What many of us have feared to be the case for months has now been confirmed to be a chilling reality – FBI director James Comey stated before a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee that President Trump and his associates are under active criminal investigation for ties to the Russian Federation and the role that country played in influencing the outcome of the 2016 general election. Though Russia’s meddling in our 2016 general election is by far the most widely covered incident, and perhaps the most influential of yet, this meddling in the democratic elections of other nations has become a hallmark of Russian foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it’s critical that we learn to recognize these patterns and begin developing strategies to defend against and counter Russian meddling in our democratic processes.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia lost an immense amount of prestige and power in the world, prestige which many Russian elites have sought to regain ever since. In fact, Vladimir Putin famously stated in a speech before the Russian Duma that, The breakup of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” Recognizing the reality that the Soviet Union will never again exist as a political entity, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin in general have sought other ways of expanding Russian influence and power around the world, much to the surprise of even our most astute intelligence and foreign policy officials. Russia knows full-well it does not have the military capacity to defeat NATO in a conventional conflict and could never militarily rebuild its empire; so, instead, it has invested heavily in soft forms of power and asymmetrical warfare such as cyber capabilities and propaganda, to shockingly successful effect. Russia’s ability to project soft power has augmented its hard power capabilities, making it an increasingly credible threat to our national security and world peace in general.
The first incident of Russia projecting power into a country in its former Soviet empire was its invasion of Georgia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia became an independent nation, but two semi-legitimate breakaway provinces largely supported by Russia known as Abkhazia and South Ossetia began demanding autonomy from the central Georgian government. At this time, Georgia had troops deployed to Iraq in support of George Bush’s war and was in high level talks with NATO officials about becoming a NATO member. Recognizing the increasingly close relationship between Georgia and the West, Russia began a media and propaganda campaign saying the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia deserved independence from what they saw as an oppressive regime in Tbilisi. Not long after, Russia invaded Georgia, created two de-facto independent nations on Georgian territory, and effectively quashed any chance of Georgia becoming a NATO member state.
The second and much more intense example of Russian meddling in countries trying to forge their own path has been their covert invasion of Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have had a very long and complicated history, shared by their common culture and related languages but plagued by violent conflicts between the two peoples. Ukraine was the second largest Soviet Republic in the USSR, and contained much of its industrial heartland. Ever since Ukraine became an officially independent nation, Russia has exerted an immense amount of influence on the country’s internal affairs. As younger generations of Ukrainians began looking to the West, and especially the EU, they saw a future that they wanted to participate in. One with democracy, prosperity, opportunity, openness, and true freedom. As high level talks between the Ukrainian government and EU officials began about the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU, Russia implemented its most covert invasion of another country in history. Similar to what it did in Georgia, Russia complained that the pro-EU forces, who were now the majority in Ukraine, were somehow oppressing native Russians in Crimea and Donbass, for which there was little evidence. What happened next was essentially this – Russia began a massive propaganda campaign both in Ukraine and internationally, employed armies of bots to disseminate this disinformation, and was able to do so to such a successful degree that it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in a sham election and has fostered a civil war in Donbass with no end in sight, all without officially declaring war on Ukraine.
Many in the field of foreign policy saw these incidents as a rational Russian reaction to what it sees as encroachments into its traditional spheres of influence, and there is legitimacy to this claim. Russia has always been a great power and as such has always asserted what it believes is its right to influence smaller nations on its borders. However, this is the 21st Century and nations, no matter what “sphere” they are in should have the right to pursue their own destiny. Many of these experts also thought Russia would limit these activities to this traditional sphere, but this assumption also turned out to be incorrect.
Perhaps as a response to what it sees as Western encroachment on the Russian homeland, the Kremlin is no longer simply playing what could be considered defense – it is waging rather aggressive offense, which we must be prepared to recognize and counter to protect our electoral processes from this Russian meddling. Through dark corners of the web, Wikileaks, Russia Today, and many other forms of false media outlets and sources of disinformation, the Russian government employed a massive disinformation campaign during the 2016 general election which we were woefully unprepared to cope with, let alone counter. They used trolls, bots, fake news, infiltrated groups, and fostered infighting between Bernie and Hillary supporters. The saddest part of all of this is that many, though not all, of us fell for it. There is mounting evidence the Kremlin is employing these similar tactics to affect the outcome of the French and German elections, and that it even played a role in Brexit’s success. The Kremlin’s goal is obvious – divide the West and regain as much of its former glory as possible.
But we won’t let it happen again, at least not in our country if we recognize these patterns, understand that Russia wants a divided United States for its own purposes, and unite in the face of this common threat to our country. Make no mistake – Russia gaining power in the United States does not benefit any American whether they are left, right, or center. This country belongs to us, as does our electoral process. Let’s take it back from the Russian bear.