Political warfare: The United States of America under attack

by Michael J. Del Rosso
Senior Fellow for Homeland and National Security
The Center for Security Policy
Research Fellow in National Security Policy
The Claremont Institute
© 2015 Michael J. Del Rosso, All Rights Reserved

Political Warfare

Hardly non-violent, it is a pre-violent tactic employed by America’s enemies whose objective is to violently destroy our republic and subjugate our citizens to a tyranny 

Introduction

I am going to address a number of areas this evening that do not often get discussed. Some of them will seem new to many of you. Many of you will have heard parts of what I have to say, that’s what happens when you speak to sophisticated audiences.

But overall I am going to cover a number of areas that the mainstream media have ignored and that have been mostly outside the purview of public debate. They deal with matters of national security and the failure to deal with these issues has spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations.

They are a by-product of both political correctness, a willful ignorance about the nature of our enemies, and a strategic minimalism that will not see national defense issues as the existential issue it is by its very nature.

So I would ask that you dispose of many of your preconceived notions about the state of our national security and engage with me about a set of facts that is beyond dispute and an analysis of our current crisis that, if we do not address it, will mean our downfall.

There are a handful of people inside the establishment who understand this and are trying to figure out how to remedy the situation. But we face an uphill battle if more concerned citizens such as you do not become educated on the facts and hold our political elites to do the same and take action.

I say it with no pleasure that the hour is late and the continued existence of our Republic is in peril because our political and national security elites, in both parties, have a near complete lack of comprehension of the nature of the hazards, threats and tactics facing America. Worse, they believe fictions fed to them as enemy propaganda making them, at a minimum, guilty of professional malpractice in occupying the roles of responsibility we the people have placed them in.

I can only cover a small amount of material in the time we have here this evening, but the evidence for my claims are deep, wide and encyclopedic.

Political Warfare

The evidence will show that “The war which we fight is primarily defined by the enemy as INFORMATION WARFARE, which manifests itself in our system as political warfare, influence operations, and subversion of our foundational institutions: political, educational, religious, and media. Yet, our entire government structure is focused on the kinetic war – shootings, bombings, kidnappings and other acts of ‘terrorism.’”

These Enemy information operations influence U.S. foreign policy and national security decisions to the detriment of U.S. interests. Two of the more egregious manifestations of this were employment of U.S. might and influence to force an American ally, Egypt’s Mubarak, out of office to be replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood regime which has openly declared war against America, as well as a NATO campaign to force Libya’s Gaddafi, a compliant, cooperative anti-jihadi, out of power permitting known al Qaeda rebel leaders to acquire OPEC wealth and a massive arms cache with which to empower jihadi insurgencies in other Middle East countries, notably ISIS in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

During the past 25 years US national security apparatus has failed to focus on traditional security capabilities related to the conduct of and mitigation of political warfare.

Following the conclusion of the cold war many of the concepts and capabilities associated with this domain have been discarded and or wholly ignored by the administrators, educators and political leadership of the US national security establishment.

The emergence of the terrorism threat did nothing to ameliorate this neglect and in fact expedited the demise of these skills by channeling resources away from indirect means and into niche capability domains like targeting, force application and more conventional military and intelligence approaches.

Skills such as covert influence, deception, black propaganda, counter intelligence and ideological warfare have atrophied to a point of operational incapability with a deleterious strategic effect.

The national security establishment’s fixation on network centric warfare ignores critical threat vectors and the emergent information environment drives leadership towards short term tactical objectives but overlooks long term strategic consequences.

Additionally, US counter-intelligence capabilities suffer from decades of atrophy and are frequently outclassed by our more sophisticated adversaries.

This is not a partisan political issue. This issue transcends politics. Both parties are equally culpable for failing to understand these political warfare tactics employed by enemies, domestic and foreign, to the Constitution. They have a duty to know that self-declared enemies are successfully employing these political warfare tactics.

That duty to know encompasses the duty to know all tactics, techniques and objectives employed by the enemy, as well as a duty to defend the Constitution.

In employing Information Operations (“IO” the US military’s current all-encompassing term of art for such tactics), America’s enemies are following Sun Tzu’s maxim “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

But let me be clear that just because I am using terms like “Political” and “Information” to describe warfare does not mean that the adversaries employing these tactics are not lethal and that they don’t mean to destroy America. They are, and they do! These are not non-violent tactics. These are pre-violent tactics.

I will give you some specific examples this evening, but to set the stage, permit me to lay out what I categorize as the three main classes of enemies to the Constitution of the United States:

1. Domestic Progressives/Fabian Socialists,
2. The nuclear-armed totalitarian regimes of Russia and China and their rouge nation clients (Iran, N. Korea, Venezuela, etc.), and
3. A global, totalitarian, Islamic movement embodied in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (the OIC is a NGA composed of the 56 Islamic nations and the Palestinian Authority, and represented at the head of state level) and the Muslim Brotherhood and their jihadi groups such as The Hamas, al Qaeda, and ISIS.

