Author: Andrej Il’nitskij – 18/12/2019
“Don’t fill your head with things that are irrelevant to the present. In the future we must still be able to get.” V. Pelevin
On New Year’s Eve, it is customary to sum up the results of the past, to think about what the coming one will be.
In December 2019 in the United States, US News published a ranking of the most powerful countries, in which Russia ranks second. The result was unexpected for many, sad for those who rejoiced in Obama’s ” regional power torn to shreds.”
The criteria for compiling this rating were:
• participation in international alliances;
• the figure of the leader;
• economic, military and political potential.
In the first place – the United States, the second-Russia, the third-China. Among the least influential countries in the world are the Baltic republics and a number of Eastern European States. “Independent” Ukraine confidently falls down and is already in 39th place after Lebanon, Belarus, Egypt and many others.
According to Americans, such a high position of Russia is determined by a powerful and professional army, the authority of the country’s leader-Vladimir Putin-and a fairly effective foreign policy. It is necessary to pay special attention to one more “factor of force” noted by Americans. Overseas analysts, albeit “through his teeth”, hanging the label “authoritarian”, but are forced to note the stability and functionality of our state, governing the country for “most of its more than a thousand years of history.” Thus, confirming that our most important bond is a strong state. This is fundamentally different from the liberal concept-the service state.
The main pillar of the power of the Russian state is its army. And not for nothing in 2019, the Armed forces of the Russian Federation took second place among the strongest armies in the world according to the global Firepower rating. The authors took into account 55 factors, including 25 countries in the list. The first place was taken by the us army, the third-by China.
Of course, we have weaknesses and vulnerabilities. In the first half of 2019, the leading American analytical structure RAND Corporation, working for the government, the Pentagon and us intelligence, analysing the weaknesses of Russia, in order to destructively affect them, pointed out: “the Greatest vulnerability of the Russian Federation in any competition with the US is its economy, which is relatively small and highly dependent on energy exports. Russia’s economic policy is bad and weak.” Conclude.
In General, such a high positioning of Russia by our competitors is very positive news.
Global crisis as a challenge
The West today is in a deep existential crisis. The world is “American”, where the dollar-the main product produced by the United States for export- ” buried in the ceiling.” End of growth – ends the progress and meaning.
Most of the adults of the “Golden billion” already believe that their children will be worse off than their parents: 50% in Australia and up to 90% in France think so. Tomorrow for the Western man in the street is no longer a world of dreams, but rather a world of uncertainty, a world of growing anxiety, conflict and injustice. And why then need this “democracy as a value in itself”, ask the question more and more countries and people on the globe.
There is a sharp weakening of the attractiveness of US policy and Western civilization as a whole. That is-sincerely and “for love” with the world at them already in any way, and “for love for money” – means came to an end. To dominate through the purchase of loyalty and military power in the United States corny lack of resources. And the risks are growing…
Analysts recognize the “Golden billion” + China and India – on the verge of resource collapse. The struggle for dwindling resources is now the dominant force in world politics. Leadership is provided by dominance in the information field, technological superiority with the support of direct military force.
So-the crisis is obvious. Alas, but often historically in such situations – the solution to the global crisis was war. The most unseemly methods are used. As the chief of the General staff of the Russian armed forces, army General Valery Gerasimov, stressed, ” the Western allies are advancing the thesis of the so-called Russian military threat. Any step of Russia in the field of ensuring its military security, any planned and transparently conducted event on the construction of the army and Navy, every exercise by Western propagandists and fake media is unambiguously presented as a “threat to the world”.
The struggle for the preservation of peace becomes the main task of the responsible forces of world politics.
Threats to national security
The modern world is already living in a state of hybrid war, which is unfolding for hegemony, resources and maintaining control over Finance, trade and technology, on the one hand (the West led by the United States), and for multipolarity and its own sovereign future on the other (Russia, China, etc.).
In this situation, nuclear deterrence is a basic factor that humanizes the international situation. To date, and this is recognized by our Western opponents, Russia is able to cause unacceptable damage to them. Based on this, the probability of a direct “hot” conflict is unlikely. The nature of threats is also changing.
The most urgent threats for Russia today are information, ideological and cyber threats.
Their goal is chaos and confusion in the minds of Russians, undermining trust at the junction of “power-society”, the destruction of social infrastructure, and in the end (on the model of “cold” destruction of the USSR) – the weakening and disintegration of the Russian state – that is our main staple.
Russian-language platforms based in the Baltic States and Ukraine, as well as the fifth column inside our country, are used for information attacks. The factor of de-consolidation of part of the Russian elites is used. The key is the psychological and ideological stability of society.
The very content of the concept of ” war ” is changing literally before our eyes. According to Rand Corporation analysts, a new form of war – virtual social war-will be conceptually fixed by 2023 as a mechanism of undermining the sovereignty and destruction of States.
Rand Corporation report on Russia.
Virtual war will be social in nature, because it will extend to the entire society of the enemy. Its purpose is to undermine social trust and, ultimately, the very stability of the functioning of the target state.
