Given the hack of the DNC, who is the real enemy?
No matter how much we criticize our political process and the candidates we have nominated we should remember that it is our political process and they are our candidates and we should allow no one from the outside to meddle in our political affairs.
I think it might be useful to understand "Political Warfare" from the Russian context. The following is an excerpt from a report from the Latvian Defense Ministry (page 5, link below) that I think is very much worth perusing whether you are a Republican, Democrat, or Independent (like me). We should pay close attention to how the Russians are thinking about the future of war and warfare, to include political warfare.
While we argue, debate, and spew all kinds of rhetoric (and dislike - I hope we can simply dislike and not hate) at each other over our choices for president we should be united in the idea that we are the only ones who get to participate in the process and the Russians do not get a vote. Please give some thought to the analysis below and ask if the Russians are executing their form of political warfare? More importantly as Republicans face off with Democrats and Democrats face off with Republicans neither should view the other as the enemy - just someone with a different world view - the real enemy is the one who is attacking our political system and trying to manipulate the American public.
As a result, it follows that the main guidelines for developing Russian military capabilities by 2020 are:i. From direct destruction to direct influence;ii. from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay;iii. from a war with weapons and technology to a culture war;iv. from a war with conventional forces to specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings;v. from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of perceptions;vi. from direct clash to contactless war;vii. from a superficial and compartmented war to a total war, including the enemy’s internal side and base;viii. from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace;ix. from symmetric to asymmetric warfare by a combination of political, economic, information,technological, and ecological campaigns;x. From war in a defined period of time to a state of permanent war as the natural condition in national life.Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population. The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker to the detriment of their own government and country. It is interesting to note the notion of permanent war, since it denotes a permanent enemy. In the current geopolitical structure, the clear enemy is Western civilization, its values, culture, political system, and ideology.RUSSIA’S NEW GENERATION WARFARE IN UKRAINE:IMPLICATIONS FOR LATVIAN DEFENSE POLICY
