Section: The Atlantic (USA)
‘What the Russians Did Was Utterly Unprecedented’
Well before the White House or U.S. intelligence agencies publicly blamed the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, two members of Congress did. Back in September, Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee,...
2016: The Year in Quotes
Here is the story of global politics in 2016, told through the mouths of our wise and glorious leaders.30. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe: “I was dead, and I resurrected, as I always do.” Mugabe is African politics’ great survivor, literally. He is frequently declared dead by the local press. But he’ll be around bit longer. At 92,...
The Best Books We Read in 2016
You’ll Grow Out of It by Jessi KleinGrand CentralOkay, so this book is not exactly belles lettres. I picked it up while I was working on a difficult, serious story earlier this year, and I needed something to do in the evenings that wasn’t biting my nails into a glass of wine, then drinking said wine. I was also going through Amy...
Americans Need More Answers on Russian Hacking
Although there is still a great deal we don’t know and must find out, the Russian hacking of the 2016 American election must now be regarded as a seminal event in the history of American democracy and a paradigmatic warning sign of the danger that all modern democracies face in the age of cyberwarfare. There is no pure analogy for what has...
Donald Trump’s Post-Cold War Vision of U.S. Foreign Policy
In 2000, as Donald Trump toyed with the idea of running for president on the Reform Party ticket, the businessman co-authored a campaign book with the writer Dave Shiflett. It’s a long-forgotten work, vastly overshadowed by The Art of the Deal. But one passage illustrates just how profoundly U.S. foreign policy could change under President...
Foreign-Policy Poker With Donald Trump
Mayberry Machiavellis. That was the sharp and memorable term coined by John DiIulio in 2002 to describe those staff in the George W. Bush White House who imagined themselves cunning—but actually bungled everything. There needs to be an update for the would-be grand strategists of the Trump era. Perhaps Kleptocrat Kissingers?People trying to make...
Will Obama Order American Hackers to Dox Putin?
President Obama’s threat was direct and unequivocal: The United States will retaliate against Russia for its election-related cyberattacks. “And we will, at a time and place of our own choosing,” the president told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in an interview that aired Friday. “Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not...
Trump, Putin, and the Art of Appeasement
Donald Trump’s Russia strategy is based on making a series of one-sided concessions in the hopes of luring Moscow into a more positive global relationship. There’s a name for this approach: appeasement. A man who ran for office as the ultimate negotiator is intent on giving away the store on Crimea and Syria for free—and it’s...
FAQs on Russian Hacking and the U.S. Election
1. Didn’t we already know about Russia hacking the Democratic National Committee? Why all the fuss right now?Yes we did. Way back in mid-June, the Democratic National Committee reported an intrusion into its computer network, and the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike publicly blamed Russian hackers after analyzing the breach. In July, after...
Trump’s Enduring Willingness to Give Russia the Benefit of the Doubt
In explaining how he would enforce a treaty with the Soviet Union, America’s top adversary, to jointly reduce nuclear-weapons stockpiles, Ronald Reagan famously adapted a Russian proverb: “trust, but verify.” Donald Trump seems to be taking a different approach to Russia. Over the last year or so, he has repeatedly granted Russia and its...
