(CNN) CIA official: China wants to replace US as world superpower. Quoting CIA’s Michael Collins,

“By their own terms and what Xi enunciates I would argue by definition what they’re waging against us is fundamentally a cold war, a cold war not like we saw during the Cold War, but a cold war by definition. A country that exploits all avenues of power licit and illicit, public and private, economic and military, to undermine the standing of your rival relative to your own standing without resorting to conflict. The Chinese do not want conflict,” Collins said.

I agree, although the tone almost implies that it’s the fault of China. The fault is ours, a major failure of U.S. policy. Historical inevitability contributes to the outcome.

On June 11, 2014, this blog kicked off with The Nine-Dotted Line. Since then, “soft power” has appeared in at least a dozen articles. Of particular relevance are the Pivot to Asia series.

I have not found it useful or desirable to disclose my politics. But the subject of China is so politically charged, you would perhaps interpret what follows as political, rather than open source analysis. To dissuade you, this brief disclosure:

• A social, secular liberal, favoring the use of public funds and resources to foster human development.
• Favor environmental causes  and sustainable development.
• Appreciate the efforts of intelligence community to keep us safe in an extremely challenging threat environment.
• International outlook in defense of liberty, but  don’t equate the welfare of multinational corporations with the welfare of the U.S.
• Eclectic economic ideas that do not correspond to the political spectrum. This article may persuade you also, to unhook your economics from politics.

That’s enough about me. Refer to it when I offer a bitter pill.

Since the French Revolution, epochs of world order have lasted between 10 and 80 years. This span allows for differences of opinion as well as the punctuations of major conflicts. After World War One, the intervals became shorter. Bush’s New World Order of 1991 lasted a mere ten.  In 1994, reversing a campaign pledge, Bill Clinton renewed China’s MFN status. Quoting MIT’s The Tech,

Echoing the case made by George Bush when he was president, Clinton said he was convinced the Chinese would take more steps to improve human rights if the issue were separated from the threat of trade sanctions.

“This decision offers us the best opportunity to lay the basis for long-term sustainable progress on human rights and for the advancement of our other interests with China,” he said at a news conference announcing his decision to extend China’s most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status.

On December 27, 2001, China’s most favored nation status was made permanent, effectively retiring trade as a tool of foreign policy.

Clinton’s kindly thoughts were followed by statements from the Bush Jr. administration that were remarkable in the impotence of their tone, seemingly requesting the voluntary restraint of China to not exercise their burgeoning influence. During the second Bush administration, the evisceration of the U.S. industrial base became severe. At the same time, the multinationals successfully conflated their own prosperity with the welfare of the U.S. blue collar labor force. At the time, these arguments were made by multinationals and importers:

• The U.S. now had an “information economy”, rendering the actual manufacture of goods obsolete.
• China was creating jobs for Best Buy sales droids.
• The welfare of the nation was best described by economic indicators highly dependent on China growth stats — which, in reality, measured the continuing evisceration of the U.S. economy.
• Both political parties are to be blamed. The lure of cheap China goods, with the inherent buy-now-pay-later deficit plan, was politically irresistible. At one point, it was calculated that a CFL light bulb made in the U.S. would cost a few dimes more, too much for patriotism to bear.
• Elements of the media, and of establishment intellectuals deserve blame.  The benign nature of China trade was repeated ad nauseam by almost everyone with a word processor.

No allowance was made for the simple fact that in the Rust Belt, people were ejected wholesale  from the work force by  practically irreconcilable mismatches of their training or aptitude with the job market. They could work in service positions, with incomes reduced to poverty levels. Somehow, the cost of living came to be influenced by the cost of a cell phone or a TV set, instead of bread on the table.

The above has been politicized by extremists, so that it is almost impossible to separate from association with nationalism, racial and religious intolerance, and various extreme beliefs that we hoped were in eclipse. The problem deserves the attention of every person of  liberal persuasion, and every internationalist. Politics has nothing to offer; political attitudes and doctrines formed in prior times do not apply.

Let’s consider it strictly as an economic problem. We must still bear the torch of liberty, but to be successful. solvency is required.

This has been a failure of U.S. foreign policy.  It should humble the intellectual establishment, co-opted and snookered into the belief that it would be good in the long run. If we could be so stupid so long, what can we expect of ourselves in the future? A characteristic of this recent failure is that the policy worked about long enough to pass the expiration of it on to the next generation. Generational thinking punishes generations yet to come.

The failure is measured against the span of a world-order epoch . As epochs now tend to last a few decades, what would have been a measure of success? Might some aspects of Michael Collins’ presentation be problematic for generations yet to come?

Next: historical inevitability, circulations of the elite, and sustainability.

(Politico) Bolton says US not seeking Iranian regime change. Quoting,

“Our policy is not regime change,” he said during an interview on Fox News. “We want to put unprecedented pressure on the government of Iran to change its behavior. And so far they’ve shown no indication they’re prepared to do that.”

