War as man's most persistent companion
Never try to win by force where you can win by deception
Sun Tzu (544-496 BC)
The only human activity that has been unfettered and, moreover, constantly encouraged to new inventions and solutions is war, whether we want to admit it or not. If it is for comfort, most of the inventions related to war and the army were immediately used for civil, peaceful purposes (among others, this favorite media – the internet).
Photo: Euromaidan collage
The general division of wars is reduced to conventional and non-conventional. It must be admitted that all conventional wars have always been Hybrid, even when not called so, using all possible methods (in addition to armed ones) to overpower the opponent. Clausewitz wrote about this, outlining four basic principles of warfare:
Engage all available forces in the war at the most favorable moment.
Focus your forces on the solving part of the battlefield.
Don't waste time in any situation.
With the least possible effort to exploit the achieved success.
This is clear, Alphabet. It also develops segments of the war that have not changed to date:
Objective: to defeat the opponent.
Motive: greed (for territory, material resources, and in the slaveholding age and towards people).
Method: we will stop here to answer the essential questions of this text. What can be useful, and what can War be until it turns into a conventional, that is, until the cannons speak?
Photo: Orange Revolution in Ukraine
Modern wars are called, rightly, hybrid wars. These are the wars of the new generation (New Generation Warfare). They mean in themselves PsiOps (about which B. B. Bogdanovic wrote). They can be: substitute or surrogate war, economic war, biological-chemical war, war of knowledge, media war, and there are color revolutions as a unique cross-species. In the future, there will be wars of non-lethal weapons, but we will wait until then.
Media war, as a cultural phenomenon that combines communication-information and information models, intelligence work and much more, we will dedicate a separate text. Let us therefore start from the sight of innocuous phenomena of receptive and even poetic titles.
The color revolution
When it comes to them, then the devil in one state has long since taken away the joke. This is the most reliable sign that the instigator of these revolutions was convinced that the right moment had come to change the system or, at least, destabilize a country. Thus, in the theory of Modern Warfare, two currents of scientists are in parallel: some argue that color revolutions end spontaneously, and others are of the opposite opinion. Of course, these opinions and aspects change depending on whether such a revolution brings benefit or harm to the party concerned. In general, they most often wear a benign title (plush, pink, Tulip Revolution, variegated, clove, spring) with the clear goal of softening the edge of public reaction in advance and weakening the resistance of opponents. To not deviate from this, it is enough to remember the name of the action ”the Merciful Angel”.
The term color revolution does not have an exact definition of its own; more precisely, there are several dozen definitions, so one cannot accurately answer and adopt only one as a general one, even though they all use similar or the same vocabulary. But what is common to all of them? It has been proven and it is known that all these color revolutions involved directly or indirectly the United States of America! They don't hide it too much, on the contrary. When one of these revolutions succeeds, this is the reason to sound the bells – and vice versa. Without exception, Washington has always had a certain geopolitical benefit. Theorists of geopolitical events and processes usually include these processes in the narrowest sense of the word: mass protests and change of power in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2000. year, 2003. in Georgia, 2004. and 2013/2014. in Ukraine. In Kyrgyzstan, the first messengers of such changes appeared in 2005. years since December 2010. until December 2012. it was the " Arab Spring." Along the Middle East and North Africa, as of December 2010. to date, practically, a wave of ”spontaneous” protests and changes has begun. It all began in Tunisia, four months after Obama's presidential memorandum ”political reform in the Middle East and North Adrica”. Just a month later, the regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fell, and then in February 2011. Egypt and Hosni Mubarak. At the same time, in sync, protests against Muammar al-Gaddafi began. They lead to The Assassination of Gaddafi and anarchy that persists to this day. The wave affected Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Djibouti and Iraq to a greater or lesser extent, and the governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco were not spared. It was easy for the instigators of these ”revolutions” to justify their doctrine and actions because it was based on the traditional prejudice that the rulers in the countries of the Middle East did not step down just because of street protests. The dramatic impact of the internet and directing, i.e. manipulation, by the interested services, is ignored. The most striking example of such manipulation is the report of an American citizen from the United Kingdom who depicted on his blog the oppression of a Syrian lesbian само only he used images of a Croatian citizen for that role. There are many examples, and one of the most famous is the unconfirmed case that in Qatar they made a set of one of the city squares of Tripoli where they then, as in every film set, directed images that already fit at a given moment.
