By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  November 3, 2020

SILVER SPRING—To call the report of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of the United Kingdom Parliament on Russia long-delayed would be far too charitable, as the report itself and its authors make clear.  We have the long-suppressed report now available to the public, and it is so embarrassing for the UK and its leaders that the motive for suppression may be understandable if not the gall of the effort to carry out said suppression.  The old adage “better late than never” surely applies here, and this report is many welcome things in spirit that present many terrifying things in substance, with lessons applicable often not only to the UK but to America (especially) and other democracies under cyberassault from Russia.

Not All Reports Are Equal

The report acknowledges publicly what we Russia-watchers have known for some time that Putin is a genius at leveraging not only both his country’s strengths and weaknesses to his agenda’s advantage, but those of many other nations, too, as I have noted for years.  Yes, the Mueller report and other U.S. official reports, not to mention multiple books and news reports, have made this clear for years now, but the terse boldness in the relatively short report, which says so much in such a condensed space, is truly remarkable.

It is also fair in many ways to compare this to the Mueller Report, mostly because for each country, we have the most in-depth official document detailing Russian interference.  But the hot-take that Special Counsel Robert Mueller “failed” or that he didn’t go “far-enough” misses the point: as I explained even before his full report was released, Mueller was setting up Congress to be able to take down, impeach, remove, and investigate a sitting president because the Constitution empowers Congress to be able to do this, not the Department of Justice or any Special Counsel.  And while the Senate Intelligence Committee Report did an admirable job of detailing Russian interference, it avoided going into Team Trump’s culpability on accepting, soliciting, and using Russian interference (i.e., collusion, as I noted) leaving that for readers to conclude, much like Mueller.  Democrats rightfully took the obvious unstated conclusions Mueller’s report set up (while Republicans gaslighted the public that the Mueller report was “exoneration” for Trump), yet  the Democrats’ impeachment effort remained focused on a narrow set of issues surrounding an attempt and coverup by President Trump to use powers of the presidency and the U.S. government to extract political favors from Ukraine’s government to damage his main political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, on (as I have noted before) entirely misleading, unsubstantiated, and false premises.  While in content we may compare the Mueller Report and the UK ISC report, then, in purpose and role it would be more apt to compare the ISC report to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report.

The UK’s Parliament’s ISC report has many redactions, but in a manner involving the dropping hints that seems to reveal far deeper indications of what is redacted than many U.S. government reports I have seen, throughout the reader is exposed to subtle hints that give tantalizing, pointed indications of the nature and level of what is redacted in ways that quickly raise eyebrows for those with background and familiarity with the topics being discussed, but would also raise eyebrows for the even the general public.

The report opens with one of the best short summaries of the strengths, weaknesses, intents, and capabilities of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin regime.  In fact, as The Economist can be said to be the standard-bearer of the English language in terms of style, with a brevity that carries tremendous weight with each word, so, too, this ISC report is the standard-bearer of the English language for style as far as government reports go.  Even among British reports—admittedly I have not read too many  of those—it would seem to stand out, not to just to non-Brits but also for informed British readers, and it is certainly far better-written, far-more succinct, and far more enjoyable (can one even imagine using this word this about a government report?) a read than any U.S. Government report I have ever read, its pithy smoothness most impressive.

Coming to Grips with That Which Had Not Been Spoken

Just after my own country’s 2016 election, I was one of the first people—particularly as Democrat and a supporter of the Obama Administration—to recognize and come to grips with the fact that the Obama Administration had catastrophically failed in historically unique senses to protect the U.S. from hostile foreign intervention during the 2016 election cycle, the president being a victim of (among other things) a sensibility of wanting to appearing above the electoral fray.

Had President Obama and his people been able to peer into the future, they might have found this damning, astonishing line from the report helpful: “Overall, the issue of defending the UK’s democratic processes and discourse has appeared to be something of a ‘hot potato’, with no one organisation recognising itself as having an overall lead.”  For Americans not familiar with British understatement, this translates as “organizationally, no took responsibility, no one led, and no one protected us.”  Immediately after in the report, the redress is clear: “Whilst we understand the nervousness around any suggestion that the intelligence and security Agencies might be involved in democratic processes – certainly a fear that is writ large in other countries – that cannot apply when it comes to the protection of those processes,” later calling such an attitude of “extreme caution”—the report noted MI5 only provided six brief lines to the Committee’s for its inquiry as to whether the UK government had intelligence backing up multiple open-source studies that the Russians had worked to influence the UK’s Brexit vote—“illogical.”

(As a related aside, there is a tantalizing yet spare discussion in Footnote 50 of when “Arron Banks became the biggest donor in British political history when he gave £8m to the Leave.EU campaign,” which provided grounds for the UK’s Electoral Commission to refer its own inquiry on this highly suspicious activity to Britain’s National Crime Agency [NCA].  There are some glaring and telling redactions, and thirteen months after that submission it was announced NCA did not find laws had been broken by Mr. Banks or others referred by the Commission, but the context and redactions suggest serious malign influence from suspect money was involved and that the scandal here is that the UK’s legal system does not criminalize such activity, especially since this is one of the key conclusions of the whole report, along with recommendations to create new laws to make such operations involving foreign bad actors illegal).

Shockingly, later the report notes that “We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference,” followed by a mysterious redaction and, following that, a contrast to U.S. efforts to produce such formal assessments and to do so quickly (one of our few favorable contrasts).  But take that in for a minute: no formal written assessment looking at overall Russian election interference in the UK was presented to the ISC over the course of its thorough investigation, which speaks for itself, and there is a clear implication that no such report makes it difficult to assure the public that British democracy was or is safe from major foreign interference operations.

Social (Media) Responsibility

The report’s initial expression of frustration of the lack of engagement of intelligence and security agencies in protecting British democracy is followed by sound criticism, echoed by a great many others, that social media companies have done a shameful job through their lack of regulation of their platforms and allowing the Russian government and other bad, even unwitting, actors—many of them domestic—to hijack their platforms quite easily to create targeted, destabilizing information warfare, even chaos, through a deluge of disinformation (on everything from our elections to the coronavirus and even both at the same time, as I have noted somewhat recently):  “we note that – as with so many other issues currently – it is the social media companies which hold the key and yet are failing to play their part.”

In just a few paragraphs, the report hits the nail on the head with a hammer in terms of core issues of responsibility spread across both government and social media companies.  Another succinct sentence comes after noting that British media during Brexit and other votes was not coopted in ways that the U.S. media has been and, as I have noted, still is, so in the U.S., we can add corporate media (mis)coverage as also bearing a huge amount of responsibility.  The report notes that the government has developed a relationship with social media companies to fight terrorism and that such a relationship should “be brought to bear against the hostile state threat,” and adds, in the report’s typically blunt yet understated (i.e., delightfully British) fashion: “indeed, it is not clear to us why the Government is not already doing this.”

Indeed.

In America, too, government- and social media company-synergy in fighting terrorism can be characterized as a serious effort, but similar combined efforts to fight hostile state action have been pathetic when they even have existed, with far more action being long- and inexcusably-overdue.  In fact, their sheer failure begs for regulation over “cooperation,” both of which there has been next to none.  As former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa has noted, “platforms like Facebook and Twitter have little incentive to help counterintelligence beyond their own goodwill.  But Congress could pass legislation that requires social media companies to cooperate with counterintelligence in the same ways they do with law enforcement.”

The Russian Bear Runs Amok in Britain’s Backyard

The report notes that even before Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election, attempts to encourage a secessionist vote in Scotland’s 2014 independence-from-the-UK referendum may have been “the first post-Soviet Russian interference in a Western democratic process.”

The report also reveals that the UK is awash in both Russians and Russian money: a post-Cold War foreign investor system was introduced in 1994, in part, to draw Russian money in the UK economy, with at least some of the impetus being that the UK’s business standards would rub off on the Russians and Russian companies taking advantage of them.  This failed miserably, as the report notes that today, “what is now clear is that it was in fact counter-productive, in that it offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’” and so much so that “Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal.’”

A lot of the massive Russian investment into the UK economy was about “extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment – PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money, contributing to a ‘reputation laundering’ process.”  This money has bought wealthy Russians close to Putin legitimacy and a home in Britain’s elite business and social scenes.  The report is also incredibly blunt that the problem is beyond fixing any time soon: “This level of integration…means that any measures now being taken by the Government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation” and “broad Russian influence in the UK…cannot be untangled.” 

Terrifyingly, UK authorities can only hope to mitigate the problem and do not even hope to neutralize it, a shocking sign of the degree to which Russia has successfully infiltrated and corrupted British business and society.  And all along the way, the report notes that the Russians have had help from a local “industry of enablers – individuals and organisations who manage and lobby for the Russian elite in the UK.  Lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR professionals have played a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in the extension of Russian influence which is often linked to promoting the nefarious interests of the Russian state.”  The depths of these links are so embarrassing that the report actually redacts the degree to which the UK has been infiltrated by Russians, Russian money, and Russian businesses, a giant liability since Russian businesses are “completely intertwined” with “Russian intelligence.”  But the cooperation of Russian businesses with the Russian government goes far beyond that: the oligarchs who Run Russia’s big businesses often operate hand-in-hand with the Russian government and the Russian mafia (in some ways, the real trinity of branches of the Russian government) to advance Putin’s agenda at home and abroad, so that with many of these people—including Putin himself—it might be hard to distinguish their roles in these three overlapping worlds, as I have noted many times before.

These financial infiltrations have extended to charitable and political organizations, including political parties, and it even seems the report is strongly hinting that members of the House of Lords (the UK’s weakened version of the U.S. Senate) have been compromised, with this classically British quip appearing in the discussion: “It is important that the Code of Conduct for Members of the House of Lords, and the Register of Lords’ interests, including financial interests, provide the necessary transparency and are enforced.”  This is equivalent of a British official screaming “The House of Lords has been infiltrated and there is barely any effort at enforcing the rules.”

If you think this might be exaggeration, consider that right after this report was published, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Tory government, which had opposed releasing this ISC report, named Russian-born British immigrant and dual Russian-British citizen Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords.  As a prime example of Russian infiltration into British society, he owns the prominent UK media outlets The Independent and The Evening Standard and is the son of Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy who worked in the UK during the cold war.  The father co-owns his son’s UK papers, and while Alexander additionally owns a Russian newspaper critical of Putin’s domestic actions, the elder Lebedev he has been personally supportive, even lobbied for, Putin’s aggressive foreign policy towards the west, as has the younger Lebedev. 

The report also notes that the UK has no law on the books like America’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires agents in America working on behalf of the political (or “quasi-political”) interests of foreign governments to register and disclose their related finance sand activities.  However, since the last election cycle on, the old, outdated FARA has been shown to have been woefully inadequately for its mission in the modern digital age.

What is clear is that in light of all these developments, the authors of the report view “economic crime as a national security issue” that is not nearly prioritized enough, and American lawmakers and officials would do well do to the same.

The report also notes a Buzzfeed investigation into the deaths of fourteen deaths of “Russian business figures and British individuals linked to them,” with the ISC getting evidence on these deaths.  This evidence and any commentary on it is redacted, most likely meaning that effort is ongoing.  Perhaps most troublingly, the report indicates the police involved may be compromised, as the report quotes the UK Parliament’s Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, in an again-characteristically understated British style, that the Buzzfeed piecepresented “considerable concerning evidence [that raises] questions over the robustness of the police investigations.”

Much Room for Improvement

After the discussion of the Buzzfeed report, what follows is an important discussion of resourcing and info-sharing within the government, much of which is redacted, but it is still fascinating to read anyway, though it may be of less interest to non-policy wonk-types.

In reading this report, it is no secret that, as mentioned, Boris Johnson and other Conservative Tory governments have hardly been eager about its compilation or release.  In a remarkable section, the ISC argues for taking responsibility for the “Hostile State Activity” portfolio away from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, right under Boris Johnson as Prime Minister; for the report’s ISC authors, “this appears unusual: the Home Office might seem a more natural home for it;” given the overt politicization of the process surrounding this report, its authors are essentially calling for a depoliticization of these responsibilities by taking them away from the people directly working under and for the Prime Minister and to have them given to a government department (albeit one that still reports through its head to the Prime Minister) that is seen as less political, a department that includes MI5 and the NCA (Americans can think of this as taking something away from a White House task force and entrusting it to one of our cabinet agencies like the Departments of Defense or Justice, something which I have argued needs to be done for pandemics in the future given the Trump Administration’s perhaps-singularly pathetic response to the coronavirus outbreak).

And as noted at the beginning of the report, Putin has an advantage in being able to autocratically combine whatever forces he wants to further his ends as far as political interference.  Thus, the ISC recommends that the mechanisms needed to respond to such Russian efforts should be unified and coordinated in such a way as to make the overall effort more robust, less redundant, and more able to plug any gaps.  Quite tellingly, under a headline “Less talk, more action?,” the ISC report authors feel that, as to the various bodies’ “plethora of plans and strategies…it has taken some time to understand the purposes behind each one and how they interlink: this suggests that the overall strategy framework is not as simple as it might be,” and they concludes these comments with a stinging “time spent strategising is only useful if done efficiently, and without getting in the way of the work itself.”  The U.S. should take a similar approach, with an interagency task force being formed as soon as possible to specifically handle the threat of Russian interference in America’s domestic political affairs, one that compels individual states to coordinate and be involved with it.

In related criticism right after, the report notes that its government Agencies (as opposed to Defence Intelligence) do not seem to have clear or useful performance measurement mechanisms when it comes to their evaluation of their success in fighting Russian political interference in the UK.  In a sharp rebuke of the Agencies’ transparency, the report notes that “We remind the Government that the Justice and Security Act 2013 does not oblige it to withhold information relevant to ongoing operations but merely provides the option of doing so… it is disappointing that in relation to a subject of such public interest this option has been exercised quite so broadly.”  Indeed, some of both the Obama Administration’s and (certainly more of) the Trump Administration’s secrecy on these matters were/are highly questionable, so such a sentiment is more than applicable to the U.S.

Lessons, Problems, and Solutions

In a section detailing why Russia is such a challenging adversary (“All witnesses agreed that Russia is one of the hardest intelligence challenges that there is.”), the ISC report notes that in some of its operations, Russian operatives have been rather clumsy, even seeming to be incompetent.  But the authors note, and I would wholly concur, that “whilst these attacks demonstrate that the RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] are not infallible, it would be foolhardy to think that they are any less dangerous because of these mistakes.”  I would make the case further that, while some of the more comical operatives or heavy-handed approaches have led to various Russian efforts being exposed, it is the smoother operators that were not caught (or not caught until much later) and whose attacks and effects are not even known that should be far more troubling.  Indeed, while the uncommonly bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee released a much-redacted report in late July, 2019, revealing that all fifty U.S. states’ election systems were the objects of a Russian infiltration campaign in 2016, earlier assessments had a much smaller number of states affected (in late 2016 and early 2017, only some 21 states were determined by U.S. officials to have been targeted).  This means that, in the words of The New York Times, the Russian “effort [was] more far-reaching than previously acknowledged and one largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time.”  The Senate report did not include many details on which states were compromised and actually masked the identity of which states were most heavily compromised.  A Democratic dissent added to the Senate report was deeply concerned that “there are currently no mandatory rules that require states to implement even minimum cybersecurity measures. There are not even any voluntary federal standards.”  In other words, we have no serious standards, who knows what we do not know about what we do not know, and who knows if whatever measures have been taken to defend our election systems—differing and spreading among fifty states as they are—are appropriate or will be effective.  We must assume, then, that there are other efforts and other successes on the part of the Russians beyond those of which we have become aware, whether thinking of the UK or U.S.

Because of Russia’s virtually non-existent check-and-balances, the ISC report notes that Putin and his inner circle can make and implement substantive decisions far more quickly than most Western governments in most situations can respond, lamenting that the UK and its allies “have yet found an effective way to respond to the pace of Russian decision-making.”  In a section that is heavily redacted in terms of explanations and specifics, it also notes the West faces a gap with Russia in terms of how it can use new technology to augment its intelligence capabilities, especially in recruiting and implementing human intelligence operatives to carry out operations on the ground.  Russia is also relatively likely to escalate because of the famous Russian paranoia coupled with Putin’s viewing virtually any challenge to him as an effort to delegitimize and overthrow him (as he famously viewed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Russian elections in 2011, a perceived slight he certainly never forgot). 

The UK is also at a disadvantage because it does not have enough people working to recruit personnel to work on countering Russian malign influence, and certain redacted areas of work regarding Russia are not given enough attention, either.  This means that not only are there not enough people working on these issues, but that their areas of focus even when focusing on Russia are also not properly balanced.  A further weakness the report notes is that appropriate countermeasures require more care than the terrorism operations that have been of such focus in recent years because, while those operations seek to destroy and dismantle terrorist organizations, that cannot be an option with Russia.  As in the U.S., there has been something of an irrational reluctance to aggressively and publicly name and shame Russian malign actors, and the ISC would like to see a more aggressive stance taken by the UK.

As in the also case with the U.S., there is vast room for improvement in drafting and passing legislation to counter these Russian threats.  The MI5 chief is quoted as saying that “there are things that compellingly we must investigate, everybody would expect us to address, where there isn’t actually an obvious criminal offence because of the changing shape of the threat and that for me is fundamentally where this doesn’t make sense.”  To paraphrase, there are things the Russians are doing that are known to be bad and harmful but are not illegal, and the laws must be strengthened to include such activity and enable authorities to investigate and prosecute those carrying out these hostile acts, which is very much the situation in the U.S., too.  The same MI5 Director-General also noted that the current framework was “completely out of date” and “makes it very hard these days to deal with some of the situations we are talking about today in the realm of the economic sphere, cyber, things that could be, you know, more to do with influence.”  As happened earlier in the report, the lack of an ability to legally counter foreign agents seeking to “obfuscate” their missions and backers is noted as an obvious area of weakness.

Additionally, despite some recent new options (Unexplained Wealth Orders) to crack down on malign and foreign financing of such activities, the report notes that since so many Russians have had longstanding financial ties and investments in the U.K., they work around this new tool.  Furthermore, because these Russians are so wealthy, they are able to tie up government actions and lawyers in costly, lengthy litigation that the UK government does not have the resources or personnel with which to compete to the degree that the NCA said “we are, bluntly, concerned about the impact on our budget.”  That the UK government is nervous about taking on Russian agents because they have better resources and can outspend and outlast British officials using Britain’s own legal system is an incredibly disturbing revelation.

In discussing sanctions, the report notes that because the Russians merge organized crime and businesses into their government’s influence and interference operations, sanctions meant to stop hostile state actions must be broadened to be able to include not just government officials but also these other actors who are not officially in the government but are still working to further the Russian regime’s agenda.  The world has seen a number of countries adopt so-called Magnitsky legislation to go after government officials who perpetrate human rights abuses in response to a high-profile case involving Russian officials’ murder of a whistleblowing Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky, including laws passed in the U.S. and the UK, but clearly, Russian campaigns against the West routinely include Russian businessmen and Russian organized crime, so rethinking sanctions is absolutely necessary.  This is likely one of the most effective ways to combat Russian hostile activity, as even the Magnitsky sanctions have enraged Putin and lobbying against them has been one of his top priorities, even to the point of Russian agents meeting with top Trump campaign officials—including campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—on this issue at the height of the 2016 election, as I noted in a piece that was censored by a Russian government-linked think tank for which I previously wrote (free of any compensation), so sensitive are the Russians about this issue.  Reform in the area of sanctions is surely crucial for the U.S., then, too.

In an obvious suggested move with which few reasonable people would disagree, the ISC report also remarks that election laws in our new, digital era need a major update to cover how the internet is used in campaigns, one that expands the ways in which online and especially targeted advertising and outreach is regulated.  Obviously, this is needed in the U.S., too.

When discussing the issue of working with allies to counter Russian hostile acts, there is an interesting redaction in a section discussing the working relationship with the U.S. (“In responding to the Russian threat, the UK’s long-standing partnership with the US is important…However, there remains a question as to whether ***.”), and while there are many possibilities as far as the redaction, U.S. President Donald Trump’s odd relationship, history, and behavior in relation to Putin and Russia are of major concern for all U.S. allies and it is not without some foundation that one might think this redaction relates to this concern.

Of at least equal, perhaps even more concern, to the UK is, as the report notes, division within Europe over Russia, and France, Austria, and Italy are called out by name, as is Israel as an example outside of Europe.  Far earlier in the report, Footnote 25 is interesting because it references knowledge that France’s Marine Le Pen’s far-right nationalist party is either the subject of UK surveillance or that it has unwittingly produced hard evidence of some sort of quid pro quo involving the promise of cash transfers in exchange for supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea.  Either way, it strongly suggests that UK intelligence has pretty deep knowledge on the degree to which Russia has infiltrated political parties, figures, and systems in continental Europe and the clear implication is that it is quite bad (infiltration and manipulation about which I have written for years).

One positive development is noted several times in the report: that not only was the UK government’s response to Russia’s attempt to murder a Russian defector, Sergei Skripal, (an attempt that he and his daughter survived but a local woman inadvertently exposed to the chemical weapon did not) on UK soil in Salisbury with a military-grade chemical weapons nerve agent, Novichok A234 swift and forceful, but so were a number of the responses of allies countries.  Sadly, this type of response is the exception and not the norm, but demonstrates that such type of coordinated action is possible.

Finally, the ISC report calls out the British government for placing too much effort in good-faith engagement of Russia:

Whilst it is possible that an improved relationship between Russia and the UK may one day reduce the threat to the UK, it is unrealistic to think that that might happen under the current Russian leadership.  It would have to be dependent on Russia ceasing its acts of aggression towards the UK, such as the use of chemical weapons on UK soil.  The UK, as a Western democracy, cannot allow Russia to flout the Rules Based International Order without there being commensurate consequences.  Any public move towards a more allied relationship with Russia at present would severely undermine the strength of the international response to Salisbury, and the UK’s leadership and credibility within this movement.

Such a lens should be applied to Trump’s nonsensical efforts to improve America’s relationship with Russia, as even now, Russia is actively interfering in the U.S. election.  There is only reason to believe that Donald Trump has improved his personal relationship with Vladimir Putin, not America’s with Russia.

Conclusion: The U.S. Needs to Take Massive Inspiration from This Exceptional British Report

To conclude, there is a certain level of brilliance that I have not seen in American government reports at work here.  Whereas most American reports are presented as a narrative, usually piece-by-piece and step-by-step, and analysis is usually presented at the end, here, it is presented throughout.  And this makes a big difference when it comes to redactions: with the commentary provided (sometimes itself redacted), we are actually being given hints by the committee as to the nature of the redacted material and the Committee’s views on this material and thus the degree to which we should be worried, and I would say this seems quite deliberate from the tone.  So it is, then, that while this report is much briefer than most American reports, it says so much more per page than its American counterparts.  Where the American equivalents often do not connect the dots on sensitive issues but leave that for the public, the media, and members of Congress, here the authors very much wish to guide the debate, even to the point of raising serious credibility issues of certain actors, pointing fingers, sometimes in the dark or hinting at names and institutions without naming them, other times being more direct but still with characteristic British blunt understatement.  And in this way, the report is so much more damning and valuable as a single document.  A typical American will not read the Mueller report and understand the big-picture in the same way or as deeply without expert commentary and additional analysis as a typical Brit reading this report can take away insight without such interpretative assistance.  As an example, one section header simply reads: “Did HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] take its eye off the ball?”  in big, bold lettering, something unimaginable in a U.S. Government report.

The bottom line is, this major UK report gave a succinct, highly-readable, even fun-to-read report that most Brits could go through relatively quickly and feel better informed on a key national security issue, taking away bold understandings on the drastic failings of the UK to protect the integrity of its democracy from Russian interference and able to see where a good chunk of the blame lay even if fingers are pointed in a somewhat indirect, terse, and understated manner.  Conversely, few Americans would be able to make it through the long, extremely detailed, and highly technical U.S. government reports that are actually bipartisan and credible, and whether the Mueller Report or the Senate Intelligence Committee reports, they mostly dance around anything sensitive politically and avoid laying much out directly or even indirectly as far as conclusions that would actually hold those who failed and fail to protect American democracy accountable, especially at the top of the current Trump Administration.  The typical U.S. citizen would be both overwhelmed by so much information and unable to draw appropriate conclusions from many of the complex, detailed segments, if they even managed to read the full reports, which few likely have.

That is not to say that such highly technical reports are not necessary—they certainly are, and are still extremely valuable—but America’s government must take a page from this praise-worthy UK ISC report and find a way not only to improve our defenses against Russian interference, but improve its ability to inform its citizens about threats and have them understand both our failures and the actions that must be taken to address those failures.  Executive summaries as we have done them are not enough, and, despite Americans not being British, we must find a way to produce momentous reports in the manner both the substance and style of the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee.  That means, too, something of a lesson on the English language from the British, which this report also refreshingly offers.

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 10, 2020; see related article: Republic of Georgia Shows Trump & His Fans Depressingly Normal: Just Another Ethno-centric Nationalist Movement

SILVER SPRING—When I was in graduate school, in one class I took at a very difficult time in my life taught by the worst professor I have ever had (and I have had many great ones), I nonetheless had some interesting experiences and produced some interesting papers.  One of these papers involved either picking out of a hat or from a list (my memory is a bit weak on this detail), one person after another, a country that we would have to write about in terms of conflict.  It was the fall of 2009, and I ended up with Georgia, barely a year after the war that had erupted on one level within Georgia between different groups and regions, namely and primarily Abkhaz in Abkhazia and Ossetians in South Ossetia on one side and Georgians and Georgia’s central government on the other.  On another level, it erupted between Georgia, a former Soviet Republic, and Russia, its former overlord. 

This war was Russia’s first foreign military intervention under Vladimir Putin, who had been in power for nearly a decade without intervening militarily outside of the Russian Federation and was hardly viewed as a serious threat to Europe or the West even as he pursued a brutal war against Chechens within the Russian Federation.  Yet by 2008, the hope in the West with which Putin had been greeted as someone who could both bring order and prosperity to Russia’s new democracy and be a more competent, stable partner with the West was quickly fading.  But it was the 2008 war, launched by Putin against Georgia amidst its own civil conflict and while the world was focused on the Olympic Games, that would wake the West up to the internationally aggressive tendencies of Putin, for whom the Cold War had never really ended.  In retrospect, the 2008 war with Georgia was a watershed, the beginning under Putin of repeated bold Russian interventionism beyond its borders.  Five-and-a-half years later saw the beginning in 2014 of Russian dismemberment of, and conflict instigation in, Ukraine.  A year-and-half later saw Russia’s dramatic entry into the Syrian Civil War in 2015.  By 2018, Russian “mercenaries” from the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeniy Prigozhin (a.k.a. “Putin’s chef”) and acting as an extension of the Kremlin, were conducting combat operations in Libya against its Western-backed government, in the Central African Republic, and, in 2019, in Mozambique. 

Yet beyond use of military force, Russia would be even bolder with different approaches.  The year 2014 saw Russian “active” hybrid measures support the 2014 Scottish secession campaign in the UK; 2016, the Brexit campaign, a failed coup attempt in Montenegro designed to thwart its entry into NATO, among other aims; the campaign to weaken and destabilize the U.S. by installing Donald Trump as the U.S. president in what I called back in December, 2016, the First Russo-American Cyberwar, which involved major efforts by Prigozhin in one of his other major capacities: helping to run Russia’s cyberwarfare (indeed, as I have written before, he is a real nexus of Russian international aggression).  Since then, Russia has interfered with Catalonia’s secessionist campaign and German, French, Austrian, Italian, British, Dutch, Swedish, (North) Macedonian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Moldovan, and, even now in 2020, American votes.  Also currently, Putin may be prepping for a military intervention in Belarus to crush a democratic uprising there, and we should not forget more general cyberattacks on Finland and the steady stream of cyberattacks against the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

There seem to be even still more countries that have been the target of Russian political interference and cyberwarfare.

With a large portion of these Russian campaigns, Putin has expertly manipulated what czars and comrades alike had often skillfully manipulated throughout Russian and Soviet history both within Russia and throughout is periphery: nationalism.  And many of these campaigns are part, as I have noted before, of a larger Russian war against the West mean to destroy, NATO, European unity, and even Western democracy as we know it.

In his 1931 book Conversations with Oscar Wilde, A. H. Cooper-Prichard presented the following exchange with the book’s namesake: “’How is it,’ I once asked him, ‘that people who are not possessed of a single other virtue should come out at times as patriots?’ ‘Exaggerated patriotism,’ he answered, ‘is the most insincere form of self-conceit.’ And at another time he said, ‘Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.’”  And in his “Notes on Nationalism,” Orwell—who would use the term “nationalism” as Wilde used “patriotism,”—wrote that “nationalist thought” could be characterized primarily by “obsession,” “instability,” and “indifference to reality,” that one of the great dangers he saw for nationalism was that it “may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.”  Orwell here famously defined nationalism as

first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  But secondly – and this is much more important – I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.

As Putin acts as a maestro conducting an orchestra of nationalism on a global scale to his ends in 2020 in ways most of us could have hardly imagined back in 2008, it is useful to look at how the Georgia war—this first great foreign campaign of Putin’s—can be a window into the world of nationalism, showing how banal and, sadly, normal ethno-nationalism can be.  This is true globally, and I used excerpts from my 2009 graduate school paper that discussed nationalism in Georgian history to shed light—just weeks before his socking victory in the United States—on the rise of the similarly thoroughly unoriginal, bland, and boring nationalism of then-candidate Trump.

That exploration of my older 2009 work—which in important ways was especially enriched by Ronald Grigor Suny’s deconstruction of nationalism as a very much consciously constructed phenomenon with two main sides: inclusion and exclusion—in a 2016 context has only increased in relevance thanks to what President Trump and Trumpism have become: the largest force in American politics since George Wallace to be built so nakedly on inclusion and exclusion.  The president does not even attempt to hide that white ethno-nationalism is what will be included in, and other identities excluded from, the top position in the national hierarchy.  This white, exclusionary ethno-nationalism, which he fanned and flamed into the White House with substantial Russian support, has only gotten more extreme and more powerful since then and today has plenty of sensible people worried about the prospects of both civil war and the death of true American democracy.

That look at how Russians long manipulated various nationalisms in Georgia is only too chillingly relevant to our current situation, in which our domestic divisions exploited by foreign enemies and domestic demagogues alike have brought America, in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic that has only intensified our divisions, to its knees, leaving it more vulnerable and weaker that at any time since the Civil War.  Ultimately, laws, elections and government reform can only go so far in rescuing us from our current nationalistic disaster: it will take many millions of Americans taking a hard look at their credulity and hardened exclusionary hearts and realizing that it is only a tempered, informed, inclusive nationalism that can save us from ourselves.

See related article: Republic of Georgia Shows Trump & His Fans Depressingly Normal: Just Another Ethno-centric Nationalist Movement

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s new podcast and his related eBook: A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

*****

The story of how Russia won the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar because American President Barack Obama did not fight back and failed to protect America’s democracy from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well-orchestrated, wide-ranging cyberassault, part of Russia’s wider war on Western democracy

 January 21st, 2019. Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 7, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook) December 7th, 2016 (a condensed, edited version of this article is featured on War Is Boring, and that version was quoted in another article by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL] here and was also mentioned in a morning briefing here by that article’s author; here are the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and ePub eBook versions)

Support Brian and his work by donating here.

Reuters

AMMAN — It is fitting that, on the anniversary of Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack, I am publishing an article discussing an attack far worse in its overall effects on America than Pearl Harbor: if December 7th, 1941, is “a date which will live in infamy,” 2016 is a year which will live in infamy.

All things being equal in an election that was decided by, at current count, less than 38,600 votes spread across three states (a few over 22,150 in Pennsylvania, slightly more than 5,350 in Michigan, a few under 11,100 in Wisconsin) out of over 136 million votes cast (under 0.0284% of all votes cast), it is certain that without Russia’s political cyberwarfare offensive in the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar—and Obama’s stunning lack of response to it—Hillary Clinton would now be President-elect.

Full disclosure: I am a liberal Democrat who proudly voted twice for Obama, but I will make clear what no one seems to want to, though it pains me: I tried making excuses before and after the campaign—he thought she would win anyway, he wanted to play it safe, maybe he has something secret in store, etc.—but as the days turned to weeks after the election and I spent more and more mental energy thinking it through, the stubborn truth reared its ugly head: Obama failed miserably in his role as Commander in Chief, protector, and defender of the United States of America in the final months of his eight-year presidency. In doing so, he ensured his own legacy would be destroyed, likely along with the American political system as we know it and possibly (likely?) the U.S.-led international system that has been a bulwark of great-power peace since WWII.

