This is the game everyone is playing: turn-based play-by-forum-post PvP MMO. And the only way to win is not to play.
You’re kidding, right? The more chaos they sow, the more political acrimony they create, the more they fuck with us, the more we bicker and melt down while they step into the geopolitical void we leave behind. They’re smart, though, so should they choose to do that, we won’t ever be able to trace it to them. It will look like some dude in Manila or something because it probably will be, funded by Russia. Would t surprise me if stuff like that started happening several times per month. It would be them telling us we are vulnerable, causing panic and making us spend vast amounts of money on stuff that never before was a national priority. That’s basically the golden rule of offensive counterintelligence.
I just meant that it doesn’t make sense to stir things up right this second. They have their candidate in pocket, about to enter office.
I think it is too early to know if it turned out well or not. Getting rid of a brutal dictator like Gaddafi is always a good thing. Conflict afterward is to be expected since any type of political opposition is imprisoned or shot. Libya had 3 years of vaguely democratic government after Gaddafi’s, during that time Libyan people enjoy political freedom unlike they ever had under Gaddafi.
Obviously, if ISIL ends up taking over Libya that would be worse than Gaddafi, but ISIL controls a pretty small area in Libya and AFAIK aren’t making recent progress.
The US played a supporting role in the overthrow with Britain and France being the primary force. I’d argue that US did too little and acted too late. Rebel forces were in danger of being wiped out in Benghazi before the west acted, resulted in the death of the many of the original pro-democratic forces. Acting faster and more decisively would have strengthen the pro-democratic forces in Libya.
Your assertation and Instant0 that Libya would be better off if the US had done nothing, makes two assumption A. that ISIL is going to win and/or the civil war will be so awful that living under Gaddaffi is preferable B. That if Gaddaffi remained in power that ISIL wouldn’t have appeared in Libya. I think both assumptions are dubious at best.
I think that’s where you’re making an incorrect assumption. They don’t like Trump for any reason other than they very likely have some type of leverage over him and he is stupid enough to play their game. I have high confidence that the people in the intel community working in international counterintelligence are sweating bullets right now. Trump allows them to sow discord. They fair far more in the strategic move of causing domestic American chaos than they do in any tactical engagement through Trump. He’s wholly unable to recognize or defend against it. As we navel gaze and argue, they will aggressively advance their policies to rise in the European power structure, just as they have done both in Crimea and Syria. Chaos and disorganization here is a far far larger reward to them than having a friendly dimwit in the office of the president.
I’d agree with this. I think the powers that be in Russia regard Trump as an embarrassing twit, especially as for all of his definite down sides, Putin is nothing if not competent, and there is a strain in the Russian nomenclatura that really respects actually, you know, knowing shit and being able to do stuff. Clinton was a bad thing for them because she, in many ways, is just like them, in terms of being a technocrat, politically capable of ruthlessness, and able to get stuff done.
Trump, not so much. So there’s a double benefit I guess. Incompetence plus the great chance to stir the pot. With Washington constantly embroiled in pissing contests and circus shows, there’s no doubt Moscow is going to make power plays somewhere.
This is hilarious. If it was really the Russians, huge props for the balls of steel and a fantastic sense of humor.
I was in Riga a couple years ago getting trashed with some locals because they kept buying me shots of vodka with tomato juice and because I like to drink vodka with tomato juice. They were expressing how terrified they were that Putin will march in and take their port. I insisted that Obama and NATO would never allow that to happen and that those fears are totally unfounded. I distinctly remember exclaiming in my intoxicated state that “Putin can suck my ass.”
Quickly learned that was not too wise when 4 thugs surrounded our table and my hosts said “You must now run.” Which we damn well did.
Over the past couple weeks, I continue to look back on that memorable night and be amazed that these folks were exactly right to be afraid and that I was the naive one. We’ve got a president elect in Putin’s pocket stating that we may not honor our NATO commitments. I’m sure all of this has turned out much more successfully than Putin ever could have imagined. And I’m just stunned by the turn of events.
This cool anecdote is even cooler if you imagine that dialogue in a Latvian accent.
-Tom
And this is why I always kept my drinking in Riga to upscale places, usually hotels with foreigners. Fun town though!
This long but really interesting Politico article says basically the same thing.
Putin’s long game is to create chaos and distrust in the west.
Fourth, the diplomatic side of this non-linear war isn’t a foreign policy aimed at building a new pro-Russian bloc, Instead, it’s what the Kremlin calls a “multi-vector” foreign policy, undermining the strength of Western institutions by coalescing alternate — ideally temporary and limited — centers of power. Rather than a stable world order undergirded by the U.S. and its allies, the goal is an unstable new world order of “all against all.” The Kremlin has tried to accelerate this process by both inflaming crises that overwhelm the Western response (for example, the migration crisis in Europe, and the war in eastern Ukraine) and by showing superiority in ‘solving’ crises the West could not (for example, bombing Syria into submission, regardless of the cost, to show Russia can impose stability in the Middle East when the West cannot)
Essentially it is much easier to pull down the west than to build up Russia. Trump being the ultimate Chaotic leader is super useful.
Dictators always believe that democracy is weak because is disorganized. Even many people on actual democracies believe chaos to be a weakness.
It is a weakness and is also a strong point of democracy. Chaos emerge in democracy, and many solutions are considered, the people in power change, new ideas enter and old ideas die, society is refreshed. The stability of dictatorships don’t stop change, it only delay it enough so it comes violent.
People don’t actually want progress, because progress mean change, so I could understand that people hate all the things that come with chaos. But fuck you because chaos is a growing pain.
Holy shit. You know it’s bad when our own intelligence community is telling some of our closest allies not to share intel with us because we’d have to put it in reports to the Executive Branch and they’ll just courier it over to the Russian Embassy.
On the other hand, there is a prime opportunity for intelligence misdirection there as well…
One of my little pleasures when reading QT3 is the irony of increasingly outdated thread titles as time passes. This one definitely gives me a chuckle every time (e.g. replace “Secret CIA source claims” with “Everybody agrees”)
Tangentially related, but I’ve always thought that the FBI’s Elicitation Brochure (PDF) is a good outline of tactics used in offensive counterintelligence, at the person-to-person level.
Shhhh! Your post has the potential to prompt someone to update the thread title. This in turn will surely lead to the Fourth Qt3 Forum War. We’re still recovering from the shock of having the “Stupid things Donald Trump says” thread title changed!
Me too. It gives some perspective, since society have the memory of a fish.