Sun Tzu’s version of “political warfare”:
"So to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy's army without fighting at all...The expert in using the military subdues the enemy's forces without going to battle, takes the enemy's walled cities without launching an attack, and crushes the enemy's state without protracted war."
An interesting discussion by War on the Rocks on “political warfare vs. hybrid warfare”
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-...rid-threats/#_
Foreign Policy article from 26.8.2014 from the former Georgian President who has experienced the exact same thing the Ukrainians are going through and who had even less Western support.
Groundhog Day and Putin the Predator
We know Vladimir Putin's playbook for destabilizing Ukraine. Which is why only a decisive military victory against Moscow's forces will work.
Below are the first seven phases of the new Russian UW military doctrine New Generation Warfare that Russia uses to support their “political war” really against western values using the Ukraine as the proxy for the West.
Right now if one goes back to before the Crimea and traces and records every political comment and military move made by Russia/Putin you can virtually layer each event/comment over one of the first seven phases---it is that easy to understand every move Putin is making.
If it is that easy then why are not Western leaders capable of understanding it?
About three months ago we were only at a phase four---just in the last four weeks it has now crossed to phase seven in an eight phase process before it goes to full military conflict which to some degree the Ukrainians are already in with Russian troops fighting inside the Ukraine.
The phases of new-generation war can be schematized as (Tchekinov & Bogdanov,
2013, pp. 15-22):
First Phase: non-military asymmetric warfare (encompassing information, moral, psychological, ideological, diplomatic, and economic measures as part of a plan to establish a favorable political, economic, and military setup).
Second Phase: special operations to mislead political and military leaders by coordinated measures carried out by diplomatic channels, media, and top government and military agencies by leaking false data, orders, directives, and instructions.
Third Phase: intimidation, deceiving, and bribing government and military officers, with the objective of making them abandon their service duties.
Fourth Phase: destabilizing propaganda to increase discontent among the population, boosted by the arrival of Russian bands of militants, escalating subversion.
Fifth Phase: establishment of no-fly zones over the country to be attacked, imposition of blockades, and extensive use of private military companies in close cooperation with armed opposition units.
Sixth Phase: commencement of military action, immediately preceded by large-scale reconnaissance and subversive missions. All types, forms, methods, and forces, including special operations forces, space, radio, radio engineering, electronic, diplomatic, and secret service intelligence, and industrial espionage.
Seventh Phase: combination of targeted information operation, electronic warfare operation, aerospace operation, continuous airforce harassment, combined with the use of high precision weapons launched from various platforms (long-range artillery, and weapons basedon new physical principles, including microwaves, radiation, non-lethal biological weapons).
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