Europe: Obama Undoing Reagan’s Cold War Victory
Russia running highly effective campaign of subversion in Eastern Europe, disrupting NATO operations
Remember President Obama’s open mic moment in Seoul, South Korea back in 2012, when he was overheard by reporters, promising Russian President Dmitry Medvedev more “flexibility” to Russians in Eastern Europe after his re-election?
The NATO generals in Europe are now finding out the hard way what happens when you offer ‘harmless’ concessions to tyrants and imperialists. President Obama offered a bit of leg space to Comrade Putin in a fit of mindlessness and now you have Russian jackboots dangling all over Eastern Europe. Putin and his ex-KGB clique in control of Kremlin, have not forgotten humiliating Soviet retreat from the countries of Eastern Europe and are back from the cold to correct the ‘historic injustice’.
Today, Putin’s Russia is running a well-coordinated and highly effective campaign of propaganda and subversion in Eastern Europe that even communist-tyrant Stalin would be proud of. This “hybrid warfare” involves covert cyber operations, misinformation campaigns and psychological warfare to disrupt political and military decision making in Europe. Recently a leading NATO commander acknowledged the damage Russians are inflicting on U.S. allies in Eastern Europe:
Speaking at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, US Admiral Mark Ferguson, who is in charge of the Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, said that Russia is developing military capabilities and hybrid method of war are designed to “cripple” the functional abilities of the NATO alliance, according to a transcript from US Naval Institute news.
Russia’s focus on hybrid and asymmetrical warfare, including its development of cyber and information warfare capabilities, is “designed to cripple the decision-making cycle of the alliance,” Ferguson. “Their capabilities have focused on the creation of ambiguity.”
Admiral Mark Ferguson explained the objectives of Russian tactics against the NATO member states, saying, “Russia exploits ethnic and religious divisions, makes use of an aggressive information campaign, and extensively uses misinformation and deception to delegitimize the forces under attack while confusing the attribution of their actions.”
Last week, NATO’s top commander, General Philip Breedlove also confirmed Russian technological edge over U.S. and NATO forces in Mediterranean, as Russia practically blocked their operations in the region at the onset of its Syria campaign.
From the day President Reagan took office, he pursued the policy of standing firm with the oppressed people behind the Iron Curtain that eventually led to the destruction of the Soviet Empire. He called the evil by its name, and relentlessly exposed the moral bankruptcy of the oppressive Soviet system, while continuing to build America’s military and economic strength.
President Obama, on the other hand, lacks the basic ability to distinguish a friend from a foe. He first refused to see Russia as a geostrategic rival and then dismissed the rising threat it posed by calling it a “regional power” bullying its neighbours “out of weakness.” In President Obama’s ideological wonderland, power and strength are evil notions, especially if they are wielded by United States.
The President who went on an apology tour of the world just after taking office, now can’t find it in himself to rally the allies in the Free World to face up to the challenge of rising expansionist aspirations of Russia, China or Iran.
President Reagan’s legacy was the cutting of Soviet-Russian Empire to its size and consigning Soviet Communism to the ash heap of history. President Obama’s legacy would be the rise of Imperial Russia from the ashes of Soviet Union.
Video; Everything that’s wrong with President Obama’s foreign policy, in his own words, during 2012 Presidential Debate with Mitt Romney:
(Cover image courtesy Associated Press, YouTube screenshot)
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Comments
People. Stop it. Reagan was up against the Soviet Union. It doesn’t exist anymore.
Not since the 1st day of WW I have the Euro’s pulled their weight. If they want to put Putin in his place, let them pony up the funding and the boots on the ground and go for it.
This comment is the very definition of short sightedness.
Say that to the families of good men who die or are maimed inevitably in the wars your type gen’s up.
Show me your well-worn combat boots or shut up.
Oh there’s a strong argument! Only those who have served in combat can debate foreign policy!
I normally don’t respond to boneheaded blowhards on the internet, but in reverse order I’ll be selling my Danner Fort Lewis boots on ebay. I don’t need them anymore since I retired in 2008 after 20 years of service to Texas, where thinsulate Gore-Tex boots aren’t ever necessary. Bid on them if you want to examine them; they carried me through enough Korean winters to qualify for membership in the VFW on that basis alone, not counting deployments overseas for ONE/OEF. But be warned, they aren’t cheap. New they currently sell for $340-$350, and since they’re good boots designed to last for years with hard use, and since I wore the jungle boots issued to me by the Navy’s Expeditionary Warfare Training Group, Pacific (EWTGPAC) at the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado during summer, mine are just well broken-in. So I’m not going to give you a break on the price. In fact for you I’ll charge a premium since you’re an obnoxious internet know-nothing.
