From time to time in the comments section of this blog doubts are raised about whether the Russians undertook to meddle in the 2016
election in an effort to help Trump get elected. These doubts are frequently expressed in a
way that suggests that those who think the answer is “yes” are dupes of
American propaganda, always a cruel insult to those who like to think of
themselves as unusually clued in. Today,
I should like to address both the manifest doubt and the latent judgmental
rebuke that accompanies it. Keep in mind
that I do not read, write, or speak Russian, so my discussion will perforce proceed
at a rather high degree of abstraction, not a problem for someone who has spent
his life as a philosopher.
There are four questions that I need to address:
1. Would the
Russians do such a thing if they had reason to and could?
2. Do they have
reason to?
3. Could they?
4. Why should I
care?
Let me tackle the first question not directly but rather, as
Hume says in the Treatise, by “beat(ing)
about all the neghbouring fields, without any certain view or design, in hopes
(my) good fortune will at last guide (me) to what (I) search for.” [Book I, Part III, section II.]
Would the American government meddle in the election of
another country in an effort to aid a candidate it favors? The question answers itself. A country that has thought nothing of
overthrowing by force foreign governments it dislikes would, I am confident,
not hesitate to resort to what is menacingly labeled cyberwarfare. Would Great Britain? Would France?
Would China? In the interest of
brevity, I shall refrain from citing chapter and verse and simply reply “Yes.”
Well, if America, Great Britain, France, and China would employ
cyberwarfare to influence the internal politics of another nation, would
Russia, alone among these global powers, refrain, perhaps out of a deep and
abiding respect for the sanctity of the ballot box? I am going to take a giant leap here and say “No.” They would not refrain.
So, Russia would, if it had reason to.
But why would they?
What is it to them whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or Donald
Trump or Joe Biden is President? Here I
must speculate. I can see two reasons
why they would prefer Trump to either Clinton or Biden. First, ever since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the United States has been encroaching in Eastern Europe on what was for
a long time an uncontested Soviet sphere of influence. I infer, without direct knowledge, that the
Russian government does not like that fact.
Hillary Clinton clearly supported that policy more urgently than Donald
Trump appeared to, and Joe Biden does as well.
Second, the Russian government, I believe without direct knowledge,
wishes to be quits with the economic sanctions that restrict the international
movement of the money of Russian oligarchs, and in this regard as well they have
good reason to suppose Trump would be more amenable to lifting the sanctions
than either Clinton or Biden.
But could they? Clearly
the Americans have the technical skill to pull off such an intrusion, and so, I
think, do the French, the British, and the Chinese. The Russians?
To be sure, they write great novels and make lovely nested dolls, but
are they smart enough to master the ins and outs of twenty-first century
technology? Well, I am, for family
reasons, prejudiced on this matter.
Recall that my older son, Patrick, was a chess prodigy who grew up to be
a famous International Chess Grandmaster.
At our dinner table, the names Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, and Gary
Kasparov were uttered reverentially in hushed tones. I have no doubt that somewhere in their vast
land the Russians could find techies up to the job of hacking the American election.
So Russia would if they had reason to, they did have reason
to, and they could. I conclude that they
did indeed try, who knows with what success, and will try again.
But why should I care?
What is it to me that Russia tries to influence our elections to
re-elect Trump? At this point I must
speak personally. Each of you must do
the same. There are a number of very big
changes that I would like to see in American economy, society and government. I shall not detail them; I assume readers of
this blog would have little difficulty making a list. Now, given the broad, deep, systemic changes
I desire, I can see only two ways to accomplish them: by violent revolution or
by government action. I don’t put much
faith in violent revolution. For one thing,
the wrong subset of the population has all the guns. So, frustrating and depressing as it may,
seem, that leaves government action.
Considering the people who now hold local, state, and federal office,
the only way to get the government action I want is to elect different people
to those local, state, and federal offices.
Now, if I thought the Russians wanted America to change into
the sort of country I could be proud to call my own, then I might welcome a
little foreign cyberhelp. But I don’t
think that is what the Russians want. So
I don’t want the Russians trying to hack our elections. Is this my number one concern? Of course not. My number one concern is getting all those
sluggards who claim to support the right policies off their asses and out to vote. My number two concern is the
broad, deep, insidious efforts by our All American vote suppressors to block
the good people who want to vote from doing so.
But some ways down my enemies list is the Russian government trying to muck
about in our elections.
That is why I care.
16 comments:
If Great Britain, France and China (and probably Israel, Saudi Arabia, x, y and z too) would use cyberwarfare to influence in a U.S. election, why single out Russia?
