Are Color Revolutions a New Form of War?
By Alexander Golts Jun. 02 2014
The most recent example occurred at the Moscow Conference on International Security, at which members of Russia's General Staff announced the appearance of a new form of warfare.
When the conference agenda was initially set, the plan was to focus on regional security, with an emphasis on the problems that would inevitably arise when international coalition forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Prior to the Ukrainian crisis, the most pressing problem was the need for Russia and the West to work together to ensure at least a degree of stability in Central Asia.
However, the Kremlin clearly issued orders that radically changed the focus of the forum. In his opening address before the conference, President Vladimir Putin emphasized that so-called "color revolutions," are now the main threat to peace.
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After all, if "color revolutions" are really a new form of aggression, the General Staff must urgently develop a strategy for combating it. In this sense, Russia's annexation of Crimea and the actions of separatists in Ukraine's east and south can be seen as a sort of "color counter-revolution."
What is more, that approach paves the way for using military forces to combat internal threats because the Kremlin is convinced that the West is constantly looking for a way to organize a "color revolution" in Russia.
This sets up a chain of faulty conclusions in which Moscow interprets any protest against the authorities as an attempt to stage a color revolution — an act that is now defined as an act of aggression against the state. And by this logic, the government can mobilize not only the police and internal security forces to crack down on political protestors, but also the Army.
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