Author: Andrej Il’nitskij – 01/08/2019
In the modern situation, when the U.S. hegemony is weakening and Russia and China are gaining power in world developments, the character of challenges and hazards is being changed. In order to retain its hegemony, the USA have to hinder development of all other countries – including use of force, economic, military and political pressure and also provocation of conflicts .
In fact, now the world is existing – and, unfortunately, will exist for a long time – in a pre-war state. And, particularly, the USA are putting the world into this state.
In this situation, it is hard to overestimate the role of nuclear deterrence. Due to the fact that Russia can inflict unacceptable damage, the Western countries headed by the USA avoid direct confrontation with Russia. But the wain hegemon has somehow to meet the challenge of deterrence, weakening and, in the ideal case, elimination of its competitors.
For some reason, we are literally the eyewitnesses of confrontation strategy change. The ‘hot war’, as it is understood in the Western countries, will be preceded by a so called ‘proxy war’ or a hybrid war. The Prompt Global Strike concept and the National Defense Strategy of the U.S. are frankly speaking about that.
The purpose of such proxy-hybrid war is to overextend, overstress a particular country at every possible way: to wreck its economy and political stability, to affect morale of its citizens, to destroy the will to resist and, at the end of the day, to compel the political and economic elite of the country and then the country itself to capitulate. In order to provide effectiveness of hybrid attacks, the attacker is looking for vulnerabilities, which will be affected with the cutting edge of the strike.
The war of this type, proxy war or information and hybrid war is already in progress between the Western countries and Russia. Its purpose is to dismount the Russian state and turn it into a failstate in the fashion of Ukraine.
The phrase ‘War is on’ – is definitely not a metaphor. Below we shall analyze the fundamental report published in April 2019 and containing evidence of this point. We are talking about the RAND Corporation report under the title ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. Assessing the impact of cost-imposing options‘. –
In this paper the Americans from the RAND Corporation have provided their version of our vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Moreover, they have described the measures which can be taken by the Western countries in order to overextend Russia, confuse it, hinder its development and finally to lead it to its breakup, just as it was made with the USSR in the time of Ronald Reagan.
This report is impressing by frankness and cynicism of its conclusions and proposals.
‘For whom the bell tolls? It tolls for thee,’ – Ernest Hemingway has written.
Why do we have to analyze thoroughly this report? First of all, I would like to remind you, what the RAND Corporation is. It is the main expert group which develops the foreign and security policy of the USA. It is a think-tank of the United States Department of Defense working also for other U.S. security and defense agencies. It is the RAND Corporation which specifies the strategic direction for the U.S. policy in the area of defense, as well as in international relations. We have to know and understand their intentions. In fact, the Americans have done our work, describing precisely their version of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And, actually, the risks proceeding from them.
And, if we rely on the RAND Corporation, the USA are ready to declare hybrid war against Russia on all fronts, including economic, information and ideological, geopolitical and military measures.
Let us consider some of them more specifically (RAND’s Reports: A) Extending Russia. Competing from Advantageous Ground; B) Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options, 2019)
Continue reading, download the Analytical Dossier AD_22_2019
Article reproduced by kind permission of the Author – source: Национальная оборона – National Defense – Translation from Russian to English by Pavel Nazarychev
Acknowledgments
The author expresses gratitude to A. Losev, V. Soloviev, D. Kulikov, A. Shafran, D. Evstafiev for discussion of the RAND report provisions.
Andrej Il’nitskij – Adviser to the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation