Are Russian information operations against the US a war?

Molly McKew defines herself on her Twitter account @MollyMcKew as an "information warfare expert." She has a couple of articles I want to highlight here: Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Treying to Reshape America Wired 10/03/2018, giving a summary of some important alt-right contemporary history, from Gamergate to QAnon; and, Putin’s Real Long Game Politico 01/01/2017, a piece from just after the 2016 election on Russian information operations.

McKew also advertises herself as a "Foreign Policy and Strategy Consultant." Wired's author bio notes, "She advised Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili's government from 2009 to 2013 and former Moldovan prime minister Vlad Filat in 2014–15." The Politico description of her includes, "She is a registered agent for Georgian President Saakachvili’s government, which she advised from 2009-2013, and for former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat, who has been in prison since 2015." She begins her Politico piece by recalling "sitting on my front porch with a friend best described as a Ukrainian freedom fighter." So it's not surprising that she is sharply focused on Russian online propaganda messaging.

I try to be cautious with terms like "information warfare" or "information terrorism." Because what is being described is generally less immediately fatal than bullets and bombs, which are involved in actual war and terrorism. What is usually called information warfare is otherwise known as "propaganda." It deserves to be taken seriously. But it's effects play out in different ways than shooting people with guns. It's a distinction worth preserving.

Cyber-warfare is a broader concept, and some caution is appropriate in what to include in it, as well. Spying, espionage, sabotaging vital infrastructure, disrupting military operations, all those can be understood as part of warfare. Whether a foreign power monkeying with the computers at a power plant should be considered an act of war that justifies the guns-and-bombs kind of military response is another question.

The Wired article is a longread that explains a process that the alt-right currently uses to spread outlandish conspiracy theories. She talks about the online networks the alt-right has developed as a "runaway narrative architecture":

Gamergate became Pizzagate became QAnon became entrenched modern narrative architecture ripe for exploitation. The cadre mobilized a movement of misogyny and white nationalism and intimidation — of angry boys who reveled in the chaos god of Roger Stone — and cultivated the narrative to make it acceptable to a wider lane of conservatives. This is triggering violence and identifiable forms of extremism that we can no longer ignore.

Free speech discussions often bring up the famous line by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes from a case called U.S. v. Schenck (1919). “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Trevor Timm explains in It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote The Atlantic 11/02/2012:

In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" (emphasis mine).

The text of the Brandenburg v. Ohio decision is available online. As it happens, that ruling overturned a conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader for advocating political violence in the abstract.

Freedom of speech in US law does not give immunity to criminal conspiracies, whether the crime involved is stealing money or a mob boss ordering a hit on someone.

And we need to keep in mind that distinction when it comes to "information terrorism". Being a verbal scumbag is disgusting. But it's not the same as directing someone to commit an act of violence. Responsible people should also keep in mind the likely consequences of spreading inflammatory and/or crazy conspiracy theories on some of the human loose cannons out there. That doesn't mean we should minimize the irresponsibitlity of people like some of the political actors McKee describes in Wired. It does mean that a term like "information terrorism" should be used narrowly for direct incitement to violence or direct threats of violence. Not everything that makes people uncomfortable should be called "terrorism."

Also, if you're going to brag very publicly about hanging out with a "Georgian freedom fighter" at your residence in Washington DC, it might be prudent to exercise caution about encouraging expansive definitions of terrorism.

When it comes to foreign policy and the issue of Russian interference in elections via propaganda, McKee's January 2017 article was already engaging in threat inflation, one of the most damaging characteristics of US foreign policy since the Second World War:

What both administrations [Obama and Trump] fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.

I've always maintained that Russian interference in the US Presidential election in 2016 was a serious issue that needed to be seriously invetigated and countered. Much more information about that Russian effort is now in the public record than was the case when her Politico article was published.

But we also need to be realistic about it. Is there any way to reliably measure the influence of those notorious Russian bots? Not that I've seen. Direct intervention in the physical election systems is a more serious problem, but there is still no real evidence in the public record of which I'm aware that Russian hackers changed or erased votes or otherwise directly affected the voter count. But hacking election systems is illegal in itself. So are foreign donations to American political campaigns, and it appears that the NRA still has to account for its conduct in the matter of Russian money in the 2016 Presidential election. And, of course, there are numerous cases established by convictions in the Special Council's probe of Russian interference that involve inappropriate involvement by US political actors with foreign money adn actors.

But whether Russian bots amplifying Republicans smears and campaign themes rise to the level of those more concrete crimes is dubious. One Russian political intervention that might reasonably be judged as effective came in early 2016 in Europe. On New Year's Eve at the end of December, there were a number of sexual harassment of women in the German city of Cologne during the outdoor celebrations there in the plaza in front of the cathedral, many of them perpetrated by foreigners (Arabs and North Africans), and many cited by the police were asylum seekers. Germany and Austria and several Balkan countries were then still struggling with how to manage the ongoing wave of refugees that coming into Europe at the time in extremely high numbers compared to the years before and after. Russian information operations in 2015 promoted the notion that Germany would accept all comers, an action consistent with Putin's goal of weakening the EU by promoting tensions bewteen EU countries, in this case greatly assisted by the Hungarian government's handling of refugees.

The critics of Merkel's immigration policy of the moment seized on the Köln incident as an example of the dangers posed by her policy, thier message facilitated by the clumsy police public information operations after the event. Then in January, Russian state media seized on a routine news story of a 13-year-old girl named Lisa who had gone missing in Berlin and then turned up the next day. They actively spread the story that she had been kinapped by foreigners and raped for 30 hours, after which the police were said to have forced her to claim the sex was consensual in order to protect the Evil Foreigners. (Alice Bota, Das missbrauchte Mädchen Zeit Online 21.01.2016; Christine Kensche, „Der Fall zeigt, Lisa ist ein Missbrauchsopfer“ Welt 20.06.2017)

The Russian government used that story to promote the Putinist narrative that Europe was allowing itself to be overrun by dangerous foreigners. (Lisa's family is Russian-German.) Alice Bota quotes a commentator on Russian Channel One saying, "Underage girls are being raped, the police do nothing, the perpetrators go free. That is the new order in Germany." Presumabley because of the age of the girl, the circumstances of her disappearance were not immediately publicly explained. But Bota reports that the Berlin police did specifically and publicly said at the time she the girl was not raped.

The story was it spread in Europe, but did it have an effect in Germany and Austria? Bota gives no indication that it was. Russian propaganda was happy to magnify the Trump-style agitation against foreigners as rapists. But how much effect the magnification of such messages promoted by domestic xenophobes in the EU had is, as in the American election, hard to measure. Still, Kensche's 2017 report adds of the aftermath in Germany:

Fünf Männer attackieren die Flüchtlingsunterkunft gegenüber Lisas Schule. Ihre Cousine spricht am Rand einer NPD-Demonstration, die Partei hält eine Kundgebung gegen „Überfremdung“ ab. Hunderte Russlanddeutsche ziehen vor das Kanzleramt, auch NPD und Pegida mischen mit. Propagandaforscher erklären, Russland mache gezielt Stimmung gegen die Bundesrepublik.

[Five men attack the refugee housing opposite Lisa's school. Her cousin speaks on the fringes of a {far-right} NPD demonstration, the Party {NPD} holds a rally against "over-foreignization". Hundreds of Russian-Germans appear in from the Chancellor's office, and the NPD and {the far-right anti-immigrant group} Pegida join them. Propaganda researchers declare that Russia is making a targeted effort to turn the mood against Germany.]

