The title to this post comes from a comment made to a group of tourists by a Russian guide several years ago. We were in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg and standing before the tombs of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. The guide offered her opinion that there would another tomb for Vladimir the Great. It seemed to us to be skating a thin edge between humor and political commentary. Perhaps we were wrong.
Following the 2016 election, President Donald Trump suggested that his opponent, Hilary Clinton only received more votes than he did because of voter fraud. This theme continued throughout his term of office. As it became probable that he would lose in his bid for reelection, the President and his supporters increased the extent and the volume of their claims that the upcoming election would be “rigged” and filled with voter fraud. These claims increased even more after the election. Today a large minority of Americans and a majority of Republicans accept these claims and appear to believe that President Trump won reelection in 2020. The fact that the Department of Justice and the election security monitors of the Department of Homeland Security found no evidence of widespread voting irregularities has had no effect on these beliefs.
What has this to do with Vladimir Putin and Russia. It represents the achievement of some of the major goals of Russian activity directed toward the United States. These goals have been recognized within our intelligence community and publicly reported for some time. An illuminating report from the Director of National Intelligence in 2017 provides insight on the subject. (Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections, Intelligence Community Assessment 2027-01D, 6 January 2017). An extensive quotation from that document is appropriate.
“Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.” (p. ii)
The purpose of producing this judgement here is not to rehash the 2016 election. It is to point to the degree to which President Putin and his colleagues have been successful in realizing their goals. For those of us who value traditional democratic processes, this is a cause for weeping. It undermines those processes at home and seriously diminishes the standing of the United States abroad.
Of course, at the time of its issue, there were those who derided the assessment as yet another product of a “deep state” conspiracy against the forces of truth and virtue. Even those of us who were at the remote fringe of the U.S. intelligence community have enough knowledge and experience to dismiss such claims. Our intelligence services are staffed with dedicated professionals. They sometimes make mistakes, but all mortals do. That is one of the reasons that assessments represent the product of many separate elements within the community. Individual members of the community have political points of view. Some are liberal. Some are conservative. The people who provided the data and analysis underlying this assessment were not political appointees. They were public servants trying to warn us of a danger to our political system. They were, apparently, not sufficiently successful.
Perhaps his supporters will cite this as a major achievement when they seek to prepare a place in Peter and Paul Cathedral for Vladimir the Great.