Throwback edition: Cyber warfare comes of age.

For those who may have noticed David Sanger's article today in the New York Times, "Russian Hackers Appear to Shift Focus to U.S. Power Grid," the piece that I published on March 20, 2018 entitled "Cyber warfare comes of age" provides some historical context. Here it is.

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Consider this possibility: What if Russia's information operation targeting the 2016 presidential election was just a side show, a distraction that has drawn our attention away from more significant cyber operations. It is one thing to get people yelling at each other online, and to instigate marches and demonstrations in the streets. It is another thing altogether to derail trains loaded with lethal chemicals, contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.

Last Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security published a Technical Alert authored by DHS and the FBI entitled "Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors." It was a notification that Russian government "cyber actors" have compromised energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing facilities in the United States. The story made the front page of the New York Times – below the fold, overshadowed by the latest happenings in the Mueller investigation – and got a few quips from late night comics, and then quickly receded from the news.

In all of our yelling back and forth about what Russia did or didn't do around the 2016 presidential election – and whether it constituted an act of war or just some kind of geopolitical mischief – we may have deluded ourselves into believing that this is what is meant by cyber warfare.

Of course, we know that it isn't the extent of it. We hear Ted Koppel's warnings of the cyber apocalypse to come. We worry about the attacks on credit reporting companies, and hackers stealing our identities and selling them on the dark web. And we know that all sorts of actors, from Russia, China and Iran, to 400-pound guys sitting on their beds in New Jersey, are in on the game. Yet, somehow, as much as we understand the threats are out there, we show little concern over the extent of the risks that cyber warfare could mean to us, as evidenced by how little heed was paid to the DHS alert.

According to DHS, Russian cyber efforts accelerated in 2015 – around the same time as its information operation with respect to the election began – and they have advanced their capabilities to wreck havoc in the United States from being a theoretical risk to literally having their finger on the trigger.

“We now have evidence," observed Eric Chien, a security technology director at the digital security firm Symantec, "they’re sitting on the machines, connected to industrial control infrastructure, that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage... All that’s missing is some political motivation.”

If this sounds like something out of an action movie, it should. Ten years ago, the plot of the 2007 film Live Free or Die Hard, centered around Thomas Gabriel – played by Timothy Olyphant – a disgruntled Department of Defense software engineer who went rogue after the Joint Chiefs of Staff ignored his warnings about the vulnerability of the country's cyber infrastructure. Gabriel decides to prove his point through a cyber attack blowing up a gas pipeline network and utility plant. Of course, the eternal Die Hard hero, Bruce Willis, playing NYPD cop John McClane, thwarts Gabriel's plans and saves the day, aided – notably – by Fredrick Kaludis, aka Warlock, a seriously overweight computer hacker living in his mother's basement, probably in New Jersey.

As it turns out, movies have played a significant role in our understanding of cyber warfare. In the opening pages of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, author Fred Kaplan tells the story of when President Ronald Reagan watched the movie War Games in June of 1983. War Games stars Matthew Broderick as David Lightman, a high school teenager who unwittingly hacks into a Pentagon mainframe computer and sets the world on a course for thermonuclear war. Broderick and his girlfriend, played by Ally Sheedy, spend the balance of the film trying to undue the havoc he has wrought.

The next day, President Reagan asked his national security staff whether what happened in the movie was plausible: Could someone hack into our defense computers and launch a nuclear war? According to Kaplan, Reagan's question took Pentagon and National Security Agency officials by surprise. The whole cyber world was in its infancy, and, apparently, it had not occurred to the best and the brightest of the military and intelligence communities that while they were developing new forms of cyber warfare to unleash upon America's enemies, our enemies might be preparing the same capabilities to unleash against us. Yes, they concluded, to their chagrin, it was plausible. The episode changed the course of America's cyber warfare efforts.

A decade later, in 1992, the writers of War Games collaborated on the movie Sneakers. As Kaplan tells the story, that movie created a similar ah-hah moment for the incoming director of the National Security Agency, Rear Admiral Mike McConnell. Sneakers revolves around efforts by the NSA to recover a mysterious cryptographic device that, it turns out, can hack into any computer system – the Federal Reserve Bank, air traffic control, missile defense, whatever. In a climactic moment, Cosmo, the teenage hacker-turned criminal mastermind – played by Ben Kingsley – who created the device, describes the new cyber world to his erstwhile college hacker friend, Robert Redford: "The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It is run by ones and zeros, little bits of data. It's all just electrons... There's a war out there, old friend, a world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information: what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It's all about the information." Admiral McConnell had been struggling to define the mission and purpose of the NSA he had been appointed to lead. When he saw the movie, he realized that Ben Kingsley had defined it for him.

