Paul Goble
Staunton,
March 6 -- The Russian high command has long wanted to have a domestic crowd
control role, rather than as has been the case in recent years standing by as
the FSB and the interior ministry gain influence in the Kremlin because of what
they do in that regard, Aleksandr Golts says.
Now,
General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, has provided
a justification for such a role, Golts says, a supposed American plan to use
Russian opposition groups as part of its military strategy, an approach that justifies
the use of the Russian military against them (openmedia.io/exclusive/pochemu-genshtab-gotovitsya-voevat-s-rossijskoj-oppoziciej/).
In an article
entitled “Why the General Staff is Preparing to Fight with the Russian
Opposition,” the independent military analyst argues that “American strategists
are working on a new strategy of conducting military action under the code
name, ‘Trojan Horse,’” a strategy involving “the active use of the protest
potential of ‘a fifth column’ for destabilizing opponents.”
Obviously, Gerasimov continues, the
military as part of its “strategy of active defense” must be involved in
“neutralizing” this threat to the security of the state, an argument that
invokes a supposed US strategy as the basis for doing what the Russian military
has long wanted to do, serving as a force for domestic control as well as
foreign action.
Since 2013, Gerasimov has argued
that “there are no essential differences between a period of open war and times
of peace.” In the second, “confrontation is carried out by non-military means,
with the aid of secret and information operations.” That justified Russia’s
various hybrid wars.
Now the chief of the general staff
has taken the next step and provided what he sees as an unanswerable reason for
the Russian military to be deployed against opposition elements in Russia in
order to protect the country’s national security. And that this is his primary purpose is shown
by one telling detail.
Gerasimov misquotes the US general
as far as this new American strategy is concerned even going so far as to claim
that the American has said things he did not say, Golts continues. Indeed, he
suggests, this invention was “no accident” but rather an effort to “link
potential protest with immediate military aggression.”
A decade ago, Makhmut Gareyev, the
president of the Academy of Military Sciences, “well-known for his unique
ability to tell which way the wind is blowing,” suddenly began to talk about
the need “to find a military answer to non-military threats.” Gerasimov has taken the next step.
Because the Kremlin so fears color
revolutions, it was perhaps only a matter of time before it would be fated to
hear about “the military dimension” of such popular actions. As Golts points
out, the latest version of the Russian Military Doctrine (2014) does speak of
popular uprisings as “a new form of military action.”
Gerasimov
builds on that. His speech last week thus represents but the latest attempt to
tie together “’military’ and ‘non-military methods” of defense. The innovation
is that he suggests any such protests won’t simply be the work of hostile
special services but will be accompanied by the use of precisely targetable
weaponry.
“The
logic is clear,” Golts continues. “If an enemy could go to the point of
coordinating protest actions with air strikes, then the General Staff must
develop plans to counter this combination” – and those plans would include “the
use of forces against the people on the streets of Russian cities.”
That
represents another step to what the General Staff has long wanted, the
independent Moscow military analyst says, one that gives them a new
high-profile role but also one that sets them on the path to conflict not only
with the provisions of the Russian Constitution but also with the FSB and
interior ministry who have long viewed taking such action as their prerogative.
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