Saturday, March 26, 2016

HYBRID WARS” AND THE RUSSIAN RESPONSE

http://gizadeathstar.com/2016/03/hybrid-wars-russian-response/ I have to share this very intriguing article that was in turn, sent to me by Mr. W.M., cconcerning a type of analysis of America's policy, as exemplified most recently in a series of what the article's author, Anrew Korybko, calls "hybrid wars."  This is a lengthy, meaty article, but there's one paragraph in particular that caught my attention:
Oriental Review is very happy to announce that we will be regularly publishing Andrew Korybko’s latest research on Hybrid Wars. Building off of the strategies that he described in last year’s book of the same name, Andrew has conceptualized a new paradigm for understanding international relations and invented an accompanying methodology for testing it. The … Continue reading Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare
First, note what the goal of hybrid war is; namely, to destablize connective regions in multipolar blocs with multinational projects:
The grand objective behind every Hybrid War is to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, regional, political, etc.) within a targeted transit state.
But here's the paragraph that caught my eye, and particularly with respect to the recent years' mess in the Middle East in general, and Syria (and to some extent, Iraq) in particular:
The first thing that one needs to know about Hybrid Wars is that they’re never unleashed against an American ally or anywhere that the US has premier preexisting infrastructural interests. The chaotic processes that are unleashed during the post-modern regime change ploy are impossible to fully control and could potentially engender the same type of geopolitical blowback against the US that Washington is trying to directly or indirectly channel towards its multipolar rivals. Correspondingly, this is why the US won’t ever attempt Hybrid War anywhere that it has interests which are “too big to fail”, although such an assessment is of course contemporaneously relative and could quickly change depending on the geopolitical circumstances. Nevertheless, it remains a general rule of thumb that the US won’t ever intentionally sabotage its own interests unless there’s a scorched-earth benefit in doing so during a theater-wide retreat, in this context conceivably in Saudi Arabia if the US is ever pushed out of the Mideast. (Emphasis added)
The two italicized caught my eye  because, in the first instance, there are those internet rumors going around that the current immigration crisis is being driven in part by the USA (and by Twitter feeds no less), in an effort to keep Europe in general, and Germany in particular, busy with "domestic unrest at home" and to prevent a European turn to the East in general and to Russia in particular. While I have advanced the speculation that in some respect that crisis is also being driven by an agenda to create a "cultural European identity" to cement the EU more tightly, I do not rule out this possibility either, for as I have also stated many times, it has been a consistent foreign policy agenda of the Anglo-American oligarchy since the late 19th century and the formation of the German state in 1871, that any Russo-German entente had to be prevented at all costs, for such a power bloc would dominate the crucial Eurasian "heartland" as outlined by British geopolitician Halford MacKinder. I also personally think this strategy, if indeed there is an American component driving the immigration crisis in Europe and Germany, is bound to fail.
In the second instance, I suspect Mr. Korybko's analysis is true as well, that in the face of a collapse of the American position in any geopolitical theatre, that the infrastructure of that region would be deliberately collapsed in order to deny its use to any power able to fill the vacuum.
Enter Syria.
This strategy was very clearly pursued with respect to that country, and the objective, following Mr. Korybko's line of careful reasoning, was never to replace Assad (though that was its publicly announced and ostensible purpose), but simply to destabilize the country and deny to Russia(and potentially China) any foothold in the region. But, as we have seen, Mr. Putin and his advisors may have thrown a monkey wrench into the works by his intervention and the pummeling that the Russians meted out to ISIS, and then the equally dramatic, sudden, and unexpected withdrawal from the operation once the objectives were achieved, which objectives, as I opined on Mr. Hoagland's radio show of Tues, Mar 15th, were in part to show the US effort for what it really was, a sham, for had the USA been seriously intent on combatting ISIS, it could have done so in a matter of weeks, as Russia demonstrated. Thus, the Russian effort was as much about public perceptions and changing the perception in world opinion of the US narrative as it was about ISIS.
If this analysis be correct, then one will expect Russia, and very possibly China as well, to assume a more aggressive stance with any similar "hybrid wars" that the USA may choose to engage in, and their formula will be similar to that which Mr. Putin demonstrated in Syria: a sudden, sharp, dramatic and powerful military intervention, a drubbing of the US proxies causing the unrest, and then a calculated manipulation of world opinion on the real motivations of the American sponsorship of the "hybrid war."
In short, Mr. Korybko's analysis is one to watch, for it heralds the shape of warfare in the 21st century. My prediction?
The US strategy in evidence here is that of Venice, and notably, Russia's response was equally Venetian: a sudden sharp application of military force, and a return to diplomacy. But Venice, as we know from history - and as they've apparently forgotten in Washington - led to that "War of the League of Cambrai Moment," when all of the then European powers had simply "had enough" of the "Republic in the Serene Swamp" and converged to destroy it, once and for all. Only papal duplicity, and Venetian diplomacy, saved it from extinction long before Bonaparte unloaded his cannon in the lagoon. Now, there will be no papal duplicity, and one looks at the droning dumbness of the American "elite", and the prospects don't look too promising for a diplomatic exit from that possible "League of Cambrai" moment.

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