The fact that the liberal media single out Russia (and no one mentions good old Israel and Saudi Arabia) leads one to suspect that they are brewing up a new cold war. Now I know Putin is really evil (he even looks like a James Bond villain) and freedom-loving nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia are headed by really good freedom-loving folk, but still....
Dear Prof. Wolff,
That I agree with most—almost all—of what you write here will perhaps not surprise you given what I’ve written in previous comments. But I do want to say that when you refer to the way some doubters seem to cruelly and insultingly imply that proponents of Russian meddling are dupes of American propaganda, I think you somewhat misrepresent matters. (Or am I again misreading your irony?)
I certainly won’t presume to speak for others who have voiced such doubts here. But I will protest that where the subject of Russian meddling is concerned I myself have never thought anyone here has been a dupe of American propaganda.
I do see many supporters of the 2016 Democratic candidate feverishly searching for explanations for what was for them on that November evening a totally incomprehensible and totally unacceptable defeat. And I see some of these quickly coming to the conclusion that the Russians did it at Trump’s behest and that Trump was therefore an illegitimate President. [I imagine you need no reminding that the Republicans have pushed the “illegitimate president” line repeatedly against Clinton, because he was a criminal and a womaniser (o tempora, o mores), and Obama, because he wasn’t born in the USA. So that sort of charge, that sort of political weapon, has become rather standard issue in this country.)
I don’t see many of those who think this way as dupes of anyone but themselves. But more importantly, I do see those engaging in politics on this basis as in effect obstructing a politics that would perhaps bring about the things you allude to when you, towards the end, explain “why should I care?” Their focus just isn’t where I would rather it was, because I quite agree with what you say in that paragraph and in the one that follows.
Besides those who think this way—i.e, that Trump conspired with the Russians, which is very different from the claim that the Russians did try to intervene and that Trump welcomed their intervention—I am of the opinion that others, who don’t necessarily believe that, decided it was too good an opportunity to miss to further their own political goals, both domestic goals (both to try to weaken Trump’s base by appealing to the old Cold War fears which likely still linger among some of them, and simultaneously to try to weaken their political opponents within their own Democratic Party and to its left) and foreign policy goals (some of which you allude to when you refer to the policies Hillary Clinton supported vis-a-vis the expansion of American influence into Eastern Europe after 1989— which foreign policy, if the British political scientist Peter Gowan is to be believed, may have had as much to do with keeping post-Cold War Western Europe within the American fold as with challenging a down and out Russia).
To conclude by circling back to your beginning and mine, my rebuke of those who put so much emphasis on Russian interference is certainly not latent though it is certainly judgemental, politically judgemental, because, as I see it, latent in their Trump-Russia conspiracy claims are political methods and political goals which are certainly not mine. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend but may, at best, be my ally of convenience. I can’t resist mentioning here Gabriel Kolko’s “The Politics of War,” where he, to my mind, convincingly argued that Britain, the USA, and the USSR, not to mention such lesser players as the free French, the free Poles, the Greek resisters, the Italian resisters, etc., were all both no more than allies of convenience for each other wrt some matters while they were actually enemies on others—as I vaguely recall him saying, there was more than one war going on during World War Two. That seems to me to sum up our present political situation too.
But as you say, in 2020 there are a lot more and more significant things to worry about than Russian interference.
Best wishes, rm
I think RMcD reply is excellent. As you say Prof Wolff, this Russian interference issue is way down your list of priorities. But please contrast that statement with the reality of American political and media obsession for the last 4 years. It has been wall-to-wall coverage of Russia, crucially, to the exclusion of all your more important priorities. I think to ignore this fact is to miss the point.
We have to see this "Russian phenomenon" for what it is: as RM says, a way to avoid dealing with fundamental and enormous problems with the current iteration of the Democratic party and the deep rot within our country in general.
The criticism is that the Democratic Party and basically every media outlet massively invested in a narrative based on some pretty unworthy motivations.
Ironically (for lack of a better word), Trump's actual policies have not been esp. favorable to Russian interests (w one or two exceptions), but I think they still prefer Trump to Biden, just as they preferred him to HRC.
s.w.: One rather compelling reason the media "singled out" Russia is that Putin had an entire building filled w people whose job was to infiltrate social media platforms w the aim of disrupting, trolling, and filling them w anti-HRC posts and content. The debated question was the extent to which the Trump campaign knew in advance about, encouraged, and/or cooperated with this effort, not whether the effort itself took place (though there were some who questioned whether it took place, most observers do not). Just b.c other countries cd have done something comparable doesn't mean they did so on the Russian scale.