The case caused some notable diplomatic tension between Russia and Germany. So it clearly had a real-world effect on politics.

In 2017, a fuller story emerged in court. It did involve a defendent identified as Ismet S., who presumably has some kind of immigrant background. When he was 18 and Lisa 13, they carried on a romance that included sleeping together once. He was convicted for the statutory rape and for child pornography.

McKew's Wired article gives a good description of the use of rape in political and ehtnic propaganda:

Through each iteration of this [online rightwing] network, rape has been a constant theme. Rape and pedophilia are potent triggers that elicit an intense emotional response from an audience. Rape has been used to fling charges of hypocrisy—almost always involving accusations against Bill Clinton or other Democrats. It has been used to highlight examples of "fake news" by pointing to the few cases where the media has promoted unsubstantiated rape allegations. It has been used in attempts to prove elite corruption by insisting that there is a secret cabal of elites who are pedophiles and predators. It has been used to normalize racism—referring to blacks and Muslims as serial rapists and to migrants as rapists and killers. And it has been used to justify misogyny by arguing that rape is "misunderstood."

McKew in the 2017 article paints the Russian influence operations as strikingly effective. But, compared to the concrete practices of bribery and injecting funds into foreign political groups, it's hard to argue that their propaganda bots are nearly as effective.

With direct manipulation of vote results, the kinds of measures that are needed to guard against that are largelyh the same as those needed to guard against voter suppression efforts. And the efforts to counter Russian propaganda are also part of the effort to combat general misinformation and "fake news" from domestic sources.

But even beyond information operations, McKew's depiction of US-Russia relatioships as "a war ... to be won, decisively — not a thing to be negotiated or bargained," is very much threat inflation. It's not a realistic way to see US-Russian relations. She even seems to be arguing that diplomacy is useless in dealing with Russia. She writes, "As Obama did, Trump has already made the first mistake in negotiating with the Russians: telling them that there is anything to negotiate." Which strikes me as a pretty nihilistic take on the subject.

Russiagate today

Here are several recent articles that bring out important considerations on the Trump-Russia scandal, i.e., "Russiagate":

• 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

I've been posting since 2016 about the Trump-Russia scandal. I've always seen two distinct concerns looking at it from a progressive viewpoint. One is that it is a real problem. Based on what was in the public record by the time of the election, at a very minimum we had reports that the "intelligence community" thought Russia was hacking the American election campaign in some way. So that's something that should be taken seriously and deserved a real investigation of some kind, whether Congressional or a fact-finding commission of some kind.

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.

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.

Actual foreign policy is important, too. We need a smart, practical, and peace-oriented foreign policy. And when it comes to Russia, a policy that addresses real problems and threats, from election interference to the Crimea, while also working to forward common interests like nuclear disarmament and sound climate policy. And one that recognizes that Russia is a power far weaker than the old Soviet Union and has no realistic possibilities to become one in any forseeable future. For the Democrats to blow that by following their own conservative instincts to present themselves as the tougher-than-the-Republicans party would be a real tragedy.

NATO and Europe after the latest Trump shenanigans

Raimund Löw gives this evaluation of the state of relations between the EU/NATO countries and Trump's USA in Wie Donald Trump Europa zerstören will Falter 18.07.2018

Trump hat in Brüssel die niedrigen Rüstungsausgaben der Nato-Partner angeprangert. Angesichts seiner Annäherung an Russland fehlt dem Vorwurf die politische Logik. Dazu kommt: Höhere nationale Rüstungsbudgets lösen nicht das Hauptproblem, dass in Europa alle Armeen das Gleiche tun. Sie unterhalten alle ihre Panzer, Flugzeuge und Geschütze. Die militärische Arbeitsteilung ist trotz Nato und EU minimal. Das nationalstaatliche Denken beim Militär erhöht die Kosten und senkt die Effizienz.

Kein europäischer Nationalstaat könnte gegenwärtig im Ernstfall ohne US-Hilfe bestehen.

Politische Freiheiten, Gewaltenteilung und Pressefreiheit, für die der Westen steht, sind es wert, verteidigt zu werden.

Gefährdet werden sie von den eigenen autoritären Nationalisten, von Donald Trumps Amerika und den von Washington gesponnenen merkwürdigen Allianzen.

[Trump in Brussels demounced the low armaments expenditures of the NATO partners. In light of his rapprochement with Russia, the accusation lacks political logic. On that matter: Higher national defense budgets will not solve the main problem, which is that in Europe all the armies do the same thing. They all maintain their tanks, planes, and guns. But the military division of labor is minimal, despite NATO and the EU. The national-state thinking in military affairs increases the costs and reduces the efficiency.

No European national state could presently last in case of emergency without US help.

Political liberties, separation of powers, and freedom of the press, for which the West stands, are worth defending.

They are being endagered by our own authoritarian nationalists, by Donald Trump's America and by the strange alliances that Washington has knitted together.]

It's unlikely that Russia, which is relatively weak in conventional military power, has any real intention of annexing former Soviet Republics like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, or the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. But they actually did annex the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. This kind of violation of legal national borders is a violation of international law. And the NATO countries have to take that seriously.

Then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave what is one of the the best descriptions I've ever heard of the danger of belligerent nationalism when he was arguing for the NATO intervention in Kosovo. I supported that intervention at the time but the postwar view of the results made me highly dubious of its necessity or desirability, as I explained in James Galbraith on lessons of the Kosovo War 05/13/2004. And my view since then has only gotten more critical. But what Fischer said then is still worth noting:

Fischer made these comments on the PBS Newshour of 05/25/99 (the given link is now dead):

If you were to ask me a half year ago whether we [the governing coalition in Germany] would politically survive a bombing campaign of 60 days, I would say "never." We are now very united not only in Germany, but also in the alliance. I think this is a very positive result. On the other side, I mentioned it before, you must understand that in Germany, there is a trauma of the two world wars and especially in the older generation. Germany, for example, accepted much more refugees than all other countries. Why? Because many of us, my family is for 200 years lived in Budapest. We are ethnic Germans from Budapest. After-- in 1946, we were sent back like hundreds of thousands of other Germans to Germany after 200 years. So the experience to be displaced persons or refugees is very substantial in our people. So I mention that, that I think tradition and historical experiences, historical fears are very important. ...

I was a peace activist against colonial wars. But this is not a colonial war I think. This is an aggressive confrontation against aggressive nationalism. In the 30's, Milosevic would fit -- would have fitted wonderful in the political landscape of a fascist Europe and fascist means not only the extreme -- most extreme form of fascism of the Nazis. Mussolini, Franco and all the others. It's an aggressive nationalism and is believing in the right of its own people to attack, to fight for territory for whatever and to suppress others, the Balkans is full of this heritage. They all have their maps in their pockets. And these maps mean bloodshed and means real disaster. And Milosevic is acting in that way. And we cannot accept it. This would mean that Europe, the principals of Europe, of unification would be, I think, attacked and if Milosevic will win, others will follow in the Balkans and then we will have a real security problem. Therefore, he must be stopped. [my emphasis]

That applies to the Russian annexation of Crimea, as well.

