Russian Unconventional Strategy

[OUTLAW 09]

New administrations in the White House generally result in strategy changes, if not the ends, then the ways and means.

Who are the major players (official and unofficial) in U.S. foreign policy? Federal government, State governments, Industry (to include the defense industry), NGOs, media, etc. All have an impact. The difference perhaps is unlike the Russians we're possibly not as synched in leveraging all these different players to achieve strategic ends. We do use them all and each has incredible capability and influence, so if we first understand what the Russians are doing and why, determine if any of these "really" threatens our national interests, if it does then get serious about addressing it.

The ability to execute these operations on countries that border their nation is impressive, but not overly impressive. We have been astrategic for the past 10 years, so we're impressed with a nation that can actually think strategically (at least in the area of military and paramilitary arts). We have the capability to execute a global strategy globally, they don't, but we won't, etc., so their is some self-imposed strategic asymmetry here.

Bill---would argue and some might not agree---right now the Russians are in fact implementing a global strategy the problem is we are not use to the game after about a 25 year hiatus of playing global games.

They have had time to sit down and to rethink their collapse and they apparently learned from it and focused on a rebuild of the military and military projection powers, they definitely have played a great economic game using gas/pipelines and oil, and politically are now playing the UW card against NATO and attempting to split the EU from the US which they have in effect achieved to a degree.

Back to the players---it makes Russian FP simplistic in nature when having to deal with five players especially if all the players are onboard ideology wise ie neo imperialism or neo economic imperialism cloaked under the guise of ethnic nationalism. We on the other hand in the last 25 years seem to have forgotten the old ideology war games ---we are so wrapped up in our own internal political right/left/tea party games for especially the last ten years we have simply "missed" what the rest of the world is thinking/doing.

You are right the core question is Russian a national threat?---if one looks at the willingness recently to fly a SU29 30 meters in front of a RC135 and flash weapons then I would say they are already a national threat especially since that flashing had to be approved by the central flight controller of the SU, if they are scooping up all our "former" allies and are sponsoring new friends in the ME and Africa then they are a threat, if in fact they have modernized and added to their nuclear abilities and voided a portion of the INF then they are a threat, if they have power projection abilities equal to us then they are a threat, they now openly question and or void existing treaties anyway they feel like interpreting -then they are a threat. If one looks at the claimed joint efforts by the US/Russian in Syria, Iran, Palestine, NK --where has the Russian significantly contributed to a direct resolution of any of those problem areas--no that I can see.

We could though take the high ground and via "soft power" look the other way stating they are not a threat but then what does the long term look like especially if Putin controls until 2024?

A lot of this is IMO---- has an underlying not spoken about driver-economic survival of Russia at least in their eyes.

This was taken from a new Russian SWJ article that goes to the point I am making about the threat.

"Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria." The author quotes one reference but I had seen references to this in several Interfax press releases over the last four weeks and had wondered about it---nothing-nothing was mentioned in the US media and this is a threat as it impacts a really long term ME ally which has had strained ties with us the last several years by our all over the map foreign policy regarding Syria, Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood support.

This newly released editorial today (below) in the Voice of Russian reflects a hardening in rhetoric I have not seen since 1989 especially if one really reads the reunification treaties 4 plus 2 and the Founding Act between NATO/Russia---they are virtually demanding the West accept their definition of those treaties, but then notice they ignored the Ukrainian treaty which they themselves signed. It should be noted that the 4 plus 2 treaties stipulate no nuclear weapons and no large scale permanent troops bases---not rotational exercise troops contingents.

http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_06_10/...t-expert-3064/