Applying Putin’s Advice Against Wishful Thinking To Alt-Media’s Color Revolution Speculation

Seeing CIA-orchestrated Color Revolutions in every protest that breaks out in the Global South is just as paranoid and pathological as the US seeing a so-called “Russian trace” in every one that breaks out in the West.

President Putin cautioned his strategic forecasters last week against wishful thinking in their assessments, which is also relevant to the Alt-Media Community (AMC) as the author explained in his piece about that part of his speech. The AMC’s speculation about Color Revolutions is a perfect example where his advice can be applied, particularly the claim that the latest unrest in Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan on Friday was allegedly a manifestation of the CIA’s weaponization of protests for political ends. The author challenged that populist assessment in his analysis about that incident, but there’s more to say about the subject in general than what was shared in that article.  

Seeing CIA-orchestrated Color Revolutions in every protest that breaks out in the Global South is just as paranoid and pathological as the US seeing a so-called “Russian trace” in every one that breaks out in the West. That’s not to say that the CIA isn’t behind some of them or that it can’t shape their dynamics in the direction of its strategic interests, but just that there are many times where such demonstrations are mostly organic and provoked by so-called “trigger events” connected to certain decisions made by the state. In the Uzbek case, this is the report that one of the draft constitutional amendments will remove that autonomous region’s largely superficial right to secede through a referendum.

For the most part, there’s nothing wrong with overestimating an opponent’s capabilities, especially unconventional ones related to orchestrating Color Revolutions. This establishes the scenario’s parameters and enables decisionmakers to understand the socio-political process that might be unfolding. It also ensures that the state has a strategy for dealing with events if they evolve in that direction, both in terms of correcting perceptions about them as well as physically responding to what’s taking place. Moreover, this can also place the incident in a larger strategic context, particularly the New Cold War between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the BRICS-led Global South.

Having said that, such a potential overestimation (which is being done out of an abundance of caution owing to established precedent over the past two decades) shouldn’t automatically lead to an overreaction. To explain, certain “Democratic Security” policies (counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies that also by their very nature concern both preemptive responses to Color Revolutions and that which is decided after they begin materializing) might be counterproductive depending on the state of the affairs when they’re implemented. For example, forcefully dispersing genuinely peaceful though still unauthorized protesters could needlessly escalate matters when other means might better suffice.

Nevertheless, it’s each state’s sovereign right how to respond to each incident as well as how to portray both the event itself and the official reaction to it to the domestic and international masses. In the Uzbek case, the Interior Ministry’s official press release about Friday’s unrest said that it was “a result of misunderstanding of the constitutional reforms that are conducted in the republic”, which strongly suggests that the state doesn’t want to portray the attempt to seize government buildings as a Color Revolution, let alone one linked to foreign intelligence. There’s no denying that such a provocation by the protesters is a Color Revolution tactic, but such technologies have proliferated worldwide over the past two decades to the point where any non-state actor can employ them on their own if they want.

About that and returning to the comparison mentioned at the beginning of this analysis, the utilization of one or another Color Revolution tactic during a protest (whether legal or unauthorized) doesn’t in and of itself make the event a Color Revolution, not to mention one tied to a foreign state’s plot to destabilize the state in which it took place. Anti-COVID protesters across the West have indisputably employed Color Revolution means whether conscious of it or not, the same as Antifa and “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) did during summer 2020’s Hybrid War of Terror on America that was arguably a Color Revolution by the “deep state”-backed Democrats’ front groups to unseat Trump but not a foreign plot.

Despite this insight, everything can still admittedly be very confusing for the general public, especially those who are aware of Color Revolutions and are thus skeptical of the West’s official narrative towards whatever the event might be. The presently chaotic phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity brought about by the Ukrainian Conflict has created a need among the masses for trusted sources to simplify complex events and sequences thereof, ergo one of the reasons why the AMC reflexively describes all protests in the Global South as CIA-orchestrated Color Revolutions even if they’re genuinely organic for the most part and driven by domestic factors like in Karakalpakstan.

Those AMC figures who see Color Revolutions in every Global South protest don’t truly want that to be the case so they’re not engaging in “wishful thinking” per se, but rather a perversion thereof influenced by their tendency to overestimate the CIA owing to established precedent over the past two decades since that intelligence agency began systematically weaponizing protests for political ends across the world. Their intent is in the right place but their resultant information products run the risk of inadvertently misleading their audience if the assessment ultimately ends up being inaccurate, which can in turn unwittingly create an alternative reality in their minds if this isn’t corrected soon thereafter.

Most members of the AMC place inordinate trust in their sources since they instinctively believe them more than they do the Mainstream Media (MSM) from which they fled as “information refugees” after realizing how grossly they’ve been lied to, though that subconsciously disarms them by their own hand in the narrative sense by convincing themselves that the AMC is by nature automatically more accurate in assessing events than the MSM is. That’s not always true as proven by many in the AMC falling under the false beliefs in recent years that President Putin is secretly an anti-Zionist allied with the Iranian-led Resistance and thus preparing to liberating Palestine at a later date and/or that he’s waiting until the right moment to liberate Constantinople from the Turks in order to create a Neo-Orthodox Empire.

Those are extreme examples, but they’ve nevertheless become dogmatic among many in the AMC and are aggressively enforced by gatekeepers, including influential figures within the AMC who “cancel” those who “dare” to contradict these false narratives with facts (especially those from the official Kremlin website confirming the closeness of Russia’s relations with Israel and Turkey). Just as extreme but no less popular, however, is the AMC’s belief that every protest in the Global South is a CIA-orchestrated Color Revolution. That’s not always the case as was argued in this analysis, which is why prudence and a professional commitment to modifying one’s models for explaining certain developments as they evolve should become a fixture in the AMC going forward.

To be absolutely clear, nobody should be condemned for getting something wrong – whether mistakenly describing a protest as a Color Revolution when it isn’t or not doing so before it becomes obvious that it is – but everyone who does get something wrong owes it to their audience to account for why that was. Wishful thinking, which in this context also includes seeing Color Revolutions where they don’t exist due to overestimating the West’s capabilities as a result of established precedence, can inadvertently lead to the creation of alternative realities if it isn’t corrected as soon as possible. It also ignores genuinely grassroots causes behind domestic unrest, including what might be the said state’s own mistakes or shortcomings, and sometimes even prescribes counterproductive solutions.

In accordance with the spirit of President Putin’s advice last week and to quote what the author wrote in his analysis at the time, “strategic forecasters must always aspire to reflect reality as accurately as they can, understanding that this is impossible to perfectly do in practice but nevertheless continually moving in this direction and regularly improving their work to this end.” When it comes to Color Revolutions, not every protest in the Global South is an example of a CIA-orchestrated Hybrid War plot even if there might be an indirect trace in some of them and/or they’re ultimately hijacked to that end. Members of the AMC who are prone to speculating that every such event automatically meets Color Revolution criteria would therefore do well to keep President Putin’s advice about wishful thinking in mind.