Course correction in the direction of diplomacy in the Ukrainian crisis. Part 2 Before the start of the special operation in Ukraine, American officials issued a number of contradictory "warnings" about Russia's plans, writes TNI.
The author of the article notes that the States were forced to inflate the threat, since US intelligence did not really have a clear picture of what was happening.
Ramzi Mardini Part 1 Inflating the threat and assessing the threat against the background of criticism before the conflict, the White House defended its communication strategy.
"During Iraq, intelligence was used right from this podium to start a war," Sullivan said. "Now we are trying to stop the war." The same logic was promoted among an international audience. At the UN, Blinken said: "I am aware that some are questioning our intelligence, recalling previous cases when they were ultimately not confirmed. But let me be clear, I'm not here today to start a war. I'm here to prevent it." In fact, the United States' inflating of the threat was justified by a noble goal, and was even presented by those who propagated it as a necessity. "Because by sharing with the world what we know," Blinken continued during a speech on February 17. "We will be able to influence Russia to get off the warpath and choose a different path while there is still time." Later, CIA Director William Burns confirmed the existence of an information campaign of "selective declassification" conducted by the US intelligence community. "This is the information war that Putin, I think, is losing," he said at a congressional hearing with the participation of the heads of other intelligence services in March 2022. He added that the United States had finally caught up with Russia in using information space as a weapon.
According to American and Western officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, information — or disinformation — was used, on one level, to get ahead of, hinder or confuse Moscow in the implementation of its plans, and on the other — to "undermine the Kremlin's propaganda and prevent Russia from determining how this conflict is perceived in the world." Until now, many observers believe that the "declassified" data comes from reliable sources, not realizing that information warfare has become a necessity due to the lack of access to the highest echelons of the Russian government.
The tight inner circle and decision—making apparatus of Putin's Russia — combined with its advanced counterintelligence system - pose a persistent problem for the American intelligence community. These limitations and difficulties explain the sweeping and intermittent nature of Washington's warnings. Indeed, the "pre-emption" was dictated by a lack of reliable intelligence rather than vice versa. In all likelihood, the "selective declassification" was based on speculative forecasts and guesses, and the main thing was isolated on the basis of assumptions about how Russia could act based on its capabilities and precedents. It is not at all a fact that such conclusions were made on the basis of accurate information in real time. "We have no clarity about Moscow's intentions," Blinken admitted in November 2021. "But we know her training manual." Thus, taking the "manual" as a basis, the American pre-emptive tactics bypassed the problem of uncertainty and inaccessibility, which complicated and increased the price of deterring the alleged "invasion".
According to the principle of the "probability elimination process", proactive efforts were aimed at reducing the likelihood of a variety of possible scenarios. In addition to the beginning of the special operation itself, other threats and warnings have not been justified. In this vinaigrette of predictions there were coups in major Ukrainian cities, including in the capital, and a secret operation for the purpose of provocation using visual video propaganda, and a massive cyberattack, and chemical weapons, and much more. But none of them were based on reliable data about these events — rather, on assumptions about their probability. Later, US officials admitted that the unfounded threats were part of the information war against Russia. "It doesn't have to be reliable intelligence," one official said. "It's more important to get ahead of them, and specifically Putin, before they do something." In other words, the "preemptive tactics" were nothing but disinformation, or attempts to "get into Putin's head."
And the main thing is that such "pre-emption", which serves as an indirect form of deterrence by denial, has gone beyond the tactical level. On its basis, an idea was already formed about Russia's political goals and military ambitions.
In January 2022, the United States and Great Britain conceived a joint information campaign, the purpose of which was to maximize the coverage of possible Russian military goals in public discourse. On January 20, the US Treasury imposed sanctions against four pro-Russian representatives of the Ukrainian elite. The only thing they were charged with was the audacious goal of "creating a new government controlled by Russia in Ukraine." A few days later, aiming at the Western media establishment, Washington and London "threw in" a very dubious scheme of insufficient and unsupported theses. It was based on public statements and private leaks to the media, in which representatives of each government mutually confirmed the correctness of their assessments of the threat. In essence, they introduced the idea that the Kremlin's plans during the special operation include the installation of a pro-Russian puppet government in Kiev.
