The less time is left for the US presidential elections on November 8, the more unpredictable are the results of this race in the world’s most influential country. While earlier the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had the advantage of 10 or even more percentage points over the Republican Donald Trump, public opinion polls are now giving a slight edge to the New York billionaire.
Moreover, a foreign state seems to be interfering into US elections for the first time in history. This is the way most experts view the leaking of the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Party’s governing body, on the eve of the party’s convention in Philadelphia.
This turn of events is so serious that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently dealing with this case. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, says the latter will be seeking additional information about the hack and the likely involvement of Russia or other states in this.
The email leak scandal forced DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign. It follows from these emails that the party staff preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, who was her main rival in the presidential candidate nomination struggle, although, in theory, they were supposed to be unbiased in this matter.
And it is strange that there were no media leaks on the eve of the Republican convention, which could compromise the Republican candidate Trump who praised and received praise from the Russian leader Putin.
Therefore, it looks quite logical that the US media have carried a number of publications which claim that Trump is Putin’s candidate. But what attracts the greatest attention is an analytical article, “Why Putin Hates Hillary,” in Politico.
On the one hand, the publication says, Clinton has never hidden her hostility to Putin. Clinton has never concealed her disdain for Putin. As a senator in 2008, she joked about President George W. Bush’s famous line that he’d gotten a sense of Putin’s “soul,” cracking that because Putin was a KGB agent, “by definition he doesn’t have a soul.”
Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul commented to Politico that Clinton had been skeptical of the “reset” of relations with Russia and was a difficult interlocutor with Lavrov and Putin.
In January 2012, when Ambassador McFaul was literally being dogged in Moscow by reporters and Russian secret services, Clinton called the ambassador’s residence on an unsecure line to express her anger at the Russian violation of diplomatic protocol. “Oh, I want them to know that I know,” she said to the diplomatic mission’s chief.
But nothing angered Putin as much as Secretary of State Clinton’s statement about Russia’s December 2011 parliamentary elections. At a conference in Lithuania, Clinton issued a biting statement saying that the Russian people “deserve to have their voices heard and their votes counted, and that means they deserve fair, free transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.” This certainly provoked Putin to accuse his opponents of organizing with State Department money.
Commenting on the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Clinton, no longer the secretary of state, compared Putin’s action to “what Hitler did back in the 1930s.”
But few would have guessed that Clinton herself might wind up wondering whether she herself had become a target of Putin’s aggression. “I think they expect her to win,” said one diplomat with extensive Russia experience, who believes the Kremlin directed the email hack. “But they’re sending her a message that they are a power to be reckoned with and can mess with her at will, so she had better take them seriously.”
McFaul himself twitted: “Putin said Clinton had given a signal to his opponents in 2011 and accused her of fomenting protests. Has the time of payback come?”
The email leak only seems to be prompting Democrats to rally in the struggle against Trump. The proof of this is the first day of the convention, where Senator Bernie Sanders said: “…based on her ideas and leadership, Hillary Clinton must become the next President of the United States.”
Meanwhile, the First Lady Michelle Obama wittingly scoffed at Trump’s chief slogan “Make America Great Again.” “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country is not great, that somehow we need to make it great again,” she said. “Because this right now is the greatest country on Earth.” Concluding her speech, the first lady called – to the thundering applause of the audience – on the Democrats to repeat the success they achieved eight and four years ago.
“MOSCOW WILL BENEFIT FROM TRUMP BECAUSE HE PROMISES NEOISOLATIONISM AND REDUCTION OF GLOBAL SECURITY GUARANTEES”
Mykola KAPITONENKO, executive director, Centre for International Studies, Kyiv:
“The first day of such a large-scale and superbly staged political event as National Convention of the Democratic Party will perhaps be the most important one, even though the speeches of heavyweights – presidents Obama and Clinton, Vice President Biden – are scheduled later on the program. Against the backdrop of speculations about the party’s inner struggle, the key question of the convention is party unity. So far, unity looks restored. Apparently, the speeches of Bernie Sanders, Michelle Obama, and Elizabeth Warren played the crucial role in this. And while the current US first lady made, by all accounts, a most emotional and moving appearance, Sanders and Warren – Hillary Clinton’s most serious Democratic political rivals – did their utmost to leave inner party conflicts behind and join efforts for the sake of victory over Donald Trump. The latter criticized sarcastically and laconically, quite in his style, what is going on in Twitter, while viewers could draw parallels between the two grandiose political shows – the Democratic and Republican conventions. It was difficult to avoid talking about the Kremlin’s hand, given the emerging rift among the Democrats. That the Kremlin’s cherished dream is Trump’s victory in the elections is a favorite topic for many political observers. Even if it is the case, the point is of course not in Putin’s and Clinton’s personal scores. Moscow will benefit from Trump because he in fact promises neoisolationism – reduction of Washington-sponsored global security guarantees. This seemingly gives Russia more chances to establish its own small post-Soviet sphere of influence and thus achieve its geopolitical dream of the past few decades. But, as it often occurs in the case of Russia, the calculation may be wrong. Trump’s rhetoric will not necessarily shape his foreign policy, and even if the US really backpedals on its ‘global police mission,’ this may aggravate conflicts between Russia and a number of other geopolitical rivals which may treat Moscow’s interests with far lesser understanding and caution.”