In 2013, Vladimir Putin's top general, Valery Gerasimov, emphasized the elevated role of cyber warfare in the Russian strategic arsenal: "The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness." The Pentagon, in turn, showed its heightened concern earlier this year in a Nuclear Posture Review that proposes to expand its policy regarding appropriate first-use of nuclear weapons responses to include significant cyber attacks.

Cyber warfare capabilities as described by the DHS are part of a new strategic balance. In the 1980s, we won the Cold War and beat the Soviet Union into submission through a strategic arms race that only we could afford. Now, the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review – viewing a significant cyber attack on par with a nuclear one – suggests that Russia has successfully recreated a balance of power with the United States without having to match our spending on missiles and bombs. Recreating a balance of power has been central to Vladimir Putin's ambitions. The Russian president – who was re-elected this week to a new six-year term – will soon stand with Joseph Stalin and Catherine the Great among Russia's longest-serving and most consequential potentates. Putin has made no secret of his desire to push back on western encroachment toward Russia's borders since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to return to the great powers world of the 19th century, where the dominant states each had their respective – and respected – spheres of influence. Russia's strategic concern about being encircled by hostile forces may smack of paranoia, but it is useful to keep in mind that the Russian nation has been invaded by foreign powers at least once each century for the past half-millennium.

While the Pentagon's cyber warriors have offensive cyber capabilities equal to, if not greater than, Russia's, our cyber defenses are more problematic. As Mike McConnell has observed, while the lion's share of cybersecurity expertise rests with agencies of the federal government, more than 90% of the physical infrastructure of the Web is owned by private industry, making investments in adequate cyber defenses problematic. The DHA alert specifically focused on this vulnerability.

A balance of power in the cyber world is fundamentally different from a balance of power with respect to nuclear weapons. Unlike nuclear war, cyber warfare can be fought in many ways – as the 2016 election interference campaign suggests. Cyber attacks can be launched in an unlimited degree of gradations, from small air traffic control disruptions at a single airport to the destruction of the utility grid in a major city. These gradations, as well as the challenges of attribution inherent in cyber events, are particularly well-suited to Putin's purposes. The balance of power of the Soviet era was based around the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction, which meant that both sides had their finger on the button, but neither had an incentive to push it. In contrast, cyber warfare is already in active use, with myriad variations in its targets and scope. This suggests that it cannot be contained as the Pentagon imagines – other than, perhaps, with respect to catastrophic events – which begs the question: what are effective responses?“

Attribution is a critical issue, as it is essential to effective deterrence. The essence of deterrence is the certainty of consequences for proscribed behavior, but it all rests on "ascribing agency to an agent." As we have seen in events from the little green men that led Russia's incursions into Crimea and Ukraine, to the poisoning of former Russian spies Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko, Putin likes to push and prod, to test limits and gauge reactions, as he pursues his objectives, even as he denies responsibility and minimizes consequences. So, too, with respect to the election hacking, where attribution of responsibility to the Russian state has been difficult to prove, much less the determination of an appropriate response. Given these considerations, one can imagine that Vladimir Putin will have significant incentives to expand his use of cyber, and the leverage that flows from it, to achieve his strategic goals.

The brilliance of the Russian strategy – if indeed it was a strategy – of paring the attacks targeting our political institutions through social media, and those that now threaten our critical public and economic infrastructure, is that the degrading of our political infrastructure has undermined our capacity to respond to threats to our physical infrastructure. If we cannot manage civil discourse around the most mundane issues in our day-to-day politics, imagine what our discourse looms to be when we seek to ascribe blame because the lights have gone out and airports are shut down in the midst of a tit-for-tat cyber escalation.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Joe Dworetzky. Check out Joe's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

Spies, sex and the demise of the Grand Old Party.

If polls are to be believed, Republicans are pretty happy with Donald Trump. With approval levels among Republicans nearing 90% , the President is more popular in his party than any president in the modern era, with the exception of George W. Bush in the days following 9/11. While Republicans in the Senate panicked in the face of Trump's Helsinki press conference with Vladimir Putin last week, polls suggest that their reaction was overwrought, as 70-80% of Republicans appear to have been just fine with the President's performance.

Old school Republicans – a dying breed – are wondering what happened to their party. They dream wistfully of the days when the GOP demanded moral rectitude in its leaders, and Ronald Reagan celebrated America as a shining City on a Hill, inspiring people around the world with his principled defense of democracy, liberty and freedom. Freedom is on the march, George W. Bush used to say, and the Republican Party was the tip of the American spear. Republicans cheered the spread of democracy across the world, as, in the decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, autocrats and dictators from Asia to South America and ultimately Africa gave way to democracy's march.

