John R. Houk
© June 26, 2019
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in conjunction
with the Think Tank American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) has put together a report measuring
Russia’s potential threat to American interests today.
In the Bush II Presidential years the AEI had a
Neoconservative reputation in its policy advocacy. In this day and age Neocons
are pretty much castigated by the American Left and American Right.
On a personal level I have been an admirer of Neoconservatism’s
American Exceptionalism and a Foreign Policy based on military strength.
Traditional Conservatives (sometimes
called Paleocons) view this kind of aggressive Foreign Policy as a Big
Government budget destroyer. There are those the American Left would label as
the racist Right who castigate Neocons as ex-Communist Jews that can’t be
trusted.
There is a large amount of truth to the “ex-Communist”
association since a large number of early Neocon proponents were indeed
Communists or at least Marxist sympathizers, BUT these rebels against Communism
woke up to the ideological failures. Socialism (and yes this includes National Socialism aka Nazism) and varieties of
Marxism have led to much of history’s oppressive regimes and the genocide of
huge groups of human beings.
However, to label a “Communist” a “Jew” is a bit of an
oxymoron. Communists are anti-religion atheists by nature and a good Jew practices
the religious faith of Judaism. It is true there are people of a Jewish
heritage that have repudiated the religious tenets of Judaism and embraced Marxist-Communist
ideology. If one embraces Communism one rejects religion. That would make a Jew
who became a Communist an ex-Jew. Incidentally, a person of Christian heritage,
Islamic heritage, Buddhist heritage or any religious heritage who embraces
Communism have rejected their religious heritage and have become an ex-whatever
heritage.
Condemning all Jews because a few rejected their religious
heritage should logically lead to the same condemnation of other people
rejecting their religious heritage. I doubt Jew-haters follow that logic since
one rarely hears the label that all Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. are
evil because a few accept atheistic One World Government Communism. Hence the
hypocrisy of hating Jews because of Communism is just plain racism. (Muslims hate Jews because their revered writings tell them to hate
Jews [Percentages]. That’s a whole
different kind of racism. One sees that kind of racism among idiot Christians who
believe all Jews are responsible for killing Jesus when it was a secret night
tribunal of Jewish leaders fearing a rebellion would displace status among their
Roman overlords. Human fear and jealousy got Jesus Crucified. God’s love Resurrected
the Son of God which offers Saving Redemption to ALL who Believe in the Risen
Savior – to the Jew first then to the non-Jew.)
The American Left deride the Neocons’ American
Exceptionalism as nationalistic anti-globalist rejectors of Socialism/Marxism.
Have Neocons made mistakes? DEFINITELY! The principle of
nation-building based on American Republic Representative-Democracy only works
in cultures amenable to the Western heritage. This unfortunate discovery became
evident in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those cultures have been brainwashed
into Islamic thought for too long for the populace to understand let alone
accept Western Representative Democracy.
When Neocons have a warning about Russia in relation to
American National Interests and National Security the benefit of the USA is
what is in mind.
JRH 6/26/19
Your generosity is always appreciated:
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CONFRONTING THE RUSSIAN CHALLENGE
Russian Soldier
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (PDF)
[Institute for the Study of War (ISW)
and Critical
Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute]
June 2019
Russia poses a significant threat to the United States and
its allies for which the West is not ready. The West must act urgently to
meet this threat without exaggerating it. Russia today does not have the
military strength of the Soviet Union. It is a poor state with an economy
roughly the size of Canada’s, a population less than half that of the U.S., and
demographic trends indicating that it will lose strength over time. It is
not a conventional military near-peer nor will it become so. Its
unconventional warfare and information operations pose daunting but not
insuperable challenges. The U.S. and its allies must develop a coherent
global approach to meeting and transcending the Russian challenge.
The Russian Threat
President Vladimir Putin has invaded two of his neighbors,
Georgia and Ukraine, partly to stop them from aligning with NATO and the
West. He has also illegally annexed territory from both those states. He
has established a military base in the eastern Mediterranean that he uses to
interfere with, shape, and restrict the operations of the U.S. and the
anti-ISIS coalition. He has given cover to Bashar al Assad’s use of
chemical weapons, and Russian agents have used military-grade chemical weapons
in assassination attempts in Great Britain. Russia has threatened to use
nuclear weapons, even in regional and local conflicts. And Moscow has
interfered in elections and domestic political discourse in the U.S. and
Europe.
The Russian threat’s effectiveness results mainly from the
West’s weaknesses. NATO’s European members are not meeting their full
commitments to the alliance to maintain the fighting power needed to deter and
defeat the emerging challenge from Moscow. Increasing political polarization
and the erosion of trust by Western peoples in their governments creates
vulnerabilities that the Kremlin has adroitly exploited.
