September 10, 2024

How to Stop Rogue States Like Russia from Interfering in Our Politics

By: Richard Fontaine

New revelations that Russia has mounted a sophisticated, covert campaign to influence the 2024 U.S. election are shocking but not surprising. They follow recent efforts by Iran to hack the Trump and Harris presidential campaigns and leak internal Trump campaign documents. These latest attacks will not be the last. U.S. adversaries see election interference as a low-cost, potentially high-reward way to damage undesired candidates, shift public sentiment on key policies or simply sow division and distrust.

The U.S. government employed a range of appropriate responses to the new Russian effort, including indictments, sanctions, taking down websites and publicizing Moscow’s activities. But unilateral responses are not enough to stop foreign political interference. Western democracies should coordinate their defenses by creating a formal response mechanism that would bind allies to aid one of their own in the event of attack. The stakes have grown too high and the threats too pervasive to leave every democracy to its own devices.

Democratic governments have done much to protect themselves in recent years. Still missing, however, is a mechanism for collective action.

Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is well known. Less so are the numerous instances in which foreign governments have since meddled in our democracy. Late last year, a declassified intelligence assessment found that a “diverse and growing group of foreign actors” — including China, Russia, Iran and Cuba — targeted the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.

Such depredations are by no means limited to the United States. Russia meddled in the 2017 French election and China interfered in Australian politics the same year. Two years ago, the State Department estimated that Russia had covertly given $300 million to political actors across more than two dozen countries. According to the German Marshall Fund, China and Russia engaged in information manipulation, cyberattacks, co-opting civil society groups and supporting divisive domestic movements in more than 40 countries since 2000.

Read the full article from The Washington Post.

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