Nearly 14 years ago U.S. officials became interested in a 1995 planning document from a Russian defense think tank. The so-called "Surikov document" was put together in October 1995, with the title "Conceptual Provisions of a Strategy for Countering the Main External Threats to Russian Federation National Security." It was used to brief the Russian defense minister and top generals. The document says that the United States wants to turn the former Soviet Union into a "raw materials colony of the West," as well as making it a political appendage. "Because of this," says the document, "it is the United States and its allies that are the sources of main external threats to Russia's national security, and they should be considered the principal potential enemies of the Russian Federation."
From the perspective of the Surikov document, the West's efforts to encourage democracy and free markets in Russia are entirely subversive; an attempt at blatant interference in Russia's internal affairs by the sinister bolstering of the country's prosperity. Russian leaders understood then, as now, that any attempt to limit the despotism of the Russian government threatens the very foundations of the country's security structures. "The line of the United States and its allies toward intervening in Russia's internal affairs to impose on it paths of development in a direction favorable to the West represents the greatest danger."
Free elections and free markets are, indeed, highly dangerous -- if you are a committed KGB general, and if you want to preserve key "Soviet" structures, or a remnant of Soviet ideals. It therefore follows that Russia is on a collision course with America. As a corollary, the document admitted that Russia's interests coincide with the interests of so-called rogue states (i.e., Libya, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, etc.). The tendency of U.S. economic and technological dominance, is to drain Russia of capital and brain-power. The Russian military-industrial complex would find thereby itself without funds or talent. Russia's unified domestic market would be eliminated, the country's political unity shattered. "It is also important to note that all major operations of pumping resources and funds out of the country are being carried out with the involvement of foreign partners."
What the document doesn't say is how foreign partners are routinely fleeced; how the Russians steal Western technology for military and commercial uses; how Russian capital flight is used as a vehicle for penetrating and compromising Western financial institutions; how the KGB and the Russian mafia have joined forces in a broad-based campaign of blackmail and extortion. While the West is encumbered by laws and traditions, the only traditions observed in Russia are those of the secret police, or institutions heavily infiltrated and guided by the secret police (including the church, the state, big business, organized crime and the media). The document admits that "the activity of the outflow of resources and capital from Russia abroad in the form in which it is being accomplished today is criminalized to the highest degree and represents not only a violation of domestic laws, but also the grossest violation of laws of the Western countries themselves."
The implications of this are not spelled out in the document. But to a KGB-trained individual, they are obvious. If the West seeks passage into Azerbaijan and Central Asia, for the sake of developing oil resources, then it is a two-way portal. The Russian special services can use the occasion to penetrate Turkey. If Moscow's spies know what they are doing, they can frustrate the Western oil companies while secretly harvesting Western businessmen. As for NATO, the Surikov document regarded its eastward expansion as "inevitable," correctly predicting the stages of future NATO expansion, accurately anticipating that "Russia will not be accepted in NATO under any circumstances." Russia's strategists realize that the Germans and Americans are the chief instigators of NATO's eastward expansion: "In fact we are dealing with a resumption of German expansion in the eastern and southeastern directions twice interrupted in this century and being accomplished this time primarily by political and economic methods under the American 'nuclear umbrella.'"
Viewing its enemy's policy as a mirror image of its own, the Russian document noted that Russia will eventually be subjected to "nuclear blackmail." Accordingly, the "creeping expansion of the United States" has as its ultimate goal the elimination of Russia as a state. It is therefore essential that Russia reject cooperation with the IMF, impose "elementary order" on foreign trade, and restructure national industries. Furthermore, Western oil companies must not be allowed to exploit the Caspian Sea oil resources (which are blamed for the war in Chechnya), and Ukraine must be prevented from joining NATO. In this we see the rise of Putin, the jailing of uncooperative "oligarchs," the second Chechen War, and the dim prospects of British Petroleum and other Western oil companies.
The Russians strategists knew, even in 1995, that the West would be vulnerable to Russia because Europe is bound to experience "a natural gas consumption deficit of 100 billion cubic meters per year." This is fortuitous because Russian natural gas reserves make up one third of world reserves. But Russia's real trump card is its nuclear missile potential, "and the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the world...." If persistently driven into a corner, Russia could sell nuclear and missile technologies to Iran -- or to Iraq and Algeria "after Islamic forces arrive in power there." This last qualification by the Russian strategists, should not be missed, penned more than five years prior to 9/11. Nothing here should surprise anyone, but continues to be overlooked by Western strategists as too inconvenient for acknowledgement.
Because of its reliance on nuclear weaponry, the Russian strategists of 1995 were committed to the modernization of the country's Strategic Rocket Forces. The plan was to reconstitute Russia's ICBMs as a mobile force, deployed on railroad flatcars, hidden in caves and tunnels. In this context, U.S. tactical ABM defense systems were politically targeted (as always) by Russia's allies on the Left. Instead of reverting to a new Cold War, the Russian strategists created a new term: "Cold Peace." Inevitably, more and more countries would acquire nuclear weapons. America's campaign to stop nuclear proliferation was hardly serious. How, after all, did Israel get nuclear weapons? Are we to believe that the Americans did not give the Israelis this potential? According to the Surikov document, "It is obvious that Israel will not give up its nuclear potential and accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons under any circumstances. It should be understood that Israel's nuclear potential was created not just for deterring a non-nuclear attack of Arab countries, but also for blackmailing the USSR to compel it to exert a deterring influence on the Arabs...."
Russia's strategists are hostile to the United States and its allies. Is this hostility justified? The United States is painted as an aggressor intent on eliminating Russia as a unified state. It is curious, indeed, that no kiss-and-tell book has yet emerged from Washington, exposing a strategic plan to break up Russia. If such a plan existed, which U.S. president originated it? And why hasn't the New York Times printed its details in full? What has emerged, over the last 15 years, is an excited anticipation of America's breakup. Perhaps some readers will recall the Wall Street Journal's piece, "As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S." Igor Panarin is a Russia strategist, and his prediction is not an idle one.
It is a tradition of totalitarian states, that they always accuse their intended victim of the exact crimes that they are contemplating. This is part of their strategy, and the basis of its rationale: "Do unto others before they do unto you."