Here is the story of how Obama lost the war.

*****

First Strikes

In June of 2015, a unit of elite Russian hackers known as Cozy Bear, or APT 29, working at the behest of the main security service of the Russian government—the F.S.B., main successor to the famed Soviet-era K.G.B., where Vladimir Putin had served for over 15 years—successfully hacked into the systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the national governing body of the Democratic Party, completely unbeknownst to DNC staff.

The FBI contacted the DNC in the fall of 2015, warning it of possible hacking and asking its people to look for suspicious activity, but not providing any specifics; when DNC staffers responded with a sweep and found nothing, they asked the FBI to provide specifics, but it declined, keeping from them then and in future meetings the fact that U.S. officials suspected the Russian government; if the DNC had known this, it would have taken additional steps that could have limited the damage that came later. Only late in March 2016, did the DNC realize its systems were compromised and later bring in private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in April for help.

Also that March, another group of elite Russian hackers known as Fancy Bear, or APT 28—working at the behest of the G.R.U, Russia’s military intelligence service—targeted the DNC as well, in addition to targeting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, namely the e-mail accounts of senior campaign officials, including Chairman John Podesta. The FBI warned the campaign in March about possible hacking, but, again, did not mention anything specific about the hackers; only in April did the campaign realize its systems had been penetrated, something U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper publicly hinted at vaguely in May.

It took until June for the DNC to expel the Russians, and on June 14th, DNC officials and CrowdStrike experts informed the Washington Post of the successful hackings. The next day, CrowdStrike released an analysis that detailed ample evidence of Fancy/Cozy Bear’s involvement. The following day, the Clinton campaign hacks were first reported.

Only days after this, a hacker/hackers going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0—an homage to the Romanian hacker made famous by publicly outing Clinton’s private e-mail server—began publicly posting DNC documents, but it was quickly clear from a consensus of experts citing overwhelming evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was actually a front for Russia’s Fancy Bear.

Soon after, it was also reported that government officials realized in June that the Clinton Foundation was also the target of attempted Russian hacks. The same month, the Russians tried to breach voter databases in Arizona but apparently failed; in July, the Russians succeeded in hacking into Illinois voter databases, stealing information on some 200,000 voters; experts suggested it was likely other states’ voter databases had been hacked undetected.

*****

Information Bomb

The hacking stories largely receded until the evening of Friday, July 22nd, just after Donald Trump’s official nomination and days before Clinton’s Democratic National Convention, when WikiLeaks posted close to 20,000 e-mails from the DNC that had been hacked by Russia. The grossly overblown fallout from that release has been well-documented.

The leaks could not have come at a worse time for Clinton, who was desperate to rally liberals (particularly the conspiratorially-minded among hardcore Millennial Bernie Sanders supporters, whose emotional state demanded an alternate reality where the only possible explanation for their savior’s loss was that Clinton “cheated”) wary of her to her banner for the coming fight with Trump and to display Democratic Party unity at her convention; the leaks slowed and partly prevented this process, creating remarkable public displays of disunity at the Convention and in the streets outside of it and reopening wounds that had only just begun to heal. By the time a later round of leaks came, the ability of Clinton to have built up enough goodwill among many of these people to stay with her in the face of such new leaks playing into their negative stereotypes of her was greatly diminished by this first round of DNC-related leaks.

This was not a coincidence, and it was clear from the beginning that WikiLeaks and the Russians who gave WikiLeaks the hacked information (either directly or indirectly) had designed the release to have a maximum negative impact on Clinton. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ extremely anti-American founder and leader, made no secret of his intent to harm Clinton’s campaign and his visceral dislike of her, even while refraining from criticizing Trump, Republicans, and Russia, as he and his organization have a complicated but largely beneficial relationship with Russia.

Putin had far more reason to fear a Clinton presidency than one led by Trump, who has spent many years courting Russian favor, whose positions were the most pro-Russian for a major party candidate in American presidential campaign history, and whose campaign manager at this time, Paul Manafort, was notoriously known to have for years been on Putin’s payroll, even if indirectly.

During the week of the Democratic National Convention, it became even more obvious how intent the Russians were on damaging Clinton and the Democratic Party, and Trump even publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton. That week, it was reported that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a voter database used by the Clinton campaign and other Democrats were also targeted by Fancy Bear. It was also reported during the same period that both cybersecurity experts and U.S. government officials had determined that that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the DNC (including a consensus of FBI officials), that officials saw this as a full-blown national security issue, and that U.S. government officials had shared this conclusion—and evidence that Russia was responsible—with the White House, which had discussed the hacks prior to the WikiLeaks DNC release; some officials had also concluded that the DNC e-mails’ release was part of a Russian attempt to hurt Clinton’s chances and help make Trump president. 

Numerous Obama Administration officials were concerned enough with the lack of response that they anonymously shared their frustrations with the media. Apart from serious internal pressure on Obama from some of his advisors, the day Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination a bipartisan group of dozens of prominent former military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials and experts called on Obama to act swiftly and forcefully to counter, deter, and punish those responsible for the hacking, describing the attempt to hack and influence the American electoral process in the gravest, starkest of terms. In addition, senior Democrats on congressional intelligence committees called on Obama to publicly name the attackers. 

Later it was discovered that the hacking efforts were on a wider scale than initially thought, including the Democratic Governor’s Association, left-leaning think tanks tied to the Party, and other Democratic insiders and organizations.

Presidential Pensiveness and Paralysis

Despite all of this, Obama was steadfastly refusing to publicly name Russia as the culprit, in part because of fears of igniting a conflict and uncertainty as to how to respond to such attacks. 

The most absurd part of his rationale was that he was worried naming the Russians and taking a strong stance against them would harm John Kerry’s then-ongoing diplomatic efforts to win cooperation with the Russians on Syria, as all recent diplomatic talks with them on Syria had been a farce. The same officials noted that Obama “fear[ed]” additional cyberattacks by Putin, additional military harassment in the Black and Baltic seas, and further aggression in Eastern Europe. 

Yes, incredulously, Obama imagined that turning a blind eye to Russian interference in domestic American elections would somehow invite Russian compromise on other fronts, frustrating some on his team.  I am reminded of the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when the heroes are trying to convince Théoden, King of Rohan, to stand up for his people against the disinformation and aggression of Saruman; Théoden responds by saying “I will not risk open war,” to which Aragorn retorts “Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not;” in the real world, we had Obama playing the role of a Théoden in denial.

