Alternative War: Unabridged

by J. J. Patrick

  Despite the White House downplaying the discussion and Israel’s rather erudite reply, in yet another bold as brass statement, Putin stepped in and announced via Kremlin aides he was: “Prepared to provide a transcript, not audio recording, of the Trump and Lavrov meeting.”

  Giving context on the significance of a specific leak of classified information, John Sipher who served in the CIA for almost thirty years, including a Moscow posting in the 1990s, later running the agency’s Russia program, commented236: “The Russians have the widest intelligence collection mechanism in the world outside of our own.”

  “They can put together a good picture with just a few details. They can marry President Trump’s comments with their own intelligence, and intelligence from their allies. They can also deploy additional resources to find out details,” he added.

  While all of this was spilling out, it also became public President Trump had asked the F.B.I. director James Comey to shut down the federal investigation into his own administration’s Russia links – initially focused on disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn – before deciding to dismiss the leading law enforcement official. “I hope you can let this go,” the president told Comey, according to a memo shared with close senior colleagues, one of whom read parts of it to a New York Times reporter237. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, he is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,” Trump is alleged to have continued.

  Michael Flynn was dismissed after he privately discussed US sanctions against Russia with the country’s ambassador to the United States, Kislyak, during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public denials by Trump officials. In a statement, the White House denied the Comey memo’s version of events, though they were already under the shadow of allegations of repeated untruths and Trump had also intimated, in tweets, he may have recorded Comey and any such tapes may be leaked. In response, on the 16th of May 2017, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded the FBI turn over all memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings pertaining to Trump and Comey238. Such documents, he wrote: “Raise questions as to whether the President attempted to influence or impede [the FBI].”

  Flynn’s communications with Kislyak were interpreted by some senior US officials as an inappropriate – and potentially illegal – signal to the Kremlin on sanctions issues and the significant investigation was triggered with Comey at the helm. Sally Yates, former Acting Attorney General dismissed by Trump over his immigration measures, also told the Trump administration Flynn was compromised. She later told an inquiry hearing she was ignored and the Trump Administration team had misled the American public over the truth.

  Yates pulled no punches, informing a Senate committee about illegal conduct and stood by her evidence afterwards, telling reporters239: “We had just gone and told them [the White House] that the national security adviser, of all people, was compromised with the Russians and that their vice-president and others had been lying to the American people about it.”

  In March 2017 it was also reported Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the long-time friend of Farage along with Bannon, had spoken twice to Ambassador Kislyak, once in July 2016 and once in September 2016240. At the time, Sessions was still a US senator sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee. During Sessions' Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in January, he was questioned under oath about “possible contacts between members of President Trump's campaign and representatives of Moscow” and expressed he had no knowledge of any such contact. The New York Times had also reported that Kislyak met with Michael Flynn and another Trump team member, Jared Kushner, in December 2016 to “establish a line of communication” with the Trump administration241. This was in addition to the significant number of officials within, or close to, the Trump administration who, I had discovered, were connected with Russia in a vast number of direct and indirect ways.

  Even without spies in the White House Trump was, by then, leaking like a sieve and his next effort ended up leading me straight back to the cyberattack, in a way. Via submarines.

  In a show of force aimed at North Korea in the wake of their continued missile tests, Trump sent the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier to the area, where it joined the advanced submarine the USS Michigan in waters off the Korean peninsula. On the 24th of May 2017, Reuters reported242 that US President Donald Trump told his Philippine counterpart about Washington's deployment of two nuclear submarines to waters off the Korean coast. According to the official transcript made during the call between Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte, and Trump, the US President said the US Navy had “a lot of firepower over there...We have two submarines — the best in the world. We have two nuclear submarines, not that we want to use them at all.”

  As I know a few useful people, I contacted an experienced naval source with a history of extensive service on submarine operations who provided me with a grim – but colourful – explanation of the risks Trump exposed military personnel and naval operations to.

  After having them read the public stories, then Trump’s leaks, I asked my source for their initial reaction to Trump’s intentions and the former high-ranking naval officer told me: “It's difficult to tell, with a character like Trump, but I don't recall Obama doing this. One thing about Trump is that it is totally possible he's telling the truth or is so stupid that he actually made a blunder.”

  “Personally,” they added, “I think he's done it on purpose. A carrier group always has a minimum of one boat with it, but nuclear boats are top-top secret. This includes stationing and deployment.”

  What I couldn’t understand, without specific detail, was if the Trump leak really significant and if it could give anything away. My source was clear on this, telling me: “As I said, a submarine deployment with a carrier group is normal, even two boats on station is (possibly) normal – though this would be for continuity and sheer firepower.”

  “If TLAM [TLAM is the acronym for the Tomahawk missile system] strikes are planned, it would make sense to be ready to saturate your objective with Hi-Ex cruise missiles rather than risk a miss,” they continued. “Think continuity. What Trump is not saying is that there are probably two more boats hanging around, waiting to deliver more TLAM payloads when required.”

