Comment by meri_dian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meri_dian | Hacker News Reader

I implore everyone alarmed by recent Russian assaults on Western Democratic institutions to get their hands on an English translation of 'The Foundations of Geopolitics' by Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin is a Russian academic and the book is essentially a textbook on how Russia should seek to subvert and destabilize Europe, the US and other Russian rivals in order to forge a new empire for the explicit purpose of ethnic Russian domination of the world.

Dugin is not some fringe academic and the book is well known among the elite of the Russian state. According to the Wiki page:

>"The book has had a large influence within the Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites and was allegedly used as a textbook in the General Staff Academy of Russian military."

More on the book's approach towards destabilizing America:

>"Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."

We must unite in the face of division, both for the sake of unity and because the Russians are actively trying to divide us.

I haven't been able to find a copy of the English translation online. I was only able to get my hands on one because of a connection that works in DC. If anyone knows where to get one online please post a link.

Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics?wpr...

This New Yorker article from March provides a lot of background on Russia's "Hybrid War" strategy and its motivations:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an...

Reading that article left me pretty slack-jawed.

It cites a 2013 article, "The Value of Science in Prediction", by Chief of General Staff of Russian Federated Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov as a canonical text behind the Russian election interference campaign. After reading the New Yorker article, I tracked down a translation of that text here:

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/...

Strange to think that the Arab Spring helped function as a trigger for white nationalist marches in this country.

Yes, it was that New Yorker article that I was remembering. In particular, this bit:

> In 1996, during a summit meeting in Moscow, Clinton went for an early-morning run with Talbott in the Sparrow Hills, near Moscow State University. Clinton had known Talbott since they were students at Oxford, and confided his anxiety. He did not regret the expansion of NATO or the decision, at last, to battle Serbian forces in Bosnia. But he knew that he was making Yeltsin’s political life excruciatingly difficult.

> “We keep telling ol’ Boris, ‘O.K., now, here’s what you’ve got to do next—here’s some more shit for your face,’ ” Clinton told Talbott as they ran. “And that makes it real hard for him, given what he’s up against and who he’s dealing with.”

> Earlier that year, Yeltsin had summoned Talbott. “I don’t like it when the U.S. flaunts its superiority,” he told him. “Russia’s difficulties are only temporary, and not only because we have nuclear weapons but also because of our economy, our culture, our spiritual strength. All that amounts to a legitimate, undeniable basis for equal treatment. Russia will rise again! I repeat: Russia will rise again.”

And yet so far Yeltsin is still wrong: Russia's difficulties appear to be permanent. Population and life expectancy have declined. GDP growth has been low and erratic; currently their economy is smaller than Italy. They rank 131st on the worldwide corruption index. All of these problems are self inflicted.

Maybe so. But time will tell.

In any case, it's not the accuracy of the prediction that matters here. It's the motivation.

And it's also not very charitable. It's an aspect of a mindset that perpetuates the cycle of violence. Long term, it works better for victors to be forgiving and magnanimous. But sadly enough, it's probably too late for that. Maybe about a century too late.

I thought this bit was interesting:

>In 2008,[...] Russian hackers accomplished a feat that Pentagon officials considered almost impossible: breaching a classified network that wasn’t even connected to the public Internet. Apparently, Russian spies had supplied cheap thumb drives, stocked with viruses, to retail kiosks near nato headquarters in Kabul, betting, correctly, that a U.S. serviceman or woman would buy one and insert it into a secure computer.

That's interesting. Stuxnet used a very similar strategy. It was identified in 2010, but could have been in use earlier. So I wonder if the Americans/Israelis got the idea from the Russians, or vice versa. Or maybe they both got the idea from malware hackers. Or employed them ;) Maybe even the same malware hackers. That'd be a trip!

Where is a good place to learn about these things in the future. I'm a bit floored by all this but want to keep tabs on it all too.

That's why it troubles me so much that everyone succumbs to this, like small children. Not just the media that are fueling the divide - but my own friends, making big drama everyday, insulting those with different political views - making the divide even bigger. It really saddens me, especially when I see it among my close ones. It's like mass hysteria, it got completely out of control.

The US "won" the Cold War by bankrupting the former Soviet Union. And then they humiliated its leadership. Putin was Yeltsin's protégé, and watched him dying of alcoholism. He's still angry. And remember, much of his family died in the siege of Leningrad.

So, yes. They have a plan.

The Soviets bankrupted themselves by being Soviets.

Putin is angry because Yeltsin died from alcohol? What US has to do with it? Or with the fact that Putin's family died in the siege (which was USSR faut, by the way, since they've friended Hitler in 1939)?

Putin is angry because the US humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. Which was reflected in Yeltsin's collapse, through depression and alcoholism. And regardless of the causes of Leningrad's sacking, many of Putin's family died there. All of which has given him a rather negative attitude toward the US and its allies.

And by the way, remember that the US and its allies invaded Russia at the end of WWII, after the Tzar was deposed. So it's not at all surprising that Stalin initially allied Russia with Germany.

WW1, not WW2 (I think that is just a typo)

US humiliated Russia? Care to provide some clarifications?

Another excellent speech on reds' tactic is this https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g , old, but I believe relevant

A lot of Putin's ideas about how to subvert and destabilize western powers have apparently also come from Vladislav Surkov.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hi...

Calling publishing some ads in Facebook an "assault on Democratic Institutions" is a bit exaggerated.

The Russians have done a lot more than Facebook ads. I'll give you $100k on ads from Russia is not much compared to the ~$800m the Koch's are said to have put up.

Here's Aleksandr Dugin on youtube talking about Trump's election https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQlNJdR8jo&feature=youtu.be...

I'm curious: other than a will to power, is there any philosophical or principle-driven reason for Russia's actions? In other words, why don't Russians want Western liberal democracy for themselves?

The Russian regime doesn't want Western liberal democracy because it's incompatible with the self-sustaining kleptocratic autocracy that they are running.

Individual Russian people may or may not want Western liberal democracy for any of a variety of reasons (they “not” side in part driven by regime propaganda), but those preferences are not controlling regime actions.

No, double digits of KGB and CPSU staff had bank accounts abroad just like Chinese CCP members do now.

And more power, means more money for them, just like usual.

To disrupt Russian political establishment, you do same things you do to disrupt criminal gangs. Plain and simple.

Gathering all of NATO's paratroopers and sending them to Moscow will work too, but at a bigger expense

A similar question, but specifically related to "…in order to forge a new empire for the explicit purpose of ethnic Russian domination of the world." – what is the purpose of this in this day and age, it would take generations by which time the people initiating change would be dead, is it just an archaic form of racism?

In Russia the word "democracy" has some negative meaning. After Soviet Union collapse there was a period (1990-2000) of "freedom" with economic downturn, poverty, hyperinflation, corruption, raise of criminal activity and a war in Chechnya. By the way, Wikipedia says [1] that ecomomic problems might be a result of reforms suggested by American economists. Russia began recovering only when Putin became a President.

Putin likes to remind about this saying things like "Do you remember what the country was before I became the President? You don't want to return to that time, don't you?"

People in Russia want higher salary (median salary is $500/month) and reasonable mortgage interest rates (now it can be as high as 12%), not more democracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia#Transition_t...

I didn't read the book but it is worth noting that those ideas are Dugin's personal opinion (of course there might be people who support it, for example there are people that dream of reviving Soviet Union). It is not official Moscow's policy.

Also ethnic Russian domination might be a bit difficult because in Russia itself there are many different ethnic groups [1] that wouldn't approve this idea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia

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