International Security and Estonia 2023
raport.valisluureamet.ee
raport.valisluureamet.ee
> Russia believes that time is on its side. To keep the war machine going, Russia is ready [missing a 'to' here] raise the stakes. Russia seems to believe it can “bomb” Ukraine to the negotiating table.
Really they did a pretty good job. I could do better (as a native English speaker), but it would a lot of effort. My rough drafts (which is all you find here) are much worse.
Russia uses cyberattacks to support its strategic objectives (e.g., causing fear and weakening society’s resistance to the aggressor, disrupting the functioning of the state, and creating information noise to make it difficult to distinguish reality from disinformation). The Russo-Ukrainian war confirms that cybersecurity measures 12 make it possible to withstand cyber espionage, cyber sabotage and influence operations.
In democratic world we should respect dialogue and avoid using rethoric of enemy.
Russia looked at US actions in Iraq etc and apparently had an irrational attack of imperial atrocity envy, blended with greed over the mineral-rich areas of Eastern Ukraine.
Neither empire is wholesome and good, but the Russians are almost wholly crap at militarised colonialism, while the US is fairly competent at it.
However... Russia is much better at subversion and bribery. Given Jan 6 and the wholesale co-option of the far right of the Republican party - which is most of it - only someone very naive would believe that the US and NATO aren't in danger of being subverted from within. It almost happened in 2020 and it could still happen in 2024.
My suspicion is that Ukraine is part distraction, part attrition campaign against NATO, and part proxy war with China, with Russia as willing (because naively stupid) intermediary.
The real front is the internal politics of each NATO state.
Hungary is already lost, the UK is severely weakened by Brexit, Germany was compromised but is recovering, and the US has some very serious problems with infiltration and subversion.
Which are not being taken seriously enough.
Are they, actually? Vietnam, Afghanistan etc..
The moral authority that Americans claim, to justify their nations' heinous crimes against humanity, simply doesn't exist. Americans AND Russians ought to be shunned for their nations' war crimes.
But, you know, those doing all the healing of the victims, have been keeping track:
https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf
"Thus, the intense debate revolving around casualty figures is an important element in the discussion of whether the population supports such interventions or not. It is therefore not surprising that the media, and even parts of academia, be it ideologically motivated or guided by other interests, use starkly sanitized figures (see Chapter 3: “The Numbers War”) And this has been quite successful: In a 2007 poll, Americans estimated the number of killed Iraqis at less than 10,000.
However, should the number of Iraqis killed from the 2003 U.S. invasion until 2012 actually be around one million, as the analysis of the existing scientific studies presented in the present study suggests, this would represent 5% of the total population of Iraq – a number which additionally indicates the extent of the corresponding damage inflicted upon society and the infrastructure. "
“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face.” U.S. General Stanley A. McCrystal in his inaugural speech as ISAF Commander in June 2009.
"However, should the number of Iraqis killed from the 2003 U.S. invasion until 2012 actually be around one million, as the analysis of the existing scientific studies presented in the present study suggests, this would represent 5% of the total population of Iraq .."
Of course Americans' aren't going to own up to the magnitude of this crime. But it should be noted that this report was issued in 2015 - and a lot more death has happened since then. 5% is a conservative estimate.
There's also the question of "when" when talking about a percent. The population of Iraq in 2003 (when the war started) was around 26 million. Their exceptionally rapid population growth is ironic when talking about us killing off a large chunk of their population, but relevant nonetheless. You end up with this weird scenario where Iraqi lives are measured (for those using percentages) less meaningful each year that passes.
Ultimately using percents is probably just a bad idea, and it's not like it's necessary to contextualize here how killing whether hundreds of thousands of some low millions of people, primarily civilians, is a really awful thing to do, let alone in a war based entirely on fabricated evidence.
After Trump was cleared, I’ve started thinking that the US is just going through another Red Scare.
The Republicans concluded Paul Manafort, for example, "represented a grave counterintelligence threat" and "created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign" while acting as Trump's campaign manager. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/18/sena...
The problem is that those were mostly just 644 seemingly random, primarily conservative, "real" Western individuals. For instance David Horowitz [2] was a "Russian troll." Others included individuals who had written books on the US constitution, a conservative news editor, and so on. So basically whatever conservative individuals were discussing was labeled as "Russian disinformation" which the media (and congress) then simply took at face value and repeated.