As R McD noted in the other thread, you can see this simply as Putin et al pursuing and defending their interests. It so happens that their interests in this case involved actively supporting by less-than-transparent means a candidate that most of the readers of this blog (incl me) strongly opposed. More broadly, the U.S. has an interest in minimizing foreign interference in its elections, just as the Russia govt, i.e. Putin, has an interest in minimizing foreign interference in its elections, and that interest can be summed up as a desire to let the population of the country concerned decide who leads it, whether that decision occurs in the context of a relatively transparent and relatively democratic contest (note the word "relatively") or in the context of a (for lack of a better word) pseudo-election in which the victory of one candidate (Putin or his designee) is close to a foregone conclusion. Because the population of a country ultimately has to decide its own political fate (as Mill suggested in his classic essay on non-intervention) absent truly egregious conditions (see below).
Although the US govt has initiatives and quasi-governmental institutes devoted to "democracy promotion" abroad, it is not the proper business of the U.S. govt to try to influence, subtly or otherwise, how the Russians or the Chinese or anyone else conducts their pseudo-elections or (in the case of some other countries) their actual elections, and no more is it the proper business of the Russian govt or any other govt to try to influence US elections. Where the phrase "proper business" signifies that one of the entailments of being the govt of a sovereign state is that the govt gets to run its political system and elections as it sees fit.
When a govt is enslaving, massively killing or massively incarcerating (for political reasons) some of its population (cf the Chinese govt vis-a-vis the Uighurs for instance), then foreign intervention via sanctions or other means is justifiable, but when the question is the conduct of an election -- either an imperfectly democratic election in an imperfectly democratic polity or a pseudo-election in an authoritarian state -- then foreign interference, as a general rule, is not justifiable.
My man if you cannot see that promoting the Russia story is a dumb and harmful move, then you truly are a dupe. As you note, the question of ‘Russian interference’ is so banal as to be barely worthy of mention—of course like all powers, Russia tries to influence geopolitics. Yet despite its banality, it dominated headlines for over a year. AND precious little evidence was ever uncovered to support the claim in the first place. Throw in the fact that amping up bellicose rhetoric with a nuclear power is one of the most dangerous things imaginable. AND the fact that other nations’ meddling—I’m looking at you, Israel—is so much plainer and more serious. So yeah, promoting it makes one a dupe.
P.s. to my comment:
Would the US's disproportionate incarceration of people of color, black men in particular, fall into the last category? Possibly; the argument cd at least be made, for sure.
So to put my point more succinctly:
The basic, underlying reason anyone "should care" about Russian interference in U.S. elections, or U.S. interference in Russian elections, or any X's interference in any Y's elections, is that such interference, barring extremely unusual conditions, is unacceptable on normative grounds (because it is both immoral and contravenes basic, though frequently violated, norms of an international system or society composed of sovereign states [or sovereign governments]).
LFC,
Maybe Putin had a building dedicated to infiltrating social media posts about the election. I have no idea and I don't entirely trust reports which foment a new cold war because I lived through the first cold war and saw how the media lies. However, let's say that Putin had his building.
However, if there is one macho demagogue that Trump seems to owe favors to, it's Netanyahu. Trump has recognized that Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that the Golan Heights belong to Israel. What's more, he gave up on the half-hearted attempts by all U.S. presidents since Clinton to broker a deal which while favoring the Israelis over the Palestinians, could be sold as "impartial" to the U.S. public. So maybe Netanyahu and his boys (and girls) did some intervening in Trump's favor. Israel has very advanced technological capacity and it may be that they can intervene in an election without even having to devote a whole building to the job.
Prof. RPW, hope you don't mind this comment about a fringe issue you raise. Of the three chess greats you mentioned, Tal, Spassky, and Kasparov, only Spassky is the true estabslishment candidate pushed by the mighty chess organization of Russia and the republics that constituted the Soviet Union. Tal and Kasparov were from the fringes of that Soviet empire and internal political disorder favored the likes of Spassky. In practical terms, it meant getting permission to travel to tournaments both within the union and outside. Tal, and especially another attacking player like him, Rashid Nezhmetdinov, had immense burdens placed on them for traveling to qualifying matches. Both did not have the same Russian nationalist tendencies of Spassky. Consequently both lost out many prime years of their career to bureaucracy and were too old by the time they qualified for the candidates. Of course such nationalist bonafides only helped Spassky return to his Russian home from his self-exile in France with full support of the state. --Dave F.
s.w.
It wouldn't surprise me if that had happened.
