Attack oligarchs at home and abroad

April 2, 2018 8:38 AM

“The next administration should make the case that the transnational oligarchy spanning from New York to London to Moscow isn’t merely greedy but also poses a threat to national security by undermining the integrity of the political process. It should expand FARA and end foreign lobbying, both legal and illegal, on K Street. It should crack down on money laundering through banks and real estate, as well as offshore tax havens.” How Progressives Should Think About Russia - David Klion, The Nation.
posted by The Whelk (33 comments total)

FTA -- the broadstrokes:

TAKE ON RUSSIA’S OLIGARCHS, BY TAKING ON AMERICA’S

WORK FOR A JUST PEACE IN UKRAINE AND SYRIA, AND RECOMMIT TO DISARMAMENT

INCREASE CYBERSECURITY BY BREAKING UP TECH MONOPOLIES

SUPPORT HUMAN RIGHTS, NOT REGIME CHANGE

PUNISH THE REAL CULPRITS
posted by philip-random at 9:19 AM on April 2, 2018 [16 favorites]

PUNISH THE REAL CULPRITS

ie: the next president’s Russia policy should reflect an agenda of combating corruption, inequality, and abuses at home. If the US political system is vulnerable to interference from abroad, it is only because it has decayed from within. Russia should be held accountable for its intervention, but the greater priority must be to hold accountable those Americans who accepted Russia’s assistance in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.
posted by philip-random at 9:20 AM on April 2, 2018 [15 favorites]

Problem is, even assuming the next Democratic president wants to pursue that agenda the Democrats in the Senate dont seem interested. Look at the way so many Democrats voted to re-de-regulate banks.

The unfortu ate fact is that it seems tgat enough Democrats will vote with the Republicans to stop any anti-Oligarch bill even if we get a President who wants one.

Is there any usable leverage we can employ againstthe pro-oligarch Democrats? Cuz we're going to need all we can get.
posted by sotonohito at 10:01 AM on April 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

Two-front wars are bad enough. Let’s maybe not go to war with ALL the people all at once. Maybe start with the traitors?
posted by leotrotsky at 11:18 AM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Is there any usable leverage we can employ againstthe pro-oligarch Democrats?

They’re called primaries. All the money in the world won’t save you if the voters pick someone else.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:19 AM on April 2, 2018 [9 favorites]

Christ, The Nation is bad at Russia. There's a lot in that piece that'd I agree with—or at least not disagree with because much of it is fairly vague, but even at that, it is astounding that Klion and The Nation can't bring themselves to criticize Russia without hedging and qualifying and making it clear that, ultimately, the US has no one to blame but ourselves. This is "both-sides-erism" with a vengeance. Klion wrote this last week—

The conservative movement and its constituent institutions are hate groups. If you’re a progressive of any stripe and your goal isn’t to shut them down then you don’t really understand them.

—I don't know why Vladimir Putin deserves any more of the benefit of the doubt.

If the US political system is vulnerable to interference from abroad, it is only because it has decayed from within. Russia should be held accountable for its intervention, but the greater priority must be to hold accountable those Americans who accepted Russia’s assistance in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

And this is a fine example of what I'm talking about. It should be possible to argue that the American system of voting should be more free, more expansive, and more secure from interference AND that people and organizations who abuse that system should be held accountable without at the same time needing to argue that the only reason that system was abused is because "it has decayed from within." Not only is that definitely a "citation needed" claim, but in any other context it would smack of offensive victim-blaming. It isn't even necessary to his point! It's just a rhetorical gesture!

But the next president must also make clear that the United States does not intend to extend its own sphere of military influence via NATO or in any other capacity.

This is just more of "don't anger the bully" and accompanies several paragraphs of the usual apologies for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And while Klion, doesn't hesitate to call the invasion "illegal," even that's hedged by concluding that Crimea would choose to be part of Russia in a "fairly organized vote."

"For better or worse, Washington is committed to the security of its Baltic allies now."

"Oh, I guess we're committed to your security ..."

While there is no justifying Russia’s or Assad’s atrocities, the United States also bears responsibility for stoking this civil war in the first place and for its interventions in Iraq and Libya, which Putin opposed and which have been catastrophic.