Incidentally Twitter also knew that the "Russian disinformation" stuff was, itself, largely disinformation. They were able to determine Hamilton's entire list by simply looking at their API calls. While there was lively internal debate about whether they should go public with this information or not, and they did push back in private, they ultimately chose to remain publicly silent - just as the mainstream media is now also doing, leaving me to link to rando sites in lieu of where these stories ought be.
The one thing I'm certain about is that reading the book, 20 years from now, about whatever's happening now - is going to be interesting.
[1] - https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilt...
That is not backed up by even the overly breathless Twitter Files coverage.
Post #3: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029780179075073
"Unlike #ReleaseTheMemo, this one is primarily being driven by data from Hamilton68."
The Wikipedia article covers substantially more involvement than Twitter bots.
So any investigation carried out by our intelligence community can be well expected to have also taken Hamilton 68 as an authoritative source. It's something akin to the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree. A -> B -> C -> D. But when it turns out that A is invalid, suddenly so is everything else that used it. So that entire article needs to be rewritten from scratch with consideration of the sources and their relationship to data that has been shown to, itself, be genuine disinformation.
One other small thing I'd mention here is that I think the chances of this having only happened or applied to Twitter are very near zero. We simply don't have access to e.g. the FBI Files, or the Facebook files, or the NYTimes files. Which is part of the reason why I said I'm quite looking forward to reading the book about today, in 20 years!
I don't know why you'd assume that if Twitter saw through it immediately (as evidenced by their discussions in that Twitter Files thread).
And it just continues on endlessly. Every bit of evidence, no matter how flimsy or obviously false, made its way through the proper channels - so long as it supported the desired narrative. This is not something that can be dismissed as incompetence even if you hold our intelligence community to an abysmal standard. And I see no reason to think that this has changed.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_weapons_laboratory
The Trump White House and Senate Republicans definitely didn't want "yep, Russian involvement" to be the conclusion of the 2016 investigations. Very different situation, and a lot more evidence from a lot more venues (including successful criminal convictions).
I'm not implying that it was only the CIA, but rather that these sort of situations tend to defy simplistic explanations. It's a lot of different people with a lot of different motivations. And those motivations are often going to drive them to come to the conclusions that they want to come to, exactly as happens in literally every other large organization in existence.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_weapons_laboratory
There's a real problem in spy-hunting that the people hunting the spies may themselves be compromised. Was a problem with the Cambridge four https://www.nationalcoldwarexhibition.org/schools-colleges/n...
https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/106708-000-A/panic-in-the-balt...
Video is in French, and has no subtitles.
(yt-dlp gets the VTT file, but it appears to be empty).
Did someone say Global Defense Initiative (GDI)? Someone over there has played C&C a bit too much. :D
But they got the sides mixed up. It's more like Nod. (Which is a name taken from to "The Land of Nod" in Genesis, which was located to the east of Eden).
Can you give some examples of what you are talking about here, and in what countries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...
Are you talking about the left and the right in the USA?
Who aside from modern US Republicans is giving them a pass?
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-corbyn-interview-russia-ceas...
Until recently, both Dems and Reps were happy to fund and expand NATO, which is basically and anti-russian expansion org. Now Republicans seem to have an issue with that though.
I just don't understand what you mean by "Russia has gotten a pass?"
The goal of NATO is to defend members against invasion. Who tends to invade those nations? Russia. BTW, I am fully in support in NATO.
I think it's fair to say that NATO is an anti-Russian imperialist organization.
I see lots of such posts by my lefty friends with nary a mention of Russian culpability.
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/its-not-okay-for-gro... https://www.afr.com/world/europe/chomsky-we-re-approaching-t...
What a lazy answer! for sure, it is colonial. During the imperial time, during soviet time and now in the east of Ukraine. In all periods, Russia tried to destroy the local population/settlements and tried to build Cossak/Russian defense lines.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_imperialism
You don’t have to look that hard to find actual displaced peoples—the way the Russian Empire burned down all of Ossetia, the way Stalin ejected most of the population of Chechnya after that, the way Crimean Tatars constituted the bulk of the population in the Crimean peninsula and then suddenly Russians and Ukrainians did for some reason—there’s plenty. (If you really want to get into the history, care to find some speakers of the North Slavic languages for me?) It’s that the example does not seem to be a good one.
The last part is so much bullshit thst it isn’t even really worth considering. (Every sentence in the whole of official Soviet history that includes the word kulak is bullshit.)