You are clearly immune to evidence incapable of learning, hence your shortsightedness. You can’t be taught so you fail to understand countries have permanent interests. Which is why you’d make our next involvement in any European (or any other foreign war) bloodier and costlier with your willful ignorance. The rest of us have learned that rather than getting involved later and reversing an enemies gains it is better to have a force already at a flashpoint to prevent a war from breaking out in the first place. But failing that, since deterrence is not a function of military might alone but political will (here you and Obama fail the test miserably) ending the war as quickly and at the lowest cost possible.
There are thousands of men who were needlessly killed by your short-sighted “none of our business” attitude. You owe each of them an apology. I wouldn’t have let that happen.
Because you operate on your juvenile uninformed instincts like our President you also fail to understand Putin. He knows Russian history. He knows that the Soviets continued the Czarist foreign policy of imperialism and colonialism. They didn’t break from that foreign policy. In fact, that was the one policy area where the Soviets had high praise for the Czars.
The Kremlin’s interests are dictated by geography, and while that fact continues to elude you, you haven’t noticed the geography in Eastern Europe and Asia hasn’t changed since time immemorial and barring something along the lines of a massive asteroid strike isn’t going to in the foreseeable future. In other words Putin understands his nations permanent interests even though you don’t, and it doesn’t matter what name his nation is operating under.
Were you a brighter man Putin’s comments during his 60 Minutes interview would concern you. But since you deal in conventional wisdom, otherwise known as ignorance in circulation, it hasn’t made a dent in your lazy consciousness.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/vladimir-putin-russian-president-60-minutes-charlie-rose/
“I indeed said that I believe that the collapse of the USSR was a huge tragedy of the 20th century. You know why? … Because, first of all, in an instant 25 million Russian people found themselves beyond the borders of the Russian state, although they were living within the borders of the Soviet Union. Then, all of a sudden, the USSR collapsed—just overnight, in fact. And it’s turned out that in the former Soviet Republics—25 million Russian people were living. They were living in a single country. And all of a sudden, they turned out to be outside the borders of the country. You see this is a huge problem. First of all, there were everyday problems, the separation of families, social problems, economic problems. You can’t list them all. Do you think it’s normal that 25 million Russian people were abroad all of a sudden? Russia was the biggest divided nation in the world. It’s not a problem? Well, maybe not for you. But it’s a problem for me.”
He has announced his expansionist intentions. He intends to unite the Russian nation, and the borders of that nation are almost the same as the old Soviet Union and before that the Russian empire. Thanks to the willfully blind and deliberately obtuse such as yourself he is emboldened. And thanks to cooperative adversaries such as our dear leader and you he can accomplish his goals with what would normally be a weak economic and military hand. Putin is the luckiest Russian leader ever, what with you and Obama ceding him ever larger spheres of interest. And here you are, advocating ceding Putin an even larger sphere of influence in Europe.
Congratulations. By insisting on living in the bubble of your comfortable alternate universe and refusing to face the fact that men like Putin operate under an entirely different set of rules than those that order your imaginary world, Putin couldn’t ask for a more effective force multiplier.
I could point out that people like you ignorantly called Churchill a warmonger throughout the 1930s. But I think Themistocles provides a far better example of how a leader should operate than Churchill, who spent the 1930s in “the Wilderness” because he honestly, accurately warned Britons of the coming danger. Themistocles, on the other hand, understood that people like you can and will ignore any amount of reality. So, well aware that the Persians hadn’t lost their interest in Greece following Darius’ defeat at Marathon in 490 BC, and that Xerxes would be back to avenge his father, Themistocles also knew that honesty would get him nowhere but kicked out of power. As happened to Churchill. So Themistocles simply lied to the Athenians and claimed that the tiny neighboring city state of Aegina posed such a threat to Athens’ newfound wealth that Athens needed to build a powerful navy to guard against that threat.
It was complete BS, but Themistocles was able to build the navy that allowed Athens to defeat the Persians at sea.
So if I were a politician, I’d simply lie to you. That’s just how little respect you deserve.
People like you are making the world a more dangerous place with your self-serving complacency. You turn a blind eye to danger until reality hits you in the head with a 2×4. So of course you’re calling me a warmonger. That’s par for the course. History also shows you can’t fix the stupid in the unteachable like you and our likewise hapless, untutored, perpetual adolescent President.
This comment is the very definition of short sightedness.
How so? It seems a very sensible evaluation.