That's the most shameful quote, practically indistinguishable from the pro-Assad left.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:55 AM on April 2, 2018 [10 favorites]

Is the role of the Mercers and Cambridge Analytica in this actually in doubt at the moment?
posted by Artw at 12:02 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Also it;s pretty undeniable that the Civil War in Syria is one of the many, many consequences of the Bush era neoconservatives being utter fuckwits. Not really seeing acknowledgement of that as being pro-Assad.
posted by Artw at 12:03 PM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

The dirty little secret of having enough cheddar to buy anything that your mammonic heart might desire is it gets really old, real fast. And stays that way, like Groundhog Day.
This is the reason why the Hunt Brothers decided to corner the Silver Market in 1978. And its why the Bekkka opened a gourmet cookie bakery, and when that got old fast too, decided to cut to the chase and run the world.
TL;DR 100% tax on all earnings once your net worth reaches 7 figures. Please do keep showing up at work, for the sheer joy of success, just gratis from that point on. If you can't live large on a minor mountain of cash like that, its no longer ambition, just a behavioral deficit.

Meanwhile, Putin is merely emulating Tony Soprano.
posted by Fupped Duck at 12:11 PM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

If the US political system is vulnerable to interference from abroad, it is only because it has decayed from within.

This is nice cover should the fall Blue Wave fail to materialize, and Trump win in 2020. "Oh hey, it's not the fault of the people who manipulated the system, it's the fault of the system itself, so whatchagonnado? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "
posted by happyroach at 12:16 PM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

/raises eyebrow at the “no collusion” argument being constructed here where Putin and Putin alone interferes while interacting with nobody.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

I should say that I have no reason to think that Klion is being disingenuous or dishonest here. In general, I don't disagree with his domestic prescriptions as a goal. I don't think targeting oligarchs is a bad idea or breaking up monopolies or making US elections fairer and more secure. I don't think seeking out new wars to fight is a good idea. I probably wouldn't disagree with Klion on too much. But The Nation's only recently even come around to conceding that there was Russian interference in the last election. Somehow they just can't help cringing eastwards.

It's pretty undeniable that the Civil War in Syria is one of the many, many consequences of the Bush era neoconservatives being utter fuckwits.

Not disputing that, but what's ridiculous/offensive about the sentence I quoted is its tortured attempt at laying as much of the blame for Syrian atrocities as possible on the US at exactly the moment whole parts of the country are being ground into dust by Russian and Russian-backed forces and a fraction of the extremely online left is doing their best to justify it.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:49 PM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

The "we were only able to take advantage of you because you were already weak" justification sounds like it could have been pulled directly from a Russian internet propaganda handbook. If I saw that on Twitter, I'd just figure the account was probably being part of a botnet and move on. It's actually beautiful in its table-turning simplicity:

"You attacked us!"
"No, we didn't."
"Yes, you did, see, you did right here [insert loads of painstakingly-compiled evidence]"
"We were only able to do that because you were [decadent and depraved|weak from within|lousy with collaborators|run by the Jews|whatever]"
"...what? No, we're not"
"That's exactly what you would say!"

It's part of a more general class of arguments that are analogous to asymmetric attacks in the technological realm, because they take much more effort to defend against than to launch. It's part of what ends up being a rhetorical DDOS. Because of this, I think it's important not to take them seriously or respond to them, because doing so is part of why they are effective. The best thing is to ignore them and anyone who uses one, even accidentally, in order to deprive them of their utility.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:50 PM on April 2, 2018 [10 favorites]

They take advantage of the vulnerabilities because those are the vulnerabilities. They collude with the traitors because those are the traitors. Getting upset at either being mentioned seems like an excercise in delusion and/or throwing up hands and refusing to address the problem.
posted by Artw at 12:52 PM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

The dirty little secret of having enough cheddar to buy anything that your mammonic heart might desire is it gets really old, real fast. And stays that way, like Groundhog Day.

I’ll give it a shot, all the same.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:55 PM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

bravo octobersurprise! damn right.

the nation's russia apologia (and katrina van den heuvel in particular) is a relic of the cold war that is so far past its prime it doesnt even resemble sense or reason anymore. there are oligarchs on both sides? um, ok, except over there the oligarchy is headed by a dictator who *murders* his political opponents and critical journalists in broad daylight while billing them as enemies of the people, and is stoking the same sort of nationalist resentment around the world.

when will the ostensible leftists at the nation realize that russia today is about as far from a leftist state as you can get, short of afghanistan? what part of killing and jailing disfavored groups (from political reformers to lgbt activists) strikes them as progressive? the russian govt shot down a civilian fucking airliner over europe! are you kidding me?

look, i get that the US is suffused through and through will wealth, racial, and social inequality. but it's not a dictatorship yet, though not for lack of trying by the kremlin's inside man.
posted by wibari at 1:13 PM on April 2, 2018 [12 favorites]

For one of my classes in university, we had to read that year's State of the World book - a collection of essays on policy topics, related by an annual theme or three. One of the essays was about the global small arms trade, and how it was fueling local and regional conflicts, leading to many (mostly internally displaced) refugees. That essay, as well as talks by Mary Robinson around the same time, highlighted the connection between the global arms trade and international banking regulations.

