- Julia Ioffe, The Spy Who Drove Me GQ 07/24/2018
- Gene Lyons, So Does That ‘R’ Stand For Republicans — Or Russians? National Memo 07/24/2018
- Corey Robin, The Question of Russia and the Left Jacobin 07/23/2018, responding to this Facebook post by Scott Horton 07/21/2018 (?) [Facebook's practice of not showing the date on the current day's post complicates getting the actual dates on posts like this; it's especially difficult with a Facebook poster so prolific as Scott Horton]
- Seth Ackerman, Russiagate Can’t End Well for the Left Jacobin 07/24/2018
- Micah Zenko, Democrats Will Regret Becoming the Anti-Russia Party Foreign Policy 07/24/2018
The other is that it was disturbingly clear at the time of the election that advocates of a hawkish policy toward Russia, both the neocon and humanitarian-hawk varieties, were eager to use the scandal to discredit antiwar critics and websites like The Intercept, Truthdig, and Consortium News that have often done important investigative reporting (The Intercept) and provided important, well-infomred dissent from warmongering narratives.
One early alarm bell was the Washington Post's infamous story promoting "PropOrNot," a website promoting a McCarthyist-style list of sites allegedly serving as Russian propaganda outlets. The Editor's Note that was later posted at the beginning of the web version of the article is an embarrassing admission about the quality of the story itself: Craig Timberg, Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say 11/24/2018. See also Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton, Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group The Intercept 11/26/2018, and Adrian Chen, The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda New Yorker 12/01/2016.
The general principle of "just because your're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you" applies here, cutting both ways. Or maybe several different ways. Because, yes, Russia makes propaganda to screw with other countries' politics, including the US. Yes, the US also carries out similar operations, including against Russia. That doesn't mean that either side can or should ignore what the other side is doing it or should neglect to take measures to protect themselves. That's how international politics and international espionage works. And none of that means that people in any country shouldn't criticize such operations by their own country if they think it is problematic or wrong.
Another practical political problem in the United States is that the Clinton campaign immediately after the election seized on Russian interference as the reason Hillary Clinton lost to the Orange Clown. Of course, at various times, her loyalists have insisted that the reason was Jill Stein, that the reason was Bernie Sanders and the BernieBros, that the reason was James Comey. All without giving up the notion that Russian interference was the reason. Politics is politics. But aside from the fact that it was a deflection from some stunning mistakes by the Clinton campaign, the very slim but decisive margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin mean that it's nearly impossible to definitely say that any one of them was a unique cause of Clinton's loss. Plus, the very fact that she was a very sigificant majority of the popular vote nationally raises questions about how effective the Russian efforts may be.
The one thing I've heard that might plausibly turn out to be a decisive intervention - but also hasn't been shown to be so at this writing - is that if Russians worked through their NRA connections to finance and/or direct very targeted campaigns and get-out-the-vote operations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and/or Wisconsin on behalf of Trump. But that's also not something that can be justified based on what's currently in the public record.
The articles cited at the start of this post bring out aspects of the Trump-Russia issue that I find helpful in illustrating the various dilemmas for the press, political parties, and activists that we're seeing play out. Julia Ioffe's piece is an informative and entertaining account of her trying to figure out whether a talkative Uber driver she kept encountering at the Aspen security conference this year was a Russian agent of some sort. It's a reminder for people wondering about what kind of associations with Russians might be considered guilty ones. The lesson she draws from the experience sounds to me like a version of Obama's purported guidline for foreign policy, "Don't do stupid s**t." Most people involved in politics or familiar with basic ethics should have some sense of what kind of things it's okay to chat with strangers about and which not. And also to be on the lookout for people offering some kind of corner-cutting arrangements that might somehow be compromising or make thembody subject to blackmail of some kind.
For most people in the US and Europe, the risk of crossing paths with Russian agents is vanishingly small. But there are other kinds of "espionage" involving trade secrets, proprietary company information, legal confidentiality requirements, that do touch a large number of people. So while there are always borderline cases and gray areas, avoiding getting involved in foreign espionage isn't really that big of a challenge for most people it might touch.
A couple of fictional presentations involving espionage come to mind that actually are relevant to this. One is the recent, much-acclaimed TV series The Americans, which has generated many a fantasy about being seduced by Russian spies. Another is an older mini-series, Oppenheimer (1980), which stars Sam Waterston as J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhatten Project, who had his own issues with security matters.,
Marcy Wheeler describes a recent real world case in which she reported a source to the FBI that she "had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US.": Putting a Face (Mine) to the Risks Posed by GOP Games on Mueller Investigation Emptywheel 07/03/2018.
Propaganda is a squishier matter. But I have to admit that in general, that doesn't look to me (mostly) like such a complicated thing, either. Now, it's very possible that with decades of political junkiedom behind me, I'm oversimplifying a bit here. But the same kind of critical thinking people should be applying to news coverage generally, or to scientific claims in the popular press, or to any kind of advertising, should be sufficient to protect most people from getting suckered by fake propaganda claims of any sort, foreign election interference included.
