How The NED Manufactures Regime Change Around The World

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SPOTTER: RICK STANGGENBORG

IMPERIALIST TOOL

Another cynical fig leaf for high crimes by the empire


Great article republished by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers’ Popular Resistance, always a great source. It succinctly outlines the role of the National Endowment for “Democracy” in promoting regime change and global fascism. Anyone who isn’t aware of how this works should read it and save it for reference. This is the key to understanding its function: “A lot of what we do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA.”—Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy. Anyone familiar with early CIA coups knows that they included political warfare such as funding opposition groups and media, union thugs (note the role of the international AFL-CIO), the US Chamber of Commerce (which promotes pro-multinational propaganda) and the Republican and Democratic Party-controlled foreign policy institutes. (This dirty pool has been going on for generations, and comprises the entire postwar period.—Eds.] I was under the impression that NED also funneled money through some of these groups (presumably the IRI and NDI) directly to political candidates and parties as well. This is an important part of how they influenced elections in Italy and Greece after WWII and into the 70s, as well as Eastern European nations at various times starting in the 50s. If the NED isn’t doing that now, I don’t know who is but rest assured that chore is covered. It is also important to know that the IRI was heavily involved in getting Harper elected in Canada! Presumably, the NDA does the same thing with foreign parties and politicians of its choosing.—RS


Derek Royden, www.nationofchange.org
alanWeinsteinNED

First iteration November 2nd, 2015

Above Photo: Carl Gershman, NED’s president since its founding in 1984, and a card-carrying Jewish Neocon. To most people the National Endowment for Democracy, probably looks like a pretty innocuous organization. But when you examine the records of those who control it and its affiliates, it starts to look like they’re running a shadow foreign policy, sometimes acting in ways that are contrary to the wishes of the powers that be in Washington. From Nationofchange.org.

“A lot of what we do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA.”—Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy

When we think about non governmental organizations we tend to focus on heroic groups like Doctors Without Borders, whose members travel into war zones treating the wounded without regard to the political affiliations of their patients. It’s dangerous work, as shown by a recent air-strike on a hospital run by the group in the Afghan city of Kunduz in which 13 staff and 10 patients died (7 other bodies have yet to be identified).

So, when we hear about Russia crafting a law in 2012 to make certain NGOs register as “foreign agents”, we naturally think this shows growing repression in that country. Offered as further proof of this is the fact that Putin’s government has created even stronger rules this year, seeking to ban “undesirable” groups. The first to be thrown out of the country in this way was the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). How could Russian law-makers ban an organization whose motto is: “Supporting freedom around the world’?

carl-gershman-Many notable people, including Carl Gershman, Chairman of the Endowment since its creation in 1983, have been vocal in criticizing this Russian legislation. They invariably fail to mention that the original 2012 law was based on a an American one enacted in 1938, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. This law, “also requires individuals and entities working for foreign interests and seeking to influence U.S. policies to disclose those relationships with the U.S. Justice Department or face prison.”

Although it promotes itself as a “non-governmental organization”, NED receives at least 90% of its funding from the US Congress, earmarked to USAID; the balance is provided by right leaning non-profits like the Olin and Bradley Foundations. To most people, the Endowment probably looks like a pretty innocuous organization. After all, who’s against more democracy? But when you examine the records of those who control it and its affiliates, it starts to look like they’re running a shadow foreign policy, not only in Eurasia but throughout the world, sometimes acting in ways that are contrary to the wishes of the powers that be in Washington.

Carl Gershman (pictured, second from left) has been the President of the National Endowment for Democracy since its beginning in 1984. In this picture, he presents the 2011 Oxi Day Award to Jamel Bettaieb for his leadership in Tunisia's Arab Spring. One wonders what services this individual lent NED to merit this prize.

Carl Gershman (pictured, second from left) presents the 2011 Oxi Day Award to Jamel Bettaieb for his leadership in Tunisia’s Arab Spring. One wonders what actual services this individual lent NED to merit this prize. NED is a key player in the Anglo-Zionist empire’s propaganda wars.

To bolster its credibility as “non-partisan” in the American context, NED distributes more than half of its money to four organizations: the Free Trade Union Institute of the AFL-CIO (FTUI), the Center for International Private Enterprise of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). Chairing the latter is Senator John McCain (R-AZ), probably the most well known hawk in the US Senate.

