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Found 8 results

  1. “Gerasimov’s Doctrine” – a key to Russian Success On the 22nd of September at the Finnish government’s Koningstedt residency in Vantaa a meeting took place between General Velery Gerasimov the Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of United States General Mark Milley. Military Commanders have held internal negotiations in the past – in 2019 in Geneve, Switzerland. As always, official information on the agenda and results of meetings of heads of general staffs of two strongest armies on the planet stands out in laconism and restraint. According to the press-service of the Ministry of Defence of Russian Federation the Military Leaders discussed “issues of mutual interest including lowering the risks of occurrence of incidents during military activities.” In the Russian Defense Ministry, by the tradition, which has settled in the international diplomacy, it has been noted that the meeting "carried constructive character". The Pentagon stands in solidarity with the Russian colleagues that, by the way, happens not so often. Mark Milley's press secretary colonel Dave Butler with the reference to the chief has noted efficiency of the meeting. According to him, Valery Gerasimov's dialogue with Mark Milley "became the next stage of the negotiations directed at improving the communication between the military management in order to decrease the risks and find ways of evading conflict situations". As reciprocal curtsey to the Russians, Butler has shared Milley’s reverence for mister Gerasimov, having specified that both military leaders have not failed to show sense of humour, of course, "when it was pertinent". In spite of the fact that Valery Gerasimov's negotiations and Mark of lasted nearly six hours, details have remained in secret. Such state of affairs in the Pentagon was explained as "established practices". The surreptitiousness of negotiations between Valery Gerasimov and Mark Milley, on one hand, has strengthened the mysterious atmosphere around the Russian army and, first of all, it’s military leaders, on another, it has led to the rapid growth of interest among the western experts in modern Russian commanders. Special attention of the American and the European analysts is directed at the general Valery Gerasimov which is quite understandable as the head of the Russian General Staff for the last several years remains a recognized ideological leader and the mentor of Putin’s group of elite commanders. Among our military experts there isn’t one, who doesn’t have a strongly established opinion about the Russian general. He is characterised as a man with stone-cold face, he keeps confidence and calm in most extraordinary and unusual situations. Mister Gerasimov along with his immediate charismatic superior Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu permanently accompanies the Russian leader Vladimir Putin on military venture, tests of the new Russian weapon, and also international visits (especially, to traditionally unsteady Middle East) and meetings with world leaders (as it was at the June summit of Putin and his American vis-a-vis Joe Biden in Geneva when the general Gerasimov was part of the Russian delegation). The trust of the head of the Kremlin Vladimir Putin the chief of the General Staff shows the high status and weight of the general Gerasimov in the Russian military and political elite is unprecedented. Cardinal difference between him and his predecessors, in our opinion, lies at mister Gerasimov’s excellent expertise in the field of military diplomacy that has proved itself during numerous meetings with heads of the foreign states and the governments. Besides, there is no doubt that the role of the general Gerasimov as a head and the organizer of modern Russian military science derived from the first Russian emperor Peter the Great, the creator of the regular army. By definition the head of the Russian General Staff is obliged with key functions of development and practical introduction of scientific concepts of the military constructions. His predecessors – Georgy Isserson, Alexander Svechin, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Boris Shaposhnikov, and many others gained outstanding practical achievements due to a theoretical judgment of character and forms of future wars. General Valery Gerasimov who looks good as the army commander, managed to be a successful leader and coordinator of modern military science. At the same time Gerasimov had a great luck to check the effectiveness of his means and ways of conducting modern war on the ground. Russia relying on its military force got back its status of a key power in the Middle East despite skepticism of its geopolitical competitors. Roger McDermott, professor in Jamestown Foundation said Gerasimov's role as president of Academy of military sciences (AVN) marked an important step in further improvement of the Russian army. He stressed that Valery Gerasimov's election as the AVN chair in December, 2020 was caused by his aspiration to let the academy revive the interest in military science and art of war. Being an inspirer of the Russian military science, Valery Gerasimov does his best in summarizing the modern armed conflicts experience and modeling of future wars. Meanwhile, his American colleague Mark Milley is not involved in any kind of scientific research and the analysis. Mister Gerasimov is widely known in Russia as the author of a number of articles in which he comprehends the experience of wars and military conflicts of the past and defines the character hostilities