Review: Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront The West – by Keir Giles

I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the first of the loans that I have finished reading. It is apt as Keir Giles is indeed a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. He is an expert on Russia and this was clear from the outset of this book, Moscow Rules.

I have read much material on Putin’s Russia in the last decade or so. I have also extensively studied the Cold War and beyond that into Tsarist Russia and the Revolution of 1917 and subsequent communism of the Soviet Union. I think that Keir Giles’ book stands out among many other titles in that he seeks to identify the difference between Russia, Russians, their leaders, and The West. Often, that there is a clear difference between Russia and ourselves, is glossed over. We see Russians as an extension of ourselves, with European, democratic, libertarian values. Russian commentators, who educate and inform Western readers on the subject of Russia, are indeed akin to us Europeans or North Americans and do in fact share our values. However, Giles is keen to point out that these Western-facing Russians are the minority, the tip of the iceberg and the extreme. Russians proper are not so European. As much as Peter the Great or Catherine the Great sought a  European home for Mother Russia; that dream has never been achieved. Russia is such a vast continent spanning Europe and Asia and containing such vast isolated resources and diverse populations  that, to consider it European. is just folly. Geographically, we are told of how the natural frontiers make defence an almost impossible task for Russian militaries to arrange conventionally. In Moscow they seek buffer states. ‘The only safe border is one with a Russian soldier on both sides’.

Giles identifies that strategically. Russia has changed little with regard to its foreign policy since Tsarist times, through Soviet Communism and into the post Soviet times of Yeltsin and now Putin. It always blows hot and cold in its foreign policy and relationship with The West. One of the biggest factors in Putin’s current stance is his concrete conviction about the fall of the Soviet Union as being the worst event in Russian history. The tumultuous topsy-turvy gangster capitalism that accompanied the Yeltsin era in a Russian flirtation with free market capitalism, brought the country to its knees. The people suffered a massive decline in living standards. Oligarchs got rich but the experiment with out and out capitalism just didn’t work. One of the main reasons for the fall of the USSR was a ‘betrayal’ by Ukraine in agreeing with Belarus to leave the Union after the Baltic States successfully seceded. In Russian, Ukraine means’ borderland’ and it is known as ‘Little Russia’ History with the ancient Rus capital of Kyiv in Putin and many Russian eyes does not separate Ukraine from the motherland. We have seen Ukrainian leaders of the USSR like Khrushchev and Brezhnev. It is the bread basket of Russia. One of the principal functions of the Ukraine borderland is to act as a territorial buffer to invading armies. This was the case when Napoleon came and also Hitler’s Nazi Invasion. It was clearly agreed at the end of the USSR, beforehand with Mikhail Gorbachev, that there be no further expansion of NATO into Russian imperial territory. This has proved a lie by The West. Whereas we see our export of Western democracy as a gift to Russia, the Russians see inequality, decadent and immoral sexual values, and an untrustworthy source of liars and values which simply are not native Russian. It’s like Christian missionaries, Western ventures into Russia.

The Russian mentality of paranoia is justified. They do accept autocracy and it works. Yes, there is brutality and State oppression but also the Russians trust their leaders. The Tsar was holy, God’s representative on Earth. Although the horrors of Stalin are obvious, his personality cult was also very real indeed. What we see in our media’s depiction of Vladimir Putin, the Russians see exactly the opposite. He has genuine popularity and represents true Russian values. Propaganda and suppression of dissidents has a long history within Russia and is an accepted part of their culture.

The whole Russian language has its peculiarities and translation into and out of Russian is not straightforward. Giles identifies an example in the difference between Pravda and Istina. Pravda is a ‘tactical truth’ and Istina is the ‘real truth’. We don’t have equivalents in the English language. So often, Western ‘experts’ on Russia do not possess lived in experience of Russia and the cultural knowledge that accompanies native language skills. One has to think like a Russian in Russia in Russian to understand the country.