In fact, for an organization with the aim of “peaceful democracy promotion” it’s riddled with Neoconservatives and their Liberal Hawk counterparts, including such luminaries as Elliot Abrams (of Iran-Contra fame), Zalmay Khalilzad (Former Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan).and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright (Chairwoman of the NDI), to name just a few.

The presence of reliably pro-war Washington insiders like these points to the real roots of the organization during the Reagan Era when it was created with the input of then CIA Chief William Casey. At that time, the actions of the US intelligence community were being scrutinized in light of the Church Committee hearings and other revelations of the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, some of the functions that the CIA once performed were farmed out to the newly created Endowment. One has to concede that NED is a PR savvy version of what these agencies used to do covertly and it also helps to keep the hawks in the foreign policy conversation, whatever disasters they leave in their wake when they hold the reins of power.

Disturbing Patterns

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ooking critically at the so-called “Color Revolutions” that NED has funded, one begins to see similarities that couldn’t be coincidental. One example is the symbol of a clenched fist, probably expropriated from the Black Panthers and first used by OTPOR, a Serbian youth group that became something of a template for successful regime change operations from the end of the 90s until today. Now called CANVAS (Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies), remnants of the group train civil society and student groups in many countries.

The fist symbol, originally black but often using the “colors” associated with each individual “movement”, has been seen with some variation in Georgia, Ukraine and Venezuela, places where NED or its affiliates spent big to produce regime change.

And it isn’t just student groups being trained and funded by the Endowment. As a 2013 report by Al Jazeera showed, in the weeks and months leading up to the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, NED and some of its affiliates were funding individuals and organizations calling for the overthrow of the elected government in the country.

The reporter on the story, Emad Mekay, made some interesting discoveries about the role that the organization played in the ouster of the Egypt’s first democratically elected president, including tracking down where some of the organization’s money was going: “A main conduit for channeling the State Department’s democracy [sic] funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorized an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.”

This charming man, Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman, the recipient of a “human rights fellowship” at NED, used social media to call for some pretty heinous things. One Facebook post, featured in the report, had Soliman calling on his Egyptian followers to “Make a road bump with a broken palm tree to stop the buses going into Cairo, and drench the road around it with gas and diesel. When the bus slows down for the bump, set it all ablaze so it will burn down with all the passengers inside… God bless.”


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SHADY MOVES BY THE US TO PRECIPITATE REGIME CHANGE IN EGYPT
Exclusive: US Bankrolled Anti-Morsi Activists

The making of an Egyptian Asset: A Complex Grid of Deceits
Documents reveal US money trail to Egyptian groups that pressed for president's removal.

By Emad Mekay July 10, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "Al Jazeera"--

President Barack Obama recently stated the United States was not taking sides as Egypt's crisis came to a head with the military overthrow of the democratically elected president. But a review of dozens of US federal government documents shows Washington has quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country's now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the US channeled funding through a State Department programme to promote democracy [sic] in the Middle East region. This programme vigorously supported activists and politicians who have fomented unrest in Egypt, after autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February 2011. The State Department's programme, dubbed by US officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose US interests in the Middle East.

Activists bankrolled by the programme include an exiled Egyptian police officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the ouster of the country's first democratically elected leader, government documents show.

Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, interviews, and public records reveal Washington's "democracy assistance" may have violated Egyptian law, which prohibits foreign political funding. It may also have broken US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers' money to fund foreign politicians, or finance subversive activities that target democratically elected governments. [This is a cruel joke because the US has been in the business of toppling governments for generations using numerous above — and underground assets to achieve such ends, including media and military.—Eds.]

'Bureau for Democracy'

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ashington's democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars ["Sucker dollars"] is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based, quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative - launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks - has spent close to $900m on democracy [sic] projects across the region, a federal grants database shows. USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion [gag if you must] , according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). The US government doesn't issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED's executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year. A main conduit for channeling the State Department's democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country. This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in "peaceful" political change overseas.

