The Mess

[ssu]

The key thing to understand about the Russian strategy, is that they are seeking strategic balance, the United States asserts "Full Spectrum Dominance", the Russians are in the business of demonstrating that the United States is not capable of dominating them thusly.

The hybrid warfare/asymmetric warfare is the response.

When you don't have the conventional edge, you have to innovate. And hence Russia has put information warfare and the "asymmetric" ways to influence and improve it's position as a top priority. And as the leader of the country is no party apparatchnik, but a career spy, Putin has had the ability play the game extremely well.

I think one analyst put it quite clear: Putin puts NATO and the West to focus on the Baltics, then can do something somewhere totally else, perhaps in Central Asia in the -stans or in Moldova, or try something in the puny little Montenegro.

In the final analysis, the Russians simply do not have the resources, to get into a confrontation with NATO over the Article V line, the Russians will be very had pressed to even hold on to what they have now, never mind escalate into NATO territory, the only way they would ever do that, is if they were absolute backs against the wall, in a desperate gambit to try to force NATO to the bargaining table, before NATO ran them into the ground without breaking a sweat.

And that is why it is imperative not to have the crisis to become a full blown war. But have it as a confused crisis where people are scept

At the end of the day, the Russians have no actual interest in taking Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania back, because they would be deadweight, the Russians don't have any interest in destabilizing them neither, because that would simply draw NATO closer to the Russian border, the only thing of strategic importance to the Russians in the Baltic States, is Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad; is the Crimea of the Baltic, the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet, the only ice free port the Russians have in the Baltic Sea, and the Yantar Shipyard, which is their second most important naval production facility after SevMash in Severodvinsk.

What the Russian objective is that the countries are "Finlandized". That the Baltics lose all hope that anybody would lift a finger for them, hence they have to be in really good terms with Russia.

Our friend Curonian seems quite convinced of the new Red Menace. Have a listen to The Eastern Border - e31. "All in".

He's received a very ominous death threat, implying that Latvia goes back to Russia by May.

Curonian here? That's nice. I think he was the one that started the famous "Poking the Bear" thread. So he's an old member from DCF.

And Latvia's response to it's lack of deterrence is actually logical: it prepares it's population for an insurgency, for instance publishing manuals for an insurgency. Now that's basically how you try to create deterrence when you have no chance of an conventional defence that can counter the Russia conventional forces.

[SuburbanFarmer]

here's a pile of military-balance blah blah

When all you know is hammers.....

That military balance doesn't really matter, if the people can be incited, or appear to be incited to overthrow their government in favor of rejoining the glorious new gulag. I'm sure you'd just roll over them with tanks anyway, but not everybody thinks like that.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a full scale confrontation over the Baltic's, I'd love to see NATO get incited, I'd love to see the Russians catch the bus they were chasing and then not know what to do with it when they did, and I would absolutely love to see that jibjabbering assclown Curonian get overrun by the Spetsnaz GRU, I would chortle with glee, but, alas, reality check; nothing like that is imminent at this juncture, not even close.

I have no doubt that a new shooting war would get your beaver-pants all stiff, but that's not what we were discussing. And what exactly is your problem with Curonian? That guy never said an unkind word on the DCF, and he's scared for his life. Quit being a cartoon.

[Xenophon]

here's a pile of military-balance blah blah

When all you know is hammers.....

That military balance doesn't really matter, if the people can be incited, or appear to be incited to overthrow their government in favor of rejoining the glorious new gulag. I'm sure you'd just roll over them with tanks anyway, but not everybody thinks like that.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a full scale confrontation over the Baltic's, I'd love to see NATO get incited, I'd love to see the Russians catch the bus they were chasing and then not know what to do with it when they did, and I would absolutely love to see that jibjabbering assclown Curonian get overrun by the Spetsnaz GRU, I would chortle with glee, but, alas, reality check; nothing like that is imminent at this juncture, not even close.

I have no doubt that a new shooting war would get your beaver-pants all stiff, but that's not what we were discussing. And what exactly is your problem with Curonian? That guy never said an unkind word on the DCF, and he's scared for his life. Quit being a cartoon.

