Caspian - Russian Power

24
Editorial
thE russian military posturE
GIANCARLO ELIA VALORI
piErcing thE shiEld
a lEanEr and mEanEr russia
bEyond nuclEar stratEgiEs
DR. MATTHEW CROSSTON & TROY BAXTER
thE grand cybEr spy gamE
russia, amErica, and china
stEaling thE World
onE bytE at a timE
DR. MATTHEW CROSSTON & ANONYMOUS
Fsb's snoWdEn War
using thE amErican nsa
against itsElF
ALEXANDER S. MARTIN
thE islamic statEs FakE story
russian Fsb spy
JULIA SWEET
playing chEss, not chEckErs
russian rEsponsEs to
u.s. hEgEmony in kind
LOGAN WILDE
Russian peacekeepeRs in nagoRno-kaRabakh

an unlikely and unwanted scenaRio
RUSIF HUSEYNOV
the Mighty have Fallen
aMeRican space dependency on Russia
NENAD DRCA
vitalizing Russia- Japan Relations
DR. ABDUL RUFF
Ronald Reagan and Russias
Re-annexation oF cRiMea
PROF. DR. VLADISLAV B. SOTIROVIC
the caucasus eMiRate MuJahedin
global JihadisM in Russias noRth caucasus
and beyond
JULIA SWEET
authoRs
THE grEaTEr
CaSPIaN PrOJECT
BI-WEEKLY DIgITaL EDITION

www.moderndiplomacy.eu
Caspian@moderndiplomacy.eu
DImITrIS gIaNNaKOPOuLOS
Modern Diplomacy, Editor-in-chief
Dr. maTTHEW CrOSSTON
The Caspian Project, Director
BruCe aDrianCe
KeVin auGustine
anatoLii Baronin
troy BaXter
GreGory BreW
nasuruLLaH BroHi
staCey Cottone
antony CLeMent
anDy DeaHn
nenaD DrCa
sara Dyson
JareD s. easton
GianCarLo eLia VaLori
JeFFery FisHeL
BaHauDDin Foizee
Laura GarriDo
orHan GaFarLi
aaron GooD
aMy HanLon
Jeanette "JJ" HarPer
JonatHan Hartner
Brian HuGHes
rusiF HuseynoV
anDrii KoLPaKoV
nina LaVrenteVa
VLaDisLaV LerMontoV
aLessanDro LunDini
PauLa MaLott
MeGan Munoz
eLena M.
aLeXanDer s. Martin
Luisa Monteiro
norBerto MoraLes rosa
tayLor Morse
JoHn CoDy MosBey
saraH noLDer
teJa PaLKo
GaBrieLa PasCHoLati
JosHua Patterson
Petra PoseGa
Dayna riCe
JessiCa reeD
GreGory rouDyBusH
Dr. aBDuL ruFF
stePHen sarty
DMitrii seLtser
ProF. Dr. VLaDisLaV B.
sotiroViC
raKesH KrisHnan siMHa
eVan tHoMsen
Dianne a. VaLDez
CHristoPHer WHite
LoGan WiLDe
tiM WoBiG
The society that

separates its scholars from
its warriors will have its
thinking done by cowards
and its fighting by fools
Thucydides
www.moderndiplomacy.eu
The beast
of Russian
power
ur dedicated readers might have been

taken aback to read the title of this
edition of the Greater Caspian Project.
I have no doubt the initial assumption
was that GCP had finally jumped on the near-universal Western bandwagon to lament Russian aggressiveness and hand-wringingly discuss the
problems of a world with Russia aiming to be a
major player within it.
As you dive deeper into No. 24, however, you will
see our continued commitment to bring a dierent approach and perspective to the global aairs
arena. When we use the term beast here it is not
in a pejorative sense. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of how pervasive, extensive, and layered
Russian power is in todays global environment.
The articles within cover geopolitics, strategy, cyberwar, missile defense, intelligence, space, ethnic
and religious conflict, and military studies, all of
which Russia is an active, vibrant, relevant, and intriguing participant on the global stage.
Russia has a role to play because all of these issues
either touch directly upon its sovereign territory,
impact historic allies, are being utilized by rivals,
or manipulated by self-declared enemies.
This is where GCP separates itself analytically from
so many other scholarly and policy venues: our admission of the legitimate issue base facing Russia
means we have no choice but to accept its need
to engage and not shy away from the world stage.
There are few countries in the world that face the

type of constant criticism for international engagement as Russia.
Often Russia is painted as an unwanted house
guest in the home of the world. But the reality is
Russian power interests quite frankly demand its
global presence. This does not mean its policies
are well-devised or its initiatives are beneficial and
admirable. We do not sit as a proponent of Russia,
just as we refuse to reflexively declare ourselves
automatic opponents.
The world of global aairs, diplomacy, and international engagement cannot be seriously considered without diverse and controversial uses of
power. This is by ALL actors on the stage, not just
the Russian one.
This edition of GCP lets our readers see those actions, across a wide and impressive array of issues,
and asks that they decide for themselves: just
what kind of beast is Russian power today?
Prof. Dr. Matthew CrosstonGreater Caspian Project, Director
The Russian
military posture
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders.
Mr Valori has lectured on international aairs and economics at the
worlds leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York.
GIANCARLO ELIA VALORI
Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa
he big parade organized on May 9, 2016

to commemorate
the 71st anniversary
of the USSR victory in the Great
Patriotic War - as the Soviet struggle against Nazi invaders was
called - was an opportunity for
Russia to display its new or recent
Russian weapons and, above all,
to understand their strategic use.
10,000 soldiers, 135 units of military hardware and 71 aircraft paraded.
An evident show of strength and
a clear, but hidden, threat to the
Russian Federations enemies.
There was, at first, the Yars RS 24
long-range nuclear missile (the
one that NATO currently calls SS
27 Mod.2), a MIRV system (that
may contain multiple independent warheads, probably ten in
this case) which is deployed in a
regiment consisting of three battalions.
A missile needed to ward o the

United States and its allies from
the traditional areas of interest for
the Russian Federation, such as
Ukraine or the Western border
following the Cold War. But also
needed to make it dicult to
manage any anti-Russian tensions in the Middle East, in Central Asia and in the peripheral
seas. Many years ago, Zbigniew
Brzezinski had already assumed
that Ukraine was basically close
to the West and, therefore, it
would become an unacceptable
vulnus for Southern Russian security. All the Russian weapons
showcased in the parade are
powerful weapons for strategic
deterrence, which will enable
Russia to have a "free hand"
where the Westerners less heavy
threats cannot arrive.Also the
new National Guard security
force, recently created by President Putin to combat terrorism
and organized crime, paraded.
The National Guard, of which we

have already spoken, is armed
with the new AK74M assault rifle.
The parading tanks included also
the new T-14 Armata battle tank,
which has an unmanned remote
control of the various guns and is
now considered superior to the
Leopard and Abrams 2 tanks and this, too, is a clue.
Furthermore the T-14 tank is supposed to be shortly fully robotised.
Here the issue lies in making any
escalation along the old Cold War
borders dangerous.
The old aircraft which flew over
the sky during the military parade
were the solid Su-25, but also the
new Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA was
showcased, namely the 5th generation aircraft which is said to be
superior to the F-22 and, above
all, to the US F-35, which is still a
generation 4++ aircraft.
THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24
The new Sukhoi aircraft features

excellent stealth characteristics,
high attack speed and radar
equipment using original nanotechnologies. Another aircraft
displayed was the Tupolev
Tu22M3, that NATO called backfire, which is operating optimally
in Syria. Two other missile systems were showcased, namely
the S-400 and Pantsir.
RUSSIA
DOES NOT wANT
US SINGLE SUPREMACY
AT GLObAL LEVEL
A US SUPREMACY
THAT RUSSIA
wANTS TO DIVIDE
INTO NEw AND
DIffERENT
GEOPOLITICAL AREAS
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
The former, the S-400 "Triumph"

(NATO code SA 21 Growler) is a
new generation anti-aircraft/antimissile SAM, already sold to China
and Iran, which can simultaneously intercept 36 missiles and
planes (indeed, 80 in the latest
versions) flying at a speed of up
to 17,000 kilometres. The Pantsir
S1 (NATO code SA Greyhound) is
a combined system of surface-toair missile launching and anti-aircraft artillery. They are both
already operating in Syria, especially in the Latakia base.
In his speech before the 71st military parade, President Putin
called for an international system
not based on opposing blocs, but
overcoming the tendency - present in many Western countries to resume the Cold War.In other
words, Vladimir Putin wants, at
first, to dissuade Western countries from trying to split Eurasia
which, in Russias opinion, should
feature geopolitical continuity
from Moscow up to most of the
European peninsula and China, as
well as geopolitical continuity
from Moscow up to most of the

European peninsula and China, as
well as geopolitical continuity between Europe and the great Central Asian Heartland, the area of
the largest economic growth in
the future.
Furthermore, Russia does not
want US single supremacy at
global level a US supremacy
that Russia wants to divide into
new and dierent geopolitical
areas: Japan, China, the Shiite region with Iran and Iraq, the large
African areas, Latin America.
Furthermore, while the Americans adapt every area over which
they have supremacy to the same
uniform political and cultural
model, the Russians plastically
conform
to
the
various
economies, strategic threats and
cultural patterns.
From this viewpoint, suce to recall Russias actions in Syria.
All strategic areas already mentioned in which the Russian Federation wants to expand its
power and, above all, to show for
each of them a possible alternative to the US hegemonic policy.
Hence Russia thinks that, in the
future, no country will be in a position to gain clear military superiority: in its opinion, security
regards also economic, mass
health and social order issues.
These are the factors that Russia
can currently interpret as a direct
threat to its stability and, above
all, to its sovereignty.
In fact, Russian analysts were impressed by the initial eectiveness of the "colour revolutions"
and the "democratic" ones in the
Maghreb region. Obviously the
results have gradually proved to
be disastrous, but the management of non-military techniques
to destabilize a country, together
with Gene Sharps old theories
which were a study subject of
study for the Muslim Brotherhood during Mubaraks fall, are
the focus of the current Russian
strategic thinking.
These are the Russian themes to
respond to non-military subversion:
1) to immediately avoid the "cultural contagion"; 2) to strengthen
the national identity and, where
possible, the Welfare State; 3) to
steadily increase the level of the
possible military threat; 4) to develop strategies designed to
avoid hidden hostile actions
against Russia on the financial or
commodity markets and this
holds true also for China. The economic and financial destabilization has been well studied by
Russian analysts and even military superiority is needed to
avoid it.
Moreover, there is also what I
would call the identity strategy:
the rejection of the ideological
globalist mix designed to protect
the Russian symbols, traditions
and popular culture from the attack of the US pop culture.
This goal, too, is reached with the

great military parades, the soldiers joyful and proud faces, as
well as with a credible strategic
threat.
Moreover, Russian strategic
thinkers know all too well that the
modern strategy is full spectrum
and regards the economy, the political and cultural stability and
the technological evolution at
the same time.
The reason why Russia maintains
a superpowers military structure,
with some technologies largely
superior to its competitors, is that
President Putin wants to make
the whole new Russian hegemony to be inferred from military
power.
This is the primary theme raised

by Russia against NATOs enlargement: Russia is opposed to it and
it is even ready to block it, as
happened with Ukraine and
Crimea, as well as with the network of NATO radar stations surrounding the Russian Federation,
from Poland up to Romania.Any
limitation to the Russian autonomy and sovereignty will always
be fiercely opposed, at first with
non-military actions, and later
even with surgical military strikes.
The US analysts idea of repeating
the old Cold War game, in the current strategic imbalance situation, unfavourable to the United
States, will be the harbinger of
many diculties for the Americans.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Piercing the shield