His maddening naiveté manifesting hardly for the first time during his presidency, Obama, demonstrated how poorly he understood his adversary, and unsurprisingly, Putin was emboldened on all these fronts.

Even during Kerry’s fastidious diplomacy, on September 19th Russia deliberately bombed a well-known UN aid convoy heading for an Aleppo, Syria, civilian population that was under siege and desperate for supplies; a few days after, Russia and Syria launched a “ferocious” indiscriminate air offensive against Aleppo, an “unrelenting assault” that quickly became the most intense campaign to date in the war and involved systematic targeting of hospitals (today, Russia and Assad are, with impunity, threatening whole parts of Aleppo with mass slaughter); Ukraine also saw Russian escalation.

Kerry’s talks failed because the Russians were never serious about them, much like previous negotiations on both Syria and Ukraine had repeatedly failed. After some two weeks of these Russian war crimes, the U.S. formally broke off negotiations on October 3rd; the day after, the Guccifer 2.0 APT 28 front released fake documents it claimed proved corruption at the Clinton Foundation.

In the face of Russian mockery of Obama’s diplomatic efforts and his continued non-response to Russia’s cyberwarfare, some of Obama’s “top national security officials” grew furious with him and felt U.S. credibility was being severely damaged, especially in the intelligence community and State Department, while even top Democrats in the House and Senate intelligence committees were either criticizing Obama’s caution (Rep. Adam Schiff) or publicly stating that Russia’s goal could be to harm Clinton’s candidacy and empower Trump’s (Schiff and Sen. Diane Feinstein). Calling on Obama to do more, they issued a joint statement on September 22nd publicly blaming Russia and stating its intent was to influence the election; incredibly, the White House had repeatedly urged them to delay the statement.

In fact, for all of 2016, Russia’s own media was decidedly pro-Trump and anti-Clinton. Additionally, all throughout the campaign, up to and through Election Day, it is now quite clear that Russia’s propaganda machine of hundreds of websites and many thousands of social media accounts—some unwittingly duped, others complicit or even an army of paid agents—posted many thousands of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump, pro-Russian, and anti-American comments, posts, and stories. Sometimes they amplified true stories like the DNC hacks, often they promoted only partly true or even totally false stories that were seen hundreds of millions of times by American voters, with a core of some 15 million Americans regularly consuming the propaganda and sharing it with much larger audiences on Facebook and Twitter, to the extent that in the final months of the election, fake U.S. election news produced greater engagement and shares than real U.S. election news, a period for which Trump had just placed the despicable Steve Bannon—a major American master of creating and promoting fake news—in charge of running his campaign. I can personally tell you from my own experience that Russian trolls even have ample time left over to direct their blatant propaganda at someone of my own lowly status often, repeatedly, and energetically.

*****

Bloodless Victory Against a Passive Opponent

Even considering all this, Obama waited the better part of a week after the Syria talks formally ended, and some two-and-a-half months after his administration had reached a consensus that Russia was behind the hackings and at least involved in the passing of the information to WikiLeaks, to finally formally accuse Russia on October 7th, explicitly asserting that the aim of its operations was to “interfere” with our presidential election, the conclusion of 17 American governmental intelligence agencies. 

Later the same day, a recording from 2005 of Donald Trump vulgarly bragging about committing serial unwanted sexual advances appeared; “almost immediately after” it surfaced, Russia and WikiLeaks came to play defense for Trump and offense against Clinton, with WikiLeaks beginning a series of releases of many thousands of Clinton campaign Chairman Podesta’s e-mails, obtained earlier by Russia; they highlighted campaign infighting, transcripts of Clinton’s paid-by-Wall Street-banks speeches, and Clinton’s ties to political and financial elites, all of which generated negative publicity for Clinton. The batches were released almost every day from October 7th through Election Day on November 8th, ensuring they would constantly be in the headlines in the closing month of the election, even as U.S. officials were coming across even further evidence that Russia was feeding them directly to WikiLeaks. Exit polls—especially in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and others—showed that voters who made their time up during this period broke overwhelmingly for Trump; additionally, they showed that far more voters broke for third-party candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—as well as every swing state that Trump won—in the final weeks and month than before. For those who had been deeply angered by the DNC leak but were trying to give Clinton a chance, these new Podesta leaks were a reminder of the previous controversy and played into many of the same negative emotions and perceptions these people had harbored about Clinton.

At this point, Obama was considering a “proportional” response to Russia, but such a response still has not materialized, as any appropriate response of any proportion would have sent a public message that the world would unmistakably have heard, being that this Russo-American conflict is playing out very markedly on the global public stage; what has materialized instead is a deafening silence of action from Obama, causing Western democracies to despair. To add insult to injury, weeks before the election Trump claimed America “had no idea” if Russia was behind the hacks at the final presidential debate and Russia even requested it be allowed to send election observers to several U.S. states, which rejected the requests.

Pathetically, Obama warned Putin directly on October 31st on a sensitive nuclear-related hotline not to hack the electoral process (but making no mention of the WikiLeaks DNC and Podesta leaks), only eight days before the election and long after so much damage had already been done, clearly enough to shape public opinion and achieve Putin’s aims without direct election hacks, and the WikiLeaks leaks still continued after this message was delivered. 

Obama laughably claimed the warning amounted to successful deterrence, yet even if Clinton had won, the U.S. was possibly facing massive unrest and a Congress intent on impeaching Clinton, its constituents incensed in part by Russian propaganda. 

In charge of a relatively weaker Russia taking on the most powerful nation in the world and regardless of the election’s outcome, Putin had already won: he took to heart von Clausewitz’s maxim that “War is the continuation of policy [or politics] by other means,” something that Obama seems to have missed. Putin had essentially “weaponized” WikiLeaks (and, in the process, the unwitting U.S. news media) against Clinton, the Democratic Party, the U.S. electoral process, and American democracy itself. And almost overnight, he has largely silenced the Republican Party’s hostility to him and his regime: most Republicans seem to prefer not to attack their new benefactor, while the most vocal GOP critics of Putin are mostly a fading old guard (as a case in point, just a few days ago, all Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called for the Obama Administration to declassify information on Russia’s interference in the U.S. election; not one single Republican on the Committee joined the call). 