Exiled policeman Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman - who served in Egypt's elite investigative police unit, notorious for human rights abuses - began receiving NED funds in 2008 for at least four years. During that time he and his followers targeted Mubarak's government, and Soliman later followed the same tactics against the military rulers who briefly replaced him. Most recently Soliman set his sights on Morsi's government. Soliman, who has refugee status in the US, was sentenced in absentia last year for five years imprisonment by a Cairo court for his role in inciting violence in 2011 against the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two US allies. He also used social media to encourage violent attacks against Egyptian officials, according to court documents and a review of his social media posts. US Internal Revenue Service documents reveal thatNED paid tens of thousands of dollars to Soliman through an organisation he created called Hukuk Al-Nas (People's Rights), based in Falls Church, Virginia. Federal forms show he is the only employee. After he was awarded a 2008 human rights fellowship at NED and moved to the US, Soliman received a second $50,000 NED grant in 2009 for Hukuk Al-Nas. In 2010, he received $60,000 and another $10,000 in 2011.  In an interview with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, Soliman reluctantly admitted he received US government funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, but complained it wasn't enough. "It is like $2000 or $2,500 a month," he said. "Do you think this is too much? Obama wants to give us peanuts. We will not accept that." NED has removed public access to its Egyptian grant recipients in 2011 and 2012 from its website. NED officials didn't respond to repeated interview requests.

'Pro bono advice'

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ED's website says Soliman spreads only nonviolent literature, and his group was set up to provide "immediate, pro bono legal advice through a telephone hotline, instant messaging, and other social networking tools". However, in Egyptian media interviews, social media posts and YouTube videos, Soliman encouraged the violent overthrow of Egypt's government, then led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. "Incapacitate them by smashing their knee bones first," he instructed followers on Facebook in late June, as Morsi's opponents prepared massive street rallies against the government. Egypt's US-funded and trainedmilitary later used those demonstrations to justify its coup on July 3. "Make a road bump with a broken palm tree to stop the buses going into Cairo, and drench the road around it with gas and diesel. When the bus slows down for the bump, set it all ablaze so it will burn down with all the passengers inside … God bless," Soliman's post read.  In late May he instructed, "Behead those who control power, water and gas utilities." Soliman removed several older social media posts after authorities in Egypt took notice of his subversive instructions, court documents show.

More recent Facebook instructions to his 83,000 followers range from guidelines on spraying roads with a mix of auto oil and gas - "20 liters of oil to 4 liters of gas"- to how to thwart cars giving chase. On a YouTube video, Soliman took credit for a failed attempt in December to storm the Egyptian presidential palace with handguns and Molotov cocktails to oust Morsi. "We know he gets support from some groups in the US, but we do not know he is getting support from the US government. This would be news to us," said an Egyptian embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Funding other Morsi opponents

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ther beneficiaries of US government funding are also opponents of the now-deposed president, some who had called for Morsi's removal by force. The Salvation Front main opposition bloc, of which some members received US funding, has backed street protest campaigns that turned violent against the elected government, in contradiction of many of the State Department's own guidelines. A longtime grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy and other US democracy groups is a 34-year old Egyptian woman, Esraa Abdel-Fatah, who sprang to notoriety during the country's pitched battle over the new constitution in December 2012. She exhorted activists to lay siege to mosques and drag from pulpits all Muslim preachers and religious figures who supported the country's the proposed constitution, just before it went to a public referendum. The act of besieging mosques has continued ever since, and several people have died in clashes defending them. Federal records show Abdel-Fatah's NGO, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, received support from NED, MEPI and NDI, among other State Department-funded groups "assisting democracy". Records show NED gave her organisation a one-year $75,000 grant in 2011. Abdel-Fatah is politically active, crisscrossing Egypt to rally support for her Al-Dostor Party, which is led by former UN nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei, the most prominent figure in the Salvation Front. She lent full support to the military takeover, and urged the West not call it a "coup". "June 30 will be the last day of Morsi's term," she told the press a few weeks before the coup took place.

US taxpayer money has also been sent to groups set up by some of Egypt's richest people, raising questions about waste in the democracy programme. Michael Meunier is a frequent guest on TV channels that opposed Morsi. Head of the Al-Haya Party, Meunier - a dual US-Egyptian citizen - has quietly collected US funding through his NGO, Hand In Hand for Egypt Association.