American Principles

Our enemies’ Information Operations have successfully subverted America’s foundational institutions: political, educational, religious, and media, with the postmodern belief that a correct description of reality is impossible and that all truth is limited, approximate, and is constantly evolving. As a result, our elites know neither the enemy nor who Americans are. America presently has a compromised immune system that is incapable of detecting, let alone rejecting, political philosophies which are in direct conflict with the American political philosophy.

This bodes ominously when considering another famous stratagem of Sun Tzu, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” And we currently know neither.

So with that in mind…. Before we look at our enemies and their IO tactics, let’s take a quick look at some textbook definitions of the various political philosophies in conflict in America today.

The Declaration of Independence is the unique embodiment of America’s founding principles. The United States Code recognizes it as one of America’s four organic legal documents. It was literally the legal document which created the nation of the United States of America, which, prior to July 4^th, 1776, was otherwise just a collection of independently governed colonies rebelling against England.

The principles espoused in the Declaration provide a concise definition of the American political philosophy, where:

1. There are knowable moral Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
2. Everyone is created equal and free,
3. We don’t need a government to grant us rights because all of our rights come from the Creator; they are inalienable and we posses them in the natural state,
4. The only purpose of Governments are to secure those God-given Rights,
5. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,

It is worth contrasting this with definitions of competing political philosophies.

Merriam-Webster defines Socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” A socialist is “one who advocates or practices socialism.”

Black’s Law Dictionary defines Communism as “a system of social organization in which goods are held in common, the opposite of the system of private property,” and as “communalism, any theory or system of social organization involving common ownership of agents of production of industry.”

In The Concise Encyclopedia of Economic, edited by David R. Henderson, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Sheldon Richman contrasts socialism and fascism; tell me if any of this sounds familiar:

 “Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.  Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”–that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it.  (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.)  Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities.  Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically.  In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace.  Entrepreneurship was abolished.  State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.”

Simply put, the American political philosophy is based upon the principles of individual Liberty, and these competing political philosophies are based upon the principles of varying degrees of state Tyranny.

It is worth noting that what is passed off as a liberal democrat today is not at all what it was 60 years ago. Back then, liberal democrats were every day Americans who firmly believed that the force of government could be used to help the unfortunate in society. We could have our arguments over the efficacy of such programs or of the place of such programs as being the proper role of government. But they were honest discussions.

Today, what is passed off as a liberal democrat bears no resemblance. Today they would be more accurately identified as Marxist, Progressive or Socialist. They do not believe in the American Political Philosophy as defined in the Declaration. We do not have honest differences of opinion. Whether it takes 20 years or 100 years, these elites would replace our Constitution with something unrecognizable.

But just like 7-Up is not a cola, it is the un-cola, Liberals and Progressives in both parties espouse un-American political policies which we should vehemently oppose. And we should not hesitate to label these policies un-American, as they are demonstrably and provably so. They are a text book definition of the domestic enemies that millions of us have taken an oath to defend the Constitution from.

The only Oath specified verbatim in the U.S. Constitution is in Article 2, Section 1, for the Office of President of the United States, and I quote:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Well, President Obama campaigned to “fundamentally change America” which is in direct opposition to the oath of office which requires him to “preserve, protect and defend,” not change! But President Obama is the symptom, not the problem. Americans who should know better elected him, twice! How did that happen?

Ideological Subversion

At this point in the discussion we have to ask ourselves, how did America produce such a large demographic of citizens who believe in un-American political philosophies?

The Progressive Threat

The Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives between 1952 and 1954 that looked into this question. The committee was originally created by House Resolution 561 during the 82nd Congress. The committee investigated the use of funds by tax-exempt organizations (non-profit organizations) to see if they were being used to support communism. The committee was alternatively known as the Cox Committee and the Reece Committee after its two chairmen, Edward E. Cox and B. Carroll Reece.

The several thousand page 1954 Report of the committee is available on line. Additionally, commentaries on the proceedings are found in the writings by the committee’s research director Norman Dodd and also the 1958 book Foundations: Their Power and Influence, by the committee’s chief counsel Renee Wormser, which is still in print and available on Amazon.

As my recently departed friend and colleague Joseph Douglass characterized it:

Actually, this Committee was not focused on the growth of the problems we face today. Most of these problems had not become so serious as to warrant national attention until well into the 1960s. What the Reece Committee was interested in was the growing influence of large tax-exempt foundations on education and the manner in which they had inserted their views into the American government itself.

What they found was the growth of an insidious network of leftists under the patronage of the major tax-exempt foundations. This network had infiltrated both the education system and the government. The clear purpose of this network, or interlocked cabal as they would call it, was to control the marketing of ideas and through these ideas to introduce social change, change that in the Committee’s eyes was not in our interest – indeed, they even ended up calling it “subversive” – and how right they were. The changes being orchestrated by this cabal can now be seen to lie at the heart of the major social, economic, and political problems America is experiencing today.

