Reuters: Chinese state media cheer Xi-Trump meeting, say confrontation not inevitable. This was preceded by (Washington Post)Tillerson’s visit to Beijing, which the Post summarizes as a win for China. The Post notes  the remarkable pivot, from a campaign that demonized China and made a saint of Russia, to the polar opposite. In the old days, of which too much lingers in vocabulary, this would have been explained as “balance of power politics.” Today is radically different, because the real dangers come from tiny-to-small actors, state and non-state.

Ten years from now, it may be different again. China is much more adroit in the use of soft power than the U.S. The Trump administration seems blind to this: (Reuters) U.S. backs out of Latam development fund in sign of policy shift. In twenty years, it is likely that the railroads, airports, and mining concessions in South America will be controlled by China’s state capitalism.  When they have built the Nicaragua canal, South America will have passed to China’s sphere of influence. Since China has larger population and lower labor costs than the U.S.,  it would require U.S. strategists of extraordinary talent and insight to avert this.

But the current problem is with tiny actors. In Donald Trump’s Internal Conflicts, I wrote

… This short note offers the possibility, not probability, that Trump’s points of view will evolve in unexpected directions. It takes note of unexpected diversity in Trump’s selection of his inner circle and unusual expressions of thought…

…It is possible that Trump is changeable. By implication of the above, he may be the kind of person who will recognize, perhaps not immediately, that eradication of our liberal heritage will result in a one term presidency.

This was demonstrated first with foreign affairs, and more lately, with an expressed desire to cooperate with the Democrats.  In real estate all achievements are measured by the most fungible of commodities: money. (Classic examples of fungible commodities are oil, gas, grain, and pork bellies.) Except for the occasional problem of exchange controls, all money is equivalent. One tends to extend the familiar. So Trump may be the first president for whom achievement is fungible. If you can’t solve one problem (Russia), why not another?

Both pivots are the results of  extraordinary challenges. It appears that Trump’s initially naive attitudes towards Russia, and his overconfidence in his ability to judge people gave him a bad case of the leeches. There is the distinct possibility that, completely unknown to Trump, some of his campaign associates were accessories, though not spies themselves, to espionage against the U.S.

In fairness, people confidence in business means trying them out and if necessary, saying, “You’re fired.” The ship of state can’t be managed that way.  But only by turning away from Russia, by embracing the internationalist attitudes of the West, can Trump insulate himself from guilt by association.

Gone with the idea of rapprochement with Russia are the ideas floated in 2017 Predictions; Trump’s U.S./Russia Codominium/ New-New World Order. Excerpting,

• Deliberate exclusion of China from the codominium. As with a bad marriage, there will be attempt to blame the other partner. Subtle provocations will continue, with the motive to induce Chinese retaliation, providing further pretexts. But China will stick to soft power unless pushed to the wall.
• Promotion of economic interdependence between the U.S. and Russia.

and

• The Eurasian codominium warned of by Kissinger is averted.
• A profitable mercantile model with Russia is established.

Trump’s approach to China now reverts to the internationalist model. Without Russia as the favored natural resources state, it’s impossible to construct a self-sufficient codominium.

Since Trump’s concept of achievements is that they are fungible, he reconsiders the South China Sea.  There are things you want to keep, and things you want to trade. It’s key to streamlining a business.

Maybe it’s trading material. I’ll finish this a little later.

This is offered since it is known that Russia is interested in the opinions of independent analysts.

The posture of the Russian government after the U.S. missile strike on Shayrat Airfield is expected. It’s what is called  “boilerplate”, the repetitive material of a document that so closely follows form as to have no information content. At least, we hope that is all it is.

The Laws of War have been violated in Syria to the tune of 500,000 dead. To Bashar Assad, the arithmetic of a little sarin, of perhaps 80 more dead, is too small to matter. Perhaps it was inevitable that the choices of the West to ignore the the conduct of the Chechen wars, of the previous U.S. administration to ignore violation of the “red line”, and Rex Tillerson’s misstep, would encourage Russia to vigorously shield and possibly abet Assad’s actions.

We gave you a special pass on the Chechen wars. We knew your survival was at stake. Syria is too distant for that.