A LEANER AND MEANER RUSSIA
bEYOND NUCLEAR STRATEGIES
DR. MATTHEw CROSSTON & TROY bAxTER
ussias history as a
nuclear state is extensive and welldocumented. It was
the second country in the world
to acquire nuclear weapons (after
the US) and since that point it has
been the world leader in stockpiled nuclear weapons.
The only other nation to remain
in close contention was the US
and it was estimated to have
some 10,000 fewer nuclear warheads than Russia at each nations
respective stockpiling peak. Russia has historically placed a significant emphasis on nuclear power
and nuclear deterrence as a primary deterrent strategy since it
first acquired the capability.This
was best exemplified during the
nuclear stock-piling frenzy of the
Cold War, where nuclear weapons

were acquired at a rate that will
likely never be seen again, and
more recently with its declaration
that it has the capability to punch
through the US missile defense
system. Yet, despite Russias historical comfort and reliance on
nuclear power as a deterrence
strategy, the end of the 20th and
beginning of the 21st century
saw Russia moving away from
strict nuclear deterrence. Treaties
such as START I, II, SORT and the
New START, which all worked to
reduce nuclear stockpiles in the
US and Russia, indicated that a
trend towards disarmament, coordination and cooperation was
the new norm taking over in
place of the old one of confrontation, competition and mutually
assured destruction.
Troy Baxter is currently a

Masters Student in Bellevue
Universitys International
Security and Intelligence
Studies Program in Omaha,
Nebraska. He received his
Honours Degree in Criminal
Justice and Public Policy
from the University of
Guelph in Ontario, Canada
in 2013.
TROY bAxTER
been spearheaded by the US,

would significantly reduce its nuclear deterrent capabilities in its
very own backyard. However, the
US claims the defense system is
being put in place in order to
counter the potential Iranian and
North Korean nuclear threat and
that it is not set up in order to defend against a nuclear arsenal the
size of Russias. This may very well
be true in logistical or strict military terms, but it fails the perceptional conventional wisdom
scratch test: you cannot propose
to have missiles in Eastern Europe
to defend against Iran ONLY and
expect the Russian side to believe
it.
Happily, to some it seemed that a

shift in the Russian defense ideology was taking place: from the
old hat concept of nuclear deterrence to the new one of slow but
steady disarmament and international cooperation.
Such an assessment of Russias
defense ideology, however, has
now been all but dismissed, as it
was recently revealed that Russia
has already started dispersing
missile defense penetrating technology throughout its military
and plans on developing new
types of such weapons moving
forward. This declaration is saying
very publicly that Russia does not
consider nuclear deterrence to be
an old hat concept.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
In fact, the nation is saying very

loudly and deliberately that nuclear deterrence is as relevant as
its ever been and that it is intent
on protecting its geostrategic
realm of operations, just perhaps
with a leaner and meaner face
that is accentuated by nuclear
and non-nuclear means.
The US and NATO have been progressively encroaching further
into Russias geostrategic areas of
operation and the discussion of a
NATO missile defense system has
only narrowed the gap further
and caused greater Russian consternation. The fear for Russia is
that the installation of this missile
defense system, which has largely
Russia does, as previously mentioned, have a massive stock pile

of nuclear weapons. The American limited missile defense system would be incapable of
defending against an all-out nuclear warhead blitzkrieg.
Moreover, it would be shortsighted of the US to believe that
a nation as historically skeptical
as Russia with a leader as historically Machiavellian as Vladimir
Putin would blindly accept this
explanation as fact and move on,
particularly as Iran and North
Korea continue to cooperate in
nuclear arms control talks with
the UN (though unevenly). It certainly appears as if the US is positioning itself to undermine Russia
for reasons other than what it has
stated publicly.
In any event, this potential subversion is not a fact lost on

Vladimir Putin and this has no
doubt contributed to the continued strain in US-Russian relations.
These relations are arguably at
their lowest point since the
height of the Cold War. The conflict in Syria has only served to exacerbate them. Both nations are
still engaged in the conflict (despite a Russian partial withdrawal) and appear to be
cooperating in the bombing
campaign against DAESH.
This cooperation, however, has
not been free of tension and criticism. Russia appears to be engaged in the conflict largelyin
order to show its strength on the
international stage and looselytied claims of stopping DAESH in

Syria hurts potential radical Islamist movements in Southern
Russia. Russia doesnt just want
but needs to be seen as an equal
player to the US, which is why the
nation wasted no time dropping
bombs in Syria a mere 24 hours
after it received political approval
from the Russian parliament.
Ultimately, Russia wants a say in
what happens in the region next.
It wants the ability to weaken the
US presence in the Middle East.
This is a higher priority than many
first surmised, which was why it
deployed a significant military
force to Syria despite a sluggish
sanctions-hit economy and
subsequent depreciating currency. Russia has shown that it is

willing to make significant military and financial commitments
to Syria in order to protect its
geopolitical interests in the area,
regardless of the fact that it may
be unsustainable economically
over the long-term.
It is clear that Russia has not been
swayed by the allure of disarmament and international cooperation to such a degree that it is
willing to abandon coincident
strategies that still push its national and global interests. The
nation is still firmly entrenched in
its belief that the US must be
managed at all times.
RUSSIA IS wILLING TO CONTINUE

TO AGGRESSIVELY PROTECT
ITS GEOSTRATEGIC INTERESTS
EVEN If IT MEANS
SIGNIfICANT RISk TO ITSELf
By all indications the US firmly

believes in the same strategy
about Russia, as it continues to
try and gain the upper hand
across several dierent arenas
and strategies. The fact that the
proposed missile defense system
can also be repurposed as an offensive system, if needed, only
adds to the strategic concern for
Russia. Russia is fully aware of the
US geostrategic intentions to
continue moving into what Russia considers its regional spheres
of exclusivity. This is arguably
what compelled Russia to move
military forces into Syria not just
strategic objectives but PERCEPTIONAL ones.
What this says is two things. First,
that both the US and Russia are
still firm believers in the maintenance of old school rivalry, even
under situations where they
share the same objective (like defeating DAESH).
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Second, Russia is willing to continue to aggressively protect its

geostrategic interests even if it
means significant risk to itself.
Some might call that the Russian
penchant for irrational foreign
policy behavior but it is also fueled by a strong Machiavellian
logic bent on balancing American
power by any, and multiple,
means necessary.
The apex of concern for Russia is
that a world powered by American influence unchallenged is an
unhealthy world for Russian visions of the future. That influence,
even if it cannot be stopped entirely, has to be rivaled and compromised, whether it is politically,
diplomatically, or militarily. Its deployment of a military force in
Syria weakened this American influence to the point where it is almost impossible to imagine
today how any Syrian conclusion
will emerge that is fully endorsed
or governed by American ideas
alone.
And that, in the end, may be the
most important victory for Russia in this. In the old days of nuclear deterrence, piercing the
shield was a purely physical military consideration. Today, that
concept has expanded and been
enriched by new Russian thinking. And that, moving forward,
may be the biggest concern for
America.
newsstand.moderndiplomacy.eu
NEWSSTAND
never miss an issue
The Grand
Cyber Spy Game
RUSSIA, AMERICA, AND CHINA STEALING
THE wORLD ONE bYTE AT A TIME
DR. MATTHEw CROSSTON & ANONYMOUS
Anonymous is currently a graduate student in International
Security and Intelligence Studies at Bellevue University and
works within the US governmental system. The opinions
expressed are strictly personal and do not reflect a formal
endorsement of or by the United States government and/or
Intelligence Community.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
very month another

story of cybertheft
linked to China or
Russia emerges. Recent data breaches at Target,
United Airlines, Blue Cross Blue
Shield, and OPM have been
linked back to Russia, while theft
of key technology across major
Department of Defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and
US government laboratories have
been linked to China.
Neither China nor Russias government formally admit to leveraging the internet to steal secrets
from other countries but hacks
have been linked directly to their

intelligence services respective
buildings or individuals known to
be under governmental influence.
International cyber incidents in
Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia
have all been apparently linked
back to Russia while the Canadian
government recently set up domestic cyber-protection programs after several major
corporations were hacked by Chinese intelligence.
The US government struggles on
how to approach these cyber intrusions.
Matthew Crosston is Professor

of Political Science, Director of
the International Security and
Intelligence Studies Program,
and the Miller Chair at Bellevue
University
DR. MATTHEw CROSSTON

Senior Editor, Caspian Project Director
Should they be ignored so that

other foreign policy initiatives
can move forward? Are these initiatives acts of war or a new
method of state gamesmanship?
Do these collections of vast
amounts of information count as
high treason/espionage or simple
economic theft?
wELCOME TO
THE REAL CYbER ERA,
wHERE MULTIPLE
PLAYERS TRY TO STEAL
THE wORLD
ONE bYTE AT A TIME
wHILE PRETENDING
TO DO NOTHING
Of THE SORT
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Environmental negotiations just

about broke down several years
ago when President Obama
called out China for hacking several governmental systems during the negotiations. What does
all of this signify as Russia and
China become more important
strategic world partners, while
still at least semi-maintaining
long-held intelligence and military adversarial attitudes toward
the US?
Welcome to the REAL cyber era,
where multiple players try to steal
the world one byte at a time
while pretending to do nothing
of the sort.The Chinese, American, and Russian intelligence
services have no issue launching
clandestine internet attacks to
pursue what they all consider to
be legitimate national security
and foreign policy objectives.
Sometimes the information collected is economic, directed
against or about important corporations; other times the information is military and political.. In
all cases the information is highly
strategic.
While it is true that the information the Russian and Chinese intelligence services are providing
to their respective policymakers
is much broader in scope than
the CIA or US Department of Defense, and is arguably much more
domestically invasive than the FBI
or DEA, both Russia and China
have successfully started campaigns questioning the purity of
purpose within American intelligence given the details of the
Snowden scandal. All of which
begs questions: should American
intelligence maneuvers match
Chinese and Russian cyber precedence? Is the American public
aversion to cyber collection programs really just a front for a private philosophy that already
rivals China and Russia? Is there
something fundamentally important for states to consider in this
style vs. substance cyber spy debate?
Crucial dierences in intelligence
organizational culture and mission make figuring these questions out quite dicult. While the
United States has been quick to
leverage open-source collection
for its own programs, it has supposedly been hesitant to execute
the power of its cyber abilities in
invasive, oensive, global scenarios (although this consideration is
now being heavily debated in the
classified sector and some accuse
it of already transpiring).
This article will attempt to determine if Chinese and Russian intelligence services have gained a
tactical advantage over the
United States because of a political and bureaucratic blind spot,
or if the United States intelligence
collection culture is dierent only
at the superficial level and is
largely the same as its rivals in
terms of true cyber substance.
Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Drug Enforcement Administration, National Reconnaissance Oce (NRO),
and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The first five
use intelligence collection as part
of a law enforcement mission,
while the NSA, NRO, and NGA all
harvest data and imagery collection.
The first important aspect in understanding the Grand Cyber

Game is to understand how the
Russian, Chinese, and US intelligence communities are structured. The United States is known
for the big brothers of its IC, the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), and National Security
Agency (NSA). However, there are
actually 17 members of the US Intelligence Community. Some of
these include intelligence oces
for each branch of the US military,
Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy,
Traditionally, the CIA operates

overseas and cultivates human
sources while conducting clandestine operations. The FBI traditionally
manages
counter
terrorism operations domestically, provides investigation support overseas when American
citizens are involved, and acts
under an enforcement jurisdiction to maintain the law. The NSA
was established to provide cryptologic services and to protect US
information systems and signals
intelligence.It supports military
customers, national policymakers, and counterterrorism and
counter-intelligence communities under the Department of Defense. However, in a post-9/11

world, these explicitly defined
roles have become more blurred
and opaque as global travel and
transnational collections are intensely complicated by the internet.
Conversely, modern Chinese intelligence services have always
had domestic and international
missions intertwined. Chinas
Ministry of Public Security (MPS)
was formed in 1954 as a domestic
law enforcement agency. It managed criminal investigations, security
protection,
public
information network security,
trac control, legal aairs,
counter-terrorism, drug control,
and other anti-smuggling and
anti-corruption duties.In 1983,
the Ministry of State Security
(MSS) was established as the formal intelligence and security
agency of China for non-military
areas of interests.
the Border Guard Service and the