Briefly: we had some international regulations on various banking activities to help deter or catch the activities of organized criminal enterprises. These also worked nicely to put some effective pressure on dictators or oligarchic regimes that had poor human rights practices - targeting the wealth of the rulers directly, rather than imposing broad sanctions that also hurt regular citizens. Thing is, these same global banking restrictions and regulations limited "above-board" and legal transnational companies and wealthy individuals from making a killing (financially speaking). Such as the arms industry; but applicable to all sorts of industries.

In other words, the global banking practices that enable - or reign in - illegal looting and wealth transfers from the already-poor to the already-rich also enable - or reign in - currently legal looting and wealth transfers from the already-poor to the already-rich. The lines between global capitalism, kleptocratic governments, and organized crime syndicates are largely paper distinctions. What is considered standard business practice in international finance today would have been illegal money laundering 30 years ago. Legal "election strategy" today would have been illegal financial contributions or vote rigging before the Citizens United ruling and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

The article is correct in that this is a broader issue than Russian election meddling specifically. I don't think it's analysis goes quite far enough, however. We know how and by whom our laws have been changed over the years to enable increasing concentration of power in the hands of a new global oligarchic class. There has been an assault on democratic institutions, and it has largely been initiated by internal actors (though they collaborate in the sense of sharing strategy in meetings with serious sounding names like "G8 Summit", in more informal meetings, through the research of funded think tanks, through shared financial advisers in banks that facilitate hiding wealth offshore (eg. as detailed in the Panama Papers)), but these internal actors aren't, by and large, nationalists in most senses - their loyalties are to their class, and often include (as we see with Trump vis a vis Putin) stronger affinities across countries than to less well off co-citizens within their own countries. Mueller is following the money, because this story is all about money. In other words, it's not about whether Trump or Putin is more to blame. They are both to blame. Boy howdy are they, and both of them; and the Mercers, and the Kochs. But there's a larger, systemic problem that we need to address.

And yeah, Putin gets away with more direct violence in his own country than Trump, though Trump would probably be pretty happy if he could start murdering brown and poor people in the streets like his buddy Suharto. The Russian government's actions in Ukraine, Syria, and other countries in its sphere of influence have also been violent. The US government has a history of invading other countries for financial gain, and of meddling in other country's elections. All of this is bad (and The Nation does indeed have an odd history of ignoring or excusing negative actions by the Russian government). None of it justifies attacks on the democratic power of citizens within either country. It's not Russia versus the US. It's ruling oligarchs versus the rest of us.
posted by eviemath at 1:34 PM on April 2, 2018 [10 favorites]

They take advantage of the vulnerabilities because those are the vulnerabilities. They collude with the traitors because those are the traitors. Getting upset at either being mentioned seems like an excercise in delusion and/or throwing up hands and refusing to address the problem.

Yeah, this is all true, but Klion specifically wrote "If the US political system is vulnerable to interference from abroad, it is only because it has decayed from within ..." I submit that only and decayed are doing a lot of work there and it's the kind of work that in any other context would be described as "asking for it." If US schools are vulnerable to deranged shooters, it is only because they are decayed from within ... doesn't sound nearly as clinical.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:35 PM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

We know how and by whom our laws have been changed over the years to enable increasing concentration of power in the hands of a new global oligarchic class.

And this is true, too, as the career of Paul Manfort, from buddy of Lee Atwater to buddy of Viktor Yanukovych demonstrates.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:40 PM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

If US schools are vulnerable to deranged shooters, it is only because they are decayed from within ... doesn't sound nearly as clinical.

Am not aware of some equivalent to the Kochs, Mercers, Republicans et al deliberately weakening school security in such a way that the shooter (Putin?) can take advantage of later? Would they be the teachers? But that would assume the teachers ALSO want to shoot the kids, but for their own purposes? And that they colluded with the shooter when it became convenient?

Bit of a shitty analogy TBH. I mean, deliberately cos it’s some kind of straw man, but I can’t really see a way to make it work.

But anyway... if someone in the school system was responsible for America’s gun laws and subsequent mass shooter problem then he’ll yes I’d want that pointed out.
posted by Artw at 2:58 PM on April 2, 2018

Artw: “Is the role of the Mercers and Cambridge Analytica in this actually in doubt at the moment?”

Not to me. I've said it in another thread and I'll say it here to: Them, Oakes, Nix, Prince, and every one of their co-conspirators should stand trial at The Hague and answer for subverting the political systems of dozens of nations.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:40 PM on April 2, 2018

There’s simply no fixing of the vulnerabilities in US democracy to foreign threats without fixing the vulnerabilities to domestic threats, as they are the same vunarabilities and often the same or related threat.
posted by Artw at 3:42 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Am not aware of some equivalent to the Kochs, Mercers, Republicans et al deliberately weakening school security in such a way that the shooter (Putin?) can take advantage of later?