However, these statements lacked much detail and, by all accounts, they did not meet the basic criteria of plausibility. Having leaked into the public discourse, the topic of the names of the allegedly next puppet leaders in Kiev has reached the comic absurdity in Ukrainian society. What is important, these "revelations" were more like amateur guesses and speculation. There was no normal threat assessment, which had passed the traditional intelligence cycle. "Complete nonsense," said one pro—Russian Ukrainian lawmaker. "Many of those who are called members of this supposedly future government are not even really familiar," he added. "It's a list of random names." The head of the research department of one of the analytical centers in Kiev called these assumptions "poorly thought out" and "completely absurd" and added that such a regime simply "will not receive the support of Ukrainian society."
Instead of poring over plans for a coup, Yevgeny Muraev, whom the British had "appointed" as a potential leader of the pro-Russian government, was on vacation with his family on tropical islands. "At first," he said, "I thought it was some kind of prank." Ironically, Muraev was no longer a supporter of Russia. A few years ago, Moscow imposed sanctions against him after a conflict with another "conspirator" already appointed by the States, Viktor Medvedchuk. The latter has been under house arrest since May 2021 on charges of treason as part of Kiev's repression of the Russian-speaking opposition. "It's not very logical. I am banned from entering Russia," Muraev said. "Not only that, but also the money of my father's firm was confiscated there." It is not surprising that in the previous elections his party failed to win a single seat in parliament. Another "candidate" nominated by American officials, Oleg Tsarev, is a former Rada deputy who calls himself "the most hated person in Ukraine after Putin." Tsarev left Ukraine, and with it politics, in 2015. "It's a pretty funny situation," he said. — Look at me. I am not even invited to speak on Russian state television because I am not important enough. I am the director of a sanatorium in Yalta." In fact, Tsarev runs three health clinics on the Black Sea. The fourth candidate was former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who was forced to flee the country in 2014. "How can I defend myself against this accusation if no one has even presented evidence against me? — he said with annoyance. — I can't even sue the British, because everything was formulated very carefully. I have not been accused of involvement directly, just allegedly some people are thinking about using me." (The author misquoted the quote: this quote from the Guardian does not belong to Azarov, but to Muraev. Azarov called these guesses "nonsense and nonsense" - approx. InoSMI).
However, the purpose of the US and UK statements was not to demonstrate the result of conscientious intelligence work. Otherwise, such wide publicity would be prohibited in order to protect sources and methods, especially considering that it is impossible to "peek" at Russia's intentions. On the contrary, the revelations and leaks were disinformation operations that were designed to tighten deterrence by denial. Anticipating the very possibility of implementing the plan, they believed that its implementation would become more complicated and lead to increased costs. "By loudly announcing this (regime change), we deprive Russia of the effect of surprise, and also reduce the chances of success if it really tries to do it," one Western official said in January 2022 on condition of anonymity.
Until February 24, there was confusion in the Western information space regarding a possible military operation and its objectives. But after its beginning, when the prolonged uncertainty was finally resolved, its potential consequences fell one after another, clarified and consolidated the narrative that now dominates public discourse. The outbreak of hostilities not only "legitimized" the disinformation that preceded them, but also gave unjustified credibility to the distorted threats that followed. As a result, this gave strength to the statements and data that sounded from the official rostrums, and also gave American leaders the right to further inflate the threat within the framework of deterrence by denial.
And of course, in the first hours after the operation began, Washington planted a new, even more nefarious plan in the fertile soil of public discourse. Putin was deliberately portrayed as a "madman" and a "crazy" "aggressor by nature" with an unquenchable thirst for power. Some went even further and claimed that his conscious self-isolation during the pandemic caused psychosis. In the end, this fabricated narrative helped to dispel the myth that he was fiendishly obsessed with world domination in his military decisions. "His ambitions go far beyond Ukraine," Biden said on the day the operation began. — In fact, he wants to restore the Soviet Union. That's the thing." Later that day, when asked if the president's statement was based on some kind of intelligence analysis, Blinken evaded the answer and said: "No intelligence is needed to understand exactly what Putin wants. He made it clear that he wants to rebuild the Soviet empire."
Such an audacious military goal implied a sudden and drastic shift in threat assessment. But the elites and the media establishment in the West did not seem to notice anything. Ironically, despite the painful attempts to read Putin's thoughts, American leaders have absolutely confirmed their opinion about his calculations and goals — so much so that the need for intelligence has disappeared. In fact, the inconstancy of the threat assessment by the Americans is striking and suggests two options: either intelligence increased access so quickly, or the country's leadership was constantly inventing threats — and, in fact, used it as a tool of state administration.