of the future. Mark Milley, the graduate of Priston and Columbia University is a rather a politician than a military theorist. Such differences between Russian and American military chiefs can be explained by differences of military systems of the two nations. The U.S. Joint Chief of Staff is initially engaged in combat operations planning, the Russian General Staff also conducts scientific forecasting. The American military analysts point to these disproportions in powers of Russia’s and U.S. military staffs. “The General Staff of Russian Armed Forces solves a much bigger range of problems than simple planning of operations. It is also responsible for development and improvement of the theory and practice of future war by forecasting. In the Russian military system the forecasting is directly connected with military science”, – Charles Bartls and Lester Grau wrote in the book “The Russian way of waging war”. Being directly involved into multi-level scientific researches on forecasting of the future conflicts, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian army is a key coordinator for the enterprises of country’s military and industrial complex. Possessing information on perspective weapons of potential foes, every head of the Russian General Staff, as a rule, personally supervises development and tests of the weapons of deterrence. Eventually, specifics of Russia’s political system in which military command is most distanced from election processes allow the Chief of the General Staff to concentrate on his professional duties only. The U.S. political system expects that the chairman of Joint Chief of Staff shows flexibility to minimize political risks as the White House administrations change. Theoretical concept of Chief of Russia’s General Staff caused discussions among military experts. The so-called “Gerasimov's Doctrine” is the concept of “new generation war” or the “hybrid warfare”: simultaneous use of power methods, information campaigns, political pressure, and economic sanctions. For the first time this term was used by the British researcher Mark Galeotti in February, 2013 – almost immediately after Gerasimov’s speech Russia’s AVN conference and the publication Gerasimov’s article “Science’s value is in foresight” in “Voyenno-promyshlenny Kuryer” newspaper. The article included ideas about a combination of military and non-military methods of armed struggle between the states. Afterwards Gerasimov’s article was also published by “the Military Review”, the popular English-language magazine, and was repeatedly quoted in European and American mass media. The research associate of the Kennan Institute in Washington Michael Coffman wrote that the term “hybrid warfare” was first mentioned in an article in 2005 by Americans James Mathis and Frank Hoffman, who used this definition to describe the nature of the military conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Coffman considers that Gerasimov precisely described the western model of “hybrid warfare” in the Big Middle East and tried to explain how the West succeeded in use of non-military methods against its foes. Despite the intrigues around terms, “Gerasimov's Doctrine” is an issue of a great interest as it describes the scale of Kremlin’s foreign policy claims and effective actions of the Russian military using methods of “new generation war”. Helsinki meeting did not become a bright political event or a breakthrough in relations between Russia and the West. But the quiet Finnish capital once again gives a hope for the military chiefs of two nuclear powers mutual understanding. In a situation when politicians fail to find a common ground, military professionals are able to avoid new global shocks.
  2. Im currently a grade 12 student who started an Initiative to Inform Youth about Politics and World Issues. I started this podcast in the summer of 2019 after seeing the lack of attention being given to the Canadain election of 2019. My older friends were not voting, and if they were voting, they voted without the proper knowledge. That led me to create this podcast where I try to inform the youth about world issues and politics, and hopefully encourage them to vote. CHECK IT OUT HERE & TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK
  3. The melting ice of Greenland will soon reveal the dirty secrets of the Camp Century military base built by the Americans in Denmark during the Cold War. Then it was assumed that the secrets of this place would be buried forever under snow and ice, along with nuclear and toxic waste. But now the «canned» base with hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel, radioactive refrigerant and toxic substances has begun to thaw. The rapid ice melting means that in a few decades these substances will appear on the surface, exposing a serious environmental disaster. The «Camp Century» base was developed in 1959 to deploy ballistic missiles within the reach of the USSR. The project was called an «Ice Worm». According to the Pentagon, it was planned to conduct in Greenland ice sheet a system of 2500 miles long tunnels and deploy about 600 «Iceman» intercontinental ballistic missiles in it, aimed at the USSR. These missiles were supposed to be a modernization of the «Minuteman» missiles (a shortened two-stage version), their flight range was estimated at 3800 miles, while they had to carry a 2.4 megaton warhead in TNT equivalent. The missiles were planned to be placed in tunnels under the ice, while the ice was supposed to protect the missiles from detection and complicate the process of their destruction. It was planned