But a virus infected the Republican Party during the Reagan years that is only now becoming evident; it was the virus of single issue voting. While Ronald Reagan was off giving high-minded speeches, his political Svengali Grover Norquist was building the Election Day turnout machine that continues to enable the Republican Party to dominate the levers of power at both the federal and state levels, despite much-touted disadvantages in demographics and party registration. Norquist's coalition of passionate, single issue voters – anti-tax, anti-abortion, pro-gun, etc. – delivers for the GOP because, for decades now, the GOP has delivered for them.

Donald Trump grasped an essential truth of the Norquist coalition that many in the GOP never considered: It provided a path to power for a candidate indifferent to – or even hostile to – what many Republicans long viewed as core principles of the GOP. He understood that as long he delivers on tax cuts, judges and guns – and a few other issues for good measure – those Republican voters would forgive him everything from his philandering with porn stars and to turning his back on Ronald Reagan's lofty vision of America's role in the world.

Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity as well in the Republican Party's reliance on single issue voters. The Russian intelligence operation that was disclosed last week in the action filed by the Department of Justice against Russian agent Maria Butina sought to test the premise of whether those voting groups were actually committed to GOP principles beyond their own single issue. Specifically, Putin and his team sought to cultivate the National Rifle Association and conservative Christian organizations as allies of the Russian government, and use their influence to steer the GOP away from its long-standing anti-Russian hostility.

It turns out that Putin hit the nail on the head. Over the course of just a few years, seduced by Maria Butina's cunning advances, the leadership of the National Rifle Association and conservative Christian organizations in the nation's capital turned a blind eye to GOP objections to Russia's invasions and occupations of its neighboring countries, and its continuing efforts to instigate social discord and undermine European democracies, and bought into the vision of Vladimir Putin's Russia as their pro-faith, pro-gun comrades-in-arms.

As I read the material filed by the Department of Justice, I could imagine the satisfaction that Putin and the leaders of the Russian intelligence services must have felt as they gathered in his office and reviewed Butina's operation. Everyone in the room knew the operation itself was a long-shot, but by the time Barack Obama was in his second term – and Obama and Hillary Clinton had successfully orchestrated the Orange Revolution in Ukraine – the threat of western democracy had reached Russia's doorstep, and Putin's bag of tricks was running out.

Putin had almost gotten to George W. Bush, early in his presidency. Bush shocked the Republican establishment when he claimed that he gazed into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. John McCain burst that balloon when he ridiculed Bush in public, suggesting that if one gazes into Putin's eyes, all you will see is K.G.B. It was a good line – all great humor has an edge of truth – but it derailed Putin's efforts to win over the younger Bush and temper decades of Republican hostility.

The bad-cop, good-cop routine that Putin and his Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, tried on Barack Obama seemed to make progress as well. Obama had the optimism inherent in being a community organizer, and he almost bonded with Medvedev, but like Bush's flirtation with Putin, Obama's 'reset' foundered in the face of Republican ridicule – and came to a screeching halt when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.

By 2013, Putin had come to realize that he had to tackle the elephant in the room, and Butina was part of that effort. Rather than just go the K Street lobbying route and throw a lot of dark money at the problem, this operation was a bit more subtle – and ambitious. Putin needed to change how the Republican Party viewed Russia. In doing so, it turns out, he was going to challenge what it means to be a Republican.

I imagine the group gathered around Putin couldn't help but chuckle as they walked through the progress of the operation as it advanced. A stunning redhead in her twenties, posing as a pro-gun Christian conservative, Butina quickly bedded Paul Erickson, a big time, fifty-something, GOP operative. According to the detailed information provided in the court documents, Butina's pitch was that she was linked to people who would be powerful in the post-Putin world, a story that Erickson pitched to others as he walked her around the corridors of power. In an email from Erickson to Butina, Erickson understood the balance she was striking between focusing on life after Putin, while never criticizing Putin directly.

Taking Down Reagan's GOP: A Pretty Girl With a Gun

It was the image of Butina cradling an ORSIS T-5000 tactical assault rifle that must have gotten the group giggling. The T-5000 was Moscow's latest entry into the world's arms bazaar, but there was no way that an average Russian could get their hands on one. Russia's gun laws are the stuff of Democrat dreams. Russia limits ownership to hunting rifles and shotguns; no handguns and no clips holding more than ten rounds. The implausibility of Butina's legend – that she was a country girl from Siberia who came up with the idea of starting gun clubs in Russia while chatting with friends in a cafe, and came to America because she thought it would be cool to partner those clubs with the NRA – never seemed to occur to Erickson, or to Wayne LaPierre at the National Rifle Association, for that matter. It never seemed to occur to either of them that the only way Butina could be so familiar with the T-5000 was if she was trained in the Russian military, or – perhaps – by Russian intelligence. Putin and his compatriots must have marveled at their gullibility, but they knew – as Butina had now proven – that in America, a pretty girl with a gun can accomplish just about anything.

