The Russian “election” – where any real opposition candidates had been forced out of the race one way or the other (never well) – overwhelmingly placed Vladimir Putin as Russia’s president for the next six years. Facing term limits, Putin – unlikely to want to cede power even in six years – can either push for the elimination of term limits (which under Russian law only prohibits more than two consecutive terms) or trade places and become “prime minister” again (as he has in the past) but remain as his nation’s de factor chief executive officer in what would normally be a secondary role, for one election cycle. Putin must, however, continue to rally his constituency and suppress his critics to make this work.
But just as Donald Trump has embraced Washington swamp-dwellers and mainstream media as his/”America’s” mortal enemies (any reportage that does not agree 100% with his vacillating Trumpian policies is dismissed as “fake news”), a luscious feast of disinformation for deep state conspiracy theorists who will not let hard facts get in their way, so too does Vladimir Putin need “enemies” to rally his own people to his political mandate. The West, particularly the United States, have been the Russian/Soviet go-to traditional “enemies of state,” existential threats that have always required the Russian people to rally behind their autocrat-du-temps.
So with Russia’s propensity to destabilize the Western democracies, erode their functionality from within by exploiting natural political divisions into horrific self-destructive polarization, combined with a clear signal to any dissenters and political activists challenging the dictatorial status quo that “no matter where you are in the world, we will hunt you down and kill you,” they are able to continue to control their local constituency… at least for the foreseeable future.
Like Donald Trump, Russians label as “fake news” and “unsubstantiated conspiracies against us” any reportage concerning meddling in our or other Western-nation elections (all of our national security agencies confirm that meddling) as well as the litany of assassinations and assassination attempts against Russian dissidents overseas, most recently the failed attempt to use a nerve agent to kill former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in London.
That assassination attempt was deemed “highly likely” to have been ordered by Moscow, considered a virtual certainty by Scotland Yard, and resulted in the initial expulsion of 23 Russian embassy and consular officials from the UK. Effectively, Britain hoped that it had eliminated the bulk of Russia’s espionage supervisors from its shores. Thereafter, this expulsion was followed by a massive and fully coordinated additional “sympathetic” expulsion of over 130 Russian embassy and consular officials from all over the Western world (U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Poland, etc.). As our President remained largely silent on this challenge to Russia, the United States not only expelled 60 such Russian officials but ordered the Russian consulate in Seattle closed as being too close to one this nation’s most important nuclear submarine bases.
Calling this unprecedented coordinated expulsion a “provocative gesture,” the Russian reaction to diplomatic expulsions, pretty much the “norm” in the diplomatic world, has been a quid pro quo expulsion of an equal number of Western diplomats, one-for-one if you will. So let’s look at the plusses and minuses of this course of diplomatic expulsions. For expertise, I turn several to reactions (excerpts) from several former high-ranking U.S. government officials as cited in the March 27th The Cipher Brief:
In the ‘win’ column, we send a strong message to Russia and we decrease their capability to collect intelligence here in the United States because the people who will be expelled will most likely be intelligence officers. Importantly, this is done in harmony with our NATO and other Western allies, who are pursuing similar lines of response to the attempted killing of Sergei Skripal.
In the ‘lose’ column, however—whenever we get into these expulsion battles with the Russians, we pay a significant price because they will in turn reciprocate by expelling American diplomats, and they will try to expel as many intelligence officers as they can identify. And if we’re talking about closing a Russian consulate in Seattle, then they are going to be looking at perhaps closing a U.S. facility in Russia.
Expelling diplomats is a good first step, but it is a little bit of fighting the war with very old weapons when the Russians have already moved on to the next generation—and that’s my biggest concern. Russia is defining this new form of warfare with hybrid warfare, attacking Western elections and at least attempting and setting the battlefield to conduct cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the U.S.—and we’re responding by expelling diplomats, which is a Cold War era tactic.
There has been a disconnect between President Trump’s rhetoric and impulses—which are almost solely pro-Putin—and those of his national security team. It is surely as hard for Russia to comprehend as it is for our allies and others. The expulsion of Russian diplomats is a positive move in that it is being done in concert with our allies.
However, it is also something very easy for the Russians to reciprocate. In the past, the Russians have simply matched our actions – or even take harsher measures, so often we end up in the same place or worse off than before our action. It’s obviously a less-than-ideal way to “punish” another country when you end up worse than the actor being punished. From my perspective, we have to take action with our allies to impact things that matter to Putin – to his power and money. I don’t think throwing out diplomats is something that will change behavior. We have done it now numerous times and it has had little to no effect. Punishing diplomats is far less effective than hitting Putin where it really hurts.
As a former intelligence collector, I also worry how this will affect our ability to monitor Putin and Russia. Putin will surely kick out the remainder of our intelligence assets in Moscow, leaving us blind at an important time.
I think it is unlikely this diplomatic action will have much effect on Kremlin thinking. Putin seems committed to the course of making Russia a rogue state. There is no doubt he is deeply committed to a course of confrontation with the West in general and the United States in particular. Frankly, it is difficult to find an area where Putin has chosen a path toward accommodation with the United States in the past decade. The 2007 cyber assault on NATO member Estonia, the August 2008 invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and support for the insurrection in the Donbass, cyber espionage and massive use of cyber to disrupt elections in the U.S. and elsewhere comprise a short list of Russian misbehavior.
The Litvinenko assassination, Skripal poisoning, interference in the U.S. election, Putin’s March 1 speech with a mock-up of a cruise missile targeting what appears to be Florida did not happen by accident but rather by design. And that design is nothing short of confrontation.
I would expect Russia to respond in kind, yes. And that suits Putin; he needs a degree of animosity between Russia and the West, again to support this narrative of Russia the besieged fortress, enemy-at-the-gates from the West. What he wants to do is conflate that supposed threat with our ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy so that his own people who might support those ideals would be branded a fifth column in support of the enemy—the UK, the European Union and the United States. Putin needs a bit of that.
The mutual expulsion of diplomats is a relatively minor inconvenience compared with sworn testimony before Congressional committees from high-ranking military and security agency leaders that the Trump administration has not authorized or directed these agencies to deploy effective countermeasures to Russia’s hacks and highly effective use of social media to spread disinformation in an effort to influence our political choices and accelerate our growing polarization. We are sitting ducks without camouflage or defenses. Putin is playing his cards sharply and close to the vest. Trump isn’t even at the table.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think this Russian malevolence is going away by itself, you clearly have not read the vast and relevant historical evidence to the contrary.
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