The findings of the Reece Committee were published in December, 1954 The principal conclusion was direct and unequivocal: A cabal consisting of leftist intellectuals, social science organizations, and the big tax-exempt foundations had come into existence. Their objective was to destroy the American culture and way of life, introduce socialist and Marxist ideas, often under deceptive garb, seize control of our government’s policy apparatus, and place themselves in charge.

There were two main thrusts in the cabal’s strategy. The first was to use the American education system to promote the desire for social change in the public’s mind; that is, to change the thinking and behavior of our youth and young adults. The second was to infiltrate the government and use it to start implementing the social changes.

The Foundations’ clear intent over decades was to replace, in all aspects of American society, American principles of individual liberty with a Marxist/socialist set of principles. By 1952 they had successfully subverted government institutions to such an extent that tax money, through the auspices of government programs, would continue the process. As of today they have thoroughly corrupted all major American institutions.

“It is difficult for the public to understand,” writes Mr. Wormser, “that some of the great foundations which have done so much for us in some fields have acted tragically against the public interest in others, but the facts are there for the unprejudiced to recognize.”

The great foundations were not alone in employing the tactic of ideological subversion. It is a very effective technique employed by many entities hostile to America. The Soviets use this tactic heavily throughout the world, to this day

In a 1985 interview, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov points out that the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of Espionage and Intelligence. Bezmenov felt the Soviets spent only about 15% of their efforts on classic Espionage and Intelligence. The other 85% of their effort was spent on “Ideological Subversion.” This is done in the open for all to see, as it is the deconstruction of the principles, norms, morals and education system of an adversary to weaken and subvert them so they in essence overthrow themselves.

The operational premise of ideological subversion is that if I can control the information available to you, whether factual or contrived, I then control your decision making process.

Stanislav Lunev, the highest ranking GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) officer to ever defect, gives example of such Ideological Subversion. He states that during the Vietnam War the USSR spent more initiating and guiding CONUS (Continental United States) antiwar movements than all Soviet economic and military assistance to North Vietnam to prosecute the war. On page 78 of his 1998 book Through the Eyes of the Enemy, he writes:

What will be a great surprise to the American people is that the GRU and KGB had a larger budget for antiwar propaganda in the United States than it did for economic and military support for the Vietnamese. The antiwar propaganda cost the GRU more than $1 billion, but as history shows, it was a hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost. The antiwar sentiment created an incredible momentum that greatly weakened the U.S. military.

The fact that in contemporary presidential elections the Communist Party USA (created in 1919, funded and controlled by Soviet intelligence to this day) no longer fields a presidential candidate but rather backs the Democratic Party’s candidates should speak volumes as to the convergence of the principles of these two parties and their assault on America’s founding principles.

Please let that sink in. We didn’t lose the Vietnam War on the battlefield. We lost it in domestic politics. And the Democratic Party has ideologically merged with the CPUSA.

The Islamic Threat

Completing the threading of this needle of hostile entities employing IO against America would be incomplete without examining the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). For decades, very well organized Muslim Brotherhood entities have been waging a highly effective Information Operation against American Principles with the intent of ideologically subverting and manipulating American institutions so as to impose Shariah law in America.

The MB had it easier than the Soviets in that when the MB started, America was already dumbed down quite a bit in their understanding of American principles. After all, if you don’t understand American Principles, how will you know when you are confronted with principles that are hostile to American Principles?

The MB has been operating on US soil for over 50 years. An August 2004 FBI search of a senior MB member’s Virginia home uncovered a secret sub-basement that housed the archives of the MB operation in America. Two truckloads of evidence were seized, including 80 banker boxes of documents and hundreds of video and audio tapes.

Several documents recovered in this raid were submitted, uncontested by the defense and stipulated as being official Muslim Brotherhood documents, as evidence in the Texas Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Trial, the largest federal terrorism financing case in US history. The material met all of the U.S. Federal Government’s rules for evidence and could be subject to cross-examination by the defendants. The trial resulted in the conviction of all defendants on all counts and the imposition of significant sentences. Because of the conviction, this evidence, by definition, is no longer opinion, but now a matter of legal fact.

One key seized document used in evidence was titled the An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America. It explains that “The Ikhwan [what the MB refers to themselves as] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands [those of the Americans] and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion [Islam and Shariah Law] is made victorious over all other religions.”

This memorandum also self-identifies “A list of our [MB] organizations” involved in this conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a totalitarian Islamic state. The list includes some of the most prominent Muslim Groups in America both then (1991) and today, including CAIR (in 1991 called Islamic Association for Palestine), ISNA, and NAIT. In fact, the HLF Trial designated over 200 Muslim organizations and individuals in a U.S. government List of Unindicted Co-conspirators.

Yet these entities are completely and exclusively embraced by the government as key allies who drive US strategies.