While the Right as a whole is leaning stronger and stronger in at least silent support of people like Putin (Christian defender of the white race and all that), the Left does not have this problem. There is a small crew of commies and tankies that drool over Putin, but us left-leaning folk laugh at them as much as anyone.
Right now the world is in a process of reevaluation, and academia is a huge part of this. Educational institutions have realized they have been teaching Russian history all wrong, and it SHOULD be taught through the prism of imperialism. It's kind of amazing, considering that even looking at the last 100 years, Russia has been on a rampage of conquering and subjugating nations from East to West.
Before anyone tries, please do not compare this to ill-fated American adventures. Last I checked, Vietnam and Iraq are still not part of the United States.
Seeing people draw this parallel was surprising to me, as I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world: Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany.
Indeed I’ve gotten this list from a GEO Magazine special issue dedicated to colonialism, showing on a map where each of those countries had their colonies between ~1400 and 1915. OTOH Belgium isn’t directly mentioned, so perhaps the list is not exhaustive.
Is this even a debate? Do you need an analysis also showing that the UK was a colonial empire? The second bit is trivial, it was called the Russian Empire. The first bit is also trivial, they had colonies in North America, for example.
> I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world
Russia is (historically) a European country. It only has land in Asia because of imperialism and colonisation.
If you look at e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism there’s a really long list of countries under British colonialism. Russia has such a short list, it’s no wonder it’s not considered a (former) colonial power.
Indigenous peoples living in Russia like Mansis are simply not known about, while everyone has heard of Incas, Apaches and Comanches and their fate. The actual Russian-Russia is pretty small and borders Eastern Europe. Most of the territory you see on maps has historically belonged to indigenous peoples and is still dominated by them in many regions outside of major cities, wouldn't surprise me if the majority of land area of Russia to this day had ethnic majority of non-Russians. Their culture and language has been suppressed for a long time to turn them into loyal Russians, the same way US and Canadian and many other governments destroyed traditional lifestyle, forced resettlement, forced indigenous children into state schools and so forth. The difference from historic colonialism is that it's still happening in present day, and on a scale that has not been seen elsewhere in a long time - by that, I mean the war in Ukraine, also colonial in nature in what motivates Russia, and how they disproportionally conscript ethnic minorities to fight and die for Russia.
Anglo-american histography is fairly self-centered on these topics, lots of focus on American slave trade and colonialism by Western Europe, but very little on what happened in the rest of the world. This feeds into perception that the colonial history of the Americas is unique, that only blacks have been slaves, that only western countries have been colonial, etc while we have a large country in Europe even in 2023 that wants to establish politic and economic control over a nation of 40 million people, exploit them in every way, and impose foreign language and culture on them. And it's been like this for centuries.
If you want to get started somewhere, then I'd avoid publications that explicitly set to prove or disprove colonialism. Instead, read a balanced history of Eastern Europe and Russia, especially from the perspective of smaller nations if you can, and make up your own mind. You may discover that the life of farmers in Latvia in early 19th century wasn't that much different from Antebellum South. Same overall story, different setting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...
It gives another perspective that’s often ignored how US and European foreign policy has played part in shaping what Russia is today.
I don't think Russia should have been able to dictate the terms of NATO enlargement, but I do think the way that we enlarged NATO, combined with the lackluster way that the west attempted to engage with Russia was a foreign policy failure.
Watch the video.
An interesting 2014 read on their inclusion re: national defence matters: https://icds.ee/wp-content/uploads/2014/Juhan_Kivirahk_-_Int...
While only roughly 300,000 to 450,000 of 1.3 million of Estonians have ethnic ties to Russia, 73% are near Estonia’s border with Russia:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/et-peop...
This YouTube provides an animated history of Estonian borders:
However, it generally follows the pre-1917 borders of the Governorates of Estland and Livonia.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=352476
I was unable to find a map overlaying pre-1917 borders and current borders.
So the border is old but the ethnic borders are very new and based on very recent Russian colonisation.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Narva
Of note, “The status of Narva was resolved in a July 1917 referendum, when the district population, at that time roughly equally divided between ethnic Russians and Estonians, voted to attach itself to the newly autonomous and soon to be independent republic of Estonia.”
One could move quite freely by 1970-ish.
Except that you could not have permanent residence in Moscow and Leningrad.
this is a weird construct, we were not willingly part of soviet union, not not willingly former
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_Soviet_Socialist_Repu...
Was the process of a joining the the USSR ever a willingly thing a country could choose to do or not to do?
