Is there anything we can’t blame on Russia?
By Iain Morse – WRF Scottish Representative
Trump, Le Pen, Farage, Brexit, Wilders, Orban , Alternative fur Deutschland, separatist movements in Spain and Italy, Syria and the failure of the Arab Spring ; the list is long and growing. We have got into the habit of blaming what we do not like in our own political systems on Russian ‘intervention’, on President Putin and the FSB men around him.
If we blame Russia it must be judged capable of effective intervention. Here, of course, facts contradict the fiction. Russia has a GDP about the size of Italy’s, a standing army of about one million, and the longest most indefensible borders of any country in the world. It also faces constant security threats in the Caucuses, and central Asia, consequences of a still rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. It has a long, shared border with China, a country that lacks space for a fast growing population and has a history of territorial aggression. President Putin has plenty to deal with at home and on his immediate borders.
Never mind. Ancient Russian turbo-prop aircraft flying the borders of the EU, capital ships of the Russian navy so decrepit they are pulled by tugs through the English Channel, not to mention military exercises in western Russia are all rendered into an imminent threat to our freedoms.
No less a figure than ‘Professor’ Anne Applebaum, a hostile opinion former on Russia, has lectured and written about Russia’s unique skill at ‘maskirovka’, essentially deceit for military purposes. Elsewhere, Edward Lucas, a keen proponent of the ‘New Cold War’, warns that Russia’s secret service are practised collectors of ‘kompromat’, compromising material collected to blackmail. Both have also noted Russia’s special ability at waging ‘hybrid warfare’, which seems to depend on a combination of regular and irregular forces with propaganda, and the stirring up of local tensions as relevant.
All of this is presented as pretty wicked and very Russian. Never mind that during WW2 , Britain housed a phantom army which diverted German resources from Normandy, or that we planted papers on the body of a dead tramp, clothed as a naval officer then washed ashore on a beach in Spain. The US unleashed ‘shock and awe’ pyrotechnics over Belgrade in 1999 and Baghdad in 2003, indeed shock and awe is a US military doctrine, comprising the use of pyrotechnics and firepower to dazzle, paralyse and actually kill. The west and particularly the US has used covert means to assassinate leaders, bring down whole regimes, and backed these up with conventional forces on many, many occasions. General Gaddafi’s convoy was targeted and hit by NATO planes immediately before his final, brutal beating and street-gang style execution.
Over the past few months a slew of claims have been made about Russia interfering in the US Presidential election, all aimed at paralysing and de-legitimising President Trump. These have more to do with US domestic politics than anything as boring as the facts of the case. Key phrases have been used again and again, that Russian internet ‘warfare may have put Putin’s finger’ on the US electoral scale, that Russian really has ‘shifted opinion’ in the US, and so on.
To date the Mueller investigation has discovered no smoking Kalashnikov. Instead, it has thrown up trivial meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian diplomats, and possible tax evasion by high powered American .P.R. men who made the mistake of working in the Ukraine and pocketing the generous proceeds before briefly joining the Trump campaign. They must wish they had gone to live in Monaco instead.
Russia’s alleged expertise at mounting internet, social media and twitter campaigns has been often rehearsed. Problem; the stats on Russia twitter accounts are always quoted out of context. Twitter reported to the US Congress that 50,000 Russian automated tweeters re-tweeted Trump 2 million times between 1st September and November 15th 2016(source Daily Mail). Sounds impressive and subversive of democracy. Until you realise that there are 500 million tweets per day or over 200 billion year. In fact, the Russian tweet ‘campaign’ is likely to have had….no impact at all. Like those stories about Russia’s agent of influence, the buxom ‘Anna Chapman’ , this is a storm in a D-, sorry , a tea cup..
Anyone who doubts this should visit the Oxford Internet Institute’s web-site. Under the aegis of Oxford University, the Institute publishes authoritative research on social media and elections in the EU, UK and the USA, including a focus on Russian originated material. It is a bit of surprise that none of their research is quoted by the likes of Applebaum, and Lucas. The reason is simple. The O.I.I. have found little or no evidence of Russian effective ‘interference’ in our democratic processes by the use of twitter accounts or other social media. O.I.I. is not singing from their anti-Russian hymn sheet. So O.I.I. research is not quoted. Simple.
How can we explain current levels of anti-Russian invective in our media? Just last week, the heavyweight Telegraph staffer ‘Con’ Coughlin declared that the BBC TV series ‘McMafia’ was actually a documentary!! The Times published a leader on Russia’s forthcoming elections as ‘fake’.
Almost by the day, a think tank or branch of western government declares a new military threat from Russia without bothering to corroborate their claims.
Perhaps the answer lies in a toxic combination of exiled oligarchs, the US and UK defence industries, and so called Visegrad Group of countries (notably Poland).
More next week.
