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Deep in the Great Depression, when many Americans were questioning whether capitalism had failed, the influential leftist literary critic Edmund Wilson sated with an open mind about Soviet-style "socialism." It did not take long the scales to drop from his eyes.
"They have not even begun the democratic institutions; But they are actually worse off than when they started, "he said:" They have totalitarian domination by a political machine. "Indeed, by the time he finished writing To the Finland Station his admiring take on Bolshevik firebrand Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin was already ankle deep in blood, murdering opponents at home and abroad and scheming to undermine the West.
Vladimir Putin's Russia has resumed many practices of the old communist bosses, <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Soviet neighbors, trepidation in Western Europe and alarm in the precincts of official Washington President Donald J. Trump's fondness for foreign strongmen. Trump's critics, who has already been wasted terabytes bashing his eagerness to give Putin has passed on interference in US politics, his seizure of Crimea, and murder of dissidents and defectors, will be autopysing his every alpha-male gesture and remark for signs that he's been in the United States, when Kim Jong (19659002) But the television spectacular is just another distraction from what has been going on. Russia and Trump. Yes, he's slapped sanctions on Putin's cronies, however unenthusiastically, but he's also quietly allowed U.S. defenses against Russian subversion to wither-when he's not been actively dismantling them. Nothing positive out of Finland will change that.
On June 20, to quote the latest alarming example, Trump let John Bolton, his erstwhile hawkish national security adviser-his third in 18 months-fire White House cyber czar Rob Joyce and eliminate his office entirely. "This is definitely not the signal to your allies and your adversaries," Michael Daniel, who served as a cybersecurity coordinator under President Barack Obama, said at a congressional hearing in mid-May.
Not that Joyce had been allowed to do much. For 18 months, criticized by Russian, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean hacks and subversion had been completed in the White House had not been released. . Dan Coats, Trump's own director of national intelligence (the behemoth invented 16 years ago to coordinate our spies and counterspy agencies), rued to Congress that, "There's no single agency, quote, in charge" of addressing the problem. "It's clearly something that needs to be addressed, and addressed as quickly as possible," he said.
The White House refused to let Joyce testify. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center, which supposedly has a key role in drafting policy to thwart subversion, is also adrift. In early June, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley turned the appointment of FBI trainer agent William Evanina, who's been running the agency in an "acting" capacity since 2014, in a pawn in the Republicans' war with the Justice Department over its handling of the Hillary Clinton and Russiagate investigations. His appointment is on an indefinite hold as Russia steps up its preparations for the 2018 midterm elections. Meanwhile, in mid-May, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen issued a strategy paper on cybersecurity and said the DHS was "rethinking its approach."
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The Kremlin must be smirking. Victoria Nuland, the Obama administration's senior official for Russia, told Congress in June that Moscow was "turbocharging" its clandestine social media efforts to divide Americans on hot-wire issues like race and gun control .. Nuland, who was US ambassador to NATO during Vice President Dick Cheney, President and Chief Executive Officer of the United States of America. He was so successful, she said, that China is emulating its techniques, "disinformation campaigns and influence operations in Taiwan, Australia and other neighboring countries."
There is nothing surprising in that. statecraft ever since the Greeks invented the Trojan horse about 3,000 years ago In 1917, Germany smuggled Lenin from exile in Switzerland back to Russia to foment chaos and take Moscow out of World War One. (For its part, Germany was caught trying to inveigle Mexico into attacking the southwest US) Britain, meanwhile, secretly bankrolled anti-Bolshevik organizations to bring down the Russian revolution and murder Lenin.But the so-called "Lockhart Affair," named after London's envoy to Moscow, has been largely forgotten in the West, it's been put to the memory of Russia's security officials, and most certainly the mind of Putin, an ex-KGB operative To Putin, Secretary of State Hill
And it's payback time.
For the past several years in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and its train Soviet states to fracture the European Union and NATO. Britain's "Brexit" was a spectacular success, yet facts on its exact role remain elusive. According to a Thursday report in The Washington Post however, special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into the relations between the Russians, a shadowy group of wealthy Britons and Trump campaign officials in the Brexit effort.
or maybe because of this backdrop, it's hard to imagine Trump doing a U-turn and shoring up US defenses. In the meantime, the Kremlin observers tell Newsweek . "I'm reserving judgment" until after the summit, top CIA Russia hand Daniel Hoffman said. There are pockets of cooperation both in North Korea and in North Korea, it is preventing the spread of nuclear or biological weapons, he said. There is also a breakthrough in the field of nuclear warheads, known as New START, which expires in 2021. Trump says bringing the savage war in Syria to an end on the top of his agenda.
Trump and Putin could do all that-not a bad thing. It's the prospect of a demanding Trump lift sanctions as the price of looking good in Helsinki that worries many observers. Under such pressure, they freight, Trump may give Putin a pass on the seizure of Crimea, a red line for Germany's Angela Merkel and other NATO members. If they can get away with that, they fear, Putin's appetite for recapturing Soviet territory in the Baltics or Eastern Europe will only be whetted
Others say give peace a chance. "I am not in an anti-meeting camp," says Nina Khrushcheva, the great-grand daughter of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, who almost brought the world to nuclear extinction by smuggling ballistic missiles into Cuba. "
More, the psychometrics are good, she said. "Trump is on the roll showing off his manhood around the world, and Putin is in world-statesman mode after the St. Petersburg [International Economics] Forum, the World Cup etc.," said Khrushcheva, now professor of international affairs at The New School. "So they both feel they are going in a strong position." That's a far cry from September 2016, when Obama's icily told Putin to "cut it out" -meaning meddling in the US elections.
And it's not like having the two presidents talk is a problem, she and others agree. It's more about what comes after. Will it be good or bad? Who knows?
"If they really get along, as they plan to," Khrushcheva said, "this is where real collusion will begin."
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