Democrats at the moment don't like to hear it, but NATO's action in Kosovo, including recognizing Kosovo as an independent country, was one factor shaping Russian policy in Crimea. That does not justify it. And the referendum conducted there also does not justify annexing part of another country without that's country's agreement. Americans even half-familiar with the history of our own Civil War shouldn't need a lot of explanation about the problem with that idea. It's also a ploy that Britain has used and still uses today to justify holding illegal colonial possessions, including the Malvinas/Falkland Islands (Argentina) and Gibralter (Spain).

The smaller portions of territory in Ukraine and Georgia that Russia also de facto controls are practical measures from a Russian point of view to prevent the incorporation of either country into NATO. But those are also a problem, based as they are in part on the presence of ethnic/linguistic Russian populations in those areas. As Fischer said in 1999, "They all have their maps in their pockets. And these maps mean bloodshed and means real disaster." It's not only in the Balkans where that is so.

But Russia is the single biggest military security worry for NATO countries. And especially for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were part of the former Soviet Union like Georgia and Ukraine and therefore viewed by Putin's government as a legitimate Russian sphere of influence. As a practiacl matter, every step of the post-1990 NATO expansion was dubious and risky, each one more than the others. But with the Baltic countries, NATO accepted countries that were atually part of the old Soviet Union. And did so apparently thinking that it was not such a big deal at all.

But it is. Even if it was a bad idea to incorporate them into NATO, there are NATO allies now. And if the Russians were to take part of their territory and NATO does not respond militarily to push them out, that would call into question that value of the NATO alliance, to put it mildly. As Löw puts it, Trump's approach already means, "Europa ist dabei, seinen weltpolitischen Anker zu verlieren. Der amerikanische Schutzschild über der Nato, inklusive der ehemaligen Sowjetrepubliken im Baltikum, gilt nur mehr halb." ("Europe is already on the point of losing its world-political anchor. The American protective shield over NATO, including the former Soviet republics in the Baltics, now only half applies.")

Joschka Fischer on the rise of China and "the descent of the West"

"The global Western era is coming to an end in our time." - Joschka Fischer, Der Abstieg des Westens: Europa in der neuen Weltornung des 21.Jahrhunders (2018)

Joschka Fischer's latest book is a broad sketch of the state of world politics. Obviously a very large subject! And the satellite's eye view inevitably involved in such an undertaking can induce dizziness at times. But as a former Foreign Minister of Germany and as someone who have been intensely engaged in politics since his youth, Fischer does a respectable job of it, with particular emphasis on the challenges the changes present for European foreign policy.

Fischer sees the rise of China toward being the world's leading power in the world as being the geopolitical consideration already defining the world in the 21st century. He looks at this development through a foreign-policy "realist" lens, viewing China's rise not as a threatening menace to be suppressed or some ideal to be supported but rather as a normal development in the relative power of nations in the world. He sees us as now being in a "global transition phase to a new, Asia-centric world order." (The quotes from the book in this post are my translations from the German original.)

Many Americans are inclined to see US predominance in the world as some kind of inevitable historical development, even divine providence. But that predominance didn't show itself on the world scene until the end of the First World War, and even then proceeded in fits and starts until the end of the Second World War. The "Westphalian" system of nation-states as we know it began with the Peace of Westphalia in 1848. Just two centuries ago, the dominant powers in the world were the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, Prussia, and the Ottoman Empire. All of those had ceased to exist by 1918.

Very mindful of the risks that the relative decline of the US in world power and China's rise to the leading role, his hope is that the process will involve more active, pragmatic cooperation than military hostility. He calls this option "Chimerica." Neither German nor English readers are likely to miss the suggestive ambiguity of that term because of its resemblance to "chimera/Chimäre." Unlike much of the current political conversation in the US, Fischer views Russia realistically as at most a secondary player for the foreseeable future. He sees three major options for Russia, due to its weak economy, retarted innovation, and heavy dependence on fossil fuel production: stay weak and isolated; become a junior partner to China; or, develop a cooperative relationship with Europe.

Fischer has a Malthusian streak that sees world population growth almost as a self-evident evil, to which he apparently sees no real solution in sight. In fact, urbanization and the growing demand by women worldwide for equal rights create a strong tendency toward the stabilization of the world population in the 21st century.

He also seems to have a bit of a techno-utopian perspective, although his general comments on the role of progress in "digitalization" seem pretty sensible.

I'm tempted to say that his observations about the need for greater EU political unity are fairly pedestrian. But they are downright radical-democratic in comparison to the notions of the far-right nationalists and their supporters. And he actually does advocate for an aggressive political strategy by EU advocates to win a solid popular majority in Europe for more substantive political integration: "it seems to me the moment has come to leave behind the bare integration-pragmatism and widen it to a political strategy to win back a wider political integration."

Which is very appealing. But it's how to see how any option, including the two-speed one he advoates, can reasonably move forward without at least simultaneously creating a eurozone that can survive as an "optimal currency area" and reaching a general European strategv for a real (not theatrical only) solution to the longterm immigration situation which no amount of magic conjuring will make go away. Fischer explicitly acknowledges the difficulty and urgency of the latter. National solutions "no longer make sense," he states in saying what should be obvious but the xenophobic parties are trying hard to deny. The euro's problems, though, he mostly skirts around.

Fischer optimistically views China's rise to its current position as the ascendent leading power in the world as having been "exclusively peaceful," though that might be overgenerous, unless we start the time count after China's armed incursions into northern Vietnam in 1979, aka, the Sino-Vietnamese War, the Third Indochina War.

The US, by contrast, achieved its role as world hegemon through two world wars and the Cold War, which included hot wars of various levels of intensity, most notably the Korean War and the US' own Indochina War. But Fischer stresses that US "soft power" also "played a very decisive role in its rise and, above all, for its roll as 'benevolent hegemon' through the decades."

One of the things I appreciate about Fischer's political perspective on the United States is that he stresses the central importance democratic traditions of the US, "the basic values of the American Revolution, [of] democracy, human rights, and the rule of law." But he also notes that the American tradition of "territorial conquest" is not one that should be perpetuated or defended. To me, this is a sensible and obvious perspective, one that has important differences from the Hamilitonian-Whig ideological version of US history that is currently dominant, remarkably not only on the left but if anything particulary on the left.

Fischer even credits the "idealistic committment" that has accompanied the hard-headed pursuit of American national interest in foreign policy. Although foreign policy realists like Fischer are also accutely aware of how easily and frequently the idealistic rhetoric has been used to justify brutal and unjust policies. He had direct experience of that as German Foreign Minister during the Iraq War.

He also makes an important historical observation that the US even prior to its overseas imperialism at the turn of the 20th century was nevertheless oriented to an internationalist outlook. And he attribues that in particular to its culture of immigration, which in the 19th century was primarily European immigration:

[The US] was, in contrast to other nations, almost from the beginning on founded as interally "globalized," despite the breadth and thin settlement of the huge country, through the immigration-related combination of its population from all dominant countries and parts of the world - on a universalism of values, and that had consequences for its popular culture. What made and makes the immigrant population "Americans" were the Constiituion and the value of the USA, all of them immaterial, normative values, and in their innner core an unparalleled freedom for the individual.

Fischer's general perpective in this book is describing the longer-term shift in world politics from the US as the so-called unipolar hegemon in the early 1990s to the current period, in which he sees China's process of rising to be the world's dominant power as defining world politics. And with that point, he is stressing how radically the Trump white nationalist view misunderstands so very much of what America's influence in the world has been.

