How Russian Disinformation Shapes Western Understanding about Ukraine

http://euromaidanpress.com/2018/11/04/how-disinformation-shapes-western-understanding-about-ukraine/

As Ukraine strives to emerge as a strong and independent nation, Russian disinformation works to undermine its legitimacy. Disinformation has a powerful influence on Western public and policymakers’ understanding of the issues affecting Ukraine, so it is important to understand how it works.

An example of disinformation is a recent article titled Short Digest of the Roots of Ukrainian Crisis from 1654 to present that was published by The Washington Times, a major US newspaper in Washington DC. The article is a type known as “sponsored content” because it is essentially paid advertising by the author (in view of its misleading content, it would be irresponsible to provide a link, but here’s a screenshot).

The article mimics journalistic content. A reader can easily overlook the “SPONSORED” flag at the upper left, especially as the content itself is titled “ANALYSIS/OPINION.”

To the casual reader, the overall appearance of the article lends credibility because it looks like news content, which, of course, is the objective.

Russian disinformation about Ukraine often begins with a carefully curated context that omits critical information.

This article, beginning with a nod to how scholars might disagree, seems innocuous enough in the first three paragraphs, although such details as the starting point of 1654 place Ukraine’s history squarely under Russian and then Soviet suzerainty, even though Ukrainian history as a state and a people extends back at least to the 10^thcentury, before today’s Russia existed as a polity in any form.

The article continues. The period 1917-1922, is described as “the division of the territory of Ukraine between the Soviet Ukrainian republic and several East European countries,” without mention that a brief Ukrainian independence from Russia did not end with the division of Ukrainian territory by East European countries but with the invasion of Ukraine by Bolshevik forces led by Moscow.  The period was messy but key omissions don’t improve understanding

The period 1991-2014, the author writes, meant a Ukraine, “free from the communist yoke” — not Russian mind you — and that Ukraine might have “become one of the most prosperous European countries” if it had not turned its back on “the country’s centuries-old economic, family, cultural and religious tie with Russia” (set aside for the moment that Russia itself has fallen far short of that lofty goal). The chronology conveniently omits Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of eastern Ukraine, without which Ukraine’s current circumstance cannot be understood.

The distorted context that is provided in the article sets the stage to draw conclusions about Ukraine’s present circumstance without taking account of Russia’s role, although that role is the crucial relationship in Ukraine’s pursuit of independence.

The article goes on to say that Ukraine might have been a “happy and prosperous state…if not a new Switzerland” had it only followed a number of measures listed in the content that, incidentally, correspond in large part to what Russia has demanded from Ukraine to end Russian instigated and led hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

Mention is then made that “There would be no civil war and Donbas and Crimea would still be part of Ukraine” (again without reference to Russia). For the record, that is false. Donbas is still part of Ukraine, although occupied and controlled by Russia and the international community does not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

By eliminating Russia as an actor and presenting inaccurate facts and inferences about Ukraine’s circumstances, the author’s purpose is to draw the reader to incorrect conclusions that support an anti-Ukrainian narrative.

The article goes on to allude darkly to undefined “inside and outside forces” that are responsible for Ukraine’s current troubles, including the unfounded claim that “radical nationalism is on the rise”, which is unsupported by actual events in Ukraine.

Of those dark forces, the author names the former foreign ministers of Sweden and Poland, Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski, who had a role in negotiating the European Economic Association Agreement with Ukraine (in the article called a “scheme”), which the author claims was conditioned on Ukraine breaking economic ties with Russia. The author makes the spurious claim that “the interests of the Ukrainian people were the last thing on the minds of Bildt and Sikorski.” This is false. There is no such understanding, and Carl Bildt in response has forcefully denied that any such intention existed.

After detailing the allegedly perfidious behavior of the West, the author describes Moscow’s — and Putin’s–view as “understandably quite different” and that the true intent of the West is to “weaken Russia geopolitically and economically.” The article concludes by wishing “former compatriots” well and hoping that they will “find the way out of this crisis by taking…the fate of their country into their own hands.”