As the book draws to a conclusion, Giles doesn’t leave us with false hope that Putin will be ‘offski’ any time soon. And if he is, his replacement will have similar mentality and little will change; relationships between blocs could indeed disintegrate further. There is a certain stability and continuity in Vladimir Putin’s rule, as unpalatable as it might be at present. We seek rapprochement but we must recognise Russia’s point of view. NATO is encroaching and I personally see the argument being a double-edged sword regarding Ukraine. Both sides are equally guilty. It’s one thing Eastern European satellites signing up to NATO, but vast core areas of the Soviet Union adjacent to the Motherland signing up? It is unacceptable from a Russian perspective. You have to draw lines at some point. The whole Westphalian system is based on drawing borders and we know from other war experience that borders don’t necessarily export very well. Eg. The Middle East and Arab World. There needs to be some middle ground and it is important that politicians on both sides of the divide look at the psychology of their agreements and disputes and I think that by studying ‘Moscow Rules’, which is a very interesting, mainly psychological,  exploration of the differences between Russia and us, any potential diplomat involved in international relationships, will be wiser and better armed in their ability to succeed in diffusing the ticking timebomb. I don’t think that there are many on the planet out there that wish for a full MAD Armageddon nuclear exchange between the old Cold War rivals.

It’s the first book that I’ve read from Chatham House library: I’m off to a good start and it makes me hungry for more. The library there is alone worth the membership fee alone for anyone with just a vague interest in international geopolitics. Chatham House is a renowned think tank with leading global experts. Knowledge is the key to all survival and is the essence of civilization.

https://wezgworld.com/chatham-house-how-effective-are-the-united-states-sanctions-19-06-2023/

Review: Defending The Realm – MI5 and The Shayler Affair – by Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding

This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it interests me in particular as I was living down in London at that specific time and had what I believe to be my own brush with Shayler’s employers. It was at a time (in history) when people still bought and read daily newspapers and not just get all their news information off Donald Trump’s twitter feed. I can distinctly remember all the controversial headlines about the whole affair.

The book is written by some Daily Mail journalists, a sort of hive for some of the smelliest sort of flies that the tabloid journalist industry attracts so automatically I was on my guard as to the agenda and the sort of bias, provocation, and fascist ideology of the book. Also, let’s get one thing straight. David Shayler is not a hero like they might try to portray him as, he’s not even an anti-hero. He’s just a sort of bo standard below-average MI5 officer, a disgruntled employee, a whistleblower. He knows what he’s signed up to by applying for the job in the first place, by successfully passing the vetting and by being offered a position. I think the Official Secrets Act as much as anyone may find it repulsive and disagree with it is pretty clear and explicit in what it states. Basically Shayler is a criminal and this book is evidence of his crime. He’s broken the Official Secrets Act, he’s also clearly committed treason and although he perhaps lacks the glamour of those that have gone before him such a Kim Philby, he’s certainly nothing more than traitor scum acting against the interests of this country which is exactly what MI5 or their employees are not supposed to be doing. Mi5 is their to protect the nation and yes, the job is difficult but I think the outset that Shayler has failed totally to appreciate the patriotic element of the work. It may have changed since the cold War and be [perhaps a little more boring, but it will adapt like many other industries and indeed since the time of publication MI5 has adapted, facing a new enemy is Islamic terror and the end of the Cold War has proven only really to be a brief ceasefire as the Russians are now back on the scene added to which a growing threat from China makes MI5 an even more critiical organization in the contemporary (and future) world.

I hold the whole message that Shayler and the writers are trying to present as completely invalid and very easy to discount. Zero sympathy for him. Nobody should be reading his revelations. Yes maybe a private letter to the MI5 boss would have been OK. But selling your story to the Daily Mail and anyone else with a chequebook? At least Kim Philby was sort of driven by ideology and is therefore it’s much more easy to identify with him. Shayler just basically wanted a nice comfy hug payout so he didn’t have to worry about his mortgage. Selfish capitalist. Thatcherist, blinkered self-aggrandisement and totally free of ethics and morality. About as close as we get to James Bond his little escape to France where his greed catches up with him and he eventually gets raided and arrested by the French authorities He was probably given a nice comfie bed and a constant supply of fresh croissants out there, just in case and It wasn’t corruption or anything like injustice. He was a serious wanted criminal and that is what INTERPOL etc is set up to sort out. Cheered me up when he finally got to Belmarsh. I’m tempted to look up his wiki but to see where he is now but it will just annoy me further.

He’s an anonymous dot in a big blob and the secrecy of the work, yes it’s underpaid, difficult and the whole system and organization is frankly sh*t but so is everything else in #brokenbritain and has been for a long time. It’s reality. You don’t get to cut corners in life. Just a buy a lottery ticket like anyone else – I’m glad the sort of celebrity tabloid culture has removed a lot of power from the redtops with their lottery payout bribes to corrupt people and deliver huge sales. The British Press is by far the biggest threat to National Security we have. Greed and capitalism has turned them into the most sinister devious body of enemies ever produced on this island. They will stop at nothing to subvert Britain, the Commonwealth or the Empire. Just examining a tiny of fraction of Prince Harry’s valiant quest against them seeking justice is total proof of their treachery. Shame Murdoch didn’t holiday with Maxwell and the rest really as Davy Jones’ locker seems the best place for them all.