A reasonable goal is always good. But Iran’s government is a case of multiple personality disorder.   How do you influence a psychiatric case?

Iran’s various Freudian parts are:

• The religious establishment, who exercise control through the pulpit and via the bonyads, immense private “charities.”
• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who control a large slice of the economy, both military and non-military. It has at times been speculated that the IRG has more power than the religious establishment.  The comparison is problematic, comparing unquestioned legitimacy to hands-on-levers. The conventional military establishment has little public voice.
• The “bazaar”, formerly the principal economic system, and which was a key player in previous revolutions, is no longer a principal actor, but important nonetheless.
• The aggravated jobless rural youth, despite spontaneous demonstrations,  is not so far politicized.
• A secular elite, who live a concealed Western lifestyle, tolerated for their necessary expertise.
• A civil government that has some of the elements of representative democracy, but is basically subordinate to the religious establishment. Why does it exist at all? It probably has roots in something like the Pashtun jirgas, a chaperoned system to blow off steam, be heard, and provide input to the national consensus.

The Freudian parts fracture along these lines:

• Religious intensity, obligatory jihad  versus secular culture.
• Old versus young.
• Economics: bazaar, IRG, and bonyads.

Nearby Pakistan is not totally dissimilar. Although Iran is not a failed state, and Pakistan perpetually teeters on the category edge, Pakistan  is also fractured, with something resembling jihad in   perpetual war with India. The economic damage is entirely self-inflicted. The common diagnosis: In contrast to progressive societies,  Iran and Pakistan are trapped into servicing the equivalents of grudges.

Pakistan, trapped by internally generated misery, is a nearby example of stasis typical of the region. Will U.S. sanctions force change, or result in a similarly unpleasant stasis for Iran? Let’s count the ways:

• The IRG stokes war to keep their reason-to-exist. Closing of the Straits of Hormuz, though temporary, results in a U.S. counter strike which is interpreted as aggression. This would be very useful to the hardliners.
• The spontaneous eruptions of rural youth acquire a political tinge. This results in repression with mass executions. This has precedent.
• In the civil government, the hard liners grab power from the moderates, replacing Rouhani.
• In fact, they could go further, with the goal of returning to the revolutionary fervor of 1979. To forge a new monopoly on power, the hard liners reinstate heavy indoctrination of the masses, focusing on “the Great Satan.”
• Because it’s so traditional, they  grab some hostages.
• The moderates hang on. Avoiding provocation, Iran initiates back channel negotiations.
• Iran cheats so badly as to make the above worthless..

You may be more creative, adding to the above. Here I offer a heuristic I’ve found useful for prediction:

For a list of enumerated events of unknown probability, assign equal probability to each.

This gives the a priori probabilities:

• chance of negotiations = 28%
• chance of positive outcome to sanctions = 14%

Here a priori means without any special knowledge of the situation. It is the best we can do without a gambler’s edge, or some kind of special knowledge of Iranian society.  If the sanctions are informed by clandestine means, they may have better chances. But the above numbers are the best we can do with open source.

With such dismal odds for the success of sanctions, this is another opportunity to suggest B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, referenced in Russia, proposed Syria cooperation with United States; Is Russia a Rational Actor? and related articles.

If you’ve read about the Skinner Box, your reaction may have been that it is too hard to implement in practice, requiring major revisions of U.S. administrative law. With Iran, it’s much easier, because the primary export is oil. Simply take charge of Iran oil sales.

The  Iraq  Oil-for-Food Programme precedes. Marred by corruption, it had a different purpose, and hence a different structure, than the current purpose demands. This requirement is for a finely modulated tool that offers Iran specific sales in return for individually minor concessions. For example: the such-and-such Martyrs Brigade to be withdrawn from Syria in return for the sale of X barrels. Pick any feasible metric: foreign militia deployments, missile inventories, subversion, provocations,  and develop a trade for each.

As with Russia, the ultimate goal is not the particular trade, but to influence the internal conversation, causing rational self-interest to squeeze out the irrational grudge-mantra that underpins Iran’s aggressive aspirations.

Think blue sky. Everything has a price.

(Reuters) Russia confirms proposed Syria cooperation with United States.

For both amateurs and intelligence pros, this poses a fascinating question. Since

• Assad is despised in the West.
• U.S. ire at Russian hacking of our elections is going ballistic.
• Russia has actually increased hacking activity.
• Russian aggression in Ukraine, and subversion in Eastern Europe have frightened a moribund NATO into new dynamism.
• Assassinations on Western soil. Yes, dear Russians, Salisbury and other “special tasks” do count.

why would they make the proposition?

There are two possibilities, which may exist in combination.