Federal Agency of Government
Communication and Information.
The three intelligence services
often overlap and sometimes
compete against one another in
the recruitment and collection of
intelligence sources.
It has the same authority to arrest

or detain people as the MPS with
a nearly identical oversight mission by the courts, but it is also a
separate, parallel network to the
MPS. The MSS mission is to ensure the security of the state
through eective measures
against enemy agents, spies, and
counter-revolutionary activities
designed to sabotage or overthrow Chinas socialist system.
Similar to the CIA, the MSS gathers foreign intelligence from targets in various countries overseas
while the MPS gathers information domestically to protect
against domestic terrorism and
political coups. Both heavily rely
on cyber collection.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Russia operates with three principal intelligence services. The SVR

focuses on foreign intelligence
collection, but mainly with civilian aairs. It is formally responsible
for
intelligence
and
espionage activities outside the
Russian Federation. The GRU is
the main foreign military intelligence directorate of the General
Sta of the Armed Forces. It is
Russias largest foreign intelligence agency, deploying at least
six times as many agents as the
formal KGB successor, the SVR.
The FSB operates in theory only
across the former Soviet Republics and domestically, but
having had its operational portfolio increased in 2003 to include
Russia also established an AntiTerrorist Center that falls under

full control of the FSB. The Centers mandate was to create a
database for intelligence sharing
among the security services of all
members of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS). Although the SVR has promised not
to spy within CIS territories, the
FSB has not. As such, it has become the de facto leading intelligence service for foreign
collection activities for Russia. Interestingly, Russia has often
turned a blind eye to Central
Asian intelligence service activity
within its borders, when Central
Asian leaders are making moves
against so-called political enemies (these moves are usually abductions back to Central Asia for
detainment).
These activities have included
both the Chinese MSS and MSP. In
2001, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) was established by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan, to work together
against terrorism, separatism,
and extremism.
They established their own Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure

(RATS) that became the mechanism of choice for carrying out
abductions across national
boundaries, outside of standard
judicial procedures. RATS operations have been compared to the
CIAs practice of extraordinary
rendition and allow members to
detain suspects in the six participating states outside of any rule
of law. The members operators
are not subject to criminal liability
and they are immune from arrest
and detention within the six
states.
The reality is, on an international
level, the intelligence services of
all three nations operate with remarkably similar mission goals
and objectives: they wish to protect the national interests of their
respective states and garner advantages for said states via the
acquisition of important information. While Hollywood has often
focused on the political deviance
and violence of intelligence missions around the world, the less
exciting reality is that intelligence
is more often utilized simply for
political leverage. On the domestic level, the United States has
long-held the moral superiority
card against rivals like Russia and
China, largely based on the democratic system in America supposedly being more altruistic and
legally-minded than the so-called
autocratic-type regimes in Beijing
and Moscow.
Snowden and other details in the

past several years have started to
make some at least wonder how
much that moralism is built upon
a foundation of sand and not
stone. Finally, the stylistic aspect
of intelligence public relations is
significantly dierent between
the three: the US decidedly tries
to maintain an air of secrecy and
deniability over just about everything its Intelligence Community
does or needs to do. Russia and
China, while revealing no secrets,
tend to be a bit more unabashed
about the role and necessity intelligence plays for the furthering
of state power and do not fear
making public statements to that
eect anywhere, anytime.
For them, therefore, the only difference between the three great
players in the Grand Cyber Spy
Game is the costuming and marketing of their respective goals,
but NOT the ploys, initiatives, and
overall desires. When it comes to
winning, it seems all three are set
and determined to virtually steal,
that is, obtain as much as possible. The Grand Cyber Spy Game
demands no less.
FSB's Snowden War

USING THE AMERICAN NSA AGAINST ITSELf
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Alexander S. Martin is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in International Intelligence and Security Studies from Bellevue University. He
earned a Bachelors Degree in International Intelligence and Security
Studies also from Bellevue University in 2014.
ALExANDER S. MARTIN
ussia's understanding of information

warfare must be understood in the context of Russian statism. Russian
leaders, particularly President
Vladimir Putin, view state power
as essential to national health
and broadly-defined state power.
The state attempts to maintain
absolute privilege over rights,
ownership, and power, and often
confers these things to others as
gifts or presents. (Jurevicius,
2015)
Since Putin's rise to power, exclusive private ownership within the
state has been weakened and the
state has increasingly used its
now massive media industry as a
means of influencing both the
domestic population as well as
foreign audiences. (Kiriya &
Degtereva, 2010) In terms of foreign influence, information plays
a critical role in Russian political
and military strategy.
The Russian military divides information operations into two

means of attack: informationtechnological means, which include attacks on national critical
infrastructure and cyber-attaches; and information-perceptual means, which include
propaganda, perception management, disinformation, psychological operations, and
deception. (Liaropoulos, 2007)
Russia's exploitation of US intelligence disclosures falls within
this second set of means as a
form of propaganda. While the
Russian state has always used
propaganda as a means of ensuring Russian security, examination
of this tactic is under-appreciated
in the modern day. (Stewart,
2014)In relation to the West, Russian information operations, often
called Information Warfare by
Russian strategists, fill a critical
strategic role in all phases of conflict.
wHILE IT IS POSSIbLE
TO DRAw fROM
A RANGE Of INCIDENTS
THE DISCLOSURES
Of EDwARD SNOwDEN,
A fORMER NSA SYSTEM
ADMINISTRATOR,
HAS ARGUAbLY bEEN
THE MOST
CONTROVERSIAL
AND IMPACTfUL
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
In a conflict involving kinetic operations, information warfare is

used as a force multiplier whose
purpose is to guarantee the
achievement of the goals of the
operation and is often seen as
most eective in targeting enemy
command and control structures,
as well as enemy decision-making. (Thomas, 1996)
Tellingly however, the Cold War
notion of information warfare as
a low-intensity form of conflict
targeting the enemy's civilian
population and its public awareness, as well as state administrative systems, production control
systems, scientific control, cultural control, and so forth remains a key feature of Russian
thinking today regarding information operations. (Thomas,
1996)
It is not that other nations do not
accept this anymore as a part of
modern warfare, but rather only
Russia is so openly adamant
about the properness of such
techniques. In 2013, the Russian
Chief of the General Sta wrote
that modern conflict includes the
broad use of political, economic,
informational, humanitarian, and
other non-military measures.
(Jones, 2014) Russian information
warfare thinking has thus
evolved beyond Soviet-era concepts into a fully modern doctrine, particularly in the more
intense forms of conflict.Critical
to the eective use of Russian
propaganda are its intelligence
agencies, particularly the FSB.

One high profile example of FSB
media manipulation is the allegation that the FSB controls troll
armies, a term used to describe
an estimated 200,000 FSB employees who are tasked with
flooding social networks, Internet
forums, and media comment sections with pro-Russian content.
(Jurevicius, 2015)
It is worth noting that this is but
one aspect of the FSB's control of
Russian media. While it is dicult
to ascertain precisely what links
exist between the FSB and Russian media corporations formally,
the FSB's extensive power makes
it clear that FSB-directed propaganda is likely a critical component of many Russian media
operations.
In response to the expansion of
US intelligence because of the
Global War on Terror, Paul Todd
and Jonathan Bloch wrote just as
the Cold War provided a legitimizing framework for the unprincipled and often counter
productive waging of covert warfare, so the dangers of a new era
of intelligence 'blowback' are all
too clear. (Todd & Bloch, 2003)
Russian media propaganda
against US intelligence services
makes use of such allegations - of
vastly expanded and illegal
American power to collect information against foreign and domestic targets.
While it is possible to draw from a

range of incidents the disclosures
of Edward Snowden, a former
NSA system administrator, has arguably been the most controversial and impactful.
Reporting on the NSA's requirement to end its collection of telephony metadata as stipulated
by the USA Freedom Act, one
grouping Russia Today articles
highlighted the conflict between
privacy advocates and US lawmakers, writing while privacy advocates described the change as
only a single step with the
prospect of more progress to
come, lawmakers adopted a tone
of finality. (RT, 2015) Another
grouping of articles aimed at
demonstrating the loophole the
NSA technically used to continue
collection against US citizens.
Finally a third implied that the

vast metadata collection program did not provide the NSA
with any operational or analytic
value. (RT, 2015)
These article groups demonstrate
not only Russia's main aim in reporting on the Snowden leaks so
as to undermine American image
on the international stage, they
are also an abstract attempt to
achieve an important Russian foreign policy goal: using the expansive NSA collection eort
targeted against US citizens to
positively contrast with Russian
maneuvers on the global stage. In
the context of America always
making charges against Russia for
using draconian measures to limit
its citizens' rights and invade their
privacy, these reports are designed to highlight US hypocrisy
and sow the seeds of discord and

doubt among American allies
about any so-called US moral supremacy.
Falling approval ratings of the US
Government also help determine
the impact of FSB propagandizing the Snowden leaks. After
Snowden leaked the disclosures,
US President Barack Obama's approval ratings plummeted. (CNN,
2014) Gallup poll data show now
that American confidence in all
three branches of the US Government is declining, with the
Supreme Court and Congress
being at all-time lows in 2015.
(McCarthy, 2014) In contrast, a recent Economist/YouGov poll
found that 78% of Americans
view President Putin as a stronger
leader than President Obama.
USING THE
ExPANSIVE NSA
COLLECTION EffORT
TARGETED AGAINST
US CITIzENS
TO POSITIVELY
CONTRAST wITH
RUSSIAN MANEUVERS
ON THE
GLObAL STAGE
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
A final area of impact to consider

is European reactions to the leaks.
As with the American public, European publics were outraged.
Not only by the perceived US
hypocrisy, but also by the alleged
NSA collection against European
diplomats and elites. (Network of
European Union Centers of Excellence, 2014) These disclosures
have had a negative impact on
US-European relations, as the EU
has become increasingly reluctant to impose further economic
sanctions on Russia despite US
pressure. (Harress, 2015) Furthermore, European leaders are
showing an increased willingness
to cooperate with Russia with regard to military operations and
objectives in Syria. (Bloomberg,
2015) While the reasons for these
developments are complex and
multi-level, the damage done to
US-European relations has absolutely been impacted by explicit Russian intelligence eorts
to refocus media perception on
American image and global status.
It is important to note that this

form of intelligence media propaganda is not eective in isolation. It was not Russian
propaganda that caused widespread distrust of the US government. However, the FSB and
Russian media conglomerates are
able to eectively profit from the
damning Snowden disclosures by
casting the US in a suspicious,
negative light, while at the same
time minimizing its own supposed flaws and political sins.
More study should be devoted in
future to this softer but still significant aspect of US-Russian relational conflict.
The Islamic States

fake story
RUSSIAN fSb SPY
JULIA SwEET
Editor
PhD Candidate, Rutgers University, NJ
n May 2016, Al-Hayat

