US-Russian relations have for decades been one of the key topics of debates during US presidential elections but have never raised such intense controversy about the nature of the relationship between the Republican Party nominee 2016 US Presidential elections, Donald Trump, and the Russian leadership, namely President Vladimir Putin. The controversy became even more intense because Hillary Clinton, the nominee of the Democratic Party and the incumbent US President Barack Obama administration suspect that Russia is intervening in the elections to back Trump against Clinton by statements and email leaks.
Although Russia stated that the US elections are an internal affair and that the Kremlin will be ready to work with any president that the American people elect, and despite the strong belief that Clinton has more chances to win the elections; some political circles in Moscow have placed big bets on Donald Trump whose rhetoric is met with satisfaction in Russia.
Controversy about Russian intervention in the US Elections
The talk about Russian influence on, or interference in US elections this year is gathering increased momentum for several reasons, the most important of which are as follows:
1. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been forging great relations with Russian businesspeople and politicians since 1987. Moreover, Trump even stated that if he becomes president, he will improve relations with Moscow, which prompted Foreign Policy to write "Is Trump a Russian Stooge?" and wonder whether he is a puppet by which Putin meddles in the internal affairs of the United States.
2. The apparent friendship and harmony between Trump and Putin, on the one hand, and the enmity between Putin and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, on the other. In December last year, Putin described Trump as "a colorful and talented man" and Trump later said that the Russian president deserves an “A” for leadership. He expressed his admiration of Putin's strict policies and stressed that he sees no problem in inviting Putin to Washington if he wins the US presidential elections.
On the other hand, Clinton and Putin are not on good terms. The Russian president would not forget Clinton's criticism of the Russian parliamentary elections in 2011 when she was Secretary of State. He believes her criticism was a cue for his opponents to take to streets and stage demonstrations. Moreover, Clinton took tough positions on the crises in Ukraine and Syria and criticized the situation of democracy in Russia and suggested that Putin was trying to re-create the Soviet Union.
3. A third factor that made the Russian influence even heavier in the US elections has to do with Trump's men suspected for their relations with figures close to the Russian administration. Paul Manafort, Donald J. Trump's campaign chairman, who resigned from his position on August 19, days after his powers were stripped in the wake of the Republican nominee's campaign staffing shake-up. Manafort was a political adviser for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for a decade where he helped his party to win a parliamentary majority and enabled the pro-Russian leader to win the presidential elections before he was overthrown by a popular uprising 2014 and was forced to flee to Russia.
4. The fourth and most important factor is the hacking of the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the governing body of the Democratic Party, and leaking its emails and publishing them on WikiLeaks on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, held in Philadelphia on May 25, 2016. The leak exposed the involvement of top officials in the Democratic Party who favored Clinton over Bernie Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, during the primary elections and even pitted voters in the conservative southern states against Sanders.
There was nothing new in these accusations because the Russians were reported to have spied on both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, including in 2008 and 2012. However, this latest leak marred the image of the Democratic Party and was aimed at triggering divisions within it so as to benefit the Republic Party. Moreover, Donald Trump publicly invited and encouraged the Russians to retrieve and release tens of thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails which were deleted from her private server when she was Secretary of State.
It was the first time in the history of the United States that a presidential nominee invited a foreign state, and an arch enemy, to spy on his country. Although Trump claimed to have been joking, some were prompted to suggest that he collaborated with the Russians in the hacking and leaking of the emails, which Trump categorically denied.
In April 2016, a new YouGov research poll of over 20,000 adults in every G20 country for Handelsblatt Global Edition revealed Russia as the only country of the G20 major economies where people would rather Donald Trump was the next President of the US than Hillary Clinton. This suggests that President Putin would like to see Trump voted as President of the United States. Once again, this is not a new development because the Russians have always favored Republican nominees over the Democrats for many reasons including that the GOP candidates do not meddle in the internal affairs of Russia using democracy and human rights as a pretext.
Moreover, several plausible motives that may explain Putin's desire are related to Trump's declared stances, and Trump managed to make the Republican Party embrace some of them although they eventually serve Russia's interests. Trump believes that it would be better for his country to have improved relations with Russia. He even said that if elected president, he might recognize Russia's claim to sovereignty over Crimea, try to get to terms with Russia on the Syrian issue and even called the United States to leave Syria and let Russia fight ISIS.
Trump also pledged to reduce the burden that the US shoulder as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and even said that it should not protect NATO members whenever they ask for it. He even said that the U.S. paid a disproportionate amount of money to NATO to ensure the security of allies and suggested that these allies should pay for this protection. No doubt, these statements made the Russian president happy - because Putin entered wars in the Middle East because he fears the expansion of NATO - and even made the Eastern European NATO members have doubts about Washington’s commitment to defending them.
This builds on Trump's defense of foreign isolation policies. Although these policies which mandate a gradual withdrawal from involvement in the affairs of other regions of the world, they emerged during the second term of the Obama administration, promoting them would serve Russia's international interests. Trump proposed that the US should focus more on its domestic affairs and in particular migration. The US may even experience a period of instability as a result. Moreover, Trump does not take a keen interest in promoting democracy and human rights outside the United States, and his visions are largely compatible with President Putin's in the issues of terrorism and Islamic radicalism.
Russian Tools of Influence
Media organizations, such as Russia Today and Sputnik news agency, which Putin controls and uses to influence the United States, repeatedly announced that they favor the Republican presidential nominee. Sputnik even stressed Trump's claim that President Obama founded ISIS.
Moreover, Trump, even after Manafort's resignation, continues to surround himself with men who maintain wide relations with the Russian officials and the business community. Following the cyber attack and the hacking of DNC emails and documents, WikiLeaks pledged to release more emails raising expectations that a possible surprise will pop up in October.
Although public opinion polls continue to show that Hillary Clinton is the potential winner of elections, it is still uncertain whether Russia's influence on the elections can yield the desired results, although The Washington Post noted that the fact that Putin favors the Republican nominee will eventually have an adverse impact on the US elections. Still, the possible Russian impact on these elections will damage the image of US elections, and this can very possibly be the real purpose of the recent email leaks and the current influx of reports published by the Russian state news agency Sputnik and Russia Today on the US presidential election’s developments.