I'm totally sympathetic to Fischer's perspective on that. But in terms of historical perspective, there are some obvious problems left unstated by Fischer's prsentation, which is not primarily focused on illustrating the major conflicts of 19th century US history. The United States was also defined, of course, by the exclusion of the indigenous Indian population and by a very particular treatment of immigrants of African origin. There were good reasons slavery was known as the Peculiar Institution. The Calhounian (not Jacksonian) political tradition from which Donald Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III draw today is unfortunately also very much a part of the history of the American brand of internationalism.

Fischer understands Trump's America First blustering not as isolationism but as narrow nationalist belligerence. Presumably the book manuscript was finalized in late 2017. But even without the events of this year - US rejection of the Iran nuclear agreement, more intensely expressed hostility to NATO and the EU - Fischer sees Trump as already having made a decisive break with the previous level of commitment to NATO common defense, one that increases the urgency of better European cooperation on military matters and European security. Though he does not understand the latter to be Europe pursuing new and expanded military roles in the Middle East.

He describes the major US soft-power assets this way:

... the attractiveness of the US way of life, the popular culture of Hollywood, pop music, and jazz all the way to Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Starbucks. As well as a policy of open borders, which brought the best and most clever into the country and many more besides. The gigantic land simply needs people. Through immigration developed not only growth, but also a strong dynamic of upward mobility. And obviously there was also the language, an easy-to-learn and globally spoken English, which through the worldwide media dominance of the USA via TV and the Internet became the lingua franca of modern times.

(People who didn't grow up as native German speakers might have a somewhat different perspective on how easy English is to learn!)

Fischer doesn't see a comparable soft power potential for China on the historical horizon.

He closes the book with a chapter on the rise of 1930s style authoritarianism in the West today and another on the history of German nationalism and its immensely destructive and self-destructive consequences.

Fischer seems especially comfortable writing on political theory, as in the chapter on contemporary authoritarianism:

The ideological cadavers of National Socialism and fascism - and the previous "conservative revolution" of the 1920s - are being exhumed again and used by rightist intellectuals as the newest theoretical faschion [Dernier cri] of Western democracy and its fundamental values. An anti-democrat and intellectual henchman of the Nazis like Carl Schmitt counts these days as the pillar-saint of this New Right.

This Carl Schmitt.

The Trump-Putin Helsinki summit and nationalism in Europe

The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki scheduled for July 16 is providing a focal point for political and foreign policy analysts to understand the current state of US-Russia and EU/NATO-Russia relations.

Several parties in power in European governments see Putin and his party as some kind of model for their countries. Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary is currently the leader in EU in moving to what Orbán calls "illiberal democracy," i.e., an autoritarian government validated through elections, on something like CKarl Schmitt's notion of validation through plebiscite.

In the German literature, for example the use of plebiscites was supported by Carl Schmitt, an apologist for the NSDAP-regime, who proposed that a dictator, as a “single trusted representative”, could use plebiscites to “decide in the name of the…people”[v], and it was denounced by democratically inclined writers like Robert Michels, who dismissed the plebiscite as it would allow “a Führer to lead the people astray through unclear questions, which he himself would be solely entitled to interpret afterwards”[vi]. (Encyclopedia Princetoniensis; accessed 07/06/2018)

No, even Hungary isn't that far gone yet. But, yes, Carl Schmitt is in fashion again, it appears. Schmitt would probably approve of Putin's manner of maintaining what is in fact a dictatorship while leaving the empty forms of democracy in place.

But it's also worth noting at this point that the Manichean notion that the US so often uses of democracy (Our Side) vs. dictatorship (The Bad People) is very often more slogan and propaganda than real understanding. Elections in Hungary, for instance, still do happen. And the EU rules do require free elections, which so far has put limits on how far toward authoritarian government EU member states can go. Though the Merkelized EU has far more diligent about enforcing Herbert Hoover-Heinrich Brüning economic policies than it has been about moving against "democractic deficits" in member states' governance. Not least because the EU has its own very real democratic deficits.

The point is that there is a continuum between democracy and dictatorship. And even dictatorships have to secure the practical support of some significant portions of their populations. In the case of "Putinist" parties and groups in Europe, the danger from such groups is not that they will suddenly stage a Putsch. Even Putin didn't come to power that way. The more immediate practical reality is that they are pushing for restrictions on democratic paticipation and seeking to further weaken or undermine the EU and NATO.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte heads a still-new coalition government of the left-populist Five Star Movement and the right-populist Lega. Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence conveys the concerns of Alberto Nardelli, Europe editor for Buzzfeed, about the Lega and the Interior Minister of that party, Matteo Salvini (What to make of Salvini's relations with Russia? 07/05/2018))

The key issue is the partnership agreement between the Lega and United Russia, Putin's Party. It contains a clause on information-sharing relevant to bilateral and multilateral affairs. The question is whether there is a deeper level of communication happening between the two parties, or whether they are simply united in their distaste for the EU and their admiration for Donald Trump. The diplomats said that European governments were playing close attention to Italy's behaviour especially during international meetings. Nardelli notes that Giuseppe Conte did not make good on previous threats by Italy to refuse a renewal of the Russian sanctions. But Conte took time with the decision, and made the point in the discussions that the sanctions should not hit Russian civil society. The officials Nardelli spoke to expressed concern that Conte may not be his own man, but may be under the direct control of Salvini and [Deputy Prime Minister and Five Star leader] Luigi Di Maio. [my emphasis]

Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), currently the junior partner in Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz' government, also concluded such a partnership agreement with United Russia in 2016 (Austrian far right signs deal with Putin's party, touts Trump ties Reuters 12/19/2016):

Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPO’s recently defeated presidential candidate Norbert Hofer attended the signing ceremony in Moscow, as did officials of Putin’s United Russia party including Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy chairman of the lower house of parliament.

The FPO has long taken a pro-Russia stance, calling for an end to European Union sanctions against Moscow imposed over the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. It has also denied allegations that it receives funding from Moscow.

Strache is now the Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister for Austria.

Here the questions of pragmatic foreign policy, political ideology, and subversion get mixed together in ways than can be confusing. These partnership agreements with United Russia have at least an analogous relationship to the role of the Soviet Communist Party to other Communist Parties. But historical analogies are often as misleading as they are clarifying. The USSR saw itself as the legitimate leader of the world Communist movement, with the idea that the Soviet leadership provided worldwide guidance for how Communist Parties could come to power in other countries. Not surprisingly, non-Communist governments didn't view that as an entirely friendly arrangement.

But also not surprisingly, the reality was much more complicated. As Communist Parties did come to power in other countries, they had disagreements with the Soviet leadership. Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet leadership in 1948. The split between the USSR and China would become far more significant. Having formal partnerships with parties in other countries did not guarantee the Soviet Union even consistent pro-Soviet foreign policies on their part.

Politics is politics, and countries are countries. So of course countries try to influence other parties and other international actors in their favor. Anyone who is of a mind to do so can paint those influences as subversive or espionage will find some audience for those claims. Although for most people in most circumstances, the difference in admiring a foreign party or leader and committing illegal acts of espionage or treason is a clear one.

All of which is to say that we can view Russian governmental interference in elections in violation of national laws as a legal and factual matter. And the appeal to some constituencies of the Putinist forms of government and doctrine as a political and ideological matter. And the question of a country's relations to Russia as a practical and diplomatic concern.