The Explanatory Memorandum further to states

Understanding the role and the nature of work of “The Islamic Center” in every city with what achieves the goal of the process of settlement … is the “base” … to supply our battalions. The “center’s” role should be the same as the “mosque’s” role during the time of God’s prophet … when he marched to “settle” the Dawa in its first generation in Madina.”

If you have read any Islamic law or the Quran, you would know that the Medina campaign was violent, kinetic warfare and the mosques were armories. So if you need a sound national security reason to oppose the 9/11 Islamic Center in NYC, this is it!

The Muslim Brotherhood’s position stated in their secret archives, nor the similar positions of published pronouncements from al Qaeda’s bin Laden, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or other jihadi group’s, are not some aberration of Islam.

How do I know?

Because there are four schools of Sunni jurisprudence which have been codified for a thousand years, published continually, and published today in authoritative English translations available from Amazon and other sources. ALL four schools are in complete agreement that the ONLY definition of jihad is violent, kinetic war to establish global submission to Islamic law, that such jihad is OBLIGATORY for all pious, observant Muslims, that LYING to advance it is obligatory, and that a portion of a Muslim’s zakat (the equivalent of Judeo-Christian tithing) must go to fund “those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in Islamic military operations for whom no salary has been allotted in the army roster.”

So it is inexcusable for our political and national security elites to not know what Islam says and still claim any semblance of professional competency in their execution of the position of trust the public has placed them in.

So, far from being “extreme” or “perverted” positions of Islam, according to published, authoritative Islamic law (NOT according to me), to be a pious, observant Muslim, like Major Nidal Malik Hasan, MANDATES kinetic activity which is a felony violation of US law include homicide, material support of terrorism, and sedition, and acts of treason if you are a citizen and acts of war if you are not.

Also seized in the FBI Elbarasse search was another document titled the “The Rulers” which specifies “Phases of World Underground Movement Plan”:

• Phase I:  Phase of discreet and secret establishment of elite leadership
• Phase II:  Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities (establishing a shadow government)
• Phase III:  Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers, through utilizing mass media
• Phase IV:  Open public confrontation with the government through exercising the political pressure approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour.
• Phase V:  Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups become united.
• All the above-mentioned phases are preliminary steps to reach the above mentioned [fifth] phase.

The countries of Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq are presently in Phase V. America is in Phase IV and about to enter Phase V.

Consequences of Information Operations (IO)

The consequences of such prolonged subversion operations are that our elites not only cannot identify our enemies, but they do their bidding.

In 2001 right after 9-11 the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t have to lie to America about the hostile nature of their threat and intent. They got no less than President Bush to lie for them! It was Bush who declare to a joint session of congress and the American people, just weeks after the attack, that Islam is a religion of peace, a claim that is provably false if he bothered to personally read Islamic law like Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams did when presented with the threat of Islamic Jihad.

In May 2010 Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, presently director of Central Intelligence, made remarks at CSIS that included

Nor do we describe our enemy as “jihadists” or “Islamists” because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenant of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children. 

Brennan’s statements are not only completely and provably false because no published Islamic law supports his contention, but he is parroting propaganda introduced by enemy information operations. And this man is director of the CIA!

The 9/11 Commission Report accurately identified Islamic Terrorism as the Threat. But the Muslim Public Affairs Council recommended that the US Government find other terminology.

The result is that the 2004 The 9/11 Commission Report used the term “Islam” 322 times, but the 2009 FBI Counter Terrorism Lexicon and the National Counterterrorism Strategy 2009 documents use the term “Islam” ZERO TIMES!

Other than in a footnote reference of a several year old document with Islam in the title, the January 2010 DoD independent review Protecting the Force: Lessons from Ft. Hood used the term Islam ZERO TIMES! This is in spite of the fact that Maj. Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar,” professed to be a Jihadist, had Soldier of Allah on his business cards, and was the accredited Islamic lay chaplain for Ft. Hood!

In June 2012 five Republican members of Congress sent letters to the Inspectors General of the State Department, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence asking for investigations into the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in these agencies.

In the ensuing dustup, who attacked Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and the others? Not MB front groups like NAIT, ISNA and CAIR; not the democratic opposition, it was John McCain and John Boehner! The facts are 100% on Bachmann’s side and the GOP leaders have a professional duty (due to their oaths) to be able to identify all Enemies, foreign and domestic. That they did NOT is at a minimum professional malpractice.

The Enemy is winning their IO campaign.

We are not only NOT winning in the information battle-space, we are not engaged in that space because we do not understand it is the enemy’s self-identified Focus of Main Effort.

But it gets worse.

Regarding the so called “Arab Spring,” in a September 2010 speech in Cairo, Egypt the newly elected Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi, called for Jihad against America. This was the last in a series of open source Indications and Warnings (I&W) monitored over the previous year by a small cell of national security experts which led them to issue an October 2010 warning to the U.S. Joint Staff of an impending takedown of the Egyptian government.