And then there was Butina's outreach to conservative Christian groups. The Russian Orthodox Church – which Putin and Russian intelligence services have used for years as a foreign policy tool – played an important role in Maria Butina's operation. Her pitch was straightforward: Russia and America are the two most observant Christian nations, and should stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of a hostile secular world.

As with the NRA, the leaders of the Christian groups Butina cultivated apparently evidenced little concern about Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine and Georgia, or the growing threat Russia posed to America's European allies. Two years into Butina's operation, Patriarch Kirill, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church hosted American evangelical leader Franklin Graham in Moscow. Graham, the son of Billy Graham and now among Donald Trump's most avid supporters, embraced Kirill and his church, just as Butina's handlers had hoped. On his Facebook page after their meeting, Graham praised Kirill as an ally of American evangelicals in their common cause opposing same sex marriage and abortion, as well as their shared "need to reach a younger generation brought up in secular schools surrounded by a secular culture who know nothing of God and His love for them." By 2018, according to participants, a delegation of visiting Russians constituted the largest group of participants at the National Prayer Breakfast, and Butina had secured an invitation for Putin himself to attend.

Grover Norquist never suggested that the pro-gun, pro-life, anti-tax and other single issue voters that he cultivated as cornerstones of the GOP coalition cared about what Ronald Reagan cared about; he only claimed that he could deliver their votes to the GOP as long as the GOP delivered on taxes, judges and guns. It was, and remains, the definition of transactional politics – and for the GOP – it was the virus that ended up consuming the host. As Donald Trump has confronted our traditional allies across the world in one setting after another, Senate Republican have derided his trampling of Ronald Reagan's vision of America and the post-World War II order; but, if polls are to be believed, there has been no outcry among Republicans voters.

As to Russia itself, Vladimir Putin must surely be pleased. In short order, Maria Butina bedded a senior GOP operative, gained access to the corridors of power of Russia's great adversary, and got the leadership of the NRA and National Prayer Breakfast to turn the GOP on its head. Since 2014, according to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who view Russia as an ally has nearly doubled – from 22% to 40% – and, for the first time in decades, Republicans view Russia more favorably than do Democrats.

Last week, Donald Trump put a fine point on his attack on the global order one championed by the GOP. During an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he questioned the rationale behind the NATO alliance, asking specifically whether Americans were really prepared to go to war for Montenegro, a NATO member country most Americans have never heard of. Trump already knew the answer: outside of the U.S. Senate, few in the GOP care about those issues anymore. For Vladimir Putin, this is wonderful news; by the time Donald Trump is done – with the help of Maria Butina and the Russian intelligence services – Ronald Reagan's vision of America as a shining City on a Hill – a beacon of democracy, liberty and freedom for people's across the globe – will have faded into the recesses of memory.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

Watching Vladimir Putin's dreams come true.

When Vladimir Putin looked ahead after the 2012 election to who might succeed Barack Obama, he faced the unpalatable prospect of a President Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Putin knew Clinton well, of course. As Secretary of State she had aggressively supported the Ukrainian pro-democracy movement that had ousted the Putin-controlled government in 2011. Putin saw both Bush and Rubio as traditional anti-Putin, pro-democracy, Republican hawks. He knew he needed to change the American political landscape; and he has.

Putin's ensuing plan was not about Donald Trump; it was not even primarily focused on the 2016 presidential election. This is a point that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sought to emphasize at a press conference this week, where he laid out the range of Russian intelligence strategies targeting our political system. Rather, Putin's plan was – and continues to be – about Russian sovereignty over Ukraine and Crimea, and Putin's longstanding determination to break down the post-World War II international order and reassert Russia's authority over territory it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it is about the United States' long-standing opposition to his ambitions.

Buried among all the sturm und drang this week among Republicans, particularly in the U.S. Senate, about whether Donald Trump could be forced to utter the magic words "Russia meddled in our election," was the criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice against Russian spy Maria Butina. Together with the indictment a week ago of twelve Russian intelligence officers by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the documents filed in Federal Court continue to flesh out the breadth of Russian intelligence operations targeting the United States. Those filings also illustrate the extent of electronic evidence – online activities, emails, texts, etc. – that is available to FBI counterintelligence investigators as they seek to track what has been going on.