to lay a network of tunnels that were scooped in an ice shell like trenches, followed by arched ceiling. The tunnels were supposed to interconnect the launch complexes with missiles located at a distance of about 4 miles, with at least one meter of ice above them. Between the launch complexes, the missiles were supposed to move on special small trains. The tunnels network and launching sites should have been managed from 60 command centers. In total, 11 thousand people were planned to be involved in servicing the complex. In the process, 21 tunnels with a total length of 3000 m were laid. In the small town under the ice was created all the necessary infrastructure for life and work. There were built presidential houses, kitchens and dining rooms, showers, toilets, lounges, a library, a shop, a theater, a 10-bed hospital, an operating room, a laundry room, a cold warehouse for food, a research laboratory, a communications center, a nuclear power station, an administrative building, and a hairdresser, diesel-electric power plant and water storage tank, there was even their own chapel. The «Camp Century» military base lasted until 1966, when it became apparent that the «Ice Worm» project was impossible to implement, so the Greenland ice won. Back in 1962, it was discovered that the ice movements on the island significantly exceed the calculated values. Identified features and reduced funding for the project led to the fact that in 1963 the nuclear reactor was stopped and dismantled, and in 1966 the military completely left the camp. Observation over the camp was still ongoing for several years, until in 1969, ice and snow almost completely consumed all the erected premises. The place was abandoned and the Americans simply left, giving the snow the opportunity to hide their tracks. The «Ice Worm» project has not been mentioned for decades. For the first time this became known only in 1997 when the Danish Parliament commissioned the Danish Institute for Foreign Policy to study the history of nuclear weapons using in Greenland in connection with the scandal over the plane crash over the American base of Thule, located in the north-west of Greenland. In 2016, scientists working on the global warming issue found that its consequences led to a thinning of Greenland ice layer, and to a slow melting of those tunnels that were built by the U.S. military. In this regard, melting ice in this area is a threat to the ecology of the island. Radioactive waste that poses the greatest danger may appear on the surface. For a long time, the United States ignored the information that during the implementation of the «Ice Worm» project, there had been produced about 200 tons of radioactive water, which merged right into the ice cap of Greenland. Moreover, at a depth of about 40 m and at an area of a hundred football fields, nine thousand tons of various materials lurk - bunkers, railway rails, tanks with diesel fuel and radioactive coolant, as well as an unknown amount of extremely toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, which are extremely dangerous for health and the environment. Undoubtedly, scientists are especially worried about tanks with chemicals buried in tunnels, that naturally accumulate in colder conditions and can penetrate into the most unexpected places. In the Arctic has already been noted the dangerous toxin levels in the indigenous population, which eats seals and whales’ meat. According to scientists, a decrease in the amount of ice can reach critical values by about 2090, when the negative effects of harmful substances from the «Ice Worm» can no longer be reversed. As for melt water, it will reach the bunkers of the former American base and its dangerous contents much earlier, and then the streams will carry the «American legacy» into the ocean. Today it may seem that if scientists believe that several more decades will pass before the melting of the ice causes a possible chemical or radiation disaster, then there is still time to clean up the territory. However, the cleaning up process of the base`s heritage can also take quite a long period of time. At the same time, the USA and Denmark have not yet agreed on a work plan. Formally, at present, the base remains the property of the US military, but it is still not clear who exactly should clean up the waste. Both countries refuse to allocate budget funds for a time-consuming project, and also do not take risks for its implementation. Meanwhile, when the Arctic as a whole, and Greenland in particular, is facing an environmental disaster, the United States, which refuses to cleanse the island of the results of its activities during the Cold War, is again interested in this island. This time, the Americans are trying to raise the issue of buying the largest island in the world, which is of tremendous strategic importance, given its position in the Arctic.
  4. Is it okay to protest at a high level against the fact that a country, in order to protect its people, is strengthening the defense of its borders? I am talking about Japanese protests against Russia's strengthening of the defense of its Far East. Tokyo constantly protests against any Russian activity on its own territory, and these protests have already become a habit. The stubbornness and new White Paper will not help the Japanese leadership to “return” the islands, because Moscow has repeatedly proved the groundlessness of these territorial claims and stated directly that they have no any plans to transfer the islands. So what are our samurai friends waiting for? Maybe support of America in a military resolving of the issue?