Well, looking directly at the book, Shayler claims MI5 cocked up IRA city of London attacks, He claims through word-of-mouth secondary information about an assassination plot by the British government on Colonel Gaddafi – Yes, well, Mr Shayler, Gadaffi (now dead of course), may have certain human rights etc but after Lockerbie he’s pretty much clear as an enemy of the British people and State. That’s who MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ are supposed to be targeting really. I was gutted that you didn’t take the offer by the Libyan intelligence service to clear off to Tripoli, would have made a much more exciting tale, one way or the other.

It’s no recruitment manual for MI5, further justification that the actual job is absolutely nothing at all like a James Bond film. The appendix 2 of Shayler’s recommendations for organizational change, probably the most boring tract of text I’ve ever read, but is great in clarifying just what a hideous corporate body of bureaucratic bungling the MI5 security service is. I can see why MI5 officers can be so deadly effective and dangerous if they are spending 23 and half hours chained up to a desk under a pile of paperwork and government forms then I guess that for the half hour allocated break where they get to do the glamorous work in high speed car chases, staking the State’s budget on roulette spins and copping off with foreign birds etc, they are going to be so angry and wound up and pissed off that they’ll pretty much take out all their frustrations on any target and cause serious destructive damage.

Some of the revelations were significant like how much financial wastage there is. An example is the £25 million spent on an amateur computer system that didn’t work and that they had to go out and buy an off the shelf version of Microsoft Windows 95 to sort out the IT in this critical department of National Security shows clearly that mismanagement is very possible and real.

I think that it does clarify the need for change and that there are serious inadequacies and probably worse than a standard government civil service department I think that we could maybe look to other countries and the way they handle their intelligence services. The CIA and Mossad, for example, are vastly different. In many ways they have more liberty and power and more open and more effective. Our secrecy laws are a bit archaic. There is most certainly a lack of balances and checks in place for our intelligence services that would limit abuses, enable necessary change and improve efficiency and productivity and better achieve the desired goal of national security. I think that for this country James Bond is quite a double-edged sword. Whereas on the one hand it is a very positive and successful (fictional) brand, I would argue it is the very epitome of global espionage propaganda achievement, par excellence. Equally it is quite old now and it must entangle the intelligence services in manacles really and be very frustrating. Deception works to a point but needs to be balanced a bit with reality, openness and honesty.

I think looking back that even though it was pretty damned boring, that Dame Stella Rimington, as head of MI5 who released a boo, that this book was actually a watershed moment and an historic change in methodology for MI5. Yes, Ok we end up with the sort of Shayler trash a s a result. But is signals that change is happening.

I feel like a nosey idiot myself for contributing to the obvious treason of Shayler et all by purchasing the book. But it is an interesting read and I think might, if used properly, be useful to enact change. It must be a very popular text out in the Kremlin in Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing or the Afghan Cave complex. It demonstrates weakness to our enemies, possible exploits and perhaps encourages hostile attacks on out nation. But it’s subject an idiot who I highly doubt had much access at all to any form of high-level security information. Vetting system is broken obviously. What to do about it aside from the recommended changes – well, really push the death penalty for treason to properly discourage future Shaylers – Hanging, drawing and quartering must have a value aside from public entertainment. I discount most of the so-called scandal and I’m pretty confident that although there have been mishaps and errors that MI5 in fact do actually run an effective security service with regard to domestic issues. The lack of serious security incidents on British soil is testament to their work being efficient.

Review: The Master and Margarita – by Mikhail Bulgakov

I read a lot of Russian literature and am becoming a bit of an aficionado. This book was first recommended to me by an ex-girlfriend from Serbia and it’s taken me a while to actually get around to completing it but I finally have done so and can produce this review. Bulgakov is a twentieth century author of Russian fiction and lived during the heady epoch of Communism with its quite harsh censorship. Indeed this book was not published during the author’s lifetime and was found as a manuscript in the drawer next to his deathbed. It took quite a few decades before finally seeing the light. When you read the book you can quite clearly see why the censors would have prevented its publication in the Soviet Union. The official atheism of the Communist Party frowned upon any mention of religion as the Russian Orthodox Church was seen as potential enemy of the Bolsheviks and steps were taken to eradicate its influence at varying degrees throughout the post-Leninist revolutionary period.