There will always be weaknesses. What happened here was the decision by another nation to take advantage of those weaknesses. Ignoring that decision - particularly when the same nation is doing the exact same thing in countries in Europe and elsewhere - is a blindingly stupid move.

We get it, though. The Nation has no love of the American government. But Russia hasn’t just sought to undermine the US. Maybe we should stop Putin et al for the sake of Europe, even if leftists can’t give a shit about their own backyard?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 3:56 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Handily the people attempting to undermine democracy in Europe are also the same people.
posted by Artw at 4:03 PM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

when will the ostensible leftists at the nation realize that russia today is about as far from a leftist state as you can get, short of afghanistan?

I'm not sure even the guys who like to tweet about how unfairly maligned North Korea is honestly believe Russia is left-wing. I don't think that's where The Nation is coming from at all.
posted by atoxyl at 1:09 AM on April 3, 2018

Predictably I thought this was pretty good, particularly the underlying idea that the problems of Russia are mostly problems to be addressed defensively (and to a significant extent domestically).

What exactly are the reasonable avenues to "stop" Putin, from doing which things, anyway?
posted by atoxyl at 1:19 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

There’s simply no fixing of the vulnerabilities in US democracy to foreign threats without fixing the vulnerabilities to domestic threats, as they are the same vunarabilities and often the same or related threat.

Absolutely. Really the other part of my position on this is my conviction that Trump is not an anomaly but the logical outcome of where American politics have been going for years. Putin's impact is not for the better here but fundamentally I can't see it as a hijacking of America - the train has been on these tracks for a long time.

I do find it easier to see Russia as a particular concern for the sake of its neighbors, or even its interventions in the Middle East. I'm just sure whether an overtly hostile posture or a military approach is really going to improve those situations.
posted by atoxyl at 1:49 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

*not sure
posted by atoxyl at 12:00 PM on April 3, 2018

What exactly are the reasonable avenues to "stop" Putin, from doing which things, anyway?

You basically black-box their entire leadership clique and employ something that looks a lot like operant conditioning on a not-too-bright rat. When they do something we like, they get a reward. When they do something we don't like, we give them a painful jolt. Repeat consistently. (This last part is obviously the challenge for the current US political system. Anyone can defy negative-reinforcement conditioning if they think the pain will stop soon without them doing anything.)

The forms each one takes varies, but luckily there's an entire Department devoted to figuring out stuff like that (hint: it's the one that deals with other states, and the US Government isn't too creative with its nomenclature), and I'm pretty confident they can come up with options. Poking at their banks via the global financial system, trade pressure (Russia is hugely susceptible to fluctuations in the CNG market, just for instance), individual sanctions, travel restrictions... there are a lot of options, and many are reversible so they can be both carrot and stick.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:15 PM on April 3, 2018

I'm not sure even the guys who like to tweet about how unfairly maligned North Korea is honestly believe Russia is left-wing. I don't think that's where The Nation is coming from at all.

you raise a good point. if current internal russian politics, which are reactionary, are not what push the Nation into giving that government the benefit of the doubt, then why else would they tread so lightly? i dont think it's just out of a general peacenik inclination, since we're not likely to go to war with russia anytime soon. the most reasonable conclusion is that it's out of some soviet era nostalgia imagining that country as a paragon for anticapitalism, even though they're not that anymore.
posted by wibari at 1:23 PM on April 3, 2018

Scratching my head again at how patching the vulnerabilities they use is “giving them the benefit of the doubt” versus doing nothing is apparently some kind of strong response? It is not a strong response.
posted by Artw at 3:25 PM on April 3, 2018

Poking at their banks via the global financial system, trade pressure (Russia is hugely susceptible to fluctuations in the CNG market, just for instance), individual sanctions

Isn't this generally in line with the idea of standing against oligarchs globally - and in fact aren't some of the same tools for doing so described in the article?

you raise a good point. if current internal russian politics, which are reactionary, are not what push the Nation into giving that government the benefit of the doubt, then why else would they tread so lightly?

General skepticism of American power as a force for good? Of course some people - the type I described earier - are so taken with this that they fall into the too-easy contrarianism of convincing themselves that anyone who stands against the U.S. must then be good but I don't think it would be fair to dismiss Klion that way, generally.

we're not likely to go to war with russia anytime soon

If the rhetoric around Russia sounded less like people wanted to go war with somebody I would have an easier time with it, I think
posted by atoxyl at 5:46 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Follow up from the author on Fellow Travllers, a site for foreign policy from the left
posted by The Whelk at 5:37 PM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]