By
Palo Alto, Calif. — A
quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it seemed that only
democracies promoted their values abroad. Today, autocracies have entered the
arena again, exporting their ideas and methods — even to the United States.
Everywhere, autocrats are
pushing back against democrats, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is the de facto leader
of this global movement.
Since returning to the Kremlin
in 2012, Mr. Putin has consolidated his hold on power in Russia. With renewed
vigor, he’s weakened civil society, undermined independent media, suppressed
any opposition and scared off big business from supporting government critics.
And he made the United States and its senior officials unwitting elements of
his malign strategy.
While I was the United States
ambassador to Russia, Mr. Putin accusedPresident Obama’s
administration of seeking to foment revolution against him — as, allegedly, we
had done in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring. Russia’s
state-controlled media portrayed Russian protesters as traitors, puppets of the
United States, who took money and orders from Washington. Mr. Putin took
special offense to Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state , claiming her criticism of the
fairness of the 2011 Russian parliamentary election was a “signal” to Russian
demonstrators.
While chastising us for
supposedly meddling in his internal affairs, Mr. Putin expanded his campaign to
weaken democracy abroad. Kremlin-aligned media like the TV station RT have championed his policies internationally,
while challenging the legitimacy of democratic leaders, including our own
president. Around the world, but especially in Europe, the Russian government
supports — by both rhetorical and financial means — political parties and
organizations with illiberal, nationalist agendas. Russia’s 2014 annexation of
Crimea and its intervention in eastern Ukraine in support of separatists, as
well as the invasion of Georgia in 2008, were violent efforts to destabilize
new democracies.
Many are impressed and aim to
copy the Putin playbook. Autocrats in Asia, the Middle East and Africa have
emulated Mr. Putin’s draconian laws restricting civil society groups. The
leader of France’s far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, has praised Mr.
Putin and his policies; her party has taken a $10 million loan from a Russian
bank and seeks another $30 million for
next year’s presidential election. Two champions of the Brexit campaign — Nigel
Farage, the former leader of the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party, and
Boris Johnson, a Conservative member of Parliament and now Britain’s foreign
minister — have spoken fondly of Mr. Putin. So, too, does Hungary’s increasingly
authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban. The Republican Party nominee for
president, Donald J. Trump, has frequently praised Mr. Putin. “He’s a
strong leader,” Mr. Trump said in December.
As well as overt means, Mr.
Putin has deployed cyber methods of subversion.
This week, WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the
Democratic National Committee. This action by a foreign agent prompted the resignation of the
Democratic National Committee chairwoman and raised new electoral challenges
for the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. American intelligence
agencies have “high confidence” that
the Russian government stole the data — and likely also hacked into the Clinton campaign’s
computer systems. While we can’t be certain yet whether its agents passed the
data directly to WikiLeaks, the circumstantial evidence points overwhelmingly
to Russia. Who else?
We also know that Russia’s use
of signals intelligence to advance an antidemocratic agenda is not a new
tactic. I have firsthand experience. During my stint as ambassador, Russian
agents secretly recorded a conversation I had with American business executives
at a Moscow hotel and published my remarks in a way to make it sound as if the
United States was plotting against the Russian government. In 2014, an
intercepted phone call between America’s ambassador in Ukraine and Assistant
Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was leaked to suggest that
Washington was choosing the new government in Kiev. Against Russian opposition
leaders, the Kremlin deploys such tactics all the time.
Mr. Putin may be the boldest
but he is not alone in this growing movement. China’s economic success
challenges democracy’s appeal. Iranian theocrats hold on to power at home and
defend autocrats like President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Elsewhere in the
Middle East, strongmen like President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt are
ascendant, forcing their citizens and foreign allies to accept their
repressions as supposed protection from Islamist extremists. Saudi Arabia intervened in Bahrain to crush a
democratic movement there in 2011, while private Arab foundations continue to
promote illiberal ideas throughout the region and beyond.
Mr. Putin is expanding his
playbook just when America is roiled by strong isolationist currents and
aggravated by demagogy that would have us disengage from multilateral
institutions like NATO, cut our overseas security commitments and stop defending
human rights abroad. This is Mr. Trump’s argument. “When it comes to civil
liberties, our country has a lot of problems,” he said this month, “and I think
it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don’t know
what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country.”
To inspire democracy abroad,
we must of course practice it better at home. But we should reject the moral
relativism that says because our own union is not perfect, we are no different
from the despots.
We will not find security in
isolationism. No missile defense shield, cybersecurity program, tariff or
border wall can protect us if we disengage. Menacing autocracies, illiberal
ideas, and antidemocratic and terrorist movements will not just leave us alone
or wither away. The threats will grow and eventually endanger our peace, as we
saw in Europe and Japan in the 1930s, and Afghanistan in the 1990s.
So we must push back, in new
ways. Just as the Kremlin has become more sophisticated at exporting its ideas
and supporting its friends, so must we.
We should think of advancing
democratic ideas abroad primarily as an educational project, almost never as a
military campaign. Universities, books and websites are the best tools, not the
82nd Airborne. The United States can expand resources for learning about
democracy.
Direct financial assistance to
democrats is problematic: A check from an American embassy can taint its
recipients. America’s next president should privatize such aid and help seed
new independent foundations. Internet access and the free flow of information,
the lifeblood of independent media and civil society, should be universal rights
we champion.
America should also focus its
economic and political assistance on new democracies like Myanmar and Tunisia,
which are most fragile in their first years of transition. The stakes are
especially high in Ukraine; there would be no greater gift to Mr. Putin than to
let Kiev’s experiment in democracy perish.
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