Not so plausible after all
Well there’s a surprise, Trump has finally joined the move to rebuke Putin.
President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, adding to a growing cascade of similar actions taken by western allies in response to Russia’s alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.
Poland, Italy, Denmark, France and Germany were among 14 European Union member nations announcing plans to expel Russians from their countries in solidarity with Britain, which previously expelled 23 Russian diplomats after the poisoning. Canada also said it would expel four.
They’re kicking out 12 intelligence officers at the UN and closing the consulate in Seattle, with seven days to pack up and leave.
In a call with reporters, senior White House officials said that the move was to root out Russians actively engaging in intelligence operations against the country, and to show that the United States would stand with NATO allies. The officials said that the closure of the consulate in Seattle was ordered because of its proximity to a U.S. naval base.
The one in Bremerton, I suppose.
Kadri Liik suggests this may be the beginning of the end for Putin’s “plausible deniability” approach.
The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent who was found unresponsive in southwest England earlier this month, poisoned with a deadly nerve agent, may be the moment when “plausible deniability” has reached its limits. In fact, it now looks as if it is turning against its masters in the Kremlin. The United States’ decision on Monday, alongside Canada and a number of European countries, to expel Russians in retaliation for the poisoning makes clear to Moscow that its actions have consequences, whether it denies them or not.
Since the annexation of Crimea, Russia has resorted to “plausible deniability” again and again. The interference in the American presidential elections was a classic case: Mr. Putin has repeatedly emphasized that Russia has not intervened “at the level of the government,” but he admits that some “patriotic hackers” or trolls with Russian citizenship might indeed have been active.
I kind of wonder how they’re using “plausible” in cases like that, but whatever.
This strategy isn’t an unmitigated success. In 2016, in a big embarrassment for Moscow, two Russian intelligence agents were indicted by Montenegro for plotting a coup that was supposed to take place under the cover of spontaneous anti-NATO protests. More tragic was the huge blunder of Russia’s proxies shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. Moscow claims to this day that it had nothing to do with it, but it was nonetheless unable to escape reprimand from the international community.
There’s no such thing as “the international community”; there’s only the rest of the world, parts of which can work together all the time and parts of which can unite for particular purposes and parts of which go their own way.
Liik says it’s backfiring because the use of all these proxies means that now other countries are suspicious even of legit activities like business promotions.
Russia’s foreign ministry isn’t happy about this situation and neither are Moscow’s business circles. But they cannot raise the issue with the Kremlin: Because these activities are being denied, they can’t be brought up in normal policy discussions. So it’s effectively impossible for the different Russian institutions to come together and discuss what the country as a whole wins or loses by engaging in such actions.
So it might turn out that Vlad has been a little bit too clever, or too short-term clever, or too not even all that clever actually.
Moscow’s track record with “plausible deniability” — from Ukraine to the United States — makes things worse. The world does not yet know the full details of the Skripal poisoning, but it does not feel like waiting, as the expulsions make clear. Too often in the past, Moscow has denied its involvement in cases that later end up being traced to the Kremlin or its proxies. The result is that its denials lack credibility. Now, the successful use of “plausible deniability” in all the previous cases collides with the Kremlin’s current interests and contributes to the verdict: guilty until proven innocent.
Well, good.
“Mr. Putin has repeatedly emphasized that Russia has not intervened “at the level of the government,” but he admits that some “patriotic hackers” or trolls with Russian citizenship might indeed have been active.
I kind of wonder how they’re using “plausible” in cases like that, but whatever.”
Well, it worked on Trump.
Does this mean the (mostly male) atheist “thought leaders” are going to come out and scream “witch hunt”? Or is that only when women get sick of waiting, and persuade people to take preventive actions before 110% certainty of guilt?
I recently read a few tweets from a foreign policy person—Anne Applebaum or similar—about how Russia is pivoting from ‘plausible’ deniability to ‘implausible’ deniability. This seems to be the strategy of the current White House, as well, especially in the person of Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who is only marginally more loathsome than Trump’s sausage-fest lawyers because she spins the lies in public every day).
They’re taking the foundations of civil society and calling its bluff. But, instead of doing it in the course of justice and expanding human decency, they’re doing it in service to personal greed and chauvinistic nationalism. And they’re daring anyone and everyone to call them out on it, because even the act of calling them out means the out-callers are still playing by the rules.
It’s a recipe for insurrection and war, but they don’t seem to much care.
For the dictators, ‘the country as a whole’ can be dismissed as the mysterious Deep State. The only thing that matters is Il Duce’s WILL.