Media Center of the Islamic State released a
new issue of Russian
magazine Istok, which contains
an article about so-called Russian
secret service spy, Elvira R.
Karaeva. Despite the silence of
government ocials, who refrain
from commenting on this situation, it is highly unlikely that Elvira
used to be a spy.
However, given the fact that she
previously cooperated with federal investigators (at least, in one
criminal case), some ISIS fighters
from Kabardino-Balkaria could
recognize Elvira and accuse her of
spying. As a result, the Islamic
State commanders decided to execute her, making an example for
other members.
She was born in 1988 in a small

town called Cherkessk, in the
Kabardino-Cherkess
republic
(Rossiyskaya Gazeta, April 24,
2013). In the North Caucasus,
being a militants wife, Elvira was
involved in the illegal activities of
local extremist organizations,
long before her trip to Islamic
State held-territories. By 2012,
she had a criminal record as a
member of a local extremist organization. Elvira was noticed
again by the Russian security
agency in March 2012 during a
counterterrorist operation in
Kabardino-Balkaria. The authorities received information about a
suspicious group of people residing in a private house in a small
village called Mir, in the Chegem
district.
Following the report, police ocers began to check the documents of all residents of this
village. This groups house was
not surrounded and residents of
nearby houses were not evacuated. The authorities underestimated the situation: militants had
machine guns and opened fire on
police (Gazeta Yuga, March 15,
2012). The operation resulted in
the deaths of the militants. According to the information center
of the National Antiterrorism
Committee (NAC), five militants
including one woman, were killed
by Russian special forces (TASS,
March 12, 2012). Trying to escape
with two children, Elvira was captured by police ocers not far
from the place of the incident
(Gazeta Yuga, March 15, 2012).
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Obviously, active cooperation

during the investigation helped
her to avoid severe punishment.
However, since 2013, she was on
a federal terrorist watchlist.
Later, her name appeared again
in police reports. In 2014, the FSB
indicted Elvira Karaeva and 3
other women (S. Halikova (Dagestan), P. Atemaskina (Sakhalin),
and E. Arshahova (Tatarstan)) for
terrorist financing and sending
money to ISIS (Svoboda, April 4,
2016). They worked under the supervision of militants widow,
Daria Izankova (Murmansk), who
moved to Syria with a new husband in December 2013.The
women were arrested in December 2014 and later, were transferred to a Moscow detention
facility for trial.
At that time, Elvira lived in

Makhachkala, Dagestan and
worked together with P. Atemaskina and E. Arshahova in a local
market selling childrens clothes.
However, there is no ocial information about the arrest or interrogation of Elvira Karaeva
whatsoever. As the Russian News
Portal, Meduza, underlined
there was an absence of any information about a development
in this criminal investigation
against this woman (Meduza, December 29, 2015).
As many other people at-risk, the
authorities monitored Elvira. Apparently, this monitoring was not
good enough because after the
arrest of Saida Halikova in December 2014, Elvira undertook a
trip to Syria.
ISISS ACCUSATIONS ARE MOST LIkELY bASELESS.

HOwEVER, SHE wAS bRUTALLY INTERROGATED
AND LATER, ExECUTED bY ISLAMIC STATE MILITANTS
So by the moment when investigators figured out about her involvement in terrorist financing
(approximately between December 2014 May 2015), Kareva was
out of their reach.
According to the Istok article,
Elvira was directly involved in the
murder of a field commander,
Emir of Ichkeria, B. Gochiaev, several militants and a female, who
was trained to be a suicide
bomber, on December 7, 2011 in
Kabardino-Balkaria. However,
these people were killed by the
explosion of their own bomb,
which accidentally detonated. At
that moment, the militants were
in a car and tried to escape from
the police. Also, she allegedly
helped to kill a leader of a local
gang, Saad or Artur Amriev (born
in 1988), who was shot by police
ocers in the Sunjensky region of
Ingushetia on November 19,
2011 (Komsomolskaya Pravda,
November 11, 2011).
To summarize, Elvira Karaeva

hardly can be called a Russian
spy. She cooperated with police
investigators and disclosed some
important information in order to
avoid imprisonment as almost
every suspect does. Her entire life
was connected to various extremist groups and criminal
gangs in the North Caucasus. Trying to escape arrest for terrorist financing, this woman fled to Syria,
maybe alone or with a new husband and her child. ISISs accusations are most likely baseless.
However, she was brutally interrogated and later, executed by Islamic State militants. The story
presented in the last issue Istok
magazine was made up by the Islamic State in order to intimidate
enemies and provide an example
for its members.
Playing Chess,
Not Checkers
RUSSIAN RESPONSES TO U.S. HEGEMONY IN kIND
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Logan Wilde is currently pursuing his Bachelors degree in the International Security and Intelligence Studies Program at Bellevue University.
He has more than thirteen years of experience working in the intelligence
community, primarily focusing on the Middle East and Central Asia regions.
LOGAN wILDE
ew would argue that

Russias recent display
of military assertiveness, in both its hybrid
confrontation in Ukraine and recent intervention in Syria, is antithetical to its proposed selfimage as a regional power. This is
largely the basis of Emil Aslan
Souleimanovs article explaining
how Russia is using the threat of
the Islamic State to attempt to reinstate political-military hegemony throughout the former
Soviet states. But Souleimanov
missed the broader aspect of
Vladimir Putins true motivations
in the Middle East and throughout the Caucasus: countering perceived U.S. and NATO hegemony
in the region and beyond.
The 2008 skirmish in Georgia
marked the first use of Russian
military power to engage an independent Post-Soviet state
since the fall of the USSR. The

weak reaction by the United
States only highlighted the ecacy of the strategy, which came
to be known as the Medvedev
Doctrine, where the Russian president proclaimed that protecting
the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be, is an
unquestionable priority for our
country.
Our foreign policy decisions will
be based on this need. We will
also protect the interests of our
business community abroad. It
should be clear to all that we will
respond to any aggressive acts
committed against us. (Friedman, 2008)
This ambitious military strategy
rested on the reality that Russia
was suering from an economic
downturn due to low oil prices
and the political threat of NATO
expansion to its borders.
It is not a coincidence that Russias involvement in Georgiaand

Ukraine symbolically coincided
with each countrys stated intent
to join the NATO Membership Action Plan.
Souleimanov gets into Russias
consistent eort to link the
United States to any political or
military objective it deems worthy of pursuing: besides the obvious connections to NATO, the
Russian media (heavily controlled
by the government as to message) assumes that the Islamic
State is a U.S. project to redraw
the political map of the Middle
East, or that it is used by Washington to either boost Americas supremacy in this part of the world
or destabilize Russias Muslimdominated areas in the North
Caucasus, as well as Russias
sphere of influence in Central
Asia.
Paradoxically, this link also requires that Putin necessarily

downplays the immediate threat
that the Islamic State poses to
Russia, which Souleimanov correctly points out.
Instead, Putin speculates that
North Caucasian fighters participating in the Syrian war will return to their homeland and
continue the fight on native Russian soil against Russians. This is
one of his primary reasons for
military intervention in Syria.
THE 2008 SkIRMISH

IN GEORGIA MARkED
THE fIRST USE
Of RUSSIAN
MILITARY POwER
TO ENGAGE AN
INDEPENDENT
POST-SOVIET STATE
SINCE THE fALL
Of THE USSR
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Members of Russias political and

intellectual elite are now arguing
that the Islamic State could in fact
pose an immediate threat to Russias political and military interests
in the Central Asian region. This
narrative helps to justify Russias
strong military presence in the region, itself a response to a substantial U.S. military deployment
in Afghanistan.
Russian analysts point to Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
and Kyrgyzstan as the regions
most vulnerable states in the
event of a concentrated attack
perpetrated by ISIS or its local allies. Although Souleimanov correctly identifies that this is
actually an unlikely threat, he
does not do enough to explain
this conclusion. All of these states
are at least semi-authoritarian
and while they do not have large
militaries, they do rely on Sovietstyle military agreements.
They also have substantial police

forces that are trained to identify
and respond to any insurgent or
terrorist crises, while regularly
employing torture and extralegal tactics to silence opposition.
(Human Rights Watch, 2016) In
other words, this region is fundamentally hostile to an influx of Islamic State members.
Unlike in war-torn Yemen or Syria,
the states in this region have absolute control over their respective populations and therefore
represent a significant barrier for
most jihadist groups. This at least
partly explains why home-grown
Islamist groups have been fairly
weak throughout Central Asia for
the past generation.
Souleimanov also suggests that

Russia may be complicit in allowing its citizens to travel to Syria to
fight alongside jihadists. There is
little reason for Russian police to
prevent these individuals from
leaving.
In
addition
to
Souleimanovs explanation that
Russian authorities are counting
on many of these individuals
being killed in combat while in
Syria, they also serve to further
destabilizeand therefore undermineU.S. intentions in Syria
itself.
It was also these same individuals
that gave Russia the initial justification to enter into Syria, keeping
in line with its doctrine to protect
its citizens.
Partnering with Assad was merely

another strategic maneuver to
display Russias independence
from U.S. goals in the region, despite both the U.S. and Russia
having a similar objective of defeating the Islamic State. As Russia withdraws from Syria it will
remain focused on tracking the
Russian-born jihadists that are intent on returning to their homeland to continue their fight once
the Syrian battlefield has grown
stale.
Russias declining political and
economic influence throughout
the region has forced its hand in
its attempt to establish itself as a
regional power comparable to
China or India.
Unfortunately, as Souleimanov
points out, the Central Asian
elites have grown increasingly
suspicious of Moscows expansionism, its hybrid warfare in eastern Ukraine, and its rhetoric of
protecting Russians abroad.
(2015) This presents a problem for
Russia, which has few potential
solid partners beyond its former
Soviet states.
Embarrassingly, the only parties
that ocially recognized Russias
claim to Ossetia and Abkhazia in
2008
were
Hamas
and
Nicaraguanot even the Central
Asian states were willing to ally
with Russia on such an openly
anti-NATO maneuver. (Matthews,
2008)
wITH SYRIA
AS A SHOwCASE,
RUSSIA HAS TAkEN
ITS fIRST STEP
IN ESTAbLISHING
ITSELf
AS A DOMINANT
MILITARY fORCE
ONCE MORE
The most palpable example of

Russias focus on military strategy
is its use to maintain its influence
in the Arctic region, an area that
is bound to see vastly increased
economic activity as the region
begins to melt and reveals access
points to vast reserves of hydrocarbons. (Mitchell, 2014) This
level of military quasi-aggressiveness on the international stage is
unique to Russia. Even Chinas
military posture to preserve its influence in the South China Sea is
not nearly as robust. (Rizzo,
Lendon, Levine, & Ullah, 2016)
Without the economic clout of
China or the political standing of
India, Moscow is forced to rely on
modernizing and utilizing its military as a means to counter Western influence. With Syria as a
showcase, Russia has taken its
first step in establishing itself as a
dominant military force once
more that is capable of defending
the region from Westernor as
the Russian populace understands it, Islamic Stateinfluence.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
But Russia must establish a foreign policy that does more than
attempt to undermine U.S. and
NATO activity in the region if it
hopes to truthfully achieve the
level of regional influence that
China and India enjoy. After all, it
is Chinas trade with the United
States and Indias strong political
ties with Washington that have allowed them to grow.
Russia must embrace a similar
strategy if it wishes to compete in
a similar fashion on the international stage. It may have a legitimate strategic reason for all of its
military posturing, but ultimately
its biggest global successes and
most powerful regional influence
will be in showing how well it is
able to partner with others as opposed to going it alone.
An unlikely
and unwanted scenario
RUSSIAN PEACEkEEPERS IN NAGORNO-kARAbAkH
RUSIf HUSEYNOV
Independent researcher
he April shootouts in
Nagorno -K arabak h
that took dozens of
lives from each side
signaled to the world community
that the conflict around the abovementioned region is not frozen, as
it was previously claimed.
Ethnic clashes between Armenians
and Azerbaijanis living in NagornoKarabakh , a mountainous pro
vince inside the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, arose in 1988
toward the end of Soviet rule. The
conflict of a local scale developed
into a full-fledged bloody war between newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan after the
collapse of the Soviet Union: Azerbaijan tried to maintain its control
over the region, while Armenia
backed the separatist movement
of the ethnic Armenians.
Although Azerbaijan was admitted to the United Nations with its

