Russia masters the art of clandestine warfare against Ukraine

Special forces
(Image credit: (REUTERS/Olga Ivashchenko))

Don't be surprised that Russian special forces and military intelligence are stirring up resistance in eastern Ukraine. When acute conflicts seem to simmer, Americans lull themselves into a false nap of security. It's false because Vladimir Putin's timeline is significantly longer than ours. We care about the Crimea, today, or what happens in Ukraine, tomorrow. Putin has the luxury of time; he cares what happens next year.

The "resistance" is artificial, of course. People power in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been generated more often than not by foreign governments that have their own agendas, and not by indigenous forces. The U.S. national security establishment understands this, because they designed the template the Russians are using. From the first CIA officers who toppled Mohammed Mossagdeh in 1953, to clandestine efforts to prop up and then discredit Asian governments during the Kennedy administration, to the Cuban exiles trained by the CIA to overthrow Fidel Castro, to efforts to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan after the September 11th terrorist attacks, to the "indigenous" American-backed Iraqis who took control after the war — the playbook is very familiar.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.