THE FALSE FLAG FACADE

Recently Western media outlets have adamantly suggested that Russia plans to employ a "false flag" operation intended as an excuse to invade Ukraine, which is now almost entirely encircled by upward of 190,000 of its troops ready to attack. To the uninitiated and for current purposes, a "false flag" event or action (typically political or military in nature) intentionally organized against Russian interests and made to appear as having been perpetrated by opposing forces or terrorists, would give President Vladimir Putin a pretext for military action. Indicators have been that the Russian media has already been laying the groundwork for such a move by trying to convince its public that Ukrainian forces are ready to attack in East Ukraine, the "Donbas," an unrecognized pro-Russian breakaway region, largely controlled by Russian-backed separatist militia units. To raise the stakes, the "Duma," the lower chamber of the Russian parliament recently approved a resolution asking President Putin to recognize the two terrorist controlled territories as independent, pro-Russian, states. The concern has been raised that if he signs this resolution the chances for a provocation will be significantly elevated. Putin has promised in the past that Moscow is ready to protect Russians outside of its borders, many of which live in the area. "False flag" operations, used to justify the initiation of military conflict, are not new. The practice dates back to a time when pirates and privateers used the tactic - flying the flag of a neutral country - to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking. Subsequent to the "golden age of piracy" - generally accepted to have been somewhere between 1650 and 1720 - rules of naval warfare were adopted. It remained perfectly legal under Maritime Law to fly a "false flag" to chase an enemy ship or to try to escape. However, it was universally agreed that immediately before an attack a vessel had to fly its national flag. Over time, while the descriptive term stuck and the political necessity to justify aggressive actions grew, the concept morphed into a military tactic. Russia has made use of this method numerous times, most prominently when it secured control over the South Ossetia region in Georgia in 2008, and when it annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2014 masked soldiers in unmarked green army uniforms, carrying modern Russian weapons, occupied and blocked the Simferopol International Airport, most Ukrainian military bases on the Crimean Peninsula and the region's parliament. While Putin claimed that these were local militia, spontaneous self-defense groups, a Russian general soon after confessed that these were actually Russian Spetsnaz troops preparing the area for annexation. The recent media focus on potential "false flag" operations in Ukraine may have given the impression that the practice is typically Russian. Nothing could be further from the truth. The technique has been employed by multiple countries throughout history. Many people still insist that the explosion that destroyed the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 was in fact a "false flag" operation to give the United States a pretext for the Spanish-American War. The armor plates inside the battleship were blown outward, not inward. Sadly, 255 crew members died. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox was fired upon by three Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea. Two days later, our National Security Agency fabricated a second, "false flag," attack. Subsequently Congress passed the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which led to the deployment of ground troops in what would become the Vietnam War. Twenty-five years earlier, covert Nazi operatives, dressed as Polish soldiers, stormed the Gleiwitz radio tower on the German-Polish border. They broadcast a short anti-German message and left behind the bodies of a pro-Polish German farmer and several Dachau concentration camp inmates dressed up in German uniforms. The Nazis used this fabricated "attack" to justify Germany's invasion of Poland the next day. The most famous "false flag" operation was the burning of the Reichstag on the night of February 27, 1933. A lone communist sympathizer, Marinus van de Lubbe, was arrested, charged and executed for setting fire to the German parliament building. Adolph Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels used this excuse to purge Germany of opposition, especially the communists. The sweeping emergency powers Hitler and the Nazis seized after the fire convinced many people that the Reichstag was burned by the Nazis themselves. And between 1979 and 1983, the Israeli secret service instigated a series of car bomb attacks in Lebanon, claimed by the terrorist organization "The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon." Later an Israeli general admitted that the bombings were carried out by his country to justify invading Lebanon. These days most mainstream sites prefer using "conspiracy theories" to "false flags." To many on-line conspiracy theorists the biggest "false flag" operation of all times was the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many believe that these attacks were deliberately carried out by the U.S. government to justify the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. (see: "The Truth About "False Flags" from Nazi Germany and the Vietnam War," Sky History TV Channel). Given the volatile situation surrounding Ukraine, the activity on the ground may well have changed by the time this column is published. But, no matter what happens, the Biden administration's apparent strategy to release intelligence information as it becomes available could keep Putin from employing surprise justifications for a more aggressive posture. If the Russian strongman is at all interested in maintaining any measure of international credibility, he should drop the facade and negotiate for peace. Theo Wierdsma