The Soviet Union and Russia were not the same problem. The USSR was a peculiar blend of expansionist ideology, institutionalized showmanship/deception/propaganda, and severe paranoia in high places. Russia, on the other hand, is a conventional Great Power. The world expects Great Powers to look out for their own interests, and need not attribute such behavior to unusually expansionist ideology or severe paranoia.
Or, in other words, Putin isn’t Stalin Lite. He’s not even Trotsky Lite. Which is not to say that Obamaesque torpor is an appropriate way to deal with him.
There is nothing peculiar about the Soviet Union’s expansionist policies. That goes back to the beginning of the Russian state.
Ivan III Vasilyevich, later known as Ivan the Great, the first Russian ruler to use the title “Tsar and Ruler of all the Russians,” also known as “The Gatherer of the Russian lands:”
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/ivan-great-becomes-grand-prince-moscow
“In the 13th century Moscow was the capital of a small state which paid tribute and provided forced labour to the Khans of the Golden Horde, Tatar masters of a an area stretching from eastern Europe to Siberia. Over time the Muscovite princes gradually expanded their territory until they gained independence under Ivan III, known as the Great.
…Other campaigns extended Ivan’s territory and in 1480 he succeeded in gaining independence from the Tatars. He dealt with a rebellion by two of his brothers, whose estates he annexed, and plots against him by his wife and their eldest son. He added part of the Ukraine to his domains and by the time of his death in Moscow at 65 in 1505 Ivan had tripled Muscovy in size and taken a grip on the running of his realm.”
http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/the-ryurikovich-dynasty/ivan-iii-the-great/
“Ivan III the Great was the grand prince of Moscow and the grand prince of all Russia. During his reign, the Russian state gained independence from the Mongol Tatars, finally ending 200 years of their rule. Ivan also made Moscow the centre of the Russian world by considerably expanding its borders.”
Putin, 21st (fom the 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose):
“in an instant 25 million Russian people found themselves beyond the borders of the Russian state, although they were living within the borders of the Soviet Union. Then, all of a sudden, the USSR collapsed—just overnight, in fact. And it’s turned out that in the former Soviet Republics—25 million Russian people were living. They were living in a single country. And all of a sudden, they turned out to be outside the borders of the country. You see this is a huge problem.”
The Russian admiration for an autocratic, strong-man type ruler, a Vozhd, goes back much further than Stalin. A ruler that can reverse the humiliation inflicted on Russia by foreign powers such as the Mongols nearly a thousand years ago or the US two decades ago. Gather all the Russian lands and all the Russians within the borders of a united, greater Russia, and build an empire and expand its sphere of influence over neighboring vassal, buffer states to prevent the repeat of any such humiliation.
“The USSR was a peculiar blend of expansionist ideology, institutionalized showmanship/deception/propaganda, and severe paranoia in high places.”
Actually all of those characteristics were distinctly Russian, and had nothing to do with communism.
I’ve already demonstrated that the Soviets simply continued the Czarist expansionist, imperial policies. The same goes for the “institutionalized showmanship/deception/propaganda.” Gorbachev didn’t invent Glasnost. He did deceive the west about what it meant, it didn’t mean “openness,” but then that sort of deception goes to the very heart of what the old Russian world meant since the time of the earliest Czars.
“Dostupnost obshchestvennomy obsuzhdeniyu, kontrolyu; publichnost,” or in English making available for public discussion; publicizing; self-promotion. Both inside and outside the country. When Ivan the Great conquered the Principality of Novgorod, there was an already old and well established newspaper called the Novgorod Chronicle.
“He shrewdly took over the ancient Novgorod Chronicle and made it a propaganda vehicle for his regime. – See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/ivan-great-becomes-grand-prince-moscow#sthash.b5iWQUkb.dpuf”
He did it for the purpose of glasnost, for self-promotion and to burnish his image as a Vozhd. Just as Gorbachev mislead the west about the true meaning of of glasnost. By convincing the west it meant openness he promoted himself and burnished his image abroad using the same, very old propaganda techniques of the Czars.
Severe paranoia in high places? Also an ancient Czarist tradition. You couldn’t get more paranoid then the Czars. When the communists formed their own secret police with their networks of informers they were just doing what the Czars had always done.
The problem with the USSR wasn’t so much that it was communist, but that it was very, very Russian.
All comparisons to Stalin are both apt and way off, or, as somebody aptly put it, Putin might be a Stalinist but he’s no comie. He should be seen in a greater context of Russian history. If Stalin enjoys a resurgence at the moment, it’s because he embodies Russian nationalism, not because 1937 is back.