• The Russians don’t understand the Western mind. They don’t know how we think, or how we respond to Russian behavior, which is divided between show, presumably for the purpose of influence, and substance, which is for the benefit of Russian aims.
• The concept of the Kremlin, and Russian military, as having tight unity of purpose, is false.

The first must play a part, or it would manifest in Russia’s internal conversation. Western ideas about the power structure of Russia, which may also be misinformed, have these varieties:

• Putin is Russia; the “most powerful man in the world”.
• Putin and the Kremlin “inner circle” are Russia.
• Putin, the “inner circle”, and the “clans”, which are major divisions of interest, comprise a Russia of sometimes common, sometimes competing interests.

The Russian proposal on Syria cooperation is the end product of one of the above, but it is not a rational product.

Foreign policy of many nations has an above-board  representation in diplomacy, and in clandestine organs as well. The two are frequently at odds. In the Soviet era, many Russian ambassadors, to the extent they were even aware its presence in their embassies, found the KGB an annoyance, and they were definitely out of the loop.

In modern Russia, the above-board and clandestine organs are both present. Unity of purpose should be achieved at the top. Yet it is clear to us, if not to the Russians, that their clandestine efforts are undermining their diplomacy. If Russia is a rational actor, this is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to happen. Subversion of the U.S. political system is supposed to make us more persuadable, not less. Hence this derivation:

• If Russia as a whole is a rational actor, election hacking would have stopped. Therefore Russia is irrational.
• Russia’s government is composed of individually rational actors.
• The combination of these individually rational actors is irrational.
• The likely reason: Conflict between rational actors.

All this occurs against the background of the man of mythic power, Vladimir Putin. But the myth is contradicted by history. Such power has not existed on the world stage in modern times. Russian irrationality is compatible with a Putin who lacks complete control.  Yet the public and press are captivated by the illusion of it.  So let’s enumerate the possibilities:

• Absolute, or complete control. Total command authority for an unlimited number instances. In today’s world, only Kim Jong-un approaches this, but it is beyond even his grasp.
• Detailed control. Total command authority for a limited number of instances. Every time it is used, some group  is annoyed. Excessive use results in erosion of authority.
• Provisional control. Command authority varies, depending upon clans or groups which gain or lose.
• Control by mediation, the internal equivalent of balance-of-power. Russia has clans.

Since the level of control is partly determined by how tough the ruler is perceived to be, there is a penalty in backing up, backing out of previous policy decisions. This may contribute to the perception of irrationality.  If Russia stopped election hacking, a number of clandestine groups would feel a sudden loss of purpose. This is dangerous to provisional authority.

The sum of Russian irrationality is something like a national psychosis that has at times affected the U.S. and other nations. (Pakistan may be the premier example.) How do we deal with a crazy Russia?

If one goal of U.S. foreign policy  is to influence Russian behavior for the better, it’s been a miserable failure. There is a tendency to politicize the failure, which makes intelligent approach to the problem impossible. The Russians are a sophisticated group of people, individually sane. We want to influence the behavior of this group.

Sanctions have had nil effect. We lack explanation. One possibility is that, if Russia is as a whole irrational, it lacks the capability for internal dialog about sanctions, the effects, the reasons, and remedy. Blocked by irrational factors, such as the national pride that afflicts so many countries, the response to sanctions is somewhat like the offender who can’t be knocked down by a Taser. We may shortly discover this about Iran as well.

Modern behavioral psychology offers replacements for overtly coercive measures. Psychology is about  individuals, not nations. But B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning could result in the dialog within the Russian clans that we have been unable to induce by the brute-force of sanctions.

With that in mind, I commend to you Advice for a New Secretary of State, Part 5; Nikki Haley, Russia, and Advice, Part 6.

On July 7, Mike Pompeo defended the results of the Trump-Kim summit. (Reuters) After Pyongyang put-down, Pompeo stands by ‘difficult’ denuclearization talks. Quoting,

“When we spoke to them about denuclearization, they did not push back,” Pompeo told a news conference after two days of talks in Pyongyang that ended on Saturday. “The road ahead will be difficult and challenging and we know that critics will try to minimize the work that we’ve achieved.”

This is a difficult problem. There would be no point in contradicting  Pompeo, unless I thought the problem was being mishandled, and my analysis would clarify.  Pompeo is entitled to put a spin on the talks, apropos of encouraging Kim to do the right thing.

There have been two reports since then:

• Increased activity at a plutonium processing plant. (Independent) North Korea has increased nuclear fuel production at secret sites, US officials say.
• At a missile factory. (Telegraph) North Korea renews work at long-range missile factory, US intelligence officials say.

After the plutonium plant accelerated, some respected retired diplomat or other, possibly connected with 38 North, said it was just what you would expect of a dictator who honestly intends to dismantle his nuke program. With the increased missile construction, I guess some respected retired diplomat or other could just keep going with the same argument: to dismantle a program, you enlarge it. You could prove the existence of God this way. This is a weakness of diplomats in general.

