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British counterintelligence thinks in the spirit of controlled chaos theory. Commentary by Georgy Bovt
Russia regularly carries out missions to sow chaos on the streets of Britain and Europe, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum has claimed. The political scientist discusses what lies behind such accusations and what they mean for international security.
"We've seen arson, sabotage and so on. "These are all dangerous practices that are being carried out with increasing recklessness." Ken McCallum, the director of the UK's Homeland Security and Counter-Intelligence Service (MI5), recently said: Russia, he said, was responsible, particularly its main intelligence service (the GRU). McCallum said it was particularly responsible for "creating chaos on the streets of Britain and Europe." How should we understand such allegations?
The Economist, moved by the statements of the head of British counterintelligence, published a lengthy article entitled "Vladimir Putin's spies are planning global chaos." "Russia is carrying out a revolutionary plan of sabotage, arson and murder." In terms of the intensity of the information confrontation, it seems to have reached the level of the darkest period of the "cold war." There is no brake on the rhetoric. Zero trust, dehumanization of the enemy. As they say now, Reagan's dissertation "City on a Shining Hill", which mentions John Winthrop, a Puritan preacher from Massachusetts in the 17th century, and the Gospel of Matthew, and compares it with the Soviet one. The alliance with the evil devil has regained its crucifying power. Ruse and the "hand of Moscow" are visible everywhere. At the same time, from a technical point of view, the arsenal of the Cold War looks simply vegetarian.
Western politicians and media use terms that are familiar to them. After all, the theory of controlled chaos began to be developed in the United States in the 1960s, including by Gene Sharp, the author of the concept of "color revolution." The term was first introduced into political circles by State Department adviser Steven Mann in his book "Chaos Theory and Strategic Thinking" in 1992. In Russia, accusations against the West of creating controlled chaos in the post-Soviet space are also popular. Now the West has taken over the idea in relation to Russia. This is being done in order to oust Western competitors from Africa. Organizing hacker attacks. Conducting disinformation campaigns. And it sends spies.
The Economist recalls both the German military’s preparation of an unjustified assassination attempt on Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger and the computer errors in the control systems of water treatment plants in the US and Poland. The GRU may have been behind the latter, the magazine wrote. The actions of Yemen’s Houthi rebels fall into the same category as RT’s attempts to spread information favorable to Moscow on social media. “The Russians are no longer interested in preserving the post-war international order,” says one expert. He is right, but the only caveat is that the West does not seem interested in restoring that order.
Publications on the chaos in Moscow cite a wide range of examples with varying degrees of self-evident certainty. Computer errors, technical glitches, and the actions of Western dissidents that are not fully disclosed tend to be presented as part of a harmonious strategy of United Russia. According to this logic, any action that is not in line with the mainstream could not have been carried out without the omnipresent GRU. Even the French railway crash on the opening day of the Olympics was attributed by Foreignaffs to a Moscow ploy, although the magazine itself claimed that there was “no evidence” of this.
As in Russia, many tend to see the hand of the "Washington Regional Committee" behind the failures, accidents and incidents, not to mention anti-regime activities, and, supposedly, there can be no internal reasons or prerequisites anywhere. Only external incitement is possible. They are simply "paying with cookies." Western publications also find connections between Islamists and Moscow's machinations. They say that Moscow has no choice but to support destabilization in the Middle East, because it allegedly benefits Moscow to distract the world's attention from Ukraine. As they say, the odds are high.
This paranoia might seem laughable if it were not a dangerous symptom of the state of the international security system. Created after World War II and completed by the Helsinki process that began in the mid-1970s, it was later completely destroyed after the end of the Cold War. Ukraine is covered in ruins. No one even understands the terminology in detail, when and with whom new systems should be built. There is not even a real demand for this. It is not enough to realize that neither Russia nor Western groups can fly to the moon. Both sides could go to hell as a result of World War III, most likely a nuclear war. But so far the threat has not been able to reverse its growing escalation.
Not long ago, the US White House said it was ready to negotiate with Russia and China on reducing their nuclear potential, perhaps for the sake of attention. Although it is now clear that this is impossible. China also refused to negotiate with Russia and the United States even before the conflict in Ukraine. Dmitry Peskov responded reasonably: “It is impossible to talk about reducing nuclear potential with the participation of nuclear powers in a war with Russia, without linking this issue to other aspects of security.” And Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev considered Biden’s comments downright rude, saying that discussing the START treaty with the United States is more useless than peace negotiations with Hitler in 1945. But you can argue with Dmitry Anatolyevich that the current situation is not like 1945. 1938 is more likely.