with history from a “Muscovite” perspective. Reading the history of this same geostrategic space from the perspective of Kazan or Krakow provides a leavening experience to the feudal Muscovite view of European history.

None of this is to argue that nonproliferation efforts of the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union didn’t play a crucial role in avoiding additional tragedy. Despite the Putin narrative of Western—and particularly American—exploitation of a chaotic Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the USG did everything it could to get the nuclear weapons all back into the hands of Moscow. Furthermore, the USG spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to secure the warheads and deal with other residual peripheral issues such as the safe disposal of the nuclear power plants for decommissioned formerly-Soviet nuclear submarines that had previously carried missiles targeting America. This circumstance resulted in the absurd situation wherein the United States was paying to clean up the abysmal pigsty created by the Soviet military-industrial complex while it was designing a new SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) and a new SLBMs (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) to target the very country that was paying the bills for the clean-up. The old Red Defense Industrial Managers didn’t want to change and learn to do things that actually benefited the country and its peoples, they just wanted someone to make it possible for them to continue to do what they already knew how to do—make weapons of war. Beyond the hardware, the USG spent additional hundreds of millions of dollars supporting the “commercialization” of Russian weapons of mass destruction talent to keep it out of the hands of “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran. And, before that, the German Government spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars for housing the Soviet officer corps back in Moscow in order to get Soviet troops out of the reunified Germany. Whenever possible, the new Russian authorities (both civilian and military) attempted to steal as much of the assistance funds as possible. And, in order to continue this plundering of the country and its peoples, the Russian military-industrial complex extracted an informal commitment from Boris Yeltsin to turn the country over to them in exchange for backing him during the 1993 Constitutional Crisis.

An Inconvenient War

When the United States—and the West more broadly—were celebrating its victory over the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, for the most part they simply wanted to enjoy the fruits of victory, giving little thought to securing the fruits of victory. There were those, of course, who tried to warn the deliriously inebriated that evil still lurked behind the red walls of the Moscow Kremlin. The leaders of the Baltic States who were attempting to urge such a perspective were attacked by Westerners as well as Russians, who presented them as “hysterically anti-Russian”—which is much easier to do when you haven’t had one-quarter of your population murdered or deported to Siberia. When the Poles also spoke about caution with regard to whether Moscow had really changed, they too were labeled “troublemakers” with an anti-Russian bias. The old Cold War joke about the Pole who was asked about who he would fight first if his country was again invaded by the Germans and Russians, and who responded, “why the Germans, of course, always business before pleasure” was used to explain the “cultural bias” in Warsaw. And, clearly, some contemporary conservative Poles carried with them the resentment that those children of their former domestic antagonists were the ones who had tended to benefit most financially from the restoration of national independence, and the economic “shock” therapy “that proved extremely favorable to private business development throughout the Polish economy.”[4] More contemporary Polish economists may perceive this period more objectively with regard to the economy, if not Polish media.[5] However one choses to characterize the left–right preconceptions, the fact is that the warnings of the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Poles with regard to the modernization of Russian politics turned out to ring true with the perspective of time.

Figure 1-1: Polish President Lech Kaczyński with Ukrainian President and the Presidents Baltic states, in Tbilisi during the 2008 South Ossetia war. Source: Robert Kowalewski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Ironically, while the clamor for diligence on the part of the West came from the Baltic Sea region, the first armed aggression on the part of Putin came in the Black Sea region. But, once again, it was the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Poles (Figure 1-1) who understood the true meaning of this aggression; and it was the Polish President Lech Kaczyński who touched a too sensitive nerve for Putin to let the matter go unaddressed. From the besieged capital of Tbilisi during the Russian war on Georgia, Kaczyński announced that

we are here to take up the fight. For the first time in years our eastern neighbor shows their true face that we have known for hundreds of years. They think other nations should be subordinated to them. We say no! That country is Russia; the era of the empire is coming back.

Worse still, from Putin’s perspective, Kaczyński warned that “we know well that today it is Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, and the day after the Baltic States—then perhaps the time will come for my country, for Poland!”

The Smolensk Incident of 2010

Moscow’s dissembling concerning its intervention in the 2014 Ukrainian popular revolution has led to a reexamination of Russian, and in particular Vladimir Putin’s, behavior since Putin was named Russian Prime Minister in 1999. The short political memory of the West and a more general psychological human tendency to avoid accepting that genocide and political murders remain entrenched within the range of human behavior gave Putin and his Federal Security Service (FSB) criminal organization fifteen years to fully develop its methodology of subversion. While Moscow’s “explanation” of the 2010 decapitation of Poland’s leadership[6] has subsequently been completely discredited by the scientific-technical assessment of leading aviation disaster experts from around the world, because more than a decade is practically an “eternity” in terms of international politics, the incident is “history” and whatever evils may have been perpetrated do not retain the ability to “shock” because they are not perceived as a data point in a pattern of behavior. The only way to compel publics, and their governments, to draw “conclusions” that will demand action is to set out a series of data points that do indicate a pattern of behavior that persuasively argues for an appropriate response to Putin’s plans for Russian violence and aggression.