  Perhaps all Trump was doing was letting North Korea he had serious firepower which could be deployed against them, but I found it curious. If submarine deployments are so secret, I couldn’t quite grasp why the world was allowed to see the USS Michigan docked in Seoul.

  “Power projection,” the source told me. “We did it all the time: look at my nuclear submarine, it's fucking awesome! A boat is a serious asset.” Though they then dipped questions about the Michigan's nuclear capabilities, my source did add that it “carries some mega stealth and comms intercept kit.”

  Still curious, I pressed them on whether a leak as generic as Trump's could assist an enemy.

  “Yes and no,” they told me. “Yes because they could shape their maritime tactics.” I thought this was simply about restricting a dragnet search area, but the source told me it was that and more. “Your comms are no longer safe, local GSM networks are capable of being tapped. Emails may – or may not – be intercepted. You get the picture.” Effectively, submarines are a naval boat doubling as a spy, they explained.

  The response options for an enemy are almost limitless, they continued. “You could go for a full deployment of ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare]) tactics, or no deployment at all. Deny the US any opportunity to run rings around your own maritime forces.”

  “Sometimes denial is better,” they said. “It's not just bluffing, you actually don't sail from port, leaving all your mega-assets safely at home and blockading the waters around it, to stop the US or someone else snooping around your latest kit.” I supposed the question then became what tactics could these US boats Trump exposed find themselves facing. “US boats are seriously good, so you'd throw the
kitchen sink at it,” my source told me. Specifically, I asked them what a likely Russian response would be and the reply was blunt. “I can't speak for those sneaky bastards, but the best way to catch a submarine is with another submarine, so deploy your boats, with your surface and air forces, and dragnet.”

  The objective of such an action surprised me too.

  “If it's boat to boat, you're trying to get a firing solution on your opponent ASAP, constantly trying to turn inside each other to get the best angle. But there is no chance you would fire.” The end game was very different than that I'd anticipated. “All you are doing is forcing your opponent to surface, where you can embarrass the fucker or make them withdraw,” the source said.

  “The enemy is trying to get a firing solution on your highest value asset, which is?” they turned the conversation and asked me. I guessed at nuclear warheads but was wrong. “Two massive nuclear reactors. It causes massive political and military ridicule. Point scoring.”

  Following the worldwide cyberattack, which targeted Windows, a number of articles had been reporting Trident submarines run the vulnerable version of the operating system. For me this raised questions as to whether they could be infected by the Wannacry Ransomware, or worse – though it’s a grim thought, if Russia can hack to turn the power off, they can surely switch other things on. The one silver lining came from my source who, though they clearly would not divulge operating system specifics, told me a submarine could be switched over to manual after shutting the systems down.

  None of it made me feel better. As well as having spies in the White House, Trump was telling people where to dragnet his submarines and potentially hijack their systems. I wasn’t faced with much of a choice, as far as I could see, so I took everything I had gathered and turned it into a seventy-page statement of evidence which I sent to the UK and EU parliaments, STRATCOM, NATO, and the FBI via their London field office. For good measure, I made the full statement public via Byline. I was hoping, I suppose, somebody, somewhere, would act.

  Eighteen:

  After reading back through the evidence I had submitted to the authorities243, I realised just how important my lengthy discussion244 with Steve Komarnyckyj – a PEN award-winning poet and writer for Ukraine’s Euromaidan – had been. Komarnyckyj had worked on the Index On Censorship for two years when we started talking through Byline and he had been focusing on the methodology of Russian-led hybrid conflicts, including the deployment of non-state actors and Russia's use of multiple narratives. His personal background was just as fascinating as his work.

  “I am a literary translator of mixed Ukrainian and English parentage and grew up in Yorkshire,” he told me, by way of introduction. “My partner Susie conceived Kalyna Language Press in part as a means of conveying translated Ukrainian literature to an English audience. However, we want to develop the press so that it publishes translations from other languages and English language fiction and poetry,” he explained proudly.

  Komarnyckyj began to study Russian activity some time ago, which is perhaps unsurprising given his heritage, but his work led him to look beyond the contentious borders of Ukraine. “I became interested in how Russian soft power can shape the world views of other nations. Ultimately it can be deployed as a weapon of war turning populations against their own states,” he said.

  This is how Komarnyckyj and I came to make each other’s acquaintance – after I’d been busily exploring the mess which links Russia to the far-right across Europe, and to the White House, I was able to broaden the scope of my investigation and found the wealth of evidence (from Capstone to Kremlin Watch) of the live hybrid conflict between Russia and the West.

  Komarnyckyj stumbled across the subject in much the same way, he told me.

  “When I read about Ukraine in English sources I realised that Russia was putting words into the mouths of English writers and academics. Subsequently, I would meet people who on learning I was Ukrainian would say that Ukrainians were all Fascists etc. It was like talking to dozens of glove puppets operated by Stalin,” he said, adding: “Much Western academic discourse and journalism remains polluted by Russian soft power,” which confirmed much of what I’d been able to discover on my own.