Meunier's organisation was founded by some of the most vehement opposition figures, including Egypt's richest man and well-known Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, Tarek Heggy, an oil industry executive, Salah Diab, Halliburton's partner in Egypt, and Usama Ghazali Harb, a politician with roots in the Mubarak regime and a frequent US embassy contact. Meunier has denied receiving US assistance, but government documents show USAID in 2011 granted his Cairo-based organisation $873,355. Since 2009, it has taken in $1.3 million from the US agency. Meunier helped rally the country's five million Christian Orthodox Coptic minority, who oppose Morsi's Islamist agenda, to take to the streets against the president on June 30. Reform and Development Party member Mohammed Essmat al-Sadat received US financial support through his Sadat Association for Social Development, a grantee of The Middle East Partnership Initiative. The federal grants records and database show in 2011 Sadat collected $84,445 from MEPI "to work with youth in the post-revolutionary Egypt". Sadat was a member of the coordination committee, the main organising body for the June 30 anti-Morsi protest. Since 2008, he has collected $265,176 in US funding. Sadat announced he will be running for office again in upcoming parliamentary elections.

After soldiers and police killed more than 50 Morsi supporters on Monday, Sadat defended the use of force and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it used women and children as shields. Some US-backed politicians have said Washington tacitly encouraged them to incite protests. "We were told by the Americans that if we see big street protests that sustain themselves for a week, they will reconsider all current US policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood regime," said Saaddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American politician opposed Morsi. Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldoun Center in Cairo receives US funding, one of the largest recipients of democracy promotion money in fact. His comments followed statements by other Egyptian opposition politicians claiming they had been prodded by US officials to whip up public sentiment against Morsi before Washington could publicly weigh in.

Democracy programme defence

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he practice of funding politicians and anti-government activists through NGOs was vehemently defended by the State Department and by a group of Washington-based Middle East experts close to the programme. "The line between politics and activism is very blurred in this country," said David Linfield, spokesman for the US Embassy in Cairo. Others said the United States cannot be held responsible for activities by groups it doesn't control. "It's a very hot and dynamic political scene," said Michelle Dunne, an expert at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Her husband, Michael Dunne, was given a five-year jail sentence in absentia by a Cairo court for his role in political funding in Egypt. "Just because you give someone some money, you cannot take away their freedom or the position they want to take," said Dunne.

Elliot Abrams [a notorious and longstanding sordid Anglo-Zionist operative] a former official in the administration of George W. Bush and a member of the Working Group on Egypt that includes Dunne, denied in an email message that the US has paid politicians in Egypt, or elsewhere in the Middle East. "The US does not provide funding for parties or 'local politicians' in Egypt or anywhere else," said Abrams. "That is prohibited by law and the law is scrupulously obeyed by all US agencies, under careful Congressional oversight."

But a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said American support for foreign political activists was in line with American principles. "The US government provides support to civil society, democracy and human rights activists around the world, in line with our long-held values, such as respecting the fundamental human rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, and human dignity," the official wrote in an email. "US outreach in Egypt is consistent with these principles." [The preceding excuses are classical Orwellian lingo.]

A Cairo court convicted 43 local and foreign NGO workers last month on charges of illegally using foreign funds to stir unrest in Egypt. The US and UN expressed concern over the move.

Out of line

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ome Middle East observers suggested the US' democracy push in Egypt may be more about buying influence than spreading human rights and good governance. "Funding of politicians is a problem," said Robert Springborg, who evaluated democracy programmes for the State Department in Egypt, and is now a professor at the National Security Department of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California. "If you run a programme for electoral observation, or for developing media capacity for political parties, I am not against that. But providing lots of money to politicians - I think that raises lots of questions," Springborg said. (Splitting hairs).

Some Egyptians, meanwhile, said the US was out of line by sending cash through its democracy programme in the Middle East to organisations run by political operators. "Instead of being sincere about backing democracy and reaching out to the Egyptian people, the US has chosen an unethical path," said Esam Neizamy, an independent researcher into foreign funding in Egypt, and a member of the country's Revolutionary Trustees, a group set up to protect the 2011 revolution. "The Americans think they can outsmart lots of people in the Middle East. They are being very hostile against the Egyptian people who have nothing but goodwill for them - so far," Neizamy said.


