How should U.S. respond to election interference?
policy group, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, to counter future Russian interference in elections.
“No other power should be able to influence who Americans choose to lead them,” she said.
On the infrared end of the political spectrum stands Dan Kovalik, a longtime United Steelworkers lawyer whose recent book, “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia,” argues that focusing on Russian meddling heralds “a new and dangerous Cold War.”
Mr. Putin may well have sought to influence the 2016 election, Mr. Kovalik allowed. But he said the damage done paled in comparison to the wounds America inflicted on itself and others.
“The threats to our democracy are real,” he said, “but they totally come from inside.” (Mr. Kovalik emphasized that he was not speaking for the union in his interview for this article.)
A native of Upper St. Clair, Ms. Rosenberger visited Pittsburgh repeatedly during the 2016 campaign, accusing Mr. Trump of “playing footsie with Russia” on one campaign stop. And she was alongside other Democrats at a South Side union hall on election night, watching as Mr. Trump was declared the winner.
Many disappointed Democrats have since laid some blame for the outcome on Russian hacks. But Ms. Rosenberger said that the Alliance, whose creation was announced by the German Marshall Fund in midJuly, “is not about Trump at all.” Russian leaders, she said, “want to weaken our democracy — how they get there, whether through supporting a candidate on the left or on the right, is of less importance.”
The Alliance’s mission is “to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy.” That will entail efforts to track Russian disinformation campaigns through social media, as well as hacking efforts.
“These are all things that take an open, democratic process and pervert them,” Ms. Rosenberger said.
Ms. Rosenberger’s advisory council includes both former Obama administration staffers and some of their biggest critics. The latter group includes William Kristol and other “neoconservative” Republicans who backed the Iraq War and faulted Mr. Obama for not being more hawkish — but who now distrust Mr. Trump.
Ms. Rosenberger makes no apologies for those ties. “I believe national security requires working across the aisle,” she said. “This is not about endorsing the political views of anybody on any set of issues, other than saying that our democracy is under threat.”
But Mr. Kovalik, for one, seemed unconvinced. “Working with neocons after the Iraq debacle is a deal with a devil,” he said. “And it’s the worst kind of devil — a devil that is incompetent.”
Mr. Kovalik has long been active on the left. His efforts to hold Coca-Cola accountable for the deaths of Colombian labor activists were portrayed in a 2010 documentary. A Post-Gazette opinion piece he penned in 2013 drew national attention to the death of a Duquesne University instructor and to the plight of part-time faculty everywhere.
But though his new book is published by a leftist press, “it’s the first thing I’ve done in years that my parents liked because they are Trump people,” he said with a laugh. Conversely, “a lot of liberal friends think it’s playing into Republican hands.”
Despite the title, the book spends little energy trying to exonerate Mr. Putin of election interference. Its real focus is to argue that the focus on Russian hacking suggested a “new Cold War … is being pushed hard” by neoconservatives and the press, among others.
“The old Cold War fears and hatred allowed the US to get away with the worst of crimes,” it cautions.
The book cites a number of incidents, including some in which Ms. Clinton played a role as Secretary of State, where the United States interfered with elections or sanctioned the removal of democratically elected officials. “We feel like we can act with impunity in every corner of the world, but I’m supposed to be upset that someone hacked [Democratic official] John Podesta’s emails?” Mr. Kovalik asks.
Mr. Kovalik, who supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein last year, said he viewed Mr. Trump as “a racist and anti-immigrant, and those are things I abhor.” Even so, he said, “most of my interviews have been on conservative talk radio.”
Mr. Kovalik said he was “not naive” about the possibility conservatives were using him to shield Mr. Trump from attacks on the left. But some conservatives sincerely oppose militarism, he said. “There’s a bipartisan consensus pushing that, and we need a bipartisan consensus to stop it.”
Phil Williams, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, said he sympathized with Mr. Kovalik’s argument that the West had stoked Russian fears by expanding NATO closer to its borders. “There is a natural Russian fear of the West, with some basis,” he said.
But he agreed with Ms. Rosenberger that there also is danger in not taking Russian hacking seriously: “If you don’t stand up to someone like Putin, he gets emboldened.”
The ideal strategy, Mr. Williams said, would blend a forceful response to Russian meddling with efforts to reduce tensions in flashpoint areas like the Balkans or Syria.
Mr. Williams said he doubted that Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly expressed a desire for closer Russian ties, would pursue such a policy. “He’s not consistent about anything except [favoring] Russia. I can’t think of an explanation, except that something smells.”
A special prosecutor is investigating potential ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russian meddling.
But Mr. Kovalik hopes a broader shift is possible. During the Cold War, he said, Republicans accused their Democratic foes of being weak on Russia. Now, “the red-baited have become the red-baiters. Which shows that there is a possible realignment about what is left and what is right.”