So, whether a "Putinist" party's position on relations with Russia is good or bad depends very heavily on how one views what national and international interests and goals should be protected. Austria, for instance, gained some definite national advantages from its role as a neutral country between East and West. It would be very much to Austria's benefit as a country if its government was able to contruct a similar arrangement that would enable it to play a genuine role of reconcilation on the lines of its Cold War practice.

But Austria's best chance to do that is to strengthen the EU. And they haven't been good at that for quite a while. Strache's FPÖ has a strong anti-EU bent. In that way, the FPÖ's nationalism and hostility to the EU are in line with Putin's goals of dividing and weakening the EU and NATO. (Austria itself is not a NATO member.) The FPÖ has been banging the drums of xenophobia and Islamophobia for years, something also in line with Russia's own nationalistic policies. But that is a sign of parallel ideological development and not manipulation by Russian "special measures," however much inspiration the FPÖ may draws from Russian-style nationalism. But a policy course that actively undermines the EU and tends toward the Union's dissolution would certainly damage Austria's real interests.

The other factor currently at work is the erratic American President, who has displayed considerable hostility to both NATO and the EU. It's one thing for Austria to act as some kind of diplomatic mediator among the US, Russia, and the EU. But joining the US and Russia in wrecking the EU is a whole different matter. That's not a mediating strategy. It's sucker diplomacy.

Sadly, Chancellor Babyface seems so focused on short-term nationalist demagoguery ("Close the borders!") that he risks squandering the chance to reposition Austria as a more significant European player. Especially since he's been recklessly intervening in internal German politics and is already drawing Angela Merkel's anger and retaliation because of it.

Stephen Walt observes (The EU and NATO and Trump — Oh My! Foreign Policy 07/02/2018):

It is no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump has an instinctive animus against the European Union and NATO. He supported the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, reportedly advised French President Emmanuel Macron that his country should leave the union too, and last week falsely claimed that the EU was created “to take advantage of the United States.” (This last statement raises an obvious question: Does Trump know any history at all? The answer appears to be no.) He has long complained that NATO’s European members aren’t paying enough for defense and has offered only tepid support for the mutual defense clause that is at the heart of the NATO treaty.

So, it’s not surprising that both Europeans and Americans are now looking ahead to the NATO summit in July with a certain foreboding. Coming on the heels of Trump’s petulant tantrums during and after the G-7 summit in June, and taking place just before he is scheduled to meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the summit could turn out to be the diplomatic equivalent of a 29-car pileup.

Correction 07/15/2018: The Foreign Minister of Austria in the Kurz government from 12/18/2017 to now has been Karein Kneissl; Heinz-Christian Strache has not been Foreign Minister. Strache is Vice Chancellor and Minister of the Civil Service and Sport.

Israel, Russia, and the Iran deal

American commentators and news junkies these days are too often trying to squeeze every bit of news about Russia into their preferred model of the Trump-Russia scandal.

But things to happen outside of America's borders. Russia has become a more important player in the Middle East in the last 10 years, something that in itself doesn't bother me. Given the disasters the US role in the Middle East has created over the past 20 years or so, Russian involvement there is about as bad a move as Russia's worst critics would wish on it.

Mark Katz explains the current balance of interests between Russia and Israel in Putin And Netanyahu: Converging Interests? LobeLog 05/11/2018. He sums it up this way:

Although Putin’s and Netanyahu’s interests with regard to Syria may be convergent, they are not identical. Putin wants Iran to remain in Syria as a junior partner in propping up the Assad regime but not acting provocatively otherwise. Netanyahu not only wants Iran out of Syria, but may even join U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton and other hawks in seeking regime change in Tehran. If so, the Putin-Netanyahu tactical alliance will not last.

He describes the conflicting interests between Iran and Russia this way:

Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria have the advantage of weakening Iran vis-à-vis Russia inside Syria without Moscow having to confront Tehran directly. And Tehran does have ambitions in Syria that Moscow does not share. For Tehran, preserving the Assad regime is not just an end in itself, but a means for Iran to better support Hezbollah in Lebanon in its conflict with Israel. Russia, by contrast, has strong economic and security ties to Israel that it wants to continue and expand. Moscow does not want Iran to disturb this, or create sufficient problems for Israel that the U.S. gets back into the Syrian conflict in Israel’s defense.

Unlike our President's imagination of the world, foreign policy is much more shades of gray and messy compromises than it is about win/lose situations or conflicts between Good and Evil.

Trump blusters in all directions

Trump is a spaz. So it's hard to know which of his tweets to take seriously. Although since he is President of the United States, people do take them seriously, and for good reason.

Still, this is reckless and stupid for the President to be tweeting like this:

Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018

And it makes even more of a muddle when he tweets immediately afterward:

Much of the bad blood with Russia is caused by the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter). No Collusion, so they go crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018

A new major bombing strike or other kinds of US military escalation in Syria has a real risk of winding up in a direct confrontation of some kind or other between American and Russia military forces. Peter Beaumont warns:

... in diplomacy – especially the diplomacy of war – the niceties of language are employed in defence of the legal status of armed conflict between states. What is said – and how it is said – matters when justifying the use of force. In Trump’s remarks, the appeal to international law and ethics emerges as nothing more than an expression of his personal outrage, and the dangerous diplomacy of “ya, boo, sucks”. Perhaps we should not be surprised by such comments from a political leader who has long ignored the counsel of his own lawyers, and for whom the world appears as a binary struggle, with those challenging him portrayed with nicknames and in the crudest terms of otherness. ...

If a sense of escalation has been palpable in the past few days, first in the0 Russian threat to shoot down US missiles, then Trump’s knee-jerk response, what is clear is that in his tweet, Trump has dangerously widened the scope of the crisis, from frustration among the international community at Moscow’s shielding of Assad, to hinting at the possibility of a clash with Russia.

That plays into deeper and darker themes of a competition between Putin and Trump – both thin-skinned populist nationalists who have vowed to make their countries “great again”. Two men with fragile egos who have each yoked to their national ambitions.

And too many Democrats have preemptively restricted their ability to criticize Trump's recklessness in the Middle East by carrying on like it was 1959 about how Trump is way too soft on The Russians.

How credible are the British government's claims in the Sergei Skripal assassination attempt?

I don't have any special insight on the assassination attempt in Britain against Sergei Skripal that became a prominent issue for Britain and NATO this week. there has been a pattern of untimely deaths of journalists and others that Vladimir Putin's government somehow found inconvenient. And the British government is expressing its confidence that Russia was involved. And if the former Russian diplomat Vyacheslav Matuzov's presentation in this Al Jazeera program is any measure, the responses coming from the Russian side don't sound especially convincing, How will a divided west tackle a resurgent Russia? Inside Story 03/15/2018:

So I'm considering at this point that the most likely explanation is the one endorsed by the British government. That doesn't mean I think it's been definitively demonstrated, only that I'm not hearing a more plausible explanation so far.

David Ignatius is on the bandwagon, too, in this Washington Post column, Putin has finally gone too far 03/16/2018. He displays the hawkish verbal posturing that is the default position of the Beltway pundits and most of the political establishment.