So while a small cell of national security experts can determine, exclusively from open source material, that the Muslim Brotherhood is up to no good domestically and in Egypt, and accurately predict future enemy courses of action, MB influence dupes the Obama administration into mistaking a jihadi insurgency as the “Arab Spring” and then gets the president himself to call for Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak (who, regardless of his flaws, is nonetheless a reliable U.S. Ally) to step down and hand over rule to the Muslim Brotherhood, in spite of their repeated public pronouncements and captured secret documents that show them to be an existential threat to America and Western Civilization.

The ensuing two years revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood regime which took power in Egypt in 2011, with considerable political influence and billions of dollars of assistance from America, proved to be true to their word of creating a totalitarian Shariah state. In the summer of 2013 the world witnessed a popular revolution by the Egyptian military as tens of millions citizen supporters simultaneously took to the streets in protest to reclaim some semblance of liberty that was crushed by the MB.

Regarding Libya, WikiLeaks published an August 2009 classified communication from the U.S. State department that “Libya has acted as a critical ally in U.S. counterterrorism efforts, and Libya is considered one of our primary partners in combating the flow of foreign fighters” (i.e.: into Iraq to fight Americans).

Yet in 2011, NATO partnered on no less than three of the key fronts in the Libyan war with rebel commanders who had previously collaborated with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and/or Iraq to fight Americans: al-Hasadi on the Eastern Front, Belhadj in Tripoli, and bin Hamid during the siege of Sirte.

They all have heavily reported involvement with al Qaeda going back over a decade. Reports even placed Belhadj at Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden in late 2001, as American and allied special forces closed in, where at least one account had the LIFG commander withdrawing with his troops to Pakistan to avoid a hopeless military situation.

As long ago as November 2007 the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) announced their incorporation into al Qaeda while a contemporary recorded message from Ayman al-Zawahiri described Qaddafi as an “enemy of Islam.” More precisely, al-Zawahiri refers to the confrontation with “the enemies of Islam, al-Qaddafi and his masters the Crusaders of Washington.”

The official fusion of LIFG and al-Qaeda appears at least in part to have been motivated by Qaddafi’s counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States.

Yet America double crossed an ally in the Global War On Terror (GWOT) and backed al Qaeda to give the jihadis the wealth of an OPEC nation and the weapons that go with it, which they have exported throughout the region, especially to ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

The International Communist Threat

The Islamic threat notwithstanding, the United States faces two powerful opponents: Russia and China. Few politicians are willing to admit that Russia and China are working against the security interests of the United States. Few politicians are willing to admit that the only reason why Iran and North Korea are emerging nuclear threats to the United States is because Russia and China want them to be. Other countries, as well, are part of the Russian-Chinese alliance, including Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, and others.

The old Communist Bloc still exists, and is growing, especially in the Third World. Meanwhile, Communist influence in Europe is spreading through KGB-businesses, Russian organized crime, and agents of influence. Though former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact states they have gained entry into NATO, the governments and economies of these countries are largely in the hands of Moscow’s agents. A deception has been promulgated, and the United States has been taken for a ride.

There is a substantial body of corroborating defector testimonies, purloined copies of archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, and Indications & Warnings (I&W), going back over fifty years, that support the observation that the Soviet Union didn’t so much collapse as it was reorganized by the Soviet and communist bloc intelligence services as part of a strategic deception in response to the economic and military pressures from America during the Reagan administration.

Sure, America economically collapsed the Soviet empire through our aggressive application of economic and technological superiority, but we never secured any peace, we just thought we did. Remember how in 1991 the KGB was supposed to be completely abolished? Taking a cue from Madison Avenue it was just renamed to FSB because KGB became a bad brand and the Evil Empire had to respond to changing market conditions.

Just like the Muslim Brotherhood knows that they will win this war in the Information Space, not the battlefield, the Russians have had this as an operational strategy for over half a century and their own defectors and doctrine have laid this out.

Retired KGB Colonel Victor Kalashnikov characterizes America’s great capacity for self-delusion when he said “The Cold War didn’t end, we just changed our vocabulary and you believed us.” There was no “trust but verify.” How stupid are we?

In 1992 Richard Nixon wrote in Seize the Moment. America’s Challenge in a One Superpower World

“Thirty-two years ago in Moscow, Khrushchev arrogantly predicted to me, ‘Your grandchildren will live under communism.’ I responded, ‘Your grandchildren will live in freedom.’ At the time, I was sure he was wrong, but I was not sure I was right. As a result of the new Soviet revolution, I proved to be right. Krushchev’s grandchildren now live in freedom.”

Nixon mistook the collapse of the Soviet Union for what it really was, an orchestrated reorganization as part of strategic deception to put their superior American adversary at ease so as to stop our offensive actions.

This topic is especially relevant given the unfortunate START approval by the U.S. Senate which will ensure that evil regimes like Russia and China have a considerable advantage over America. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become strategic distractions from the existential threats of Russia and China, who are preparing for an inevitable military conflict with America. The objective of such a conflict is to leave the U.S. zero strategic capability; forever neutered on the world stage. Yet our leadership has a near complete lack of strategic comprehension of these threats.