Soviet-time territory that included Nagorno-Karabakh, the
Armenian side managed to occupy both the province and the
adjacent districts and proclaimed
the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic. As a result of the conflict, which cost the both sides
more than 30,000 lives, nearly
one million Azerbaijanis got expelled from their homes in the
occupied territories and since
then have dwelled as refugees in
their own country.
The Russia-brokered negotiations
secured a truce in 1994 and
ceased the hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan but failed
to ensure sustainable progress.
Controlled by the Armenian separatists, Nagorno-Karabakh has
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
maintained de facto autonomy

since the cease-fire, while the region is internationally recognized
as part of Azerbaijan.
Ocial mediators of the Nagorno
- Karabakh conflict, Russia, the
USA and France, initiated several
proposals and organized direct
meetings of Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents. Yet any attempts to finally resolve the
conflict have failed: Baku has repeatedly oered a wide autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh as
part of Azerbaijan, while the Armenian side demands independence for the breakaway region.
The full-scale hostilities in April
that involved almost all types of
weaponry, have been defined as
"the worst" since 1994. The sides,
according to an unocial estimation, lost around 90 troops each.
However, the clashes labeled

four-day war by the media have
not fully ended as cross-border
violence still continues to harm
civilians and their estates.
The recent fight raised once again
the issue of deploying Russian
peacekeeping forces in the disputed area. Some hints and even
open statements on this matter
have been pronounced by proRussian media and several politicians several times over the past
years although the idea was
never implemented. In April
2015, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Kremlin`s unocial spokesperson,
claimed that the war in Karabakh
would be stopped by Russian
peacekeepers. His statements,
sometimes utterly unbelievable,
should be considered seriously as
he usually proclaims the Kremlin`s position or future plans.
In September 2015, Stratfor offered a scenario, according to

which Russian peacekeepers
would replace Armenian troops
in Nagorno-Karabakh. In April
2015, by referring to a Russian
daily Izvestia, Stratfor revealed
Moscow's plan to deploy Russian
peacekeepers to the conflict
zone. During and in the aftermath of the clashes, the introduction of peacekeeping forces in
the region emerged anew. Having received an unexpected blow
by the Azerbaijani Army and lost
several important positions along
the frontline, Armenia`s president
Serzh Sargsyan noted in one of
his recent interviews that his
country is not against peacekeeping forces in the region. However,
it was not fully revealed in the
context whether it could be Russian or international troops.
International media also recalled
this issue, by referring to the
aforementioned Stratfor`s report.
A recent article on OSW, Poland`s
Centre for Eastern Studies, also
mentioned that the major political beneficiary of the four-day
conflict is Russia, which has
strengthened its position as the
de factoprincipal conciliator and
guarantor of the ceasefire. It cannot be ruled out that the current
phase of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict is part of a broader Russian plan aimed at changing the
situation and at introducing Russian troops into the region as
peacekeepers.
This would strengthen Russias

geopolitical position in the Caucasus, and would mean that the
Western influence is being marginalized.
The introduction of Russian
troops in Nagorno-Karabakh
does not seem an acceptable
idea, however, for a number of
countries, including the both
warring sides and the powers interested in the region.
First of all, such development
would let Russia regain full military control over the South Caucasus and undermine the
independence of the regional
countries. Interestingly, Azerbaijan was among the first post-Soviet countries that managed to
achieve the withdrawal of remaining Russian troops in 19921993.
Despite Russia`s own economic
diculties to aord the withdrawal and accommodate Russian troops at that time, the
relevant agreement is marked as
one of the most important events
in the history of independent
Azerbaijan. To compare, the withdrawal of Russian troops from another South Caucasian country,
Georgia, was quite painful and
took longer. But Russia could still
maintain its forces in Georgia`s
breakaway areas, Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. Meanwhile, Armenia, where a Russian military base
is still stationed, is sometimes referred to as Russia`s outpost or its
remote province.
THE INTRODUCTION
Of RUSSIAN TROOPS
wILL UNLEASH
A wAVE
Of HATRED
TOwARDS RUSSIA,
SAYS AN ARMENIAN
POLITICAL ExPERT
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
With heavy anti-Russian sentiments, local societies both Azerbaijan and Armenia protest the
deployment of Russian troops in
the region, simply aspiring to
keep it as a quarrel between the
two and realizing Russia`s involvement would lead to loss of
the territory for either warring
party.
A last year`s online survey by an
Azerbaijani media outlet revealed
that the majority of respondents
believe Nagorno- Karabakh could
be permanently lost for Azerbaijan in that case. Besides, for the
current generation in Azerbaijan,
the Russians are seen as direct
and indirect perpetrators of the
two most terrible events which
have occurred in Azerbaijans
contemporary history: Black January (when Soviet soldiers entered Baku to suppress the
independence movement and
killed over 100 people in 1990)
and Khojali massacre (when a
Russian regiment aided Armenian gangs to slaughter unarmed
civilians in 1992 during the
Karabakh War).
There are also calls on Armenian
side against Russian peacekeepers as it also might lose the control over Nagorno-Karabakh: The
introduction of Russian troops
will unleash a wave of hatred towards Russia, says an Armenian
political expert. Moscow`s sale of
arms to Azerbaijan has ignited
anti-Russian sentiments and led
to big protests in Yerevan.
Furthermore, it is not guaranteed

that Russian peacekeepers would
bring the settlement for the conflict. The Russian troops currently
stationed in similar breakaway regions, namely Abkhazia, South
Ossetia and Transnistria have simply cemented the frozen status of
the respective conflicts and keep
prolonging the situation, which
might eventually lead to the full
independence and international
recognition for the mentioned regions.
Big powers that have their own
interests and vision in the region
seem never to approve this scenario either. The United States,
which has already allowed Russian engagement in the Middle
East, a traditionally American
sphere of interest, would not be
happy about Putin`s another military involvement and further
strengthening of the Russian positions in this neighborhood.
With recently severed confrontation with Russia, Turkey will not
easily acquiesce to Russia`s military presence in Azerbaijan,
which is Turkey`s natural ally
through political and ethnocultural links. Establishing its military
bases under the name of peacekeeping forces would enable the
Russians to obtain control over
important regional projects that
Turkey, together with Azerbaijan,
Georgia, the USA and the EU, has
been eectively building and operating.
Thanks to these combined efforts, South Caucasus has turned

into an important energy and
transport corridor. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, as well as
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum and TANAP
gas pipelines have increased the
significance of the region and
contributed to the energy diversification of Europe. Thus, the latter would also be interested in
having a stable alternative energy
source/corridor in order to reduce its own dependence on
Russia.
Furthermore, China`s recent attempts to revive Silk Road by circumventing Russia also promise
to seal the status of Central Asia
and Caucasus as a bridge between East and West.
Therefore, Russian threats on the

Silk Road project could harm the
interests of China, the project`s
initiator.
In this context, despite statements of several Russian politicians and experts on deploying
Russian
peacekeepers
in
Nagorno - Karabakh, this development remains highly unlikely
and quite unacceptable. Simply
lobbying this scenario without intention to implement it might
also provide several goals for Russia, including strengthening the
Kremlin`s positions against its regional and global rivals, reminding authorities and societies in
either belligerent country who is
the boss in the region.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
The Mighty
Have Fallen
AMERICAN SPACE DEPENDENCY ON RUSSIA
he space program
that gave the United
States
much-deserved global recognition is looking very dierent
today.
Somewhat embarrassingly, the
United States relies on the Atlas V
rocket, powered by a Russian
rocket engine, to transport crucial
space satellite technology.
It is concerning to the US to heavily depend on Russia, at the moment still under sanctions for
interfering in Ukrainian unrest.
Thus it seems imperative that this
situation needs to change for the
long-term benefit of the American space program.
In order to be ready for future

conflicts, which may include
space, US armed forces need to
rely on space technology such as
GPS, communication satellites,
and intelligence gathering equipment.
The United States must maintain
uninterrupted and independent
access to space due to 21st century national security interests.By
heavily depending on Russia,
Washington is supporting the defense industry of a state that carries, to put it mildly, deep
skepticism toward American
power.
Nenad Drca is a former military trilingual linguist who

worked across many nations
over eight years. He lived and
worked on three continents.
This experience gave him a
deep appreciation for intelligence community.
After graduating with BA in
Psychology he returned to
work for the US Army as a
DOD civilian. He expects to
graduate next March with
Master of Science in International Security and Intelligence Studies degree.
NENAD DRCA
It is unwise policy to depend on

Russia for vital space missions
and even worse policy when this
dependence might help Russia
takes steps against US national
security interests. Russian Deputy
Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin
has described American fees for
the space transport as free
money that is invested directly
into Moscows missile development program. NASA spokesman
Mr. Allard Beutel stated recently
that his agency still has a transport contract with Russia until
June 2020.
RUSSIA
IS DEVELOPING
ITS OwN ARRAY
Of MILITARY
EqUIPMENT THAT
COULD TRACk,
APPROACH, INSPECT,
AND POSSIbLY
SAbOTAGE fOREIGN
SATELLITES IN ORbIT
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
This idea of American space dependence on Russia is receiving

increasing criticism in Washington. Recently Senator John McCain said: today Russia holds
many of our most precious national security satellites at risk before they ever get o the ground."
His concerns were not unfounded because in 2014 Rogozin, in light of impending
sanctions, openly threatened to
prohibit the export of Russian
rockets that facilitate deployment
of the American satellite program. If that happened the
United States would have no
means of deploying its essential
satellite technology into space.
More disconcertingly, the new
federal budget proposed to cut
NASAs Fiscal Year 2017 funds
even further. In perspective,
NASAs budget is dangerously
small when compared to regular
expenditures.
Former NASA administrator Mike

Grin stated that Americans
spend more annually on pizza (27
billion USD) than on space. Due
to such changes NASAs mission
today is much weaker than several decades ago. The United
States, first to send men to the
moon in 1969, now struggles in
the 21st century to reach beyond
low-earth orbit without expensive Russian assistance. How the
mighty have fallen indeed.
While proposed budget cuts to
NASA have been causing bitter
debates in Congress, the reality is
that any good change will take
years before empirical results become visible. In 2011, policymakers decided to eliminate NASAs
Constellation program: $9 billion
dollars of diligent labor to construct a new Orion spacecraft and
Aries rocket canceled.
Some of the main objectives of
the program were completion of
a new International Space Station
and a return to the Moon by
2020, with subsequent manned
trip to Mars. The Constellation
program was meant to reinvigorate American space supremacy.
No other nation, including Russia,
China, India, and Japan, was
meant to be able to successfully
compete or outmaneuver such
an advanced program. Now
those countries do not even need
to bother.
In 2015, Russia deployed 17 unmanned satellites into orbit, further expanding its capacity for
remote sensing systems and intelligence collection. In addition,
both Russia and China are developing provocative new space
technologies such as anti-satellite
weapons. That would allow Russia and China to deny access to
any adversary during conflict. The
intense reliance of modern warfare on satellite access is impossible to underestimate.
The possibility of having Russia
and China interrupting and disabling vital communications and
navigation space equipment
should therefore be very concerning to the United States. The
threat is so serious that US policymakers have authorized an additional $5 billion dollars to be used
on defensive and oensive capabilities to overcome deficiencies
in the American military space
program.
Russia is developing its own array

of military equipment that could
track, approach, inspect, and possibly sabotage foreign satellites in
orbit. While China has publicly
announced its space endeavors
are nothing more than peaceful
science experiments, Russian ocials have remained silent. Ironically, both Russia and China have
been promoting for years a treaty
on the prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space
and the threat or use of force
against outer space objects. Interestingly, Washington opposes
this treaty, which was submitted
to the United Nations by Russia
and China. The reason for opposition is basically the American perception that Russia and China are
both disingenuous. In other
words, the US feels both Moscow
and Beijing will work on space
militarization while letting the
treaty automatically counter any
potential rival entrants.
Thus, the fear is that Russia and