This “sponsored content” in the guise of analysis/opinion appeared in a reputable Western media outlet. It is, nevertheless, disinformation.

It has all the hallmarks of disinformation—narrowing the context by excluding essential information, the selective presentation of facts and the weaving in of falsehoods and mischaracterizations, an appeal to a certain audience that may be sympathetic to all or part of the content’s narrative despite the falsehoods and mischaracterizations, and an invocation to corrective action that would result in an alternative utopia (much as the old communist ideology once did). It is not the art of persuasion. It is the art of manipulation and deception.

The author, Edward Lozansky, is a fixture in conservative, pro-Russian circles in Washington and a regular contributor in The Washington Times. He has placed other “sponsored content,” including a piece defending Russia’s seizure of Crimea and another critical of the American “hegemon” dictating terms to Russia in Syria, as well as claiming that the list of Putin’s misdeeds is “largely fake” and the Skripal poisoning was a provocation. For an informative take on Lozansky’s activities on behalf of Russia, read Max Kutner’s article in Newsweek from April regarding the World Russia Forum organized by Lozansky. Given the distortions and unsubstantiated assertions in Lozansky’s “sponsored content,” Kutner, in a well-written article, is, if anything, too kind.

The Washington Times disclaims responsibility for what it publishes as “sponsored content,” but by publishing the article, The Washington Times is disseminating disinformation.

Lozansky relies on the uncritical attitude of The Washington Times toward “sponsored content” to provide him with a respected media outlet for his disinformation, which legitimates the content and allows it to be disseminated more widely.

Once published in The Washington Times, the content is amplified by pro-Russian propaganda sites (sometimes owned by Lozansky), such as Russiahouse.org, Versia.ru and Russialist.org, often as legitimate analysis, as well as by mainstream news services and search engines that aggregate multiple-source content.

If there is any doubt about the power of “sponsored content” to influence perceptions, here is a screenshot of what The Washington Times says about the power of its “advocacy advertising” (the term in its media kit for “sponsored content”).

In the age of fake news, Western media needs to address disinformation not just through conscientious, accurate reporting but also by not enabling channels of disinformation that purposely lie and mislead, just as it does not knowingly promote advertising that makes false claims about commercial products.

Otherwise, reputable media outlets–such as The Washington Times—become the unwitting agents of disinformation.

For two excellent books on the real history of Ukraine, read the classic reference, A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its People, by Paul Robert Magocsi, and The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy.

An excellent source on exposing disinformation is Stopfake.org.

The Greater Meaning of Ukrainian Church Independence from Moscow

Photo Credit: KyivPost

Excellent coverage by Alya Shandra at Euromaidan Press of Ukraine Orthodoxy push for autonomy from Moscow (Tomos Ante Portas: A Short Guide to Ukrainian Church Independence).

While much will be made of the idea that this represents Ukraine's continuing shift toward the West, the change is more meaningful domestically in order for Ukraine to recapture its own identity separate from Putin's narrative of a unified "Russian World" under Moscow's control.  The Financial Times quotes "a person close to the Russian church" as saying, "If Putin decided to call it the Russian empire, it wouldn't change anything.  It's just the same system with a different name.  We--the Russian People--can't accept Ukraine as a separate state and they know it."  The undying enmity of Russia toward a free Ukraine is the only threat to Ukraine's existence.

For Ukraine to be free, it will have to be economically, politically and socially independent from Russia.  The independence of the Ukrainian church is the latest, and immeasurably important, reemergence of the Ukrainian identity that has been submerged under Russian imperialism since 1654.

The larger context for Ukrainian church independence is best summed up in Alya Shandra's article by Theologian Paul Gavrilyuk:

“Putin’s war in Ukraine may have gained Crimea by deceit, denial, and violence; it may have destroyed the infrastructure of a large part of Eastern Ukraine.  But the long-term effect of the war was to push Ukraine away from Russia culturally and economically, and with that, the collateral damage to Russia’s own economic interest in Europe has been considerable.  Putin has attempted to re-colonize Ukraine; in reality, he has continued to impoverish his own people and, paradoxically, will leave the wanna-be-empire even more vulnerable to the economic colonization by China.  It does not take a ‘Slavophile’ to understand this point.  Long-term, Constantinople’s historic act will bring greater peace to Europe.”