Instead of a proof of Kim’s benevolent intents, an uncomfortable insight is offered. In (12/26/2017) N. Korea Missile over Japan; Kim Jong Un’s Fakeout Move, Kim’s behavior amounts to a nasty trick to seize control of the narrative. Whether the sequence was accidental, or intelligently conceived by Kim is of the most vital interest. So here’s the reprint:

The recent face off between Kim Jong Un and the Trump Administration followed this sequence:

• Warnings by the U.S. of the possibility of military action if North Korea continues to progress towards operational ICBM capability. The threat has been made in association with nuke and/or missile testing, but with a somewhat crumbly “red line” that has been an intermittent weakness of U.S. diplomacy for many years.
• The usual dire threats of nuclear catastrophe by North Korea towards the U.S.
• Verbal posturings from the Trump Administration that have tended to alternate between the strike option and diplomacy. The most recent of these is a definitive statement (WP): a strike option is ready to go.
• In response, Kim threatened to (The Hill) target the vicinity of Guam with a missile attack of an unspecified nature. (Splash, explode, or EMP?)
• The Trump Administration implied this would trigger the strike option.
• Kim deferred the Guam strike.

Superficially, it appears a U.S. “win”,  with Kim backing down. But he changed the narrative, the story of the strike threshold, making it contingent on a strike on Guam. In public dialog, it transforms “Strike North Korea to disrupt their missile/nuke program” into “Strike North Korea in retaliation to a hostile act.”

We proceed with the assumption that the above was not an accidental success story, that it was Kim’s intelligent conception. “Narrative” turns out be the wrong word, because this is not spin. Kim actually shaped events, converting a war of words into ground facts. Kim controls the game. If this is so, Kim possess a weapon, in the form of intelligent strategy, that the U.S. has not been able to actualize with the same precision.

The manufacturing activities reported by the intelligence community suggest that Kim may try again. This time, ground facts precede words. Mattis: “North Korea ICBM Not a Threat Right Now” Part 2 considers possible triggers for a U.S. strike:

• A missile-born  atmospheric detonation in the Pacific.
• A long range test of ICBM standard trajectory, possibly with a survivable reentry vehicle, although it is not required to pose an EMP threat.
• A deployment surge.
• An orbiting satellite, or constellation of satellites, of plausible size and mass to contain a nuclear device.
• A threat of unconventional delivery. The channels of communication relating to the North Korea threat, which are currently vibrantly clear, would suddenly become opaque.

These were thought to be out-of-play after the summit, but they are now in play again. One of the above, a deployment surge, is consistent with the satellite reports. It is now reasonable to consider how a deployment surge could be used by Kim to his advantage. Some narratives:

• Kim surges the missiles out, readying them for rapid in-situ conversion to operational status.
• In this period, Kim’s language notably lacks hostility, encouraging the idea that negotiations are possible, lacking reference to ground facts.
• With all the parts neatly arrayed for quick assembly, the missiles are fueled and the warheads attached.
• Conversion to operational status occurs in the most inconspicuous fashion within the constraints of North Korean technology.
• The North’s rhetoric shifts from bland to harsh. The strategy is  nuclear blackmail.

Recently, statements have appeared  in the press that, because the missiles uses liquid fuel, they are meaningfully less of a threat than solid fuel rockets.  Let’s dispose of that now.

North Korea manufactures  UDMH, a hypergolic propellant and nitrogen tetroxide. The rockets can stay fueled for a long time. The launch time is not as instantaneous as with solid-fueled rockets, but it’s not slow. The last U.S. missile in the nuclear deterrent  with similar technology was the Titan 2, which could be launched in a minute. So let’s give North Korea an hour.

But what kind of blackmail? The CIA’s assessment of Kim is that he is fundamentally sane with respect to self preservation. So this is not likely:

• Kim demands that sanctions be lifted or he will launch.

But this satisfies the definition of sanity:

• Kim states that in the event of a U.S. strike, he will launch. To launch against ground targets has a touch of insanity. But it’s not an empty threat either; an EMP strike is borderline.

Or he could drag the game out, with:

• The rockets will be removed if sanctions are lifted.

and

• A peace treaty is signed.

A surge supplies Kim with many more options, in both demands and longevity of the game. In fact, Kim defines the game. Examine the events of last December, and decide whether Kim is in fact a sufficiently sophisticated actor to justify these scenarios.

The viability of possible measures cannot be analyzed via open source. So I am not a critic of the administration’s policy, and I don’t have an opinion on further steps.  But the  events of  2017 suggest some simple advice:

Don’t escalate the words. Don’t talk about it.

If you’re going to do something, just do it.

The readership of this blog tends to be from closed networks. But more readers are  visiting Intel9.us directly. If you are an individual reader, and have a question or direction you are interested in, you are invited to submit via contact@intel9.us.  Your email address or other identifying information will not be published. Your question may be paraphrased.

