The traditional strategy was based on the philosophy of Karl Clausewitz, in the center of which was the struggle between states or their coalitions. It is built on the principle of statism. In the context of globalization, the erasure of state borders and the subordination of national interests to global ones, the old military strategy has given way to a new one, its unit of measurement is the region.
The provocation of ethnic, ethnoreligious and migratory conflicts is aimed at reformatting the regions and turning them into state entities. Suffice it to recall the names of Western military-strategic projects: “Greater Middle East”, “Greater Caucasus”, “Greater Central Asia”, “Greater Europe”, “Kievan Rus”. The same goal can be achieved by highlighting and uniting ethnic groups located in different states.
New Barbarians
The subjects of war in the new strategy are various sub-state structures. The transition of the region to archaic tribal relations (essentially a pre-state structure) makes it easy to subordinate it. The ultimate goal of the strategy is to create the conditions for globalization.
Clausewitz defines war as a rational instrument of national politics. First you need to calculate the possible losses and acquisitions. But modern war is completely irrational.
Well-known American publicist Paul Craig Roberts writes that the United States plans to launch a nuclear strike on Russia, believing that in the end it will win thanks to the missile defense system. But logically, Russia and China, as possible objects of a nuclear attack, simply will not wait until the United States deploys its missile defense system in full. In this situation it is beneficial for them to strike first. But the Washington leadership does not reason logically.
The theory of Clausewitz is also rejected in the part concerning the national. The modern war launched by Washington is being waged in the interests of not the US at all, but supranational structures, as a whole a global corporation that bought power in Western countries.
The same applies to the instrumental category (“war is a rational instrument”). According to her, war should begin for the sake of a real goal, victory. President Bush Jr. once said that the war against terror is a campaign against evil. There are no criteria for victory, there is no and there can be no exit strategy out of the war except the opening of a new battlefield. This is an illusory, unattainable goal. As an instrument of national politics, war is limited to the interests of the state. But as a tool of global politics, it is not limited by anything and is doomed to become permanent.
The abolition of the national indicates its denationalization and privatization. A vivid confirmation is that mercenaries from private military and intelligence companies became subjects of modern warfare. They are not interested in ending the war. Their interest is in its globalization. For PMCs, the more wars, the more money, there are no high national feelings. They are nomads of global war, new barbarians, obsessed with their hunger for prey.Privatization abolishes another triad of Clausewitz - the state - the army - the people. According to the classics, only this triune alliance can ensure victory. But in a situation where proxy forces (intermediaries) are used instead of the national army — transnational PMCs or terrorist networks and the goal is not to defend the state, but global expansion, the people are alienated from war. He ceases to be its interested party. And this also deprives the war of the prospect of victory, making it permanent.
The confirmation is the Pentagon's instructions for the forces of special operations for the conduct of irregular, including unconventional war. The command of the American SSO defines it as action to provide conditions for the opposition movement or for the uprising, to force power, to split or destroy the government, acting through or together with underground, mercenary or rebel forces in the closed access area. And thus achieve the strategic goals of the United States.
According to this approach, the main subject of warfare is not the American army, but underground, mercenary or rebel forces, the opposition. That is, the aggressor state distances itself.
Such a strategy explodes the system of international law. Moreover, it creates problems for national legislative systems. Thus, “actions of a foreign state (group of states) committed in violation of the UN Charter, generally accepted principles and norms of international law and directly indicating preparations for committing an act of aggression against the Russian Federation, including a declaration of war, may be recognized as the immediate threat of aggression against the Russian Federation.
But the mercenaries are not the army subordinate to the country. The one who directs them acts in the so-called gray zone. It is difficult to establish the fact of preparation for aggression and the immediate threat. That is, to declare war, as required by international law, in this case there is simply no one.
Directors of terror
On the night of 21 in August, 2013 of the year on the Damascus Gute suburb launched several missiles with warheads containing about 350 liters of sarin. Hundreds of people were injured, among them many children. After the tragedy, the United States and Great Britain immediately accused the Assad government of everything.
One of the articles of the American publicist S. Hersh, known for his sensational revelations related to the dark sides of American politics, is dedicated to himatake in Syria. The name is eloquent: “Whose sarin?”. Hersh argues that the Obama administration blamed accusing the Assad government of using chemical weapons. The publicist refers to a British intelligence report which says that sarin did not belong to the Syrian Armed Forces. It follows from the document that in 2012, a secret agreement was signed between the Obama administration, the heads of Saudi Arabia and Qatar about attacking civilians using sarin to accuse Assad of everything, to create a pretext for the intervention of the US armed forces and overthrow the regime. The agreement distributed the functions of each of the parties. “Funding went through the signatory countries. The CIA, together with MI6, was responsible for delivering the chemical weapons from Gaddafi’s former arsenals to Syria. ”
Research journalist K. Lehman, citing reliable sources, argues: “The top officials of the United States and Saudi Arabia are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Evidence directly leads to the White House to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff M. Dempsey, CIA Director D. Brennan, the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar and the Saudi Ministry of the Interior. ”
Justifications for the non-involvement of the Syrian government to the chemical attack are contained in a report published by 14 in January 2014 of the year by leading American analysts R. Lloyd (former UN weapons inspector) and Professor T. Postol. They note that the shells used were a range of two kilometers, which coincides with the conclusion of an independent UN examination. It follows: they could not be released directly from Guta, that is, the affected area, as well as from the eastern part of the zone controlled by the Syrian government. The Lloyd-Postol report contains the following conclusion: “The interpretation by the US government of technical intelligence data collected before and after the August 21 attack, perhaps, cannot be considered correct.”