The data points in the pattern of ruthless behavior by Putin and his FSB criminal organization that can conclusively be established begins with the 1999 “false flag” building bombings that brought Putin to power organized by the FSB and falsely attributed to Chechen terrorists.[7] As Putin tightened his grip on power, tensions with the so-called “Yeltsin family” intensified leading to a rupture and, eventually, the London polonium assassination in 2006 of family loyalist FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko.[8] He had exposed the brutal method by which Putin had been brought to power by the family in retaliation for its exclusion from power. The complete immunity to consequences for their criminal behavior led Putin and his FSB colleagues to conclude that, no matter what the evidence of their guilt, so long as they proclaim their innocence and provide some, even remote, possibility of an alternative explanation to an act of violence or aggression, that they will be held guiltless. It was the West’s determination to self-deceive that led to the 2008 invasion of Georgia, and might well have led to the complete occupation of the country had it not been for the direct intervention by Ukraine and the Baltic States under the leadership of Poland. This “coalition of the willing” stood in Putin’s way, and required removal, and it is in this context in which the decapitation of not only the Polish leadership but that of the “coalition of the willing,” must be understood. It is the psychology of a serial killer and a criminal organization to grow ever more arrogant. The violence and aggression will not stop until it is terminated, and this requires first of all comprehension.

Figure 1-2: Moving evidence in an investigation should be an immediate Red Flag for criminal intent. Source: Vladimir Putin’s Russian Government Inquiry into the Crash of The Polish Air Force One in Smolensk, Russia, April 10, 2010, Polish Parliamentary Committee for the Investigation of the Tu-154M crash in Smolensk, Russia on April 10th, 2010 under the chairmanship of Antoni Macierewicz, Brussels: European Parliament, March 2015.

Whatever one chooses to believe about Russian responsibility for the Smolensk incident, the evidence clearly demonstrates that the scenario of the official report of the incident is completely inconsistent with the scientific-technical facts concerning the downing of the aircraft. What is already undeniable is that, whatever the cause of the crash (note that I will never use the word accident to describe the incident that would in any civilized country make Vladimir Putin “a person in interest” in a criminal investigation), the so-called “investigation” was, in fact, a cover-up! The natural follow-up question to the discovery of a cover-up should be “what are they covering up?”

Beyond the many technical discrepancies within the so-called investigation oversaw by Sergey Shoygu, Vladimir Putin, and Sergei Ivanov which seemed beyond rational explanation, there was clear evidence of an attempt by the Russians to insure the destruction of evidence. The crashed plane’s stabilizer, said to have been lost when the plane struck a tree was moved during the evening of 11–12 April 2010 to conform with the scenario that would appear in the Final Russian Report (Figure 1-2). Since plexiglas is commonly tested in airplane crashes to inspect for the structural changes that occur during explosive destruction, why do photographs taken at the scene indicate that soldiers were destroying the windows of the fuselage? (Figure 1-3) Rather than removing the wreckage to a secure facility where it could be pieced back together for investigation, it was cut up and destroyed (Figure 1-4). The Russians never made a reconstruction of the wreck, which broke into about 60,000 parts—an unusually high number—or search these parts for traces of explosives. Then President Medvedev established a special commission to investigate the crash to be supervised by Prime Minister Putin. The commission also rejected the offer of assistance from the European Union to investigate the crash. Instead of professional experts in investigating the cause of aviation disasters, assisting Putin with the investigation were long-time colleague Sergei Ivanov, FSB Chief and plausibly responsible for executing an operation to cause the crash, and Sergey Shoygu, Minister of Emergency Situations from 1991 to 2012 and appointed Minister of Defense when Putin returned to the Russian Presidency (Figure 1-5).

Figure 1-3: This soldier is destroying evidence. Source: Vladimir Putin’s Russian Government Inquiry into the Crash of The Polish Air Force One in Smolensk, Russia, April 10, 2010

Figure 1-4: Additional destruction of evidence. Source: Vladimir Putin’s Russian Government Inquiry into the Crash of The Polish Air Force One in Smolensk, Russia, April 10, 2010

Figure 1-5: (Left-to-Right) Sergey Shoygu, Minister of Emergency Situations, Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister, and Sergei Ivanov, FSB Chief. The basic tactical competence demonstrated by Shoygu during the operation ingratiated him to Putin, who would find him time-and-again useful.

Source: Vladimir Putin’s Russian Government Inquiry into the Crash

of The Polish Air Force One in Smolensk, Russia, April 10, 2010.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

The authors do not expect that everyone will be persuadable to the reality that Putin has ordered the long list of reporters and other critics who have been murdered both in Russia and abroad over the past decade or so, or that he has ordered the interference in the elections of liberal democratic states.[9] I am well aware of how easy it is to persuade people who want to be persuaded, as well as how difficult it is to persuade people when they don’t want to believe. The attempt in 1990 to warn the American Undersecretary of Defense for Policy that the Soviet Union was likely to split up, and that there was a significant likelihood of attempts to split Ukraine and Kazakhstan as well, may serve as an example. After having a report warning to this effect sit in the Undersecretary’s office and unread by him for more than a month, the report was discussed in the pages of The Washington Times[10] (Figure 1-6) and, subsequently, in papers of most NATO capitals. Shortly thereafter, the NATO Secretary General requested that the research be briefed at NATO Headquarters, and the briefing was again leaked to the press—appearing in The International Herald Tribune (Figure 1-7), and yet again discussed in papers of most NATO capitals.