  I wanted to get deeper into Komarnyckyj’s unusual background, mainly to find out how a poet ends up with significant experience of a hybrid conflict, so I asked him.

  “I am a hybrid myself,” he said. “A half-Ukrainian half-English man steeped in both cultures who enjoys Borshch and a bag of chips. However, the negativity towards Ukraine I encountered in England troubled me.”

  “I and many other Ukrainians fought against the stigmatisation of our culture for years. Russians regard Ukrainian culture as an aberration and believe that Ukrainians are simply self-deluding Russians. Britain I am afraid internalised this view of Ukraine. Worse still it accepted Russia’s myth of cultural superiority.” This made sense, in many ways, especially when set against the background of the collusion between the far-right right and Putin’s Russia. White cultural superiority can be clearly seen in the narratives across the changed face of the West, and it is brutally ugly.

  “This notion of Russian cultural superiority is indeed as fatuous as a beer advert,” Komarnyckyj added. “Yet it continues to hold sway in Britain. The notion that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were authors who in some mysterious essentially Russian way reached the parts other writers could not reach. I challenge such views by translating Ukrainian poetry and have won two awards from English PEN along with my publisher Kalyna Language Press. I also lobbied for recognition of the Holodomor the genocide famine inflicted on Ukraine in the thirties.”

  The Holodomor was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine which happened between 1932 and 1933 and killed an estimated seven million to ten million people. The inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority being ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime, yet the tragedy was only officially recognised in 2006 – by Ukraine along with fifteen other countries – who declared it a genocide carried out by the Soviet government.

  More recently, Komarnyckyj told me, he had started to work with voluntary organisations, such as Euromaidan Press, human rights groups and Ukrainian authors to change perceptions of Ukraine in England. “I have not participated directly in the conflict and would like to express my respect for those Ukrainians fighting and dying right now for Europe’s freedom,” he added.

  We turned more directly to the area I’d been investigating, hybrid conflicts. What I had come to call the Alternative War.

  “A hybrid conflict is one in which multiple means including military and soft power are used to gain ascendancy over an opponent,” Komarnyckyj explained. “The aim is to transform the enemy state into a psychological/political vassal.”

  “As Vitalii and Dmytro Usenko note, Russians have a much wider of warfare than their western counterparts. They cite the “Social Security Concept” of the all-Russian political party “Truth and Unity Course.” This document identifies six priorities for warfare. Many of these would not strike many of us as being means of waging war. They include changing the worldview of the enemy and manipulating history. Russia has also studied Western doctrines laying out how a hybrid war can reach a population beyond the front line.” Broadly, Komarnyckyj was not only validating my own findings but adding the benefit of Orwellian language to explain, beyond RT, Breitbart, and Russia’s underground markets, the reason we’ve become so familiar with terms like Fake News.

  “It’s important to realise that Russia is adopting hybrid war to the service of a mentality which believes in its intrinsic superiority,” Komarnyckyj continued. “The USSR as the Usenkos note aimed to create a planet-wide union ruled from Moscow. It shared with both the Tsars and the current regime an aspiration to subdue the world.” I couldn’t help but wonder if this argument was a little too fantastic but, as I had heard others say it by then, it was no real stretch of the imagination. Besides, Komarnyckyj set it out rather neatly. “Many will argue that such views
of Putin are hyperbolic. As I watch politics in the UK and US implode under Russia’s destabilisation effort I can only wonder why. Putin controls the President of the United States. What will it take for the west to wake up and realise the danger we are all in?”

  According to Komarnyckyj, the priorities of a hybrid war can only be realised by “using non-military means and the humanitarian sphere.” He explained a framework he laid out in 2014, which describes some of the mechanisms used to pursue a hybrid war. “1. Agents of influence including politicians, businessmen, corporations with a stake in Russia’s localisation program, energy sector etc.; 2. Networks of journalists who may be sectarian Communists or social conservatives; 3. Sectarian left wing sites (such as Counterpunch and Global Research) which exploit a linguistic disconnect to create a sanitised Russia and a conversely stigmatised Ukraine; 4. Political proxies (such as Stop the War and numerous politicians); 5. PR Agencies and consultancies; 6. The Troll army of paid internet commentators, all working to a script.” He ticked the well-rehearsed elements off without hesitation and, though we both agreed on adding the huge “bot army” on social media to this list, Komarnyckyj’s list also mirrored everything I’d read in the NATO, EU and US Intelligence assessments.

  “I would also re-introduce the term Deniable Asset,” Komarnyckyj added, “which refers to a tool used to pursue Russia’s aims but with no formal link to its military. Western politicians loaned billions to parrot Putin’s words. Journalists who trouser cash from Russia Today and praise Putin etc.” Again, I found his work mirroring my own, with Wikileaks and some far-right politicians such as Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage being prime examples.

  Darkly, Komarnyckyj also raised the issue I’d long held a personal suspicion over – which had become even more poignant in the light of ongoing terror attacks and the surrounding narratives from Putin-linked figures such as Trump.