China want to use the treaty only
to curb a resurgence of American
space capabilities. Regardless of
whether or not these suspicions
are true, the problem with any
space treaty will be the diculty
in achieving real compliance and
oversight verification.
China's Vice Foreign Minister
Cheng Guoping has stated on
several occasions that Beijing intends to increase its cooperation
with Russia on several space projects.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
In the meantime, Russia is planning to build its own space station by the year 2024. The
Chinese government is also planning to construct its own orbiting
space station by the year 2020. In
1998, when the International
Space Station launched, it was
the most expensive project ever
built at approximately $150 billion.
The United States generously
gave more than $100 billion toward its construction. Today, only
Russian rockets equipped with a
Russian docking system can bring
necessary ISS supplies. Realistically, the United States is approaching a critical moment
when space dependency on Russia will have to end. Perhaps the
arrival of successful private companies such as Space X will fill the
void left by diminished NASA
support.
By allowing private industry to

compete and provide necessary
services, the need for Russia
might diminish.
Frankly, American policymakers
have been too slow to act on
minimizing the negative consequences of their budget cuts in
crucial space areas. Allowing Russia or China to militarize space
while also making America addicted to Russian space services
can only lead to vulnerability in
critical military areas.
Placing Russia or China in the
leadership position for space
would cause great concern
among many nations and even
negatively impact global economic security. Many civilian and
scientific organizations have their
satellites in low-Earth orbit. It is
fair to assume that as of today
most of them prefer a leading
American presence over Russian

or Chinese. But that preference
right now is not matched by any
empirical reality.
But so far, that policy wisdom has

yet to emerge. As a consequence,
the future of space will remain
crowded, confused, and potentially conflict-ridden.
What might help even the playing field is corruption and mismanagement: it was reported
that over $1 billion cannot be accounted for in the Russian space
program. Even at its best, the
Russian space program budget is
only slightly bigger than NASAs
smallest budget. The United
States still has the leading technology assets. They are simply
being hindered by poor policy
choices.
Both Russia and China depend on
media propaganda to maintain
their image of power and
strength in space. The United
States space program does not
need more media coverage but
better policy to move forward.
Vitalizing
Russia- Japan relations

DR. AbDUL RUff
Prolific writer, Independent Analyst; Columnist contributing articles to many newspapers and journals on world politics; Expert
on Mideast aairs, Chronicler of foreign occupations & freedom
movements
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
However, since there are other

more important veto claimants
like Saudi Arabia and Turkey
Americans hesitate to undertake
steps to make Japan a veto member. Moreover, Strategic experts
view Japans veto status would
even be detrimental to US global
interests.
top nuclear power

with a veto on the
UNSC, Russia enjoys,
almost at par with US
super power, certain privileges
and international prestige that
Japan, a non nuclear and non
veto power, does not. USA looks
after Japans interests in the
UNSC.
A close NATO ally of USA, Japan is
currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council,
and its veto ambition in the UNSC
is a very important topic for the
country.
Russo-Japanese relations have

been strained for decades manly
due to four islands that the
mighty Soviet Union had annexed from Japan in the WW-II.
The four Kuril Islands Iturup,
Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai
have been administered by
Russia since the end of World War
II, but Japan still lays claim to
them.
Ties between the two countries
deteriorated two years ago after
Tokyo announced that it would
support Western economic sanctions imposed on Moscow over
its alleged interference in
Ukraine, but the lack of stable relations actually goes back
decades.
KURIL ISLANDS
Commenting on the background
to the diplomatic good will visit
in analysis Russian geopolitical
analysts noted that at first glance,
Russian Japanese relations are exceptional in their astonishing irrationality.
Relations between Russia and
Japan are not on the positive side
and they are a continuation of
tensed Empire of JapanRussian
Empire relations, covering 18551917 and equally tensed Japan
Soviet Union relations covering
1917-1991. The two countries
have been unable to sign a peace
treaty after World War II due to
the Kuril Islands dispute.
RUSSO-JAPANESE
RELATIONS
HAVE bEEN
STRAINED
fOR DECADES
MANLY DUE TO
fOUR ISLANDS THAT
THE MIGHTY
SOVIET UNION
HAD ANNExED
fROM JAPAN
IN THE ww-II
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
It appears Russia seeks to upgrade its relationship with Japan

and on April 15, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in
Tokyo for a two-day ocial visit,
discussing political and economic
issues. Lavrov invited Prime Minister Abe to visit Russia.
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe left on
May 01 for a weeklong visit to
major European countries and
Russia to lay the groundwork for
the Group of Seven summit he
will host this month and to address a decades-old territorial
row with Moscow. Abe conferred
with European leaders on how to
support the world economy amid
Chinas economic slowdown. He
visits Italy, France, Belgium, Germany and Britain before traveling
on to Russia.
He also plans to discuss counterterrorism measures and appeal to

European members of the G-7 to
emphatically denounce North
Koreas nuclear tests and missile
launches at the summit.
On his way back from Europe,
Abe is scheduled to meet Russian
President Vladimir Putin for talks
in the southern city of Sochi on issues including the long-standing
dispute over four Russian-held
islets o Hokkaido. I hope to resolve the issue by patiently negotiating based on a policy of
resolving the issue of the ownership of the islands and concluding a peace treaty, Abe said at the
airport. The government hopes
Abes meeting with Putin in Sochi
will pave the way for the Russian
president to visit Japan, something once tentatively planned
for 2014 but postponed due to
tensions over Ukraine.
The specific character of the
Japanese-US alliance shows that
Tokyo, as a part of NATO, is occasionally forced to subordinate its
interests to those of the Americans. For example, because of US
pressure, the Japanese were
forced to join in on the West's
anti-Russian sanctions, and cancel a number of high-level meetings between ocials.This, of
course, is something Lavrov reminded his partners about in
Tokyo." "In order to find compromise, it is necessary to maintain a
continuous, uninterrupted dialogue.
But Japan made the decision to

limit contacts with us at a certain
point. In my opinion, this does
not meet the interests of the
Japanese government or the
Japanese people," Lavrov emphasized. At the same time, the minister noted that "despite pressure
from its partners, and particularly
the United States, our Japanese
friends are nevertheless committed to maintaining these relationships."
Moscow hopes that Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abes forthcoming visit to Russia will give
impulse to the entire complex of
Russian-Japanese relations. We
understand that contacts during
this visit will allow for additional
impulse in advancing the entire
complex of our relations in line
with the joint statement of the
two leaders in 2012 and the following agreements, Lavrov said
during a joint press conference
with Japanese Foreign Minister
Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.
Next round of Russian-Japanese

peace treaty talks will be held
shortly after the visit of Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Russia.
Russias top diplomat Lavrov said
in a positive tone that RussiaJapan peace treaty issue cannot
be reduced to "territorial claims"
at the very least because the only
document that was signed and
ratified by both sides the joint
declaration of 1956 states that
the sides have agreed to renounce all claims against each
other, and the next task is to sign
a peace treaty," Lavrov said in an
interview with Chinese, Japanese
and Mongolian media.
Lavrov said Prime Minister Abe
expressed interest in visiting Russia. As for a possible visit to Japan
by Russian President Vladimir
Putin, Lavrov stated that there are
"absolutely no obstacles.""In
order for the visit to take place,
we need for the invitation to
take the form of a specific date,"
he added.
THE JAPANESE DEMAND ALL fOUR ISLANDS

AND wILL NOT AGREE TO ANY COMPROMISE
SOLUTION. bOTH COUNTRIES DISCUSSED THE ISSUE
fOR YEARS bUT COULD NOT REACH
A CREDIbLE SOLUTION
Lavrov also said USA does not like

any credible improvement in
Russo-Japanese relations and
that disapproving statements
coming from Washington regarding high-level contacts between
Russia and Japan are simply outrageous.
I think our Japanese colleagues
understand this and assess it in a
way such unacceptable manners
should be assessed."
The United States' exerting pressure on Japan undermines Russian-Japanese bilateral relations.
US pressure on Japan leads to
narrowing of dialogue between
Moscow and Tokyo, Russian Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova said responding
to a request to comment on the
Japanese media reports that US
President Barack Obama called
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, asking him not to come to
Russia.Japan narrowed Russian
contacts and curtailed the work
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
in bilateral direction, under the

pressure and insistent recommendations of the United States.
Japans ocials have been recommended not to pay or exchange
visits to or with Russia in a rather
harsh manner before. However,
the ocial Washington spokesman has recently said that if one
contact with Russian ocials
takes place, then its alright, thus
giving the go-ahead.
Lavrov said that overall the upcoming Russian-Japanese summit agenda looks very dense
both in terms of bilateral and international issues. We would like
to see Russia and Japan move
from just exchanging opinions to
coordinating approaches to urgent international issuesExperts
and diplomats acknowledge that
they have been preparing this series of visits for several months.
The main obstacle had been for
Abe and Putin to voice at least a
framework for a compromise.

And given that the visits have
been discussed, this seems to indicate that a formula for a compromise framework has finally
been determined.
TERRITORIAL DISPUTE
Nearly 71 years after the conclusion of the Second World War,
Russia and Japan still have no
peace treaty between them.
However, they never fought a war
since WW II. The dispute over the
Russian-held islands, called the
Northern Territories in Japan and
the Southern Kurils in Russia, has
prevented the two countries from
peace treaty to ocially end
World War II.
Ties between two countries deteriorated after Tokyo announced
support for certain Western economic sanctions against Russia
imposed in 2014 over Moscow's
alleged interference in the eastern Ukrainian conflict.
Russia has resolutely denied the

accusations. The dispute over the
Southern Kuril Islands deteriorated Russo-Japan relations when
the Japanese government published a new guideline for school
textbooks on July 16, 2008 to
teach Japanese children that their
country has sovereignty over the
Kuril Islands.
The Russian public was generally
outraged by the action and demanded the government to
counteract. The Foreign Minister
of Russia announced on July 18,
2008 "these actions contribute
neither to the development of
positive cooperation between
the two countries, nor to the settlement of the dispute," and reaffirmed its sovereignty over the
islands.
And the territorial issue is the key
stumbling block. The two sides
cannot agree on the territorial
issue. The Japanese demand all
four islands and will not agree to
any compromise solution. Both
countries discussed the issue for
years but could not reach a credible solution.
The two sides agreed to seek a
resolution over the persistent
Kuril Islands dispute, but the decision of the dispute is not expected in the near future. Despite
the territorial dispute, Hata offered some financial support to
Russian market-oriented economic reforms. . In March 1994,
then Japanese minister of foreign
aairs Hata Tsutomu visited
Moscow and met with Russian

minister of foreign aairs Andrei
Kozyrev and other senior ocials.
Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as the first Russian
President Boris Yeltsin took power
in Russia in late 1991. Moscow
took a stand in opposition to relinquishing the disputed territories to Japan.
Although Japan joined with the
Group of Seven industrialized nations in contributing some technical and financial assistance to
Russia, relations between Tokyo
and Moscow remained poor.
Russian president Boris Yeltsin
postponed a scheduled September 1992 visit to Japan to October
11, 1993.
He made concessions on the Kuril

Islands dispute over the four Kuril
Islands (northeast of Hokkaido), a
considerable obstacle to Japanese-Russian relations, but did
agree to abide by the 1956 Soviet
pledge to return two areas
(Shikotan and the Habomai Islands) to Japan. Yeltsin apologized repeatedly for Soviet
mistreatment of Japanese prisoners of war after World War II.
In 2010, President of Russia
Dmitry Medvedev became the
first Russian president to take a
state trip to the Kuril Islands.
Medvedev shortly ordered significant reinforcements to the Russian defenses on the Kuril Islands.
THE UNITED STATES'

ExERTING PRESSURE
ON JAPAN
UNDERMINES
RUSSIAN-JAPANESE
bILATERAL RELATIONS
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Medvedev was replaced by