The absurdity of Seven Republicans’ Visit to Moscow

Torrey Taussig, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, nails in the article the absurdity of the 7 Republican lawmakers’ 4th of July visit to Russia.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article214584130.html

The seven Republicans, representing most of the geographic center of the US from north to south and covering most of the US’s major gas and oil distribution system raises the question what interest and who's they are pursuing since they have no tangible publicly expressed objectives for their initiative.

TheHill.com: Armenians’ Peaceful Revolt Could Reverberate

© Getty Images

TheHill.com

If not for reporting by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Al Jazeera over the past two weeks, you could be forgiven for not knowing a political earthquake was taking place in Armenia. The Western media hardly carried a word until Monday when, after 11 days of massive demonstrations in the country’s capital of Yerevan, Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan bowed to protesters’ demands and resigned. The implications though will ripple out from Armenia, across the Caucasus and the post-Soviet space.

While the protests targeted political and economic corruption, the spark for the demonstrations was an attempt by Sargsyan and the ruling Republican Party to extend their control of the government by appointing Sargsyan as prime minister following two terms as president, despite his earlier promise that he would not do so.

A key moment in the protests occurred when hundreds of soldiers broke ranks and joined upwards to 100,000 protesters in Yerevan’s central square. In the manner of the recent popular protests in Iran and the earlier Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the protests were fueled by social media and spontaneous support from ordinary citizens that overwhelmed the government’s ability to control the narrative on the ground. When the protest leaders in Armenia were taken into custody, the leaderless protests swelled in numbers and continued.

 With Sargsyan gone, Armenia now must organize its interim government and plan for elections. The protest leader, Nikol Pashinyan, and the interim prime minister, Karen Karapetyan, who is a former prime minister and former mayor of Yerevan, met and failed to agree on a way forward. Protests are continuing.

The Yerevan protests demonstrate once again the latent power of civil society as a brake on political and economic corruption. Armenians held large protests in 2008, 2015 and 2016 against a host of grievances, including, as enumerated by Human Rights Watch, not only corruption and election fraud but also “overwhelming poverty, and the economy’s domination by oligarchs who are close to political leadership” and “the lack of accountability for abuses committed by law enforcement, lack of judicial independence, and other human rights issues.”

An informed (and enraged) public, once aroused, is more than a match for an entrenched autocratic government — a lesson autocratic rulers who aspire to uncontested rule might note, such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Yerevan protests also signify the continuing decline of Russian influence among the post-Soviet independent nations. It is more striking in Armenia because of Armenia’s complex economic and security relationship with Russia, including a frozen conflict with its neighbor Azerbaijan for which Armenia needs Russian support. Russia even maintains a substantial military base at Gyumri, Armenia. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was monitoring the events in Yerevan because the country is "extremely important" for Russia.

Russia’s own internal political and economic weaknesses are enabling neighboring countries to chart independent political courses. Putin repeatedly has warned (and as recently as April last year) that Russia will not allow “color revolutions” to take place, especially among the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Armenia, Russia, and the Central Asia nations are members. Yet, Russia has struggled to contain popular — and often anti-Russian — protests in neighboring countries, short of military intervention.  

Another military adventure, such as those that Russia has carried out in Ukraine, Georgia or Moldova, would result in crippling Western sanctions that Russia can hardly afford. On a minor note, Sargsyan once served in the Soviet military and speaks the Russian language fluently.  There is every chance he will be the last Armenian leader to do so.

Popular uprisings against political and economic corruption across the former Soviet space do not mean that peace and prosperity are assured to happen in those countries. It does mean that the search for peace and prosperity is taking those countries in new directions that are less constrained by historical context. The people of Armenia have forcefully declared their desire for honest government and a decent chance at economic opportunity.

