American politicians have provoked a terrible polarisation of the states, which are now divided into red and blue. American commentators have labelled politicians. The Kremlin is not guilty that the US electoral system is discredited. The US itself is to blame for this.
This statement was made by Fiona Hill, formerly Director for European and Russian Affairs at the US National Security Council.
In her article for The New York Times, Hill recalls how she met with Russian government officials, including Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. At the time, Washington accused Moscow of interfering in the American elections, but in Russia the accusations were rejected.
“Russian officials asked, how could these actions – of course, hypothetical – have such an impact? Apart from the use of cyber hacking and social media, what we described was an operation of ‘active measures’ from a textbook. Everybody did this during the Cold War. What was so special about it? Is the United States really that vulnerable? Can America be so fragmented and fragile that one ‘bad election’ will plunge it into political chaos?”
As Fiona Hill notes, the US is really vulnerable. The problem is that these vulnerabilities were created internally. In particular, it has had an impact on “rough tribal politics”.
“American politicians have turned the country into red and blue states”, – says the former official. – “American commentators have put acrimonious labels on our national leaders.”
Hill stresses that one of the most disturbing incidents was the hacking of the Democratic Party National Committee’s email. But it wasn’t the Russians who forced the Democrats to use a private server.
“The National Committee of the Democratic Party made itself vulnerable to hackers without taking adequate precautions”, – she admits. – “To tell you the truth, the idea that Russia determined the election is exaggerated. It would never have resonated so loudly without our deep polarisation – and our structural problems, including the huge discrepancy between the popular vote for Ms Clinton and the small victory of Mr Trump’s Electoral College.”
These problems began decades ago and have now become particularly acute. Now former vulnerabilities have become a full-scale national security crisis.
“Our partisan disagreements contributed to the failed fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. This has undermined our international reputation. It made us vulnerable to manipulation by any foreign or non-State actor who wanted to weaken us. Our own political actors are undermining our democracy to influence the elections”, – says Hill. – “The biggest risk to these elections is not the Russians, but us.”