This website favors the broad spectrum of Western, democratic, pluralistic values. Questions that reflect these values will receive  consideration.

This is not a tip line. Please do not volunteer information not available in open source.

I feel a little sorry for Maria Butina. (Reuters) Exclusive: Accused Russian agent Butina met with U.S. Treasury, Fed officials. But CNN, always keen on human interest stories, takes the cake with The Russian accused of using sex, lies and guns to infiltrate US politics.

Unlike Anna Chapman, Butina was not directly controlled by the SVR. Her effective controller was Alexander Torshin,  long a member of the Kremlin’s inner circle. Torshin is widely believed to be a Kremlin representative of the Kremlin criminal faction, or “clan”, as the Russians say. (Bloomberg) Mobster or Central Banker? Spanish Cops Allege This Russian Both.

But unlike Chapman, who was not a productive spy, Butina was working the system with panache, netting Paul Erickson, a former Reaganite.  Erickson’s sentiment has plenty of company. Dana Rohrbacher, with his strange Russian affinities, was also a Reaganite. (NY Times) He’s a Member of Congress. The Kremlin Likes Him So Much It Gave Him a Code Name.

But as Butina’s espionage job description was not inked in the blood of the SVR, she may have not understood where she stood  on the scale of grays that leads from mere affinities to espionage. Quoting CNN,

In a search of their property, a prosecutor said, they found a note in Erickson’s handwriting titled: “Notes on Maria’s Russian patriots-in-waiting organization.” A second note referred to a Russian spy agency, reading: “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” The context of the notes is not clear.

Irrespective of who received  the FSB offer, this casualness is not in accord with meticulous secrecy of the  professional spy. It has shades of   the reckless amateur, like the latter behavior of Andrey Lugovoy, who four years after poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, sent Boris Berezovsky (Telegraph) a tee shirt with an explicitly threatening message. Butina even told (CNN)  the Senate Intelligence Committee that  Konstantin Nikolaev was paying her. What kind of spy testifies truthfully to a U.S. government committee?

Butina sounds more like a girl desperate to escape from Siberia, and willing to sell her soul to do it. But in the U.S., many forms of soul-selling are indictable offenses.

It appears that while Torshin managed Butina’s  job,, Konstantin Nikolaev managed the money. (USA Today) Report: Alleged spy Maria Butina paid by Russian billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev. She was kept on a tight leash. (CNN):

Butina fretted about her finances while in school and told colleagues she had a scholarship that covered her tuition but not her living expenses, according to one person who knew her. In addition to her internship, she held part-time jobs on the American University campus, a university spokesman confirmed.

CNN quotes an unnamed friend:

Butina, who had told classmates she hoped to one day open a consulting firm in Washington, mentioned that all of her dreams were disappearing. She said it was no longer safe for her to return to Russia, either.

We have this distillation:

• Butina was being squeezed financially, by inadequate financial support from the Russians.
• She had the notion that returning to Russia would not be safe. Only an explicit threat, of Russian origin, could reverse the expected reward for service to the Russian state.
• She contemplates an offer from the SVR to become a spy, with a note to that effect in her apartment.

Conclusions:

• Butina is likely the victim of  manipulation by the Russians, to force her to accept SVR employment. Perhaps the  next step of her “development” involved transitioning to secure work habits and clandestine communications. So they wanted to squeezer her into becoming  a “real spy”.
• She did not understand the legal difference between a domestic political operator/lobbyist, and an agent of a foreign power. The job activities can be so similar,  the differences  blur. It all depends on who you’re working for.
  
• To work for the SVR, which she may have been resisting in spite of severe pressure, she would have had to give up something that she didn’t want to part with. What was it? The burial of her identity beneath a rigid mask?

In factual comparison, she may be a little less gray than Harry Dexter White, or the numbers of communist sympathizers in government between the 30’s and the 50’s, the lingering overhang of a romantically viewed Russian Revolution. Yet people are still arguing about whether White was a spy.

So why prosecute Maria Butina? These reasons contend in the mind of a prosecutor:

• A strong FARA case. The F.B.I. is very reluctant to submit a case to federal prosecutors unless it’s very strong. Winning is part of the mystique that serves as a deterrent, and keeps  strong the incentive for the defendant to plea-bargain.
• A conviction, even a plea-bargain, strengthens future cases against unnamed U.S. citizens, of whom one is likely Paul Erickson.
• To raise awareness of Americans in politics. That friendly Russian could be a Russian agent.  The prosecution, or follow-on cases, must serve as a cautionary tale.

A cautionary tale of what? It would be easier if we had a word for it. The word “treason” has had some play recently. But in the U.S. prosecutions for treason have been restricted to strongly symbolic political offenses, with the Constitutional requirement of two witnesses to the same act.

