{"id":1486648,"date":"2024-08-29T03:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1486648"},"modified":"2024-08-29T03:25:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T07:25:00","slug":"the-western-way-of-war-owning-the-narrative-trumps-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-western-way-of-war-owning-the-narrative-trumps-reality\/1486648\/","title":{"rendered":"The Western Way Of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Western Way Of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Alastair Crooke<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n

War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills. Nothing new. But what is new is that infowar is no longer\u00a0the adjunct\u00a0to wider war objectives \u2013 but has become\u00a0an end\u00a0in and of itself.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The West has come to view \u2018owning\u2019 the winning narrative \u2013 and presenting the Other\u2019s as clunky, dissonant, and extremist \u2013 as being more important than facing facts-on-the ground. Owning the winning narrative is to win, in this view. Virtual \u2018victory\u2019 thus trumps \u2018real\u2019 reality.<\/p>\n

So, war becomes rather the setting for imposing ideological alignment across a wide global alliance and enforcing it via compliant media.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This objective enjoys a higher priority than, say, ensuring a manufacturing capacity sufficient to sustain military objectives. Crafting an imagined \u2018reality\u2019 has taken precedence over shaping the ground reality.<\/p>\n

The point here is that this approach \u2013 being a function of whole of society alignment (both at home and abroad) \u2013 creates entrapments into false realities, false expectations, from which an exit (when such becomes necessary), turns near impossible, precisely because imposed alignment has ossified public sentiment. The possibility for a State to change course as\u00a0events<\/em>\u00a0unfold becomes curtailed or lost, and the accurate reading of facts on the ground veers toward the politically correct and away from reality.<\/p>\n

The cumulative effect of \u2018a winning virtual narrative\u2019 holds the risk nonetheless, of sliding incrementally toward inadvertent \u2018real war\u2019<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a \u2018winning narrative\u2019, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine \u2018takes the war to into Russia\u2019.<\/p>\n

Had the Ukrainian forces succeeded in capturing the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, they then would have had a significant bargaining chip, and might well have syphoned away Russian forces from the steadily collapsing Ukrainian \u2018Line\u2019 in Donbas.<\/p>\n

And to top it off, (in infowar terms), the western media was prepped and aligned to show President Putin as \u201cfrozen\u201d by the surprise incursion, and \u201cwobbling\u201d with anxiety that the Russian public would turn against him in their anger at the humiliation.<\/p>\n

Bill Burns, head of CIA, opined that \u201cRussia would offer no concessions on Ukraine, until Putin\u2019s over-confidence was challenged, and Ukraine could show strength<\/em>\u201d. Other U.S. officials added that the Kursk incursion \u2013 in itself \u2013 would not bring Russia to the negotiating table; It would be necessary to build on the Kursk operation with other daring operations (to shake Moscow\u2019s\u00a0sang froid<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Of course, the overall aim was to show Russia as fragile and vulnerable, in line with the narrative that, at any moment Russia, could crack apart and scatter to the wind, in fragments. Leaving the West as winner, of course.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact, the Kursk incursion was a huge NATO gamble: It involved mortgaging Ukraine\u2019s military reserves and armour, as chips on the roulette table, as a bet that an ephemeral success in Kursk would upend the strategic balance. The bet was lost, and the chips forfeit.<\/p>\n

Plainly put, this Kursk affair exemplifies the West\u2019s problem with \u2018winning narratives\u2019: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a \u2018whole of society\u2019 common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all \u2018extremisms\u2019 threatening \u2018our democracy\u2019.<\/p>\n

This aim, of itself, dictates that the narrative be undemanding and relatively uncontentious: \u2018Our Democracy, Our Values and Our Consensus\u2019. The Democratic National Convention, for example, embraces \u2018Joy\u2019 (repeated endlessly), \u2018moving Forward\u2019 and \u2018opposing weirdness\u2019 as key statements. They are banal, however, these memes are given their energy and momentum, not by content so much, as by the deliberate Hollywood setting lending them razzamatazz and glamour.<\/p>\n

