Russia Looks Out for Own Interests in Europe’s Elections But Risks Long-Term Blowback

Even as FBI and Congressional investigations into Russia’s role in the U.S. presidential elections continue, Western officials and analysts fear that President Vladimir Putin seeks to replicate the purported “success” of electing Trump in Europe. The idea is that the Russian leader is deeply motivated to stay in power at a particularly difficult period of extended foreign policy commitments, and he is unbound by the lack of explicit rules in cyber-warfare. The ostensible goal of Russian intervention would be to disrupt European elections through calculated leaks or hacks to voting systems to place pro-Russian and Euro-sceptic politicians in power, or in coalitions, or simply to weaken mainstream Atlanticist politicians. The result would be less motivation in Europe to maintain sanctions against Russia, provide support to Ukraine and maintain pressure on Moscow to stop supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, all achieved without expensive and dangerous conventional escalation. The particularly important elections this year would be in Bulgaria, France and Germany. (See table below for details.)

Moscow’s efforts to restructure the international order from Euro-Atlantic dominance to multipolarity have been ongoing for at least a decade. Russia supports far-right Euro-skeptic groups and politicians because it failed to forge common understanding with the European Union over basic cooperation even prior to events in Ukraine, which have only accelerated the division. The populist anti-EU forces in Europe existed long before Putin (indeed, Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, founded the party she now heads in 1972) and they did not cause Putin to adopt Russia's political positions as such, but Putin recognized the congruence and moved accordingly to weaken the bloc. For the Euro-skeptic parties, there are some ideological overlaps with Russia and also the benefit of financial and diplomatic support that identify them as “important” enough for Russian attention and signals to domestic voters their distance from the Atlanticist-European mainstream.

New Means, Old Motives

Despite the oft-heard claim that alleged Russian interference in last year’s U.S. election was unprecedented, that sort of activity fits into a long tradition. Russia used a variety of means to influence politics in Europe and the United States prior to and during the Cold War, which actually provide some clear historical lessons for today. From the post-revolutionary era through the end of de-Stalinization, these means included overt, covert and semi-covert activities, run largely through the Comintern, Cominform and local front organizations. As the visceral ideological appeal of Soviet communism declined over the course of the Cold War and the revelation of Stalin’s crimes, the Soviet Union changed tack, supporting peace and anti-nuclear movements in the 1970s and 1980s. In this approach, the Soviet Union took advantage of political polarization in Western societies and the widening generation gap between those who lived through a traumatic event (World War II) and those who did not. By supporting groups that appealed to Western values but which were out of step with mainstream, anti-Soviet parties, the Soviet Union used the openness and political liberalism of Western societies against Western governments.

Today, too, Russia’s reported cyber intrusions are part of a larger toolkit and, as frightening as they may sound, they were described by the Obama administration’s former director of cybersecurity policy as “relatively unsophisticated and something that probably about 60 countries around the world have the capability of doing—which is to target third parties, to steal documents and emails, and to selectively release them to create unfavorable conditions for that party. It’s unsubtle interference.”

Moreover, much of Russia’s support for the European parties it favors is completely out in the open. Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, has signed memoranda of understanding with Italy’s Northern League , Austria’s Freedom Party and Greece's Independent Greeks; it has hosted members of the European Parliament from Italy’s Five-Star Movement and leaders of Le Pen’s National Front (NF), Germany’s Alternative for Germany , Hungary’s Jobbik , Bulgaria’s Ataka and others at lower levels of official interaction, such as participation in conferences. Le Pen herself has openly sought and received financial assistance from Russian-linked banks and paid a high-profile visit to Moscow in March.

For Moscow, there may be an irony in “successful” interventions in European elections: If one party is seen as winning because of Russian interference that poisons local societal relations or is carried out in unacceptable ways (like covert funding or vote rigging), then the short-term tactical success of helping put a willing interlocutor in office could quickly descend into long-term Russophobia. The current mood in Washington gives a taste of that: While Russia may have affected the U.S. election outcome at the margins, the perception of Moscow as a player in that contest has generated opposition on a much more sustained basis.

In Europe, we could very well see a similar backlash. After the fallout from Brexit, for example, some Euro-sceptics have grown disappointed, reflecting increased uncertainty to the tune that “maybe Europe isn’t such a bad thing.” If Moscow were seen as complicit, that could cast Russia in a negative light.

The combination of polarization in Washington and wariness in Brussels also threatens Russia with a difficult long-term strategic outcome—a collective view of Russia as a revisionist power. If elections in France and Germany retain liberal politicians alongside the same result in the Netherlands, then it is more likely that the Euro-Atlantic community reaches broad agreement on an adversarial view of Russia because of its interference in domestic politics abroad. Policy measures in any one state meant to limit or punish Russia could inspire similar efforts in other states.

Now, as during the Cold War, Russia does not seem able to determine the basic outcomes of foreign elections, but it certainly can muddy the waters by disturbing the informational space and it often does so by exacerbating open societies’ most salient political differences. A recent remark by former Estonian President Toomas Henrik Ilves could apply as easily to the Cold War era as to current affairs: “What they do is asymmetric—what they do to us we cannot do them. This applies to all authoritarian regimes. Liberal democracies with a free press and free and fair elections are at an asymmetric disadvantage because they can be interfered with—the tools of their democratic and free speech can be used against them.”

The policy response for the West is to recognize that openness might be a weakness in an information war, but it is a source of strength for the societies themselves. Curtailing that openness to tighten up tactical defences would be short-sighted and strategically unwise in conceding a key source of attractiveness to others. Direct retaliation would only justify escalation on terms favorable to those who were seeking to avoid conventional confrontation in the first place.

To limit the impact of foreign interference in elections, the fixes are long-term. First, this would mean a two-pronged, supply-and-demand approach to fighting so-called false facts: various forms of self-policing by the purveyors of information, on one hand (such as the nascent efforts by Facebook ), and promoting “informational literacy ” among young people—i.e., teaching them to tell apart real news from fake—on the other. In addition, a widely watched draft law in the German Bundestag aims to equate purposefully misleading news-like stories (“fake news”) with hate speech and incitement, putting the onus on social networks to remove such objectionable material or else face punitive fines. Passage of the bill looks likely ahead of September’s elections, and EU officials are already exploring how to implement the law across Europe.  Second, the political elites in Western countries must recognize that anti-establishment, isolationist and nationalist messages are finding fertile ground because of popular dissatisfaction with macro-level political and economic changes, just as in the 1970s-1980s. Defining attractive anti-populist messages could undercut the popularity of populist rhetoric and false facts, and draw greater distinctions between open societies and closed ones.