Figure 1-6: The actual article that was written by Peter Almond, and published on March 12, 1990. Almond’s article was displaced from the front page that day by the news of the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, which took place the previous day.

Figure 1-7: The original article by Joseph Fitchett, “Europe: A. U.S. Map Of Moscow’s Hopes,”

The International Herald Tribune, March 26, 1990.

This “historical” subject matter is particularly relevant to European-American security conversations since it was briefed by Dr. Reiner K. Huber, Emeritus Professor at the Universität der Bundeswehr in München, at the 26th European-American Security Workshop at Birini Castle, Latvia on September 24, 2016 (Figure 1-8) and at the 1st Subject Matter Expert Workshop at Malpils Manor, Latvia on October 18, 2016.[11] As noted by Huber,

by the end of the 1980s it had been obvious to most open-minded intellectuals in Moscow that “the European Union train was about to pull out of the station and the Soviet Union either needed to find a way to get on that train or be forever left behind.”[12] A paper had already been prepared for Gorbachev arguing that Germany be reunited—within NATO as a means by which to prevent it from dominating Europe—as the price Moscow pay to integrate into the global economy. This paper was shared with the Federal Republic of Germany in preparation for Mikhail Gorbachev’s first visit to the FRG, and delivered into Phil Petersen’s hands by a German intelligence officer. It was this paper that prompted his trip to Moscow to discuss the paper with its author—Vyacheslav Dashichev, then Chief of the International Relations Division in the International Economics and International Relations Institute and one of the Soviet Union’s main policy analysts on Germany.[13] The results from this trip was the preparation of a compendium of Soviet views on an alternative European security future[14] for the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, but his military assistant buried the report because he didn’t agree with it. After sitting in the Undersecretary’s office and unread by him for more than a month, the report was discussed in the pages of The Washington Times and, subsequently, in the papers of most of NATO capitals. At the prompting of his Assistant for Central and Eastern Europe, Christopher Donnelly, the NATO Secretary General requested that the research be briefed at NATO Headquarters, and the briefing was again leaked to the press—appearing in The International Herald Tribune, and yet again discussed in the papers of most NATO capitals.

Petersen’s report described a number of Soviet views regarding a non-confrontational security architecture for the reorganization of Europe on the basis of regional economic interests. The Muscovites were seeking a model of regional economic relationships that would not isolate the Soviet Union, and even anticipated the likelihood of the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the subsequent effort by Putin to divide Ukraine. The paper attempted to convey that the Soviet Union was already undergoing economic collapse and that, as a result, Moscow was offering alternative security options in exchange for economic integration with the West. The paper offered two maps to visually assist in understanding the alternative futures that Moscow envisioned: one indicating what it was willing to accept regarding the devolution of the Soviet state, and a second indicating what it expected the political structure of Europe to look as a desirable alternative to continued confrontation with the West (Figure 1-9).

Figure 1-8: Participants from the European-American Security Workshop “Implementing the NATO Warsaw Summit: Defending the Baltic Region,” 22–24 September 2016. Dr. Reiner Huber is standing in the very top row, in the very center of the photograph, almost center on the open doorway.

Source: Author’s collection.

Peter Almond of the Washington Times summarized Petersen’s compendium as follows:

□ All nations of Eastern Europe will join or become associates of the European Community (EC).

□ Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will not only be independent, but will also join the EC. The Soviet Union will be an associate member of the EC, as will be Turkey.

□ Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will be members of an expanded Nordic Council[15] inside the EC. This would partially balance the political power of reunited Germany.

□ Austria and Hungary will become one economic entity and join Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in an Italy-dominated “Middle Europe Group” of the EC.

□ Britain, Portugal and Switzerland will be outside a “Western European Confederation” of Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in the EC. Britain may join a North Atlantic Group to include the U.S. and Canada.

□ Reunited Germany would stay in NATO, but only British and American troops need withdraw from there as Soviet troops also withdraw from East Germany. Belgian, Dutch and French soldiers could stay in Germany, with the German Army dissolved and initially placed under a non-German commander.

□ Internally the Soviet Union would devolve, with only Byelorussia and the Russian Republic counted on remaining in the U.S.S.R. The Ukraine and Kazakhstan may end up split. Christian Armenia will be isolated if Georgia becomes independent, and a secular barrier to Islamic fundamentalism may be promoted with the union of Soviet Azeris, Iranian Azeris and Turkey. The Kuril Islands will be returned to Japan.

Thus, in addition to balancing them economically, the Soviet’s primary reason behind forming three supranational groups within the EC was to contain German influence. The states in Russia’s immediate abroad (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece) were not considered for joining a supranational group for economic or security reasons.

For the briefing at NATO Headquarters the emerging Soviet views on European Security were presented as shown in [Figure 1-9]. It visualizes that the basic idea underlying the Soviet views was to arrive at stable military and economic balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact by each contributing, together with the neutral states in the North and South East, to the establishment of two supranational groups (Nordic Council and Adriatic Danube respectively) and to contain United Germany embedded in the Western European Confederation. Once again, a system of “entangling” political, economic and security structures were proposed to replace an existing architecture that locked Russia out of the emerging global economy.

