Perhaps it is to do with my Baltic family roots. Perhaps it is my interpretation of history. Perhaps it is my unwillingness to follow the herd. But I have always seen Russia as the saviour of Europe, rather than the threat to its integrity. It was Russia that wore down and destroyed Napoleon’s all conquering army in 1812. Wellington led the allied force which beat him a Waterloo, but by then his attempted comeback was a shadow of his former power. It was Russia’s advance into East Prussia which saved France in 1914 and it was the Red Army which destroyed the mighty Wehrmacht 1941-5. In WWII 90% of German casualties in the armed forces were on the Russian front.
Over that period Russia has traveled a road which took it through Czarist autocracy and serfdom, through the Soviet era and into a republican democracy of a less fluid and more oligarch influenced model than anything in the West. Just as we have learned to live with a united Germany no longer the Third Reich, we should have done likewise with modern Russia, no longer the Soviet Union. But we have not had the self-confidence to do that. For the most part the West sees Russia as a rival. This has cost us, because it has become one.
Just as Russia initially pulled ahead in the Space Race, to the Western astonishment and fright, so it has now pulled ahead in what can be called cyber propaganda. Cyber warfare is when your power system is shut down and your own missiles fall down on your head. Russia might be ahead with that too, although the West has significant undisclosed capability in that sphere. It is very high tech, so the West is likely to lead.
Cyber propaganda is very low tech involving little more than fake twitter and social media accounts and can very easily be run by governments, security agencies or agents acting on their behalf. It can be run also by organised crime likely to benefit from political change and mischief makers for fun. It can be used by fraudsters to influence markets and inflate gains. It is the essential foundation of modern terrorism. Just as printed and broadcast media created the modern propaganda agenda, which took off in the 1930s, so the huge advance in on line communication through which people everywhere conduct and control their lives in modern times, has enabled the opportunity for this latest manifestation. Nothing can stop it. It is here to stay. Get savvy and get on.
As for Russia, either ignore it as most do, or do it back to deter. Putin is coming up for election soon remember. But be careful what you wish for. Because in the end the world’s largest country will always be a player and few, if any, major world problems can be resolved without its input. As history reveals.
Finally if you contend that Trump and Brexit are not the product of open democracy, but a triumph of Russian cyber propaganda to direct outcomes it favours in countries it does not control, up your game. This is the new world. The old one is history. If you do not rise to the challenge of getting as good and better, so will you be.