Dirk Mattheisen is a writer/blogger on political economy and governance. He is a former assistant secretary of the World Bank Group in Washington (2008-2012) and alternate secretary of the World Bank Board Ethics Committee. Follow him on Twitter @dirkmattheisen.

Why Cryptocurrencies Aren't Going Away

http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/378891-heres-why-cryptocurrencies-are-a-sign-of-the-times

What’s it take to get a little respect? In a Congressional Financial Services subcommittee hearing last week, congressmen expressed “deep skepticism” about cryptocurrencies, echoing critics’ claims that cryptocurrencies are nothing but a pyramid scheme updated for the electronic age.  Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) stated emphatically, “Cryptocurrencies are a crock.” And last week, bitcoin — the best known of the cryptocurrencies — slipped to a new low under $8,000 after peaking around $18,000 in late 2017.

But maybe bitcoin and its cryptocurrency relations are more than that. Maybe they are a sign of the times.

Cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, are built on a bit of sensible digital innovation known as distributed ledger technology, made possible by the expanding electronic universe. Remember the term “distributed ledger”; like “email” and “social media,” it will become a big part of your life.

A distributed ledger is the electronic record of actions, such as financial transactions, changes in inventory or legal records, that are recorded nearly simultaneously at different nodes or locations on the internet through an algorithmic validation process. Through the magic of programming, distributed ledgers have the attractive quality of being difficult to falsify and have advantages of scale, accessibility and transparency over non-electronic ledgers.

The best known use of distributed ledger technology is blockchain. Blockchain is distributed ledger technology that is purpose-built to record a series of related actions. The possibilities are endless. For example, blockchain is being used to validate the provenance of diamonds and the business conglomerate Louis Dreyfus recently carried out the first blockchain agricultural trade.  The phenomenal range of blockchain uses is evident from prowling trade publications and specialty blog feeds, where stories of new business processes using blockchain are everywhere.

But the best-known use of blockchain is cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies are blockchain programs that mimic real-world money. They are rising in popularity because they have attractive qualities made possible by blockchain. They are “portable,” in the sense you can access them anywhere. They are durable since there is a permanent record. They have, at least in theory, a limited supply fixed by blockchain coding, and a value that is market-driven. In short, cryptocurrencies have all the desirable attributes of money.  

And, if not entirely anonymous (authorities can track cryptocurrency transactions), cryptocurrencies are relatively autonomous from state regulation and oversight and can be harder to hack than bank accounts and credit cards. Even cryptocurrencies’ limitations are appealing. Limits set by programming and large energy requirements to produce cryptocurrencies have contributed to huge valuation increases.

In a world of distrust of state and financial institutions and of economic insecurity, techies have happened on a technique that, conceptually, frees one from the existing ecosystem of regulatory control, legal accountability and bad guys who want your money.

And, it is not just dark money seeking safe havens and avenues for money laundering that account for cryptocurrencies’ popularity. It is also reputable institutional investors and wealth managers seeking greater returns and novel hedges against market risk.

Still, cryptocurrencies are to blockchain a little like a church deacon with a meth lab in the basement. Blockchain is good because it makes business more efficient and cost effective, but cryptocurrencies are bad because they involve risky behavior since they seem to have no real economic or financial anchor to ensure intrinsic value.

However, we have been here before. Cryptocurrencies are reminiscent of U.S. “free banking” in the mid-1800s before 1863 when a U.S. national currency was established. Prior to 1863, the need to supply liquidity to an expanding American economic space extending to the Pacific was filled by countless local banks — often known as “wildcat” banks — that issued their own script. Many of these bank scripts were based on little more than hopes and promises. Some were under-capitalized or backed by dubious assets. Some were frauds.

Shaky as it was, the system worked for a time because of (oft-misplaced) faith in the security of the underlying assets and in the good faith of the local banks to honor their obligations. Still, many went bust before the “normalization” of monetary policy through the establishment of a national currency backed by the full faith of the federal government, as well as federal bonds and capital requirements and tighter federal and state regulation. Sound familiar?

