By Greg Rushford
Ronald Reagan would be astounded. Dwight Eisenhower would be mortified. John McCain would be apoplectic. And the rest of us stand simply to be perplexed, and increasingly concerned — as attitudes towards the historically predatory Russian Bear are undergoing a significant shift in influential Republican Party circles in the United States. It seems the Bear now appears, well, cuddly, to people who used to cringe at such a notion.
Gallup polling has revealed that perhaps 40 percent of Republicans now believe that “Russia is a U.S. ally or is friendly” to the United States, the Washington Post has reported. As television personality Tucker Carlson — whose foreign policy views and advice are taken seriously by President Donald Trump — said on his widely-watched Fox News show late last month, “I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.” On several occasions, the president himself has expressed similar views.
How could any American believe that Russia is even close to being friendly to the United States, or to any western democracy? Readers will have various opinions. Some will point to a certain ignorance factor: In 2014, after Russia had invaded its neighbor Ukraine, one survey found that 84 percent of the American public couldn’t find that country on a map. Others might suggest that many Americans, especially those who don’t read the nation’s quality newspapers regularly, simply don’t know which news sources to trust anymore — itself a goal of both Russian propaganda and the constant attacks on journalistic “enemies of the state” coming from the president of the United States and his supporters.
Still others will point to deeper historical roots, notably the intellectual connection between the isolationist America Firsters of the 1930s who didn’t want to fight Hitler’s Nazis, and today’s America Firsters who are soft on Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Regardless, the essential facts concerning Russian conduct are crystal clear. Russia has been caught repeatedly running covert influence operations aimed at undermining liberal democracies. The Kremlin put its secret thumb on the scales of America’s 2016 presidential elections, with Donald Trump’s knowledge and approval — that’s an undeniable fact, however awkward for many of the confused Republican faithful.
The list of Moscow’s “active measures” to undermine democracies is lengthy. Eastern European democracies, including the Czech Republic and Hungary, have been constantly targeted. So have Nato’s frontline Baltic nations — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — that share borders with Russia. The Kremlin’s spymasters have also targeted America’s western European allies including France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and also Montenegro and other Balkan nations.
The reach of the Kremlin’s influence operations stretches beyond Europe, to remote corners of the globe. Putin and his intelligence operatives have wooed small global geopolitical players like the Philippines and even tiny Fiji (population not quite 900,000). As I’ve previously reported, Putin’s propaganda specialists at TASS have been giving Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s official Philippine News Agency “media training.” Translation: the Kremlin’s propaganda experts have been positioned to help Duterte’s spinmeisters wage information warfare against the Philippine strongman’s perceived enemies in his country’s free press. Moscow has also tried to chip away at the longstanding U.S.-Philippine security alliance by enticing Duterte — who has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Americans — into a few small-arms deals.
For little Fiji, there have also been arms deals. Putin is also Africa’s number one arms supplier. Anywhere America isn’t paying attention, wherever there are senior politicians to be cultivated, where there might be a future pro-Russia vote in some United Nations body —Putin and his intelligence operatives are likely to show up. The point for American Republicans: To say that Russia is America’s friend, and the friend of free societies anywhere, is simply false.
Moscow’s current influence operations have deep historical roots, dating to the Soviet Union during the 20th century and the expansionist Czars in earlier centuries. Clearly, Russia’s modern-era information warfare campaigns have not been “an anomaly,” as Keir Giles, a veteran Russia-watcher at London’s Chatham House, explained in a 2016 paper that deserves to be read again in Washington. Giles concluded that western governments should “recognize that the West’s values and strategic interests and those of Russia are fundamentally incompatible.”
It would take a volume to sort all this out. Meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at some of current facts that should be uncontested. A series of brief snapshots helps illuminate how pro-Russian sentiments are sprouting in the same Republican Party that once cringed at the very notion.
Snapshot
On December 3, seventy one Republican House of Representatives members voted against House Resolution 546, “disapproving” Russia’s inclusion in Group of Seven summits “until it respects the territorial integrity of its neighbors and adheres to the standards of democratic societies.” Putin has been persona non grata at the G-7 since he seized Crimea in 2014 — another foreign policy decision taken on predecessor Barack Obama’s watch that Donald Trump would love to get rid of.
The 71 pro-Russian Republicans did not carry the day, as 116 other Republicans supported the measure to chastise the Russians. It ended up passing the House by 339 Democrats (including one independent lawmaker) to the recalcitrant 71. Still, it’s worth noting that those supporting Putin’s ambitions to rejoin the G-7 despite his aggression against Ukraine included Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee Jim Jordan, Chris Stewart, and Mike Conaway.