So those who spy, conspire, or subvert are prosecuted under a miscellany of other statutes, for which there is no single bad word. “Betrayal” might be general enough, but it has no legal meaning. The offenses in this article are all covered by FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. But the name of the act sounds more like a technical violation than betrayal of your country.

At least two former Reaganites, former warriors of the “Evil Empire”, have been caught up in this moral confusion, It should be no surprise that some Republicans a generation younger than Dana Rohrbacher and Paul Erickson are naive about the dangers.

What’s missing is the equivalent of a stop-look-listen rule for interacting with Russians. The confusion has to do with Russia’s current dual nature. In place of Bolshevik  romance, it has a decent domestic government, compared to what came before. It has a system of state capitalism that superficially resembles our own.  The similarities serve as a cover for a foreign policy of subversion in the West.

The case of Maria Butina has lurid aspects. As with Anna Chapman, it involves the attraction of influential men on the basis of power, ego, gain, and sex, cloaked as “mutual interest”. Once you understand the approach, it’s very easy to recognize.  But political operatives, professional spin artists, are themselves strangely vulnerable in their search for the edge that will take them to the top.  The Butina story is an old one, but it has value in deterrence.

To all members of the political strata, three word of advice. Ironically, they were coined by a Reaganite:

Just say no.

I don’t usually comment on U.S. strategy, but to write nothing would be a statement in itself.

The Russians hacked the election. This is a fact. So why did Trump choose to deny it on the most visible platform on the planet, a summit? It’s been described as  “inappropriate”, “a betrayal of  our values”, or “a win for Putin”. On the mild side, it has been speculated to be “some kind of carrot”,   a form of positive reinforcement for Putin’s better behavior. John Brennan calls it treason: Former intel chiefs condemn Trump’s news conference with Putin.  Dan Coats has put his job on the line:  Trump clashes with intelligence chief over Russian threat.

Prediction is not about reading minds. In place of it, we have empathy, not the emotionally expressive kind, but the kind that enables one to “get inside somebody’s head.” It amounts to running another person’s thought processes inside one’s own brain. It does not lead to infallible understanding, but it gives the predictor an edge over someone to whom the person in question is a complete black box.

I recognize a possible explanation for Trump’s words in his career as a real estate developer in NYC, particularly before Rudy Giuliani cleaned the place up. In the 70’s and 80’s, behind the fancy facades of Midtown, there lurked the Mafia. Everything that had to do with construction, the Mafia raked off from. Everything that had to do with permitting, politicians raked off from. Even inside Trump’s own organization, there was the threat that money for a purpose, such as buying loyalty, would end up in the hands of the rapacious.

At the time, it was said that the Mafia owned the sidewalk you walked on. Even today, the Mafia has a strong presence in the concrete business. To avoid having your concrete “watered”, you had to make the right friends. To have your garbage collected, you had to have the right friends. To avoid having your building vandalized in myriad little ways, to avoid union “trouble”, you had to have the right friends. The Italian Mafia lingers with a lower profile. But organized crime, and the threat it poses to real estate, and the many unions involved, will never go away. This was what Trump had to grapple with in his crucible years.

There is an address popular among leaders to those that they command: “I expect the best of you”, or, “I hope you will live up to my expectations.” The root of it is the idea that trust is a gift, which the recipient will try not to devalue. It’s about personal connection. Shades of this can also be seen in Trump’s approach to Kim Jong-un. (Politico)  Trump praises Kim Jong Un as ‘very honorable’.

Dealing with the Mob, there is no law. There is only personal connection. This is is the origin of what some have called Trump’s overly personal presidency.  This is behind Trump’s desire for personal loyalty of members of his administration. If you wanted to heal relations with Don Corleone, how would you approach him?

I wouldn’t have suggested exonerating Putin. On the other hand, beating Putin over the head, as a matter of principle, or to deter what is already happening again, has been shown ineffective.  Yet on the other hand, Trump could argue it’s a throwaway, a gesture he can give without material consequence. If this is so, Trump will continue to support the efforts of the intelligence community to disrupt the next wave of Russian hacking.

Dan Coats, stand strong.

On the eve of the summit, the journalism of CNN and Reuters does not measure up to the event.

The CNN front page displays “Analysis: Putin reached goal befoe the handshake”, which links to With Putin, Trump insists he’ll be ‘different’ Quoting,

Vladimir Putin has stood the test of time through four American presidents, but from Donald Trump he is looking for one thing in particular: to be elevated on the world stage, away from global isolation...That goal has been achieved before their first handshake here.