But let's give Ignatius a tiny bit of credit. This Morning Zoo segment has Joe Scarborough taking the Russian responsibility for the attempted murder as a given, and none of his panel is especially challenging it. And Ignatius joins in. But it does drop in a qualification missing in his column in his comments starting around 8:00: "it's way over the line, even for an ex-KGB officer to go out and do this kind of reprisal killing [sic] - again, we need to have more evidence to link this directly to Putin. But it's clear that this is a Soviet-era nerve agent. ..." (my emphasis). Special Counsel Robert Mueller Subpoenas Trump Organization For Russia Records Morning Joe/MSNBC 03/16/2018:

Not many Democratic politicians will be heard asking probing questions in public about this. Although that is part of the job of Members of Congress, regardless of party. They are too busy stressing the need to fully investigate and understand the Russian interference is the 2016 election and possibly compromising involvements by Trump and his closest associates to Russian entities. The more conscientious Democrats won't be eager to let Russia off the hook on this. But few of them will risk stepping on their public anti-Russia theme at this point.

For the rest of us, close reading and listening is usually in order. Despite the certainty in his column, Ignatius is already promoting the assassination attempt to an actual murder, even though the poor guy isn't dead yet. He does mention that we don't have the evidence to link the attack to Putin. Which, of course, is not the same as linking it to the Russian government. And when he says the toxin involved was a Soviet-era substance, he's referring to the USSR whose existence came to an end in 1991. So that's not at all the same as saying that it's a substance that is somehow distinct to the Russia of 2018.

I don't apologize for being cautious on claims like these, however plausible this one seems on its face. I remember when the British government of Tony Blair was declaring confidently that Saddam Hussein had operable chemical weapons that could be deployed on 45 minutes notice. (See: Vikram Dodd et al, 45-minute claim on Iraq was hearsay Guardian 08/15/218. Let's be very generous and say that governments do, uh, make mistakes about such things. Especially when they are pushing a phony story about "weapons of mass destruction" to justify a genuinely criminal war of aggression.

Another event that is also a constant reminder to me about the uncertainty of some intelligence assumptions. And that is the AMIA bombing, the deadly bomb attack on the main Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994. This event is routinely referred to as an attack orchestrated by Iran through Hizbullah. But the case itself is still open. The Argentine government's official theory of the case has been, under both conservative and left governments, has been consistent with the common assumption, that it was orchestrated by Iran.

But even after 24 years, that is far from a certainty based on what is in the public record. Former President Cristina Fernández when she was a senator prior to becoming President had raised questions about the official theory, based on considerable indications that radical right Argentines may have been deeply involved. She took a strong interest in the case and actively pursued it as President - despite infamously dishonest arguments that she did not - and proceeded on the official theory of Iranian involvement and direction.

But the case has never been resolved. That means while there are reasons to believe based on information in the public record that Iran was behind it, that is by no means clearly established. And, we are likely to keep hearing about the AMIA attack as though it is a certainty that Iran pulled it off. Because the AMIA case is used as a primary example, by far the most dramatic, of how Iran has long had the ability to project terrorist attacks worldwide. One of the revelations from Wikileaks documented that Dark Lord Dick Cheney, not known for being scrupulous in honest use of intelligence findings, pressured the US Embassy in Argentina to try to get Argentine prosecutors from backing off a related case involving Carlos Menem, who was President in 1994, a case that might have called into question Iranian responsibility. Neither Cheney nor other advocates of war against Iran want to give up the AMIA case as a propaganda claim against Iran.

In the case of the nerve gas incident in Britain, former British diplomat Craig Murray offers some reasons for reservations about the official British case. (Russian to Judgement 03/13/2018) I don't find the alternative scenario he suggests in the linked post plausible. But some of the questions he raises are worth keeping in mind.

The same people who assured you that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s now assure you Russian “novochok” nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil. As with the Iraqi WMD dossier, it is essential to comb the evidence very finely. A vital missing word from Theresa May’s statement yesterday was “only”. She did not state that the nerve agent used was manufactured ONLY by Russia. She rather stated this group of nerve agents had been “developed by” Russia. Antibiotics were first developed by a Scotsman, but that is not evidence that all antibiotics are today administered by Scots.

The “novochok” group of nerve agents – a very loose term simply for a collection of new nerve agents the Soviet Union were developing fifty years ago – will almost certainly have been analysed and reproduced by Porton Down. That is entirely what Porton Down is there for. It used to make chemical and biological weapons as weapons, and today it still does make them in small quantities in order to research defences and antidotes. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian chemists made a lot of information available on these nerve agents.

Porton Down Murray mentions is described by Rob Evans, "Porton Down, founded in 1916, is the oldest chemical warfare research installation in the world," with a somewhat ghoulish reputation. (The past Porton Down can't hide Guardian 05/06/2004)

Leaving aside our President's Twitter spasms and his impulsive public statements, for most countries of the world, paying attention to the exact phrasing of important foreign policy statements is usually important. And it does presumably mean something that Theresa May wasn't mentioning any specific links of the toxin to the Russia of 2018. That doesn't mean she doesn't have any. But it's a carefully worded claim.

Murray also makes this observation about the circumstances:

From Putin’s point of view, to assassinate Skripal now seems to have very little motivation. If the Russians have waited eight years to do this, they could have waited until after their World Cup. The Russians have never killed a swapped spy before. Just as diplomats, British and otherwise, are the most ardent upholders of the principle of diplomatic immunity, so security service personnel everywhere are the least likely to wish to destroy a system which can be a key aspect of their own personal security; quite literally spy swaps are their “Get Out of Jail Free” card. You don’t undermine that system – probably terminally – without very good reason.

It is worth noting that the “wicked” Russians gave Skripal a far lighter jail sentence than an American equivalent would have received. If a member of US Military Intelligence had sold, for cash to the Russians, the names of hundreds of US agents and officers operating abroad, the Americans would at the very least jail the person for life, and I strongly suspect would execute them. Skripal just received a jail sentence of 18 years, which is hard to square with the narrative of implacable vindictiveness against him. If the Russians had wanted to make an example, that was the time. [my emphasis]

Now this doesn't mean that the Russians aren't changing their approach. But such considerations are important to consider in evaluating such claims.

Murray also states his broader perspective:

I am alarmed by the security, spying and armaments industries’ frenetic efforts to stoke Russophobia and heat up the new cold war. I am especially alarmed at the stream of cold war warrior “experts” dominating the news cycles. I write as someone who believes that agents of the Russian state did assassinate Litvinenko, and that the Russian security services carried out at least some of the apartment bombings that provided the pretext for the brutal assault on Chechnya. I believe the Russian occupation of Crimea and parts of Georgia is illegal. On the other hand, in Syria Russia has saved the Middle East from domination by a new wave of US and Saudi sponsored extreme jihadists.

The naive view of the world as “goodies” and “baddies”, with our own ruling class as the good guys, is for the birds. I witnessed personally in Uzbekistan [where Murray was British Ambassador 2002-2004] the willingness of the UK and US security services to accept and validate intelligence they knew to be false in order to pursue their policy objectives. We should be extremely sceptical of their current anti-Russian narrative. There are many possible suspects in this attack.

It's helpful in this things to keep some basic things in mind. Governments lie. Intelligence claims are often based on incomplete information. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Threat inflation is a chronic problem for US foreign policy.

In subsequent posts, Murray reacts to critics of his position and to additional information.

Putin family business

An article in the The Moscow Times looks at an event in the world of today's Russian oligarchy, Putin Family Split Offers Peek at Secret Dealings of Russia Inc. 01/25/2018.