During the Cold War in many ways the least of our problems were Soviet ICBMs and tanks rushing through the Fulda Gap. At least they were something we could identify, quantify and counter. Meanwhile we left ourselves completely exposed to panoply of asymmetric weapons, ideological subversion chief amongst them. America doesn’t do a good job of dealing with asymmetric threats. Not because we are incapable of it. We excel at it when we put our minds to it; but because we deliberately do not address the topic in our doctrines.

Alfred Smith, Democratic party presidential candidate of 1928, gave a famous 1936 speech where he closed with “Now, in conclusion let me give this solemn warning. There can be only one Capitol, Washington or Moscow!” He said this speaking what the mainstream media of the time dare not speak; that Franklyn Roosevelt’s administration had been completely co-opted by Soviet agents and useful idiots.

Little did Smith know that decades later Venona radio intercepts would show that there were indeed over 300 Soviet agents in highly placed positions in the FDR administration.

I mentioned that in contemporary presidential elections the Communist Party USA no longer fields a candidate but rather backs the Democratic Party’s candidates because of the convergence of the principles of these two parties. Soviet intelligence created the Communist Party USA in 1919 and have controlled and funded it continuously to this day.

As Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky points out in Judgment In Moscow, America (and other Western governments) show no interest in addressing the fact that a hostile foreign intelligence service has been interfering in domestic American politics for almost a century.

It is bad enough that we are not going to prosecute the respective national Communist Parties of the West for treasonously collaborating with Moscow to overthrow their respective governments (and Bukovsky smuggled out 700,000 pages of highly sensitive Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU) documents which prove this).

But why do the Western governments (especially America) not at least direct their respective taxing authorities to go after the hundreds of millions sent by Moscow to local Communist Parties to carry out their treasonous activities, as Bukovsky writes:

It is not hard to calculate that only from 1969, and only in this particular form of “international solidarity”, the French CP, for example, received no less than $44 million, the Communist Party of the USA – some $35 million, and the Italians got even more.  All in all, beginning with 1969, Moscow gifted its brothers something to the tune of $400 million, and that does not include other forms of financing. These are substantial sums. So how is it that they are of no interest to Western taxation, fiscal and banking bodies?

The Soviet regime that came to power in 1917 (and murdered tens of millions of their own people) has retained uninterrupted power to this day. There was never any Nuremberg Trial for the guilty; rather the perpetrators retained power, took in billions in U.S. Nunn-Lugar money, and have built up unprecedented strategic military capabilities at a time when America has been unilaterally disarming our strategic forces.

America’s growing military disparities with the oligarchs in Russia and China are occurring at a time when America is bankrupt and hence at a great disadvantage to respond, even if we wanted to.

In examining the capability inherent in this growing disparity, even worse is the possibility of ill-intent.

America decommissioned the last of our Peacekeeper ICBMS, our most advanced, in September 2007. Our front line now consists of nearly 50 year old Minute Man III’s; at a time when the Russians will have modernized 80% of their ICBM fleet by 2016.

Meanwhile the Soviets, for over a decade, have been rolling out Topol-M technology ICBMs (SS-27 & RS-24) in silo, road mobile, and soon to be perfected RSM-56 Bulava maritime versions. Let’s be clear that the Bulava is not a retaliation weapon. It is designed as a first-strike weapon, with low trajectory flight, third-stage maneuverability and ABM counter-measures. Why does Russia need first-strike weapons? These are the most advanced ICBMs every fielded by any nation. They carry miniaturized, high-yield, nuclear warheads designed with the assistance of American supercomputers illegally misappropriated to the Soviet Ministry of Atomic Energy in the mid-1990’s.

Russia has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, with 8,400 warheads compared with a US total of 7,500.

As of February 2015 the number of Russians who believe their country and the US are now mutual enemies has increased TENFOLD in a year to 42 per cent, according to an opinion poll. The total professing a negative attitude to the US has almost doubled.

Since our aid to Russia is fungible, we paid for these weapons, and they’re targeting us. Meanwhile America has not tested a nuclear warhead since 1992 and we have failed to fund the Reliable Replacement Warhead program for over a decade.

There were indications and warnings going back decades that a Soviet strategic deception was in the works. In the 1960’s Pete Bagley, at the time head of Soviet counter-intelligence for the CIA, and James Angleton, head of all CI, lost out to “the brightest guys in the world” who would prefer to listen to Soviet agent provocateurs [like Nosenko]. Today, the same mind-set people (who today think socialism is a good idea) occupy the halls of power in CIA and State.

These people lack the discernment to reject American politicians whose Marxist principles conflict with American principles. Why should we then expect them to have discernment to recognize Soviet disinformation?

Our intelligence elites readily admitted that they “missed” the “collapse” of the Soviet Union coming. That’s not all they missed.