We have our Syrian frenemies, you have Assad, and the Syrian people have nothing. We are bound together by our common enemy, jihadism. What separates us, which is why you are interested in notes such as ours, is the degree to which we balance military advantage against the preservation of civilian lives. You have your calculus, and we have ours.

Our idea is that deterrence of chemical weapons use saves a meaningful fraction of lives in the Syria conflict. What’s a few thousand of 500,000? To us, it’s a lot.

There is danger to Russia in complicity with Assad. If it becomes viral in the Islamic populations of Russia and Central Asia that Russia is complicit in gas attacks, it could boomerang on Russia. This could easily happen, even if by your own standards, your hands are clean. Standards of personal hygiene vary widely.

Such a viral idea could not be controlled even by state media. In your justified fear of the potential for jihadism in Russia, do not make your problems worse by creation of a viral myth.

Reuters Syria Conflict blog: Syrian foreign minister says first air strike by Syrian army on Khan Skeikhoun on Tuesday was at 11:30am and targeted arms depot belonging to Nusra Front.

When an arms depot is bombed, there are inevitably secondary explosions of the high explosive munitions.  This produces what is known as a “fireworks display”, as the munitions cook off and launch randomly into the sky and surrounding neighborhoods. Advanced militaries design their depots to limit this, sectioned  by earthen berms to stop the spread.  In this case, the “depot” was a shack. In Russia denies Assad to blame for chemical attack, a 14 year old girl describes her experience of being less than 100 feet from the shack when the bomb hit it. Requoting the NY Times,

“…she saw an aircraft drop a bomb on a one-story building a few dozen yards away. In a telephone interview Tuesday night, she described an explosion like a yellow mushroom cloud that stung her eyes. “It was like a winter fog,” she said.”

A bomb hit the shack, and the only thing that exploded was the bomb itself? Without enough force to knock her off her feet or even dust her up a bit? She remarks on the effect to her eyes. The implausible coincidences:

• The Assad regime identifies the shack as an arms depot.
• The arms depot contains no conventional munitions.
• It just happens to contain chemical weapons.
• The bomb that hit exploded with weak force, as expected of a nerve agent munition.
• The victims exhibit symptoms of nerve agent exposure.
• There has been no evidence that Al Nusra has sarin.
• Contradicting  practical knowledge, the Assad regime implicitly claims that the bomb succeeds in mixing Al Nusra’s presumed sarin precursors instead of dispersing them.

Dear reader, please excuse the repetition. Sometimes, it makes a difference.

Reuters: Russia denies Assad to blame for chemical attack, on course for collision with Trump. Quoting,

Washington said it believed the deaths were caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft. But Moscow offered an alternative explanation that would shield Assad: that the poison gas belonged to rebels and had leaked from an insurgent weapons depot hit by Syrian bombs.

A previous assertion that rebel elements used sarin is Seymour Hersh’s piece, (LRB) Whose Sarin?, about the August 2013 incident near Damascus.  It shows the power of good writing. But it was completely refuted by the U.N. trajectory study cited by the (BBC) in Syria chemical attack: What we know. Quoting from (pdf, undocs.org) “Identical letters dated 13 December 2013 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council”, document # A/68/663–S/2013/735,

8. In a letter dated 14 June 2013, the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations reported to the Secretary-General, inter alia, its updated assessment alleging that the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic had used the chemical warfare agent Sarin in an attack on the Aleppo suburb of Khan Al Asal on 19 March 2013.

But the difficulties are  simplified for production of binary sarin, which is stored in a bomb or projectile as two chemicals that mix when the bomb is released or the projectile is fired. It is  possible that ISIS could operate a binary production facility. What would happen if the facility were hit by a bomb?

Mixing of the two precursors must be done thoroughly and quickly, or the production of sarin is low. A hit on a factory  would cause most of the contents to separate, rather than combine. Dispersion would be slow and wind driven. Nevertheless, if tons of a sarin precursor chemical, methylphosphonic acid dichloride, was stored on site and dispersed, fatalities could have resulted.

But most significantly, (NY Times) Worst Chemical Attack in Years in Syria; U.S. Blames Assad quotes witness Mariam Abu Khalil, who was extremely close to the impact:

“…she saw an aircraft drop a bomb on a one-story building a few dozen yards away. In a telephone interview Tuesday night, she described an explosion like a yellow mushroom cloud that stung her eyes. “It was like a winter fog,” she said.”

Her recounting does not describe a blast effect, the shock to the body from proximity to an explosion. The absence is specific to a chemical munition. This, and prior use of sarin by the Assad regime, effectively refute the Russian argument.

Reuters: Russian minister: 10 dead in St. Petersburg metro blast – Interfax. A sequence of questions results:

• Is this terrorism? The probability is high, but the question is necessary.  No decent government wants to exacerbate tensions because of the actions of the purely deranged.
• Is it related to the Caucasus? If it is terrorism, the probability is high.
• Are some of the actors Chechen? It gets interesting. As a whole the southern Caucasus contains elements that can be radicalized, but Chechnya is the radical state.
• If they are Chechen, are they disloyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the personal dictator of Chechnya?

These are obvious questions. A more interesting one looms. In 2005, it became obvious that Putin had neutralized the threat of Chechnya by giving it a special deal. To do this, he had to find someone to deal with who could reciprocate in these ways:

• Personally guarantee that there would not be a Third Chechen War.
• Offer services to aid in control of the radical potential of the Caucasus as a whole. Co-opting of radical elements, and counterintelligence.

The extreme of this is that Kadyrov’s Chechnya is allowed strict Sharia law, and (Atlantic) personal dictatorship with impunity. Perhaps this would not have been required simply to end the Chechen wars. But it serves another function; it is an attractant to individuals who would otherwise fall into the jihadist orbit. That it has not been completely successful shows in the large numbers of Chechen members of ISIS. But it could have been worse. The more orthodox Chechnya is, the more resources are available to counterintelligence: informants, operatives, sympathies.

If the above questions are affirmed, Kadyrov’s co-opting has failed Putin twice: in the death of Boris Nemtsov, where close associates of Kadyrov were implicated, and in these metro bombings. The successes, prevention of repetitions of the 1999 apartment bombings, are of course not known. The Russians do not feel quite the obligation of due process for terrorists as in the West.

To neutralize at least some of the perpetrators of the Nemtsov assassination, Russia mounted a police/paramilitary raid into Chechnya with assets from neighboring oblasts. Kadyrov made a statement  that sounded like (WSJ) an open rebellion against the Kremlin, which (RFE)  publicly rebuked him. An RFE article,  The Warlord Checkmates The Tsar, offers a variety of opinions  on the degree to which Putin uses Kadyrov and in turn is manipulated by him.

Some of the ideas tend towards conspiracy, failing Occam’s Razor. The current relationship can be most easily explained as toleration of an ethnic attractant to co-opt Islamic extremism, blunt, and absorb it. It hasn’t been absorbed at all, but perhaps Putin’s solution should be measured by how much worse things could be.

The Chechnya bargain cannot be undone without a third war. Instead, Russia’s response is to strengthen her internal defenses. The merger of the SVR and the FSB security services into a Ministry of State Security will enable a complete internal judicial process, including liquidation, hidden from the public.

This new Russian police-state will facilitate the take-down of widespread terrorist networks, because the target networks will not realize what is happening to them. It’s a terrible thing, to abolish civil liberties, to bring back the troika, because Russia contains a hostile, literally murderous enclave.

But Putin would ask, and this deserves to be part of his Apology: Would you rather have a Third Chechen War?

Reuters:  U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis says Iran continues to sponsor terrorism. Quoting,

“At the time when I spoke about Iran I was a commander of US central command and that (Iran) was the primary exporter of terrorism, frankly, it was the primary state sponsor of terrorism and it continues that kind of behavior today,”

Some hold opinions that Mattis, along with the Marine Corps as a whole, hold a grudge against Iran.  In 2012, Mattis famously said that the three greatest threats to U.S. security were Iran X3. Quoting the Washington Post,

Soon after Mattis was tapped to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East in August 2010, Obama asked the general to spell out his top priorities. Mattis replied that he had three: “Number one Iran. Number two Iran. Number three Iran,” said a senior U.S. official who was present. The general’s singular focus unnerved some civilian leaders, who thought he should pay attention to a broader range of threats.

 I agree with all but the choice of words. Iran is in an expansionist, revolutionary phase, not unlike the early years of the Soviet Union. Unlike any other state adversary extant, it also exports an ideology, with the gleam of the caliphate, something we were hoping would not recur since the downfall of communism.