(Given today's controversies, I'll add that so far as I'm aware, The Moscow Times is independent of the Russian government.)

Kirill Shamalov is reportedly divorcing Katerina Tikhonova, the youngest daughter of Vladimir Putin. The article describes Sahmalov as the "son of an old Putin pal." It makes the marriage sound like a business merger:

Shamalov’s brief tenure as a captain of industry started in 2012, around the time he was preparing to wed. Sibur’s main owners, Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko, promoted their vice president for business administration to deputy chief executive officer and then awarded him 4.3 percent of the company. In 2014, with a loan from Gazprombank, he acquired another 17 percent from Timchenko for about $2.2 billion. He was 32.

Then Sibur announced last April that Shamalov had sold the shares he bought from Timchenko to Mikhelson. Though the details of the deal and the reasoning behind it were never disclosed, a person familiar with the transaction said Shamalov made “zero” from the sale because he was only allowed to hold those shares in a kind of trust as a Putin family member. That ownership privilege ended when the marriage did, three of the people [sources] said.

And they describe the secrecy around Putin's family this way:

So assiduously does the Kremlin guard the Putin family’s privacy that even off the record none of the people contacted for this story would say whether Tikhonova has formally divorced or when, exactly, she got married.

Russian media are all but banned from reporting about his daughters, Katerina, 31, and Maria, 32, so their lives are shrouded in mystery. Even their maiden names are different.

Cautions on "Russia-gate"

Stephen Cohen is one left-leaning expert on Russia who has been cautioning about politicians, journalists, policy analysis and others jumping to conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump campaign collaboration before clear evidence is available in the public record.

In The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate Consortium News 12/15/2017, he gives us an update. Including this concern:

... the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion, have spread to “contacts with Russia” — political, financial, social, etc. — on the part of a growing number of people, often going back many years before anyone imagined Trump as a presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these “contacts” were criminal or potentially so.

This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even Joe McCarthy’s search for “Communist” connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise.

More to the point, advisers to U.S. policy-makers and even media commentators on Russia must have many and various contacts with Russia if they are to understand anything about the dynamics of Kremlin policy-making. I myself, to take an individual example, was an adviser to two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns, which considered my wide-ranging and longstanding “contacts” with Russia to be an important credential, as did the one sitting president whom I advised.

To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave U.S. policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible, as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post, in an editorial. This is one reason why I have, in a previous commentary, argued that Russia-gate and its promoters have become the gravest threat to American national security. [my emphasis]

But Cohen, like some other skeptics who make important points, is also being a bit disingenuous when he argues that "no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced" for the "charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this 'attack on American democracy.'"

This requires a very narrow concept of what constitutes "actual evidence." But the FBI, the CIA and the NSA all did conclude with high confidence that the Russian government was behind the hacks. And also (with somewhat less confidence on the part of the NSA) that Russia had them transmitted to Wikileaks. Russian officials, and Putin in particular, had rational reasons for trying to cause problems for Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, even if most Americans might think they were bad reasons. And, of course, that doesn't justify interference in American elections. Nor should any American government, including Trump's, take that interference less than extremely seriously.

The charges are credible. But it's true that no court or other independent official investigation has vetted the evidence for the hacking. And that no one from Trump's campaign has yet been convicted of or pleaded guilty to collusion with the Russians in the legal sense.

On the latter point, I would say that the circumstantial evidence that collusion took place looks pretty strong. On the other hand, a conviction on direct charges of actual collusion with the Russians by campaign officials has always been less likely than most Democrats would prefer to assume. We'll see what emerges from the special counsel's investigation. And it's entirely possible. But the actual charges related to collusion (or near-collusion) are more likely to have to do with efforts to cover up contacts with the Russians by lying to the FBI or under oath, or from failing to comply with legally required disclosures of financial connections with Russian entities. And there's also a strong possibility Mueller's investigation will uncover illegal business dealings with the Russians or others that aren't involved with collusion on illegal Russian operations around the 2016 election.

A "geo-cultural" approach to understanding Europe's position in the world

"The superiority she [Europe] has long maintained, has tempted her to plume herself as the mistress of the world, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. ... Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the European: it belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother moderation. Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the Thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connexion between the old and the new world!

Diet Senghaas uses that quotation from Federalist #11 (Publius/Alexander Hamilton) to argue that Europe needs to adopt a kind of city-on-a-hill strategy in world politics of leading by example. (Von Donald Trump bis Xi Jinping: Der neue Kampf innerhalb der Kulturen Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 12/2017)

He does this in the context of considering the current international scene from the viewpoint of "geo-cultural" tendencies. This view understands the Cold War was as defined by the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States encompassing military, economic and cultural aspects, the latter taken as values, broadly speaking. "Europa war in jeder Hinsicht – also geopolitisch, geoökonomisch und geokulturell – im Zentrum eines Weltkonflikts positioniert und extrem exponiert: zweigeteilt auf beide Lager und ohne nennenswerte Grauzone." ("Europe in this respect - that is, geopolitically, geo-economically and geo-culturally - positioned at the center of a world conflict and extremely exposed: split between both camps and without any gray zone to speak of.")

Senghaas argues that conflict within cultures are now far more a defining factor in the international behavior of states and blocs than during the Cold War. His use of "culture" seems to play off the meaning "civilization" in Samuel Huntington's controversial but influential concept of the Clash of Civilizations. The article runs 10 pages, so obviously it can provide only a general sketch for an overview of international politics for the world.

So, to sketch his sketch, he argues like pretty much all foreign policy analysts and scholars that China is seeking a more important world leadership role. And while the current Communist Party leadership seems very focused on maintaining its monopoly of power, it nevertheless faces internal political conflicts, even though they aren't expressed in the way they appear in parliamentary democracies. And while military clashes with the US in places like the South China Sea are a real possibility, Senghaas puts considerable weight on the observation that China's dealings with other countries have a heavily pragmatic orientation without a notable emphasis on spreading their political ideology. (Yanis Varoufakis has made a similar observation about Chinese proposals for business deal with Greece.) He concludes that China is more focused on its internal challenges and conflicts, which he describes as a "clash within civilization" than on foreign expansionism and intervention. Its assertive foreign policy, he argues, is "allerdings nicht der Ausgangspunkt für eine geokulturell verursachte Weltstrukturbildung à la Ost-West-Konflikt, also beispielsweise für einen China-West/USA-Konflikt – zumindest auf absehbare Zeit noch nicht" ("in any case not the springboard for a geo-cultural-based creation of a world structure à la an East-West conflict - like a China-West/US conflict, for instance - at least not for the foreseeable future.")

Senghaas takes the 2013 Chinese Communist Party Document Number Nine is a particularly useful source on the current Chinese policy orientation.