Photo: Lisbon 1974.
The "color revolutions" include manifestations of social protests in the countries of the former Eastern bloc that failed: in Armenia in 2008. years later, 2010. in the period since 2011. until 2013. in Russia, the 2020 protests in Belarus. this year, as well as the attempted ”Steppe revolution” in Kazakhstan this year. All in all, the most heated dispute by theorists regarding the classification of this phenomenon is over whether ”color revolutions” should be considered revolutions at all or part of hybrid war. The difference is clear and rightly stated. Revolutions have long been known to be radical changes in social relations or social order, with the participation of the majority of a social group or a whole people, less often a small group of revolutionaries. In any case, classical revolutions differ from the ”colored” in the most important segment: how a critical mass is created to initiate them. Many classical revolutions have certainly been influenced by global world events, but the” color revolutions " are characterized by this very distinction – that they are as a rule encouraged (and even financed) by some other, external power.
As proof that” color revolutions ”are in fact destructive geopolitical moves that often have destructive dimensions, and certainly represent a long-term disruption of normal life in” reborn states with imported democracy, " we take the testimony of the Americans themselves. The Voice of America claims, in light of new unrest in the Middle East, that the Arab Spring movement has given false hope for the future. After only two and a half years, the mood of the population changed drastically: from Triumph to despair, violence and bloodshed. Beginning of 2011. the Egyptians celebrated the end of Hosni Mubarak's thirty-year reign. Throughout the region, dictators (thus declared by the instigators of the color revolution) were ousted from power, and the mood was euphoric. Much of the Middle East, however, was quickly drawn into chaos. For example, in Egypt, we can see what it looked like: the Egyptian army after the ”Egyptian spring” ousted the first president elected in free elections, then released Mubarak from prison and placed him in a far more confortable house arrest. About the example of Libya, whose tragedy still persists, a special book should be written.
Historical facts about " color revolutions”
Photo: Prague 1989. The Velvet Revolution
Today, as typical representatives of the "color revolutions" are considered:
Euromaidan in Ukraine (евромайдан) from 21. November 2013. to 22. February 2014 year;
The Orange Revolution (Помаранчева революція) in Ukraine since 22. November 2004. years to 23. January 2005. years.
The Rose Revolution (Georgia). Вაიიიია " вардебис революция”) in Georgia November 2003. years.
The Tulip Revolution (Жоогазын революциясы), in March 2005. years in Kyrgyzstan.
Raznyk's revolution (”Джинсовая ” – джинс револуция, or” Васильковая революция", Белорусија од 19. to 25. March 2010. years).
The steppe revolution (Степная революция у Казахстану 2022 years).
Bulldozer Revolution (five-Octagon turmoil of 2000 the years in Yugoslavia, theorists unequivocally classify as "colored", i.e. staged, staged revolutions, documenting this and the official statements of the participants).
Photo: symbols of color revolutions
We should not forget their predecessors: the "Carnation Revolution" (Revolução dos Cravos ) in Portugal in 1974. the " Yellow Revolution "(Philippine Revolution of 1986) ”Revolution of the Philippines, " or " soft revolution.""sametova revolucije"; Slov."gentle revolution") in Czechoslovakia, but also some others, less so, around the world.
American expert for the advancement of democracy in the former USSR (sic!former U.S. ambassador to the USSR Michael Anthony McFaul believes that what happened in Kyrgyzstan was not a ”color revolution”. Taking into account the attribute by which he is presented (”expert for the advancement of democracy” in another country), his opinion is taken into account, but it cannot be seen any other way than as an impetus to this ”Steppe color revolution”, that is, to justify its failure. In the United States, there is not a complete consensus on this, so the voice of journalist and publicist Wayne Madsen (born 28) was recorded. April 1954. a well - known conspiracy theorist who runs a popular blog Wayne Madsen Report); he believes that six dozen cases of” color revolutions " were influenced by the interests of the United States and its allies. However, according to Russian political scientist Vladimir Leonidovich Zharikhin, deputy director of the Institute of the Commonwealth of independent states, it is obvious that the US and other countries, under more or less undisguised pressure, use double standards by assessing ”color revolutions” and monitoring how events unfold. They sometimes support the current authorities and regimes, while in other cases they actively and passively (through a series of known measures) support the protesters. In Russia, such a policy has long been called " politics with someone else's hands” (substitute or surrogate war), when metaphorically speaking, the US spills gasoline, and before that it is relatively easy to find hands in which to shove a box of matches.