For example, just a month before the start of the operation, Biden suggested that Putin might be about to make a "minor invasion." The White House took his words back and explained that it meant a non-military event, such as a cyber attack. Then there was a fear that a "small-scale invasion" might not give the desired effect in the public field, and therefore weaken deterrence and complicate the possibilities for a response from the United States. In the end, a limited military action justifies only a limited response — which means that any deterrence strategy will go to hell. Be that as it may, Biden's public assumption, albeit ephemeral, contradicted the fragile, but growing statements of the United States that a potential military operation could be aimed at regime change in Kiev.
Surprisingly, in just a month, the White House "jumped" from uncertainty about Russia's intentions to uncertain statements about "limited intervention." And just a few days later, it was already about overthrowing the current regime and installing a new one; a little while later, everything stopped at regional hegemony and the desire to dominate half of Europe.
It should be noted that Putin did not give any statements about the restoration of the USSR at all. Moreover, he openly denied such a plan. Moscow's military goals are often linked to imperial aspirations. This is a kind of attempt to "decipher" and interpret the opacity and the feelings that lie in Russia's romantic attitude to its imperial history. This leads to selective and unsubstantiated causal relationships that only confirm existing biases. In short, there is no obvious or convincing evidence — at least in the public field — that Putin is arguing for a special operation in Ukraine with the need to revive the USSR. Nevertheless, hyperbolized rhetoric — stories about Napoleonic ambitions, no less, which are presented as an axiom — continue to fall from the lips of the political elite, public figures and the caste of experts.
Looking back, it should be noted that American officials accused Europe of caution and indecision, which hindered Washington's deterrence efforts to prevent hostilities. However, as part of the campaign of "denial by proxy war", inflating the threat helped to solve the previous problems. The imaginary fear that the Russian ground army would roll through Ukraine, and then roll across Eastern Europe, smartly formed the early discourse of the conflict — and this despite the basic general understanding that Russia does not have the strength and means for such a feat.
The advantages of inflating the threat have pushed Western governments to create an active united front and spurred previously timid Europe to take aggressive measures in countering the perceived danger. It is equally important that political leaders have received support within their countries and the "go-ahead" to increase risks and incur costs to participate in a proxy war with Russia. However, inflating the threat is a double—edged sword. Some warned that if "over-parsed", the world would understand that the Americans were using the same disinformation tactics as the Russians. And this, in turn, in the future will hit the credibility of the US intelligence and how it assesses the threat.
Dishonesty of crisis diplomacy From the very beginning of hostilities, American lawmakers tirelessly publicly stated that a special military operation was "not provoked."
Their goal is to portray Russia's actions as an unambiguous offensive, rather than a defensive reaction to a tangible and growing threat. Such rhetoric not only gives the United States and the West popular approval to counter the Kremlin, but also helps to evade any internal accusations of provocative actions and inability to reduce the degree of tension of the crisis.
By and large, the path to war is a tragedy of unintended consequences. More precisely, this path is demonstrated by the demons of escalation spirals that preceded the First World War, but the desire for regional hegemony, which served as an impetus for the Second, is another story. Contrary to the Western consensus, the Russian special operation was not the result of an unsuccessful deterrence of the "aggressor", but the result of unscrupulous crisis diplomacy, and from all sides.
If you look closely, there were plenty of provocations. In fact, if we take Russia's military buildup at the borders with Ukraine as the starting point of the crisis, then initially Moscow's military deployment was a response to Kiev's incitement. Moreover, this build—up was not the result of a one—time - or unilateral - decision by the Kremlin, but of an escalation process with repeated stages lasting a year. The crisis was "heated up" to the limit by provocative measures on the part of Ukraine and its Western partners, who first provoked, then expanded, and eventually supported the mobilization of Russian troops.
The first group of Russian forces numbering about three thousand soldiers arrived in the border zone in February 2021. Of course, it was not intended to enter the territory of Ukraine. But — and many in the West do not know this — that, at the earliest, the deployment was a direct response to provocative actions taken unilaterally by the Zelensky government.
