Why is it hard to impose sanctions on Russia?

     Why is it hard to impose sanctions on Russia? 

We always wonder why Trump hesitates to impose sanctions against Russia. The reason for that is extremely complicated. We know that the Russian government has large-scale nuclear weapons that they use as blackmail tools. That is an easy explanation. There is also another problem with Russia, and that problem is China. China is the biggest producer of rare earth metals. In the world. Even if the USA is one of the most powerful and advanced countries in the world. That country is bound in the international, global-scale raw material network. 

And that thing puts the brakes on the U.S. government. The USA has been the most advanced microchip maker on this planet. But the problem is that. This country requires many strategic metals and minerals that are used to make microchips and other technical equipment. This means that if China does not deliver those minerals, the USA’s ability to produce microchips decreases. Another problem is things like oil. Many oil producers in the Middle East are BRICS countries. Those countries want to see Putin as their ally. The reason for that is that those nations are non-democratic, and the activist movement wants to limit weapon sales to those countries. 

Those people know that Putin is not as sharp as Western actors who use those weapons. And Putin can sell things like nuclear weapons technology to those countries whose main source of income is minerals, and especially the oil and gas industry. The U.S military requires oil and gas for its global operations. The nuclear bomber can operate on a global scale using airborne refueling. But the support operators.  Like special forces teams. Need petroleum for their equipment, in case the nuclear bomber must make an emergency landing. Those operators also require a base in the Middle East where they can operate. In those situations. 

Another problem is that Putin thinks that he can try to buy politicians and other people to support his propaganda. People know. That Putin and his regime are willing to make sacrifices to stay in control.  The fact is that those sacrifices don’t touch Putin’s nomenclature. And that is the thing that is a big problem. Another thing is that nobody knows how big a sacrifice Putin is willing to make. Putin is the man who is in command. But he is not the entire regime. There are people in Russia who support his policy. That means changing the leader might not mean that war ends or anything changes in Russia. 

There is a certain cycle. When we think about the freedoms in the Soviet Union and Russia. There are always thaws when new, young leaders take their position. But when leaders turn old. The secret police will start to tighten its grip on society. That means arresting and sending to the GULAG. When the leaders change, the people who served those leaders turn into criminals. In one night. After Stalin’s death, his loyal servants like Beriya and many other people went to prison and were executed. That was the second purge. Those purges followed all other soviet leaders. And they still continued. The idea is that people who served the old regime are useless. And the new leader collects a new regime around him. 

The thing is that the secret police controls the entire society in Russia. If leaders are not pleasing the secret police organization. That person faces a heart attack. As long as the secret police exists, there cannot be big changes in the Russian government. The secret police surrounds all Russian leaders as it surrounded Stalin, Lenin, and the Tsar. That organization is like a state in a state. And those people don’t hesitate to use violence. It is almost certain that the secret police killed the ex. Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov. because the leader of the Communist Party, or literally the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, wanted to limit the secret police’s power. The KGB probably used salt injection for that case because Andropov’s kidneys were damaged, and that caused death. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Secretary_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Andropov

Activism as an influence tool.

 Activism as an influence tool.

Terror is a dirty tool in foreign politics. And terrorism is the most dramatic and aggressive form of activism. 

Many people think that activists are always operating domestically. The fact is that the KGB has always tried to use activists as a tool whose purpose is to break NATO. The peace activists got courses. And guidance from the Eastern European intelligence. Some activists got equipment. Like propaganda material. Guidance on legal methods, so that they could resist the police. And in some cases, the large activist groups got leaders, commissars. That was trained by the KGB. The KGB gave those people things like drugs that gave them their position as leaders of the gang. That propaganda material included images of dead children's bodies. The thing that the KGB forgot is that the Soviets also used napalm, cluster bombs, and extortion in Afghanistan and their other operations. Another thing that the Soviet Security police used was raping. 

Sexual violence’s mission was to make a canyon between the Germans and other occupied nations and Soviet troops. When the Soviet army occupied Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany, those people were classified as ideological enemies. That means Stalin’s headquarters wanted to prevent those ideological enemies from spreading their propaganda to Russian troops. And another thing was that. The soldiers who operated in the occupied territories must remain silent. So Stalin created one of the most disgusting tactics in the history of war. That thing was sexual violence. Rapings were things that created a distance between the Soviets and other people. The problem with the Red Army was that there was not enough political training to “resist that influence”. And that made this system, or apparat, a threat to Stalin. Or the purpose was to play good and bad cop. The good cop was the NKVD, the secret police. And the bad cpop was the Red Army. 

