Post-Mueller — time to address the real threat

Now that we have Robert Mueller’s finding that neither President Donald Trump nor his staff colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 United States election result, perhaps we can turn to the most important question.

Was Russia involved in a dirty tricks campaign to swing American voters behind Trump and, if so, how can this be prevented?

Because as the Washington Post correctly pointed out in an op-ed written by the Professor at the Alabama School of Law, Joyce White Vance, the one person the Mueller Report did not exonerate was Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In his usual scatter gun approach to these matters Trump has sought to use his own exoneration to try and sweep the whole issue of Russian election interference away.  This cannot be allowed to happen.

If Putin gets away with this, then many other attempts to pervert democratic decisions around the world will follow. Every election result will be doubted, trust in democracy will be weakened, in some countries fatally.

What leader could claim legitimacy if the shadow of Russian interference, or that of any other democracy hating country with the resources to do so, looms over their elected victory?

As Vance states, there is little doubt that Russia did interfere “and Trump’s foot-dragging on the subject for the past two years has meant he has taken no steps to protect the security and integrity of future elections”.

US security agencies are united in their findings that Russia was involved in meddling. Trump has overruled them with his view that Putin had told him he didn’t and was “extremely strong and forceful in his denial”.

Putin is a former KGB operative: They are trained to lie.

The one thing that terrifies the Kremlin is the possibility of another US President in the mould of John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, because in any stand-up confrontation Russia is bound to back down.

Putin has built up the old Soviet military at huge cost to the country’s shrivelling economy. Population is ageing and falling, many of its people, especially in remote areas, are living in conditions barely above third world.

He maintains the fiction of a global superpower largely by bluff and bluster. Propping up an ally like Bashar al-Assad is easy when all that is required is bombing rebel positions that have no air defences.

Talk of new hyper weapons owes more to the skills of his spin doctors than anything remotely connected with reality.

However, cyber-weaponry – setting up fake websites, spreading fake news – is much easier and, up to now, very effective.

In a contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Putin’s candidate was clear.

An erratic narcissist, obsessed with internal issues such as building a wall across the Mexican border and destroying his predecessors’ health care plan — and with business ties to Russia that might be exploited later — it could hardly have suited the Kremlin better.

It seems that post-Mueller, US politicians are finally waking up to this much greater threat to their democracy. 

After years of downplaying Russian interference in the 2016 election Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has finally accepted that “Russia poses a significant threat to American interests”.

That threat has been present since shortly after Putin came to power, but it is much more potent now and a threat not only to American democracies but democracies around the world.

Action is needed — and the time is now.