After the presentation was delivered at NATO Headquarters, the briefing was leaked by a senior State Department official who wanted to “debunk” any notion that the Soviet views that had been presented reflected reality—at least a reality that would be acceptable to a triumphant West. The Soviet Union was on its heels, and this official (later promoted to ambassador) wanted to make sure that it was clear that “the Russians” were in no position to “bargain” for a more benign West without making fundamental political changes. While the Muscovites were naïve about their leverage as the Soviet Union collapsed, the idea of reducing Europe’s power vis-à-vis Moscow continues to be a policy objective of the Kremlin.

Europe did not evolve as security theorists and Soviet leaders had hoped in 1990: In addition to countries of the Western European Group proposed by the Soviet plan, the European Community of 1990 included Italy, Denmark, Greece, Ireland and Britain.[16] Its scope was widened in 1993 when the European Union (EU) was established by the Treaty of Maastricht.[17] Since then, the EU has enlarged by accepting the applications of Austria, Sweden, Finland, and members of the former Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavia. By 2005 when Putin made the initially mentioned state of the nation address,[18] the three Baltic countries and all of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact (except for Bulgaria and Rumania which followed in 2007) had become members of the EU. As of today, the EU still is a coherent, albeit somewhat divisive, bloc of 28-member countries from Portugal and Ireland in the West to Romania in the East, and from Finland in the North to Greece in the South.[19] However, the problems currently facing the EU, in particular the Brexit, suggest that the European Union may have passed its zenith.

Figure 1-9: The actual map that was briefed at NATO Headquarters, as opposed to the map as it appears in the Fitchett article in The International Herald Tribune.

Source: From the set of VuGraphs from author’s collection.

The argument that Huber was attempting to lay before the Euro-Atlantic security community was simply that Moscow’s contemporary objective of destroying NATO and the European Union was little different than the Gorbachev era’s promotion of a weaker Europe and an American disengagement. Huber was just ahead of the rest of us. While we were all focused on the growing kinetic threat, he had already perceived the impending non-kinetic threat. While the Americans were surprised at the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, even prior to the election Huber had warned “that Putin will seize any opportunity—including war and the intervention in the 2016 American Presidential Election—that he considers helpful in defeating the ‘Project Europe’.” Huber warned that

with the objective of splitting the EU in mind, Putin has been preparing the ground for some time by supporting financially and through the media, populist anti-immigration and anti-EU parties and movements which have emerged in recent years all over Europe as citizens became increasingly frustrated over the inactivity and self-serving mentality of the traditional political parties and national governments, as well as the failure of the bureaucrats of the European Commission to address real and perceived problems facing citizens to varying degrees in the EU countries.[20]

Trump had publicly asked the Russians for help in his 2016 campaign, and Putin had provided it. Clandestinely, they both tried subsequently to use the Ukrainians to prevent Biden from becoming Trump’s 2020 election opponent. Furthermore, when Trump failed to get reelected, they both promoted—Trump publicly and Putin clandestinely—the Big Lie that Biden had stolen the 2020 American Presidential Election[21] to, first, attempt to overthrow the election and, subsequently, prepare the country for a political coup in 2024. Voter suppression laws enacted wherever the Trump Thugs can bully legislatures into getting them enacted may be insufficient to get Trump elected in 2024, so Republicans are employing gerrymandering to have disproportionate representation in state legislatures to give the legislatures control over casting of electoral votes so that no matter how many votes Trump loses by in the popular vote, they can still name him president.[22] Even if the Trump political coup fails, Putin will be able to demonstrate that liberal democracy delivers nothing but chaos. Obviously, the most dangerous scenario would be that the situation leads to a second American civil war.

The brilliant James R. Schlesinger, then Secretary of Defense, took extraordinary steps to ensure that the military would not become involved in the politics surrounding Richard Nixon’s removal from office, after his Committee to Re-Elect the President, attempting to criminally manipulate the 1972 Presidential Election, was exposed by a bunged burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters located at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC.[23] As a young Army Lieutenant stationed at Fort Devens during this period, Phil Petersen can attest to having observed first-hand an Army demoralized by its ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam choosing up sides—President Nixon or the United States Congress. While not everyone today appreciates a similar service by General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,[24] others disagree that “Milley’s efforts to ensure stability until the new and legitimately elected president could take office—and avoid an illegal or unethical military action—hardly constitute a refusal to accept civilian leadership.”[25] However, the fact of Trump flouting norms concerning the military such as “treating troop events like campaign rallies and referring to the top brass as my generals”[26] and his determined efforts after he left office to drive honest Republicans from office suggest that he was—and remains—willing to lead the country into civil war. Trump has been seduced by Presidential powers, wants them back, and is willing to end American democracy to get them back. Vladimir Putin has found the leader of his “Fifth Column” in the United States: “for Trump, it’s binary: Heads I win, tails you cheated.”[27]

The reason that neither Putin nor Trump really believe in liberal democracy is that both of them understand that in a fair election, neither of them could win.[28] Princeton University Professor Jan-Werner Müller makes a critical contribution to our understanding with his critique of “symmetrical coverage” of politics in “situations of asymmetrical polarization” when “one party has turned against fundamental democratic rules or is misleading the public systematically about the basic facts.” In this case it no longer is a matter of being for or against a particular policy or even party; “people cannot have license to undermine the standing of their fellow citizens as free and equal members of the polity.”[29] Putin and Trump are both illiberal democrats, and therefore the enemy making war upon our liberal democracies. We are in an existential struggle with them, and the only alternative is to defeat them. As observed by Michael Gerson:

The knowledge that men and women can be led to commit, enable and ignore great evil should underlie any realistic approach to governing. Certainly any conservative approach to governing. “Civilization is hideously fragile,” said C.P. Snow. “(…) There’s not much between us and the horrors underneath. Just about a coat of varnish.”[30]

Footnotes

Preface

[1] Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (1899–1980), was a Russian Jewish writer and educator, and the wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam who was murdered in 1938 in the Great Purge. She wrote two memoirs Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974). Both books are masterpieces of prose and put an author at the centre of the liberal resistance against the Soviet rule over Russia.

[2] Richard Hofstadter, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt (1955),” in: The Radical Right, edited by Daniel Bell, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1964, pp. 76–77.

[3] Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, New York: Vintage Books, 2005, pp. 219–220. Among this “mobilizing passions” Robert O. Paxton has included:

1) a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

2) the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and thee subordination of the individual to it;

3) the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

4) dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualist liberalism, class conflict, and alien influence;

5) the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

6) the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;

7) the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;

8) the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; and

9) the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

[4] Ibid., p. 41.

[5] A.F.K. Organski, “Fascism and Modernization,” The Nature of Fascism, edited by S.J. Woolf, New York: Vintage Books, 1969, p. 27. George Packer sees these two nations comprised of a narrative of “four Americas”: “Free America,” “Real America,” “Smart America,” and “Just America.” The first two align mainly with the Republican Party and the last two with the Democrats, but each represents a different challenge to the liberal consensus that defined the political landscape during the Cold War and, in Packer’s view, created a society with “more economic equality, more shared prosperity, and more political cooperation” than we have today. “All four narratives are also driven by a competition for status that generates fierce anxiety and resentment.” In the vernacular of Donald Trump, Packer argues that “they all anoint winners and losers. In Free America, the winners are the makers, and the losers are the takers who want to drag the rest down in perpetual dependency on a smothering government. In Smart America, the winners are the credentialed meritocrats, and the losers are the poorly educated who want to resist inevitable progress. In Real America, the winners are the hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland, and the losers are treacherous elites and contaminating others who want to destroy the country. In Just America, the winners are the marginalized groups, and the losers are the dominant groups that want to go on dominating.” George Packer, “How America Fractured into Four Parts,” The Atlantic, July/August 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/.

[6] Forty percent of Republicans and Independents believe the violence against the United States Government (USG) is justified, meaning that the number of Americans ready to employ violence against the USG stands at one-third. Dan Balz, Scott Clement, and Emily Guskin, “Poll: Views of Capital riot split on party lines,” The Washington Post, January 2, 2022, pp. A1 and A6.

[7] See “Appendix 2: Detailed Terrain Assessment of Strategic Regions and Operation Axes” in Baltic Security Net Assessment, Tartu, Estonia: Baltic Defence College, January 2018, to get an idea of the operational focus of the Second Volume of this current initiative, https://www.baltdefcol.org/files/files/publications/BalticSecurityNetAssessment2018.pdf.

[8] Examples are the failures of intermediate supervisors to forward analysts’ warnings and security Policy elites to accept Intelligence (and academic) warnings about the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the September 2011 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.

[9] The Washington Post, frequently denigrated by the political Radical Right as a “left-wing rag” strives to be “the” paper of the capital of the United States and, as a result, offers its pages to far more genuinely conservative authors than probably any other newspaper in the United States. Although I monitor numerous so-called news services of the Radical Right with names such as Informing America and JustPatriots, The Epoch Times which is affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement and promotes far right political figures in Europe and the United States is probably the most slickly produced, which is not surprising given the millions of dollars they have to spend. As much as The Epoch Times tries to present itself as promoting news that is factual and without bias, much of its content is focused on hard right spinning of the news and promotion of conspiracy theories that actively spread false information.

[10] To anyone aspiring to a successful career in the intelligence community or military-strategic affairs of any nation (the Chinese claim to have translated every word that Mr. Marshall ever wrote), it is incumbent to familiarize oneself with his ideas about what successful strategic assessment involves. For a quick introduction to the subject, see Paul Bracken, “Net Assessment: A Practical Guide,” Parameters, Spring 2006, pp. 90–100; one might also take a look at Net Assessment and Military Strategy: Retrospective and Prospective Essays, edited by Thomas G. Mahnken, Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, which has a foreword authored by Mr. Marshall himself.

[11] In no way am I denigrating the importance of Order of Battle work, as it must be the foundation of capability assessments concerning the opponent’s ability to execute plans. And today there are a number of individuals and organizations producing superb OB studies at the unclassified level.

[12] While much has been written about Afghan corruption contributing to the August 2021 collapse of nation-building in Afghanistan, Richard Armitage, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and United States Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush, made clear the American contribution to corruption undermining liberal democracy. During a recent interview Armitage noted that “the whole world had witnessed a conga line of grifters in the [Trump] administration that paraded as Cabinet officers. Nobody knew better than our foreign friends what these folks were about. So that raised questions, first of all, about where the direction of the United States was.” “Richard Armitage Says Starting In 2002, The U.S. Could Have Left Afghanistan,” National Public Radio, August 23, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/08/23/1030223429/richard-armitage-says-starting-in-2002-the-u-s-could-have-left-afghanistan.