AFAIK, the process was something more like Russian army invades your country and says "Congrats comrades, you are now liberated and part of the Soviet Union", rather than "Hey, would you like to have a democratic vote on joining our Soviet Union? No hard feelings if you don't want to, we can still be friends."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Austrian_Anschluss_refere...
The same "international community" lead by a number of imperialist and colonialist countries still at the time maintaining protectorates and colonies all around the world whose local populations fought with huge toil for their independece?
That would be like the pot recognizing and verifying the validity of the kettle's blackness...
OK, touché! True, most of Europe was a mess back then, with every country trying to establish an empire or defend itself from being invaded by one. There weren't many countries you could count on for an independent perspective. You had to be pro $SOME_EMPIRE and against $SOME_OTHER_EMPIRE. Unless you were Switzerland, there was no middle-ground option.
If you're looking to history - this event mirrors Kosovo, just with roles reversed. An ethnic minority, geographically isolated, within Serbia declare their independence. This is rejected by Russia and backed by the US who ensures forces are on the ready to "enforce" Kosovo's independence. The big difference is that the one remained relatively peaceful with no further largescale escalation. Ukraine, by contrast, was determined to retake Crimea and clearly had the full backing of the West. So, in many ways, this war started 9 years ago.
[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-a...
With the "minor" difference that Serbia was committing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, while no such thing happened in Crimea.
> The big difference is that the one remained relatively peaceful with no further largescale escalation. Ukraine, by contrast, was determined to retake Crimea and clearly had the full backing of the West.
That's completely false. Crimean border has been more peaceful than Kosovo-Serbia border.
It should be unsurprising that the folks who stayed tend to be the folks who support the Russian annexation. The opinion of those who fled matters, too.
We can look at past populations though. [1] Ethnic Ukrainians have never been more than a sizable minority in Crimea. Their peak was 26.5% in 1970. And indeed there was a sharp drop in Ukrainians from 2001 to 2014 (going from 24% to 16%), though that was following a downward trend from the 1989 to 2001 census as well.
So if we take a high end estimate and say the real number was 25% Ukrainian, you'd still likely end up with a poll result of ~74% instead of 83%.
I'm skeptical of any referendum of a large group of people that gets a 96.77% result. Mr. Rogers wouldn't poll that high.
It's unclear whether they're saying 96% of Tatar's supported Russia, or "only" 60%. I'd assume the latter for balance, but the writing sure does suggest the former. In either case it's the same story. The reason for the absurdly high poll numbers overall is that ethnic Ukrainians boycotted the referendum.
After they had forced their military bases on us, there were elections where only one candidate for each district was allowed and of course only candidates who supported the soviet union could be elected, it was a totally fake election. Then the new "parliament" voted to join the soviet union. So some stupid russians still say "but you joined voluntarily!!" and so on.
It was a process with people both greatly against it and enthustiastically for it in the local populations, does that count?
history is history, but although they werent "willingly" part of ussr, the fact of history is that many estonians (and latvians) pretty willingly welcomed the nazis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Estonia...
Ok, i stopped at that line, that's when you know it's not a report but rather it's propaganda
That's sad coming from Estonia
From the Kremlin:
"Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself."
Putin doesn't want a "new USSR". He wants a Commonwealth. If its good for Brits and Canucks and Aussies and Kiwi's, it'll work for the rest of the world too ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_St...
Its the USA that doesn't want to see this commonwealth form and become economically viable as a trading partner with the EU, because not only would it indeed represent an economic bloc that would be overwhelming for the US' intelligence services to corrupt, and usurp .. as they are wont to do .. it'd also be a superpower that even China couldn't handle.
Which is why the USA is doing everything it can (Ukraine coup) to ensure this unity never happens.
They don't force anyone
> Putin is scared of old soviet union nations joining Europe
I don't think Russia is scared
They are worried Europe became an american military base with long range weaponry
https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/how-many-us-military-base...
> They're free to do so.
Nobody said the opposite
So why did they invade Ukraine then?
There is bad in both sides
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia...
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/attacks-schools-quadru...
During the first months of the invasion when the Kremlin was searching for powerful symbolism, one of the symbols they tried to use was a Red Flag Granny: https://rg.ru/2022/04/12/babushka-s-krasnym-flagom-stala-sim....
They even installed some hastily-made monuments to her, which had to be removed just weeks later after the Granny apologised to the Ukrainian media.
Media Propaganda is not nearly equivalent to official state policy.