Snapshot
These same Intelligence Committee Republicans who are privy to some of their nation’s most sensitive secrets have been peddling Putin’s (and Trump’s) propaganda line that the Ukrainians were the ones responsible for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Republicans have chosen to believe the Kremlin’s “fictional narrative,” rather than the unanimous view of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the office of the Director for National Intelligence, as Trump’s former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, Fiona Hill, has put it.
None of these lawmakers with their top security clearances have expressed moral outrage over another thoroughly documented fact: that then-candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Jr., and others in the Trump presidential campaign including now-convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort and Republican trickster Roger Stone welcomed the Russian covert operation to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Instead, the Republican Intelligence Committee lawmakers have been spending their energies defending Trump from the consequences of his pressure campaign aimed at persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Democrat Joe Biden, one of Trump’s prospective rivals in the 2020 presidential contest.
Snapshot
Remember the fleeting news reports when President Trump, standing by Putin’s side at a July 2018 press conference, denigrated the unanimous findings of the entire U.S. intelligence community that Putin covertly sought to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016? Trump shrugged he didn’t “see any reason why” Russia would have done that.
Typically, as in so many other instances where the headlines screamed outrage, the president of the United States blamed the usual suspects — “dishonest” journalists — for spreading fake news. So far, the Big Lie tactics have worked in whipping up the current frenzy among Trump’s Republican base. But it is difficult to imagine that someday, dispassionate historians will be so forgiving.
Snapshot
Trump’s Fox News friend Tucker Carlson has blamed the media for an alleged pro-Clinton bias in reporting on the Mueller Report’s solid documentation of the extensive Russian information warfare aimed at boosting Trump’s political fortunes. “It never happened, there was no collusion,” Carlson declared. “Russia didn’t hack our democracy. The whole thing was a … ludicrous talking point invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign…to explain their unexpected defeat…”
The hard facts, as the detailed report prepared by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented, say otherwise. Putin’s intelligence operatives “carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” Mueller reported. He further established that the Republican candidate and his associates knew the Russians were helping Trump. Beyond doubt, they “expected” that Donald Trump “would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
Still, Mueller failed to find prosecutable proof that Trump criminally conspired with the Russians. This was the entire opening the president and his allies like Tucker Carlson have needed to falsely claim that the special counsel had completely exonerated Trump.
The smooth-talking Carlson may not have a sure grasp of the facts relating to Russian influence operations — but the television personality knows what his untutored American audience craves to hear.
Snapshot
Republicans who are inclined to regard Russia as an ally of Nato democracies might change their opinions if they would read the most recent annual reports published by secret intelligence agencies in Latvia and the Czech Republic.
Latvia’s Constitution Protection Bureau (known as the SAB) issued its most recent annual report this past April. The state security service’s findings ran to 54 pages, which were “dominated by one word: Russia,” as a Latvian Public Broadcasting report put it. Just one line sums up the litany of Moscow-directed dirty tricks: “The aggressive activities of Russian intelligence and security services pose a serious threat to the collective security of NATO and EU, and the national security of Latvia.” The Russians operations, the SAB further observed, had been “accepted at the highest political level” in Russia, the reference of course being to Vladimir Putin.
And last month the Security Information Service in Prague (called the BIS) released a 26-page report that likewise pulled no punches regarding Moscow’s covert operations aimed at undermining the Czech Republic. The BIS revealed further details of Russian subversion, including those associated with hostile “cyber and information operations.”
The BIS also reported how the Russians had been working secretly to “cultivate an influence basis close to politicians,” aiming to build “influence networks.”
This is the point in the story where observers of the current political climate in Washington, D.C. — where intelligence officials whose findings have embarrassed the White House have come under sustained political attack — will have a familiar feeling. Turns out that in Prague, too, not every politician is an admirer of secret intelligence agency findings involving Russia that can be politically awkward.
Milos Zeman, the president of the Czech Republic, is infamous for his unashamed, undisguised, pro-Russian inclinations. This April, Zeman blasted the latest BIS report for engaging in what he claimed was a “fictitious hunt” for Moscow-directed spies. And for the fourth time, Zeman rejected his government’s proposal to promote the respected head of BIS, Michal Koudelka, to the rank of general, reported Radio Prague International.
Let’s end this on a positive note. This past April, Koudelka attended a private ceremony at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Czech spymaster was given the George Tenet Award, one of the highest the CIA gives to exemplary international partners.
In Washington, some people still get it.