[13] Cristiano Lima, “Study: Sites that mislead get record attention on Facebook,” The Washington Post, August 25, 2021, p. A18.

[14] As quoted in Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, New York: Encounter Books, 2020, p. 49.

[15] Ibid., p. 83.

[16] Ibid., p. 125.

[17] Ibid., p. 171.

[18] Were Thomas Paine alive today, he probably would re-apply his term “sunshine patriots” since they only support cardboard cutout caricatures of “liberty” and “freedom”—the symbols my brother and I observed during the small town Fourth of July parades growing up in Ludington, Michigan as opposed to the quite individual scenes related to sacrifice for the genuine principles one can observe on a pleasant summer day walking through Arlington National Cemetery. I will always treasure the memory of watching my brother, Emmett, notice a woman in distress and taking time to help a mother find her son’s grave in the cemetery’s vast expanse of white crosses. That mother knew more about freedom and liberty than any Michigan Militia wannabe-soldier January 6th Insurrectionist ever will.

[19] The merging of the interests of the globe’s wealthy and their collective efforts to hide their wealth from law enforcement and the taxman can be seen in how the United States has become one of the perceived safest places to stash funds. See Debbie Cenziper and Will Fitzgibbon, “Pandora Papers: A Global Investigation – ‘Cowboy Cocktail’: The Recipe that Made Wyoming a Top Tax Haven,” The Washington Post, December 21, 2021, pp. A1, A6, and A7. “In the U.S., regulators and prosecutors steadily have warned that money launderers located both at home and abroad target U.S. real estate transactions because they are a relatively effective and anonymous means of ‘cleaning’ dirty money.” Peter D. Hardy, Terence M. Grugan, Priya Roy and Mary K. Crutcher, “The Intersection of Money Laundering and Real Estate,” Anti-Money Laundering 2020, London: Global Legal Group, https://www.ballardspahr.com/-/media/files/articles/aml20_chapter-2_ballardspahr.pdf. This volume will argue that money-laundering in the United States real estate market is the nexus of the Vladimir Putin–Donald Trump relationship.

[20] “A group of 124 retired military officials, under the name ‘Flag Officers 4 America,’ released a letter echoing Donald Trump’s false attacks on the legitimacy of [American] elections.” Paul D. Eaton, Antonio M. Taguba, and Steven M. Anderson, “The military must prepare for a 2024 insurrection,” The Washington Post, December 21, 2021, p. A19.

[21] Ibid. The reader should be reminded that such shenanigans would not be novel. In 1876, for example, Congress decided to name Rutherford B. Hayes President even though his opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, won both the popular vote as well as more Electoral College votes. This volume will make the argument at a number of points and in a number of ways that a significant number of American politicians have already committed sedition and, unless they are prosecuted, their treasonous behavior should be expected to grow ever more sinister. Given that political instability is one of the goals of Russia’s New Generation Warfare, both Moscow and its American seditionist co-conspirators should be reminded not to overlook the fact that the United States Armed forces possess nuclear weapons. Envision a future historian telling the story about how Vladimir Putin had been so successful with his strategy of decomposition (a concept explained and discussed in Chapter 4) against the United States that a rogue American military unit had launched several nuclear warheads at Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and that is how Kazan became the capital of a new Eurasian Federation and Tatars came once again to rule the eastern Slavs.

[22] Perry Back, Jr. “Where the most dangerous judges actually are,” The Washington Post, December 23, 2021, p. A21.

[23] Trump Cult Republicans like to point to geographic maps of the United States and point to the overwhelming red depicting the electoral districts that voted for Trump or for Republican Representatives and Senators. However, such maps do not represent people—that is, voters. The fact that these folks choose to ignore is that a majority of voters chose the Democratic Party candidate for president, and an overwhelming number of voters selected Democratic Candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate. Only jerrymandering and a Federal system that is skewed in favor of small population-wise states prevented rule by the majority party—the Democrats.

[24] Gino Spocchia, “Trump says Republicans would never win elections again if it was easier to vote,” Independent, 31 March 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-election-voting-republicans-us-2020-a9437881.html; to her Trump in his own words, see “Trump admits On Air if voting was easier, Republicans would never win,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r6qXQX5Fnk.

Introduction

[1] Bartosz Bieliszczuk, Joanna Bieliszczuk, „Długi telegram” George’a Kennana, Sprawy Międzynarodowe 2020, t. 73, nr 2, s. 205–224. Oryginalny document można zobaczyć na stronie Wilson Centre, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thibault Spirlet, “Former French PM Fillon joins board of Russian petrochemical giant,” Politico, 24.12.2021, https://www.politico.eu/article/france-francois-fillon-sibur-board-job-russia-petrochemical/.

[4] Austria przejmowała wtedy od Bułgarii prezydencję w Radzie UE i zamierzała pośredniczyć między Moskwą i Kijowem w sprawie konfliktu na wschodniej Ukrainie. Takie podejście szefowej austriackiego MSZ nie wróżyło dobrze Ukrainie.