What do politicians and sociologists say about such revolutions?
Photo: the Carnation Revolution in Portugal
Scientific associates of the Institute of world economy and international relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ran) ”E. M. Primakov” believe that the US is using ”color revolutions” to change the regime or correct the course of peripheral countries. According to the research conducted, there was also the creator of this unusual but effective way of warfare. Unusual, because it is necessarily accompanied by media noise and entropy, which all the world's intelligence shuns. Gene Sharp, born 21. February 1928. years). He is the founder of American. ”Albert Einstein Institution"which is a formally unprofitable civic organization. However, his nicknames say enough: the scientific world in this field considers him Machiavelli (Niccolò Machiavelli) of nonviolence and Clausewitz of nonviolent war. Where did that claim come from? His methodology was first used when storming a television tower in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Few remember or know that this moment was the formal beginning of the collapse of the USSR! Galina Sapozhnikova, a special correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, said in an interview that Sharpe admitted to her that he flew to Moscow in the early 1990s to give lectures at the Academy of Sciences ”where representatives of the Baltic countries came. And he taught them how to ruin the country.”
Photo: Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan
Other sociologists consider these revolutions to be the natural (not necessary) result of the development of society in industrial society). The reason for this is the restriction of Civil Liberties. In this way, peasant revolutions of industrial society with colossal consequences (French Revolution, Russian Revolution) are excluded. According to them, there are no such ”color revolutions” in post-industrial society because political problems are solved democratically, especially in elections. In this way, we come to the unusual conclusion that revolution is an irrational (thus undesirable) phenomenon, a spontaneous reaction of society to social contradictions leading to a dead end, so these reactions are a way of not entering it, to prevent this procedure.
In that case, this theory also falls into the water because it is contradictory to itself; one must spot this impasse and turn that critical mass in the direction that suits him.
How to fight the "color revolution"?
Photo: revolution of roses in Georgia
Different states defend themselves differently from such revolutions, according to their knowledge, economic and military power, internal circumstances (or troubles), etc. The most attacked area is part of the near and Middle East, but also of the former Soviet Union. We can see from the example of Belarus that it is not giving up now. According to the director of the Institute of Cytology and genetics of the Siberian branch of the RAN (Institute of Cytology and genetics), professor N.A. Kolchanova (Колчанов Николай Александрович), scientists of Novosibirsk (the third largest city in the Russian Federation) were ordered to create technology that should prevent ”color revolutions”. How, Of course, for now, is a top scientific, political and even military secret, we cannot know what effects they have come to, but we see on the ground that they are successfully countering such attempts. In any case, in Russia, they are convinced that ”color revolutions” are another form of war that should be given as much attention as the development of all other types of weapons, combining them with weapons that are or are yet to be used in ”wars of knowledge”.
Photo: Steppe revolution in Kazakhstan
The Chinese in their own way defend themselves against such influences. Remembering the experiences from " Heavenly Peace Square "(天安门广场, Tiānānmén guăngchăngthey are 2005. for years, they gave up their intention to allow foreign newspapers to be printed in the country because they assessed the power of the media and the possible avalanche that they could cause. "The Orange Revolution reminded us that saboteurs should not be allowed into the house and that the doors should be closed, so we closed them temporarily.” The decision was explained by Shi Zongyuan, head of the General Administration of press and publishing, giving an interview with the Financial Times.
Photo From 1989.
On behalf of the main suspects, the already mentioned, former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, also spoke. He argued that representatives of U.S. President Barack Obama (who initiated most of these revolutions) did not sponsor ”color revolutions.” However, he admits that other US governments did this, noting that in Serbia ”direct money was given to the opposition to destabilize the situation and it worked”. It also succeeded in overthrowing Prime Minister Mossadiq in Iran. Mohammed Mossadiq was overthrown in 1953. in a coup organized by the CIA and Mi 6. It was also a good example of the " Contras” (contrarrevolucionarios), using the support of Reagan, Argentina, Guatemala and Honduras in the late eighties led an armed struggle against Ortega. There are even more examples on the microplane, but they would be just a good illustration of everything that has already been mentioned.
Source: The color revolution
10. March 2025.