How Did Putin, the KGB Thug, Get so Clever?

It is no secret that if you want to improve yourself, an easy way is to read a book. The better the book the more you will learn.

When Putin did not invade the Crimea, he was leaving clues about what was on his book list. After all, the thug thing to do was to use that large Russian army and invade the Crimea. The conquest would be quick and easy. Whose plan or should I say whose book was Putin using? Was it Chinese General Sun Tzu, German General Rommel, Viet Nam General Giap, Russian General Zhukov, or American General Patton?

Putin’s strategy was based on deceit and deception more than brute force. He may have been using the playbook and strategy of the two most powerful Republican brothers of the 20th century, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. They were powerful conservative corporate lawyers.

John Foster was appointed Secretary of State and Allen was appointed head of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) by Dwight Eisenhower. The book The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer tells how the pair of religious zealots grew up to be economic and political zealots. The brother’s first allegiance was to God and big business.

As members of the Eisenhower cabinet, they continued helping their corporate clients by punishing any country that resisted American corporate exploitation. In 1954, the moderate democratically elected government of Guatemala decided that the Dulles brother’s former client, The United Fruit Company, should stop treating the country like a plantation.

John Foster called the government a dictatorship. Allen bribed officials, newspapers, and hired thugs to create chaos and violence. Guatemalan President, Arbenz, was driven from power. John Foster said that America had nothing to do with the coup and that Guatemalan’s had removed a tyrant.

How did Putin learn this strategy that he employed so well in the Crimea? He may have read Kinzer’s book. Putin may have heard about it over rum and cigars with Fidel Castro. Before Fidel overthrew the American supported dictator Batista, he lived in Mexico City. There he had conversations with Che Guevara who had been in Guatemala during the coup. Che said that because Guatemala was an open democratic society, it was easy for the American government to infiltrate, bribe, lie, and disrupt society.

Fidel said that if the revolution was successful in Cuba, it would not be a democratic government. A Cuban democracy would be too tempting for American corporations to repeat what they had done in Guatemala.

The Dulles brothers had created the blueprint for the quick, cheap, overthrow of a democracy. Putin used that blueprint in the Crimea. Outside Russia, no one believed Putin’s rhetoric about a local popular uprising. Outside America, no one believed that Guatemalan’s staged a coup on their own. The target audiences in each country were disposed to believe what they heard and they did enthusiastically.  

The Dulles brothers first used that strategy in Iran in 1953. Another former Dulles client was treating another country badly and the democratically elected secular government of Prime Minister Mossadegh got the Dulles brothers treatment. Since then America has lamented the lack of a moderate secular government in the Middle East.

At the last national security meeting of the Eisenhower administration, the president said to Allen Dulles “You have left a legacy of ashes”. Translated, it meant that after eight years as head of the C.I.A., Dulles had done nothing positive to leave to the next administration, eight years were totally wasted. Many would have said “counterproductive.”

Legacy of Ashes is the award winning history of the C.I.A. by Tim Weiner