Moscow’s success in manipulating Western perceptions of and
reactions to its activities has fueled the development of an approach to
warfare that the West finds difficult to understand, let alone counter.
Shaping the information space is the primary effort to which Russian military
operations, even conventional military operations, are frequently subordinated
in this way of war. Russia obfuscates its activities and confuses the
discussion so that many people throw up their hands and say simply, “Who knows
if the Russians really did that? Who knows if it was legal?”—thus
paralyzing the West’s responses.
Putin’s Program
Putin is not simply an opportunistic predator. Putin
and the major institutions of the Russian Federation have a program as coherent
as that of any Western leader. Putin enunciates his objectives in major
speeches, and his ministers generate detailed formal expositions of Russia’s
military and diplomatic aims and its efforts and the methods and resources it
uses to pursue them. These statements cohere with the actions of Russian
officials and military units on the ground. The common perception that he
is opportunistic arises from the way that the Kremlin sets conditions to
achieve these objectives in advance. Putin closely monitors the domestic and
international situation and decides to execute plans when and if conditions
require and favor the Kremlin. The aims of Russian policy can be distilled into
the following:
Domestic Objectives
Putin is an autocrat who seeks to retain control of his
state and the succession. He seeks to keep his power circle content,
maintain his own popularity, suppress domestic political opposition in the name
of blocking a “color revolution” he falsely accuses the West of preparing, and
expand the Russian economy.
Putin has not fixed the economy, which remains corrupt,
inefficient, and dependent on petrochemical and mineral exports. He has
focused instead on ending the international sanctions regime to obtain the
cash, expertise, and technology he needs. Information operations and
hybrid warfare undertakings in Europe are heavily aimed at this objective.
External Objectives
Putin’s foreign policy aims are clear: end American
dominance and the “unipolar” world order, restore “multipolarity,” and
reestablish Russia as a global power and broker. He identifies NATO as an
adversary and a threat and seeks to negate it. He aims to break Western
unity, establish Russian suzerainty over the former Soviet States, and regain a
global footprint.
Putin works to break Western unity by invalidating the
collective defense provision of the North Atlantic Treaty (Article 5),
weakening the European Union, and destroying the faith of Western societies in
their governments.
He is reestablishing a global military footprint similar in
extent the Soviet Union’s, but with different aims. He is neither advancing an
ideology, nor establishing bases from which to project conventional military
power on a large scale. He aims rather to constrain and shape America’s
actions using small numbers of troops and agents along with advanced anti-air
and anti-shipping systems.
Recommendations
A sound U.S. grand strategic approach to Russia:
·
Aims to achieve core American national security
objectives positively rather than to react defensively to Russian actions;
·
Holistically addresses all U.S. interests
globally as they relate to Russia rather than considering them
theater-by-theater;
·
Does not trade core American national security
interests in one theater for those in another, or sacrifice one vital interest
for another;
·
Achieves American objectives by means short of
war if at all possible;
·
Deters nuclear war, the use of any nuclear
weapons, and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD);
·
Accepts the risk of conventional conflict with
Russia while seeking to avoid it and to control escalation, while also ensuring
that American forces will prevail at any escalation level;
·
Contests Russian information operations and
hybrid warfare undertakings; and
·
Extends American protection and deterrence to
U.S. allies in NATO and outside of NATO.
Such an approach involves four principal lines of effort.
Constrain Putin’s Resources. Russia
uses hybrid warfare approaches because of its relative poverty and inability to
field large and modern military systems that could challenge the U.S. and NATO
symmetrically. Lifting or reducing the current sanctions regime or
otherwise facilitating Russia’s access to wealth and technology could give
Putin the resources he needs to mount a much more significant conventional threat—an
aim he had been pursuing in the early 2000s when high oil prices and no
sanctions made it seem possible.
Disrupt Hybrid Operations. Identifying,
exposing, and disrupting hybrid operations is a feasible, if difficult,
undertaking. New structures in the U.S. military, State Department, and
possibly National Security Council Staff are likely needed to:
1.
Coordinate efforts to identify and understand
hybrid operations in preparation and underway;
2. Develop
recommendations for action against hybrid operations that the U.S. government
has identified but are not yet publicly known;
3. Respond
to the unexpected third-party exposure of hybrid operations whether the U.S.
government knew about the operations or not;
4. Identify
in advance the specific campaign and strategic objectives that should be
pursued when the U.S. government deliberately exposes a particular hybrid
operation or when third parties expose hybrid operations of a certain type in a
certain area;
5. Shape
the U.S. government response, particularly in the information space, to drive
the blowback effects of the exposure of a particular hybrid operation toward
achieving those identified objectives; and
6. Learn
lessons from past and current counter-hybrid operations undertakings, improve
techniques, and prepare for future evolutions of Russian approaches in
coordination with allies and partners.
