Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 24 – Vladimir Putin
has developed “a new kind of war” in Ukraine, one that has achieved many of his
goals including the partial dismemberment of that country and the creation of a
new region on the basis of his perception of “new international conditions, according
to Yuliya Latynina.
In an article in yesterday’s
“Yezhednevny zhurnal,” the Moscow commentator says that this war has four particular
characteristics. Because the Russian
president has used them with such success in Ukraine and because as a result he
may apply them elsewhere in the former Soviet space, they deserve close
attention (ej.ru/?a=note&id=24994).
The first of these characteristics
of the new type of war Putin has launched concerns the use of women and
children. “In traditional wars,”
Latynina points out, these are not used “because they are weak. But in the new
war, they are “an important military force,” and Putin himself has suggested
they must be used: “’Let them try to shoot at their own children,’” he said.
As Latynina notes, the first to use
this tactic were the Palestinians; now it is being used by the Russian “liberators”
of Ukraine. It is based on the idea that
“under new world rules, he who shoots at the civilian population is wrong” and
the creation of a situation in which one side forces the other to do so or back
down.
The second characteristic of the new
type of war is its focus on the media as a battleground. “PR operatives are a no less important
component of it than ‘the living shield’” women and children offer. More than that, she continues, in this new
kind of war, “the goal of one or another operation is public relations” rather
than a direct victory on the battlefield.
Again, this strategy was developed
and is used by Hamas, but now it has been taken up by Moscow. Like the
Palestinians, Moscow sees the presentation of its side as victims as being “more
important than achieving victory” or in fact as the victory it sees. In such conflicts, “crudely speaking it is no
longer necessary to kill others. It is sufficient to kill one’s own and cover
that with sufficient PR activity.”
The third feature is that one
invariably accuses others of what one is doing oneself. By so doing, “the
aggressor blames others for the victims he has in fact created.” Thus, again
like the Palestinians, “Moscow is sending armed diversionists into Donets and
organizing the local dregs of the population, but at the same time, it accuses
the West of doing that.”
The fourth characteristic, Latynina
says, is that “the main object of attack is the brains of those whom you are
liberating.” The main target “is not the opponent but one’s own or ‘liberated’
population.” It is “zombified” through the promotion of hysteria about an enemy
that does not in fact exist. Again the Palestinians have shown the way, she
writes.
This is an extension of the world
George Orwell described in “1984,” one in which “propaganda and duplicity ...
are imposed by society on each of its members” and one in which, even those who
retain the ability to think independently go along because they cannot
withstand the attacks of fanatics and prefer to be part of “the collective.”
And by so doing,
and again like Hamas, Putin is using the ideology of the West against itself,
presenting what he is doing as being based on “the sovereign will of the majority,”
something many in the West have trouble responding to because they forget that democracy to
survive must protect more than just that.
Moreover, by using this new kind of
war, Latynina says, Putin is doing an end run around the West which “condemns
any application of force by the state but does not take note of force if it
comes from ‘activists,’ ‘social organizations’ or ‘the people.’” That Western failure opens the way for those
using Putin’s tactics to use them ever more widely.
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