Summary
Germany’s intelligence chief, Bruno Kahl, warned that Russia’s hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks and sabotage, could escalate to the point where NATO considers invoking Article 5, its mutual defense clause.
Speaking in Berlin, Kahl noted Russia’s growing military capabilities, including battle-hardened troops and advanced drone warfare, which could pose a direct threat to NATO by the end of the decade.
Russia may aim to test NATO’s unity rather than launch large-scale invasions, raising concerns over potential “red line” provocations designed to undermine the alliance’s credibility.
In order to have battle hardened troops they have to survive combat…
You noticed that too, did you?
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This guy is just crazy to push the nuke button
But it won’t, no chance.
That’s the point.
Russia has aimed to destabilize the US since the cold war.
I feel like I’m m taking crazy pills. The cold war never ended. We changed battlefields and everyone shut up about it.
And in the last 20 years we have gotten our balls stomped. Our enormous military is useless if they can turn it against our citizenry.
How fucking dumb are we?
Our enormous military
They have been totally defeated by a perfect storm of Putin’s shoe-string psyops, Republican control of the media and the “poorly educated”.
Destroy the propaganda capability and we fall back to confrontations that the West is capable of winning.
We can’t, though:
there’s too-many propagandists working for enemy-states WITHIN our countries, now…
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A lot. We are a lot dumb
It went to proxy wars after the cold war. There were a whole series of conflicts and interventions where USA and/or Russia were involved, sometimes more, sometimes less. Ukraine is basically the end boss of the proxy wars.
Ukraine is basically the end boss of the proxy wars.
Russia is not a proxy.
It’s still not a conflict between NATO and Russia directly, so still a proxy war.
a proxy war is an armed conflict where at least one of the belligerents is directed or supported by an external third-party power.
I’m now past the middle of this talk. While the points about how subversion works in general are insightful, his diatribe about unions makes no sense. He claims that unions got radicalized and became violent recently and that was helped by Soviet propaganda. That’s brutally wrong. Clashes between unions and company militias were much more violent historically and way before the October revolution, let alone the creation of the KGB. His talking points on this come straight out of Milton Friedman’s mouth. It’s straight up right wing propaganda. Given that right wing propaganda is the reason why the working class is on its knees today and has just elected Donald Trump, it begs the question whether his talk isn’t KGB subversion itself.
E: He gave the CIA coup in Chile that installed Pinochet as a good example for how to stop the process of Soviet subversion. Also straight up said that Americans should support right wing conservatives to curb this process. Restrict the rights on certain groups. Don’t elect the gays into power - they’re an enemy. 🤦
Yeah, I don’t agree with his position at all, just sharing an interesting talk that I think gives us insight as to some of what’s been going on the past 20 years. My takeaway was that Russia gave up fighting the US with force si they just try to create as much instability in the US as possible.
100%
There’s another point that occurred to me when listening to him. The process of citizens looking over another country’s regime with envy as theirs crumbles could occur without subversive action too. I don’t think there’s much US citizens to be envious for of Russia. On the other hand, I got shocked recently while looking at some income numbers for China. Wages in manufacturing is 104K CNY or US $14.3K. Adjusted for purchase power parity, that’s $52K. And look at these growth numbers:
Meanwhile the US equivalent is sitting aroung $57.5K right now. And the growth since the 80s…
If these trends continue it may come a time when it becomes self-evident that the Chinese model is the way to go.
Please keep in mind that independent-journalism isn’t allowed, in China,
so … those numbers may be more propaganda than objective
… and it isn’t just those-numbers, it is the entirety of all information about the Chinese economy which is suspect…
Remember Evergrande group?
They suspended trading of it, due to its imploding, & kept it suspended for, what, 2.5y?
Then it imploded within hours, when re-listed…
They’re hard disallowing their entire-economy’s implosion,
just as the Biden administration’s been doing, after that recent multiply-the-currency-by-7x-but-don’t-allow-inflation bullshit they did
( “quantitative easing” has consequences! )
WHEN deciding on which economic-system one wants to be in, it would be wise to decide also on how much percentage of propaganda in one’s statistics one is willing to settle for, right?
That too is a dimension of the economy!
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America still behaves like it’s in the colonial era. It is the country that has been invading sovereign nations, sabotage and economic warfare. Nobody likes a bully.
Russia already has their man in place ready to undermine NATO fatally from within, starting on January 20th.
Russia were paying Afghans bounties to kill US and NATO serviceman and Trump did nothing about it, then Biden chickened out on responding to that as well. Our leadership continues to not give a single shit for our troops. They also clearly dont care at all about US citizens being slaughtered by Israel, or NATO positions being attacked by Israel. Strikingly few of our leaders deserve to be in office. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/27/politics/russia-us-troops-afghanistan/index.html
Russian mercenaries even attacked a US base in 2018-- Trump did nothing at all about that either. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-16/russia-attacked-u-s-troops-in-syria
Our diplomats and their families were attacked at their jobs with microwave weapons giving them “havana syndrome” for the rest of their lives, and Trump and Biden did fuckall about that either.
Just fucking do it already. We are all going to fuck sooner or later so let’s get it on now. No more foreplay just spit on it and get to fucking.
Hawk tuah
Official mascot of WW3
If NATO does choose to retaliate, it should take out the troll farms first.
Which is why Trump will withdraw from NATO and effectively neuter it in the short term allowing Putin to do whatever he wants until Europe can muster the resources to defend its Eastern-most and Scandinavian members, which Putin wants to annex.
He doesn’t even need to do that, he just needs to add enough doubt about whether America would actually help defend NATO if Article 5 is invoked, which he has already been doing, to make it so the rest of NATO can’t really do anything.
He’ll gut NATO, & he’ll openly help Putin.
The only question left is to-what-degree, & when.
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They forgot to say “and this time we mean it”. How is Russia supposed to take NATO seriously if they don’t include that?
Eh, everybody does saber rattling from time to time. Most people are happier with harsh words than bombs I suppose.
Though that’s no comfort to Ukraine, who are already embroiled in war.
And Russia has been sabre rattling like nobody’s business since before the war started.
