The Plot to Hack America

The nationalistic Russia-goes-it-alone fever wasn’t always a cornerstone of their defense policy. Until the invasion of Georgia in 2004, Russia was integrating its national defense goals into NATO via various sub-organizations. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established in April 1949, is a military alliance between twenty-eight states to create a system of collective defense for member nations.^-125 Russia leaned towards the alliance when it joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991, and the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. This culminated in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, providing a formal basis for relations. In 2002, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) emerged as consultation on security issues, leading to more direct cooperation. Formal NRC meetings and cooperation in a few areas were suspended because of Russia’s military action in Georgia in August 2008.^-132 Talk show host Charlie Rose summed it up this way:

I think Vladimir Putin, because of all of his experiences, has a real fear about being—about NATO being on his borders. He’s always had that. They had that with respect to Georgia and with respect to Ukraine. I think he probably worries that if a government in Ukraine was… leaning to the West—it might one more time entertain the idea of NATO membership, which he really, really—that’s probably the thing that he dislikes the most.⁷

Anna Vassilieva noted that Russia under Putin was fundamentally changing. “Russians feel that they have the right to an equivalent of the Monroe doctrine and the right of foreign political noninterference in their domestic politics.”⁸ At the St. Petersburg international Economic Forum in 2015, Putin blamed NATO for the crisis in Crimea, and by extension Georgia and Ukraine, due to its insistence on expanding into territory he views as his domain. Putin said,

Why is there a crisis in Ukraine? I was quite confident after the bipolar system went into oblivion and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, certain Western partners of ours, particularly the United States, were in a kind of euphoria, and instead of trying to create a new situation, good neighborly partner relations, they started to explore new free geopolitical spaces—well, free in their view. And that is why we are witnessing the expansion of NATO eastwards.⁹

Senator Lindsey Graham and John McCain were some of the loudest Republican voices opposed to Russia’s aggressive dominance of territories. All cooperation, military and civilian, under the NRC was suspended in April 2014 following the Russia-Ukraine conflict. NATO’s stance: “The Allies continue to call on Russia to reverse its recognition of the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.”¹⁰

In September 2014 at the Wales Summit in September 2014, NATO leaders condemned Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine, demanding that the nation comply with international law and end its illegal ‘annexation’ of Crimea. Russia effectively ignored President Barack Obama’s warnings, invaded Crimea, and annexed it within thirty days under armed occupation. Under Putin, Russia also backed separatist groups.^-130 NATO was keeping a close eye on Russia’s increasing military activities along NATO’s borders, realizing that the new aggressive growls by the bear would threaten Euro-Atlantic security and stability.

Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea, President Obama announced economic sanctions on Russia and Crimea in March and December 2014. According to the BBC, the President said “The executive order is intended to provide clarity to US corporations doing business in the region and reaffirm that the United States will not accept Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea.”¹¹ The European Union soon followed suit.¹² In response to the various sanctions Russia called the actions “meaningless, shameful, and disgusting.” Russia imposed its own sanctions by halting the export of agricultural products to North America, Norway, Australia, and the European Union. In July 2015 he extended the sanctions.