A prescient 1996 paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta anticipated the similarity between free bank notes and “electronic money”:

“Electronic money is likely to consist of uninsured liabilities of private individuals or companies. If so, perhaps the most immediate lessons from free banking are that (1) consumers are not sheep waiting to be sheared (2) attention must be paid to the importance of the assets into which the electronic money is convertible and to the issuer’s reputation for making the conversion as promised.”

The bottom line is, with so much personal and business activity moving to the expanding digital universe, that universe needs a digital means to record and store value, just as the American economy in the mid-1800s needed liquidity to finance growth. Digital innovators are making that possible.

As in 1863, early adoption requires normalization. Blockchain is proving itself by expanding its uses, and experiments in cryptocurrency are becoming more credible and mainstream. Even countries with reputations for sobriety, such as Switzerland and Sweden, are considering the idea of national cryptocurrencies; and yes, Venezuela — although, in this case, it is a matter of necessity being the mother of desperate invention.

Will bitcoin collapse? Who knows. But will cryptocurrencies fade and wither like hula hoops and the tulip bulb mania? Don’t bet on it. Even governments know that it is no longer a question of extinguishing but of reining in the wildcats.

You’ll be using cryptocurrencies in the future, just as you will live in smart homes and use driverless cars.

Dirk Mattheisen is a writer/blogger on political economy and governance. He is a former assistant secretary of the World Bank Group in Washington (2008-2012) and alternate secretary of the World Bank Board Ethics Committee.

The Real Threat From Autocracy Is How We Deal With Democracy (continued)

Fareed Zakaria, Opinion Writer for the Washington Post, is an incisive commentator on global political, financial and economic affairs, and never more so then when he and I agree.

His article in the Post today, Democracy Is Decaying Worldwide: American Isn't Immune, echos what I wrote last week for The Hill, The Real Threat From Autocracy Is How We Deal With Democracy, about the erosion of principles and norms from within democracies, including the threat from the autocratic behavior of President Trump.

I had written that a functioning democracy can heal itself, unless a democracy had become neither free nor equitable.  There are palpable fears that the United States is slipping into autocracy...The resilience of democracy in America is being tested by an autocratic president who de-legitimizes ordinary civil discourse through misrepresentation and distortion, aided by complicit actors, such as Chairman Devin Nunes, (R-Calif.) of the House Intelligence Committee and his famously flawed memo on FBI surveillance...While the world's autocracies loom as a threat, the real threat to our welfare and to world peace is how we deal in the democracies with the erosion of basic civil liberties and the rise of domestic social and economic inequality.

In the same vein, Zakaria concludes, "Institutions are collections of rules and norms agreed upon by human beings. If leaders attack, denigrate and abuse them, they will be weakened, and this, in turn, will weaken the character and quality of democracy. The American system is stronger than most, but it is not immune to these forces of democratic decay."

The Real Threat From Autocracy Is How We Deal With Democracy

http://thehill.com/opinion/international/373533-the-real-threat-from-autocracy-is-how-we-deal-with-democracy

In 2017, autocracy — that is, government in which one person wields unlimited authority — seemed to have the upper hand against the troubled democracies of the West.  

Among the democracies, President Donald Trump polarized a divided American electorate, and European elections in Germany, France and elsewhere evidenced equally deep enmity between the political right and left. Brexit all but paralyzed Britain.

In fact, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index concludes that 2017 produced “the worst decline in global democracy in years,” highlighting, in particular, decline in freedom of expression, including media freedom. 

None of the four democracies above even made the top 10 in the EIU’s ranking of 167 countries.  Germany is 13, the United Kingdom is 14, the United States is 21 and France is 29. Of the Asian democracies, Indonesia fell from 48 to 68 in the rankings, the worst country decline globally, and the world’s most populous democracy, India, fell steeply in the rankings from 32 to 42.

