Elsewhere, I’ve speculated that one possible outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would be that other countries bordering Russia could invade it, not to conquer but to re-claim territory that has been in dispute in the recent past, or that has an ethnic population similar to itself but not to Russia, or speaks a language other than Russian that its own people speak, or just because “Hey, this looks like territory we could use!” I’m pretty sure, without knowing anything, that several bordering countries would have a few towns, peninsulas, and chunks of land that fall into these categories and likely has some nationals willing to dispute Russia’s claim to them. If several of these countries would attempt to take back (or just to take) these lands, Russia would need to send troops to repel the invaders, and they’re running kind of low of available troops just now. Might be interesting to see what happens–possibly these mini-wars could give the Russian people the idea that maybe their claims regarding Ukraine’s territories are no better than the invaders’ claims.
Or maybe they see that they’ve pissed off the world and need a new regime in charge? Or maybe they would say “What is this shit? Why are we engaged in endless wars all around the world? Bring our soldiers back home.” Or maybe…
The CIA engages in this sort of speculation all the time. That’s kind of what they do, game out scenarios and see if any of them seems especially promising. This particular idea might seem loopy to you–it certainly presents a lot of problems to me. But I believe they have gamed out weirder possibilities than I;ve been able to conjure up. What long-term, fairly unlikely possibilities would you suppose they have in mind for a solution to Russia’s territorial ambitions? The one thing I can promise you is we will be unable to come up with anything so crazy that the CIA hasn’t already considered it.
The CIA has never had “long range plans”. It is a purely reactive agency that exists primarily in the guise of “fighting Communism” in order to ensure that powerful people in the US government have access to fruit and later drug production enterprises free of interference by native populations (witness the Guatemalan Civil War, activities in the ‘Eighties in Panama and Nicaragua, et cetera), and its later belated pivot toward “The War on Terror” post September 11, 2001 in the absence of a Soviet threat.
Really, “never”? That seems a little odd to me–you can’t run spies on a short-term basis. You can’t destabilize countries on a month-to-month basis. That entire business is done on a much time frame–how could you establish a covert infrastructure in some country you think you may want to influence three or five years down the road without long-term planning. Just doing the research on a foriegn country, to establish ties to various political factions, which is the CIA’s bread and butter, takes years and years. What, do you think when a revolution breaks out in some country the CIA says “We don’t know anything about that place, Mister President. Let us send a man down there to see what he can find out” when there’s fighting in the streets? They need to have contingency plans in place long before, just to perform their basic function.
In my specific (admittedly somewhat loopy) example, I’m sure the CIA keeps track of every faction in every country on Russia’s borders, and knows which ones have territorial ambitions, how well equipped and motivated each one is, how pro- (or anti-) Russian each government official is, etc. That’s their job, and it’s not a reactive one.
The State Department and Pentagon would be doing most of the “wargaming” of what might happen, I would imagine. The State Department in the sense of they might be doing various thought exercises to figure out what might happen and what to be prepared for, and the Pentagon in both a geopolitical sense, and the literal sense of engaging in war simulations for those situations.
I imagine the CIA would do some of its own, but it would be more along the lines of “let’s game out how things might go, so we can be prepared to do our jobs if things change” and not some sort of more nefarious plans to actually influence things on their own outside the Executive Branch and State Department.
The question on my mind regarding the CIA’s reaction to Russia is how they are going to respond to the disinformation war being waged by Russia. As it stands now the US is suffering from a troll gap. Does the CIA develop a social media attack force of its own? DO they restrict themselves to correcting misinformation, or do the go on the offensive and start spewing false rumors about Putin?
This becomes even more fraught with difficulty when it comes to Russia running a partisan attack in the US. How do you successfully counter that without effectively inserting yourself into partisanship in favor of the other side?
As this “military exercise” (or whatever Putin’s current euphemism is) goes on (and on) I wonder more and more why countries with grievances against Russia don’t see this as their opportunity to get some disputed territory back. You would think China, Mongolia, Japan might see this as a golden chance to reclaim parts of their border while Putin is hard pressed to put forces together a thousand miles away. I don’t know if there are any ongoing disputed borders anywhere, but it’s easy to see how there might be, and this is a great time to claim them, I’d think. I know the Japanese claimed the southern part of Sakhalin Island until the end of WWII–they might say they want it back to protect the rights of ethnic Japanese still living there, and send a few warships into the area, just to see what Putin would say or do about it.
One specific issue, which is also a big factor in Ukraine, is a century or more of Russification of the local population. Claiming back a historically defined border territory or somewhere in the central Asian borderlands possibly brings you an embedded Russian population that forms the core for any grab-back action by a future resurgent Russian state.
If I was the CIA [and I neither confirm or deny that I am] I would be focussing on the cohort of careerist military officers who would need to take action to either sustain their own coup with CIA support or who are needed to counter one by an even worse alternative to Putin. I’d be working on a ‘Death of Stalin’ style big military event as the opportunity to position loyalists and weaponry in critical locations in Moscow on National Army Parade Day.