Imagine for a moment that I am tasked with authoring an executive summary for the upcoming Trump-Putin summit.  There isn’t room for historical justification or the semi-literary style so popular with foreign policy journalism. And it has to be self contained, so I can’t tell POTUS to go read Kennan’s Long Telegram. Instead, here’s a quote from the first modern Russia analyst:

...From the very first ghastly dawn of her existence as a state, she had to breathe the atmosphere of despotism, she found nothing but the arbitrary will of an obscure Autocrat at the beginning and end of her organization. Hence arises her impenetrability to whatever is true in Western thought. Western thought when it crosses her frontier falls under the spell of her Autocracy and becomes a noxious parody of itself. Hence the contradictions, the riddles, of her national life which are looked upon with such curiosity by the rest of the world. The curse had entered her very soul; Autocracy and nothing else  in the world has moulded her institutions, and with the poison of slavery drugged the national temperament into the apathy of a hopeless fatalism...

These are the words of  the first modern Russia analyst,Joseph Conrad, from “Autocracy and War“, quoted from page 44 of The North American Review, Vol. 181, No. 584, July 1905. You might know Conrad better for Lord Jim, Nostromo, or Heart of Darkness. But with apologies to Vladimir Putin, these words from 1905, if not literally true today, are the foundation of modern Russia. And much of the foundation shows through cracks in the facade. Conrad was interested in Russia because the land of his birth, Poland, was the plaything of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Mind these words, and don’t fall under the spell:

Western thought when it crosses her frontier falls under the spell of her Autocracy and becomes a noxious parody of itself.

• Russia’s   ruler, Vladimir Putin, is a romantic nationalist, torn between a reverence for the past that Conrad condemns and a future that, with increasing urgency,  he wants to bring to Russia – but on his own terms.
• Putin is not Russia. He is a product of Russia,  half-modern and half traditional. He has not yet reconciled the two. His power is based on balancing constituencies; his freedom to act is overestimated in the West.
• Russia is not Putin. Russia is better described as the ghost of Conrad’s description. But as with all things about people and nations, there are many descriptions, useful in spite of errors.

In 1953,  following the death of Stalin, collective leadership was restored to the Soviet Union. Until 1985, with the death of Konstantin Chernenko,  the Soviet government was characterized by bureaucratic  inertia, what foreign affairs wonks call “policy.” The Soviets were more inclined to continue a behavior than to suddenly change or innovate. Collective leadership deprived the Soviet Union of tactical flexibility. The elderly, collective leadership did not approve of  Khrushchev’s playing  poker with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he was deposed as premier in 1964.

• Putin has tactical flexibility that the old system of collective leadership lacked.
• The stability of Russia is not based on tradition. It’s based on Putin.
• Because stability is provided by the role of one person, agreements could come undone very quickly.
• Russian foreign policy identifies the U.S. as the strongest state. So it is Russia’s goal to reduce the power of the U.S. Many aspects of Russia’s foreign policy are explained by traditional balance of power.
• There are various explanations for Russia’s hostility towards the West:
  1. Recreate the Iron Curtain as a tier of buffer states.
  2. Hold onto Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
  3. Eastward expansion of NATO. George F. Kennan was emphatic about it at the time it occurred. It may be Kissinger’s pov also.
  4. Putin’s  traditional mindset, and the strong presence in government of former KGB. By this line of thought, it would have occurred anyway.
• The collective leadership of the Soviet Union was composed of professional  politicians. In the new Russia, these are replaced by KGB, industrialists, and  organized crime.
• In the Soviet Union, the KGB was subservient to the collective leadership and the party. In Russia, the KGB is the leadership.
• The rate of assassinations on foreign soil, and the broad use of poisons against external and internal opponents, is new.  Although the Soviet Union used poisons, the  leadership had a normal human fear of them.
  
• Putin can’t back up, or he becomes vulnerable to Russian nationalists.
• Putin can’t be placated, because he is not Russia.
• Russia is a natural resource state, subject to the “oil curse” of civil corruption.
• Russian business practices are not compatible with national security.
• By reducing the mobility of Russian assets, sanctions are a helpful counter to subversion cloaked as economic activity.

How can we avoid the “spell” described by Joseph Conrad,. which is thinking we understand the place? We could avoid the illusion entirely with a simple stratagem: Watch and wait for a change in behavior. Russia engages in many inimical activities, including  subversion, assassination, and unsafe intercepts, with no measurable benefit to Russia. Cessation of these activities would convey meaning that words cannot.

But since it is Russian dogma to subvert a stronger power, what is the catalyst for change? The reasoning that the U.S. is the greatest threat is  moronically outdated: The U.S. gives strength to Europe, the historical source of threats.

It’s not something that can be solved by a summit.  I’ve suggested that the Skinner Box approach, rapid fire carrot-and-stick, might be a help. Kissinger pioneered “linkage” for the same purpose. This could change the way Putin, consummate tactician, plays the game, but not the game itself.

Only the rise of China can do that. At some point in the future, Russian strategists will identify China as the greater threat. This prediction, about two adjoining land powers that were at war in 1969,  has more historical precedent than any other.

In the meantime, play the game.