The methods of this war are very sophisticated. They can include political sanctions and covert operations aimed at creating fifth columns in the target country, deactivating public opinion leaders, using multidirectional cyber-attacks on infrastructure, widely using Artificial intelligence technologies.
This is how American analysts see wars in the near future. This is a very alarming forecast, which is stupid to ignore.
Information impact is the first and most important stage of hybrid warfare, followed by social technologies of action.
Western hybrid warfare technologists understand that humans are a resource for achieving certain goals. Military-political, including. It is necessary to be able to work with this resource. After the globalization of media, capital and markets, it is time for the globalization of the human mass.
As Russian defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stressed: “the West has long worked out patterns and algorithms for overthrowing any inconvenient for them legitimate authorities in any country. Of course, all this is done under the slogan of promoting democracy.”
On an edge
They are working against Russia on a broad front, at the forefront of information attacks aimed at the following social environments of our society:
• youth as the most vulnerable group to the influence of a segment of society;
• pensioners as the most socially dependent and therefore manipulated category;
• state employees and recipients of social benefits, as categories that are fully dependent on the sustainability of the functioning of the state;
• military and law enforcement personnel, as the most difficult in terms of “achievability” target audience, but the most important and support for the Russian state, and therefore promising. Attacks on the army and security forces are on the rise.
Cyber-attack means opponents will be directed to the entire infrastructure of the state and society, but above all to:
– the country’s energy system;
– logistics, cargo and passenger traffic management systems;
– social services databases;
– banking system, payment systems;
– social networks in which disinformation campaigns can be carried out against the background of disabling the “classic” state-controlled media;
– notification system about emergency situations.
In these circumstances, national security will increasingly depend on the resilience of the cyber and InfoSphere and, more importantly, on a strong social infrastructure.
In the absence of adequate counter-measures, this can radically weaken the role of the state as a provider of territorial security.
National security policy
It is possible to reflect these threats, forming the sovereign agenda, having and realizing the project of the future of the country.
How to succeed in this recipe gave Churchill: “the Situation must not only be able to use, you should be able to create it. By changing your consciousness, you create your own Universe.”
Leadership, I repeat, will be provided by ideological integrity and technological superiority, relying on military force.
Chinese military strategist sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago: “the best war is to break the enemy’s plans; the next place is to break his alliances; and only the last place is to break his troops.”
To win at the level of plans, to change your mind, and not to overpower the enemy – this is the principle by which the development of the military organization of Russia.
Our domestic scientific and defense developments have always been characterized by a non-trivial approach, cutting corners, low cost, alternative and novelty of the methods used.
We should not and do not intend to blindly copy foreign samples, methods and developments, following in their Wake…
If you want-going into a technological breakthrough, which the President spoke about, you need to act Suvorov-style ahead of the curve and, attacking, break through where the enemy does not expect, to win not by number, but by skill! After all, our defense budget is 15 times smaller than America’s, and we are simply doomed to our alternative security path.
This is how our policy in the field of GOZ is implemented, when our Hyper weapons actually declassified the trillion-dollar American costs of creating monsters with all their aircraft carrier groups and dozens of bases scattered around the world… They are simply not in a position to repel our attacks, and they understand it.
The General approach is as follows: it is necessary to control the situation, to have scenario plans of action in extreme situations and to work on pre-emption, for which, for example, the Russian defense Ministry has already created a system of forecasting armed conflicts.
The system allows to predict the place and time of the beginning of armed conflicts, as well as to develop a mechanism for responding to the situation.
Russian defense Minister army General Sergei Shoigu stressed that it is not just a forecast, but a model that develops response mechanisms.
“A model is being built, which provides not only for the definition of such” hot ” places, but also develops a response mechanism taking into account the mistakes that were made then, in order to prevent them now,” the head of the Russian military Department said. Sergei Shoigu also noted that the Russian defense Ministry has technical capabilities that allow for the accumulation and systematization of the necessary information.
The Russian defense Ministry acts as the head and leadership structure. But we must understand that this is still only an element – albeit the main one-of the emerging state system of ensuring national security in a changing world.
How to ensure information and cybersecurity
It is necessary to state – today there is no strategic vision of information security. State policy in this area, corresponding to the seriousness of the challenges, is only at the stage of formation. There is no single ideological and technological platform for information warfare, and its legal framework has not been adequately developed. Global processes in the field of psychological defense, information and cyberwarfare are analysed insufficiently systematically. The work is carried out reflexively, chaotically and after the fact. There is a lack of professionally trained personnel.
Without an active and systematic policy in the field of information and cybersecurity, it is impossible to ensure national security even with a strong military component. The creation of a single interdepartmental center for countering information and cyber threats is overdue.
To begin with, it is possible to introduce into official circulation and the legal field-an indicator of the effectiveness of public administration, its socio-information stability, which will determine the ability of state and public structures to maintain their capacity/vitality in the conditions of cyber-strike operations against Russia, including those associated with negative information campaigns.
Achieving a given state of socio-information stability/survivability should be considered as one of the most important goals of Russia not only in military and security, but also in the sphere of socio-economic development of our country.
Andrej Il’nitskij – Advisor to the Minister of defence of the Russian Federation