In marked contrast to Trump's continuing efforts to deny or downplay accusations of Russian election meddling, Rod Rosenstein emphasized that while Putin's intelligence operations targeted the 2016 election, the scope was far broader.  "Focusing merely on a single election misses the point." Rosenstein argued this week. "These actions are persistent, they are pervasive, and they are meant to undermine America’s democracy on a daily basis, regardless of whether it is election time or not.” An FBI affidavit filed in the Butina case fleshed out Rosenstein's warning: "Moscow seeks to create wedges that reduce trust and confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken U.S. partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions, encourage anti-U.S. political views, and counter efforts to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European institutions."

The cunning irony of the Putin's mix of strategies targeted against the U.S., as well as against several European countries, is that those strategies mirror the pro-democracy efforts that the U.S. and its allies have been pursuing in the states of the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War. The efforts of the U.S. and its allies to transform the autocratic norms and political culture of the former Soviet bloc focused on building institutions of civil society. Building the infrastructure of civil society was seen to be a critical step in developing the social trust necessary to allow those countries to successfully migrate toward liberal democracy. In contrast, a central objective of Putin's intelligence operations against the U.S. and western democracies has been to break down institutions of civil society and undermine trust across social groups, and in so doing sever the ties that bind democratic societies together.

As Rod Rosenstein laid them out this week, Putin's efforts are wide ranging, and several have proven to be highly effective. Russia's use of Facebook and other social media platforms to instigate social distrust, propagate conspiracy theories, and exacerbate sectarian, racial and other divisions, has been widely recognized. Another approach, described in Mueller's recent indictment, involved stealing internal Democratic Party electronic communications and using information found there to sow discord and exacerbate divisions between Clinton and Sanders supporters, and ultimately push Sanders supporters away from Clinton on Election Day. Both strategies met with some degree of success. As Russian cyber operatives anticipated, we eagerly take the bait on social media, where we have learned to turn on each other with a vengeance. And one factor in Clinton's electoral defeat in 2016 is the number of Sanders supporters in critical states who either voted for Trump or declined to vote at all.

Maria Butina: One Part The Americans, One Part Red Sparrow

The intelligence operation with Maria Butina at its center represents a third kind of strategy. Dating back to at least to 2013, the operation described in the criminal complaint filed this week reads like one part The Americans and one part Red Sparrow. Posing as a gun-lover, Butina's marching orders from Moscow Center were to cultivate relationships with key pro-Republican operatives and groups and promote pro-Russian views. The operational objective was to use those groups as inroads to the Republican Party, to soften the GOP party platform and attitudes toward Russia. As described in the court filing, Butina successfully seduced – both literally and figuratively – key Republican operatives, and gained access to and influence with leaders of the National Rifle Association, the former conservative – now Trumpian – activist group CPAC, as well as religious groups that sponsor the National Prayer Breakfast. Those pro-Republican advocacy groups, in turn, became assets of Russian intelligence in its efforts to push the national Republican Party toward a more pro-Russia stance. Shortly after Election Day, in what could have been a culminating moment for the operation, Butina apparently helped to kill the looming appointment of Mitt Romney – who was noted for his anti-Russian views – as Secretary of State.

As with the strategies described above, this approach appears to have been effective. The Republican Party platform committee did remove anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine language, and both the NRA and a number of prominent religious leaders became publicly engaged with Russia. Whatever the combination of factors might have been, Pew Research data suggests that over the past several years the percent of Republicans who view Russia as a threat to the United States declined significantly, from 58% to 38%. Of course, attitudes among Democrats have moved in the opposite direction.

It is too soon to know how enduring Putin's efforts will prove to be in destabilizing our democracy. Perhaps, in time, it could have the opposite effect; public blowback against Trumpism and the exposure of Putin's strategies could actually strengthen our democracy.

Whether or not Russia's intelligence operations turn out to have an enduring impact on our politics, it is increasingly clear that they did impact results in 2016. In his new memoir, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper makes the case that Russia's efforts did affect the results in 2016. “Of course the Russian efforts affected the outcome. Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense, and credulity to the breaking point. Less than eighty thousand votes in three key states swung the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by this massive effort by the Russians.” 

Clapper's assessment flies in the face of the stock Republican talking points, which Paul Ryan reiterated this week. "Russia meddled," Ryan conceded, but then quickly added the standard Republican codicil that "it’s also clear that it did not have a material effect on our elections.” But as more information is being made public about the range of Russian operations affecting the 2016 election, Ryan's stock assertion is becoming less and less credible.

This does not mean that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia's efforts. Whether Russian intelligence operatives penetrated the Trump campaign, or whether Trump and others otherwise actively colluded with them, remains to be seen. However, based on the extensive electronic surveillance data presented in the court filings over the past two weeks, it is becoming increasingly evident that if the Trump campaign colluded with Russian intelligence, Robert Mueller will have access to that information.

