By
MOSCOW — Fifteen years ago, a
few months into his presidency, Vladimir V. Putin told Larry King on CNN
that his previous job as a K.G.B. officer had been like that of a journalist.
“They have the same purpose of gathering information, synthesizing it and
presenting it for the consumption of decision makers,” he said. Since then, he
has excelled at using the media to consolidate power inside Russia and, increasingly,
to wage an information war against the West.
So the apparent hacking by
Russian security services of the Democratic National Committee emails, followed
by their publication by WikiLeaks, should come as no great surprise to
Americans. It is only the latest example of how Mr. Putin uses information as a
weapon. And the Kremlin has cultivated ties with WikiLeaks for years.
It has also used
disinformation in its annexation of Crimea and in its war in Ukraine, launched
cyberattacks on Finland and the Baltic States, and planted hoax stories in
Germany to embarrass Angela Merkel. During the Cold War, the Kremlin interfered
in American politics for decades. The K.G.B.’s so-called active measures —
subversion, media manipulations, forgery and the financing of some “peace”
organizations — lay at the heart of Soviet intelligence.
Then as now, Russia exploited
real grievances in the West — discontent with the war in Vietnam and racial
tensions in the 1960s; anxiety and fear of Muslim immigrants today. Nevertheless,
Mr. Putin’s support of the likes of Donald Trump in America, Brexiters in
Britain or the right-wing Marine Le Pen in France does not mean they are his
creations.
What seems to puzzle the
American public most is why Russia, having shed Communism, is working to
undermine the West today. Didn’t America win the Cold War?
Actually, that question, which
arose 15 years ago, is as alive today as it was then. While most Americans saw
the end of the Cold War as a triumph over the Soviet Union, most Russians saw it
as a victory of their own common sense over a senile and inept regime that had
run out of money and ideas and had lost its appetite for repression. After
Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the Soviet media, the contrast between socialist
and capitalist economic systems had become too apparent. And when the K.G.B.
attempted a coup against Mr. Gorbachev in 1991, not a single person came out on
the street to defend Communism, while thousands risked their lives protesting
the coup in Moscow, in defense of freedom.
Then came an American mistake:
triumphalism, rather than congratulating the Russian people on their victory
over authoritarian rule, and using a short window of opportunity to offer
Russia sufficient economic aid to ease the pain of a collapsing economy. This
was shortsighted and dangerous. It created a false sense of invincibility in
America and paved the way for resentment in Russia. Eventually, it let
revisionists like Mr. Putin portray the collapse of the Soviet Union as an
American conspiracy.
Over the past decade, this
narrative of defeat and humiliation has become a stalwart of Mr. Putin’s
ideology of resurgence. If America won the Cold War, it must be responsible for
the Soviet breakup and the impoverishment of millions of Russians. And if Russia
was defeated, it could only be expected to one day seek revenge.
This narrative has become
extremely popular in Russia. Anti-Americanism offers Russians a familiar outlet
for their frustration and sense of impotence in the face of their own corrupt
and oppressive regime. It gives Mr. Putin an ideological cover for his
kleptocratic system of governance led by current and former security
servicemen. To sustain this narrative, the Kremlin’s state-controlled media has
excelled at reconstructing the centuries-old image of Russia as a besieged
fortress.
Today, Mr. Putin presents
Russia’s actions as responsive, not aggressive. Every time Russia attacks a
former Soviet republic, the confrontation is portrayed as a proxy war started
by America against Russia. When Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, the United
States was in the midst of a presidential election that the incumbent
Republican Party would soon lose, so the war was followed the next year not by
tough sanctions against Russia but with a “reset” initiated by the new
Democratic president, Barack Obama, and his secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton.
That, too, proved a misstep.
The idea was that two new presidents — Mr. Obama and Dmitri A. Medvedev, who
had recently taken Mr. Putin’s place in the Kremlin — could put the past behind
them. But Mr. Medvedev, who oversaw the war in Georgia, was only a place-holder
appointed by Mr. Putin to circumvent a constitutional term limit. Policy makers
in Washington and in Berlin knew this but decided to build up Mr. Medvedev,
hoping to split Russia’s elites. Instead, Russia got away with the Georgia war
cost-free, which ultimately contributed to Russian confidence that its later
incursions into Ukraine would succeed.
Mr. Medvedev’s presidency
ended with mass demonstrations in Moscow and other cities in the winter of
2011-12, with tens of thousands protesting Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency
and demanding modernization of the state. At the time, Mr. Putin accused Mrs.
Clinton of taking “active measures” to spur protesters on. “She set the tone
for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” he said. “They heard
the signal and with the support of the U.S. State Department began active
work.”
Now Mr. Putin, who is known to
bear grudges, appears to be disrupting Mrs. Clinton’s own presidential campaign
with “active measures.” That the disclosures of the Democratic National
Committee emails could benefit only Donald Trump is probably an added bonus.
Mr. Trump’s main appeal within the Kremlin is not that he admires Mr. Putin,
but that he has little interest in Russia’s sphere of influence. And Mr. Putin
has long dreamed of a new Yalta-style agreement to let Russia and America
divide Europe again.
To be sure, Russia’s ability
to influence American elections is limited. Mr. Putin does not control the
American media, and Russia lacks the financial and military resources that the
Soviet Union had. Still, the effort points to a danger. An angry and declining
Russia is far more perilous than an ascending economic power like China.
Sanctions won’t change Mr. Putin’s behavior: He rates the security of his
regime far above the economic good of the country.
Mr. Putin has reason to fear
in one respect. His system does face an existential threat from the Western
model of governance. Just as the economic inadequacies of Soviet Communism were
exposed by comparison with the wealth produced by Western capitalism, Mr.
Putin’s authoritarianism cannot match the appeal of an economy based on the
rule of law, openness and competition. The best way for the West to resist
Russia, now as then, is to uphold its own values.
“Russia, as opposed to the
Western world in general, is still by far the weaker party and may well contain
deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential.” So wrote
the master diplomat George F. Kennan in 1947. We know now that Kennan was
right. The bad news is that it took 44 years for his prophecy to come true.
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