Along with many disparate groups, Iran incubated and fueled the Iraq insurgency  that followed  the war. It quickly destroyed hopes for a pluralistic democracy in Iraq. The troops under the command of Mattis suffered terribly. Like the best of commanders, Mattis felt every death a personal loss.

The insurgency will resume after ISIS is vanquished. It’s part of the pathos of history, of Napoleon, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, et al. that the theocracy of Iran believe in the lie of their own special destiny. But is it state sponsored terrorism? In Vietnam, the tactics of a very similar insurgency were branded “asymmetric warfare.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Al-Jubeir’s thunderbolt response silences Iran summarizes Iranian actions abroad, attacks on embassies, on the Khobar Towers bombing, etc. He refers to  Iran’s assassinations program, which was very active until the mid 90’s:

Al-Jubeir added: “Iranian agents have links with terrorist attacks in Europe and South America. We did not create these facts. This is the world and this is the proof. We wish that Iran would become a great neighbor. But this depends on both sides. If you want the world to deal with you, then there is a requirement of giving up hostile expansionist policies and return to international norms and practices.”

There have been some pretty complicated intellectual efforts to integrate the word “terrorism” into the continuum of warfare. But a very simple distinction works as well. The word “terrorism” could be inclusive of directed or spontaneous acts that have no strategy behind them other than demoralization of a population — but not much more.

While the 9/11 attacks had some attributes of a decapitation strike, I cannot recall any subsequent incidents of terror, at least in the west, with hints of military strategy.  Al-Jubeir asserts that 2003 terror attacks in Riyadh, claimed by Al Qaeda, implicate Iran. Perhaps they do. The 1998 embassy bombings, claimed by Al Qaeda, were (Washington Post) facilitated by Iran.

Iran is implicated in embassy attacks, assassinations,  use of proxies against American forces, and subversion of neighboring states. But except for the 2003 Riyadh bombings, the special character of the word “terror” is unnecessarily diluted by application to Iran. Perhaps Mattis felt obliged to use the most impactful word. We don’t have a special one for a theocratic state with designs on the entire Middle East.

But what of Saudi Arabia? In (Reuters) Iran rejects U.S. terror claim by Mattis, blames Saudi, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi is quoted:

“Some countries led by America are determined to ignore the main source of Takfiri-Wahhabi terrorism and extremism,” foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted by Iran’s state news agency IRNA as saying.

All monarchies are not the same. While King Salman is supposedly an absolute monarch, Saudi Arabia is more pluralistic than an organizational chart would show. At one time, it was asserted that the House of Saud governs with the assent of the ulama, and that the ulama could cause it to fall. The ulama might be weakening a little, while uptake of western culture broadens. It is still a tribal society, but it’s…slowly…melting.

Saudi Arabia does not officially tolerate terrorism. But there are many wealthy people, who are very astute in moving their money around, even in the presence of official controls. Don’t have a bank handy? We’ll start one. Need an investment vehicle that bypasses exchange controls? No problem. Moving and disguising wealth are almost common skills. Before  achieving cultural modernity, Saudi Arabia became business-multinational.

 Some of the plutocrats involved have blatantly western lifestyles. Out of country, some indulge those carnal pleasures such as can be bought with outré sums. Yet they feel the tug of conscience. They seek to make it right, as once in the west, indulgences were purchased. The expression, understandable by those who know, is “I like to give.” To what is left mysteriously indefinite.

There is no way for the U.S. to stop it. Sanctions would be useless. To change the character of a country requires generations. The House of Saud is in the midst of the attempt to reform Saudi society to at least remove the religious barriers to industrialization. Only after approximations of western attitudes are accepted by the core of Saudi society will there even be the possibility of reform of the ulama itself. And of the Wahhabi madrassa system, which is funded on a more open level.

When that occurs, one of the great “heat engines” of terrorism will finally grind to a halt.

We continue with Putin’s Apology.  As a reminder, an apology is a defense, such as a good trial lawyer might offer. In comparison with the unknowable facts, it could be true, false, or a mix. The only requirement of this apology is that it be favorable to Putin, and not definitively refutable.