He sees Russia's policy under Putin as being based on Russian ethno-nationalism, though he doesn't use that term. Specifically, he argues that Russia takes a particular interest in relations with states that were part of the former Soviet Union. An obvious but important point. Yet it's nevertheless one that neocons and "humanitarian hawks" tend to regard with sputtering outrage, real or feigned. In Senghaas' terms, Russia's politically and military aggressiveness in neighboring countries like Georgia and Ukraine can be understood as part of a "geo-cultural" posture. (See Nuland, Victoria.) But, he argues, "Die eigene, russische Politik im eurasischen Raum wird als von
„identitärer Toleranz“ motiviert begriffen." ("The actual Russian policy in the Eurasian area should be understood as motivated by 'identitarian tolerance'.")The term "identitarian tolerance" is presumably an allusion to the far-right, xenophobic "identitarian" movement. (See: Identitarian movement - Germany's 'new right' hipsters Deutsche Welle 23.06.2017)

Senghaas doesn't address the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election. As more of the scope of that project is reliably documented in the public record, it could show a more interventionist orientation in Russian policy toward the US. But based on what we know at this writing, it seems to be more likely that the Russians assumed that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency and they wanted to weaken her hand in pursuing policies opposed to Russian actions in those borderlands like Georgia and Ukraine, in particular. That picture is largely what emerges from the Frontline documentary Putin's Revenge (2017), for example.

He sees the conflict with Islamists as a mixture of internal cultural conflicts and "geo-cultural" ones. This makes sense. While Islamist militancy and terrorism can have dramatic impact in Western countries (the 9/11 attacks most notably), the focus of the Islamists is on predominately Islamic countries, where the geo-cultural aspects are more predominate. But in this article, the section on Islamic movements highlights more than any other the weaknesses of viewing Islam as a distinct "culture." The internal vs. geo-cultural distinction seems particularly questionable here.

His short article lumps together the US and Europe as the Western culture. He passes over Latin America altogether, and mentions Africa only in passing. (It is only a 10-page piece!) He views authoritarian tendencies as constituting the major conflict relevant to foreign policy considerations. He singles out the current forms of "illiberal democracy" that are in place and/or under development in Hungary, Poland and Turkey. Senghaas also sees conflict within Western culture as particularly evident in the obvious contemporary examples of Trumpism in the US, Brexit, the AfD getting elected to Parliament in Germany, and the Kurz/Strache alliance in Austria. The latter of which is still trying to form a government.

Like Samuel Huntington's conception, any worldview built around a clash of civilizations (or cultures) viewpoint has serious limitations for understanding international relations. To take an example from his article, it's not at all clear that Putin's actual political strategy is so committed to the ideology of "Eurasionism" identified with Alexander Dugin as Senghaas implies.

His idea of Europe leading by example and influencing the world primarily through its soft power is an appealing one. And I do think that making the European Union a further success is the most powerful thing European countries can do to protect their interest and exert their influence effectively on the international scene. Hopefully more constructively than otherwise!

But to do that, the Union will have to democratize itself. And the individual countries will have to Europeanize themselves enough so that voters and leaders can and do effectively contend over EU policies that effect them in major ways. The EU will have to abandon austerity economics. And even then, the Union will have to play an assertive and active role well beyond their borders. Relations with Russia will be a permanent issue for all of Europe, not just Russia's bordering countries. Obviously, the NATO alliance locks Europe into active engagement with the United States.

And as long as wars keep springing up in the Greater Middle East, there will be a refugee crisis in Europe, which climate change is also making an effectively permanent condition. It's hard to see how that can be effectively managed without some combination of active European peacemaking and development-assistance activities in the Middle East and northern Africa. As well as systematic absorption and integration of refugees as actual permanent immigrants in Europe.

I'm just not sure how much a "geo-cultural" framework helps European voters and policymakers get there.

Background interviews in "The Putin Files" at Frontline

Frontline PBS recently ran a two-part documentary called Putin's Revenge, focused on the story of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election. Part 1 focuses on Putin's experiences with and understanding of US foreign policy.

Part 2 deals more specifically with the events of 2016 in connection with Russian hacking and the US election.

Frontline has also made available hours of background interviews of the authorities quoted in the documentary. Since they largely deal with the same set of events and questions, they do begin to sound a bit repetitive after a while. But they do provide a wide range of views, all largely within a safely Establishment perspective. Which, of course, has its advantages and disadvantages.

My most interesting and informative of the ones I've listened to so far is this one, The Putin Files: Julia Ioffe, which is 1 3/4 hours long. Her columns the past year for The Atlantic on Russia have also been helpful. Unlike our typical Pod Pundits on TV, she tells stories like you would hope a journalist would. She's very good in relating a chronological narrative. And she's careful to include a lot of factual detail and meaningful context. And she gives the appearance of trying to stick with confirmed facts, or at a minimum to explain what sources on which she's relying. That emerges at the start of the interview, where she responds to the question on whether the highest levels of Russian government knew about the hacking of the Democratic Party and election system in 2016.

Her account is also notably useful in that she conveys an image of how Putin was likely to have understood events that affected him and his political career. Understanding how the "other side" sees itself is something our TV pundits aren't generally very good about doing. Understanding isn't defending, and explaining isn't defending. But it's easy for people in politics and especially international politics to forget about those two things.

Celeste Wallander's interview in interesting in that she recounts the Ukraine crisis of 2013 as though the US is a de facto military ally of the US, The Putin Files: Celeste Wallander 10/25/2017.

Although she also recognizes that the Russians had the ability and the intent to escalate with additional Russian troops if they judged it necessary.

Victoria Nuland strikes me as a particularly unsympathetic public figure, and this interview didn't do anything to disabuse me of that impression, The Putin Files: Victoria Nuland 10/25/2017:

She insists on starting off by making the dubious point that the Clinton Administration was serious in trying to make Russia a part of NATO in the early 1990s. Of the interviews in this series that I've heard, Nuland's seemed the most carefully worded to further a hawkish foreign policy narrative. She talks as though the US approach in everything she's talking about are obviously pure and noble. And manages to sound condescending and remarkably smug through most of it. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to think that someone who can keep an expression like this for most of a 1 1/4 hour interview is probably trying to con her listeners:

It's striking in her interview that she speaks as if Russia had no legitimate security concerns about NATO expansion. Which reinforces the perception that she's making a hawkish political pitch rather than speaking as a foreign policy expert in a more technical sense here.

Nuland is so immersed in Cold War hawkish thinking that she even rolls out the hoary old Domino Theory for Europe today. Just after 47:00, we hear this interchange:

Frontline: Of course, there's another argument that some people have come in here and said, which is, [if] you don't stop Putin there, y'know, where do you stop Putin, when do you stop Putin, that's the moment.

Nuland: Well, that was the argument that those of us favoring at least defense lethal systems made, was that, you know, if he really wanted it, he would be in Kiev, and the next thing you knew he would be in Warsaw if we weren't careful.

One difference: Poland is a member of the NATO mutual-defense alliance. Ukraine is not. Nuland's words would indicate that she doesn't understand even a basic distinction like that. (I'm guessing she's faking it on that point!)

From this interview, I would have to conclude that her only regret about the 2013 Ukraine crisis is that we didn't Americanize the conflict and expand the war even more.

This interview with a former Obama adviser gives us an idea of how it sounds for someone to take Putin's outlook seriously - whether it's right or wrong - as contrasted with the strict advocacy perspective of Victoria Nuland, The Putin Files: Antony Blinken 10/25/2017:

Just after 16:30, Blinken straightforwardly explains the basic fact that makes Nuland's point about Putin marching from Kiev to Warsaw is so silly, that Poland is a NATO member.

New York Times Reporter David Sanger's interview is also notable it his seemingly pragmatic and realistic take on the topics covered, The Putin Files: David Sanger 10/25/2017:

Much of screen time on the two-part documentary itself is composed of excerpts from the set of interviews that Frontline placed on YouTube and from which these five were taken.