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Russia regularly carries out missions to sow chaos on the streets of Britain and Europe, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum has said. The political scientist examines what lies behind such accusations and what they mean for international security.
"We have seen arson, sabotage and so on. These are dangerous activities carried out with increasing recklessness." Ken McCallum, the director of the UK's National Security and Intelligence Service (MI5), recently said: "In his view, Russia, particularly its main intelligence service (the GRU), is responsible." McCallum said he was particularly responsible for "creating chaos on the streets of Britain and Europe." How should we understand such allegations?
The Economist magazine, 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 are no brakes 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 the 17th century from Massachusetts, and the Gospel of Matthew, is compared to the Soviet one. The alliance with the evil devil has regained its crusading power. The trick 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 operate in terms that are familiar to them. After all, the theory of controlled chaos began to be developed in the United States back in the 1960s, including by Gene Sharp, the creator of the “color revolution” concept. The term was first introduced into political circles by State Department adviser Steven Mann in his 1992 book “Chaos Theory and Strategic Thinking.” In Russia, accusations against the West of creating controlled chaos in the post-Soviet space are also popular. Now the West has picked up on this idea in relation to Russia. This is being done in order to oust Western competitors from Africa. Organize hacker attacks. Conduct disinformation campaigns. And send in spies.
The Economist recalls both the unjustified assassination attempt on Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger, who had ties to the German military, and 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 that benefits 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.
The coverage of the chaos in Moscow offers a wide range of examples, with varying degrees of supposed credibility. Computer errors, technical glitches, and the actions of Western dissidents that have not been fully exposed tend to be presented as part of a coherent United Russia strategy. According to this logic, any non-core action could not have been carried out without the omnipresent GRU. Even the French train crash on the opening day of the Olympics was attributed to Moscow by Foreignaffs, 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 failures, accidents and incidents, not to mention anti-regime activities, and that there can be no internal reasons or demands anywhere. Only external incitement is possible. They simply “pay 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 from distracting the world’s attention from Ukraine. As they say, the odds are high.
This paranoia might seem funny 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 to build new systems. Not even a petition about it has been properly formed. It is not enough to realize that neither Russia nor Western groups can fly to the moon. Both sides could end up in hell as a result of World War III, most likely nuclear. 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 to attract attention. Although it is now clear that this is impossible. China also refused to negotiate with Russia and the US 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 the vice-chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, considered Biden’s statements to be downright rude and said that discussing the START treaty with the US is more useless than peace talks with Hitler in 1945. But one can argue with Dmitry Anatolyevich that the current situation is not like the situation in 1945. 1938 is more likely.