Curonian and Smitty verbally sparred over Russia on the DCF, so they've had words before. Curonian doesn't need you to defend him.

[SuburbanFarmer]

here's a pile of military-balance blah blah

When all you know is hammers.....

That military balance doesn't really matter, if the people can be incited, or appear to be incited to overthrow their government in favor of rejoining the glorious new gulag. I'm sure you'd just roll over them with tanks anyway, but not everybody thinks like that.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a full scale confrontation over the Baltic's, I'd love to see NATO get incited, I'd love to see the Russians catch the bus they were chasing and then not know what to do with it when they did, and I would absolutely love to see that jibjabbering assclown Curonian get overrun by the Spetsnaz GRU, I would chortle with glee, but, alas, reality check; nothing like that is imminent at this juncture, not even close.

I have no doubt that a new shooting war would get your beaver-pants all stiff, but that's not what we were discussing. And what exactly is your problem with Curonian? That guy never said an unkind word on the DCF, and he's scared for his life. Quit being a cartoon.

Curonian and Smitty verbally sparred over Russia on the DCF, so they've had words before. Curonian doesn't need you to defend him.

I must have missed that. But it's pretty weak to insult the guy when 1) he's not here, and 2) he's scared for his life.

[StCapps]

There is no reason to believe that Latvia will be invaded by Russia before the end of the year. Why should I care if Curonian is needlessly scared of such things because his anti-Russian confirmation bias has led him to some wacky conclusions? I don't worry if a child is worried about the boogeyman coming to get them either, but you act like if someone is scared they must be scared for a good reason, when that is not necessarily the case.

[Smitty-48]

The Russians are not my natural enemy, the Russians are not the Soviets, and it wasn't us who saved the Latvians from the Soviets, the Russians saved the Latvians from the Soviets, the Latvians were the Soviets, wasn't them who defeated it, was the Russians who brought the Soviet Union down, and when they did, me and the Russians ceased to be enemies across the trace of a One World Socialist Revolution, moreover, I understand the Russian's position on Kaliningrad, and so I'm willing to discuss Finlandization with them, Curonian and Co. are very plausibly expendable downrange, to keep the nuclear peace in the Balance of Terror.

Furthermore, Curonian is an anti-Russian revanchist, he's calling the Russians out, let him deal with the 2nd Spetsnaz GRU, they're his enemies, but they're not my enemies, I actually get along fine with Mr. Ivan, we go way back, who the fuck is Curonian? Fuck that guy.

Since when is Latvia of critical strategic interest to the Anglo-American Hegenomy? We're not going to war for Georgia, we're not going to war for Belarus, we're not going to war for Ukraine, so why would we go to war over a nothing burger like Latvia?

There's absolutely nothing in Latvia, which is of any critical strategic interest to either the United States or the House of Windsor, it's not the Straights of Gibraltar, it's not the Suez Canal, it's not even a maritime choke point at all, on the other hand, avoiding a war with the Russians over the land bridge to their Baltic Fortress in Kaliningrad, is one of the most critical strategic interests there is, literally; existential.

If Curonian has to die, to keep the nuclear peace in the Balance of Terror, so be it; "everybody gotta die sometime, Red".

[ssu]

There is no reason to believe that Latvia will be invaded by Russia before the end of the year. Why should I care if Curonian is needlessly scared of such things because his anti-Russian confirmation bias has led him to some wacky conclusions? I don't worry if a child is worried about the boogeyman coming to get them either, but you act like if someone is scared they must be scared for a good reason, when that is not necessarily the case.

I listened to Curonian's Eastern Border. Ok, he's panicking. When you get death threats, many people can understandably panick about it.

I think Curonian didn't at any stage say that Latvia is going to be invaded and annexed. And this is something that seems not to get into people's heads. It's not going to be that 1st Tank Army rolling into Latvia. That is simply naive and utterly foolish. One really at first has to understand what are Russia's aims and how it can reach those objectives. And they can be reached easily without WW3.

