IS PUTINS MASTER PLAN ONLY BEGINNING?
From Russia with Love
With three consequential European elections occurring in 2017, the former K.G.B. officer has more potential to undermine free societies than he could have ever fathomed during his Cold War days.
his famous 1947 essay, “Toward European Unity,” George Orwell famously listed the “active malignant forces” that stood in opposition to a free Western European union, which was then merely a dream of visionaries such as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman.
There was the Catholic Church, which Orwell feared might sterilize such a movement; the broader forces of imperialism, which presented their own threats of exploitation; and even America, which could view its growing power as threatened by a European coalition. At the top of his list, however, was Russia. “The Russians,” Orwell wrote, “cannot but be hostile to any European union not under their control.”
Not much has changed in the past 70 years. Just because we live in a post-ideological world—one where Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump may confront each other with the dismal recognition of gangsters—doesn’t mean that Russia has dropped its primary mission of destabilizing Europe. And with three tense and unpredictable European elections occurring during the next year—in the Netherlands, France, and Germany—there are abundant opportunities for the recurrence of the sorts of manipulation that appear to have facilitated Trump’s victory in the United States.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/is-vladimir-putin-master-plan-only-beginning
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