This Is How Vladimir Putin Manufactures Conflict Between Nations

[edpc]

As Helsinki’s one-on-one presidential summit looms, with foreign policy mavens fearing that Vladimir Putin will run circles around a clueless Donald Trump, it’s time to examine what makes the Kremlin’s Chekist-in-Chief tick. Our president’s troubling statement that Putin and his KGB background are “fine” at least focused attention where it needs to be, on the undeniable fact that a career in the Soviet secret police made the Russian strongman who he is.

The Chekist worldview that forms Putin’s mental furniture is cynical and cunning to a degree that naïve Westerners—and from the Kremlin point of view pretty much all Westerners are naïve and easily exploited—find difficult to believe. Westerners simply shut eyes and ears, since the reality is so unpleasant. The casual manner with which Kremlin spies ruthlessly exploit others for their own ends is not a nice story, given that their methods embrace violence and life-ruining measures as nonchalantly as Westerners order a cup of coffee.

http://observer.com/2018/07/putin-conflict-poland-ukraine-nato/amp/

[corbe]

   Good Article @edpc, Thanks for sharing.

   I kept thinking of Trump's once campaign manager, Manafort, injecting himself into that CF for the Rubles.

[Sanguine]

It is a good article.  We tend to forget that every culture is not the same and everyone doesn't think like we do.

The cornerstone of the Chekist worldview is provocation, what the Russians call provokatsiya. It’s not new, indeed it was honed into a secret weapon in the late Tsarist era, to be perfected under the Bolsheviks. I’ve tried to explain this alien concept to Westerners for years, and it really boils down to a basic, rather nasty concept:

Provokatsiya simply means taking control of your enemies in secret and encouraging them to do things that discredit them and help you. You plant your own agents provocateurs and flip legitimate activists, turning them to your side. When you’re dealing with extremists to start with, getting them to do crazy, self-defeating things isn’t often difficult. In some cases, you simply create extremists and terrorists where they don’t exist. This is causing problems in order to solve them, and since the Tsarist period, Russian intelligence has been known to do just that.

Provokatsiya is why, whenever you meet Russians, they have a habit, incomprehensible to Westerners, of explaining that the world is not as it seems to be. In fact, it may be upside-down. Opposition is controlled by the regime, when not wholly fake. Resistance leaders are really regime operatives out to discredit the resistance. The most extreme anti-regime voices are not real. Russians think this way because that’s how their country actually works, whether under tsars, Red commissars, or “former” Chekists.

[edpc]

Interestingly, the source, Observer, was previously owned by Kushner.  It’s now ran by his brother-in-law.

[Sanguine]

Interestingly, the source, Observer, was previously owned by Kushner.  It’s now ran by his brother-in-law.

Kushner Sr. or Ivanka's husband?

[edpc]

Kushner Sr. or Ivanka's husband?

Jared - Ivanka’s husband.