Enough

Throughout the Cold War, even the most confrontational US strategies, like the Eisenhower Administration’s otherwise reckless “brinksmanship,” – the policy of playing nuclear chicken to obtain geopolitical advantage – recognized there were certain encroachments Moscow would never tolerate and were therefore to be avoided. In the nuclear era even maniacs like John Foster Dulles stepped lighter near clearly-drawn lines in the sand.

For example, it was one thing to directly confront Soviet efforts to cultivate client states in areas like the Middle East or Africa, quite another to question its control of the Eastern bloc. But wholly out of bounds was questioning the legitimacy of the Kremlin’s power over the republics that made up the USSR’s pre-WWII borders. To directly agitate for the demise of Soviet dominance over that sphere of influence was a provocation that could make for real trouble. In fact, even as the USSR began to fall apart at the seams, with the Eastern European satellite network fully crumbling, the US was cautious not to be perceived as actively contributing to the party’s troubles, lest a fluid situation become existentially dangerous.

Conversely, while the US has always been very rigid about the Monroe Doctrine, with Cuba the exception that, after Khrushchev blundered and pushed the envelope too far, proved the rule, the notion of Russian intrigue presenting any substantial threat to our union and the democracy that underpins it was never much more than the railings of paranoids or opportunists, John Birchers or Joseph McCarthys. Nobody other than back bench outliers lost a wink of sleep worrying that Russian agitation could exert any tangible impact on the fundamental cohesion of the US citizenry. Sure, there was always going to be conflict, sometimes dramatic and even destructive, but the peaceful transfer of political power, the coin of the democratic realm, was always taken for granted. That was then, sadly this is now.

Somewhere in the Moscow suburbs is a Russian intelligence officer with the Award of Lenin on his wall for going full counterintuitive and figuring out that, in the multi-media age, America’s Achilles heel for sedition lies on its right side, not left. Turns out, instead of infiltrating college campuses and no nukes rallies, Fox News comments sections and militia chat rooms were the soft and vulnerable underbelly of global capitalism’s essential nutrient, America’s previously unassailable electoral stability.

The likes of Rupert Murdoch and Andrew Breitbart built the disinformation infrastructure and populated it with their white grievance customer base. Once Putin and company realized the risk-free gains of spreading the virulent seeds of societal disintegration those roadways facilitated, they hit pay dirt. Even when Russia’s fingerprints were discovered – see the Mueller Report – the water was murky enough to dilute accountability. When Trump gained the White House bully pulpit and exceeded even the worst expectations, a perfect storm was unleashed and the process took on a life of its own, its effects going exponential. Now it’s a national security crisis the likes of which America has not seen, unless you believe razing democracy is no biggie. Biden needs to tell Putin, to his face, it must stop yesterday. Draw that line in the sand. Right now, few issues between us are more important.

Examples? They are everywhere. The most recent is as illuminating as any. It’s hard to imagine a more pressing national priority the US has ever faced than the spring’s vaccination roll out. Public confidence in both safety and efficacy was critical to assure levels of participation adequate enough to stop Covid’s disastrous winter death toll in its tracks and start driving case numbers down. The stakes – economic, political, societal – could not have been higher. Biden wagered his Presidency on getting “shots in arms.”

However, just like the GOP primaries of 2016 and then the general election catastrophe, or the campaign to downplay Covid’s seriousness and the insane anti-mask messaging, and of course continuous fulmination of the Big Lie, Putin sought to divide and discredit. Russian Intelligence was prominent throughout the web’s conspiracy incubators, spreading lies with only one focus… to increase wariness about getting vaccinated.

The State Department quickly linked four internet platforms to Russian intelligence. And while the scope of each was not particularly wide, and all ended up in Facebook and Twitter jail, taken together they were more than enough to get the disinformation ball rolling throughout MAGA conspiracy circles. Unproven claims of serious side effects and that the Pfizer vaccine actually caused people to get the coronavirus constituted one wave of disinformation. Attacking Pfizer’s profit motives and political ties to the Biden Administration were another,

Of course, it is classic chicken or the egg when it comes to assessing Moscow’s ability to warp our national discussion and further the Fox/AM zombie apocalypse. How critical Russia’s trolls are to seeding the disinformation clouds throughout the US online climate is a metric best left to our experts to figure out. Yet and still, there is an astonishing similarity to what one finds on Kremlin-affiliated influencers like New Eastern Outlook or News Front and US false content producers like The Gateway Pundit or The Daily Caller that suggests more than casual symmetry. Whether the meat of Judge Janine’s or Tucker Carlson’s daily scripts originates in a grey basement room of some dank building along Tverskaya Street is no longer too far fetched. Certainly there is no distinguishing the content.

But either way, the results have become unacceptable and need to be addressed at the highest level. Like climate change, it may very well be too late, but the direness of our predicament necessitates the pursuit of all remedies. Putin will certainly laugh at the notion the efforts he directs have substantially buttressed the rank sedition millions in the US now exalt, and the GOP now abets. Just as he will shrug that criminal ransomware outfits operating within Russia are a problem beyond his reach, he will scoff at being held accountable for MAGA insurrectionists. Only if Biden dramatically raises the costs will we get action instead of derision.

On that front he has a panoply of options, from the wrist slap kabuki of expelling Russian diplomats to economic sanctions kleptocrats like Putin weather without much difficulty to the far more serious and unpredictable frontier of cyber reciprocity, which can escalate things in a dangerously unpredictable way. But perhaps the best arrow Biden can pull from his quiver is a promise that he will use Russia’s attacks on democracy as a principle basis to resuscitate NATO. “An attack on one is an attack on all…” that’s damn right. A united West against Russian troublemaking, each nation hitting where they can best cause pain as part of a collective strategy to blunt Putin’s aid and comfort for seditious elements that now beleaguer all members of the alliance to one degree or another.

National interest is defined as “the interest of a nation as a whole held to be an independent entity separate from the interests of subordinate areas or groups and also of other nations or supranational groups.” Today in America a minority of millions no longer cares to reconcile its nihilist vision with anything the rest of the country seeks to promote at home or abroad. A totalitarian obsession of reinstating their grievance empath back to power is all they want to be about. Putin needs to understand the new sheriff views external support of such treasonous preoccupation a particularly hostile act, egregious enough to warrant most any kind of response… by the US and its allies. It’s a message he needs to hear in person. BC