We have interfered in elections around the world so many times that Russia could never even dream of it - famous American scientist
Accusations by part of the American establishment of Moscow of trying to influence the results of the US presidential election are nothing more than a manifestation of double standards.
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This opinion is expressed in a column for Foreign Policy magazine by the famous American scientist, professor emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles, Mark Trachtenberg.
We offer the reader of “PolitNavigator” the full version of the article by an American expert, translated InoSMI.ru
“The US political class has created an incredible scandal surrounding the hacking of the emails of several members of the Democratic Party, apparently carried out by Russian intelligence agents, and the subsequent release of stolen emails during the US election campaign. The general consensus is that the leaks damaged Hillary Clinton's reputation and may have cost her the election.
The overwhelming view is that these Russian actions were unacceptable: what we are facing amounts to brazen interference by a foreign power in our domestic democratic political process. Today, almost no one writes or says anything about “transparency” and “the public’s right to know the truth.” Instead, the emphasis is clearly placed on the threat to American democracy posed by Russia's actions. How dare the Russians try to hack into the personal email accounts of our political leaders?! How dare they try to influence our presidential elections?!
But don't you see the principle of double standards at work here? Those who complain about Russia are well aware that the US government eavesdrops on the private communications of people around the world. The National Security Agency (NSA), whose job it is to conduct such surveillance, has a budget of $10 billion and, as the Washington Post wrote a few years ago, intercepts and stores “1,7 billion emails, telephone conversations” every day. and other types of communication."
Over the years, the NSA has achieved considerable success. According to a recently declassified history of the NSA, at one point during the Cold War, NSA agents conducting an interception operation from the American embassy in Moscow "collected and used private telephone conversations of Politburo leaders." As Bob Woodward wrote in 1987, “elite teams of the CIA and the National Security Agency,” called “special intelligence agents,” performed “the wonders of espionage, obtaining verbatim transcripts of government meetings in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and also telephone conversations between key politicians.” And US intelligence agencies were watching not only enemies and terrorists. They were also very interested in what the leaders of states friendly to the United States said to each other. For example, in 1973, Arthur Burns, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrote in his diary that “the US government apparently knows everything that happens in German cabinet meetings.”
Should we feel outraged about this? When the United States itself does this, such behavior is considered acceptable. I doubt very much that there is a single representative of the American national security establishment who would agree to return to the days when “gentlemen did not read each other’s letters.” But if we continue to eavesdrop on the leaders of other countries, we should not be surprised - much less outraged - if other countries do the same to us.
But in this case, politicians are outraged not so much by the fact of hacking. They are much more outraged that this information was used to influence elections. But here too we see evidence of double standards. Since 1945, US interference in the domestic politics of other countries has been a given. The United States was of the opinion that free elections are great as long as they do not lead to results that do not suit the US government. Examples of such US intervention are widely known: Indochina, Congo, Chile, Dominican Republic and so on. There were also lesser-known cases: in Guyana, for example, the Kennedy administration put very strong pressure on the British to prevent Cheddi Jagan from coming to power democratically. During the Cold War, this practice was much more common than many people realize.
In fact, the United States considered itself entitled to interfere—sometimes without even hiding it—in the internal political affairs of its democratic allies. Most people are unaware that such interventions were common practice in the late 1940s. I can give one illustrative example. The US ambassador to France, as he wrote in his diary, told the country's prime minister in 1947: “No communists in the government, otherwise...”. But even after the situation in Western Europe stabilized, the US government continued to interfere in the affairs of its allies in cases where the stakes were high enough. For example, the Eisenhower administration made it clear to the German people how they should vote in the 1953 elections: an intervention that, according to German political scientists who have studied the issue, resulted in an unqualified victory for the conservative government of Konrad Adenauer. However, ten years later, when the American government fell out with Adenauer, it played a decisive role in removing him from power - an incredible episode about which little is still known on both sides of the Atlantic.
None of the examples of US intervention should be considered part of distant history. The habits and practices formed during the Cold War have not gone away. The US government still considers itself entitled to influence the outcome of elections in other countries. Everyone remembers well how President Barack Obama, just before the referendum on the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, warned the British that if they choose to leave the EU, they will find themselves “at the very end of the queue” when concluding agreements with the United States. Perhaps Obama was simply warning British voters of the inevitable consequences, rather than threatening them. But, in any case, he tried to influence the results of the referendum.
Much less known in the United States is the fact of US intervention in politics in Ukraine, which, nevertheless, can tell us a lot. In 2014, a conversation between senior US State Department official Victoria Nuland and Washington's ambassador to Kyiv, Geoffrey Pyatt, was recorded, most likely by Russian intelligence services. This recording of their conversation very soon appeared on YouTube. From their conversation it immediately became clear who Nuland and Payette wanted to see in power in Kyiv, as well as the fact that the United States already had a certain “scenario” for those political changes in Ukraine that were beneficial to the United States. As the Washington Post put it at the time, they spoke like “political strategists or perhaps party bosses in a smoke-filled back room. Using conventional words and nicknames, they come up with what the opposition should say and do, and how most effectively they can influence the decision-making process in the ranks of the opposition.” Then no one considered this step beyond the bounds of decency, and Nuland did not lose her position. Instead, they again pointed the finger at the Russians, who dared to eavesdrop on the conversation and post it online.
It turns out that the United States is convinced that we have the right to interfere in the internal politics of countries around the world, while any such retaliatory actions will be called unacceptable and will cause a storm of anger. We have the right to eavesdrop on conversations between foreign leaders, but we consider their attempts to hack the emails of American leaders and their aides to be completely unacceptable. The US is an “indispensable country”, so the rules that apply to other countries simply do not apply to Washington. These are Washington's beliefs, but we can easily imagine how foreigners would react to such US behavior. Doesn't the word "arrogance" come to mind?
Personally, I think double standards are morally abhorrent and politically counterproductive. I believe that we should not ascribe to ourselves rights that we do not grant to other countries. This means that, given our own behavior, we should not be offended if other countries begin to behave in the same way. If we approach the recent hacking attacks from this perspective, we will no longer be as outraged by Russia's actions. Her actions fit well into the trends that are now observed throughout the world - in a world that in many ways we ourselves have created.”
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