Talking About the Mueller Report: Cui bono - Why Russia Wanted Trump to Win in 2016

On Quora, Adrian J. Zarazua asks:

If it’s true that Russia meddled with the 2016 US election then why did they want Donald Trump to win and not Hillary Clinton?

My reply: 

First of all, there is no “if.” Russian state-run hackers working for Russian Military Intelligence (or GRU in its Russian acronym) worked at the Internet Research Agency (IRA) to intervene in the ’16 elections in favor of now-President Trump.

Second, Vladimir Putin had several motives for wanting Trump to win and Hillary Clinton to lose. And none of these motives were because he favors Republicans over Democratic Party pols or because he believed all the innuendoes and myths that the conservative movement has been crafting about Hillary Clinton since the 1992 Presidential election.

In any criminal investigation, you have to apply the principle of cui bono, or, “who does it benefit?”

Or more germane to the matter at hand, what does Putin’s Russia get out of a Trump Presidency?

Well, it’s not because Putin, who was a professional KGB officer before entering post-Soviet politics at its highest levels, loves Trump as a wonderful human being and shares his desire to “Make America Great Again.”

No, no, my friend. It’s exactly the opposite; Putin wanted Donald J. Trump to win because he and his ex-Soviet buddies (the oligarchs) benefit greatly from a weakened and divided United States of America, a confused and divided Europe, and a disintegrating North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The end game: Make Russia Great Again.

In the short run (2016), the Putin autocracy (to call Russia a democracy is a joke in 2019) wanted to deny Clinton a win. Not because Putin is a misogynist who only respects male Presidents, but because Clinton and President Obama did not go along with Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from its rightful owner, Ukraine. The Obama Administration had also imposed severe sanctions on many of Putin’s oligarch buddies over the Russian attempts to foment civil war in Ukraine, as well as other grievances that are far too numerous for a Quora answer. Let’s just say that Moscow wanted an Administration in place in Washington that would be, shall we say, more agreeable with the Kremlin’s agenda.

It should be noted that before Kellyanne Conway got the job as Trump's third and last campaign manager, Paul Manafort was calling the shots in then-candidate Donald Trump’s efforts to win the 2016 Presidential election. Along with other members of his team, Manafort had many cozy connections to both Russia and Putin’s Ukrainian BFF, Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych.

Viktor Feodorovych Yanukovych, you may recall (or maybe not, especially if you get your news from Fox News) that he was Putin’s man in Kiev from 2010 till he was ousted in the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. Yanukovych had resisted popular calls to not be so chummy with the Kremlin and turn toward the rest of Europe. (You know, because Europe is more or less democratic, while Putin’s Russia is less so.) Moscow was not pleased with this, because even almost 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russians still think of Ukraine and the Baltic States as being part of their sphere of influence. Putin renounced Communism as a fool’s errand during his tutelage under Boris Yeltsin, but he still believes in Russian nationalism, specifically, a brand of Russian hypernationalism that seeks to undo the post-Cold War Pax Americana that resulted from the fall of the USSR in 1991.

President Obama had tried to have cordial relations with Russia, but he could not look away and let Vladimir Putin upset the peace and order of the world just to salve the wounds of many resentful ex-Soviet poobahs. The President did not desire war with Russia, but he could not tolerate aggressive moves by Moscow in Syria, the Middle East, and Central Europe. And because Clinton would have carried on her predecessor’s policies toward Russia, Putin decided she was not going to win.

Now, Russia has studied the United States for many decades. Since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the USSR and its successor state, the Russian Federation, have had a complicated relationship with America; most of the time it was adversarial. Sometimes tensions were high and it looked like World War III might break out, while at other times both countries tried to get along, if not as friends, at least as civil neighbors.

But all that scrutiny (99 years’ worth of it as of 2016) means Russian sociologists, historians, and intelligence analysts have given Moscow a very good idea about how Americans think, behave, and vote. Even more grievous, the Russians know all of our national stressors, especially when it concerns such issues as the divides between urban and rural America, political philosophies, immigration, isolationism vs. internationalism, the class divisions, and - even in the supposedly enlighted 21st Century - race.

So, yes. After many previous attempts to interfere with U.S. elections dating to Soviet times, the 2016 Presidential campaign finally succeeded. Partially because the GRU’s Internet Research Agency’s hackers did their job well with the DNC hacks that hobbled former Secretary of State Clinton, but because the Russians knew damn well which buttons to push, what issues to highlight in their social media campaign, and what candidates to back. (They tried getting Bernie Sanders, but he would not take the bait; they did, however, get some traction with Jill Stein, and of course, won the brass ring when Trump’s campaign decided to play ball with Russia.)

Again, the topic is far too complex for a “simple” Quora answer. Suffice it to say, though, that Russia knew that Clinton would be difficult to deal with if she won the election, while Trump, with his inexpertise on the world stage, plus various back-channel connections to the Kremlin via Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates, and all of their acolytes, would be more willing to let Russia take over Eastern Ukraine (the Donbas), bully the Baltic States (which are NATO members), and basically rule over Eastern Europe without having to occupy it with the Russian army.

Cui bono indeed.