It simply can be that "Ethnic tensions" reach a "breaking point" after lets say ethnic Russians are attacked and killed in some Baltic State. Would that imply Article V? Nope. Then it gets worse... You see the objective isn't to gain land, it's to influence the countries on what their foreign policy is, and what their domestic policy is too. It's the objective of getting NATO to be dysfunctional, that nobody believes in it. Not some outright invasion that even an idiot would understand to be a hostile measure.

OK, so he's a blogger/podcaster that has a program called "Eastern Border", which is critical to Russian policy and Putin. If I or anybody else in Finland would start a similar podcast, especially in English, and then would start to analyze Russian information warfare etc, I would get in no time a Finnish Putin hack to attack my site or views etc. assuming someone started to listen to the podcast. So that Curonian gets this kind of phone call in Latvia is totally possible. And likely.

I remember a Finnish cyberwarfare analyst, Saara Jantunen, that gave some public lectures on Russian cyber and wrote a book on information warfare and after the book was published gave interviews about the subject to the otherwise indifferent media years ago. By doing so, she just got picked out, and hounded by few crazies which came to her lectures to denounce everything. She got extensively slandered and ridiculed in the media ...again by the same few people (who obviously had easy connections to get Access to the media). The reason is simple, she was an easy target and she was one of the few a) actually knew something about cyberwarfare and b) was talking about it to the public.

Now in the military there are many experts on the issue, but the experts that talk either to the officers or to the secluded security experts, they aren't any target, because they have minimal impact, actually, on the public discourse. What simply has to be understood that information warfare is something that Russia is extremely good at, and that these operations, never stop at peacetime. And this is the main difference between the US and Russia. Now if the US is either contemplating military action or in a military engagement, then it starts information warfare operations. But doesn't do them all the time.

Here's a quote from Saara Jantunen

I will start by stating the obvious: There have been several episodes and instances in the information domain in and around Finland that are simply not normal or acceptable. Finland and Finnish society have repeatedly been subjects of Russian disinformation. Journalists and experts critical of Russian foreign and security policy are being abused and harassed.

However, these problems have been recognized. In October 2015, President Sauli Niinistö stated that information warfare is a reality and it also affects Finns. According to Niinistö, national defence is every citizen’s duty also when it comes to the information environment. At the same time, the Prime Minister’s office announced that it will put a hundred government officials through training in order to help them understand and identify attempts to influence, such as disinformation campaigns. This training obviously became a subject of new disinformation on the conspiracy and disinformation websites that foster anti-Western sentiment in Finland. In March 2016 Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro won the Bonnier Grand Journalist Prize for her work to expose pro-Russian trolling in social media.

See here

[Smitty-48]

Realpolitik; we don't go to a war footing in response to Mr. Ivan running covert operations to "whip up ethnic resentment", that's not a military imperative, that's a job for MI5 not Article V, moreover, I've read Curonian's shit, and he whips up plenty against the Russians, he's no angel when it comes to revanchist villification, he's not a journalist, he's a propagandist, and neither I nor HM Canadian Armed Forces, are bound to come to the military assistance, of random Latvian's who are want to get into a ethnic back and forth with the Russians in their own lands, Article V is specific, it's a military alliance, for military imperatives only.

Any covert operations which are not preparations for World War Three, do not meet the threshold of NATO Article V, NATO members are still respsonible for their own internal security short of war, the Russians could stir up trouble in Canada, but that's the reponsibility of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, led by CSIS and the RCMP, and CANSOFCOM where aid to the civil power is appropriate, but it's not in any way cause to start warming up the nukes, and nobody ever said it was.

We're talking about hydrogen bombs here, if its not World War Three, just fucking handle it, don't be trying to invoke NATO Article V for anything short of an actual military attack over the trace, in force and en masse, because if you ever pull that Article V lever, the nukes are getting warmed up, don't ever think that they ain't, NATO Article V is for the balloon going up over the trace, and nothing short of exactly that, anything short of that, is not NATO's problem.