(Reuters) Opposition politician Alexei Navalny was detained today. It’s  a symptom of the loss of democracy. This article is about the reasons, related to terrorism, ethnicity, and  Russia’s borders.

Ironically, it became obvious that this blog has Russian readers in the angry response of some Navalny supporters to my conclusion that Putin had nothing to do with the murder of Boris Nemtsov.  Nemtsov Murder, Analysis Notes asserts that the ultimate instigators of the Chechen trigger men  were Russian nationalists upset with Nemtsov’s skillful documentation of Russian involvement in the Ukraine.

In the minds of the best and the worst rulers, there are three threads, country, party, and self.

• Benefit to the country, the justification, the vision.
• The party keeps the ruler in power.
• Enlargement of self, in wealth  or  image, as indispensable.

Even a Mahatma Gandhi has these thoughts, if only in denial. He clearly thought he was indispensable, or he would have given the job to someone else. And perhaps he was. So the above list is not a statement that Vladimir Putin has these thoughts in a specific combination.

Putin’s vision of Russia was of  the preeminent natural resources state. Before the Saudis started pumping to kill fracking, there was every sign this would happen. And Gazprom was slated to become the world’s first trillion dollar company.  The benefit of Putin’s rule, the plus side of the equation, was to wrest Russia’s natural wealth from the oligarchs who grabbed it during Boris Yeltsin’s tenure, and put in the service of the Russian state. Putin is quoted as saying, (NY Times)  “A chicken can exercise ownership of eggs, and it can get fed while it’s sitting on the egg,” he said, “but it’s not really their egg.”

The NY Times article, “Even Loyalty No Guarantee Against Putin“, defines “party” in a new way. The   power base isn’t merely political; it is to a greater extent the economic elite, the new oligarchs. But it does have a political element. The consensus of Russia cannot be formed without it. Is this an example of “intelligent design”, or did it just happen? It succeeds in co-opting every class. Without the elite, Russia would be wide open to organized crime. Now crime is also co-opted, supporting the state instead of running free.

In Putin’s Apology,  there was no alternative to rescue Yeltsin’s Russia. Western democracy had been tried, and failed.

Now the dream of wealth has gone. It would be human nature for Putin’s self justification to focus on his fears. The Russians don’t advertise them.  To do so would weaken their bluff, and play to audiences they don’t want.  But what they are afraid of is extremely valuable to the negotiator, not for intimidation, but for constructive engagement.

Mark Smith of the Conflict Studies Research Centre wrote “Putin’s Nationalist Challenge”, downloadable as a pdf from a China website. Quoting,

In April 2005, the head of the presidential administration, Dmitry Medvedev, expressed concern over the possibility of Russia falling apart if the country’s various political elites (ie regional elites) were not consolidated. This assessment was used by Medvedev to justify the abolition of elections for regional governors.

This language is a little abstract, so let’s draw three fault lines:

• The Caucasus, with a majority of Sunni Islam, contains the nucleus of Chechnya. Two wars have not subdued Chechnya to the position of the other regions of Russia. It is, in fact, a quasi independent enclave, a state within a state, with a large standing army. As with the co-opting of all classes, it demonstrates Putin’s creativity in statecraft.
• Idel-Ural, more of an idea than a place, part of the southern Volga region, the second region of Russia with substantial Sunni Islam presence.

Moving east along the southern belt past the Urals (map), what’s there? Practically nobody! This is why, east of the Urals, Russia’s administrative regions are organized mostly as north-south belts. South of the border are the weak, landlocked Islamic states of Central Asia that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Except for Afghanistan, these seem so peaceful as to be free of threat. These others are Turkic, meaning that in some way, from vague to strong, they have an ethnic affinity with the Turks of Turkey.

Our multicultural society  underestimates these strange bonds. We did not understand Russian outrage at the West’s “persecution” of Serbs in the Kosovo conflict. To the Russians, the Serbs are Slavic, and therefore, “brothers.”

The east end of the belt collides again with chaos:

• The Uyghurs, also Turkic, at the eastern end of the belt, concentrated mostly in western China, with a secessionist East Turkestan Islamic Movement. They have been designated the foremost threat to the integrity of China, and they are hooked up with Al Qaeda. In their numeric superiority, the Han Chinese succeeded in swamping Tibetan culture, but have not succeeded with the Uyghurs.