  5. American analysts are anxiously watching the strengthening of the forces of the Russian army, which has been happening in recent years. The Russian fleet got at its disposal the «Caliber» cruise missile, which confirmed its capabilities during real combat firing at terrorist targets in Syria. Also the new «Zircon» hypersonic anti-ship missile, which can be used from launchers for «Onyx and Caliber» complexes, is going to appear in the fleet service. The National Interest, also, noted the power of the Russian «Poseidon» project of an unmanned underwater vehicle with a nuclear power plant on board. All this, along with the expansion of the geopolitical influence of Moscow, forces the Pentagon and the White House administration to closely monitor changes in the military sphere of Russia. For more details: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-military-transforming-and-getting-stronger-right-our-eyes-67907
  6. Currently, in America they are working on building of medium-range missiles, and they also recognize that anti-missile defense facilities deployed in Romania and Poland, after conversion, allow the launch of offensive missiles instead of defensive ones. Does the US really want the third world war to start?
  7. In August 2019, the fate of the INF will be finally decided. On February 2, 2019, the American side announced the suspension of the implementation of the Treaty between the USSR and the USA. This situation is quite in the spirit of Washington: this is not the first, and perhaps not the last treaty, which the States neglect. In 2001, America unilaterally withdrew from the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems of 1972, which was considered an integral part of the entire system of control over strategic offensive arms. During Trump’s presidency, the States renegotiated a free trade zone agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, withdrew from the UN climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. The INF was of great historical importance, it was the first Soviet-American treaty that not only limited weapons production, but also significantly reduced it. The USSR and the United States signed a treaty in 1987 with the aim of curbing the arms race that broke out in the second half of the 1970s. By agreement, the United States and the USSR have committed themselves not to produce, test or deploy ballistic and cruise ground-based missiles of medium (from 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers) and short (from 500 to 1,000 kilometers) range. Moreover, America and the USSR pledged to destroy all launchers and land-based missiles with a range of from 500 to 5,500 kilometers for three years. The United States has been talking about withdrawing from the Treaty for the first time, declaring its bilateral effectiveness ineffective. “The motto of the INF policy should be as follows: expand it or destroy it,” said Bolton in the Wall Street Journal in collaboration with former Deputy Secretary of State Paula de Sutter. Russia has not adhered to the INF Treaty, and the provisions of the Treaty do not apply to China at all. It was the behavior of the Russian side that, according to the States, was the reason for withdrawing from the treaty. The United States blamed Russia for the fact that, developed for the modernization of the operational-tactical missile complex Iskander-M, the new 9M729 missile violates the Treaty because it has a range of over 500 km. Moreover, Washington ignored the briefing given by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which demonstrated the tactical and technical characteristics of the new missile. In turn, the Russian side has accumulated a lot of complaints about the US observance of its part of the Treaty. Moscow demanded the destruction of the MK-41 universal launchers deployed on land, designed to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles; target missiles with similar characteristics to medium-range and shorter-range ground-based ballistic missiles (for testing anti-ballistic missile defense systems); as well as the destruction of strike unmanned aerial vehicles, which, according to their characteristics, meet the definition of the term “cruise missile of a land-based. Russian requirements remained unanswered. It is easy to predict what the next disregard of Washington may lead to. And the States themselves do not hide the fact that the goal of withdrawing from the treaty is to increase military pressure on the PRC and, most likely, short-range and medium-range US missiles will be placed primarily in Japan and the Republic of Korea. Furthermore, by abandoning the INF Treaty, the United States will be able to deploy ground-based missiles with a range of up to 5.5 thousand kilometers in close proximity to Russian borders, for example, in Poland and the Baltic countries. Obviously, the next step will be the US withdrawal from the “New Start”. Thus, the last treaty controlling the situation with nuclear weapons will disappear. This, in turn, will lead to an unrestricted nuclear arms race and heightening the risks of a nuclear war.
  8. This has been brewing for some time and now has come to a head. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27517591 The relationship with China has always been an issue. Mainly regarding the status of Thailand as part of China. Or am I confusing it with another country? This is part of it, but I do not think it is all of it. http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/22/world/asia/thailand-martial-law/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
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