Summary: The outgoing 2017 was so eventful that it is almost impossible to summarize its results in detail. It is better to try to capture the spirit of these 12 months, during which the main events were associated with US President Donald Trump, the struggle around his figure and the exposure of his intentions and contacts.
The outgoing 2017 was so eventful that it is almost impossible to summarize its results in detail. It is better to try to capture the spirit of these 12 months, during which the main events were associated with US President Donald Trump, the struggle around his figure and the exposure of his intentions and contacts. Fortunately, the author of these lines did not have to strain his imagination and his modest analytical abilities himself: I got my hands on the material (op-ed) in advance by a leading columnist of one of the largest American newspapers, as far as we know, it will be published in the near future. The column is masterfully written, it not only contains quite sensational information, but, in my opinion, exhaustively conveys the intellectual trends of modern United States politics. I took the risk of translating the article into Russian and offering it for publication to Ogonyok instead of the traditional summing up of the balance of the year.
Was Watergate a covert KGB operation? No doubt anymore
(Watergate is a covert KGB operation? No doubt about it)
Over the past year, American society has learned a lot about how the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is trying to destroy his foundations and enslave America, using the latest technological advances, propaganda and mistakes made by politicians in a democratic world. However, we are only at the beginning of the path. The true scale of the threat posed by antidemocratic kleptocracies remains to be understood and ways to counter it are found.
It is impossible to limit ourselves only to current events, because the chronicle of the Kremlin's attempts to destroy the community of free nations goes far into the past and is built into a coherent line of behavior. So it is necessary not only to learn from what has already happened, but also to rethink some of the established ideas.
So isn't it time to restore historical justice and cleanse the good name of Richard Nixon from slander? Of course, Nixon was a controversial figure, a very conservative figure, unpopular in the liberal milieu. But he is one of the most successful US presidents in foreign policy: landing on the moon, curtailing the Vietnamese adventure, pulling China over to the side of the United States, which became an important factor in winning the Cold War, detente from the USSR, which made it possible to gain time for a regrouping of forces, and so on. … Nixon had to retire in the summer of 1974. Otherwise, impeachment awaited him, the reason for which was the behavior of the White House in the Watergate scandal - about the illegal wiretapping of the Democratic campaign headquarters during the 1972 presidential campaign. Classic story,but do we all know about her? I’m sure not.
Today, when much more is known than before about the manners and customs of the Russian special services (which are the direct successors of the KGB of the USSR) and about their penetration into the very depths of the American government, it is not difficult to expose disinformation (formerly called fake news) of past eras. The facts speak for themselves. Who would benefit from the elimination of such a skillful and sagacious head of the American state, who began to effectively untangle the hopeless knot of problems - the termination of an unnecessary overseas operation and mounting domestic protests? Naturally, the main competitor, the Soviet Union. To undermine faith in American democracy, create internal insecurity, exacerbate external challenges and incite discord - isn't this the age-old goal of the Russians, which was then and remains now? No doubt.
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Listening to Democrats? Now it is already obvious that this is a long-standing and invariable reception of the Lubyanka. It must be admitted that the qualifications of the KGB of the 70s were higher, how many years it took to expose its conspiracy at the Watergate Hotel, and the organizer of the hacker attack on the servers of the Democratic Party committee in the summer of 2016 got through almost immediately. Intelligence sources confirm that, despite the vastly different technological nature of the 1972 and 2016 operations, the overall handwriting is clear enough. And in the operation itself, and in the use of its consequences. Making hype around the whole story. Inflating it to a global scale with a network of agents. Exploiting the communication mistakes of the Nixon administration, which, confused, chose the wrong tactic of response. Finally,skillful manipulation of democratic institutions in the United States, emphasizing the need to cleanse American politics of corruption and abuse, exposing alleged hypocrisy - all this was done then, as it is done today as a carbon copy.
Alas, a free society sometimes succumbs in the face of such a vicious and cynical abuse of its ideals and noble aspirations. It simply does not occur to us, Americans, to what cunning dictatorial regimes are capable of reaching in order to postpone their historically inevitable end. It is with bitterness that we have to admit that such outstanding journalists as Bob Woodward and Karl Bernstein have become the blind weapon of Soviet tyrants, driven by hatred of freedom and American values. Fortunately, our society has matured significantly since then. Putin has to rely not on idealistic professionals who sincerely want to make America and the whole world better and therefore sometimes, out of lofty motives, naively become disseminators of lies, but on paid criminal provocateurs - Julian Assange, workers of the "troll factory" and the like. And, of course, for propaganda media funded directly by the Kremlin. At least no normal consumer of information will have any illusions about its purpose, and in this sense the United States is much stronger than it was 45 years ago.
History puts everything in its place. In vain did the Soviet bosses rejoice in 1974, looking at the fruits of their large-scale provocation - the resignation of Nixon and the squabble in the American establishment. Probably among those who gloated was Vladimir Putin, who was quite young at that time. Yes, it took a while for our country to recover from this whole story, which undoubtedly damaged its reputation. In the wake of uncertainty, Jimmy Carter, a man with good intentions, but clearly too weak to resist the totalitarian Leviathan, became president two years later. The USSR took advantage of this to support the coup in Iran and the coming to power of religious fanatics there, and then unleash a bloody aggression in Afghanistan. However, already in 1980, America began to recover,and the people elected Ronald Reagan, a tough and uncompromising fighter against communist tyranny, as president. From that moment on, the days of the Soviet regime were numbered.
Now in the Kremlin they are probably rubbing their hands, watching how Donald Trump, brought to power by them, destroys the greatness of America, tramples its values and ideals in the mud. But, as in the 1970s, this is Putin's Pyrrhic victory. American society has rallied against the irresponsible, corrupt leadership imposed on it, a free press boldly resists arbitrariness, Congress remains unshakable on the guard of the US Constitution and freedom, suppressing attempts to abuse them, and the special services, which perfectly understand the challenge they had to face, work to ensure that protect the nation from the threat of Russian infiltration.
President Reagan said: “There are no easy answers, but there are simple ones. We need courage to do what is morally right.” Throughout history, America has been strong by staying on the right side. And the new generation of enemies of freedom will still have to see how indestructible this force is, even if sometimes it seems that it is retreating.
PS If someone has doubts about the authenticity of the text, the publisher angrily rejects them. It is enough to read the sections of opinions and comments of the American press for a few days to be sure: such material will not cause objections, being submitted to any respectable publication.
Fyodor Lukyanov