I think Professor Wolff has it exactly right. I would just add that we shouldn’t forget what the main catalyst was for the entire Russia brouhaha to begin with — and that was T***p’s firing of James Comey over what he admitted was “this whole Russia thing.” People often forget, but prior to Comey’s firing, the Russia scandal really wasn’t on anyone’s lips, and that includes even the dreaded hacks at MSNBC. Comey’s firing was the reason for the appointment of the special counsel. And if one doesn’t consider a U.S. president’s firing of an FBI director in order to quash an investigation into his own campaign to be hugely suspicious, at least, and a major scandal worthy of attention, then, well, I just don’t know what to say.
Other than that, I don’t think the analogies to Saudi Arabia’s or Israel’s hypothetical meddling are apt. The case of Russia in 2016 was unique and of a different order, for reasons that would be too tedious to go into here. The comparisons to McCarthyism are not convincing to me, either; they seem like just an instance of anachronistically invoking history for ideological purposes. We will likely learn more about T***p and his crony’s myriad connections to the Russian kleptocracy in coming years and decades.
That said, I do think the media’s focus on the Russia scandal sucked a lot of oxygen out of the room. There were other, more pressing matters that went ignored. And anyone who thinks Russia was the main reason for Clinton’s defeat is sadly misguided. Then again, the hype about Russia seems not to have hurt the Democrats in 2018, and seems unlikely to do so in 2020. Or so we should hope.
Surely not "the entire Russia brouhaha" Ed? It's not scientific, but do a search on Russia at Daily Kos for the month of November 2016 and you'll see signs that blaming russia or Putin was already being talked about at that mainstream democratic party site.
Anonymous,
I would think Daily Kos is a little outside the mainstream. In any case, I was talking mainly about the months immediately after the current occupant of the White House was inaugurated. The story flared up in the immediate shockwave of the election, but it never really got picked up by the bona fide mainstream media (networks and major papers), and the high-profile Democratic politicians weren’t talking about it either. In fact I remember reading one or two blogposts titled something to the effect of “Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About Russian?”
Some points that have fallen by the wayside:
That Russia interfered in the 2016 election on some level is not in doubt; as you point out all powerful nations do it. Worse than scant ineffectual facebook bots, it is worth noting that the US, in addition to its massive worldwide electoral interference, has its Special Operations Forces deployed to 149 countries as of 3 years ago. However, hypocrisy seems to be a shame that has lost its purchase entirely so we can't call anyone on that.
What is important is the willful manufacturing of a new cold war, one that hurts the left yet again, one that irresponsibly increases the likelihood of hot war, not to mention diverting larger shares of our budget to war profiteers. I get sick of repeating this but there never has been evidence, made public, of Russia hacking the DNC, not to mention other claims made by Mueller. Evidence based claims joins hypocrisy as quaint artifacts of a bygone era. What evidence does exist and is available for all to inspect, is the forensic evidence that measured the download rates of the leaked documents and revealed that hacking was an impossibility. Yet we were told over and over that the Russian hacking was not unlike Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Our "democracy" was attacked and so on. This is journalistic malpractice and impeachable political representation of a high order.
Pelosi could not get behind impeachment, despite the vast range of obvious impeachable offenses, until she could find one (revealed to us by a CIA whistleblower, by the way) to hype the new cold war once again, one in which "All roads lead to Putin."
I don't think that the two and one half years of cold war manufacturing and ideological managing diminished Trump's re-election prospects. (This used to be number one concern of many.) But the reverse now may be true, especially if one considers all the other issues that could have been used to get "all those sluggards who claim to support the right policies off their asses and out to vote." But then again, the establishment Dems faced a dilemma: beating the drum for M4A or free higher education would have pissed off their donors and help elect Bernie. A two plus year expose of election fraud and voter suppression also would have been a better use of time, but that too might come back to bite them; better to tolerate interstate crosscheck and voting debacles in Iowa and Georgia. It's never been in the interest of American ruling classes to have energized and active citizens (aka "crises of democracy"). It has been far more profitable to point fingers and rattle sabers especially when "creating illusions" and "manufacturing consent" is just so damn easy.
Jerry, why do you even still bother these in-real-time-repressing-basic-facts-and-critical-thinking-observation DUPES?
Jerry Fresia,
Re the claim about an analysis of download speeds proving that hack was impossible — this has been emphatically disputed.
See here: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170814/11490537992/stories-claiming-dnc-hack-was-inside-job-rely-heavily-stupid-conversion-error-no-forensic-expert-would-make.shtml
And here: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong
Indeed, even the independent expert enlisted by The Nation (whence the dubious claim originated) said that it was nonsense
See here: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/a-leak-or-a-hack-a-forum-on-the-vips-memo/
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