Russia’s hacking and disinformation campaigns coupled with Obama’s dismal failure to respond appropriately to them were themselves certainly more than enough to explain Clinton’s razor thin loss, even as other factors—Clinton’s e-mail server scandal, the way FBI Director James Comey engaged with the public (or did not) during the FBI’s multiple investigations, the Bernie Sanders phenomenon and the behavior of Bernie Sanders, polling errors, the style and focus of media coverage, and, of course, many Americans’ irrational, visceral hatred of Clinton born largely out of still-pervasive sexism and misogyny—undeniably also played a role. Any one of those alone not becoming a factor could have swung the election to Clinton, but they were largely out of the hands of the Clinton campaign. President Obama could have declassified most or all of Hillary’s e-mails and shown the public how innocuous they actually were; he could have reigned in Comey and the rogue actors within the FBI, as they were part of the Executive Branch, though this would have carried considerable political risk and could have at least created the appearance of a president interfering in an official investigation for political reasons; but the single area where the president could have had the most impact and been able to act in a way least tainted by questions of propriety was concerning all things related to Russia.

*****

The Worst Defeat in American History and a Serious Blow to Western Democracy

Russia had simply waltzed into America’s national election, President Obama’s political party, and the campaign of President Obama’s chosen successor Hillary Clinton, did what it pleased for all the world to see, stared us down at our own gala, grabbed the microphone, repeatedly endorsed the savage critic of Obama and rival of Clinton Donald Trump, repeatedly badmouthed both Obama and Clinton, took a crap on the dance floor, the dropped the mic and laughed hysterically while doing a slow waltz out the door.

Wars have been fought for far less, and yet Obama’s response was to avoid confrontation with his legacy and the future of the nation, even the future of Western democracy, very much at stake.

In a follow-up piece, I shall deal with the many options Obama had as Commander in Chief besides doing virtually nothing. But for now, perspective:

The most successful cyberattack in world history also involved the weakest response by any American president ever to foreign aggression. It was also the worst foreign attack on American soil since the War of 1812: neither Pearl Harbor nor 9/11 resulted in a regime change that put in place a President of the United States who is so unwitting a mole for Russia, grossly unfit for high office, and oblivious to how much he will undermine critical institutions and values as Trump. It is the first time a party in power in America was toppled by foreign interference and the first time a foreign power toppled the political leadership of a long-reigning first-tier power since arguably Alexander the Great took over Persia. 

Additionally, Russia’s activities have greatly helped to diminish confidence in the American system, further fan the flames of cynicism, and normalize fake news, making America overall more divided, less governable, and more confused than at any time since the Civil War/Reconstruction period; these acts have also damaged the U.S.-led international system that has been in place since WWII.

It can only said of Putin’s resoundingly successful cyberwar that he played so many segments of American society to his ends without their knowledge that it was a masterful orchestral performance and that Putin was a legendary conductor. This (First) Russo-American Cyberwar will be studied for generations, for centuries, as a brilliant way for a state to take down a democratic nation, no matter how powerful, if its people are divided, and to do so without actually firing a single shot but by turning that nation’s strengths against itself. 

This is part of a larger Russian war against the West that is becoming increasingly brazen: until this year, Syria and Ukraine were the most glaring centerpieces in Russia’s disinformation campaigns; then, Russian disinformation caused a faux scandal early this year in Germany that weakened Merkel and her party ahead of key regional votes; Russia’s propaganda machine went intensely against Remain and for Brexit in the UK’s big vote this year and its efforts were clearly crucial in swaying votes in what was an intensely close decision; Russia has also been active in non-NATO Sweden this year, particularly when it was voting on closer ties with NATO; Finland, which shares a huge border with Russia, has also seen a surge in Russian disinformation; early in November, it even became apparent that Russia may have even been involved in an attempted coup in Montenegro, which is on the verge of ascending to membership in NATO.

Since Trump’s election and just this week, Russia’s tool WikiLeaks is already unleashing its might against Angela Merkel and her party in Germany, which fears far more interference in its 2017 national elections, and Russian propaganda was active in supporting the right-wing parties in Italy’s big vote that was a stinging defeat for it centrist pro-EU leader and his party (he will now soon resign), though efforts were less successful in Austria, where the pro-Russian far-right candidate failed by only a modestly large margin in an election that still signaled a significant weakening of Austria’s political center and in which fake news (not yet directly linked to Russia) played a major role during the campaign. In Russia, lawmakers cheered the developments in both Italy and Austria, seeing them as further signs of the demise of the current European system. Also since Trump’s victory, pro-Russian presidential candidates won in Moldova and Bulgaria, where Russian political meddling has been a significant force in shaping the political climate in the years preceding the recent votes. Additionally, Russia’s neighboring three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—already subject to heavy Russian disinformation operations—have seen a significant increase in Russian disinformation since the U.S. election and many there fear what is to come next. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the leader of close U.S. ally South Korea is now facing impeachment during a period of massive unrest in part provoked by Trump, even as a politician known as “Korea’s Trump” is rising in the polls.

Today, right-wing extremists—now that the Soviet Union is gone and Russia is not a champion of communism and the international left—admire Putin’s authoritarianism and see him as a defender of the West, a newly increasingly illiberal, rather than liberal, West, and Russian support for right-wing pro-Russian parties in Europe is hardly limited to propaganda and disinformation: Russia has been orchestrating loans to right-wing parties all over Europe, including (but hardly limited) to France. And Trump and his advisor Bannon have made no secret that they want to ally with and support the same far-right, anti-NATO, pro-Russian parties in Europe that Putin wants to see succeed. Even in just four, let alone eight, years of a Trump presidency, the damage such a coordinated effort could do to the EU and NATO as institutions should not be underestimated, especially as Russia’s successful disinformation and propaganda operations increase Putin’s standing and support across Europe. 

Putin sits on Europe’s eastern border, part wolf, part vulture, both inflicting wounds and picking those wounds apart, weakening the body politic of the West. And by any standard, 2016 was a year of spectacular success, with Russia’s desired outcomes being achieved in the US, the UK, Italy, Bulgaria, and Moldova, while seeing trends favorable to its interests significantly increased in places like Germany and Austria. Furthermore, U.S. and NATO “ally” Turkey has taken a decidedly sharp anti-democratic and anti-Western plunge and is clearly cozying up to Russia. 

2017 may be even better for the Kremlin, and even worse for what is still referred to as the West.

This is the new face of warfare, one in which the lines between politics and war are erased and in which Russia is dominant and ahead of everyone, and this should be terrifying all of us. I am not going to write that this is a fatal blow for the U.S. or the West, but it is a grievous one, and that it is one that the public and news media seem unable to discover or acknowledge, let alone comprehend or respond to appropriately, makes it all the more dangerous and all the more likely to happen again… and again.

AP

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related articles: EXCLUSIVE: Top Trump Aides’ Deeper & Linked Roles in Putin Agenda Revealed; Russian Mafia Nexus With Trump & Aides Goes Back Years

Trump, Putin, Russia, DNC/Clinton Hack, & WikiLeaks: “There’s Something Going on” with Election 2016 & It’s Cyberwarfare & Maybe Worse

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!