Vladimir Putin in 2012. In November 2013, Japan held its first ever
diplomatic talks with the Russian
Federation, and the first with
Moscow since 1973. Further talks
are expected in 2014, with a formal peace treaty on the table as
both sides seem willing to compromise
should include at least a third island.Moreover, Tokyo has also

suggested another option: that
Russia gives up two islands now,
launching strong bilateral relations and two more at a later
point.
As of 2016 matters remain unresolved, and these disputes have

eectively soured relations between the two countries. Since
governments are not maintain
good relations, peole in both
countries do not have a positive
view of each other. According to
a 2012 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, 72% of Japanese people view Russia unfavorably,
compared with 22% who viewed
it favorably, making Japan the
country with the most anti-Russian sentiment.
In any case, now Russia is not

planning on giving anything up,
as the Foreign Ministry's statement shortly before Lavrov's departure made perfectly clear. The
statement clearly said that
progress on any peace treaty
would remain impossible without
Japan's recognition of post-war
realities.
JAPANS DEMANDS
The Kremlin considers all for islands as strategic territories. As
Japan demands all the four islands, Russia's leadership was
willing, in 2004, to make a compromise along the lines of the
1956 proposal to transfer two islands and sign the peace treaty
after that. Moscow said two of the
four islands is the compromise.
Japan has held and continues to
hold a dierent position: for them
these two islands are just the
start of negotiations in which a
compromise can be found, which
In fact Japan wants all four islands

from Russia.
And Russia's stubbornness can be

explained not only by the fact
that Moscow does not want to
throw away its strategic territories, and not just because Japan
needs the peace treaty and an
improvement in relations more
than Russia does but also because the Kremlin is not convinced in the reliability of any
agreements with Japan.
NEW EFFORT FOR MUTUAL
BENEFITS
The status of disputed islands
and unstable bilateral relations
continues to disturb any normal
relations but the NATO of which
Japan is an important financing
member did not let the relations
to take any positive plunge.
However, Moscow says it wants

to stabilize ties with Japan. Sergei
Lavrovs Tokyo visit was meant essentially to hold a comprehensive
discussion on bilateral and international issues. His visit to Japan
comes partly in preparations for
Abes possible arrival in Russia to
discuss the territorial issue.
The visit aimed at laying the
groundwork for improved relations between Moscow and
Tokyo, and to iron out details on
a future visit to Russia by Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe. Russian
business magazine experts mull
the prospects for Russian-Japanese relations.
There are other options for solving the territorial dispute that do
not involve Russia giving up its
sovereignty over the Kuriles. This,
for example, may include the creation of a special economic zone
with preferences for Japanese investment. Such a scenario would
bring a number of benefits for
both Japan with Prime Minister
Abe being able to say that he has
returned partial control over the
islands, and for Russia, since
Japanese investments would
help the islands' economy.
It appears this will be one of the

topics to be discussed by Abe
during his visit to Russia," which
could be held as soon as next
month.The Japanese prime minister is set on resolving the territorial issue and has said so more
than once and is ready to discuss
the various options personally
with Vladimir Putin. These discussions would continue, most likely
in Tokyo, where the Russian president would arrive with a return
visit, a prospect which requires
only the setting of a specific date,
according to the Russian Foreign
Ministry.
It would seem that both countries would benefit from almost a
strategic partnership level of relations. Russia can oer Japan the
energy it requires, as well as resources and a market for the expansion of Japanese capital. But
more importantly, the Kremlin
could become a geopolitical balance, helping Tokyo to find a formula to defend against an
ever-strengthening China. After
all, Russia is one of the few countries in the region that does not
hold animosity for Tokyo over
Japan's war crimes in the first half
of the 20th century.
In turn, Japan can provide Russia

with technology, industrial
goods, investment and innovations, and actively participate in
the development of the Russian
Far East.
The Kremlin, for its part, is ready
to sign such a treaty immediately,
and then begin to build a strategic partnership. Without eective
cooperation with Japan, there
can be no complete 'eastern
pivot' in Russian foreign policy,
but only a 'Chinese tilt'.
However, Tokyo has one condition: the Japanese want the
South Kuril Islands, which the
USSR took from Japan after the
Second World War. The problem
of the peace treaty is directly
linked to the issue of the northern territories, Japanese Foreign
Minister Fumio Kishida said
ahead of Lavrov's visit, referring
to the Kuriles.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Reagan and Russias

Re-annexation
of Crimea
Mykolas Romeris University, Faculty of Politics and Management
Institute of Political Sciences, Vilnius, Lithuania
www.sotirovic.eu vladislav[at]sotirovic.eu
PROf. DR. VLADISLAV b. SOTIROVIC
n March 18th, 2014

following a popular
self-determination
referendum of the
people of Crimea the Russian
Federation declared re-annexation of the Crimean Peninsula
which was annexed by the Soviet
Ukraine in 1954.
Nevertheless, the western global
corporative media, politicians
and statesmen classified such act
as a matter of aggression, violation of international law and unlawful occupation of a part of a
territory of internationally recognized independent state and the
UNs member.
Russias authorities on this occasion issued an ocial statement

that Crimeas re-annexation by
Russia is based on the same selfdetermination rights as of the
people (the Albanians) of Kosovo
in 2008 which self-proclaimed independence from Serbia (by
Kosovo parliament without any
popular referendum) is already
recognized by almost all western
liberal governments.
The following text is a personal
contribution to better understanding of the case of Russias
dirty policy of occupation and
annexation of Crimea in March
2014.
Grenada is an independent state,

a member of the UN, located in
the southern portion of the
Caribbean Sea very close to the
mainland of the South America
(Venezuela). The state is composed by southernmost of the
Windward Islands combined with
several small islands which belong to the Grenadines Archipelago, populated by almost
110,000 people of whom 82% are
the blacks (2012 estimations).
fOLLOwING ALSO
REAGANS LOGIC fOR
THE MILITARY INVASION
Of GRENADA IN 1983,
THE RUSSIAN
PRESIDENT COULD
SEND A REGULAR ARMY
Of THE RUSSIAN
fEDERATION TO
OCCUPY UkRAINE
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
The state of Grenada is physically

mostly forested mountains area
(of volcanic origin) with some
crater lakes and springs. In the
valleys are bananas, spices and
sugar cane grown. The country is
out of any natural wealth significance but has relatively high
geostrategic importance. Economy was and is primarily agricultural with some very limited
small-scale industry of the food
production nature with developing tourism sector as growing
source of the national GDP. The
state budget is constantly under
a high level of foreign debt (a
debt slavery phenomenon).
As the island, Grenada was discovered by the Europeans (Ch.
Columbus) in 1498 and colonized
by the French in 1650 becoming
a possession of the French royal
crown in 1674. During the Seven
Years War (17561763) between
all major European states,
Grenada was occupied by the
British and according to the
Peace Treaty of Paris in 1763 was

given to the United Kingdom
being a British possession for almost two hundred years with
preservation of slavery.
The process of democratization
of the island started in 1950 when
the universal adult surage is
granted by the United Labor
Party. Being shortly a member of
the West Indian Federation
(19581962) and seeking internationally recognized independence, Grenada was granted such
separate independence only in
1974 with Matthew Gairy (a
leader of the United Labor Party)
as the first Grenadas PM.
However, only three years later in
1979 Gairy was deposed from the
post in a coup dtat lead by Maurice Bishop (19441983) as a
leader of a Marxist political group
under the ocial title of the New
Jewel Movement. M. Bishop proclaimed a new Government
under the name of the Peoples
Revolutionary Government that
became not welcomed by the US
administration like the Socialist
(Marxist-democrat) Government
in Chile after the 1970 elections
formed by Salvador Allende
(19081973).
The issue is in this case that Allende was the first Marxist in the
worlds history who became
elected by the popular vote as
the President of one sovereign
and independent state.
Peace Treaty of Paris in 1763 was

given to the United Kingdom
being a British possession for almost two hundred years with
preservation of slavery.
The process of democratization
of the island started in 1950 when
the universal adult surage is
granted by the United Labor
Party. Being shortly a member of
the West Indian Federation
(19581962) and seeking internationally recognized independence, Grenada was granted such
separate independence only in
1974 with Matthew Gairy (a
leader of the United Labor Party)
as the first Grenadas PM.
However, only three years later in
1979 Gairy was deposed from the
post in a coup dtat lead by Maurice Bishop (19441983) as a
leader of a Marxist political group
under the ocial title of the New
Jewel Movement. M. Bishop proclaimed a new Government
under the name of the Peoples
Revolutionary Government that
became not welcomed by the US
administration like the Socialist
(Marxist-democrat) Government
in Chile after the 1970 elections
formed by Salvador Allende
(19081973).
The issue is in this case that Allende was the first Marxist in the
worlds history who became
elected by the popular vote as
the President of one sovereign
and independent state.
A new President of Chile was a

head of the Unidad Popular that
was a coalition of the Marxists
(Communists) and the Socialists
and therefore faced by hostility of
the USA whose administration
supported Chili Congress against
Allende. The Congress backed by
the USA heavily opposed Allendes radical program of nationalization and agrarian reform a
program voted by the electorate
in 1970.
Due to such obstruction, there
were inflation, capital flight and
balance-payments deficit which
heavily contributed to an economic crisis in Chile in 1973: exactly what the US administration
wanted and needed. The crisis
became the main excuse for the
military coup organized and accomplished by the Chili army
Commander-in-Chief general Augusto Pinochet (born in 1915) a
typical local exponent of the US
global politics.
As a consequence, there were

around 15,000 killed people together with President Allende
and about 10% of the Chileans
who left the country during the
new military dictatorship (1973
1990) which replaced Chili
democracy elected by the people
and brutally abolished all labor
unions and any opposition organizations and groups.
The capitalism was fully restored
with the economy and social
order very depended on the US
financial support as a price for
transformation of the country
into a classic (US) colony.
Nevertheless, the 1973 military
suppression of democracy in
Chile was a clear message to the
whole Latin America that the
Monroe Doctrine of America to
the Americans (read in fact as
Americas to the US) is still leading framework of the US foreign
policy in this part of the globe.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
The Monroe Doctrine was articulated in President James Monroe's seventh annual message to
Congress on December 2nd,
1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western
Hemisphere as the United States'
sphere of interest. Following later
such doctrine, for the matter of illustration, there was the US direct
military invasion of Panama causing the fall of General Noriega in
December 1989: Operation Just
Cause.
This fact became the main reason

that political situation in Grenada
became of interest of the U.S. administration.
However, due to the internal
quarrel within the Peoples Revolutionary Government, Bishop
was overthrown from the post
and murdered by another Marxist, Bernard Coard, in 1983 who
took control over the Government. There were the clashes of
protesters with the governmental
troops and soon violence escalated.
Similarly to the Allende Case in

Chile, Grenada governed by the
President M. Bishop turned to the
left in both inner and external
policy of the state. Therefore, he
encouraged very closer relations
with F. Castros Cuba and potentially to the USSR. As a result, at
the island there were some
Cuban military presence composed by the engineers who
were repairing and expanding
the local airport.
However, the army troops under

the command of General Hudson
Austin soon took power and established a new military regime.
This new Grenada coup was immediately followed by direct US
military intervention in the island
on October 23rd, under the order
by the US President Ronald Reagan (the Operation Urgent
Fury), for the very real reason to
prevent a Marxist revolutionary
council to take power.
The US military troops left

Grenada in December 1983 after
the re-establishment of democratic (pre-revolutionary) regime
and of course pro-American one
transforming Grenada into one
more Washingtons client state.
It is of very concern to see what
was de jure explanation by the US
President Reagan for such military intervention and de facto the
US military occupation of one
sovereign and independent state.
The President, based on the CIA
reports on the threat posed to
the US citizens in Grenada (the
students) by the Communist
regime, issued the order to the US
Marines to invade the island in
order to secure their lives. Here
we have to remember a very fact
of issue how much the CIA reports have been (and are) really
accurate and reliable by only two
fresh examples:
1)In 1999 Serbia and Montenegro
were bombed by the NATO
troops (the Operation Merciful
Angel) exactly based on the CIA
information about the organized
(the Operation Horse Shoe) and
well done massive ethnic cleansing of the local Kosovo Albanians
(100,000 killed) committed by the
Serbian regular army and police
forces.
2)In 2003 the US and the UK
troops invaded Iraq based also on
the CIA reports about possession
of the ABC weapons for the
massive destruction by the

regime of Saddam Hussein
(19372006) (the Operation
Desert Storm 2). However, in
both mentioned cases the reports are proved to be unproved, i.e. very false.
The fact was that in the 1983
Grenada Case, there were really
about 1,000 US citizens in the island, majority of them studying
at the local medical school. Citing
the alleged danger to the US citizens in Grenada, the President ordered around 2,000 US troops,
combined by some international
forces from the Regional Security
System based in Barbados. The
White House claimed that it received a formal request
for military intervention by the