A narrow projection of Afghanistan in the southern Pamir Mountains connects with the most densely populated portion of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, the Tarim Basin. It is a working corridor for China trade.  in the early stages of the War In Afghanistan, the U.S. imported Uyghur mules. The  U.S. suspected Russia-Taliban link may be an attempt to counter anticipated Uyghur influence.

Southern Russia contains the ethnic fracture line equivalent of the San Andreas Fault. Empty in the middle, it is anchored on the ends by reservoirs of radicalization. It’s quiet now, but that’s the odd thing about ethnic fault lines. Who would have thought that one Tunisian fruit seller could set the Arab world on fire? Might the Uyghurs hook up long distance with the Chechens, with Al Qaeda as the middleman? Open sources are not revealing, but Russian intelligence may feed the anxiety of the leadership.

An intelligence summary might stop here. You have one more task. I can’t do it for you, because it involves your imagination. You work at the job, and the job works on you. How does it work on Putin? How might it amplify his anxieties, and hence his attitudes? How does it affect his sleep, his dreams? We would all like to believe that we make important decisions with rational thought, but the credit may be a lie. With similar motivation, Russia is compiling a psychological dossier on Trump.

Next: How this relates to Alexei Navalny.

Reuters: Link seen between Russia and Libyan commander Haftar: U.S. general, and (Reuters) Exclusive: Russia appears to deploy forces in Egypt, eyes on Libya role – sources. Quoting,

The top U.S. military commander overseeing troops in Africa, Marine General Thomas Waldhauser, told the U.S. Senate last week that Russia was trying to exert influence in Libya to strengthen its leverage over whoever ultimately holds power.

So it’s “influence” again. Perhaps we should consider replacing the Cold War lexicon.  Once we thumb the dictionary and find “influence”, we stop thinking. We have to go beyond the word to define what we are afraid of.

Russia is no longer an ideological adversary, exporting revolution. It exports  a kind  of subversion-via-corruption of  the weak emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. But the practices that we define as corruption are business-as-usual in Russia. In a country such as Libya, where there is no law, and everything is for sale already, there is nothing of purity to corrupt. Russia has a regional export, but not a global one.

The above is worth the words. It might be handy if we really want to understand why we oppose Russia helping Khalifa Haftar, who segued from a prior career as Muammar Qaddafi’s top military commander to U.S. citizen, who lived in the U.S. for 19 years.

Let’s compose a “meme list”, without trying to make them gel.

• Russia is our adversary, for various reasons that have entirely to do with aggression and subversion in Europe.
• Because Russia is our adversary, we are apprehensive of Russia’s support for Khalifa Haftar.
• As a consequence of the U.S. historical tradition of religious tolerance and democracy, U.S. foreign policy in previous administrations has attempted to embrace Islamism without prejudice or distinction. The U.S.  backed Islamists who feigned  the pretense of democracy, such as Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi, and Syrian rebels.
• The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, section 508, forbids foreign aid to individuals such as Haftar, if the “…duly elected” leader “is deposed by military coup d’etat or decree or, after the date of enactment of this Act, a coup d’etat or decree in which the military plays a decisive role.”
• In contrast to the U.S. embrace-without-prejudice of Islamism, the Russians fear it. This is the driver of Russia in Libya. It has no analog  in the genuine geopolitical rivalry of Europe. It explains the Russians willingness to bear high costs of backing autocratic secularists in Syria, and now, Libya.
• Khalifa Haftar is a secularist. His long residence in the U.S. suggests he actually liked it here. U.S. foreign policy gives little or no consideration as to whether the client likes us on a cultural level.

The list is a mix of consistency and contradiction, influencing a U.S. foreign policy that ricochets like a billiard ball off these bumpers:

• The desire to identify, in every revolutionary situation, a group to back with aspirations to democracy. The lure is so strong, it activates the imagination.
• A tendency to view Russian activities everywhere with the same lens we apply to Europe, where there really is a cold war, driven not by ideology, but ethics.
• Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
• Inability to consider the intangible qualities of Libya’s Islamists, of Khalifa Haftar, or to make comparisons of such qualities.

The purpose of the above is to define the terms. It advocates nothing. It does offer a radical course for U.S. policy: to make Haftar an offer he can’t refuse.