The religiousness of the novel? Well, the devil comes to Moscow unleashes hell with some unexplained spiritual voodoo, totally disrupting society, focussed in particular upon the literary community and theatrical crowd of Moscow. We get a portrait of life in Moscow under the Communist regime, and the community of artists, writers and actors. There is an offshoot sub-tale, quite a strange aside, that of Pontius Pilate and his actions during the period of the crucifixion of Jesus.  We flit between tales from the streets of Moscow where trams decapitate unfortunate members of the public and go back in time to the Roman procurator’s private worries about morality and containing Jewish rebellion in imperial Palestine.

The love story emerges between the Master and Margarita. And as the story progresses it descends into a rather disturbingly insane spiral of increasingly bizarre and fantastical events. Margarita flies off on a supercharged broomstick, the defender of feminist virtue and striking a balance between the obvious downside of a pact with the devil and gaining social justice and ending up with her lover, The Master, who, struggling in his effort to document the real tale of Pontius Pilate and evade the Russian censor, ends up relying on Satan himself to magically recover a manuscript he has himself shredded in a struggle for conscience.

Mental Hospitals are a place of gathering and meeting for victims of Behemoth and his random acts of wickedness. It’s either in the nuthouse or the Morgue where victims end up and later we see many victims from the recent past and indeed deeper history reliving their deaths and sins in a purgatorial hell’s party involving lots of vodka and splendour with Margarita glamorously hosting the event.

The demons are Koroviev, Woland, Behemoth and Azazello and are intertwined with many they seduce or whose lives they disrupt. There seems to be no real agenda other than to wreak havoc and chaos. Indeed, one thing a reader cannot do at all, is predict the plot of the unwinding tale. It’s quite wild journey but it is also sinister and to be honest to even speculate on demonic entities and dark forces like this can not be a healthy thing for anyone to do and should be avoided. Nevertheless, it is an original and unique story and when taken in context of the environment in which it was written, where Communists did rule and where culture and creative arts and indeed religion where revolutionised as with almost every element of soviet society the ‘Master and Margarita’ is a classic of twentieth century Russian literature.