PM of Barbados and Dominica
(both the US clients). If it is a true,
and probably it is, then any state
receiving such invitation by the
foreign Governments (second
states) has right to invade other
state (third state) in order to restore the democratic order (in
the sense of bringing justice) or at
least to protect its own citizens.
For instance, following the White
House logic from 1983, overthrown legal President of Ukraine
V. Yanukovych by the street-mob
in 2014 could call the Russian
President V. Putin to restore a
legal order in whole Ukraine by
the Russian army.
The US President Ronald Reagan with Afghan Taliban (later Al-Qaeda) representatives in the 1980s negotiating American support for their fight
against the Soviet troops
In regard to the 2014 Kyiv Coup,

according to Paul Craig Roberts,
Washington used its funded
NGOs ($5 billion according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria
Nuland at the National Press Club
in December 2013) to begin
street protests when the elected
Ukrainian Government turned
down the oer to join the European Union.
Similarly to the Ukrainian coup in
2014, the Guatemala coup in
1954, when democratically
elected Government of Jacobo
Arbenz became overthrown, was
also carried out by the CIA.
Following also Reagans logic for
the military invasion of Grenada
in 1983, the Russian President
could send a regular army of the
Russian Federation to occupy
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Ukraine for the security reasons

of Russias citizens who were
studying at the universities in
Kyiv, Odessa or Lvov. Nevertheless, similar Reagans argument
was used (among others) and by
Adolf Hitler in April 1941 to invade and occupy the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia as, according to the
German intelligence service, the
German minority in Yugoslavia
(the Volksdeutschers) were oppressed and terrorized by the
new (pro-British) Government of
General Duan Simovi after the
coup in Belgrade committed on
March 27th, 1941.
Nonetheless, the fact was that
during the intervention in
Grenada, the US troops faced military opposition by the Grenadian
army relying on minimal intelligence about the situation in the
country.
For example, the US military used

in this case old tourist maps of
the island. Similar mistake the
NATO did in the 1999 Kosovo
Case by bombing the Chinese
embassy in the wider center of
Belgrade using also outdated
tourist map on which a new Chinese embassy did not exist (here
we will not comment or argue on
credentials of such army and its
headquarters to intervene outside of its own home courtyard).
In order to break the Grenadian
resistance the Hollywood President R. Reagan sent additional
4,000 troops to the island. Finally,
an international coalition lead
by the US troops succeeded to replace the Government of
Grenada by one acceptable to the
USA.
Regardless to the fact that a great
part of the Americans did not
support the 1983 Grenada Case
that it took place only several
days after a very disastrous terror
act on the US military post in
Lebanon when over 240 US
troops were killed, calling into
very question the use of the US
military force in order to achieve
the political goals, Reagans administration ocially proclaimed
the case to be the first rollback
of the Communist influence since
the beginning of the Cold War in
1949 (as the US military interventions against the Communist infection in Korea and Vietnam
have been unsuccessful).
A justification of the military invasion was mainly framed within

the idea that the US citizens (students) in Grenada could be taken
as the hostages similar to the
1979 Teheran Hostage Crisis.
However, several US Congressmen, like Louis Stoks (Ohio), denied any real danger for any
American in Grenada prior to the
invasion (that was confirmed and
by the students themselves) followed by unsuccessful attempt
by seven Democrats in the Congress, led by Ted Weiss, to introduce a resolution to impeach R.
Reagan.
Finally, the UN General Assembly
with majority votes (108, with
only 9 against and 27 abstentions) adopted Resolution 38/7
on October 28th, 1983 which
clearly accused the USA for violation of international law ("deeply
deplores the armed intervention
in Grenada, which constitutes a
flagrant violation of international
law and of the independence,
sovereignty and territorial integrity of that State").
The 1983 Grenada Case is not for

sure either the first or the last
Hollywood-style violation of the
international law and territorial
sovereignty of some independent state by the US (or other) administration. But it is sure that it
was done by the order of up
today the only Hollywood cowboy-actor star in the oce of
White House in Washington as according to the US Constitution,
Arnold Schwarzenegger does not
have right to run for the post of
the US President as he was not
born on the US territory.
Finally, if you think that the 1983
Grenada Case has nothing common with the 2014 Crimean Case,
you are absolutely right.
The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin

Global Jihadism
in Russias North Caucasus
and Beyond
JULIA SwEET
Editor
PhD Candidate, Rutgers University, NJ
esearch on the insurgency and the

appearance of local
jihadist
groups
within the North Caucasus after
the dissolution of the Soviet
Union has been dominated by
studies of the uneasy history of
Islam under Russian rule, the oppressive post-colonial political
rhetoric in handling insurgencies,
Chechen wars in the 1990s, and
the Russian militaristic counterterrorism approach.
Many studies are devoted to Islamic revival, the spread of radical
Islam, Russian war crimes, and
human rights violations in Chechnya. Mainly, previous studies
failed to track down the evolution
of the North Caucasus jihadist insurgency due to their narrow
focus.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
A holistic picture demands a multifaceted approach, and in this regard this book provides an
alternative view and comprehensive analysis of the situation. The
book by Gordon M. Hahn is an attempt to present the modern development of jihadist groups in
the North Caucasus as an integral
part of the global jihadist phenomenon.
Chapter 1 of this book provides a
critical overview of the structuralist approach to the upsurge of jihadism and its theoretical
limitations. In particular, the author argues that local socio-political and economic factors such as
poverty, unemployment, rigid
political order, cannot provide a
clear picture on either the upsurge of local or global jihadism.
The widely practiced deep focus

on these factors leads, at least, to
oversimplification of the situation. Therefore, when doing research, it is important to refer to
the models of political revolutions and regime transformations
with unique compilations of relevant economic, political, cultural,
ideological and other determinants.
According to the author, the revolutionary situation within the Islamic states leads to a gradual
transformation of nationalistic
movements into jihadist local
branches connected to outside
counterparts (Al-Qaeda, etc.).
The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin Global

Jihadism in Russias North Caucasus and
Beyond Gordon M. Hahn, 2014.
This dramatically changes the nature of local Islamic groups and

opens up new opportunities for
them. Being a part of a global revolutionary movement, local
movements get access to a socalled jihadist collective experience that embraces ideological,
organizational, and structural
facets, including theo-ideology,
charismatic authority, eective
guidance (methodology and
cadres), and an organizational
pattern.
Applying these theoretical models to the North Caucasus issue,
this book indicates that disregarding crucial factors - ideology,
political contingency and operationalizing factors, have to be accounted and analyzed.
THE bOOk bY GORDON M. HAHN IS AN ATTEMPT

TO PRESENT THE MODERN DEVELOPMENT
Of JIHADIST GROUPS IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS
AS AN INTEGRAL PART Of THE GLObAL
JIHADIST PHENOMENON
Chapter 2 of this book examines

the impact of Al-Qaeda foreign
fighters, who moved to the North
Caucasus in the 1990s and participated in Chechen wars, on the
Chechen insurgency. Through a
detailed and well documented
history of the connections between Al-Qaeda and the
Chechen rebels, the author underlines that the main purpose of
Al-Qaeda was to spread its influence over these new territories
and develop jihadism.
The Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya (ChRI) became Al-Qaedas
partner, spreading its jihadi ideology and fighting strategies within
the region. The chapter concludes that this close connection
and the infiltration of foreign
fighters altered the nature of the
Chechen national separatist
movement, replacing its nationalistic and secular agenda with a
jihadist one.
MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU
Chapters 3 5 scrutinize the Caucasus Emirate, which can be considered a successor of the ChRI,
and its organizational hierarchy,
cadres, ideological foundation,
conducted operations, and jihadist strategies in light of its
connection with Al-Qaeda and its
integration with the global jihadi
movement from October 2007 to
2011. The book stresses many
Muslims from the North Caucasus
received religious education
abroad after the fall of the USSR,
which accelerated and facilitated
the adaptation of the jihadist ideology. In particular, Astemirov,
Buryatskii, and Vagabovs activities had the most profound impact in this regard.
Chapters 6-9 reveal the logic of
the CEs development in other
Muslim areas of the Russian Federation such as Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino- Balkariya,
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
To be accustomed to the jihadist

ideology, this organization announced global goals, declaring
war against Western civilization.
The CEs ideological metamorphosis resulted in significant alterations in tactical approach,
which included shifting to suicide
bombing, targeting civilians, and
even the usage of WMD.
The growing role of this organization in global terrorist operations,
especially in Europe, which has a
big immigrant community from
the North Caucasus, is underlined
in chapter 10 of this book. Thus,
the chapters emphasize that this
organization as a part of the
global jihadist movement became extremely dangerous not
only for the national security of
the Russian Federation, but for
the stability of the entire world
community.
Chapter 11 serves as a summary

for the authors pivotal conclusions about the nature of the
North Caucasus movement and
its evolution.
This book is very informative, detailed, and well structured, and
undoubtedly provides an essential contribution to the field. Its
critical engagement with the
structuralist approach and acquaintance with the dierent
trends of academic research
make this book an interesting
read for scholars, professionals,
policy makers, students, as well as
concerned individuals.
Nonetheless, for a better understanding of the presented ideas,
it is important to read Gordon M.
Hahns previous book Russia's Islamic Threat, 2007.
newsstand.moderndiplomacy.eu
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24

Russian peacekeepeRs in nagoRno-kaRabakh

BI-WEEKLY DIgITaL EDITION

The society that

ur dedicated readers might have been

There are few countries in the world that face the

Prof. Dr. Matthew CrosstonGreater Caspian Project, Director

GIANCARLO ELIA VALORI

Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa

he big parade organized on May 9, 2016

A missile needed to ward o the

The National Guard, of which we

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

The new Sukhoi aircraft features

The former, the S-400 "Triumph"

from Moscow up to most of the

This goal, too, is reached with the

This is the primary theme raised

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

Piercing the shield

Cold War, where nuclear weapons

Troy Baxter is currently a

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

been spearheaded by the US,

Happily, to some it seemed that a

In fact, the nation is saying very

Russia does, as previously mentioned, have a massive stock pile

In any event, this potential subversion is not a fact lost on

international stage and looselytied claims of stopping DAESH in

subsequent depreciating currency. Russia has shown that it is

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

RUSSIA IS wILLING TO CONTINUE

By all indications the US firmly

Second, Russia is willing to continue to aggressively protect its

very month another

have been linked directly to their

Matthew Crosston is Professor

DR. MATTHEw CROSSTON

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

Should they be ignored so that

Environmental negotiations just

The first important aspect in understanding the Grand Cyber

Traditionally, the CIA operates

counter-intelligence communities under the Department of Defense. However, in a post-9/11

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

the Border Guard Service and the

It has the same authority to arrest

Russia operates with three principal intelligence services. The SVR

Russia also established an AntiTerrorist Center that falls under

They established their own Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure

Snowden and other details in the

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

FSB's Snowden War

ussia's understanding of information

The Russian military divides information operations into two

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

In a conflict involving kinetic operations, information warfare is

agencies, particularly the FSB.

While it is possible to draw from a

Finally a third implied that the

and sow the seeds of discord and

THE GREATER CASPIAN PROJECT 24

A final area of impact to consider

It is important to note that this