Either way, as Trump rampaged across Europe this week – alienating our friends, undermining our alliances, and lending tacit support to Russia's occupation of Crimea – at each stop along the way, he seemed to do something that supported Putin's goals, as summed up in the FBI affidavit. Putin's plans may have predated Trump's arrival on the scene, but – knowingly or otherwise, blackmail or no blackmail – Donald Trump is proving to be the greatest gift that Vladimir Putin could have hoped for.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

The joys of blackmail.

Germany, Donald Trump declared before the gathered NATO leaders and press of the world, is in Vladimir Putin's pocket... It was a classic Trump comment: Democrats colluded with Russian intelligence in 2016, Trump has charged repeatedly, to deflect those same charges against his campaign; he brought Bill Clinton's accusers to a Presidential Debate in the face of accusations of his own sexual assaults; and now, as he prepares to meet with Putin alone in Moscow, he reflexively insists that it is Angela Merkel who is doing Putin's bidding.

Trump's schoolyard "I know you are, but what am I?" tactic is central to his playbook, as Ted Cruz pointed out early on. "This man is a pathological liar," Cruz warned, "And he has a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook. His response is to accuse everybody else of lying... it's simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing."

Everyone expected fireworks at the NATO meetings, but just when you think Trump had stretched the limits of hubris, he steps it up a notch. It is truly remarkable to watch in real time. The United States has become too limited a stage; he is now trolling the entire planet. There he was, deconstructing the world order with the cameras rolling, step by step, daring anyone to stand up to him. Sitting across the table from him as he attacked Germany, not one of the European leaders rose to the challenge. The best they could do was mumble platitudes about having fought a couple of wars together; muttering words about friendship and enduring alliances, sotto voce, as if not to prod the bear.

"Everything Trump is doing is on Putin's anti-America wish list," a Republican operative insisted to me the other day. "Putin is blackmailing him, there is no other way to explain it." He assumes that Putin is blackmailing Trump with the infamous "pee tape" described in Christopher Steele's dossier, or perhaps some other incriminating material. But there is another answer, a simpler answer, an Occam's Razor of sorts: Donald Trump is not serving anyone's interest but his own. Trump has demonstrated over and over that he respects strongmen. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping fit the bill, as does Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and even Kim Jong-un, about whom Trump spoke so admiringly after they spent time together. They are strong like Trump imagines he is strong.

European leaders, on the other hand, are weak, in Trump's estimation. No one cowers when they walk into the room; instead, they are the ones who cower. They cower before right wing, nationalist challenges that are shaking the Continent. They cower before the self-righteous press. And, as they demonstrated this week, they cower when Trump walks into the room.

Trump evinces a feral pleasure as he seeks out opportunities to taunt America's erstwhile allies. He delighted in mocking Canada's Justin Trudeau as a lightweight. He was all the more happy to twist the knife in the backs of Great Britain's Theresa May and Germany's Angela Merkel as their governments teeter, knowing that tormenting them about how 'immigration is destroying European culture' would play perfectly to his core supporters at home, and to his growing right wing following overseas. When Trump commented this week in the face of public protests that "they like me a lot" in Great Britain, the mainstream media back at home may have snickered, but he knew who he was talking about.

It may be that Vladimir Putin has something that he is holding over Trump, but Donald Trump does not have the look of a man who is  being dragged kicking and screaming to the task at hand. When Trump tears down the rule-based global order that America has nurtured over the past 70 years, it may be because it is one of Putin's core strategic ambitions, or simply because in Trump's mind, there is nothing fundamentally admirable about rules; he has chafed against them his whole life. Now that he has the power to break that order apart, Trump appears more than happy to do so. He lives for the attention, and relishes the anger he is provoking – no longer just among Democrats at home, but among the whole, global liberal democracy crowd.

If Putin actually has something on him, we will likely never know for sure; at least not until this historical moment is long past. In his book Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore revealed the inner workings of Stalin's rule, based on archives that for half a century had been buried deep within the Kremlin walls. Montefiore's is a gruesome story, detailing, among other things, the orders that Stalin gave to his lieutenants, specifying how many thousands of people each of them were responsible for killing each month. We all knew about the millions who died during Stalin's reign, but the documentary evidence was hidden away until long after he and his regime were dead and buried.

If Trump's undermining of the post-World War II order – with a speed and breadth that must surpass even Vladimir Putin's wildest dreams – is explained by the existence of Christopher Steele's tape, or some other evidence that Putin holds over Trump, we will likely never see it. Like the documentary proof of Stalin's crimes, that evidence is surely buried away, far beyond the prying eyes of the world, probably in a special vault in the Lubyanka Building in Dzerzhinsky Square that holds the deepest secrets of Russian intelligence. 