Perhaps, under Russian aegis, Haftar will follow the murderous path of Syria’s Assad. Or perhaps the Islamists will.  But unlike Eastern Europe, we cannot base our concern on subversion of Libya. There are no institutions to destroy. Perhaps, down the line, the Russians could sell Haftar some weapons. But there are plenty of markets.

A Russia-Haftar  lockup could be driven by Haftar’s need for  recognition, for legitimacy. He will need it, and the Russians are selling.

Let’s pick up from Fiona Hill, Putin’s Apology; Analysis Part 3 with an examination of KGB culture, which changed over the lifespan of the Soviet state. Nikita Khrushchev’s “Thaw”  actually presaged Gorbachev’s Perestroika, weak in the absolute sense, but profound compared to what had come before.

When a totalitarian leader experiments with liberalization, one of the inevitable scripts is that the beneficiaries end up threatening the leader on either an emotional or physical level. In Khrushchev’s case, it was emotional. The fragility of his thaw shows in how it came to an end. He visited a modern-art show, was shocked out of his wits by the “avante-garde”, and called an end to it.

But it kept melting. Samizdat, the self-publication, typically by carbon copy, and distribution of banned literature, began during the Thaw, and accelerated after. After Khrushchev was deposed, replaced by a troika, and the troika, eventually by Leonid Brezhnev, the “period of stagnation” set in. Stagnation was partly the consequence of the post-Khrushchev leadership that everything should stay the same, echoing the sentiment first voiced by Plato in The Republic — “if we could only avoid change.”

The fear of change, the emotional basis of conservative sentiment, is the root of  repression in all societies not actively in the throes of revolution. The prevention of change reached the highest technical level in East Germany under Erich Honecker. Under his aegis, the Stasi replaced the lethal methods of Walter Ulbricht,  pursuing the development of nonlethal methods of social control. The breakthrough was Zersetzung, “disintegration”,  the total psychological destruction of the individual as an opponent to the state. Quoting from Directive 1/76 (via Wikipedia):

…a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige in a database on one part true, verifiable and degrading, and on the other part false, plausible, irrefutable, and always degrading; a systematic organization of social and professional failures for demolishing the self-confidence of the individual; […] stimulation of doubts with respect to perspectives on the future; stimulation of mistrust or mutual suspicion among groups […]; putting in place spatial and temporal obstacles rendering impossible or at least difficult the reciprocal relations of a group […], for example by […] assigning distant workplaces. —Directive No. 1/76 of January 1976 for the development of “operational procedures”

Unlike their distant relation with external spying, the internal security branches of the KGB and the Stasi collaborated closely, inter operating, and sharing files. Putin’s service with the KGB in East Germany spans the latter part of this period, till the Wall came down in 1989. It does not define him, but it takes an extraordinarily insular personality not to absorb at least some of the corporate culture.

Even though Putin’s vision of Russia is closer to the West than East Germany, familiarity with Zersetzung is like one of the tools of a trade that you keep handy, even if you’re not sure what to use it for. It also defines an attitude that can come out under pressure. Today, Russia is under pressure.

Zersetzung did not work as well in Russia as it did in East Germany. Every society has different nerves and pressure points. In old Vienna, Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis in a world hotspot of the psychological syndrome of hysteria. Not before or since has hysteria been so colorfully popular. It almost seems that in the rest of the world, a cigar is just a cigar.

Among the tricks of Zersetzung were to go into someone’s home, rearrange the furniture, switch the knick-knacks, spoil the food, etc. The Soviets found this was hard to do because Soviet living standards were so low, space so intensely shared, there was no expectation of privacy. Somebody was always there.

The Soviets found that when they tried to embarrass the hell out of Soviet citizens, nothing happened. For example, one of the favorite “techniques” of the Stasi was to mail a sex toy to someone’s wife. Enough of that totally destroyed some Germans. How would you react if you or your partner received one in the mail? Would you be totally destroyed?

The Soviet solution was to remove the individual from life, place him in a psychiatric hospital, and inject him with drugs. Quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn,

“The incarceration of free thinking healthy people in madhouses is spiritual murder, it is a variation of the gas chamber, even more cruel; the torture of the people being killed is more malicious and more prolonged. Like the gas chambers, these crimes will never be forgotten and those involved in them will be condemned for all time during their life and after their death.”

