As the tally turned towards a victory for Donald Trump in the middle of the European night, comments began to appear on social media to the effect that Russian intelligence had won its biggest victory in the country's history. More than this, that the Kremlin had actually captured the United States.
The prominent, if spectral, role played by Russia was one of the stranger aspects of this already strange US election. And these comments were alarmist, if logical, extensions of the claims made by the Clinton camp during the campaign that Trump was somehow in cahoots with Russian president Vladimir Putin and that the Russian state was interfering in the election on his behalf.
There was precious little evidence for such claims, and Putin himself ridiculed them at his annual Valdai meeting with international Russian specialists two weeks ago.
Was the US a banana republic, he asked, that its elections could be so easily manipulated? Of course not. But they were useful to the Democrats’ campaign in showing off Hillary Clinton as a tough foreign policy president-in-waiting and demonising Trump by association.
They were not useful enough, though, given the result. Either the voting public dismissed them, or perhaps they agreed with Trump that improved relations with Russia might be a good thing. In any case, they turned out not to be the black mark the Clinton campaign expected.
Accusations
There is no mystery about why the accusations took hold. It was in part because Trump had said early on that he thought he could do business with Putin, earning him the reputation of being soft on big bad Russia. Then the Democrats at their convention chose to divert blame for the hacking of their computer system on to Russian intelligence. This was never conclusively proved and all the supposedly corroborating statements from US officials contained get-out clauses. People with intelligence connections suggested that everyone tried to hack everyone’s computers, especially at election time, without any intention of actually interfering.
The truth of any Russian involvement will probably never be known. But certain myths that gained currency need to be dispelled. One was that Trump was receiving privileged information from Russia. In fact, anything he said was already openly available before he said it. Another was that Trump had complicated and suspect business dealings with Russia. No evidence was ever produced – despite what must have been exhaustive efforts by the Clinton campaign – beyond a campaign adviser official, Paul Manafort, who had once advised the ousted president of Ukraine. There also seems to have been some confusion between Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, which hardly reflects well on the accusers.
A third was that Trump knew Putin personally, liked him and that the admiration was mutual. This flies in the face of what both men have said. Trump said that he regarded Putin as a strong national leader – a criticism of Obama by implication. He added that he did not like Russia’s political system, but that he thought there ought to be dialogue with Russia and that Putin was someone he could talk to. Putin for his part said, early on, that he regarded Trump as a colourful character and an adept politician.
Speaking to the Valdai group, Putin offered a potted analysis of a syndrome often referred to by western analysts. There was no sign that Russia or Putin were rooting for Trump; indeed, it could be argued that Moscow would have preferred Clinton as a known quantity. Trump’s promise to be “unpredictable” is the very opposite of the consistency that Russian leaders, including Putin, tend to prefer.
Security concerns
A different, and more interesting, question, however, is what difference a Trump presidency could make to US, and western, relations with Russia, which are – by universal acknowledgement – at a very low ebb. And here the signs could be more promising. Trump may well be right that he can establish a better relationship with Putin than Obama, or most European leaders, have. In a sense, they are both autocrats, both self-made individuals, both used to exercising power. There may well be something they recognise in each other.
This is not to say that Trump would be – as the Clinton camp claimed – a soft touch. But his background, and his two Slavonic wives, may give him an appreciation of how the world looks from Russia, something that seems to have eluded Obama. As an unapologetic nationalist, he may also see the post-Soviet Russian nationalist in Putin and appreciate that Russia, too, has security concerns.
Part of Russia's interest in engaging with Trump (if such interest exists) may, of course, derive from the next US president's scepticism about Nato – the alliance that has been a bugbear for Putin practically since he became president. Trump's questioning of Nato has already put eastern and central Europeans on their guard. European security, though, is a legitimate concern for everyone: for the US, which disproportionately pays the bills, for its European allies who currently benefit, and for Moscow, which felt vulnerable as Nato expanded and Russia struggled to emerge from its Soviet past.
The present arrangements, it needs to be acknowledged, are a source of as much tension as security. A US president who brought to the table a pragmatic business background rather than a defence specialist’s cold war hangover might have a better chance than his predecessors of starting to bring Russia finally in from the cold.
– (Guardian service)