If we are waiting for Robert Mueller to confirm the truth of the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and, in so doing, to resolve the chasm of public discord surrounding the whole Russia affair, we are likely to be disappointed. This week, Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for cyber warfare operations targeting the 2016 election. The 29-page indictment reads like an intelligence briefing that Putin might have received over the course of the operation. Yet, for all its detail, the indictment begs the question that remains central to the Mueller investigation: What was the extent of Donald Trump's collusion with Russia, and what is the evidence upon which that conclusion is based. And this question increasingly begs consideration of a second one: When Mueller finally delivers his report, will his conclusion – whatever it might be – help to resolve the deep-seated animus that is now roiling the nation, or will it only exacerbate the situation in which we find ourselves.

Trump supporters and Trump haters may be equally unwilling at this point to accept any conclusion that Robert Mueller presents in his report that does not comport with the view of the world they have come to embrace. There is little doubt that Trump supporters will reject any conclusion that suggests active collusion by the President himself, absent the contemporaneous publication of the "pee tape" on YouTube, or comparable irrefutable documentary evidence. And even that evidence will likely be claimed across Trump World to be a fabrication of the Deep State, providing further evidence of treachery by the intelligence community. With respect to charges relating to obstruction of justice, those will be rejected out of hand, absent proof of the underlying crime of collusion.

On the other hand, should Mueller conclude that there was no evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia – perhaps suggesting instead that Russia's actions were aligned with the interests of the Trump campaign, but that no significant coordination was evident – that will only prove to Trump haters the depth of Putin's cunning, and the limits of documentary evidence. Absence of evidence, many will no doubt observe, does not constitute evidence of absence, and those who believe that collusion took place will remain convinced that somewhere deep in the  Lubyanka Building lies a thumb drive... but it will be decades, at least, before that evidence sees the light of day.

As the months go by, more and more seems to ride on the Mueller investigation, but it is becoming increasingly hard to imagine that his report is going to solve anything; potentially leaving the sides arguing about the very real crime of obstruction of justice, with Congress unwilling or unable to act. The larger question that is emerging seems to be how and whether our democracy can return to some semblance of normalcy once the Mueller report is submitted. Fixing a nation whose polity has been torn apart – even before the report arrives – is going to be where the real test of our political institutions lies, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone in Congress is preparing to meet that challenge. Meanwhile, blackmail or no, Donald Trump is heading to his sit down with Vladimir Putin, having spent the better part of the past week trolling his way across Europe, basking in the attention, stopping in for tea with the Queen, playing a little golf, and having the time of his life.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

It turns out, Ralph Nader was wrong.

The Democratic Party is heading in the wrong direction. For months now, activists – as activists are wont to do – have seized the high ground and pushed the party further and further to the left. First Medicare for all and free college tuition – the defining issues of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign – became litmus test issues for aspiring party leaders. Then came the idea of a government guaranteed job for all. A few weeks ago, in the face of tragedy at the southern border, the cry went out for the elimination of ICE. Now, with the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the prospect of his being replaced by a younger, more conservative jurist, packing the Supreme Court has emerged as a solution to what ails the party.

Democrats need to step back consider two things as they blaze their path forward. First, the Blue Wave that so many are counting on to sweep the nation this November is not written in stone. The Democratic Party advantage on the "generic ballot" has been cut in half from its peak levels late last year. Indeed, one long-time Republican campaign strategist commented to me this week that GOP internal polling suggests that if the election were held today, they would keep control of the House by five or six seats. Second, the vision of children being taken from their parents and disappeared into a bureaucratic wasteland, and the prospect of Amy Coney Barrett being appointed to replace Kennedy – putting overturning both Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges within striking distance for the "religious liberty" crowd – should stand as stark reminders that in this historical moment winning is the singular imperative for Democrats, and it is highly debatable whether a surge to the left is a step in the right direction.

The emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the new paragon of the Democratic Party has contributed to the distorted perceptions of the political landscape that have gripped many Democrats. The 28 year-old Ocasio-Cortez is an impressive political newcomer, and her take-down of Congressman Joe Crowley was the most startling loss for a national party leader since House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated by David Brat four years ago. Nonetheless, despite the excitement her success has engendered, Ocasio-Cortez' victory as a self-proclaimed democratic socialist in a deep blue district in the Bronx – in an off-year race that had 11.8% turnout – should offer minimal, if any, implications for Democratic Party strategy going forward.

Source: Gallup

Most of the American electorate does not identify as Democrats – much less democratic socialists. While slightly more Americans identify as Democrats than Republicans, that does not make Democrats the majority party; it simply makes them – at best – the plurality party. In contrast, far and away the largest political cohort in the country is the nearly half of Americans that identify as Independents. Faced with this electoral landscape, one might imagine that one party or the other would seek to temper their respective party's push to the edge of the political spectrum and focus instead on moving to the center, but that is not the world we seem to be in. The Republican Party's commitment to Trumpism is now complete, while leading Democrats appear to have decided to turn their backs on the political center and pander to the activist progressive wing of the party.

