Really, only competent, refined military professionals, engineers, and their knowledgeable, competent sympathizers can conduct statecraft now. The weapons / electronics surround dictates this.
My main take-away from this monograph is that whereas USA military planners tend to contemplate diversion and deception as relatively straightforward tools used primarily in the tactical and perhaps some operational depths, their Russian counterparts contemplate diversion and deception inside a large set of related tools (maskirovka) which includes diversion and deception, pretense and disguise, bluff and make-believe, cover-up and dissimulation, subterfuge and posing, hiding and play-acting.
Moreover, the maskirovka tool set does service not alone but integrally with all assets of the armed joint force — space, air, cyber, sea, and land — all assets of the nation’s statecraft — diplomacy, finance, and war-fighting — and all three depths of a campaign — tactical, operational, and strategic. Maskirovka is a weapon contributing to the victory of an integrated architecture of conflict. The maskirovka weapon set is used to seduce an enemy, tracking through all dimensions of his being, eagerly to enter upon conditions internal and external that favor one’s own campaign and disfavor his.
Noteworthy is the grand architecture of the entire campaign which includes maskirovka. Maskirovka is a system of tools of campaign correlated and coordinated with the array of all other tools, military and civilian, a commander controls. The commander has to bring it all together as operations orders that favor his campaign. In his HQ, the entire presentment of campaign, its architecture, not just the glittering bits, must be held as what generates success into victory. The architecture of the conflict is the key to victory. Thus Liddell-Hart: The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
A campaign commander must be a competent mathematician, which is to say an accomplished theologian.
Maskirovka, masquerade, and mascara share the same Indo-European root meaning mask.
Here is a mask:
Maskirov means masquerade, make something look like it points to and participates in the truth. Maskirovka means little masquerade, more like a tale, a fiction, a less-than-truth, make something look like it points to and participates in the truth when in fact it does nothing of the sort and usually points in the opposite direction. ka indicates the diminutive form of, in this case, maskirov in the same way that ly of Billy indicates the diminutive form of Bill.
Theatrical art at its best is maskirov of the truth. At its worst, theatrical art is maskirovka of the truth. The first is edifying, the second debilitating. The difference is as between the whole truth and a partial truth, which is to say, a lie. The whole truth always helps. A partial truth always harms.
Christian Theologians reference The Holy Trinity as Three Persons in One. Greek persona means mask, such as those used in classical theatrical productions. The words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are maskirov of The One God.
The names given to and used to reference God in the several religions are maskirov of The One God. Conversely, the names given to and used to reference God in the several heretical and apostate movements are maskirovka.
There is maskirov that helps one along one’s career in this breathing world, and there is maskirovka that harms one along the same. Indian Sages and Scriptures speak of the former as vidyamaya and the latter as avidyamaya. Vidya means see and maya means delusion. a means not. Vidyamaya (maskirov) is delusion that leads to seeing. Avidyamaya (maskirovka) is delusion that leads to blindness.
Note! Both vidyamaya and avidyamaya are maya, maskirov, delusion, but one helps and one harms the human career. For this reason Saints, Sages, and Avathars commend assiduous discrimination, discernment in all things whatsoever, and especially in spiritual matters. Is what one receives day-to-day, hour-by-hour maskirov or maskirovka? One is food, one is poison, both often arriving on the same plate. Viveka is the Indian word for discrimination. Vivekananda means the divine bliss one earns from steady practice of discernment.
Christian Sage Nicholas of Cusa notes difference in effects of masking and therefore the desirability and undesirability of the masks themselves. Helpful masks, such as concepts, doctrines, and liturgical and pietistical practices, Cusa calls docta ignorantia, learned ignorance. Harmful ones he calls ignorantia. Aetiological study of the word ignorance itself is an helpful spiritual practice.