This, not murder,  was the principal  form of Soviet repression during the time of Leonid Brezhnev/Andropov, during Putin’s career with the KGB. Assassination was just occasional.  The techniques were justified by communist ideology, which Putin rejects. But the Russians appear interested in possible uses of Zersetzung, even though it hardly seems effective in the post-Soviet Russia. The application against American diplomats seems experimental. American diplomats, as a population, are not susceptible to the end results achieved by the Stasi. It didn’t work against journalistic muckrakers either. Russia has been lethal to them.

This was Vladimir Putin’s professional environment. He appears to have rejected much of it. He exhibits impulses of personal kindness, as well as a ruthlessness towards perceived threats that the West finds troubling and fear-inspiring. Professional exposure such as his works on the mind in ways unknown even to the recipient. These things occupy mental space.

In part 1, Fiona Hill, Trump’s Putin Advisor, I wrote

One problem I perceive with the psychoanalytic model itself is that it is a model of a mind, not of a mind embedded in society.  Hill’s analysis is referent to Freud and Jung. Mine is referent to Vilfredo Pareto, and his work, The Mind and Society. In my analysis, Putin is inseparably bound into a matrix of unconscious influence that flows both from him, and to him.

There’s a modern saying, “You work at the job, and the job works on you.” Putin’s job is Russia.

Next: How the job works on Putin.

NBC: The Victor Leonov is back. Everybody is wondering, what secrets they are trying to steal? Why didn’t it come in the summer? When I was a kid, vacationing in Atlantic City, it was such a treat to spot a Russian submarine a mile or so off shore.

The electromagnetic clutter in the region is immense. Only the shore-most cell towers are exposed to the ship; the rest are shielded by electromagnetic noise. Military communications are best intercepted from orbit. So, if the Victor Leonov is to have a rational purpose, other than to “test Trump”, what could it be?

In spy lingo, an “illegal” is a spy who is

• A foreign national with respect to the target country.
• Resides in the target country under a false identity, with an intricate forged back story, called the “legend”.

In the past, dead people have been favorites. KGB officers used to visit countries solely to harvest names from graveyards.

It is thought that, after the Abel spy ring was rolled up, the Soviets were not able to rebuild their illegals networks. All of the known breaches of the 70’s and 80’s were due to native American traitors, with the possible exception of Hungarian Steve Weber.

But the Russians did try; the (FBI designation) Illegals Program was busted in 2010. But not by luck, and not by technology. The entire ring, including Anna Chapman, who was retired to wear a bikini, were betrayed by their spy master Colonel Potayev, about whom a Kremlin spokesman said, “We have already sent a Mercader“. He was naming the assassin of Leon Trotsky. Sadly, Potayev died at the tender age of 64. I hope it was not an unfortunate accident.

In  Victor Cherkashin’s memoirs, Spy Handler, he states that the craft of being a spy, of running networks, contacting agents, etc., is a solved problem, that detection of a spy ring due to a failure of correctly executed  “tradecraft” has negligible probability.  I leave it to others to state whether it is true in all places and all circumstances.

But the capabilities of the NSA must give the Russians pause, because they cannot be sure what the NSA can’t do. So the normal means of communication, encrypted email, steganography (messages hidden in pictures), the Dark Web, etc., have an unacceptable risk for a very particular, special kind of message. What follows is mere speculation. I am not an insider.

This is the exchange of cryptographic keys. A key set is a pair of long numbers, typically numbers that have unknown factors. The keys are part of the general method called public key cryptography. The keys are so valuable, extraordinary measures are taken to preserve their secrecy. (In most uses, only one of the numbers is secret, but not so here.) For an illegals ring, an additional secret is the identity of the recipient. The keys are the equivalent of the “secret codes” of World War II.

The most secure kinds of communications known, outside of quantum key, are very short range or directional, with spread-spectrum modulation. So imagine, if you will, the Victor Leonov exchanging keys with someone on shore who carries an innocuous pocket-size device. Aiming the device precisely at the ship, the exchange occurs via a beam so narrow, it cannot be intercepted.

It must be very picaresque, being out on a windswept beach in this lousy weather, pretending to be  polar bear, just to get your secret keys. If I was a spy, I would want to do it only in the summertime.