Reflectii

It has now been more than 100 days since the leaders of NATO gathered in June for a major summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. With the war raging in Ukraine, this summit came at a crucial time for European security. Next year’s summit in Washington is symbolically important because it marks the 75th anniversary of NATO’s founding. To make sure that the next summit is a success, a lot of progress has to be made on some key issues. One hundred days on from the last summit, a lot of work remains to be done.

American foreign policymakers often wonder aloud why much of the world has such an anti-American reflex. Why the “Ugly American”? Graham Greene would never have written a novel entitled “Ugly Russian” or even “Ugly German”. Not just Iran considers the US the “Great Satan.”

To identify the essence of modern “color revolutions”, it is advisable to carry out a typological comparison with the “classical” revolutions of previous historical eras. Comparison can be made based on the following components – goals; publicly articulated ideology; social composition; organization; implementation technologies. Understanding the specifics of revolutions of a new type will allow us to raise the question of finding new effective tools to counter them. One of the main problems of such counteraction today is the use of outdated means against them, the arsenal of which was developed from the experience of past revolutions.

S. M. Shirokogorov believed that the basis for the classification of ethnic groups are: “firstly, anthropological or somatic signs, i.e., structural features of the body – skeleton and soft parts – and coloring, signs unconsciously recognized by the ethnic group itself; secondly, ethnographic features, i.e., complexes of customs and a general way of life and, finally, thirdly, linguistic features, i.e., the language of the ethnos” (Shirokogorov S.M. Ethnos. p. 37 ) .

The post-Soviet phase of the hybrid war, which began on February 24, 2022, including the “hot” part on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR, revealed to the general public the wretched and uncompromising side of information and psychological operations carried out by the enemy and directed both inward, to control its population, and outside – i.e. on us. After just a few months of operations on the territory of what turned out to be a very well-prepared enemy and the accompanying bitterness of the losses of Russian military personnel and volunteers, it turned out that the conflict exists not only on the ground, but also in our heads. The local population was subjected to the most powerful influence of unconventional psychological and information means, turning “civilians” into neo-Nazi battalions, terbats and fugitive “patriots”. How could we have missed this and how did it work?

Italy on Wednesday announced it will suspend an open-border agreement with neighboring Slovenia, citing an increased threat of terrorism in Europe due to violence in the Middle East.

On September 9th a federal court ordered Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to remove a 1,000-foot line of buoys from the Rio Grande. The buoys are part of Operation Lone Star—a Texas initiative to secure the state’s southern border, stop the smuggling of drugs and contraband, and interdict transnational criminal activity. Although the judge’s opinion was based on the obscure Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, it raises the issue of state authority over immigration.

The Pandora Papers exposed the financial secrets of powerful people in more than 100 countries, leading to a worldwide crackdown on tax dodgers, money launderers and the white-collar professionals who enable them.

So much sheer nonsense has been talked about the use of information and “facts” in political argument, that I thought it might be useful to make a modest attempt to set a few things out clearly, so as to reduce confusion, and explain how things actually work. I’m going to cover two issues: first, how we can think of “truth” in politics, and second, how governments handle information and the legal and political issues that surround it. I’m going to try to be as factual as possible, without getting drawn into controversy.

Poland is unprecedentedly important nowadays, but Germany still remains in control of the EU’s foreign policy. What changed over the past year, however, is that Berlin has finally decided to jump on Warsaw’s Russophobic bandwagon in an attempt to lead this trend. Its policymakers decided to do so in order to most effectively advance their country’s national interests as they now understand them to be in this new environment. The Kremlin must urgently acknowledge this reality and formulate policy accordingly.