It’s not that Putin’s propaganda is successful but that he owns the narrative. For instance, it’s true that USSR was diluting the indigenous population of the Baltic states with ethnic Russians, but what happened after the break up of USSR is death by EU. Latvia’s population, prime example here, shrunk by 40%.
And why are we blaming Obama personally? We’ve elected and reelected him, sending a very clear signal to the world.
If current trends persist, there’s not going to be much left not only of the Baltics, but the West in general. The West needs to go back to the drawing board.
Or this could simply be the result of electing a man whose cultural roots and life history make it clear he fundamentally hates the core of America and does not want it to remain.
He chose as his mentor an avowed and unapologetic terrorist. He chose as his religious leader someone who could make his Islamic faith reconcile with his desire to gain Christian ties and allies. He chose over and over again to weaken American values, military, and economy every way possible.
Those were his choices. We need not go into his upbringing by foreigners, American hating communists, pornographers, and perverts.
Now it’s been shown in the middle east that his war against ISIS was and is a sham and was merely cover for his war against Assad. If he was an Islamist and wanted to create a Caliphate what would have done differently?
If was an anti-American who believed we should return much of Europe to Russian influence what would he have done differently. Only the mercenary oligarch class has guided his policies in Europe more than his desire to see American political power wither on the vine.
The current Islamist flood will provide all the distraction Putin needs as the EU will spend the next 100 years swatting Jihadis and dealing with the cultural suicide they are now committing.
A weak US is just the icing on the cake.
One can hope for a new Thatcher to rise and push the pendulum in the other direction, but my optimism is low for Europe.
They are bankrupt morally and financially. Putin will mow them down like an NFL player against a middle school recreational flag football team.
You mean like Tom Brady taking down Roger Goodell?
wasn’t just reagans victory,some of us got permanently disabled over there at age of 20.
lot of people gave a lot of time to make and keep europe safe.
all tossed away.
not just obamas fault though, nato itself bears a lot of blame as most of the members never met their gdp ratios as price of membership. they just figured us paying them to keep our bases there counted somehow.
Many here do not know Putin’s background and especially how Russia functionswith their Byzantine and Potemkin Government and system.
Putin was KGB trained. Today an admirer of Stalin.
Putin stated, the worst event of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union.
When Putin took over Russia, he created the new KGB, the FSB, Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti,
Putin’s FSB draws a direct line of inheritance from the Cheka set up by Lenin.
In the 1990s one of the persons who trained in the FSB Russia was
al-Zawahiri, bin Ladin’s right hand man and now the head of al Qaeda.
Some here would do better to know their history and background of Russia and their mindset.
No, Putin is NOT the Free world’s friend.
No, the FSB was created by Boris Yeltsin.
Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister in August, 1999, the fifth one in 18 months and the third one who had a background in the secret police.
Then Yeltsin suddenly resigned on December 31, 1999 and left Putin in Charge (he had to win an election, though, but he pushed forward his own opposition. What better fake opposition than an avowed Communist?
Putin crafted FSB along with some of his trusted KGB associates long before 1999. Your comments as to the start
leaves out some of the the back story.
———————–
The Putin-Osama Connection
By: Jamie Glazov
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29472
—————
Competition to enter the service is intense. The KGB picked its recruits carefully. Drawn from various institutes and universities, they then went to special KGB schools. Today the FSB Academy in Moscow attracts the children of senior siloviki; a vast new building will double its size. The point, says Mr Galeotti, the British analyst, “is not just what you learn, but who you meet there”.
Graduates of the FSB Academy may well agree. “A Chekist is a breed,” says a former FSB general. A good KGB heritage—a father or grandfather, say, who worked for the service—is highly valued by today’s siloviki. Marriages between siloviki clans are also encouraged.
Viktor Cherkesov, the head of Russia’s drug-control agency, who was still hunting dissidents in the late 1980s, has summed up the FSB psychology in an article that has become the manifesto of the siloviki and a call for consolidation.
——
Russia under Putin
The making of a neo-KGB state
Political power in Russia now lies with the FSB, the KGB’s successor
Aug 23rd 2007
http://www.economist.com/node/9682621
“No, the FSB was created by Boris Yeltsin.”
Out of what?
yeltsin reorganized the FSK into the FSB in 1995.
in 2003 FSB gained more duties by incorporating the BSG and FAPSI.
“Last week, NATO’s top commander, General Philip Breedlove also confirmed Russian technological edge over U.S. and NATO forces in Mediterranean…”
Note that Russian cruise missiles aimed at targets in Syria crashed in Iran. There has also been speculation about why Russia is using dumb iron bombs in Syria instead of smart weapons. Maybe they don’t want us to find out that their advanced weapons don’t function as well as we think they do.