It is not hard to see how this one-dimensional zeitgeist may have contributed to the U.S. and its allies\u2019 misreading the impact of today\u2019s Kursk \u2018daring adventure\u2019 on ordinary Russians.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Kursk\u2019 has history. In 1943, Germany invaded Russia in Kursk to divert from its own losses, with Germany ultimately defeated at the Battle of Kursk. The return of German military equipment to the environs of Kursk\u00a0must have left many gaping; the current battlefield around the town of Sudzha is precisely the spot where, in 1943, the Soviet 38th and 40th armies coiled for a counteroffensive against the German 4th Army.<\/p>\n

Over the centuries, Russia has been variously attacked on its vulnerable flank from the West. And more recently by Napoleon and Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Russians are acutely sensitive to this bloody history. Did Bill Burns et al think this through? Did they imagine that NATO invading Russia itself would make Putin feel \u2018challenged\u2019, and that with one further shove, he would fold, and agree to a \u2018frozen\u2019 outcome in Ukraine \u2013 with the latter entering NATO? Maybe they did.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the message that western services sent was that the West (NATO) is coming for Russia. This is the meaning of deliberately choosing Kursk. Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.<\/p>\n

Just to be clear, this genre of \u2018winning narrative\u2019 surrounding Kursk is neither deceit nor feint. The Minsk Accords\u00a0were examples of deceit<\/em>, but they were deceits grounded in rational strategy (i.e. they were historically normal). The Minsk deceits were intended to buy the West time to further Ukraine\u2019s militarisation \u2013 before attacking the Donbas. The deceit worked, but only at the price of a rupture of trust between Russia and the West. The Minsk deceits however, also accelerated an end to the 200-year era of the westification of Russia.<\/p>\n

Kursk rather, is a different \u2018fish\u2019. It is grounded in the notions of western exceptionalism.<\/strong> The West perceives itself as tacking to \u2018the right side of History\u2019. \u2018Winning narratives\u2019 essentially assert \u2013 in secular format \u2013 the inevitability of the western eschatological Mission for global redemption and convergence. In this new narrative context, facts-on-the-ground become mere irritants, and not realities that must be taken into account.<\/p>\n

This their Achilles\u2019 Heel.<\/p>\n

The DNC convention in Chicago however, underscored a further concern:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as the hegemonic West arose out of the Cold War era shaped and invigorated through dialectic opposition to communism (in the western mythology), so we see today, a (claimed) totalising \u2018extremism\u2019 (whether of MAGA mode; or of the external variety: Iran, Russia, etc.) \u2013 posed in Chicago in a similar Hegelian dialectic opposition to the former capitalism versus communism; but in today\u2019s case, it is \u201cextremism\u201d in conflict with \u201cOur Democracy\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

The DNC Chicago narrative-thesis is itself a tautology of identity differentiation posing as \u2018togetherness\u2019 under a diversity banner and in conflict with \u2018whiteness\u2019 and \u2018extremism\u2019. \u2018Extremism\u2019 effectively plainly is being set up as the successor to the former Cold War\u00a0antithesis \u2013\u00a0communism.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chicago \u2018back-room\u2019 may be imagining that a confrontation with extremism \u2013 writ widely \u2013 will again, as it did in the post-Cold War era, yield an American rejuvenation. Which is to say that a conflict with Iran, Russia, and China (in a different way) may come onto the agenda. The telltale signs are there (plus the West\u2019s need for a re-set of its economy, which war regularly provides).<\/em><\/p>\n

The Kursk ploy no doubt seemed clever and audacious to London and Washington. Yet with what result? <\/strong>It achieved neither objective of taking Kursk NPP, nor of syphoning Russian troops from the Contact Line. The Ukrainian presence in the Kursk Oblast will be eliminated.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0it did do<\/em>, however, is put an end to all prospects of an eventual negotiated settlement in Ukraine. <\/strong>Distrust of the U.S. in Russia is now absolute. It has made Moscow more determined to prosecute the special operation to conclusion. German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia.<\/p>\n

\u2018Never again\u2019 is the unspoken riposte.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 08\/28\/2024 – 23:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/western-way-war-owning-narrative-trumps-reality<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Western Way Of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality Authored by Alastair Crooke, War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1486649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1486649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}