Chandler - Shadow world: resurgent Russia, the global new left, and radical Islam

Table of Contents

The New Face of War: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Revitalization of Americas Transoceanic Strategy.

Counterforce: Locating and Destroying Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Tomorrows War, Todays Decisions: Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Implications of WMD-Armed Adversaries for Future U.S. Military Strategy.

War of Ideas: The U.S. Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam.

THE STRATEGIC ANALYSIS presented in this book was drawn from more than four decades of reading, writing, and working to resolve a wide range of international security problems facing the United States. Over the years, I was blessed to work with many people who helped me improve my analytical skills and taught me to see beyond the apparent and behind the drawn curtain. To these colleagues and acquaintances who shaped my lifes journey in several foreign lands and at home, I extend my deepest appreciation for their confidence and encouragement.

Among those who influenced me the most was Esperanza, my wife and life partner who passed away during the writing of this book. Raised in Fascist Spain, this Catalana had a life-long thirst for liberty and democracy. She left her mark on every page Shadow World through her admonition to me: You must finish the book. The American people dont know what you know. You must explain to them how the cultural war is undermining everything good about America. I have tried to satisfy her admonition by simply telling the story about what I see developing in the storm clouds looming before us at home and internationally. It is for the reader to judge whether I have done my job well.

Secondly, I am deeply grateful to Peter Siebelt of Loosdrecht, the Netherlands, for his never ending grace and confidence in sharing his thoughts, ideas, and documents that were essential in writing the chapters about the hate-America progressives, socialists, and Marxists in the United States and Europe. Peter is a good friend and colleague whose dedication to America is founded on his recognition of the deceit and deception by the hard Left in trying to tear down the United States. He was also the best host in Europe for this foreign visitor several times over the last two decades.

Thirdly, John Rees of the Maldon Institute was very helpful in sharing his years of experience in tracking, analyzing, and writing about Americas socialists and Marxists. In addition, to sharing Maldons first-rate analyses of threats and risks facing American companies and government, John also gave me a copy of his unfinished manuscript about the Institute for Policy Studies, also known as the think tank on the Left. Johns insights were extremely helpful to this writer in breaking the code underlying the Institutes strategy and goals. For all of his support and counsel, I am very grateful.

Fourthly, my thanks also go to The Bear for his counsel and friendship as well as assistance in locating difficult to find documentation that underwrite key arguments in this book. I benefitted greatly from his deep insight to the workings of the world behind the scenes and key aspects of important stories left untold.

Many others assisted my research in 1001 different ways, from forwarding articles, reports, and studies of important issues to me. Many have shared their experiences and observations about important aspects of our complex world. My appreciation is extended to them all.

AMERICANS IN THE EARLY twenty-first century find themselves locked inside a rapidly changing world of imminent dangers emanating from three main centers of activity: one is political, another is ideological, and a third is cultural (georeligious). Each hostile group uses propaganda and disinformation to present images in strategic deception plans designed to mask their actions to sap American geopolitical influence and reshape the realities of the world order. Americans face a circumstance similar that created by clumsy French bureaucrats, lazy journalists, and co-opted professors in the 1930s, when they all helped to lull Frances people into believing that the Maginot Line provided them assured protection against German attack. Similarly, Americans are responding to the deceptive images spun by politicians, journalists, and intellectuals that all would be well in the world, if the United States would only stop doing things that make Americans unpopular. Meanwhile, Russians are offering a theatrical production of their friendship and cooperation with the capitalist West, progressives-socialists-marxists inside America are pursuing a slow-roll cultural revolution, and Saudi Arabias Salafists (Wahhabi) are preparing America and Europe for their new status of dhimmitude, or a gradual subservience to the ideology of Jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it.

Shadow World is about the political forces hidden deeply in the shadows of international affairs. It examines a wide-range of America-haters, including those aging ones who survived the Cold War and others that have since been spawned by new transnational predators. Americas unchallenged ascendance during the 1990s resulting from its position as the worlds sole economic and military superpower triggered the development of a caldron of vicious political, economic, environmental, social, and cultural anti-American centers. This seething hatred for Americans coalesced into a loose network of mutual support through three main centers of anti-U.S. activity: (1) the Kremlins hidden hand operating from the shadow world to create conditions favorable for Russias long-term geopolitical objectives; (2) a radical progressive-socialist-marxist web of popular fronts, agents of influence, and covert operatives fostering an anti-capitalist cultural revolution in the United States and Europe; and (3) an Islamic Salafist multinational with interconnections between al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups dedicated to restoration of a world caliphate and Saudi Arabias plans to place Europe, Russia, and the United States under Islamic suzerainty.

These three main activity hubs operate as independent centers of anti-Americanism, but there are many connections between them. Together they make up a Faceless International pursuing common goals of reducing U.S. power and influence in the world, while they compete for global geopolitical dominance. These shared strategic objectives offer opportunities for ad hoc support for one another, sometimes as the result of intermediaries coordinating activities and at other times simply parroting the policy line of the other. Russia, for instance, contributes to the radical Lefts peace movement through its recycled Cold War ideological allies inside the United States. At the same time, anti-war protests against Americas war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq by the homegrown radical Left and abroad are supported by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Russia, on the other hand, supports international terrorism in the form of arms transfers to enemy combatants through proxies and sub-proxies.

Against this backdrop, three major geopolitical contenders, each with sufficient resources to establish a new world order, are locked in a long-term, winner-take-all competition. Their weapons are words and culture, economic strengths and diplomatic skill, political action in the open and from the worlds shadows, as well as guns and bombs. The ultimate victor will win the right to exercise its power and political authority over all of the Earths six billion people.