The U.S. should also develop a counter-information
operations approach that uses only truth against Russian narratives aimed at
sowing discord within the West and at undermining the legitimacy of Western
governments.
Delegitimize Putin as a Mediator and Convener.
Recognition as one of the poles of a multipolar world order is vital to
Putin. It is part of the greatness he promises the Russian people in
return for taking their liberty. Getting a “seat at the table” of
Western-led endeavors is insufficient for him because he seeks to transform the
international system fundamentally. He finds the very language of being
offered a seat at the West’s table patronizing.
He has gained much more legitimacy as an international
partner in Syria and Ukraine than his behavior warrants. He benefits from
the continuous desire of Western leaders to believe that Moscow will help them
out of their own problems if only it is approached in the right way.
The U.S. and its allies must instead recognize that Putin is
a self-declared adversary who seeks to weaken, divide, and harm them—never to
strengthen or help them. He has made clear in word and deed that his
interests are antithetical to the West’s. The West should therefore stop
treating him as a potential partner, but instead require him to demonstrate
that he can and will act to advance rather than damage the West’s interests
before engaging with him at high levels.
The West must not trade interests in one region for Putin’s
help in another, even if there is reason to believe that he would actually be
helpful. Those working on American policy in Syria and the Levant must
recognize that the U.S. cannot afford to subordinate its global Russia policy
to pursue limited interests, however important, within the Middle East. Recognizing
Putin as a mediator or convener in Syria—to constrain Iran’s activities in the
south of that country, for example—is too high a price tag to pay for
undermining a coherent global approach to the Russian threat. Granting
him credibility in that role there enhances his credibility in his
self-proclaimed role as a mediator rather than belligerent in Ukraine.
The tradeoff of interests is unacceptable.
Nor should the U.S. engage with Putin about Ukraine until he
has committed publicly in word and deed to what should be the minimum
non-negotiable Western demand—the recognition of the full sovereignty of all
the former Soviet states, specifically including Ukraine, in their borders as
of the dates of their admission as independent countries to the United Nations,
and the formal renunciation (including the repealing of relevant Russian
legislation) of any right to interfere in the internal affairs of those states.
Defend NATO. The increased Russian
threat requires increased efforts to defend NATO against both conventional and
hybrid threats. All NATO members must meet their commitments to defense
spending targets—and should be prepared to go beyond those commitments to field
the forces necessary to defend themselves and other alliance members. The
Russian base in Syria poses a threat to Western operations in the Middle East
that are essential to protecting our own citizens and security against
terrorist threats and Iran. Neither the U.S. nor NATO is postured to
protect the Mediterranean or fight for access to the Middle East through the
eastern Mediterranean. NATO must now prepare to field and deploy additional
forces to ensure that it can win that fight.
The West should also remove as much ambiguity as possible
from the NATO commitment to defend member states threatened by hybrid
warfare. The 2018 Brussels Declaration affirming the alliance’s intention
to defend member states attacked by hybrid warfare was a good start. The
U.S. and other NATO states with stronger militaries should go further by declaring
that they will come to the aid of a member state attacked by conventional or
hybrid means regardless of whether Article 5 is formally activated, creating a
pre-emptive coalition of the willing to deter Russian aggression.
Bilateral Negotiations. Recognizing
that Russia is a self-defined adversary and threat does not preclude direct
negotiations. The U.S. negotiated several arms control treaties with the
Soviet Union and has negotiated with other self-defined enemies as well.
It should retain open channels of communication and a willingness to work
together with Russia on bilateral areas in which real and verifiable agreement
is possible, even while refusing to grant legitimacy to Russian intervention in
conflicts beyond its borders. Such areas could include strategic nuclear
weapons, cyber operations, interference in elections, the Intermediate Nuclear
Forces treaty, and other matters related to direct Russo-American tensions and
concerns. There is little likelihood of any negotiation yielding fruit at
this point, but there is no need to refuse to talk with Russia on these and
similar issues in hopes of laying the groundwork for more successful
discussions in the future.
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE.
________________________
If There Is a Neocon Warning – Pay Attention
John R. Houk
© June 26, 2019
_______________________
CONFRONTING THE RUSSIAN CHALLENGE
1400 16th Street NW, Suite 515 Washington, DC 20036
ph. (202) 293-5550
ph. (202) 293-5550
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