Phenomenological difference in consequences as between the effects of masks are mighty and colossal. Masks must be discerned carefully and used judiciously. Such are the powers of maskirov and maskirovka. The Christian Liturgical Year is a helpful maskirov, a beneficial docta ignorantia, vidyamaya. Eventually, one must transcend masks altogether and emerge in the universal absolute itself.
Apparently, Russian military doctrine commends simultaneous and systematic use of maskirov — vidyamaya — and maskirovka — avidyamaya — at all three depths of Operational Art (Deep Battle): tactical, operational, strategic. Of necessity and by the rigors and standards of military ethics, commanders supply one another with maskirov. They supply their enemy with maskirovka. Compare Subutai.
Maskirov and maskirovka are in universal, omnipresent mixture. They present in mixture at the same time and place whether one wants them to or not. This implies, among many other particulars, that Information Operations, for example, do not have to create deception. Deception, like truth, is present willy-nilly. It’s like air, just standing about waiting for employment.
Likewise, Christian evangelism is not a kerygma, a special teaching or story that must be generated and crafted. It is simply the truth everywhere and always in its native power waiting to be spoken, read, sung, enjoyed, and most importantly practiced by the native capacities of a human being.
Think Michaelangelo famously saying that he did not carve the statue into a marble block, he removed the marble which encased the statue within. Spiritual exercise is this. Debris flies everywhere away from the inner necessity (Indian swadharma) as gradually it appears.
In the same way, as I watch and marvel at the Russian SMO against the USA-NATO pileup in 404 [Ukraine], it seems to me that their General Staff employ maskirovka as (1) exploitation of delusion already universally present — and especially so among Nazi drug addicts comprising the 404 regime: hang ’em with the noose they already placed around their own neck — and (2) a multi-role, multi-domain weapon simultaneously committed in the tactical, operational, and strategic depths of campaign and combat architecture.
Maskirovka need not be created. It needs only missioning to cause an enemy to make decisions to move in a direction they eagerly believe is for their benefit but is not. Maskirovka has the inherent nature of seduction, an invitation to apparent self-improvement by turns lascivious and avaricious. The Devil tempts us with heaven, not perdition. You bag a man by appealing to his vanity, not his fear. In the words of The Immortal Bard, It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, And that craves wary walking.
It seems to me, a novice in these matters and not a military professional, that in formal Russian doctrine — Deep Operations, Deep War, Operational Art — maskirovka is weapon technology alongside rifles, cannons, rockets, radars, radios, ships, and aircraft. This propensity and well-honed ability of the Russian mind to engineer and labor in compelling architectures of professional art is a marvel to behold. They don’t need to out-spend their enemies. They out-think them and out-design them, while their enemies chase sex, money, and drugs.
Russians today remind me of 18th Century Scots in this regard, who, in a spate of glorious renunciation (Sanskrit vairagya, detachment from excitement) built out (Greek economos) the culture of the modern Latin Church because their children en masse learned Latin and Greek from an early age and so could design agricultural and industrial architecture. Russians today build out the culture of the modern Greek (Orthodox) and Latin Church — recombined upon transcending The Schism of 1054 AD — because their children en masse learn Engineering from an early age and so can design military and political architecture.
The authority of military and political architecture supersedes the authority of agricultural and industrial architecture. The common thread between Scots then and Russians now is widespread and very serious skill in the Mathematical Arts, which is to say, in Theology. After all, Theology is the subtle ground of success by the other professions also necessary to the success of individuals, societies, governments, and civilizations: Medicine, Military, Law, and Pedagogy.
It’s an attitude thingy before it’s an aptitude thingy. If it doesn’t become an aptitude thingy, it’s dopey. This is an attitude and aptitude thingy trans-Schism of 1054 AD:
For us, this is a contiguous region with which we are connected by a common history, a multi-level and widely branched system of mutually beneficial and equal relations based on alliance and strategic partnership and integration, added the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation.
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
[now, that’s maskirov, and for some, maskirovka]