Can one of their dumb iron bombs please fall on one of Iran’s nuclear cites?
No great mystery about the “dumb” bombs. They’re much cheaper. Even countries with “smart” bombs prefer to use the “dumb” versions if they can do the particular job at hand.
My first thought was we were engaging in some electronic warfare and managed to crash them. It had to be the Russians or Chinese that brought down our stealth drone in Iran a while back. Why wouldn’t we want some payback?
But maybe Russian guidance is just that bad?
Don’t forget telling Europe to be wary of Moslem refugees, or emigrants. That’s all Russian propaganda.
In 1999 and the year 2000, Putin also put himself forward as a man who could fight terrorists and probably staged some terrorist attacks for that purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
Putin did it again later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko <blockquote. In a 2003 interview with the Australian SBS TV network, and aired on Dateline, Litvinenko claimed that two of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theatre siege—whom he named "Abdul the Bloody" and "Abu Bakar"—were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated the rebels into staging the attack.[55] Litvinenko said, "[W]hen they tried to find [Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar] among the dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organized the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released." This echoed similar claims made by Mikhail Trepashkin.[56] The leading role of an FSB agent, Khanpasha Terkibaev ("Abu Bakar"), was also described by Anna Politkovskaya, Ivan Rybkin and Alexander Khinshtein Putin later probablyy was responsible for the assassination of several people who made such accusations against him. The polonium that killl;ed Alexander Litvinenko could only have come from ussian government sources.
And furthermore, I think also that the Charlie Hebdo attack and the attack in Denmark and the attack on the train were probably all instigated by Vladimir Putin’s intelligence agencies, using jihadists who had become disconnected from any networks, whose names he had obtained from western European governments.
The Charlie Hebdo attack in particular really could not have been sponsored by jihadist organizations. You had people affiliated with al Qaeda and ISIS working together, (!) – they were enemies by then; you had two brothers who said they were working for al Qaeda in Yemen – but al Qaeda in Yemen didn;t call itself al Qaeda in Yemen but called itself al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula!!
And the other one said he was working for ISIS but ISIS didn’t call itself ISIS but called itself Islamic State.
No, no, no, this was a Russian false flag attack using Chechens in Belgium designed to try to get European countries to align themselves with Russia against Islamists.
And that’s the way Putin is talking now about Syria and he’s lying his head off, although he is attacking a few Islamic state targets.
The United States (yes, that’s Obama – and allies) has now refused to tell him where in Syria not to attack for fear he would attack precisely those targets.
There is Europe and that will go as it goes. But there is a bigger picture here.
The basic fact is that a lot of the credit for winning the cold war is due to the tech revolution. Better computer systems mean that our logistics were just so much better then the Soviet system they could not keep up.
Cyberwarfare in modern conflicts ( cold or hot ) plays the same role air superiority played in WWII.
Modern tech companies ( despite the cries of people like me ) have been making systems less secure, and have been making it so that those systems are almost impossible to secure.
I really would like to talk about it more. But this would go on for pages.
That’s been true really since the 1970s or maybe the beginning.
They are secure enough at the start, because nobody’s trying anything, but in principle they are not secure – not like what they replaced.
“They are secure enough at the start…” until you turn them on and connect them to the Internet. Things go downhill quickly from there. Securing systems that are Internet connected is difficult, but not impossible. Things get much harder when you add a bunch of human users to the mix. Humans are often stupid.
It doesn’t take much talent to destroy things: Just ask people in prison how they’ve managed to destroy so many lives with one sick act. It’s taken Obama several.
Of course, the malignant boy-president could not be crapping violently all over the U.S. without the help of the corrupt idiots hogging the leadership positions of the GOP, their advisers, and yes, their donors. Thanks, Sheldon!
Look, before we start criticizing Obama or excusing Putin, a comparison of the two is in order.
One of these men acts with authoritarian tendencies and without constitutional restraint, and uses his control over the media, security apparatus, and government bureaucracies to harrass, intimidate and silence his opponents.
And the other one — well — he’s in Moscow.
The article’s statement “President Obama, on the other hand, lacks the basic ability to distinguish a friend from a foe” assumes his blindness is benevolent. I am not so sanguine.
With slight tweaking, the good admiral’s comments could be applied to describe Obama’s tactics much closer to home:
“[He] exploits ethnic and religious divisions, makes use of an aggressive information campaign, and extensively uses misinformation and deception to delegitimize the forces under attack while confusing the attribution of their actions.”