Shared but sigh. But the truth is far more alarming. Russia’s activities aren’t part of a conspiracy. They are elements of an openly stated doctrine — a resurrection of Soviet style political warfare, in which intelligence agencies seek to amplify divisions among their enemies, weakening the Western front by sowing discord and dissent whenever the opportunity presents itself. Well yes and no. The FSB had been in the DNC's servers for like a year from what I've read. Then the GRU stumbled on in and tripped enough alarms that they fucked it up for the FSB. So on the one hand, yeah, classic spy shit. On the other hand, "Watergate break-in." Did it ever really leave? eyeroll Russia, as the USSR, had a buffer of client states surrounding it and protecting it from direct Western interface. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, those client states became foreign (the "near abroad" as they evocatively call it). People forget: Lenin Stalin Khruschev Brezhnev Andropov Chernenko Gorbachev Yeltsin Putin That's every ruler of Russia since Czar Nicholas and Andropov and Chernenko were good for 27 months between the two of them. Gorbachev was the first premier that wasn't buddies with Stalin; Putin was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB when the USSR collapsed - he got to see Gorbachev fuck it up and Yeltsin burn it down. AND - strongman that he is, demagogue that he is, certified Bad Dude that he is, Russia is stronger today than it's been since the defeat in Afghanistan - a defeat that was 100% instigated, funded and coordinated by the United States. "Democratic fabric of American society?" Yes, we call that propaganda. It's been around for a while. Know why Condoleeza Rice was Bush's National Security Advisor? EXCUSE ME? The guy who fought the Soviets in Nicaragua, Panama and Afghanistan "ended" containment? To say that the kleptocracy that swept Russia under Yeltsin was a "choice" is to argue that ISIS was a "choice."TALLINN — The revelation that Russia’s intelligence services hacked the computer systems of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in what appears an attempt to weaken her in the U.S. election against Donald Trump may seem like the stuff of conspiracy.
The political warfare of the Cold War is back — in updated form, with meaner, more modern tools, including a vast state media empire in Western languages, hackers, spies, agents, useful idiots, compatriot groups, and hordes of internet trolls.
What the Russians have in their sights is nothing less than the democratic fabric of American society and the integrity of the system of Western liberal values.
Russia is effectively using our democracies and our systems of rule of law against us. The method works like a computer virus. They insert a lie, a false accusation, a fabrication, an illegally-obtained private conversation — some form of kompromat — into our media, competing for ratings and ad revenue, and then they let us tear ourselves apart.
On one occasion, some years after the Spanish Armada, Sir Walter Raleigh complained bitterly about the Spanish propaganda (though he didn’t use that name). He was angry about a Spanish report of a sea battle near the Azores between the British ship Revenge and the ships of the Spanish king. He said it was “no marvel that the Spaniard should seek by false and slanderous pamphlets, advisoes, and letters, to cover their own loss and to derogate from others their own honours, especially in this fight being performed far off.” And then he recalled that back at the time of the Spanish Armada, when the Spaniards “purposed the invasion” of England, they published “in sundry languages, in print, great victories in words, which they pleaded to have obtained against this realm; and spread the same in a most false sort over all parts of France, Italy, and elsewhere.” The truth of course was that the Spanish Armada suffered a colossal disaster in 1588.
The West has been slow to see Putin’s reign for what it is: a KGB takeover of Russia. The security services now operate unrestrained. They are the state.
At a 1985 meeting of arms control experts at Stanford, Rice's performance drew the attention of Brent Scowcroft, who had served as National Security Advisor under Gerald Ford. With the election of George H. W. Bush, Scowcroft returned to the White House as National Security Adviser in 1989, and he asked Rice to become his Soviet expert on the United States National Security Council. According to R. Nicholas Burns, President Bush was "captivated" by Rice, and relied heavily on her advice in his dealings with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
In the early 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ended the long period of containment, saying he had a simple policy objective toward the USSR: “We win and they lose.”
He inspired a vision that eventually broke the Soviet Union, liberated Europe, and gave Russians a chance to live in a plural, representative democracy where they had the right to determine their own future. They didn’t choose it.
I agree with your analysis, but I forgive the simplistic terms of the article for the simple reason that at least it's raising the issue. I'll bet if you polled millennials, many would be unaware that the destruction of capitalism (and world domination a la some Bond villain) was the stated position of the USSR for the entirety of their terrible, short history. It's important to keep that memory alive, especially as Putin is a career spy who made a living terrorizing East Germans.
I might be wrong wrong (ThatFanficGuy, we need you here), but I think that the FSB has a different logo. This one is from the Военная Разведка ВС РФ - Russia's Military Intelligence, which, I am assuming, operates under a different roof. FSB functions within the country (or at least it's supposed to), while the Military Intelligence would probably deal with external affairs. Still a sick logo though.
I spent a week in Finland last month. I can say without reservation that the Finns are scared stiff of the Russians. All my cousins wanted to talk about was whether and how the west would support them if Putin invaded. It's a small but real possibility to them. There are still people alive in Finland who lived through the winter war.
I think for much of the west, "Scandinavia" is a broadly-defined thing north of Europe that most people would be shocked isn't universally NATO. I suspect aggression in Finland would be recognized as a dire crisis by every player in the theater. Ahhh, the Winter War.
So your chief criticism is that the article is understating not only the length of time that Russia has been antagonizing the West but the scope of this undermining? But at the same time, it's more or less to be expected because this is how states operate. I'm glad that somehow George H. W. Bush et al were able to help smooth the transition from two superpowers to one with little blood lost. But I'm not sure future Western leadership (either Trump or the typically hawkish Clinton) will be capable of replicating relatively peaceful geopolitical transitions if Russia's ruling class has an existential crisis that can only be assuaged by creating a new buffer of states around it.
My chief criticism is that the article is overstating the threat that Russia presents by insinuating that the actions of Russia are in some way new, novel, or unprecedented. The shit Russia is pulling is the shit state actors have pulled on each other since Augustus Caesar. In this case, neither the technology nor the methods have changed. Yes - Russia has basically said that economic warfare and propaganda are fair game but that's basically just another way of pointing out that the Americans have been doing it forever, too. I mean, here's a book wherein all the shit we're accusing Putin of doing to the US, the CIA was doing to the US. Everything old is new again. And granted - were I Estonian, I'd probably see an existential threat in Putin flexing into Crimea. But I'm not.