This week’s discussion began with an Aha! moment in the wake of the British Parliament trying – unsuccessfully – to wrest power from Prime Minister Teresa May, as the country hurls toward the train wreck called “hard Brexit,” without a deal or, most important, the ability to craft one.
In other words, members of the British House of Commons themselves cannot agree on what they want – nor have they been able to for the last two years.
Dinner Talk
Soon after this event, I was having a family dinner with editor-in-chief Sally Anderson, and my daughter and son, Berit and Evan. For those who don’t know, Berit is a global expert on Russian Infowar techniques; and Evan, as CEO of INVNT/IP, is a world expert on the Chinese national business model.
I asked what seemed like a simple question:
Was it possible that the simultaneous lack of the ability to govern among leading Western democracies was pure coincidence, or was there a deeper story? Without hesitation, everyone agreed that there was almost certainly a Russian hand involved, tipping the scales toward chaos.
At that point, we began to look deeper.
It’s important, at this point, to discern the difference between this proposal and pieces that are already universally known – that Russia both interfered in the 2016 US elections and played a direct role in influencing the Brexit referendum. We all now also know about IRA (Putin’s Internet Research Agency), the group out of St. Petersburg supposedly responsible for these programs.
It’s also safe to say that everyone knows Putin would like to see NATO thrown into chaos, as he rebuilds the Old Soviet Union into his New Russia.
In today’s discussion, we will just stipulate all of these points as “old news.” What’s new, and much, much more worrying, is the prospect that Putin’s overall goal is not limited to these issues and events, but has expanded.
In the last few weeks, I’ve become convinced that Putin’s real plan is to foment so much divisiveness among the West’s major democracies that they lose the ability to govern themselves.