[5] Wg danych niemieckiego Federalnego Biura statystycznego (destatis.de) w 2020 r. obroty handlowe Polski Niemcami były 2,8 razy większe niż Niemiec z Federacją Rosyjską (123,5 w porównaniu do 44,6, mld euro) – trend ten jest podobny w pierwszych trzech kwartałach 2021 r. Zsumowane obroty handlowe naszego regionu (Polska, Czechy, Słowacja, Węgry, Rumunia, Bułgaria i kraje bałtyckie) z Niemcami były w 2020 r. 7,7 razy większe niż z Federacją Rosyjską (343 w porównaniu do 44,6 mld euro).

[6] Bieliszczuk, Bieliszczuk, op. cit., s. 212.

Chapter I

[1] See, for example, Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr., Ecocide in the USSR, New York: BasicBooks, 1991.

[2] Research conducted on the 3,517 ads by “the Russian company charged with orchestrating a wide-ranging effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election overwhelmingly focused its efforts on what is arguably America’s rawest political division: race.” USA Today Network reporters reviewed the ads released by the American House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and found that “more than half—about 1,950—made express reference to race. Those accounted for 25 million ad impressions—a measure of how many times the spot was pulled from a server for transmission to a device. (…) The most prominent ad—with 1.3 million impressions and 73,000 clicks—illustrates how the influence campaign was executed.” According to Adam Schiff, the Democratic Minority Leader of the House Intelligence Committee, “These ads broadly sought to pit one American against another by exploring faults in our society or race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other deeply cynical thoughts. (…) When you’re stoking fear to get a negative action directed at a targeted population based on race, and when a foreign nation uses that fear to subvert and undermine democracy, that’s become a serious problem,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. According to “Bret Schafer of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Democracy, which tracks activity of Russia-linked social media bots and trolls. (…) Social media is an effective way to target wedge issues because of the ability to micro-target ads, sending messages to confederate flag supporters at the same time as Black Lives Matter sympathizers to stoke divisions. They are stirring up the racial pot, while then trying to connect with minority groups and saying: Look at how racist the content is online. They don’t really have to do that because the content online is racist without the Russians, to be very clear, Schafer said.” Nick Penzenstadler, Brad Heath, Jessica Guynn, USA Today, May 11, 2018.

[3] See, for example, M.E. Sarotte, “Containment Beyond the Cold War: How Washington Lost the Post-Soviet Peace, Foreign Affairs, vol. 100, no. 6 (November–December 2021), pp.22–24.

[4] Simon Johnson, Gary W. Loveman, “Starting Over: Poland After Communism”, The Harvard Business Review, March–April 1995, https://hbr.org/1995/03/starting-over-poland-after-communism.

[5] See, for example, Marcin Piątkowski, Europe’s Growth Champion Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

[6] Among the 96 persons killed during the downing of PL flight 101 on the way to remembrance of the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers conducted by the Soviet Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs in May 1940 were the Polish President and First Lady, Chief of the Polish General Staff, the Heads of all Military Services, the President of the National Bank, and 18 Members of Parliament.

[7] See, for example, Amy Knight, “Finally, We Know About the Moscow Bombings”, The New York Review, November 22, 2012; also see, Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia. London: Encounter Books, 2007.

[8] See, for example, “‘A strong prima facie case’ European Court finds Russia responsible for assassination of Alexander Litvinenko”, Meduza, September 21, 2021, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/21/a-strong-prima-facie-case; also see the official United Kingdom report, The Litvinenko Inquiry. Report into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, Chairman: Sir Robert Owen, www.litvinenkoinquiry.org.

[9] All that can be said to those who are “unpersuaded” is that you are already late since, as noted by the American foreign political analyst Josh Rogin, already “by [early-2018] there is evidence that the Russian government interfered in Brexit, the [2017] French presidential election, the Catalonian independence vote in Spain, and even the [2018] Italian elections through a mix of propaganda, illicit funding and complex social media manipulation meant to promote Russian interests and sow chaos in democratic political systems.” Josh Rogin, “Former leaders take the lead against Russian meddling,” The Washington Post, May 11, 2018, p. A21.

[10] Peter Almond, “Soviet empire will fall, Pentagon expert predicts,” The Washington Times, March 12, 1990, p. A6.

[11] Reiner K. Huber, “Déjà Vu All Over Again: How End of the Cold War Soviet Views Portended Putin’s Plans for Dismantling the European Union,” unpublished paper.

[12] Although the collapse of the post-Second World War security structure is taken for granted by the current generation, it is important to understand that these events had a history. Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika didn’t just drop out of the sky. For a brief summary of the domestic efforts to end the isolation of the Soviet Union/Russia and the failed attempt to firmly anchor Russia to Europe, see Phillip A. Petersen, “The Challenge to Soviet Strategic Development: An Emerging Vision of European Security,” in: Jane’s NATO Handbook 1990–91, edited by Bruce George, Coulsdon: Jane’s Information Group, 1991, pp. 323–334.

[13] Petersen, “The Challenge to Soviet Strategic Development: An Emerging Vision of European Security,” op. cit., pp. 326–328.

