Articles by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz
Out of Afghanistan?
To defeat the Islamists in Afghanistan, we should learn how to divide and rule. We must pursue a number of policies that may seem contradictory. First, we should strengthen the royalists, the republicans, and the nationalists not just at the … Continue reading
All the Bad Options with North Korea
We should further step up our propaganda war via radio and social media against North Korea and its Chinese master. We should assist with an underground railroad to free North Korean slaves everywhere. Embolden the non-violent freedom fighter. And we … Continue reading
Belarus: Whose Provocation?
There will be no Maidan in Minsk. Hence, no need for regime change. There was further a self-serving message to the West: do not support the opposition to try to kick out “the last dictator of Europe” or else there … Continue reading
Eurocrats: Transparency vs. the Monet Method
Isn’t this obvious to everyone, including the Poles? One is afraid, however, that the refusal to recognize the reality of the European Union meted out to Poland its stinging slap on the face. Donald Tusk has been elected because his … Continue reading
EU Institutions vs. Democracy
The Eurocrats no longer pretend that democratic legitimacy is necessary. It is enough that the club outvotes the people, who remain disenfranchised on the sidelines. In this manner, the Tusk affair sheds perfect light on the inner machinations of the … Continue reading
Brexit Happened for a Reason: EU Members Like Poland Ought to Reassess
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło wrote a curiously desperate letter of last resort to the European Union to prevent the re-election of her Eurocrat predecessor, Donald Tusk. She appealed to democracy and national sovereignty. This must have sounded like a … Continue reading
Outfits and Trends of Russia’s Cyber StratCom
It would be misleading to posit that Russia’s propaganda works the same way that strategic messaging in democratic countries does or that the Kremlin’s strategic aim is to influence the public abroad directly. It may not always sway the masses, … Continue reading
Russia’s Deception and Denial Machine
The main narrative of post-Communism is that the Russian Federation is unique and, therefore, its system is neither of the West nor of the East. Instead, it is sui generis: a “sovereign democracy,” which in reality is a cover for … Continue reading
Moscow’s Synchronized Themes and Techniques
Learning Russia’s strategic communications themes and techniques is indispensable to countering them. Otherwise, our approach to the Kremlin’s narrative will continue to be one of confusion and surprise Continue reading
Turkey’s Presidential Putsch
One cannot help but think that the countermeasures were prepared well in advance. Either Erdoğan was prepared for the coup with extensive proscription lists or he staged a provocation himself so he could proceed with a presidential putsch. The government countermeasures appear too seamless, too well-thought out, and too professional. One way or another, the Turkish avatar of the Muslim Brotherhood is firmly in power. No wonder that Erdoğan referred to the military coup as “Allah-sent.” Perhaps he even helped Allah himself. Continue reading
The NATO Summit and Obama’s Much Ado Over a Polish Court
It is too bad President Obama apparently skipped his constitutional law classes while at Harvard. Firm grounding in the American constitutional tradition would help him understand the complexities of Poland’s struggle against the poisonous legacy of totalitarianism in its court system. Continue reading
Rule Britannia, and Now What?
Will the spirit of decentralization descend onto central and eastern Europe? That probably won’t happen right away because the denizens of the post-Soviet zone are too scared of the Russians to leave the imaginary security blanket of the EU behind. They keep forgetting that it is not the EU, but NATO that defends them. And there is no NATO without American leadership. Continue reading
Lone Omar and the FBI in Orlando
The American Civil Liberties Union immediately blamed “Christianity” for this horrific murder. Why? It is because Christianity rejects homosexual relations as sinful. Thus, it is allegedly responsible for the massacre in Orlando. ACLU forgot that Judaism is even more stringent on the matter than Christianity. This is as foul an accusation as the disgusting voices (from a preacher in Sacramento, California, to a youth activist in Kazan, the Russian Federation) who rejoice in the slayings of “the sodomites.” The latter are in congruence with the choir in the world of Islam that the gays had it coming. As for the perpetrator, therefore, Omar Mateen is a pure shaheed (martyr) of Allah. Continue reading
Counterintelligence as Strategic Communications
One may just as well quip that the Kremlin’s strategic messaging boils down to the slogan: “We beat Hitler, we fly the Sputnik, and we excel at ballet.” Unless we re-learn the lessons hard learned and quickly forgotten after the Cold War, we shall be duped over and over again. Continue reading
Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters
Without the multicultural demographic and ideological context, the holy warriors of the Caliphate would stand out like proverbial sore thumbs in the Western world. Currently, they enjoy a perfect environment. They will not let up until Dar al Islam dominates the world. Or at least they will keep trying. The West should oppose that.