For 50 years Soviet and eastern bloc defectors like Jan Sejna, Anatoliy Golitsyn, Ion Pacepa, Viktor Suvorov, Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Tretyakov, Konstantin Preobrazhensky, Alexander Kouzminov [Biological Espionage], Vasili Mitrokhin [Sword & the Shield, The World Was Going Our Way], and a host of others have warned about such Soviet machinations. Cadres of US Soviet analysts and policy makers are either ignorant of, or have ignored their analysis and warnings.

They never had a clue as to what went down in Russia in 1991 and they are equally clueless to the direction Russia is going in now; yet they are the ones making US policy and in whom we entrust out national security.

If you think this is a harsh characterization, the cluelessness of America’s intelligence elite was highlighted by Mark Riebling of the Manhattan Institute in his 1994 book, Wedge (pp 409-410):

CIA’s top leadership acknowledged that it had fallen short in predicting Gorbachev’s reforms, but could provide no real excuse. “Who would have thought that just five years ago we would stand where we are today?” Robert Gates told Congress in late 1991. “Talk about humbling experiences.” Gates could have said: Our reporting was poor because our Moscow network was rolled up, coincidentally or not, precisely as Gorbachev was coming into power. Gates did not say this, however. Instead, he suggested that “We’re here to help you think through the problem rather than give you some kind of crystal ball prediction.” This anti-prediction line was echoed by the Agency’s deputy director, Robert Kerr, who told Congress: “Our business is to provide enough understanding of the issue … to say here are some possible outcomes … And I think that’s the role of intelligence, not to predict outcomes in clear, neat ways. Because that’s not doable.”

Yet someone had predicted glasnost and perestroika [and that it would be a strategic deception – MJD], in detail, even before Gorbachev came to power. This person’s analysis of events in the communist world had even been provided to the Agency on a regular basis. But the American intelligence community had chosen not to listen – and the roots of that willful deafness could be traced back, ultimately, thirty years [this was written in 1994; we’re talking 1961 when Golitsyn defected and the mid-60’s when Bagley was fighting his battles – MJD], to a series of developments that caused a clash of mind-sets between CIA and FBI [documented in Pete Bagley’s 2007 book Spy Wars – MJD].

In 1982, KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn had submitted a top-secret manuscript to CIA. In it, he foresaw that leadership of the USSR would by 1986 “or earlier” fall to “a younger man with a more liberal image,” who would initiate “changes that would have been beyond the imagination of Marx or the practical reach of Lenin and unthinkable to Stalin.” The coming liberalization, Golitsyn said, “would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the Communist Party’s role; its monopoly would be apparently curtailed … The KGB would be reformed. Dissidents at home would be amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to take up positions in the government. Sakharov might be included in some capacity in the government … Political clubs would be opened to nonmembers of the Communist Party. Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political parties. Censorship would be relaxed.

Golitsyn provided an entire chapter of such predictions … of Golitsyn’s falsifiable predictions [as of 1994 when Riebling wrote this – MJD], 139 out of 148 were fulfilled by the end of 1993 – an accuracy rate of nearly 94 percent. Among events correctly foreseen: “the return of Dubcek and his associates” in Czechoslovakia; the “reemergence of Solidarity” and the formation of a ”coalition government” in Poland; a newly “independent” regime in Romania; “economic reforms” in the USSR; and a Soviet repudiation of the Afghanistan invasion. Golitsyn even envisioned that, with the” easing of immigration controls” by East Germany, “pressure could well grow for the solution of the German problem [by] some form of confederation between East and West” – with the result that “demolition of the Berlin Wall might even be contemplated.”

I have over 100 books in my personal library to corroborate this contention of strategic deception; so it’s not like the information surrounding the contention is not in open source.

The bottom line is the elites calling our policy shots have consistently gotten it wrong, and the handful of those that got it right have been consistently disenfranchised. This disparity needs to be exposed.

The Soviets have perpetrated a successful strategic deception that has gone unaddressed to this day by our elites.

The Islamists have also perpetrated a successful strategic deception that has gone unaddressed to this day by our elites. There is but a small group that has correctly identified the Islamist Threat. Getting our elites to admit to the Islamist threat is part of a larger problem in getting them to correctly identify all threats.

The Soviet Threat is strategic and an existential threat to America, whereas the Islamic Threat, while significant, is a tactical threat by comparison.

Consider too that the Soviets were at the heart of international terrorism for over 50 years. There is a tremendous amount of evidence to support this contention and no evidence that they dismantled their global terrorist connections. Soviet leadership in using terrorism as an asymmetric weapon was one of the hallmarks of the “Evil Empire” held up by the Reagan administration.

As Lenin wrote “We have never rejected terror on principle, nor can we do so. Terror is a form of military operation that may be usefully applied.”

Regarding China, a few years ago a Wall Street Journal article proposed “China, for example, has little incentive to disrupt the U.S. economy because it relies on American consumers and holds U.S. government debt.”