Review: War and Peace – by Leo Tolstoy

‘War and Peace’ needs no introduction. It holds its place in the minds of contemporary society as a literary classic. One cannot pick up a newspaper article on great books without a passing mention of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Like other classical works such as the Bible, I think that their obvious fame means and their influence on society and heir survival into modern times means that at the very least if you happen to pick up and read one of these rare works you will rarely face disappointment. Indeed, without further ado, I confess that ‘War and Peace’ is one of the very best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Critics compare it to Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. I’d say it outflanks them. Firstly, it is a marathon read. If you’re looking on Amazon for value for money on pence per word you can’t go far wrong with Tolstoy. For about £9 you get 1400 pages. But don’t get fooled into thinking the epic will keep you going for months on end as the pages turn fast. The story is quite entrancing and addictive. I suppose one of the beauties of writing such a huge tome for an author, is that it gives you a big canvas on which to develop your story fully and also to really define your novel’s characters. ‘War and Peace, covers a timespan of about 20 years at the start of the nineteenth century, a time when enlightenment thinking and imperial nationalism had produced great changes across all of European society, including Russia. The French Revolution spread like a virus with its new emancipation ideas and politics was actively changing the shape of entire societies. Of course the guillotines of post 1789 France soon gave way to the ‘little Corsican’ to emerge and of course our hero / antihero ‘old Boney” Napoleon Bonaparte himself does play a leading role in the book. The main war is Napoleon’s initial successful attack on mother Russia followed by his ultimate failure to seize power and the retreat of his army and destruction of the Grande Armée as it backed out of a burning Moscow and headed back down through the harsh winter roads leading back to Europe where virtually his entire corps perished, famously eating their horses to dodge starvation. Of course, closer to our own times a future diminutive European dictator, Adolf Hitler, failed to learn from the mistake of Napoleon and didn’t even make it to Moscow getting his whole World War 2 campaign totally written off by the Red Army following the counterpoint of the battle of Stalingrad which swung Nazi victory away from the latest grandiose empire-builder, daring to challenge the might of the Rus Steppes. Napoleon’s enemy is Tsar Alexander I and it is warming to see the love of the Tsar demonstrated by his people, the army and the characters at peace. These were pre-Leninist times for an aristocratic Russia, still with serfs, a society directed towards the salons of Paris for its artistic and cultural influence, yet close enough to the European mainstream to be sucking in some of the candidness of enlightenment authors such as Voltaire or Rousseau with their revolutionary ideologies that would reshape modern man’s destiny. We are in an age of excitement, an age of hope, a changing world, a globalised society. Tolstoy, a novelist with direct experience of conflict, being a veteran of the Crimean War, was very eccentric in his real life, seeing much of the excesses of society, living both as a hedonist and a monk. He was a gambling philanderer, but also a loyal Russian subject with obvious amazing talent for observation and writing. Undoubtedly ‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece and is cited as the pinnacle of Russian literary culture. Its beauty, perhaps, is in its uniqueness. The critics had no idea how to categorise it. It is such an original, creative masterpiece. Is it history, is it fiction, is it romance, is it war? Is it philosophy? The answer is that it is all. A variety of all ingredients chucked deep in with the rest of the Borsch in the pot and delivered in a unravelling exciting journey alternating between the peaceful salons of St Petersburg and the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. In researching the novel, Tolstoy actually visited several battle sites just to be fully consistent in his given detail – indeed the accuracy of the book’s battle scenes has been highly lauded by military historians.
The characters (and there are over 500 throughout the book) are centred around three main aristocratic families: Thee Bezukhovs, The Bolkonskys and the Rostovs. Count Pierre Bezukhov, a wild young man, accidentally inherits a fortune and his quest for morality and happiness is an inward journey in many ways despite the outward appearance of such material wealth. Prince Andrei Nikolayovich Bolkonsky is the real military hero of the novel and fares the best out of the central characters in the fight against Napoleon. He also manages to land the love of the most delicate and fragrant female character the dainty, youthful Natalya Rostov, although her romantic life is quite meandering throughout her courting adventures. Andrei has a sister Maria and her fraught relationship with her father’s growingly irrational discipline is an interesting familial relationship. Nikolai Rostov is a hussar in the war and although perhaps not reaching the ranking heights of Prince Andrei with his more diplomatic movements in high military circles, he is yet a formidable warrior in touch with the rank and file soldiers of the Tsar.It is Nikolai Rostov’s officer friend and comrade, Denisov who steals the show for me and is my favourite character in the novel. His speech impediment, so faithfully portrayed by the English translators gives his often haphazard movements throughput the novel a genuine comedy value and to me he is the warmest and most interesting of the stars of the show. The journey moves through family life and the early scenes include salons and ballrooms where conversation and polite society in the drawing rooms of Moscow and St Petersburg reflect upon all of society’s concerns. There isa genuine nostalgia for times gone by and to see Russian high society in full flow is a forgotten world now. Oligarchs way have been the bastard children of the collapse of the Soviet Union but they are no replacement for the aristocracy who with all wealth and down to every element of the bourgeoisie, from Count to Kulak, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al, destroyed these societal elements completely with the Bolshevik communist revolution. The later years of Soviet Russia I think make Tolstoy even more important as an historical work in that he genuinely, even if working primarily with historical characters, captures the mood and feelings of a society in mutatis.
There is genuine love and romance and the female characters hold their own. I’m not so soppy myself and prefer the war stuff like any good redblooded bloke but it’s hard not to notice the sweet feminine grace and womanly charm of some wonderful women who do seduce and distract the gaze of our male protagonists.
Tolstoy has it all and ‘War and Peace’ is a wonderful experience from which everyone should benefit at some stage in their life. Dostoyevsky used to be my favourite Russian author but I think Tolstoy now trumps him and I’m in a mad panic to see just how many words per pence Anna Karenina contains so I can drain my piggy bank from some of my shiny rubles.

Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen

This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It is up to date material and full of cutting edge military theory and ideas and I believe is critical essential reading for any politician or military personnel, especially those who conduct their employment in the NATO led West. I am no stranger to Australian soldier-scholar David Kilcullen’s work. This is the fourth book of his that I have read. This work surpasses the previous books and it is genuinely a masterpiece. What are the dragons and snakes? The dragons are the main, most powerful nation-state enemies. Russia and China are the main dragons and additionally we have Iran and North Korea who pose significant military threat and who are ideologically opposed to the West. The snakes are state and non-state actors. Less powerful nation states such as Iraq or Afghanistan and terrorist organisations and quasi nation jihadist states and their peripherals such as ISIS. Al Qaeda is a big snake, as is the Taliban as is Hezbollah and it is these snakes that have predominated active warfare measures from the USA and her allies in the post Cold War world. On the whole Kilcullen criticises Western military action in the recent past citing little evidence of genuine success. Traditional warfare and indeed highly technological modern military fighting that reached its zenith in the first Iraqi conflict of 1991 has been made redundant by adaptive enemies who have learnt how to successfully withstand dominance by coalition forces and have adapted techniques and tactics that have in effect neutralised our methods. While the world witnesses this stalemate between snakes and our armies the dragons have been sat watching, taking notes and suitably adapting their own military philosophies to take advantage of the new global environment. The way in which these dragons have re-emerged into active roles demonstrates new confidence and their upward projection into the future looks very daunting a positive to a fading Western democratic dominant imperialism. The main message of this book is that if we do not adjust ourselves and realign our military strategy we will ultimately face defeat and the political and economic collapse of our societies. When analysing the snakes we look in detail at various different organisations. ‘Combat Darwinism’ is an interesting scientific look at the decapitation of the snake that is Al Qaeda. Our strategic focus was to target leadership of this jihadist monster and every time a key leader was successfully culled a new hydra head on the snake was born and the enemy’s success in adaptation, even though its movement may have come close to complete annihilation, meant that natural selection allowed the foe to fight again with even more strength and resurge. Often our own militaries pulled back from the precipice due to economic and political factors, allowing the necessary reformation space for the enemy. This has been a key part of analysis for the War on Terror. After 9/11 We succeeded in killing the likes of Osama Bin Laden and most of the rest of the leadership but ‘The Base’ movement just became a self-perpetuating force unto itself without traditional vanguard leadership and it morphed into other jihadist factions such as AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) and ISIS, producing further problems. The very fact that today, The Taliban are back in government in Afghanistan demonstrates Combat Darwinism in effect and the future of global jihad seems to be a lasting phenomenon that will continue to plague the Western World for the foreseeable future. I found the case study of Hezbollah as it fights against Israel and later in Syria to have been very illuminating. Their adaptation and growth have demonstrated how a tactically weaker military force can survive, grow more powerful and be effective in the face of complicated battle odds. Looking at the snakes we see a new Russia under the autocratic reins of Vladimir Putin who is becoming ever more military active as his increasing hostility and delusion grows especially with the latest invasion of Ukraine. Liminal warfare tactics used by Russia introduce new elements to modern warfare against the West. Operating just below the detectable surface a combination of economic warfare, information warfare and cyberwarfare does just enough damage to Russian enemies without provoking military response. From cyberwarfare attacks in Estonia through to democratic election social media disinformation warfare during Trump election in USA or Brexit in the UK, Russia is undermining the West. Often it is different sides’ different perceptions of what constitutes hostile actions or warfare that our polarised views can fail to distinguish. In the last days of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev received promises that NATO would not expand any further to the East yet Western leaders lied in these reassurances. Putin and the Russian military rightfully are concerned by any move that threatens their territorial integrity. Post communist oligarch capitalism and an easing of traditional espionage has allowed a traditionally focussed long term enemy to rebuild and rekindle its old hostilities to the West. The study of China illustrates again how economic and computer technologies can be used liminally to fight out societies. The Chinese military has slowly been rebuilding and modernising. Its Navy has emerged from nowhere and it has been encroaching on island chains in the South China Sea, building barriers that can be used as both defensive and offensive bases against any future major conflict. I was particularly pleased to see Kilcullen reveal the importance of the military theory work of PLA strategists, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. I have only recently read the ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ book that since its publication at the turn of the millennium, has been a core component of the People’s Liberation Army’s development. Although he sees some of the authors’ ideas as pure paranoia and delusion this also demonstrates how perception on different sides can be very different. China has undoubtedly focussed very heavily on economic warfare and the fact the renminbi now underwrites the whole US economy and the globalisation of Chinese capital investment in key infrastructure such as ports or via tech firms such as Huawei is forecast by Qiao and Wang. The question is asked in that with China being so overexposed economically could mean that direct traditional military conflict could be less likely. The analyses of our enemies is concise and precise and unsettling. What are Kilcullen’s answers to the posed dilemma? He admits that there are no obvious solutions and although it is clear that change has to occur and is likely to come on both sides, The West and the Dragons and Snakes, it is felt that a Byzantine approach to preservation of Empire is the best path forward. Acceptance of our fading power and influence yet also a pragmatic and sustaining approach to preserving and development our military, political and economic futures.

