Whatever Shall We Call This Spade?

I’ve been thinking about an article, actually maybe a couple of them now, that suggest calling all this Russian business “meddling” downplays the true nature of what’s taking place. In addition, it’s always described as “meddling in our elections”. As if the meddling is confined to just the elections. While much of the activity is around elections, it’s certainly much more broad that that. It’s a continuing operation aimed at sowing dissent, distrust, and division. And it’s been ongoing for a very long time. Whenever you hear the phrase “Meddling in our elections” try substituting the phrase “Waging information warfare”. That’s not only a more accurate description of what’s going on but doesn’t sound like something Scooby and the gang might be involved in. Hopefully too that this will lend bit more urgency to the actions we need to take to defend ourselves. I’d like to think that we have some defense in place but honestly who knows. Maybe if we properly frame the issue going forward it’ll help shine a light on the seriousness of the matter.

Back in February of last year I mentioned a book, Foundations of Geopolitics which lays out a strategy by which Russia can reassert its dominance upon the world stage. A playbook if you will. You can look over the bullet points on the wikipedia summary at each of those items that has, or is, occurring right now. For a book that was published nearly 20 years ago it’s remarkable how well the objectives that it lays out have come to pass. It seems more that a little naive to think that history just happened to unfold so closely to the aims described in this book without some kind of guiding hand. Again, as I mentioned in the post last February, the play with regards to the U.S. was that “Russia must spread Anti-Americanism everywhere: “the main ‘scapegoat’ will be precisely the U.S.”. As for inside the borders of our country it has this to say:

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”

Is that not exactly what we’ve seen going on? It’s all so transparent and still there are those that refuse to believe. It’s baffling that anyone is wiling to give Russia the benefit of the doubt here. The book also says that “the battle for the world rule of [ethnic] Russians” has not ended. Let’s stop beating around the bush here, it’s not meddling, it’s war.

And we’re losing.