There were Active Measures in effect all through the Cold War, up to and including the Assassins Veto, that don't mean you wet your pants and pull the lever for World War Three, everytime the KGB sends Directorate S to cause some shit, have to relax in the saddle, and keep your powder dry, when you're dealing with the Balance of Terror, hydrogen bombs in play.

NATO is not in any way, a Latvian Police Force, and they better recognize, if they can't handle their internal security vis a vis non-VSRF Russians causing trouble in Latvia, then they should not be in NATO after all, if your problem is just uppity non-VSRF Russians, don't call us, call Latvian MI5, you only call us, for the 1st Guards Tank Army and Co.

Curonian is all "wanh-wanh, them Rooskies is picking on me!"? Are they picking on you with main battle tanks? Attack helicopters? Strategic bombers? Nuclear submarines? Cruise missiles? No? Then stop bothering me, just because Canada is in NATO, that doesn't make me a Latvian, NATO problems may indeed be my problems, but not all Latvian problems are NATO problems by default, NATO is not your nuclear armed Mommy, and nobody ever said it was.

[SuburbanFarmer]

They shouldn't be in NATO in the first place. That's the point.

The question remains that we have no idea exactly how far constitutes 'too far'. Putin ran the experiment in Ukraine and got a perfect result -no reaction, and more domestic cred. He will do it again, and nobody will be able to find a Casus Belli to stop him.

After all, it was just local volunteers right?

[ssu]

Realpolitik; we don't go to a war footing in response to Mr. Ivan running covert operations to "whip up ethnic resentment", that's not a military imperative, that's a job for MI5 not Article V

But how capable are they in this environment, really? Because that's the "hybrid" environment.

Take just for example that MI5. It's director has given a historical newspaper interview (the first) to the Guardian by saying the following:

Russia poses an increasing threat to the stability of the UK and is using all the sophisticated tools at its disposal to achieve its aims, the director general of MI5 has told the Guardian. In the first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service’s 107-year history, Andrew Parker said that at a time when much of the focus was on Islamic extremism, covert action from other countries was a growing danger. Most prominent was Russia. “It is using its whole range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways – involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks. Russia is at work across Europe and in the UK today. It is MI5’s job to get in the way of that.”

See MI5 head: ‘increasingly aggressive’ Russia a growing threat to UK.

The British Intelligence Chiefs:


But look at this crowd here, who don't believe a shit, perhaps because their candidate (in a election that has been over for a long time) would "Look bad" or something. Or then they in principle don't trust at all their government, even if their government is a lot more better than your average Third World country government. Yet I think it's a symptom of something bigger: that people mistrust their governments, yet can easily believe propaganda from others... as they actually haven't experienced propaganda in their own country by their own government.

What I think the Western countries have neglected totally with disasterous results is to get their own people to believe in them. It's not something that just comes as a natural thing, if there's low crime and the government services work. Nope, you really have to do something in order for people to love their country and to connect that country to their government. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be critical or disagree with policies as naturally people have different views. Yes, governments do stupid things. Yet in general there should be some trust, at least. Too many times you have especially Americans with the punchline of "yeah well, we likely do worse shit".

There were Active Measures in effect all through the Cold War, up to and including the Assassins Veto, that don't mean you wet your pants and pull the lever for World War Three, everytime the KGB sends Directorate S to cause some shit, have to relax in the saddle, and keep your powder dry, when you're dealing with the Balance of Terror, hydrogen bombs in play.

NATO is not in any way, a Latvian Police Force, and they better recognize, if they can't handle their internal security vis a vis non-VSRF Russians causing trouble in Latvia, than they should not be in NATO after all, if your problem is just uppity non-VSRF Russians, don't call us, call Latvian MI5, you only call us, for the 1st Guards Tank Army and Co.

With this I do agree.

But during the Cold War the KGB had it's hands tied to a totally worthless ideology that in the end nobody believed in (but those useful idiots, who didn't know the reality). They had to support Marxism-Leninism, even if those Communist parties didn't have a chance in hell. Hence the possibilities of getting influence was Limited. Now they don't have those kind of ideological limitations. Above all, the Russians have a leader that genuinely knows how to use the intelligence services.