Or Will We Take Lessons from Antiquity?
Russian President Putin is a famous practitioner of the KGB black arts known as “active measures,” the range of actions between diplomacy and war that include propaganda and other information warfare, subversion, moral compromise and subsequent blackmail, cyber-attacks, and other hybrid warfare. His most successful active measures are those that promote division among the free peoples of the West. Among the many examples are those where his agents step in to exacerbate existing grievances or bring discredit on legitimate complaints, such as we’ve seen in Catalonia, Hungary, Poland, or Brexit. Most important, however, are the sharp divisions he has encouraged in the United States.
The social media giants have discovered Russian influence taking both sides of issues related to Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the alt-right, removal of Confederate statues, and a host of other issues…
Recent revelations from Facebook and Twitter show that Russian sources were funding ad campaigns both before and after the 2016 election. They were aimed at stoking passions and conspiracy theories on the most extreme left and right of American politics. The social media giants have discovered Russian influence taking both sides of issues related to Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the alt-right, removal of Confederate statues, and a host of other issues on which public opinion is divided. Friends send each other news clips from RT that support a political position they hold, with no idea that RT – Russia Today – is Putin’s billion-dollar project to influence American public opinion.
Before the 2016 election, Russian surrogates attacked Hillary Clinton and praised Donald Trump, giving rise to suspicion that Putin favored Trump’s election. That gave rise to allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. But, like everyone else, they were sure that Hillary was going to win. Their purpose was not to support Trump, but to weaken President Hillary Clinton, and ensure she presided over a deeply divided country.
Once Trump won, however, they switched their tactics. Clandestine Russian efforts on social media were aimed at stoking the resistance movement. Large-scale public demonstrations and protests erupted in major cities across America, and nobody really knew for sure who had organized them.
Far more important, the Russians very cleverly stepped in with finely calibrated public statements, sometimes of denial and other times of ridicule, each aimed specifically at promoting the theory and the belief that there had been collusion between Putin and Trump.
When the Democrats seized on the collusion “narrative,” they played right into Putin’s hands.
When the Democrats seized on the collusion “narrative,” they played right into Putin’s hands. His greatest goal was to cover his own weaknesses at home by dividing America and weakening America’s president. Many recusals of senior officials were driven by the Russians speaking up at just the right moment to say that a senator or campaign official had met with the Russian ambassador. Routine diplomatic meetings were suddenly seen in a sinister light, and Russian Ambassador Kislyak could stop the career of any politician in Washington by simply announcing that they had met.
The capstone of this strategy came with the meeting in the Oval Office between President Trump and the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, to which they brought an official photographer under false pretenses. The subsequent release of countless photographs of the meeting were used for great propaganda victories in Russia and Europe, and even in the United States, vigorously promoting belief in the collusion story.
The result was Putin’s great success at promoting divisions within American society and political leadership. It is his most successful active measures campaign. But now that we understand his tactics, I believe American society is strong enough to combat his propaganda efforts. He succeeded initially because it caught us off guard, and exacerbated existing fissures of race, class and ideology. The bitterness of the 2016 campaign and the newly dominant role of social media also played into his hands.
But these tactics only work long-term in the absence of full and open information. The U.S. political structure is resilient, and as we learn just how active Russian measures have been, they will lose their effect. Our saving grace is that at our core, in spite of political differences, Americans actually like each other. That hasn’t changed yet – not irreversibly.
Francesco Hayez, Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem
The great historian Josephus wrote in his classic treatise The Wars of The Jews, that for centuries the city of Jerusalem had never been conquered. The Romans finally succeeded, but only when the divisions among the Jewish leadership became so deep that one faction, rather than submit to the leadership of the other, opened the city gates one night and allowed the Roman legions inside the citadel. Only then did Jerusalem fall to the pagan invaders. Will America learn a lesson from the fall of Jerusalem? Or will we allow our shining city on a hill to be conquered by foreign invaders because of the divisions in our society?