Such a conclusion is counter factual to the past behavior of Chinese and Russian leaders. Hoping or assuming that the present leaders of China and Russia share our principles of western civilization does not make it so. “Hope” is not a national security strategy; yet we have assumed it as such.

Over the last 25 years our leaders, in both parties, have significantly de-industrialized America to the point that both our military and civilian sectors are disastrously dependent upon unreliable, if not hostile, foreign regimes for critical capabilities. Furthermore, we have permitted a massive exodus of dual-use technology to hostile foreign regimes. Finally, we have led initiatives so that world economic structures have shifted so hostile foreign regimes hold massive capital reserves while we have relegated ourselves to third-world debtor status reliant upon a consumer and service economy.

If you take the Chinese military at their own words in books like “Unrestricted Warfare” by Colonels Liang and Xiangsui, China is preparing for an inevitable war with America. Contemporary Russian defectors and I&W offer the same ill warning of Russia. “Mutual economic need” is a meaningless concept to the Chinese. China uses economics as an asymmetric weapon; gaining technology and hard currency while America de-industrializes and goes into debt.

China’s goal is not economic success but to put their adversary (that would be America) at a disadvantage; a decidedly non-capitalistic exploitation of capitalism.

We are an adversary’s dream. America’s leaders (from both parties) suffer from a significant (if not complete) lack of strategic comprehension to the threats we face. We are deluded to think that as a consumer economy we have some value to China and that it provides America protection.

“For ultimate victory,” Mao offered in a letter to Khrushchev, “for the total eradication of the imperialists [America], we [i.e., the Chinese people, who had not been consulted] are willing to endure the first [U.S. nuclear] strike. All it is is a big pile of people dying [but not Mao, who would be in a bunker].”

The west is unable to comprehend such callus evil. Many mistakenly conclude that Mao could not have been so homicidal, and surely the present leadership in Russia and China are not. Such a conclusion is dangerously false. The entre concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) is that the adversaries are equivalent actors. That was never the case. America is good, the Communists are evil. America freed Western Europe and East Asia, the Communist ruthlessly enslaved Eastern Europe and the bulk of Asia. I don’t recall seeing Jintao or Putin making any alter call of repentance.

Just because Hu Jintao or Vladimir Putin put on expensive suits does not mean they adopt principles of western civilization. The totalitarian oligarchs running China and Russian have maintained uninterrupted control since their respective 1949 and 1917 revolutions, in spite of any pretenses of democracy or economic liberty.

Together, they murdered over ONE HUNDRED MILLION of their own citizens and would do so again, without remorse, if it served their purposes. If there was some Nuremberg Trial that held Russia and China accountable for these 100,000,000 deaths, I sure missed it. Yet we do business with these regimes.

America would be better served taking in the John Gotti’s of the world as our security and business partners. It would be less dangerous.

We should all be disturbed that Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (“Carlos the Jackal”) wrote in his book, L’islam revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Islam) that “only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States.”

Robert Bukar aptly summarized the convergence of these threats: “Yuri Andropov once explained to Romanian Intelligence chief Ion Pacepa, the Muslim world was a Petri dish in which the Russians might “nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought.” KGB General Alexander Sakharovsky once said to Pacepa:

“In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.” Americans and Europeans no longer remember the past and don’t realize that history is now repeating itself. No effective counter-strategy is likely to emerge from Washington because a regime predicated on economic optimism cannot accept the negative implications of ongoing Russian enmity. People will simply believe what they wish to believe. More people indulge their own ideas of the world rather than deal with its realities.“

Conclusions

The American political philosophy is the pinnacle of man’s experiments with liberty. The American citizens that philosophy produced are capable of addressing any adversary or challenge. We’re Americans. We know this to be true.

But sadly, and I say this without any hyperbole and as somebody in command of the facts, we have let our American heritage almost completely slip away and are on the verge of becoming a failed state.

America is presently living in the equivalent of Poland in August of 1939, yet does not realize it.

We may not be able to reverse this path. All of the efforts I see are too little, too late.

And we cannot expect our present political elites of either party to correct this. It was their corruption, vanity and lassitude that brought us here.

And God forbid America ends up in a failed state. Who will manage the post-failure consequences in order to minimize what could be horrific loss of life and liberty. Who will attempt to reconstitute America? Not those same political elite who caused and presided over the failure!

Recently the Egyptians found themselves imposed with a US-backed Muslim Brotherhood tyranny. In the summer of 2013 over thirty million of them simultaneously took to the streets in protest. That’s ONE THIRD OF THEIR POPULATION!

Can America hope to see that kind of solidarity?

I submit that unless the remnant of Americans who still believe in our founding principles educate and organize, and I mean in a hurry, this Republic is doomed.

Unless an organized remnant can replace our vapid and complicit political leadership with men and women of principle and action, our Republic is doomed.

But we must try. And while we are struggling, we must simultaneously prepare ourselves, at the individual, household, and community level, to manage the post-failure consequences which will result from the inevitable collapse of our Republic. It would be imprudent and immoral to do otherwise.