Interesting article entitled “Active Measures” just out today in The New Yorker about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. It opens with a description of the way that the head of the KGB in 1982 ordered “active measures” against the expected re-election campaign of President Ronald Reagan. The gist of the article is not so much that Trump might be a puppet for Putin, but rather as laid out here, in the final paragraph:
QUOTE: Alexey Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, and a figure with deep contacts inside the Russian political élite, said, “Trump was attractive to people in Russia’s political establishment as a disturber of the peace for their counterparts in the American political establishment.” Venediktov suggested that, for Putin and those closest to him, any support that the Russian state provided to Trump’s candidacy was a move in a long-standing rivalry with the West; in Putin’s eyes, it is Russia’s most pressing strategic concern, one that predates Trump and will outlast him. Putin’s Russia has to come up with ways to make up for its economic and geopolitical weakness; its traditional levers of influence are limited, and, were it not for a formidable nuclear arsenal, it’s unclear how important a world power it would be. “So, well then, we have to create turbulence inside America itself,” Venediktov said. “A country that is beset by turbulence closes up on itself–and Russia’s hands are freed.”
OK, cue up the snide remarks about The New Yorker and anyone who reads it.
