'Anti-Russian Narratives are Out of James Bond Movies' - Geopolitical Analyst

Hacker group Anonymous has called on the UK government to conduct an honest investigation into the activity of the Integrity Initiative project, a UK-based firm, claiming to be fighting Russian "propaganda". On Friday Anonymous leaked new documents containing evidence of the Integrity Initiative's connections to the Salisbury attack.

Radio Sputnik has discussed the development with Adam Garrie, a geopolitical analyst and director of Eurasia Future, a UK-based think-tank.

Sputnik: According to the leaks, the NATO-affiliated project is aiming to expand the scope of anti-Russian narratives. How dangerous is this?

Adam Garrie: Well, the narratives themselves are only as dangerous as what's done as a result. And in the past that we've seen is sanctions being the most dreadful and magnetic outcome of these kinds of narratives and beyond that you see individuals having their business activity disrupted. Famously, the owner of England's Chelsea football, Roman Abramovich, he was having a difficult getting a visa to the UK over this nonsense. So it disrupts business.

Sanctions are, of course, an act of war. They are totally unnecessary in just about every circumstance, and they're bad for business in multiple countries. So it's really using these narratives that are straight out of some James Bond style thriller in order to try to restrain the economic growth of various transnational partnerships, and in someone who believes in free trade and who believes in as many bilateral international partnerships and business as possible, it's clearly a negative thing.

We've seen this before and unless these narratives stop we'll probably see something similar again.

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Sputnik: How likely is it that we're going to see more nations so to say jump onto the bandwagon of anti-Russian hatred?

Adam Garrie: Well, I think that on that particular bandwagon we aren't really going anywhere, but I don't think that any other nations are going to jump on that bandwagon. We've got to remember that not a single nation in Asia, including Japan, a country that has historic disputes with Russia stemming from the end of the Second World War, even they haven't jumped onto this bandwagon.

It's only really been the large white English-speaking countries and quite a lot of European Union members who have jumped on this. But Africa, Asia, Latin America, they're not particularly interested in this either. Because they're not affected by what Russia does one way or the other or because they're actively trading with Russia.

Sputnik: The leaks we speak of indicate that UK taxpayers' money was used to carry out analysis of the activities of RT and Sputnik with one of the documents recommending banning RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK. What are your thoughts on these attempts to basically silence alternative opinions?

Adam Garrie: I think that it is this issue in the short-term is actually the most important of all. The average person in Britain or anywhere else for that matter, they don't really care about the Great Game. They probably don't know what belt and road activity is.

They probably never heard of Halford Mackinder, but what they've heard of is the fact that people are waiting longer in hospitals to get treatment, that they're paying more for public services and getting less. We see this in France where there've been demonstrations about this. And for governments to waste money and we don't actually know how much money it is, but I think it would be very important for the wider world to find out.

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To waste money on what for an ordinary man and woman is just a ridiculous, obtuse and obscure issue, is just such a waste. I think that the best way to promote peace between countries is to trade freely with countries and this is moving in the opposite direction.

It is this Great Game rivalry where you can't prosper without me failing, where the win-win ethos of the 21^st century is that people mutually benefit from trading with each other. And that's true whether it's China or India. It's true whether it's the European Union and Russia, it's true when it's Turkey and Iran and the list goes on.

So as an advocate for free trade and for win-win partnerships, I am really disturbed by the fact that money is being wasted on creating these narratives, not least because frankly I don't think it costs that much to create them; most of it is just lifted from old James Bond films and other television shows from the 1960s.

So frankly I can say that even if you're going to do this you can pay one bloke in a room with a computer and a Netflix account to write it for minimum wage. So I have a feeling that a lot of people are milking this cow for much more than it's worth.

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Sputnik: What do you think could put the brakes on the scope of anti-Russian narratives? Could it be the fact that, yes, there will be more of veering off towards China and targeting China or some other factors?

Adam Garrie: I think in terms of the Russian narrative dying down, I think that it will just eventually have its lifespan, people will get fatigued. Senator Joe (Joseph) McCarthy was once one of the most powerful politicians in all of the United States, but his fall from grace was even more rapid than his rise.

He was officially censured by the Senate which is a fairly rare move, and the public, in general, turned against him. The mainstream media of the day turned against him, the pop culture turned against him writing songs mocking his anti-red campaign.

And so I think essentially something similar will eventually happen with this. Every war has a lifespan, every political campaign domestically and internationally has a lifespan.

So I think that when the private sector resists similar moves against China that will help retard the progress of this whole thing. I think in a more specific and narrow sense when it comes to Russia, eventually, the narrative will just exhaust itself and they'll move on to something else as they have time and time again.

Views and opinions, expressed in the article are those of Adam Garrie and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik