Studies of global and strategic problems are fashionable in Ukraine. Pertinent str uctures are formed and personnel selected. An ordinary taxpayer learns about how his money is used there thanks to this newspaper. Sometimes its coverage includes such global and strategic findings. Not so long ago, its learned authors informed us about information warfare, the fourth combat domain after land, sea, and air. Information warfare appears to be waged by any country with its armed forces, in time of both war and peace. In other words, there is permanent global warfare. The tactic of the so-called general battles (with attendant armed confrontations and heavy manpower losses) will soon be abandoned, along with swords and other medieval paraphernalia. All this is due to information. And which country is most aggressive in waging this kind of war? The United States, of course. We are told by scholars that America is waging that war on two fronts simultaneously, with the elite combating its own people along with the rest of the world. This elite enlists a hand-picked group of media outlets, mainly television companies, to keep public opinion in the desired vein.
This is especially effectively accomplished on the home front, owing to the specificities of the rank-and-file US mentality. The American man in the street is credulous, lacking criticism, and not given to analysis. American culture is simplified, courtesy of television and consumer entertainment. One may infer that US public opinion is the easiest to manipulate in the world.
Personally I find this a far cry from what is generally understood as analysis. Rather, something like preaching daily anti-Americanism (hopefully unintentionally). This is akin to Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies’s book Why Do People Hate America, recently published in Great Britain, then promptly translated and printed in Moscow. That people hate America is taken for granted as an established fact. One is left to try to figure out why. That is the topic of the book. Its quality can be judged on the very first page when a wounded woman rushes out of the smoking debris of the World Trade Center and the first thing she says is why do they hate us so. Thus the lady running out of the inferno already knew that a jet had crashed into the building, that the aircraft had been seized by terrorists, and that those terrorists had been sent by those who hate America. Incidentally, it would not hurt the sociologists concerned to compare the number of individuals hating America to that of people who dream of becoming US residents. I would not be surprised to see something like a 1:1 ratio in their findings, meaning that there is an equal number of those who love and hate that country. According to The Day, 54,000 Ukrainians legally (!) immigrated to the US in 1998-2001.
Let me tell the authors of Why Do People Hate America that they should not count on me in that number. I like America. This is my personal attitude, and I do not care about any unbiased analyses. Of course, some of my readers might say who the hell are you to impose your likings on us, especially on newspaper pages. If you were a pop star we might pay attention, for we are eager to learn things about celebrities, what they prefer for breakfast, what shampoo they use, and how they feel about G Ъ del’s incompleteness theorem. Perhaps this is what such analyses are actually all about. In our case it is assumed that an individual, a scholar to be precise, has nothing to do with it. It is as though he were nonexistent, and that his humble duty were to present facts and logical schemes organizing these facts as a convincing discourse. And this must be of public interest only, nothing personal. Science and scholarship are most certainly supposed to be in the public domain. However, dear reader, here you will find an intellectual somersault; the said philosophy would probably be good when used in mathematics or physics, yet it is being applied to understanding society. Here everything is different. Here we have values that determine the selection of facts and figures of rhetoric; values determining a vision of realities at a research level. This is precisely why in social cognition oral constructions are usually presented as scholarly findings, expressing nothing other than stable cultural stereotypes that are still embedded in the heads of many people here, perhaps even in their genes (there are more such people in Russia), stereotypes of militancy and suspiciousness. Combat, battle, and frontlines are the basic subcategories of this mentality. Seeing reality as warfare in everything done by others, looking for evil intent — that was how all such individuals were raised and educated. They are all victims of information warfare waged by the totalitarian regime against America, then considered enemy number one.
I am not trying to act as an unbiased researcher. As I have stated, this is my personal choice. I could, nevertheless, cite facts, considering that this is meant as a public discussion; facts that some of my readers would probably recall after familiarizing themselves with yet another opus dealing with what is alleged as primitive US culture, its consumer and entertainment character. In 2002, the US share in the world GDP was 31.2%. more than Japan’s, in absolute value, considering that Japan then ranked second, and 35.6 times more than Russia’s. California’s economy alone shows more gross product than all of France or Great Britain. The United States attracts over one- third of world’s investment. Its research and development projects are financed on a scale surpassing that of the world’s seven wealthiest countries put together, amounting to 40.6% of world spending. More than 40% of worldwide computer technology investments are enjoyed by US companies. The number of PCs owned by employed US citizens is five times higher than that in Europe and Japan. Over 90% Internet sites are US-generated. Seventeen of the world’s top twenty universities are on American soil (the other three being Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of London). Over the past fifty years US scientists have been awarded 66 Nobel Prizes in physics, 68 in medicine, and 42 in chemistry. Some 450,000 foreign students are enrolled in US institutions of learning (the above statistics are courtesy of O. Utkin’s book, The Sole Superpower, in Russian, Moscow, 2003). In light of these facts, a sober-minded individual is supposed to wonder how all this could have been achieved by a nation whose unattractive image is being so painstakingly portrayed by all those infowar soldiers. Among other things, a society of consumers cannot be a society of producers.
I think that what makes people hate America is envy, the way some lazy individuals or paupers begrudge the industrious and affluent. Some Ukrainians visiting the US say that America is dominated by a cult of professionalism and that they will not accept any shoddy work. Thus, a Russian lady flew across the ocean to study New York theatrical life. She said later, “Being professional the US way means dedicating your whole life to it. Small wonder that our immigrants are loath to watch US employees get up at six in the morning, work like slaves, and then turn in at nine p.m. How can one enjoy one’s life with so much work and no play? The answer to this is simple: between six and nine (in some cases between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m) one has fifteen to sixteen hours, ample time to enjoy life” (Alla Bossart).