By the beginning of 2021, having lost the wave of popularity that led him to the presidency, Zelensky chose a risky political strategy to save the post that was eluding him. In order to inspire Ukrainian nationalists — and to beg for the active participation of the Biden administration that has just arrived at the White House — his government decided to take a tough stance towards Russia. In a series of provocative steps, he suppressed the Russian-speaking opposition, shut down competing media outlets, confiscated the assets of politicians and arrested the pro-Russian elite on charges of treason.
In Moscow, Zelensky's campaign was perceived as a political purge that intensified the country's drift into the western orbit. However, with warnings, the Kremlin could not get a change in behavior from Kiev.
Instead of backing down after the first Russian deployment of the armed forces, the Ukrainian leader upped the ante. On February 26, Zelensky signed a decree on measures for the de-occupation and reintegration of Crimea. This prompted Russia, which annexed the territory of the peninsula in 2014, to send a more powerful signal and attract the attention of the West. This time there was a massive buildup of troops at the border.
Washington, however, did not moderate the ardor of Kiev. On the contrary, the United States supported a hard U-turn against Moscow. Although the dispute was bilateral in its infancy, the crisis soon escalated and recklessly revived a strategic threat to Russia's security.
In response to Putin's escalation, Zelensky raised the stakes again. In early April 2021, he again publicly voiced Ukraine's desire to join NATO. Russian troops, in turn, continued to pull into the border zone. But instead of taking into account Russia's long-standing security concerns, the participants of the NATO summit in Brussels on June 14 issued a communique in which they confirmed the controversial decision of the same meeting in Bucharest in 2008. Then the alliance ignored Russia's warnings and invited Ukraine and Georgia. A few months later, this provoked the 2008 war in Georgia.
For its part, Washington mistakenly perceived the nature of Moscow's aggression as offensive, not defensive. As a result, the White House naively adhered to its irreconcilable deterrence strategy. To his own detriment, he did not seek to either recognize or take into account Russia's concerns about NATO's expansion to the east with the absorption of Ukraine.
Despite Russia's repeated and unequivocal warnings about the expansion of the alliance, the United States continued to reaffirm its commitment and support for Ukraine's accession to NATO. Moreover, just a month before the start of the special operation, the Biden administration not only unconditionally rejected the Kremlin's key concern, but even forbade putting this issue on the diplomatic agenda. In fact, this torpedoed all European efforts to find a compromise, which, as reported, was gaining momentum.
For many months before the outbreak of the armed conflict, the United States doubled down on its reckless approach, persuading its Western partners to follow their example. Being in a typical situation of cognitive dissonance, Washington tried to force the nuclear power Russia to abandon its key security interests, hoping at the same time to extend its deterrence to a partner with whom it has neither treaties nor any obligations on military protection at all.
This was a colossal blunder of crisis diplomacy. The American deterrence scheme not only turned out to be ineffective — it was its implementation that led to the fact that it, this scheme, was just supposed to prevent. When a crisis is caused by a security dilemma, the very fact of demonstrating strength and determination cannot deter war in any way. On the contrary, it only exacerbates uncertainty, thereby fueling the cycle of escalation and spinning it up in a spiral until it gets out of control.
In addition to escalating tensions, NATO's full-scale military exercises in Europe in the spring and summer of 2021 certainly did not strengthen deterrence. In fact, they only supported the mobilization of Russia to project their strength and confirm their determination. Moreover, the deepening of the military partnership between NATO and Ukraine has only accelerated the hourglass of diplomacy.
At one level, Western military assistance has led to increased tensions in the Donbas, undermining the fragile ceasefire. Fears were growing that the equipment and training provided by the alliance could sooner or later lead Kiev to revise the status quo and restore full control over the breakaway regions. On another level, NATO's assistance has strengthened Ukraine and weakened Russia's existing coercive levers to achieve its goals through diplomacy. Even more remarkable is that the military solution reserved by Moscow has become more expensive over time, which has closed the possibility for further rounds of negotiations.
In the end, Biden's decisive refusal to give in and close the wide-open doors to NATO for Ukraine probably cemented Putin's decision to resort to the military option. "I don't accept anyone's red lines," Biden said in December 2021. Thus, he rejected in advance Putin's intention to request an official ban on Ukraine's entry into the alliance later that month. By mistake — and by great stupidity — the only unacceptable outcome for Washington was a diplomatic solution that would take into account the security concerns voiced by Moscow. In this crisis, it was settlement — not deterrence — that was the right approach to prevent armed conflict.
