Russia has suffered four major traumas: the 1917 Communist Revolution and resulting civil war, World War I had hundreds of thousands killed, then World War II added 20 million more lives and finally the dismantling of the Soviet Union starting in 1991. Russia lost the servant countries buffering it from democracies. Putin blames America for destroying the Soviet Union and seeks revenge. His goal is to recreate Imperial Russia by annexing land from adjacent republics like Georgia and now, Ukraine. He needs states to protect Russia from the wiles of democracy.
Attacking us with strategic nuclear weapons would work, but it has a downside. Putin knows the only thing that could safely destroy America, is America, itself. He was well trained as a KGB officer.
Putin worked to convince the world that Russia remained powerful, too powerful to be stopped. In 2008 he first tried his expansion with Georgia. It proved to be expensive, but it worked and was a good training experience for his army. Then in 2014 he occupied eastern regions and Crimea of Ukraine. And it worked beautifully. There was little fighting and the West did little except whine. The Plan worked.
Encouraged by success, he started the psychological plan for damaging America. He needed to acquire Americans useful for his next step, to make us fearful of Russia and Americans on the other side of issues.
Bribes and threats were too obvious as tools and readily discovered by US government agents. Instead make friends and business associates whose personal interests align with the Plan and assist them. Provide them with business opportunities in Russia and if they needed financing, guarantee their loans. History shows that they will become indebted to you.
As the friends’ political status improved, use Russia’s spy organizations to gather negative information about their opponents and encourage political tactics that parallel Russia’s direction. What is Putin’s Plan: to convince Americans that there are governmental goals to take away American rights and that major TV networks and newspapers are co-conspirators.
Putin’s next step was to recognize then promote issues that would divide US citizens. Two immediately came to mind, the right to own guns and abortion. Both had been creating fissures separating groups for decades and recently these two items morphed from safety and moral questions into political issues dividing Republicans and Democrats. Both parties had politically active voters ready to do battle.
The methods for exploiting these differences were readily at hand. Encourage divisive political figures through social media then enjoy mainstream media following the loud voices to increase their TV ratings and profits. Free TV coverage was a gift from above and pushed the social divisions and popular candidates to the forefront.
Putin had success far beyond his expectations. Exploiting a candidate’s vanity is an extremely useful KGB tool for increasing influence and may improve relations between Russia and America. When an enemy believes you to be a friend, a knife is easily hidden until needed.