There are tales that commissars ordered their men to make those disgusting things. And sexual violence offered an excuse to put those men on court-martial and order the secret police to shoot them. In that case, Stalin must not say that the arrest was political. He must just show the crime. Stalin’s idea in that brutal game was simple. The Red Army committed crimes. And the political police were the thing. That supports and protects people. So the purpose of that brutal action is to make the secret police and state leaders look like good guys. And I think that Putin and the FSB follow the same route in Ukraine. 

But then to the modern days. 

Cyber is the new battlefield. And the cyber is the key to the next-generation propaganda and other psychological operations. The ability to break into information channels opens a route to hostile cyber influence against society. This makes it possible to share disinformation through trusted channels. That disinformation can be used to break relationships, support friendly politicians, and undermine trust in authorities. 

By recruiting NATO countries' citizens, it is easier for the FSB than to make strikes using their own people. If those foreigners. Friendly operators will be arrested . The FSB can claim. Those people operated on their own initiative. Making sabotage against things like electrical substations is not very difficult. People can throw stones at insulation or shoot those ceramic insulators using an AK-47. In the same way, if somebody jams aircraft navigation, it's easy to claim that those actions are only lies or a product of imagination. The key element in those operations is this: Everything is always denied. Foreign actors operate with minimal training. They can be criminals like narcomen who get drugs or guns from their services. 

Those activists are always poorly trained. Which makes them receptive to disinformation. Sometimes their leaders play professors or some kind of doctors, “who disagree with their university's values”. So they sold their houses and other things that they owned and went to search for “ a real world”. There in the far east, those people realize that communism is the only thing that is accepted. The real reason could be that those people used drugs or were fired because of pedophilia. 

Things like jamming aircraft navigation signals are meant to deliver fear. This kind of thing is used to give a signal that the decisions people made are not accepted. And if people give in, those attacks will end. This cheating is targeted against high-ranking deciders. The idea is that the terror will make them give in, and then they will escalate that throughout the entire society. This is why things like aircraft are excellent targets for that kind of influence. When terror is targeted at high-ranking leaders. That requires fewer resources. When we think that a leader has an automobile, it’s easy to put the paper on the windshield, there is text, “this could be the bomb”. 

Or the activists, as some media call them, can pop a tire from those cars. The fact is that the car is a good indicator. When some people use cars. Observers can follow those vehicles and then connect them to the person who is targeted by activists for that action. This is one way to influence leaders. 

The method in far wing radiacals is always the same. They use hybrid methods for recruiting. The idea is that most of the objects that those radicals support are acceptable. But some of them are not. Or their methods are not acceptable. The tool that those people use is fear. Their message is always that “they could be armed, and they remember your face”. In many cases, adult people lead underage actors. Adults tell youngsters what to do. Sometimes, there are pedophiles who are using those groups as sex objects. The idea is that sometimes the actors find people who have nothing to do. 

Then they offer things that give their lives a purpose. And then those outside, adult actors will raise the leaders of the gangs. They can offer drugs that help them to keep their position. The image is always the same. The adult leaders raise the sub-leaders in the group. This hierarchy makes things easier. First, they came to tell that it’s easier if only a couple of people come to take orders. And then those “chosen ones” will share the works with the activist groups. 

Those sub-leaders share orders, whose mission is to paint banderolles, and whose mission is to get transportation. Like bus tickets. Those leaders are marked with a different color. Those groups also have a kitchen team, which involves the cooks. And the people who collect garbage. And the people who work with garbage are the newbies or lowest-ranking members.  They should earn their promotions. But, as we know, some of those people are more liked than others. 

The idea in information operations, also called psychological operations, PSY-OPS, is that the hostile actors support actors who are useful to them. Those actors can be far-side nationalists. Or, selfish businessmen who want to do business with dictators. The useful actor is the actor that breaks the line at the front of the hostile actors. In cases like Russia, far-right nationalists serve the regime on both sides. 

The far-right nationalist government breaks NATO, and they also act as a tool that serves Moscow's propaganda machine. That propaganda introduces Russia as a nation, which is surrounded by hostile actors, whose purpose is to destroy Slavic culture. And the only thing that can protect this culture is Russia with its nuclear weapons. In Russia, nationalism serves the military and the high-ranking nomenklatura.