Unexplored context

A couple of observations about the context of the Russiagate investigations. With Friday's revelations it appears that our evidence so far is that there was some hacking from Russians, both state-sponsored and otherwise. That there was a small budget. That there were some Facebook ads purchased before and after the election and actions taken that were disruptive in nature rather than purposeful. I.e. sponsorship of events that were both pro and con Trump and also events that were pro and con Clinton. It appears, again based only on the evidence available to date, that the Russian goal was mostly disruption rather than achievement of a particular candidate. That their goal was primarily to reduce confidence of the electorate.

None of this has seemed out of the ordinary. We know that our own government has done the same to other countries and that there have even been occasions where we have intervened even more directly such as dispatching campaign consultants to our preferred candidates overseas and making direct appeals to their electorate.

So, enough crumbs of evidence to support any particular extreme hypothesis but no evidence of anything out of the ordinary in terms of governmental action (ours, Russians, Chinese or others), no evidence that outcomes were influenced, no evidence for actual vote tampering, and no evidence of collusion.

What seems to be missing is any historical context. Though American, I grew up in Europe in the 1970s. The Soviet Union was a feared adversary that was ever-present. Not just geographically but in terms of influence, influence exercised through money for communist parties, through indirect support of other political parties, through clandestine sponsorship of popular movements, and influence through spies and agents.

The Soviets financially supported numerous major European political parties. The various European communist parties were not fringe outfits. The Italian Communist Party gained 34.4% of the popular vote in the elections of 1976. The French Communist Party routinely polled between 15-25% of the electorate in the late sixties through the seventies.

Soviet influence went far beyond simple money to political parties. In Britain money went to Trade Union leaders who made up the leadership of the Labour Party. Many socialist parties were riddled with Soviet influencers of one sort or another.

There was, for example, the Guillaume affair. Willy Brandt, leader of the Social Democrats, was Chancellor of West Germany from 1969-74. He resigned after it was discovered that one of his closest advisors, Günter Guillaume, was in fact an East German Stasi agent.

That would be the equivalent today of discovering that Obama's closest advisor Valerie Jarrett was a Russian agent. Now that could be credibly called interference. Blessedly, the Russians of today are not the Soviets of yesteryear.

The Soviets were also active in fomenting and/or supporting a variety of divisive protest groups in western European countries. For example, the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who sought the unilateral disarmament of Britain's nuclear arsenal, was long suspected of being under Soviet control.

It is right and proper that we should be cautious of foreign government involvement or interference in our elections. I am supportive of appropriate interventions that preclude any such interference in the future.

It is striking to me though that the evidence turned up so far for Russian interference in the most recent election indicates a meager and ramshackle program of interference.

But most striking is that the media is not providing any context. The 1970s are not deep history. We know what foreign interference can look like and this is nothing like that.