What’s important is not that Russia changed the 2016 election outcome, “but that it attempted to do so”: Report

Here are excerpts from the Introduction to the report:

With each passing week, the evidence of the extent of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—and in U.S. politics and society more generally—grows. Since at least 2014, in an effort to influence the election and undermine confidence in American democracy, Russia has hacked private American citizens’ and organizations’ computers to steal information; released that information in ways designed to affect electoral outcomes and divide Americans; planted and disseminated disinformation in U.S. social media; used its state-funded and state-controlled media networks such as RT and Sputnik to spread that disinformation; purchased ads on U.S. social media sites such as Facebook to spread targeted information designed to anger or inspire political and social groups; deployed tens of thousands of bloggers and bots to disseminate disinformation; cooperated with American citizens and possibly even the Donald J. Trump campaign to discredit Trump’s opponent in the election; and probed election-related computer systems in at least twenty-one U.S. states.

The United States will never know for certain whether Russia’s intervention changed the outcome of the 2016 election. In such a close race— where the result could have been tipped by changing fewer than eighty thousand votes in three states—it is possible, but it is no more provable than an assertion that any other of an almost infinite variety of factors proved decisive. The important point is not that Russia changed the outcome of a U.S. presidential election but that it attempted to do so.

Beyond the attempted election interference, Russia’s continued efforts to sow and exacerbate divisions among Americans—using many of the same tools just mentioned—are also unprecedented. Throughout 2017, Moscow continued to fund and direct efforts to fuel racial, religious, and cultural resentments throughout society, pitting Americans against each other and many of their politicians. Whereas physical attacks on the U.S. homeland, such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11, have brought Americans together in a common cause and led them to bolster defenses against such attacks (rather successfully, in fact), attacks on the American sense of national unity could substantially weaken the foundational institutions and shared beliefs that are the essence of the United States and are crucial to its enduring success. The threats of growing domestic strife and diminishing trust in national institutions are as great as any traditional national security threat—with the exception of a nuclear weapons attack—the United States faces today.

Russia’s wider challenges to American national interests are also growing. Since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, Moscow has significantly stepped up its efforts to confront the United

States and its allies politically and militarily and to counter American influence worldwide. It has invaded and annexed Crimea; intervened in and occupied parts of eastern Ukraine; deployed substantial military forces and undertaken a ruthless bombing campaign in Syria to prop up the Bashar al-Assad regime and defeat the American-supported opposition; significantly expanded its armed forces and deployed missiles in violation of treaty commitments; undertaken large military exercises designed to intimidate East European states; interfered in the political systems of European countries in much the same way it did in the United States; and used the threat of cutting off gas supplies as leverage over the most energy-dependent European states. Putin is a career intelligence officer who is deeply hostile to democratic change anywhere near Russia, paranoid about what he believes to be U.S. efforts to oust him, and resentful of American domination of the post–Cold War world, and he seems to have made it a personal priority to weaken the United States and contest American influence wherever he can.

Neither President Barack Obama nor President Trump—for different reasons—adequately elevated Russia’s intervention in the United States to the national priority that it is, or responded to it in a way sufficient to deter Russia or other hostile states from undertaking future attacks. A wide range of additional measures is therefore needed in order to better protect U.S. society and political and electoral systems from further intervention, punish Russia for attacking the United States, and deter Russia and others from continuing to directly interfere in the workings of American and allied democracies. And this more vigorous response to the challenge from Moscow should not be confined to required measures to protect the United States from Russian election tampering. That sort of tit-for-tat U.S. reaction would only encourage Putin to refine his cyber-penetration techniques. Rather, Russia will need to conclude that it is paying a major price in matters important to it for such cyber interference, especially in the area of European security. Only that is likely to cause Moscow and its national security establishment to cease and desist regarding the functioning of American democracy.

Having worked since the end of the Cold War to build more constructive U.S.-Russian relations (Blackwill in the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations and Gordon in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations), we come only reluctantly to the conclusion that the United States needs to confront Russia more robustly. Just as it did during the Cold War, Washington should continue to interact with Moscow, and it should not refrain from practical cooperation or arms-control agreements with Russia whenever such cooperation is in U.S. interests. But Washington also cannot stand by if a foreign adversary not only adopts an agenda of countering U.S. influence throughout the world but also continues to directly strike at the heart of the U.S. political system and society.

CFR notes that the report’s prescriptions for U.S. policymakers are “designed in the first instance to deter Russia from again stoking disunity in the United States by making clear to the Kremlin and to its national security apparatus the significant cost of their activities.”

The recommendations in the report include:

— Expanded sanctions. Working closely with European partners, implement asset freezes and visa bans on Russian officials and entities known to be involved with election and political interference. Current sanctions have “failed to send a sufficiently powerful message to Moscow.”

— Electoral and cyber countermeasures. Strengthen the cybersecurity of federal networks and critical infrastructure and support legislation to enhance transparency and update campaign finance laws to cover online activity.

— European security. Work with European partners to expand sanctions, maintain the numbers of permanent NATO forces currently in Europe, and “deploy permanently an additional armored combat brigade in Poland and maintain permanent multinational battalions in the Baltic states.”

— Read more in Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon, Containing Russia: How to Respond to Moscow’s Intervention in U.S. Democracy and Growing Geopolitical Challenge (Council of Foreign Relations Special Report, January 2018)