'Russia Today' – 'The Bullhorn' of President Putin (Secretary of State, John Kerry)

I was going to write this blog several months ago but hesitated for several reasons:

The first was my appreciation of the principles of good journalism and the first motto which is that the journalists or broadcasters or news networks should, themselves, never be 'making' the news.

Secondly the absence of good journalism and programming throughout Africa , Asia and the Middle East is so profound that it is almost tantamount to torture. But to raise the issues of why would be to open up a can of worms which most in broadcasting in the Arab world (for example) would not just not understand but grossly misinterpret to the point of lethal outcome.

Thirdly and most important of all, television still remains the greatest instrument of propaganda yet invented. Having said this, it is being challenged in the information crossover to multiple portable media devices – including the internet – which present opportunities for societal controls hitherto unrealised as such were never thought possible in other centuries.

To give just one hypothetical example and leave it at that:

Whoever thought in previous decades that it might be possible to identify, through satellite car tracking devices, the exact location of your enemy, through his car Navsat and to 'engineer' signals through his car to cause massive systems failure most likely resulting in a fatal crash on a treacherous mountain pass?

So the implications of the crossover from television to multiple streaming devices, and their amalgamations present profound implications.

Indeed we have gone even beyond this with the advent of molecular electronics and the ability to insert rudimentary systems as 'sleepers'. In the case of our hypothetical enemy target, systems developed for social interaction and communication can be turned into lethal devices at the flick of a switch. It's the same principle as saying that a sharp knife can be used to slice a loaf of bread or cause a fatal injury depending on how it is used.

Do you trust Dilma Vana Rousseff heading up an Apartheid regime in Brazil (where incidentally more journalists have been murdered over the past two decades than in almost any other part of the world – excluding war zones) or do you trust President Putin or even President Barack Obama to control the internet and not to use it, in the event of a national emergency as an instrument of war or for other purposes?;or perhaps you would prefer to trust North Korea or Iran or Saudi Arabia with such profound power?;or perhaps some other Gulf State where until 50 years ago they were happily living nomadic or semi-nomadic lives until black gold transformed their world – but not their appreciation of the history of the modern world and how it got to where it is? Perhaps The Congo or Rwanda or Nigeria could be trusted as developed enough to even understand the profound implications of what exactly they would have management of so as not to misuse it?

Or indeed is the information revolution placing potential 'nuclear bombs' in the hands of 'children'?
With the ability of media services of countries such as China, Russia and The United States to reach into the very pocket of our hypothetical enemy target, to synergize and integrate information data, propaganda, electronic engineering and, with Space-based systems able to materialize and coalesce, all to become very real and very deadly.

Even before the battles commence, the war has already been lost if the total integration of systems (as pre-planned for decades to deny an opponent operational capability at the very least) has been successfully activated and the objectives achieved.

So do we really have anything to fear from 'Russia Today'?  In an era of peacetime, absolutely nothing.
In the event of a major world crisis which potentially could pit two global superpowers against each other, the answer is most certainly we do - but only to the extent of any networks' foreign correspondents operating, albeit legitimately, 'behind enemy lines' to cover the conflict 'from the other side'.
But was John Kerry wise to highlight 'Russia Today'?

In my opinion, there are very special times when, in today's interconnected world, one might seek to 'outlaw' specific media elements.

The first is if a country is on the verge of war with an opponent which matches it's own military capabilities.

It's inconceivable to have a successful propaganda medium operating from within your midst if you are on the brink of war with a country which equals your own potential in military capabilities.

In my opinion, 'Russia Today' is the most intelligent, successful, and capable of all propaganda broadcasting networks in the developed world at this present point in time.  For this reason alone it would be the first I would seek to isolate from within the United States if I thought the prospect of  (unconventional) war with Russia was more likely a possibility  than not.

This would not of course stop worldwide broadcasting but would result in a situation where compatriots were led to believe that it would be 'unpatriotic' for most (except approved government sources) to be 'taking feed' from a 'hostile' 'enemy' propaganda network. The 'doomsday' solution would be a legal ban on it's availability – but there is a clear risk here that the United States would be perceived in the same light as North Korea and Iran- two notorious countries which jam and ban, imprison and execute their citizens who listen to and watch foreign broadcasts deemed 'Satanic'.  Apart from being first and foremost unconstitutional, it would be unwise and nonsensical in today's interconnected global information village.   So under this very special pre-war condition (and only for national security reasons) would it be justified to highlight a foreign broadcasting network – such as 'Russia Today' – in your midst in order to (voluntarily and patriotically) deny local access.  It's a very dangerous step because of the implications and repercussions on U.S. Media networks likewise operating abroad (which provide their listeners and viewers with information, of course, and not reckless propaganda) can also be equally profound.
So it does appear that the Ukraine could be going  in the direction which all the indicators would suggest.

Perhaps history is more understanding of the 'triggers' which spark world wars than those 'caught up in the moment'?
I still to this day cannot understand (apart from imperialism, political intrigue, nationalism and all of the other factors Machiavelli understood all too well) why the First and Second world wars started. I have some difficulty understanding the characters of Pol Pot, Hitler, Josef Stalin, Khomeini in Iran; the tribalism, nationalism and racism which tore Yugoslavia apart and, as with Rwanda, Europe reverted to it's dark past - with a world-wide audience in network attendance.
The Ukraine is a very special case and is an identifiable trigger for a potential global conflict for the reasons mentioned in earlier blogs.
A phrase which I always remember reading in a book about history as child, written in, I believe, The Times of London, England, in the late 1800s and which has forever since been popularly quoted and misquoted: 'The fate of Serbia is not worth the dead bones of a single British Grenadier' [ a misquote of Otto von Bismarck, the 19th Century German Chancellor at the time of the Congress of Berlin (1878), who dismissed the Balkans as “not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier” ]

There are indeed parts of the world which have unique qualities and attributes, not as special in themselves, but special in their profound abilities to influence world events with a reach far beyond their own military and financial and cultural capabilities.

One fascinating fact is that we might not even be 'officially'  informed if an unconventional Third World War had actually begun. We might see all indications of world wide policy shifts and military deployments but no formal endorsement by any world leader.   Indeed military deployments could well be cosmetic – with the real war taking place across the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum – with not a single regular force deployment for adversarial conflict in the zone of action by either superpower.  Not that conventional forces are, as yet, outdated, but, as with the horse in The Great War, their presence today is more symbolic to consolidate security and gain on the ground than actually required to win a war – at least between superpowers.

Patrick Emek

www.colorado.edu/IBS/PEC/johno/pub/lboro.pdf 

revised with an amendment on both  26th and 27thApril