https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an...
Reading that article left me pretty slack-jawed.
It cites a 2013 article, "The Value of Science in Prediction", by Chief of General Staff of Russian Federated Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov as a canonical text behind the Russian election interference campaign. After reading the New Yorker article, I tracked down a translation of that text here:
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/...
Strange to think that the Arab Spring helped function as a trigger for white nationalist marches in this country.
> In 1996, during a summit meeting in Moscow, Clinton went for an early-morning run with Talbott in the Sparrow Hills, near Moscow State University. Clinton had known Talbott since they were students at Oxford, and confided his anxiety. He did not regret the expansion of NATO or the decision, at last, to battle Serbian forces in Bosnia. But he knew that he was making Yeltsin’s political life excruciatingly difficult.
> “We keep telling ol’ Boris, ‘O.K., now, here’s what you’ve got to do next—here’s some more shit for your face,’ ” Clinton told Talbott as they ran. “And that makes it real hard for him, given what he’s up against and who he’s dealing with.”
> Earlier that year, Yeltsin had summoned Talbott. “I don’t like it when the U.S. flaunts its superiority,” he told him. “Russia’s difficulties are only temporary, and not only because we have nuclear weapons but also because of our economy, our culture, our spiritual strength. All that amounts to a legitimate, undeniable basis for equal treatment. Russia will rise again! I repeat: Russia will rise again.”
>In 2008,[...] Russian hackers accomplished a feat that Pentagon officials considered almost impossible: breaching a classified network that wasn’t even connected to the public Internet. Apparently, Russian spies had supplied cheap thumb drives, stocked with viruses, to retail kiosks near nato headquarters in Kabul, betting, correctly, that a U.S. serviceman or woman would buy one and insert it into a secure computer.
In any case, it's not the accuracy of the prediction that matters here. It's the motivation.
So, yes. They have a plan.
And by the way, remember that the US and its allies invaded Russia at the end of WWII, after the Tzar was deposed. So it's not at all surprising that Stalin initially allied Russia with Germany.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hi...
Individual Russian people may or may not want Western liberal democracy for any of a variety of reasons (they “not” side in part driven by regime propaganda), but those preferences are not controlling regime actions.
Putin likes to remind about this saying things like "Do you remember what the country was before I became the President? You don't want to return to that time, don't you?"
People in Russia want higher salary (median salary is $500/month) and reasonable mortgage interest rates (now it can be as high as 12%), not more democracy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia#Transition_t...
And more power, means more money for them, just like usual.
To disrupt Russian political establishment, you do same things you do to disrupt criminal gangs. Plain and simple.
Gathering all of NATO's paratroopers and sending them to Moscow will work too, but at a bigger expense
Also ethnic Russian domination might be a bit difficult because in Russia itself there are many different ethnic groups [1] that wouldn't approve this idea.
Dugin is not some fringe academic and the book is well known among the elite of the Russian state. According to the Wiki page:
>"The book has had a large influence within the Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites and was allegedly used as a textbook in the General Staff Academy of Russian military."
More on the book's approach towards destabilizing America:
>"Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."
We must unite in the face of division, both for the sake of unity and because the Russians are actively trying to divide us.
I haven't been able to find a copy of the English translation online. I was only able to get my hands on one because of a connection that works in DC. If anyone knows where to get one online please post a link.
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics?wpr...