‘You Can Conquer Vast Territories Without Big Armies’ (Source thetrumpet.com)”In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace,” Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov wrote . “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” Gerasimov wrote. “The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.” He continued: The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures—applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population. All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open use of forces—often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation—is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict. This is exactly what we saw in Crimea and Ukraine. Russian-controlled TV blared out the constant message that the new government in Kiev was packed with Nazis. Then Russia used special forces in disguise to take over the Crimean Peninsula, catching the West by surprise. This led to the rigged referendum and eventual annexation of Crimea into Russia.