The innovative aspect of information warfare is not that the combatants use falsehood as key armaments. Falsehood is nothing new; it has always been there. It is a long-established fact that truth becomes the first casualty of war. Sir Winston Churchill said that truth in time of war is so precious that it has to be protected by watchdogs of falsehood. Rulers of totalitarian regimes have proven themselves unmatched liars, aided by their “ministries of truth.” Just as army generals have always insisted that theirs is the only victorious course. However, I happened to hear a general with a surprisingly philosophical cast of mind. He said they would never have a victory without CNN informing people that they had won. I mean General John Shalikashvili (I am grateful to the authors of the above-mentioned article for this quote). Here one finds a separate philosophy, whereby a phenomenon exists only when becoming public knowledge, after being informed [by the media]. There is a nuance, however. The important thing is precisely who makes it public knowledge. Another Georgian, known as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili [or Joseph Stalin], could have come up with a similar statement, except that he would have mentioned the Informburo instead of CNN, and the meaning would have been the exact opposite. In that case Iosif Dzhugashvili would have been the one to make all the announcements, but even then he would have been no different from any other army generals.
Therefore, information warfare — or carrying out information operations to be precise — is a notion originating from a top secret Pentagon directive after Operation Desert Storm. It began when people realized that computers were stronger than artillery. In fact, such missions were first effected on a large scale in the 1991 war in Iraq. The first blow dealt the enemy was a computer virus attack, with special agents planting viruses in Iraqi telephone and radar facility networks and activating them at a preset time, thereby incapacitating Iraqi air defenses almost instantly, with the materiel turning into a heap of useless metal and manpower becoming something like ideal gas molecules. The coalition forces, in contrast, transformed themselves into a complex social and technological entity, with manpower, personal, and onboard computers, along with hundreds of satellite channels integrated into tens of thousands of information systems. Information had conquered space in terms of high precision weapons and target-designating systems, using Pentagon processor-generated charts, sending signals thousands of miles from the battlefield. Given this strength of hi-tech information, the meaning of ideological falsehood [disinformation] became considerably lower. The coalition forces’ leaflets contained words of truth and useful recommendations. Iraqi soldiers were urged to avoid senseless death and keep away from their tanks and artillery guns. And they paid heed. The latest war in Iraq has added additional food for thought.
I have spent a number of years watching all those pundits push their way through the crowd with their “scientific explanations” of various US phenomena. Such endeavors were obviously and unanimously supported by the powers that be, meaning a nationwide brainwashing effort. George Soros gave CIS scientists $500 each in the trying early 1990s. What did this mean? He must have conspired with the CIA and was now acting on their instructions. Mr. Johnson is a millionaire, meaning he has robbed the proletariat of some added value. And so on and suchlike. Of course, everything can be interpreted in any which way, including accusations of foul play, espionage, inhuman exploitation — so what is it? Manipulation or consolidation? Are they profit-seekers or philanthropists? Capitalist sharks or sensible and enterprising individuals? Psychologists advise us not to allow ourselves to think ill of others.
I believe that US culture has many things that are easily comprehensible, and that it is not difficult eliminate prejudices, provided one fully understands the true meaning of the freedom of expression, it being a major principle of US lifestyle. Carlos Pascual, in his farewell interview with The Day’s Viktor Zamyatin (August 2, 2003, not translated in this digest) made a statement which I consider an example of lofty humaneness and which emphasizes the following three categories (values): (a) supremacy of the law, (b) suffrage, and (c) truly independent media. Actually, all three are aspects of the freedom of expression. However, a closer look shows that they are tantamount to the proclamation of the metaphysical freedom of comprehension of truth by any individual. It is important to stress that this applies not only to the institutional realm -science, politics, religion — but also to our daily life. This concept of knowledge appears alien to European culture. After ancient times, European thought has evolved in keeping with The Word saying Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature . There are those who carry knowledge and there are the masses in need of that knowledge in expectation of enlightenment. Enlightenment has not changed much, after all. Preachers and pastors were replaced by free thinkers, yet the idea of disseminating knowledge, with individual brilliant individuals begetting and spreading such knowledge among the masses, remained the same. Danko with his flaming heart in his hands, leading his people out of the dark forest [an allusion to Lesia Ukrainka’s poem — Ed.]. Such images are probably most adequate to the situation. I might as well point out that Danko made quite an impression on the Bolsheviks, although their interpretation was that of a vicious prison guard herding inmates into the thick of the woods, prodding them with his whip.
The American way of thinking is different. The United States began with Old World adventurers arriving to set up colonies, whereupon they found themselves in possession of a degree of social equality. It was some natural practical egalitarism that begot a kind of philosophy lacking philosophers. Daniel Burstin wrote that this philosophy had to be that way because it was a way thinking derived from doubts about the professional thinker’s ability to think better than everybody else. All men are created equal: this notion seems self-evident for every American. From the outset this clause implied that one and all should be free to think and form ideas relying on their personal experience. The same applies to the perception of nature, social order, and everything else. It follows that all social intuitions, ranging from the market to political democracy, are actually consequences of the freedom of thought and expression.