It makes sense for public institutions to fund sites like EU vs Disinfo. But they need to be read with a sensible critical eye, as well. The same applies to other publicly-funded news sites, some of which, like the BBC or Austria's ORF, have a solid reputation for independent reporting. And, of course, anyone trzying to understand the diplomacy and international politics of countries adversaries of one's own needs to make some effort to know and understand what the propaganda promoted by the Other Side is.
And, on the critical thinking topic, facts and arguments used in propaganda may be true. Propaganda consists of presentations meant to persuade. In international politics, facts don't normally simply speak for themselves. But the difference between fact and fiction is still important.
The other posts deal with various aspects of the politics of Russiagate. Gene Lyons gives a decent picture of the current state of the Republican politics of this. The Republican base and most of its officeholders don't actually seem to care if Russia is meddling with our election system, as long as it helps Republicans. I probably would have speculated that in November 2016. Now it's hard to avoid that conclusion. (Gene does brush up against the "17 intelligence agencies" problem, though.)
Corey Robin and Seth Ackerman focused on the ways that a careless use of the issue by Democrats can backfire. Corey is reacting n particular to a Facebook post by human rights attorney Scott Horton. Horton in the screenshot from Corey's post:
European intelligence analysts I have spoken with over the last month say that they have picked up clear data suggesting that Putin has authorized and put in play a major active measures campaign designed to split and disable the Democratic Party because he believes this is the surest way to keep Donald Trump in power and undercut any opposition to him. The method used, according to these sources, will generally follow what was done during the 2016 campaign, where one of the core strands of the Russian operation focused not so much on supporting Trump as it did on persuading key Democratic constituencies that it wasn't worth going to the polls to vote. This included general demonization of Hillary Clinton and other candidates as "establishment" or "organization" candidates, and repeating claims that the DNC had "rigged' the vote against Sanders (designed to persuade Sanders supporters not to vote or to vote for another Russia-backed surrogate, Jill Stein); alienating blacks and Hispanics, and persuading them that the Democratic candidates really did nothing for them, etc. The Russian operation will also aim, in the classic fashion, to pick Democratic candidates in the primary period who, for whatever reason, are seen as likely not electable. Some evidence of this is clearly at play now. The key thing to look for is not positive messaging supporting any particular policy program, but negative messaging attacking other Democrats. [my emphasis]I'm not sure from what I've seen that the 2016 Russian election operation "focused not so much on supporting Trump as it did on persuading key Democratic constituencies that it wasn't worth going to the polls to vote." That argument doesn't support claims that Putin was specifically trying to get Trump elected, although Putin did say in the press conference at last week's Helsinki lovefest that he did prefer that Trump be elected. It may be a distinction without a difference. From the reporting I've seen, it does seem that Russian interference in the US in 2016 was more aimed at causing headaches for Hillary than determining the outcome.
But we should be careful about crediting Russia with superspy capabilities in something so difficult as fixing US votes to produce certain outcomes. The US voting systems need to be protected. But it's worth remembering that two of the CIA's most famous and successful regime change operations, Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, relied a lot on dumb luck. And we're still experiencing the long-term negative blowback from the former.
Horton amplifies his perspective in this post of 07/22/2018 (The Facebook embed function also doesn't show the posting date):
This fits more with a Russian approach of causing chaos. Although they have a specific goal of wrecking the EU. But Horton's presentation there blurs the very real distinction between rightwing anti-EU criticisms and strategies and the EU-critical position of parties like the German Left Party (DIE LINKE), the party of the politician Sarah Wagenknecht pictured there. Thre are real problems with the EU that neither the center-left or the center-right have addressed sufficiently. The best way for Putin to get his wish of seeing the EU break up is to continue with the extend-and-pretend solutions on which the EU currently relies in the long-range crises of the euro and of immigration.
Finally, Micah Zenko warns of the practical foreign policy risks of the Democrats treating Russia as a simple bogeyman:
When a political party increases its animus toward a foreign country—believing that this will enhance its own popularity—it introduces second-order effects that can manifest themselves years later. It creates a voting bloc of Americans who become socialized to hate a foreign government and, by extension, its citizens. It reduces the motivations and complexities of that government to a simplified caricature of anti-Americanism or just plain evil. More broadly, it engenders hostility between the United States and foreign countries, which makes cooperation over shared problems more difficult and rapprochement unimaginable.Actual foreign policy is important, too. We need a smart, practical,
Moreover, political parties attempting to out-tough each other has enabled some abysmal recent foreign-policy outcomes. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which declared it “the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” was passed overwhelmingly in the House, passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, and signed by President Bill Clinton in just 32 days. That legislation was preceded, and followed, by both parties wildly exaggerating the threat that Saddam posed to the United States and its regional interests. Likewise, Trump’s confounding withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—which Iran was adhering to—was politically cost-free to the president because Democrats and Republicans had demonized Iran to the point of simplistic malevolence for decades.
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