Review: Red Notice – How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy – by Bill Browder

There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder was drawn to business possibilities behind the Iron Curtain and in the post Cold War, post Soviet Union Russia, Browder’s Hermitage fund became the biggest foreign investor in Russia and also the fund, with at its peak over $1 billion in assets under its control, the best performing investment fund in the World. The start of his career was interesting. After good qualifications at Stanford University in the United States, Browder set himself up in the European financial capital of London, with a view to exploring trade in Eastern European markets, made possible by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Among early experience he worked for the notorious Robert Maxwell, shortly before his controversial yacht death just as a huge pension fraud Maxwell had been operating was being exposed and investigated. Despite this career blip, Browder went on to form his own fund, Hermitage Capital Management. He headed off to Moscow and with careful research began to take advantage of the huge available margins made in the wake of privatisation of former Soviet Industry. This was the age of emerging gangster oligarchs and widespread corruption. Browder, ever in a quest for justice and a moral code which rejects corruption began to flag the eyes of Russian potentates and in 2005 he was refused entry to Russia as Moscow airport and put back on the plane for repatriation in the U.K. Thus ends the high profit-yielding business honeymoon and the start of a quest to recover his money, keep his business afloat and expose the enemies and corruption that threatened his destruction. The whole saga spirals out of control and the Russian authorities launch a massively corrupt scheme involving police officers who tried stealing his businesses and ran a massive tax fraud amounting to about $230 million. The path led to the very top with Kremlin officials supporting every move against the Jewish American businessman. His Russian lawyer, an honest Russian gentleman by the name of Sergei Magnitsky becomes embroiled in situation and is thrown in jail and due to health complications, torture and refusal of necessary medical care, Magnitsky suffers a brutal early death in jail. Browder is deeply upset and affected by this and his role as venture capitalist businessman changes into human rights campaigner. Browder irks even the highest power in Russia and becomes the biggest public enemy of Vladimir Putin. The U.K. government were relatively unbothered in their assistance so Browder ends up campaigning with the US politicians and at the very highest level dealing with the likes of Senator John McCain, Senator John Kerry among other Washington players to take up the cause. Ultimately Browder flukes hi sway into getting President Obama to pass legislation called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act which restricted and placed travel bans on all corrupt officials involved in the crimes and death of Browder’s lawyer and was part of a general move of sanctioning Russia and its excesses. In return Putin decided to punish sick Russian orphans by denying them access to adoptive American families. A bit sort of in tow with Vladimir’s current international reputation as a bit of an ogre…. The book is a whirlwind exploration of big business, exposes the realities of modern Russia and also in the wake of unbelievable corruption and human rights atrocities a sense of justice is achieved.

Review: On War – by Carl von Clausewitz

In addition to Sun Tzu’s Art of War, this book authored by Prussian officer Carl von Clausewitz is the quintessential classic book on military theory. The book (although this edition was only an abridged version) puts forward in detail theory for all elements of war, from politics to military leadership, from defence to attack. It cites examples from military history with a special favouritism towards Napoleon Bonaparte who, at the time of writing, had only recently wowed the world with his French imperial victories in the turmoil of post Revolution France. Frederick the Great is also regarded well as an able military leader. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to follow the rather lengthy minutae of some of Clausewitz’s theory. From my understanding of the book I would now view military defence to have a superior advantage against any attack. It seems that according to this German expert’s views that patience and correct preparation will ultimately favour a country defending its own territory, even against a more superior force. I did enjoy the historical details of famous figures in their battles, perhaps the most striking event was Napoleon’s mistaken advance to Moscow which ultimately led to the Grande Armée’s destruction. Obviously some of the strategic formulae from this work may be too antiquated for warfare in the modern world, however, I feel that even in hi-tech military action most of the general ideas developed here would still have much relevant application. I can see why Clausewitz is so highly regarded in military academy circles due to this great study of the rules of the conduct of war.

Review: Putin’s People – How the KGB took back Russia and then took on The West – by Catherine Belton

The author of this, the best study of Vladimir Putin that I have read to date, is Catherine Belton, a Financial Times journalist that was based in Moscow. It is a comprehensive study of the rise of Putin and how he has cemented a Tsar-like power as head of the New Russia. We go from a relatively humble career as a KGB agent in East Germany through to a man who has consolidated vast amounts of wealth and power in an insurmountable concrete position of power as head of State. The anarchic conditions of Yeltsin’s post Soviet Union capitalist experimentation left opportunities for many and was very disruptive both globally and within Russia. Putin enters politics as deputy mayor of St Petersburg where he begins a steady ascent to supreme power. So much of his rise is based on total corruption and dodgy dealings with organised crime such as the Tambov group. Putin’s main allies who have accompanied his meteoric success have been the Siloviki or former KGB and FSB agents. Systematically towards the ed of the Cold War as perestroika and glasnost opened doors, money and large sums of it were being funnelled out to the West by KGB agents planning the post Soviet reality of Russia. Putin challenged the new wave of super wealthy oligarchs who were the revolutionary Russian cowboys who seized State assets during the anarchic capitalism. Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkhovsky were the most high profile victims of the new Putin state facts that oligarchs had to comply and were subservient to the Kremlin. Roman Abramovich was more lucky and has a cosier more complaint relationship with the régime. Londongrad and siphoning of cash to Panama Papers offshore banks enriched Putin and a web of total corruption of all, the judiciary, the opposition politicians, rogue regions of the former USSR, all have been forced to submit to Putin aggression and domination. Some of the links are so discrete and conniving and the journalistic excellence of the author brings to light a lot of the hidden deceit. Espionage has had a lot of psychological resonance within the Kremlin with democratic foreign politics being subjected to Russian meddling and interference. It is interesting to note the evidence of Putin’s role in Brexit and the Trump presidency. There has been massive financial input into the British Conservative Party and frankly the Russian impact on Donald Trump is totally blatant and obvious. He was farming out Trump Towers franchises across the world entirely to dodgy Russian businessmen and gangsters while pocketing a healthy 18% return cushion on all investments without touching his own unscrupulous dollar bank accounts. The reality of this non-fiction real life account is so far-fetched and shocking that it could never possibly have been invented by a modern day Dostoyevsky as for sure, the true story of Vladimir Putin is stranger than fiction. This book has obvious relevance with this odd man’s decision to invade Ukraine and its international and domestic dangerous consequences. A great book.

Review: The Billion Dollar Spy – by David E. Hoffman

This espionage thriller tells the true life story of one of the Cold War’s most valuable assets, a Russian spy working for the CIA in the heart of the Soviet military aerospace sector. Adolf Tolkachev made the first tentative moves to reach out to the Americans in January 1977, in the heart of Moscow. At first, due to a faltering lack of human resources in the spy game for the Americans, it was seen with suspicion and Tolkachev was viewed as a KGB dupe. After he started to produce information from his workplace, the Scientific Research Institute for Radio Engineering, it was seen as a genuine defection and his material would prove absolutely vital in the arms race for the USA over a critical decade during the last years of the Cold War. Tolkachev became a billion dollar spy and his work would reach the Oval Office directly. In Moscow, the spying game is so difficult as it was seen as the hardest place on earth to work as an agent. Yet through cat and mouse cutting edge deception, the CIA were able to clandestinely successfully run their asset for a long time. It was only a crude defection from within that disrupted the operation and led to the arrest and execution of a Russian man who is a true hero for the West during this dark period. The story dovetails through risk and amazement and surprise yet is balanced out by the simple needs of a hardworking quiet family man that Tolkachev was. It is a well researched, gripping tale of a bygone era when Cold War espionage was at its critical heights.

Review: Fragile Empire – How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin – by Ben Judah

This is a very well researched study of Russia under Vladimir Putin. Always concerned with the political angle of this modern day Tsar, Judah studies the rise of Putin from a relatively unflattering career in the FSB through to him becoming an immovable rock in the Kremlin. Putin’s early years are interesting and I enjoyed the reminiscences of his early teachers. His whole calculated rise through the Russian political structure always displays a calculating and cool yet opportunistic politician. His consolidation of power has been very extreme and in spite of United Russia being a new form of one party state apparatus, endemic with corruption, there is no doubt that Putin is a force that is here to stay. What is perhaps surprising is that in spite of genuine mass popularity, the Russian people are now discontent with their leader and although they face steep obstacles, credible democratic opposition is emerging, headed by the interesting internet hero, Navalny. Russia’s move from democracy towards a quasi-Soviet style economy, the empire dominated by Moscow, paints an interesting picture of this huge superpower nation. I found the author’s trips around the hinterland to reveal some fascinating insights into Modern Russia and the problems that it and its people face. This is a very good book, if perhaps a little too biased against Putin, it is a worthy opinion of the situation of this new Russian empire.