Edit: CNN) Two people poisoned by same nerve agent used on ex-spy, police say. Read down.

The tally of arrests in the Iranian bomb plot against the MEK has reached six: (VOA) Iran Diplomat Arrested in ‘Plot’ to Bomb Opponents in France.

We can now understand Mike Pompeo’s May statement about Iranian ops in Europe. (Slate) Mike Pompeo Says Iran Is Carrying Out “Assassination Operations” in Europe. What Is He Talking About? He was talking about the elaborate covert preparations made by Iran’s Quds Force in advance of actual assassinations, creating networks of operatives,  provision of weapons, safe houses, surveillance of targets, and escape routes.

For some insight into the real world complexities, John le Carré ‘s The Little Drummer Girl is a fictional but  well informed (le Carré has  an intelligence  background) account of a Mossad operation against a PLO assassin in Europe in the 70’s. A dry, factual account of the assassination of Leon Trotsky is given by Pavel Sudoplatov in his autobiography, Special Tasks.

As with a spy network, the elaborate network created to support assassinations is typically discovered by a dangling thread, poor tradecraft, visibility, or  pattern that does  not disclose the full extent. A network is typically followed for years without arrests, with observations of a few operators progressively  leading to the discovery of others. Only imminent threat forces investigators to take action, possibly leaving undetected operators in place.

The exception to careful planning is post breakup Russia. While at their best, Russians still excel at the undetectable murder, their reputation has been sullied by high profile embarrassments, amateurish exploits involving high tech poisons, such as the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko,  and the contamination of half of Salisbury with Novichok A-234. It suggests that, contrary to the almost automatic “Putin approved…” theory of assassinations, there are multiple entities in Russia that initiate, including the SVR, and multiple entities that execute, including possible freelancers.

This hypothesis has just received a little extra support from  (CNN) Two people poisoned by same nerve agent used on ex-spy, police say.  This is likely the result of bungling; the Russian operatives seem to have had a poison leakage problem. Tales of the old KGB reveal they had their share  of drunks and bunglers. But  at the institutional level, they strove for perfection. There would have been consequences; the operatives would have been cashiered.

As with the recent misadventure of Russian mercenaries in Syria (Newsweek: ‘A Total F***up’: Russian Mercenaries in Syria Lament U.S. Strike That Killed Dozens), and the Litvinenko hit, this implies  multiple entities, not inherited from the Soviet Union, with varying degrees of competence, which may not be in complete  control of the Kremlin. A sentence from one of Putin’s speeches following his reelection appeals to “the clans”, not to take actions that damage Russia.

If you dig into the subjects of the above  paragraphs, you’ll notice that these operations come in three noxious flavors:

• With the use of simple  means, such as bombs and hand weapons, an operation requires a large footprint, with elaborate logistics, deception, concealment, and elaborate preparations for escape.
• With exotic poisons, the fact of murder can be concealed. An operation can have a small footprint, as with Litvinenko and the Skripals.
• At the height of the dark art, the Russians commit murders that speak as unsolvable crimes, such as (my opinion)  the death of Mikhail Lesin (see Mikhail Lesin, a Kremlin Hit, a Theory, Part 1, Part 2, and Takeaway) and (my opinion) the death of Gareth Williams.

Iranian operations have been of the first category, requiring large footprints vulnerable to discovery and interdiction. The disadvantage of discussion  in advance of  public disclosure is the broad suspicion of political motive. Quoting The Slate,

It appears that the secretary, who was CIA director until a month ago, was either revealing some classified information or relying on some fairly sketchy reports in his charges against Iran. Given the stakes of this conflict, he should reveal what evidence he’s relying on.

This Pompeo could not do, without compromising  operations to trace and dismantle the Quds networks. But even in May, Pompeo’s assertion was highly plausible. As a Quds Force policy, assassination has been institutionalized for decades, and is widely employed. See  (The Diplomat) Did Iran Really Plan a US Hit Job? and  (WaPo) U.S. officials among the targets of Iran-linked assassination plots.

From 1979 to 1992, Iran may have had the most active assassination program  operating in the West of any sovereign state.  The total number of hits is not definitively known. A low count (Wikipedia, List of Iranian assassinations) of 18 includes only high profile political figures. A count of  162 given in (Iran Human Rights Documentation Center) No Safe Haven: Iran’s Global Assassination Campaign includes Iranian expatriates for whom political motive may exist but is not obvious. The murder of Gelareh Bagherzadeh had all the appearance of an assassination. The alleged perpetrator, Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, is (Chron) currently on trial for what appears to be an honor killing.

Iran and Russia share the distinction of running the only assassination programs now threatening the West. Russian means tend towards the sophisticated, with operations varying from sophisticated to amateurish-as-if-by-freelancers.  Iran’s methods are more conventional, hand weapons and explosives. requiring larger, more vulnerable footprints. But there are no amateurs among the Quds Force.