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Ushering in Poland’s Reagan Democrats
The leaders and followers of the populist conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) consider a symbolic litmus test of international relations the previous center-left government’s egregious manhandling of the Smolensk Polish presidential plane crash in April 2010. They reject the echo-chamber consent of Warsaw’s incumbent liberal regime for Moscow’s ukaze that no foul play was involved in the plane disaster that killed Poland’s president, Lech Kaczyński. They would like an international investigation. This seems to be non-negotiable because the deceased president’s twin brother Jarosław Kaczyński is the head of PiS. Continue reading
Cyber Statecraft: Developing a Strategy for Cybersecurity
Instead of waiting for the state to act, a bottom-up army of cyber warriors should be created. They should stand side-by-side with the marching National Guard and paramilitary organizations. If the government can’t protect us from cyber aggression by China, Russia, and others, including non-state agents – as evidenced most recently by the theft of over 20 million classified files by Beijing’s hackers – a U.S. cyber militia and a cyber tea party should rally to the rescue. Continue reading
The Rising Tide of Third World Refugees and the Plight of NATO’s Southeastern Flank
The Hungarians and others argue that for economic and cultural reasons they simply cannot accommodate the new comers. The Magyars refuse to succumb to the social engineering schemes of Brussels and prefer their country just the way it is. We should watch the European debate very carefully because it also concerns our own problems on America’s southern border. It is not Nazism to wish to protect the nation’s frontier and to uphold its cultural essence. Patriots defend their countries from all enemies: foreign and domestic. Continue reading
Moscow’s ‘Spetznatz Day’ is Everyday: Conspiracy, Assassination, and Disinformation
Nemtsov was shot right outside of the Kremlin, a very secure place. Further, he often complained about his FSB tail, a surveillance squad, which shadowed him. Why didn’t they jump to the rescue? Also, a snow plow inched slowly behind the strolling couple, obscuring security cameras.
Hungary Abroad
The Hungarian politician hopes that because Germany holds neither revisionist territorial designs nor any general historical animus against his nation, Hungary can serve as a useful and reliable geopolitical pawn for both Berlin and Moscow.
Hungary at Home
According to his admirers, Prime Minister Orban’s third achievement is to restore and rehabilitate Hungary’s past, including its pre-war and war-time leader, Regent Admiral Miklos Horthy. It was Horthy who rushed troops and armored vehicles to the streets…
Russia’s Gift, Turkey’s Move
Moscow’s Vladimir Putin has resolved to send his energy to the European Union via Turkey. Ankara’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accepted for his own geopolitical reasons and for the benefit of the neo-Ottomanist project, an attempt to re-create Turkic political, social, economic, and cultural dominion in its former imperial space, space some Western observers who have judged that the Islamic democracy has thus been merely assigned the inconsequential role of a transit area.
Ukraine: What’s Next?
The parliament in Kyiv has just signed a bill granting autonomy to Lukhansk and Donetsk regions in the southeast of Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated was his wish. To sweeten the deal the Ukrainian legislature also voted to associate its nation with the European Union. This suggests a return to the traditional policy of subservience to Russia and cooperation with the West, a fence-straddling posture pursued by Kyiv since independence nearly 25 years ago. Putin got what he wanted, while the West remains rudderless under the Obama administration.
The Ukrainian Crisis: Theory vs. History
John J. Mearsheimer’s geopolitical game theory tells him that the West has provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. Moscow behaves rationally, you see, and Washington should have understood that before it expanded NATO eastward and stepped on the Kremlin’s toes. It is logical and legitimate to defend one’s sphere of interest. Why provoke Moscow?