All these sources indicate that the US government, as well as before the war in Iraq, lied to justify the attack on Syria and repeat the Libyan scenario there.
Front line
This is a war that does not correspond to the classical strategy of reference and requires a different approach. “This is the art of changing the balance of power in its favor,” says L. Friedman in his work “Strategy: story"Written on the basis of the synthesis of the military, social sciences and control theory.
The US leadership has reduced the strategy to the art of creating global power in the interests of the transnational elite controlling Washington.
This is hampered by Russia. Hence, it is understandable why in the US National Security Strategy-2015 17 of 18 the references to the term “aggression” refer to our country.
The war for the seizure of global power requires a strategy that sees the whole world as a single battlefield. An example of such an approach is the article by J. Friedman, chairman and founder of the Stratfor American-Israeli Center, considered in America as the leading geopolitical, intelligence and consulting firm. The analyst writes about the need to create a new strategic map that unites two wars into one whole - in Ukraine and in Syria-Iraq.
Thus, a continuous front line is formed along the southern border of Russia with access to the territory of Central Asia. In the foreground is the destabilization of the situation in the region and at the same time the separation of the countries located here from Moscow, including through the instigation of conflicts.
Friedman writes: “The Russian intelligence services suffered a complete failure, being unable to predict, or take control of the events in Kiev, or organize a widespread uprising in the east of Ukraine ... The American strategy in Ukraine repeated the strategy in Syria-Iraq. First, Washington uses intermediaries (proxies). Secondly, it provides material support. Third, it avoids direct military intervention. This strategy is based on the assumption that the enemy is incapable of a decisive offensive, and if he starts, he can be suppressed with the help of air power. ”
With all the doubtfulness of this thesis, it is worth noting that the American strategy is based on certain installations that should be taken into account in order to avoid mistakes.
Friedman emphasizes: “It is critical for the United States to create a single integrated plan that addresses the most pressing challenges. Such a plan should begin with a definition of a theater of operations geographically interconnected in order to enable the implementation of integrated political maneuvering and military planning ... It is crucial to learn to think in terms of a single operational center of gravity. It’s increasingly obvious to me that the Black Sea is such a center of gravity. ”
If we proceed from this, the conflict in New Russia will not remain frozen. The appointment of General Abizaid adviser in Ukraine is proof of this. Conflict will be unfrozen when conditions are created that guarantee the achievement of the intended goals.
Following the logic of the global strategy and integration approach to the war against Russia, Friedman proposes to consider as a single theater of operations not only the Middle East and Ukraine, but also the region that unites Romania, Hungary and Poland. He believes that the American strategy should avoid considering these theaters as independent and unite them as separate aspects of the same theater - the Black Sea. “When we look at the map, we will see that the Black Sea is the organizing principle of these spaces. It forms the southern border of Ukraine, the European part of Russia and the Caucasus. All of this intersects with jihadists and Iran. Northern Syria and Iraq are at a distance of less than 650 kilometers (400 miles) from the Black Sea ... The first step to creating such a unified strategy is to create a map that allows you to think in terms of the unity of forces, not their separation, unified support, and not its disintegration . It will also make it possible to perceive regional relations as part of an overall integrated strategy. ”
Friedman talks about the strategy of the Great Black Sea, where Georgia and Azerbaijan are of particular importance for the United States. They are considered in unity, since the first without the second has a small weight. And Azerbaijan acquires the meaning of the “eastern anchor of the Great Black Sea”. Hence, any provocation, for example in Nagorno-Karabakh, can serve to destabilize the entire region.
In the strategy of the Big Black Sea, Turkey and Romania are of key importance to the United States. As for the first one, which has interests in the whole basin - in Syria, Iraq, in the Caucasus, in Russia and in Ukraine, it becomes one of the indispensable American allies. Such an alliance should not be confused with an inter-national, that is, interstate alliance, where each country retains even a partial right to sovereignty.
The global is incompatible with the national and is approved through its destruction. In this objective incompatibility lies the reason for the crisis of American strategic thought, which has turned the US Army itself into the proxy force of the global elite. In other words, we are talking about the voluntary renunciation by the United States of military-strategic sovereignty.
We need, while maintaining the commitment to the statist principles of our military strategy and national interests, to take into account new approaches and draw appropriate conclusions.