Overthrowing a democratic regime is the easy part; in fact, it is so trivially easy all you really have to do is co-opt some pre-existing opposition and foment dissatisfaction. Getting your ostensibly “U.S.-friendly dictatorship” in a way that doesn’t result in blowback is the tough part, frequently requiring that a later presidential come up with some pretense to invade a sovereign company with the entire might of the US military and all of the expense and sacrifice of international goodwill that entails.
The Russian regime appears willing to tolerate, and inflict, horrific losses and destruction ad infinitum just to capture swaths of a neighbor’s territory. What might it be willing to do to defend territory internationally recognized as its own?
Russia is a nuclear power.
Any country attempting an opportunistic land grab risks diplomatic and economic isolation.
Oh, yeah? So how many democratic regimes have YOU toppled personally? In your spare time, of course.
This is a silly distraction from my topic. No matter how futile such an effort would be for the CIA to attempt–and I may as well assert that it would be child’s play for such a masterful organization to pull off since I’m about as much an authority on the CIA’s omnipotence as you are on their powerlessness–the real issue here is why Russia’s neighbors don’'t attempt to take back disputed territories on their Russian borders, in this ideal moment for them to do so, with or without help and resources from the CIA. even if it’s only the CIA mailing them billion-dollar checks from their unlimited and infinitely replenishable budget that is ever-mysterious outside of a few friendly Senators, and none of their expertise and manpower, that would be an incentive for these countries to try and settle some age-old territorial disputes at this moment when Putin can hardly spare a soldier or a bullet to defend Russian interests abroad.
The next spy movie or novel i see will be my first in a few decades, but that’s still far better than being informed by a stranger on the internet who goes by “Stranger”
I recognize " Dont provoke the bear," but what if the bear is fighting for its life 4000 miles away, and all you want is a slice of land you think belongs to you anyway? Also, this old bear is looking surprisingly toothless just now. You think Putin has troops to spare to fight a land war against insurgents in the Far East? If they’re not going to reclaim these lands today, then they’re giving up on any claims to them in the future, because they’re never going to have a better opportunity.
But this too is besides the point in a different way from Stranger’s somewhat fatuous point–this is potentially an opportunity for the CIA to try to exploit. I’m wondering what they’re thinking. They seem to have decided not to stir up border troubles for the Russians. (I say “seem” because they could have tried and failed.)
And quite possibly for the reasons you lay out. But the notion that this has never occurred to anyone at the CIA as a rich area of exploitation is absurd.
At the very least, someone in their Far East Bureau, which I’d speculate is funded in the billions of dollars and hundreds of personnel, would have brought such a scenario up, if only as a devil’s advocate plan, to show Congress that they had considered and rejected such a scheme as being too high risk for too little reward. But they would have had to game it out to get that far, and gaming it out is what my OP is positing.
Because they probably realize it may look like an ideal moment to do so but why make life harder for yourself if you don’t need to.
For one thing, also, I don’t think a majority of Russia’s neighbors have a recent worth-bothering-about legit unresolved border dispute.
The post-WW2 treaties had East Prussia and the lands taken in the Winter War be formally surrendered, and the Prussian and Finnish populations were already evacuated. And part of the whole point of the current conflict is that the post-WW2 and/or at-independence borders are to be unchanged except by mutual agreement and you can’t just say “that used to be mine in Great-grandad’s time, I want it back!”
Mongolia’s border is virtually unchanged since independence (Tuva was split off VERY early on) and in any case the USSR/Russia had been the putative guarantor of that independence vs. any claim from Beijing and the Mongolians are probably aghast at how it now looks like they can’t guarantee jack.
Japan’s got the matter with the Kurils but they have self-denied taking any aggressive actions and in any case would not risk ticking off the USA over that. China may cast a longing look past the Amur but for now are getting a good deal on the statu quo and they can afford the Long Game. Biggest victory is the one you achieve without a single arrow flying, and all that.
Among those with legit issues, Moldova and Georgia know they do not really have the power (or cannot afford the reprisal toll) to liberate Transdnistria, South Ossetia or Abkhazia by force while Russia is still in a position to inflict pain, and that nobody is going to shower them with funds and matériel if they make the first move.
Funny, that’s pretty much the sum and substance of Putin’s claim on Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine. Be kind of interesting to hear him complaining about someone else using that as their basis for invading, no?
Bit of a strawman to claim, btw, that I ever said that “a majority” of Russia’s neighbors could or should make such a claim. One or two would do. And if the bear turns out to be completely toothless, maybe a few more could join in the fun.
OK, has anybody claimed that a majority of Russia’s neighbors would be needed to create a major problem for Putin? If you’re arguing against it, and it’s not a strawman argument, I think you need to find someone arguing against you. I don’t see one.
You can always find someone to make a bad argument whose results please you, which is what I’m speculating the CIA should be doing here. Someone who left valuable property, ancestors’ graves, a ham sandwich behind and who would like to have their stuff returned to them. Whether to act on this information, of course, is another matter, but I’d bet money the CIA has invested much time and effort to identifying those with the strongest claims and the most ease in pursuing those claims.