Putin’s Active Measures, Buchanan’s Grief
True enough the Moscovite leader has invoked God routinely. So did Stalin. In public the Georgian mass murderer played the God card whenever it suited him. Places of worship were forcibly closed. Most of them were destroyed. All religions were virtually banned and their followers were exterminated by the millions.
Ukraine: Operation Wave
During three long months of increasingly violent demonstrations in Ukraine some observers asked themselves a question about an allegedly imminent crack down. When? And how? One assumed that the government of Viktor Yanukovych, to maintain itself in power and to preserve its credibility, had to act.
Get David Satter: Who’s more of a threat to the Kremlin, the journalist or the terrorist?
David Satter (who happens to be an acquaintance of mine) has just been expelled from the Russian Federation. David is no stranger to the masters of the Kremlin. He has accumulated a long track record of annoying them. Having been threatened with deportation as early as 1979 for “hooliganism,” Satter left the Soviet Union three years later under a cloud in 1982.
Snowden Forever
This is not to cheer the defector but simply to point out that the phenomena undergirding the Edward Snowden case will continue to metastasize predictably, linger painfully, and haunt us into the foreseeable future. Yet, this awful affair affords us an opportunity to have a long, merciless look at the perpetrator, ourselves, and the damages wrought on the nation. Continue reading
The Czech Soap Opera
A combination of corruption and old fashioned post-KGB active measures ushered in a serious government crisis in the Czech Republic. Whether engineered by the post-Communists or brought about by rightist hubris, or both, the crisis continues to fester and may lead to early elections.
Boston Bombings: The Russian Question
It appears the Boston perpetrators, Tamerlan and his younger brother Johar (Dzhohar) Tsarnaev, were homegrown, Internet empowered jihadists. But Russia’s part in the deadly game remains murky.
Smart Power Iran
Iran plays smart. We do not – unless the objective is to stay engaged for engagement’s sake. That really worked neatly during the Cold War and we had the Soviets exactly where we wanted them: engaged. Thus, for most of the conflict we did not accomplish anything save for staying engaged. The fallacious assumption was that the impotent engagement saved us from a nuclear war, as if the Kremlin…
The Worst Enemy
We are the worst enemy of the West. Or, to put it a bit differently, the most serious adversary is born and bred within the gates of the West. Thus, the battle against mortal danger to our civilization ranges among the denizens of our cultural and political sphere and it must be won here before we can proceed to victory outside.
Trouble in Prague
Memory is the most precious weapon to transmit our traditions, which includes the heritage of liberty. Hence, individuals, communities, and nations cultivate memories of triumphs and calamities to derive lessons from the past for today to march boldly into the future.
The Moving Wall of China’s Red Dragon Empire
Beijing views India, Japan, and Russia as strategic rivals, where India must be checked by the geopolitical alignment of China with Pakistan and trade routes must be secured by the so-called “String of Pearls” for the acquisition of vital resources, … Continue reading
The Spread of “Red October:” A Kremlin counter-intelligence virus?
This just in from Kaspersky Lab: Over 300 computers in 39 countries, most notably Russia, were infected with a spy virus dubbed “Red October,” the month of its discovery last year.
Infiltrate, Network, Influence
Communist spies, willing collaborators, benevolent enablers, progressive dupes, lazy bureaucrats, and useful idiots abound in M. Stanton Evans and Herb Romerstein’s Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government. The authors are interested in “the oft-neglected link between pro-Communist infiltration of the federal government on the one hand and calamitous policy outcomes on the other.”
Mali crisis precipitated by civil war in Libya engenders U.S.-Africa strategy
Northwest Africa’s landlocked country of Mali has now replaced Somalia as the continent’s prime failed state.
The Kremlin’s Moves in Syria
As Syria is aflame torn by a civil war, Russia seeks several interrelated objectives there.
The Dangerous Truth about Communist Crimes
An apocryphal 16th century story has Polish diplomats meeting their Russian counterparts about yet another Muscovite invasion. The Poles try to reason with the Russians: “Look, you come every year and we defeat you invariably.