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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]lthough the press and politicians quickly forgot, it needs to be emphasized that Morsi was the elected leader of Egypt and, before he was ousted, he tried to negotiate an end to the crisis he helped to instigate, admitting that he “made many mistakes”. The word coup was rarely uttered in the aftermath of his removal and military aid to the tune of a billion and a half a year soon started flowing back into the country.

What’s going on in Egypt is an overlooked humanitarian disaster, it isn’t just members of the Muslim Brotherhood who are being rounded up by President al-Sisi’s thugs and given death sentences in mass trials. Many of the young people and progressive forces who so bravely faced off against Mubarak at Tahrir Square to create a more progressive Egypt are facing similar persecution. Ironically, some of them received aid from NED or affiliated groups and this could be used as evidence against them in court as Egypt has its own version of the “Foreign Agent Registration Act”discussed earlier.

A Danger to Democracy

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here’s also the glaring hypocrisy revealed by where most of NED’s money gets spent. The cases of Haiti, Venezuela and most recently Honduras show that those governments deemed “Anti-American” (often a euphemism for not laying down for multi-national business interests) will be targeted for regime change regardless of their citizens’ democratic choices. It doesn’t matter how many elections deemed free and fair you win if you are seen as acting against American interests there is a good chance NED or one of its affiliates will put you in their cross-hairs.

It’s pretty obvious that foreign policy programs run by groups like NED risk de-legitimizing protest. If an increasing number of governments (or corporations for that matter) start engaging in these activities as we’re just beginning to see, paying protesters and the like, they could essentially professionalize protest, at the same time putting genuine aid workers at risk. As an interesting side-note, a convincing argument has been made that this kind of “Astro-turfing” helps explain the rise of the Tea Party movement in the US.

What’s most dangerous about NED is that it gives voice and a measure of power to some of America’s biggest hawks whether they’re in government or not. In this way and many others, NED is not only not promoting democracy, it’s often doing the exact opposite at US taxpayer expense.

—finis—



=APPENDIX=

Here’s an example of how the supremely hypocritical NED, a typical liberal artifact, does it job as an effective disinformation tool for the empire. Observe this attack on Russia, published on their website and presumably disseminated through their networks.  Reproduced here in toto.—Eds.


Liberal democracies ill-equipped to deal with autocrats’ ‘hybrid warfare’

NED manual using Putin as "example" of autocracy. It figures.

NED manual using Putin as “example” of autocracy. Naturally the American sheeple pay for these criminal entities and their shady business around the world.

The latest version of Russia’s National Security Strategy is the most specifically anti-Western one to date, Leonid Bershidsky writes for Bloomberg:

NATO and the European Union are accused of being unable to ensure the security of Europe, and the EU refugee crisis is held up as proof. The U.S. and EU, the document says, backed “an anti- constitutional coup” in Ukraine that “led to a deep split in Ukrainian society and an armed conflict.”  The document argues that the West is out to topple “legitimate political regimes,” which creates instability and new hot spots.

The new strategy aims at protecting Russia’s “cultural sovereignty” by blocking external “destructive informational-psychologic influence,” notes Jamestown analyst Pavel K. Baev:

No useful tools exist yet for policing the Internet, however; and the vicious TV propaganda is becoming stale and tiresome (Meduza.io, December 24, 2015). As the chain of crisis situations increasingly becomes the new norm, Russians tend to lose interest in Syrian adventures or missile defences and start to ponder their deteriorating quality of life (Gazeta.ru, December 30, 2015). Revelations of hyper-corruption in the highest echelons of law enforcement, which a year ago made no impression, have again started to produce angry resonance in public opinion (Rbc.ru, December 24, 2015).

The strategy also again demonstrates that Moscow is conceptually ahead of the West in realizing that security and governance are essentially indistinguishable, notes Mark Galeotti, director of New York University’s Initiative for the Study of Emerging Threats:

The empire and its information whores are deeply concerned about the growing alliance between China and Russia and their insistence on independent action.

The empire and its information whores are deeply concerned about the growing alliance between China and Russia and their insistence on independent action.