[14] Petersen’s work on this subject in the USSR was facilitated by Prof. Andrei Piontkovsky of the Soviet Academy of Science. Petersen and Piontkovsky had met first in October 1989 at an international symposium at the Bundeswehr University in Munich organized by Prof. Reiner Huber, to kick-off a research project on “Conventional Stability in Europe” funded by the VW Foundation. It was at this meeting, four weeks before the Berlin Wall came down that, when asked about the future of the Soviet Union, Piontkovsky briefly sketched a vision that came close to what happened two years later. At the time, Piontkovsky’s vision was regarded as wishful thinking by most of the Western analysts present. However, it was published five years later in the introductory notes of the proceedings of a follow-on symposium (Models for Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Era, edited by Reiner K. Huber and Rudolf Avenhaus, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1996, p. 13).

[15] The Nordic Council was founded in 1952 as the official inter-parliamentary body for cooperation in the Nordic Region. In addition to the Scandinavian countries, the Nordic Council today includes the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland and Åland.

[16] It actually was named the European Economic Community (EEC) created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and known as the Common Market in the English-speaking countries.

[17] The Treaty of Maastricht (Treaty on European Union) opens the way to the political integration of Europe creating a European Union consisting of the three pillars: the European Communities (EC) which replaced the ECC; Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP); police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters (JHA). It introduces the concept of European citizenship, reinforces the powers of the European Parliament and launches economic and monetary union (EMU).

[18] Here, Huber is referring to his opening sentence of his presentation, which was: “In a state of the nation address to the Russian political elite and parliament in April 2005 President Vladimir Putin reminded his audience—according to the English version the Kremlin’s official protocol—that “the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century”.

[19] Except for Finland, Ireland, Malta, and Sweden all of the EU countries are also members of NATO.

[20] Huber, “Déjà Vu All Over Again: How End of the Cold War Soviet Views Portended Putin’s Plans for Dismantling the European Union,” unpublished manuscript.

[21] Recently released Court documents make clear that within two weeks after the 2020 election Trump’s campaign had already determined the outlandish claims about election fraud were baseless. Still, even recently the documents indicate that the campaign justifies continued claims of election fraud on the almost unbelievable logical basis that “we have no underlying definite facts that it wasn’t.” Alan Feuer, “Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Voting Machine Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows,” The New York Times, September 21, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/us/politics/trump-dominion-voting.html.

[22] Dana Milbank, “Why Jan. 6 might have been only the beginning,” The Washington Post, July 18, 2021, p. A25.

[23] Decades later, Phil Petersen would work with David Young, who had created “the plumbers”—so named to “plug the leaks” of information that tormented Richard Nixon—that conducted the burglary from a basement office in the White House. To protect Young from prosecution, his old boss Nelson Rockefeller got him to England and funded his creation of an Oxford Analytica team of university “Dons” to provide him with a reliable source of income in “exile.” Interestly enough, the more recent infamous Cambridge Analytica—which will figure prominently in a later chapter—was also funded by a wealthy Republican.

[24] LTC (ret.) Alexander S. Vindman, whose “whistle-blowing” led to Trump’s second impeachment, and has written that “public servants have long protected citizens against abuses by self-serving political actors. They were the check on the Trump administration and testified to the president’s corruption.” Vindman argues that resignation was the proper instrument for opposing Trump’s use of the military “to extend his presidency,” and not attempting to construct “guard-rails” to a traitorous president. Alexander S. Vindman, “Gen. Milley had another choice: He should have resigned,” The Washington Post, September 19, 2021, p. B2. In fact, Milley’s actions were coordinated with the Secretary of Defense, so his actions were not those of a rogue military officer. Still, Vindman may have a point in that, as with Schlesinger, acting out of the chain of command may be “for a greater good, but that often comes with a price. Paying it is the only way to ensure the norms survive for the next time.” When the threat is passed, it might be appropriate to fire Milley to preserve the norms; unfortunately, these are definitively not normal times, and the Trump threat is most certainly not yet over.

[25] Rosa Brooks, “Milley’s calls about Trump do reflect a crisis, but it’s not a military crisis,” The Washington Post, September 19, 2021, p. B2. In fact, Milley “was not freelancing” in his defense of the republic, but executing guidance supplied by the then-Secretary of Defense, Mark T. Esper.

[26] Missy Ryan, “Milley’s deeds risk further erosion of nonpartisan norm,” The Washington Post, September 19, 2021, p. A12.

[27] Dana Milbank, “Republicans’ new civic religion: Election denial,” The Washington Post, September 21, 2021, p. A23.

[28] Jackson Diehl, “Putin’s not as powerful as he looks,” The Washington Post, May 14, 2018, p. A17.

[29] Jan-Werner Müller as quoted in E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Advancing democracy abroad requires defending it at home,” The Washington Post, August 30, 2021, p. A19.

[30] Michael Gerson, “We need to face these dead,” The Washington Post, October 30, 2018, p. A25.

About Author

PHILLIP A. PETERSEN has a Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. For fifteen years he served as a United States Army officer, an intelligence analyst at the Library of Congress and for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and as a policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and at the National Defense University. Upon leaving government service with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dr. Petersen served for 25 years as a Senior Fellow at The Potomac Foundation, and served as its Vice President for Studies until he left to form the Centre for the Study of New Generation Warfare.