In addition to highlighting freedom of expression and media freedom, the EIU pointed to a widening gap between political elites and electorates; declining popular participation in elections and politics; declining trust in institutions; and erosion of civil liberties.

Meanwhile, autocrats had a field day. The absence of a strong U.S. voice at Davos in January 2017 enabled Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to champion free trade, backed up by Chinese investment in a new silk road spanning Asia, Central Asia, Africa and Europe. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — would-be impresario of a new world order — was credited with orchestrating much of the election and social chaos in the United States and Europe in 2016 and 2017, as well as tilting Britain’s Brexit vote in favor of leaving the European Union.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan crushed opposition to his increasingly autocratic rule and cozied up to Putin, distancing himself from Europe and the United States. North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un defied U.S. pressure to end his nuclear weapons program by launching one test missile after another. Wanna-be autocrats Prime Ministers Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland and Viktor Orbán of Hungary defied EU democratic norms from within the union with nationalist agendas. Even President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela held on, despite one of the most mismanaged economies in history, with an inflation rate of 4,000 percent.

However, by year’s end autocracy appeared no less troubled than democracy.

Putin’s interference in the U.S. election processes provoked a significant expansion of U.S. sanctions against Russia. Russian corruption also resulted in the passage of “Magnitsky” legislation in a number of countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, targeting individuals responsible for serious civil rights violations, as well as government officials complicit in “acts of significant corruption.”

Although Putin is expected to be reelected in March, social discontent has risen with rising poverty. Putin’s reported desire to achieve 70 percent voter turnout with a 70 percent pro-Putin vote to legitimate his next term may be out of reach because of, on the one hand, voter apathy and, on the other hand, growing opposition activism. Russia ranks 135 in the EIU’s Democracy Index.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vaunted Silk Road looked less compelling as it ran into political and economic resistance from other countries concerned with rising Chinese influence, including the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, which criticized China’s indifference to global standards and norms. Although China’s economy still manages growth of almost 7 percent, high and rising debt levels threaten economic stability. Xi may look firmly in place, but so did Putin in 2008 before the Russian economy turned against him. When it did turn, it was not the reformist Putin of 2000-2004 but the autocratic Putin of 2014-2018 who, to maintain his authority, resorted to increasing oppression (despite the claim of popular support).

Xi is headed down the same path in his attempt to control threats to his authority by tightening control of the military, police and social media.  China ranks a low 139 in the Democracy Index.  

It was, however, the sudden, dramatic fall in December 2017 of President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe (136 in the index), after 30 years ruling over a wrecked Zimbabwean economy and society, that illustrated the risk faced by all autocrats. Instability can appear suddenly when the autocrat fails to anticipate a palace coup or a social upheaval due to social and economic tensions because there is no stabilizing mechanism other than oppression. Anti-government protests in Iran (150 in the index) at the end of 2017 against the economic plight and social oppression of ordinary Iranians came out of nowhere, as well, and threatened Iran’s political and economic stability.

Rather than being islands of stability governed by firm leadership, autocracies are inherently unstable because of limited political participation, social oppression and economic inequality that diminish the welfare of the citizens of those states and threaten world peace.

Democracies are more stable because, due to broader citizen participation, they are better at balancing differing societal interests and adapting to change. History is full of failed autocratic states, but few failed democracies. A functioning democracy can heal itself, unless a democracy has become neither free nor equitable. There are palpable fears that the United States is slipping into autocracy. Political discourse is fractured, and the EIU writes, “Income inequality is higher in the U.S. than in other rich countries and has worsened since the global economic and financial crisis of 2007-09. Studies show that higher income inequality reduces trust in others and undermines social capital.”  

The resilience of democracy in America is being tested by an autocratic president who de-legitimizes ordinary civil discourse through misrepresentation and distortion, aided by complicit actors, such as Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) of the House House Intelligence Committee and his famously flawed memo on FBI surveillance.

While the world’s autocracies loom as a threat, the real threat to our welfare and to world peace is how we deal in the democracies with the erosion of basic civil liberties and the rise of domestic social and economic inequality.