Russia’s new style of so-called “hybrid warfare” is in so many ways simply a logical reflection of that understanding, and suggests that — even if out of political constraints, economic shortage, inefficiency and downright stupidity in some cases — they may not be able to pull it off, they are also well aware that Russia needs also to be considering “hybrid defense.”

There are three takeaways for the West, Galeotti adds:

  • First of all, do not get too worried about the strident new language; the tone reflects Russia’s new antagonisms with the West, but the underlying strategy is the same.
  • Second, the Kremlin’s real security concerns are not so much military threats as political, economic, and technological challenges.
  • Third, while the Russian economy may be in trouble and their geopolitical aspirations disproportionate to their actual capacities, the Russian state still has sharp strategic thinkers and their understanding of the modern “full spectrum” political-informational-economic battlespace is still unappreciated by their Western counterparts.

The U.S. government’s international media operations lack funding to counter the global blitz of state-sponsored propaganda from Russia, China and other rivals, says the head of the federal board that oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America.

“There’s no question we’re badly underfunded and don’t have enough money to compete with our adversaries,” Jeff Shell, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, told The Washington Times.

“We have three great challenges right now,” he said. “The challenge of this newly nationalistic Russian media, the challenge of China presented increasingly through cybertechnology and, finally, the challenge of violent Islamic extremists spreading their propaganda online.”

“We should be marshaling our resources,” he said.

2015 has seen the flourishing of conflicts that exist in a gray zone, one which is not quite open war but more than regular competition, which is attuned to globalization, which liberal democracies are ill-equipped to deal with, and which may well be the way power is exercised and conflict conducted in the foreseeable future, analyst Peter Pomerantsev writes for The Atlantic:

In the case of Russia’s ongoing campaign in Ukraine, for example, hyper-intense Russian propaganda has cultivated unrest inside the country by sowing enmity among segments of Ukrainian society and confusing the West with waves of disinformation, while Russian proxy forces and covert troops launch just enough military offensives to ensure that the Ukrainian government looks weak. The point is not to occupy territory—Russia could easily annex rebel-held eastern Ukraine—but to destabilize Ukraine psychologically and advance a narrative of the country as a “failed state,” thus destroying the will and support inside Ukraine and internationally for reforms that would make Kiev more independent from Moscow and might, in the longer term, create hope for democratic reform inside Russia.

China on Monday hailed Russia’s updated security strategy which names the United States as one of the threats to Russia’s national security for the first time, and also lists threats from NATO and “color revolutions”, the BRICS Post reports:

The document describes those involved in “colour revolution” as “radical social groups which use nationalist and religious extremist ideologies, foreign and international NGOs, and also private citizens” who work to undermine Russia’s territorial integrity and destabilize political processes.

The document says that the United States and the EU have supported an “anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Ukraine”. China, has also, in the past, warned against attempts to destabilize the country through “colour revolutions”.

“I want to make it clear that China categorically opposes the sanctions the United States and Western countries have taken against Russia. China categorically opposes colour revolutions and attempts to hold back Russia’s development,” said Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli in September in Moscow.

China’s doctrine of the Three Warfares  stretches non-physical aspects of hybrid warfare even further, Pomerantsev adds

….using “legal,” “psychological,” and “media” warfare to, in the words of the analyst Laura Jackson, who directed a Cambridge University and U.S. Defense Department research project on the subject, “undermine international institutions, change borders, and subvert global media, all without firing a shot. The Western, and especially American, concept of war emphasises the kinetic and the tangible—infrastructure, arms, and personnel—whereas China is asking fundamental questions: ‘What is war?’ And, in today’s world: ‘Is winning without fighting possible?’”

However, though Moscow’s ties with Beijing have never been better, they have never been very good, Hudson Institute analyst Richard Weitz writes for The Diplomat:

The bilateral relationship is still mostly marked by harmonious rhetoric but few specific projects outside of Central Asia, arms sales, and intermittent energy deals marked by protracted negotiations over pricing and other disputes. Chinese entrepreneurs have been as wary as others about investing in Russia, with China’s FDI flowing overwhelmingly into other Asian countries as well as the EU and the United States. Despite Moscow’s outreach to Beijing, there is no indication that China has made any effort to use its much greater leverage with ASEAN to assist Russia’s integration efforts.

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