Two decades ago, Ralph Nader took the Democratic Party to task just as activists are today, when he famously derided the notion that there was any material difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. "The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush," Nader commented before the 2000 presidential election, "is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door... It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote." Nader, of course, went on to throw his hat in the ring, and arguably threw the election to George W. Bush, as Nader's 97,421 votes in Florida overwhelmed Bush's 537 vote margin of victory.

One might have thought that seeing two wars launched and two conservative Supreme Court jurists appointed by Bush over the ensuing eight years would have taught Democrats a lesson, and tempered their urge to seek a savior on the left, but just sixteen years later Bernie Sanders took Democrats down the same path. Like Nader, Sanders was a political independent who embraced the Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum perspective on the national political parties. And, as with Nader, one can argue that the 20% of Sanders supporters who chose not to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election because she failed the test of doctrinal purity, tipped the balance for Trump. The difference this time is that despite losing to Hillary in the primaries – and despite her winning the popular vote nationally – it was Sanders who emerged from the 2016 contest as the undisputed winner on the Democratic side. Today, the curmudgeonly grandfather figure is leading a movement of youthful zealots who imagine that by pursuing his progressive agenda they will redeem the Democratic Party, even as they ignore the very real risk that they will simply assure its continued minority status.

Lest Democrats are letting their anger delude them into thinking otherwise, that is the objective reality of what is at stake. Right now, Republicans hold not just the White House – and thus the privilege of making Supreme Court nominations and dictating ICE policies and practices – but the Senate, the House of Representatives, 33 of 50 governors, both legislative chambers in 32 of 50 states, and a tightening grip on the Supreme Court. To put it in even more stark terms, the GOP is just two states short of being able to call a Constitutional Convention and seek to enshrine its political priorities in the U.S. Constitution; and don't think for a minute that possibility is lost on Republican strategists. So much for the demographics is destiny notion that is supposed to portend the Democrats being the majority party for decades to come; if there is a political party in America that is slipping into irrelevance, it is not the Republicans.

It feels like we are watching a slow-motion train wreck. One week after another, Donald Trump hands Democrats issues around which they might build a broad-based political coalition. One week he is actively destroying the alliances that have been central to America's post-World War II leadership in the world, while the next week he is cozying up to dictators – petty and otherwise. His growing trade war has conflated Canada with China, and has had the unintended consequence of torching the agricultural sector. Trump's attacks on foreign automakers at a rally in Greenville, NC marked the highpoint in political irony, deafness or hubris – take your pick – as Greenville-Spartenberg is the home to BMW America, where the German automaker builds SUVs that it sells across the globe. When Trump vilified Harley-Davidson on Twitter a few weeks ago for responding rationally to his tariffs, he demonstrated to corporate America the risk of a president who is willing to use his bully pulpit and regulatory powers to settle political scores. And then, of course, there is his administration's treatment of asylum-seekers and their children, which has marked a fundamental assault on American notions of decency.

Just at the moment when one might imagine that a trans-partisan political response to Trumpism would be so easy to assemble – after all, a large subset of Americans must be yearning for a government that evinces a modicum of integrity, pursues reasonable and moderate public policies, provides desperately needed leadership against the rise of nationalism across the world, and does not assault their notions of integrity, fair play and decency one day after the next – the Democratic Party has chosen instead to turn its back on the political center and chart what could be a path to its own destruction. Nate Silver summed it up the other day, when he commented that "The notion that moderation wins elections more often than not isn’t going to persuade many people after 2016, even though it might happen to be true. The mostly young Democratic activists who are pushing to abolish ICE feel like the Democratic establishment totally misunderstands politics and are responsible for the Democrats’ electoral predicament." 

Progressive Democrats may be convinced that a majority of the country think the way they do; that if given the chance, a majority of Americans would vote for their agenda, despite the fact that just two years ago a majority of Democrats chose not to. Those who are inspired by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' inspirational words should take note of the fact that her victory was hardly a robust endorsement of her democratic socialist platform: Her 57% winning percentage in an election that had 11.8% turnout means that only 6.7% of eligible voters in her district actually cast a ballot for her.

Nate Silver may be right that young progressives don't want to hear that moderation wins elections, but they – and aspiring party leaders pandering to them – should consider the alternatives. Given the Trump administration policies – and what the future could look like if Republicans gain rather than lose ground in the fall – even progressive Democrats might conclude that this time around, to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, winning isn't everything, it is the only thing.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.