Russia Was
The Target of Nato's Own Fake News
Military and media reports hyped the Zapad military
exercise as a major threat. In fact, what took place
was nothing as dramatic as the West's warnings would
have led you to believe
By Mary Dejevsky
September
25, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Whatever happened to the imminent outbreak of
World War Three? Earlier this month, you may recall,
warnings about a “huge” Russian war game were
everywhere, sowing alarm across the Western world.
This could, we were told repeatedly, be Russia’s
biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold
War. “Massive” and “vast” were other adjectives
used.
Military
and media reports built Zapad-2017 – Zapad meaning
West in Russian – into an almost unprecedented
threat, but two particular claims stood out.
Russia’s insistence that around 12,000 troops would
take part was dismissed as a subterfuge; in reality,
there would be upwards of 100,000.
Then there
was intent. Such a major exercise, it was argued,
could provide cover for a Russian land grab in
Ukraine or even the Baltic States. Its proximity, in
time and geography, to the 1 September anniversary
of the start of the Second World War – Germany’s
assault on Polish troops at Westerplatte – only
seemed to lend the warnings extra credibility. With
East-West tensions running high, we were on standby
for World War Three.
So what
happened? Zapad-2017 concluded earlier this week, by
which time it had seriously fizzled out, in Western
media terms at least. All that made the news was
footage of President Vladimir Putin observing the
scene through binoculars, and a report that three
people had been injured when a Russian helicopter
accidentally fired on spectators. The numbers are
put, even by Western analysts, at somewhere between
10,000 and 17,000 troops taking part. No one has
been invaded.
And the
Russians are enjoying a rare last laugh. They point
out, with some justification, that their numbers
were accurate, there was no dissembling,
international borders were respected. All the
Russian troops introduced into neighbouring Belarus
for the exercise are going home, too. After all the
Western accusations that Russia has been waging an
information war with the help of “fake news”, who is
disseminating “fake news” now, they ask. Is this not
further evidence that Western opinion formers are
stuck in the rut of Cold War stereotypes? They have
a point.
One theory
doing the rounds is that, with Zapad-2017, Russia
contrived to set a trap which Western analysts and
media duly fell into. More likely, I think, is that
Russia is simply enjoying the novelty of finding
itself on the right side of any information war.
But that
leaves the real question – for us – unanswered. How
did it come about that the scale and intent of
Russia’s Zapad-2017 – its latest in the four-yearly
Zapad series of manoeuvres – was so unrealistically
hyped in the West to the point of presaging a new
world war?
Behind the
scenes, accusations are flying, with “the media” –
the “irresponsible” media – as usual, in the
spotlight. There is an element of truth in that, but
only an element. The media does not usually invent,
completely invent, what it reports. Especially with
military and defence matters, their information
comes from somewhere; they may also be given a steer
as to interpretation.
In this
case, the media – or, more accurately, some headline
writers – can be accused of missing some nuance in
the information they were given. Russia “could”
field as many as 100,000 troops, “could” use the
exercise as cover to invade Ukraine, and so on, may
slip over into “will”. Possibility becomes
certainty. This may be done out of ignorance, for
effect, or, in some cases, because it fits an
existing political agenda.
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But the
media is not where the information – or rather,
let’s use the old word, “disinformation” – about
Russia’s Zapad-2017 originated. Even a cursory
look back over advance media reports about these
Russian war games shows that they relied on
sometimes anonymous, but more often named,
sources – sources moreover that could claim some
expertise in the matter in hand.
One of
these was none other than the Secretary General of
Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, who warned that Russia “has
used big military exercises as a disguise or a
precursor for aggressive military actions against
their neighbours”, citing Georgia in 2008 and Crimea
in 2014.
Then there
was the British Defence Secretary, Sir Michael
Fallon, who said the exercise was “designed to
provoke us” and appeared to accept the estimate of
100,000 troops.
Many of the
reports also cited political or think tank sources
in the Baltic States, Poland or Ukraine, where – for
understandable reasons – a view of Russia as a past
and potential aggressor prevails. That a particular
view is understandable, however, does not make it
correct, especially in new or different
circumstances.
The same
applies to precedent. UK officials defended what
some – myself included – would regard as the
scaremongering of the UK Defence Secretary and head
of Nato, by saying that Russia had a record of
understating the numbers involved in military
exercises so as to exclude international observers,
and it was not unreasonable to suspect them of doing
the same again. Something similar applied to the use
of manoeuvres as cover for aggression – even though
the relationship between Russian exercises and its
Georgia and Crimea interventions are at very least
contestable.
Vigilance,
they insisted, should be the watchword. But
vigilance – and being prepared for any eventuality –
is rather different, in my book at least, from
hyping a supposed threat from a routine Russian
military exercise in a way that simply was not
warranted by the evidence and served a sharply
anti-Russian Western agenda. This was happening, it
is also worth noting, even as “non-aligned Sweden”
(so described by Nato) was conducting a Nordic area
exercise which involved many Nato members, and
shortly after Nato itself had held exercises in the
Black Sea and before that in and around the western
borderlands of Ukraine. Who, it has to be asked
here, is threatening whom?
Thanks to
an initial analysis by the foreign affairs
think tank Chatham House, the facts of Zapad-2017,
in summary, would appear to be these. This was an
exercise designed to test the new, smaller and more
agile configuration of Russian forces and its new
electronic and communications capabilities. It was
also intended, in part, to show off its modern
hardware, for commercial purposes – and, yes, to
demonstrate to Nato that Russia remains a force to
be reckoned with. In other words, it was an
exercise, in concept and purpose, very similar to
the sort of exercise that Western forces hold
This
article was first published by
The Independent
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