Biden Announces Second Summit for Democracy: "Hybrid Warfare" as Revival of Imperial Geopolitics

by: Harley Schlanger

On December 9-10, 2021, at a moment when Russian President Putin was pressing for a serious response from NATO leaders to what French President Macron now admits were legitimate security concerns, NATO governments -- led by the U.S. and the U.K. -- not only rejected Putin's demands, but instead convened what they ostentatiously called the "Summit for Democracy."  The online summit was used to divide the world into two blocs, of "democracies" squaring off against "autocratic" or "authoritarian states."  This division provided a justification for NATO countries to rebuff Putin, insisting instead that they were defending Ukrainian "sovereignty and democracy" against Putin's authoritarianism. 

As the Russian special military operation in Ukraine has been turned into a war of NATO against Russia, the sponsors of the summit are furious that nations representing the majority of the world's population, particularly those of the "Global South", have refused to join the NATO-led "democratic" bloc in condemning Russia.  This is the context for President Biden's announcement on November 30 that a second online summit will convene at the end of March 2023.  The stated intent is to evaluate the progress made in fulfilling the "five pillars" of the Summit's "Initiative for Democracy Renewal" set out at the first summit, and to recommit to the process.  

A review of the "five pillars" of democracy promoted by the sponsors makes it evident that the only purpose of the gathering will be to provide a cover to justify continuing the war against the leading designated "authoritarian" regime, Russia, and prepare for war with the other leading designee, China.  Further, it demonstrates the commitment to substitute "hybrid warfare" as a means of subverting diplomacy, replacing dialogue with a digitalized form of what was known in the past as "psychological warfare."

The hypocrisy behind this is blatantly evident from applying the five pillars to the reality of the fascist regime in post-Maidan Ukraine.  For example, as to the first pillar, "Supporting Free and Independent Media", the Zelensky regime has shut down every opposition media in the country, accusing them of operating on behalf of Putin.  Pillar two is "Fighting Corruption".  By every standard, Ukraine repeatedly is identified as the most corrupt regime in Europe.

Likewise, any objective review of the remaining three pillars ---"Bolstering Democratic Reformers, Advancing Technology for Democracy, Defending Free and Fair Elections and Inclusive Political Processes" -- demonstrates the delusional fraud perpetrated by the Summit, as Ukraine has threatened, jailed or killed reformers who opposed the dictatorial Zelensky regime, outlawed opposition parties, and engaged in hybrid/information warfare through advanced cyber operations to censor, terrorize and murder opponents, employing such NATO-run operations as the Center for Countering Disinformation.  

It should also be obvious that such information warfare techniques are being applied against opponents to the war in every NATO nation, as the truth about the actual intent of NATO's operations against Russia, and the reasons behind them, are suppressed by pro-NATO psychological warfare operations.

"Whose Story Wins"

The use of hybrid warfare as a central strategic feature of war is not new, but has been advanced by incorporating artificial intelligence capabilities pioneered by British intelligence agencies and developed by Silicon Valley into mainstream military planning.  Hybrid warfare refers to combining methods of irregular warfare with cyber technologies as a means of controlling the "narrative," which is sometimes referred to as "soft power."  It is the subject of a RAND Corporation study published in 2020, "Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere, Noopolitik and Information Age Statecraft."  The authors apply the concept developed by Russian scientist/philosopher Vladimir Vernadsky of the Noosphere as the "realm of the mind", arguing that as the digital technologies of "artificial intelligence" advance, the application of such digital information technologies will supercede traditional strategies based on "realpolitik."  Thus, future wars will be determined based on "whose story wins."    

An element of this is the concept of "pre-bunking," which is a means of controlling the narrative by eliminating "unacceptable" ideas from public discourse.  It has been presented as a means of inoculating people from susceptibility to "disinformation", "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" by eliminating "false choices" from consideration.  Rather than relying on "fact-checking" to "debunk" alleged disinformation, the concept is to pre-emptively debunk thoughts which run counter to the desired narratives churned out by the accepted information warriors.  

As such, it is presented by its sponsors as a more aggressive form of "content moderation" than the use of fact-checking.  One of the lead studies on this was done by the Cambridge University Social-Decision Making Lab, together with Google.  In previous times, imposing limits on which ideas are allowed for consideration, to be tested by debate, was considered to be the tool used by dictatorial "autocracies", referred to as "brainwashing."  Today, it is called "democracy."    

Tool of the "Unipolar Order"

The original idea for the summit emerged from a U.S. State Department policy planning initiative adopted by the Atlantic Council (AC), a "think tank" which defends the London-Washington Unipolar Order with funds from the British and American governments and "military-industrial-financial corporations.  According to a blurb on the AC website, the "Democracy 10" group (D-10) was created to "serve as a standing platform for strategic collaboration that would allow the U.S. and its like-minded allies to advance common interests and shared values."  The D-10 group has held annual Strategy Forum meetings since the first summit in Ottawa in 2014.

The CEO of the AC, Fred Kempe, provided a glimpse into the delusional, hysterical mindset driving the War Hawks in a December 4 statement.   After asserting that Ukraine is winning the war and Russia is losing, he called on the "U.S. and its global partners" to "double down in 2023 to shape the contest unfolding between democrats and despots that will define the post-Cold War order. US President Joe Biden has consistently focused on this competition as a historic 'inflection point.' His third year in office provides him his best opportunity yet to score lasting gains in that contest."

An example of such narrative shaping was an event sponsored by British intelligence's Chatham House on December 6, under the title "Russia's War on Everybody."  Intended to expose Russia's use of hybrid warfare, which the speakers defined as typical of Russia's "whole of society attack," they spent an hour ridiculing any idea that Russia has legitimate security issues with TransAtlantic/NATO policies.  According to Edward Lucas, a former editor of the London flagship journal, {The Economist}, who was one of the speakers, peace is only possible by changing the way Russians think!  "We are playing Russian games by Russian rules," he said, and the west gave Putin a green light to attack Ukraine.  The problems with Russia "pre-date Putin", he insisted, but western intelligence has forgotten that.

Lucas' racist attack on Russia demonstrates what is really behind today's intelligence warfare, the return to the standard of British imperial geopolitics, which defined east-west relations during the Cold War.  Decrying what he called the "self-indulgent" delusion that one can negotiate with Russia, he concluded that western diplomatic and intelligence services were "once really good, during the Cold War...but we destroyed it because we don't think geopolitics is still going on."  The consensus of the panel is that a "long-term strategy" for dealing with Russia requires first winning the war, to end the Russian belief that it is entitled to be an empire.