Washington's obsession with Russia emerged from the toxic waste of the 2016 elections as a maneuver to strengthen the Democratic Party's losing campaign. The initial accusation of Russian hacking was nothing but a ploy to detract from the content of the DNC WikiLeaks data dump that revealed the extent to which the Hillary Clinton campaign rigged the Democratic Party primary in her favor. Still, Russia-baiting didn't help the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton lost anyway. This hasn't stopped the Democratic Party and its Republican allies from keeping the Russia boogeyman story alive in order to serve its war agenda.Washington's obsession with Russia is only becoming more difficult to follow.Little explanation is provided beyond the "anonymous sources," a euphemism for the US intelligence services.These are the same intelligence services that murdered Black revolutionaries in their sleep in the 1960s and 1970s. The same US intelligence services that have taken part in the destruction of over fifty nations in as many years , all in service of US multinational corporations and banks. Yet because the CIA, NSA, FBI and the rest of the seventeen intelligence agencies have all agreed that Russia interfered in the US elections, the US populace is supposed to believe it. No matter that the US intelligence services have lied about damn near every "finding" about nations and peoples with war targets on their backs. It should not be forgotten that the US led invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were all based on lies lies, and more lies disseminated by US intelligence.Billions of tax dollars go to the intelligence agencies each year. Every dollar is spent on the secret police operations of the military state. The job of US intelligence is to conduct covert operations on behalf of international capital. US intelligence specializes in political assassinations, coups, and covert activities designed to bring oppressed peoples or nation-states under the auspices of US control. A number of intelligence operations including MKUltra Operation Mockingbird , and Operation Phoenix reveal the extent to which intelligence actors go to achieve their objectives. Current operations are now supported by an infrastructure that enables intelligence agencies to record the digital communications of every person on earth.A bizarre byproduct of US imperialism's multifaceted crisis has been the elevation of these spooks and spies to the mantle of "trustworthy" sources of information in the US corporate media.. And every report has been followed with a new one to keep US viewers guessing. The most recent allegations involve the Russia's supposed use of $100,000 over two years to buy advertisements on Facebook geared toward influencing the Presidential election results.It was this backdrop that led to the US intelligence apparatus to violently shift from targeting Russia as a sponsor of white nationalism to accusing the Kremlin of sponsoring Black Lives Matter. The absurdity of the claims, however, puts on full display the primary interests behind the Russia obsession. Nothing indicates the supreme crisis of the US imperialist order more than the election of Donald Trump as President. In periods of crisis, the US intelligence apparatus conducts war on two fronts. The first is the suppression of radical political activity in the US. The second is the suppression of all anti-imperialist and anti-colonial activity abroad.This is better termed counterinsurgency warfare. Every sector of the US intelligence apparatus is engaged in counterinsurgency warfare on behalf of monopoly capital. The attack on Russia is part and parcel of a US counterinsurgency war to maintain military and economic dominance in the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin has changed the calculus in the East by collaborating with China on new economic and political infrastructure projects that seek to wrestle away the world from dependence on US-led capitalist arrangements. The accusation that Russia influenced the 2016 elections must be placed within the context of the US-led NATO build up on the Russian border dating back to the destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999 and climaxing with the US-backed fascist coup in the Ukraine in 2014.With Russia surrounded by NATO's military weapons of mass destruction, the Russian government has every reason to keep tabs on the political situation in the US. Russia's military budget is a fraction of what the US spends. Russia's total expenditure in defense amounts to nearly twenty billion dollars less than the proposed increase to the US military budget currently passed in the Senate. That means that any attempt to meddle in US affairs is an invitation for a one-sided war. Furthermore,Russia's so-called influence over the 2016 elections is nothing but an extension of US imperial policy. It is the highest form of counterinsurgency warfare and targets both domestic and international threats to the future of capital. When the US intelligence services declared that Russia spent money on social media ads catering to white nationalists and Black Lives Matter groups, it was following up on what has been almost a year of equating resistance to the power structure with the Kremlin. In November of 2016, the website PropOrNot published a list of left-wing and right-wing sources that it deemed to be "Russian propaganda." American Herald Tribune made it to the list, which was likely complied by US intelligence operatives given the anonymity of the web page and the identification of the creators as former "experts" in "national security affairs." A new Cold War has been set into motion and the targets are clear. Black insurgency is a threat to the future of the white supremacist, imperialist system in the US. White nationalism's increased visibility in the US is a public relations nightmare for an empire in rapid decline. Russia's growing independence in world affairs cannot be allowed to stand, lest the US empire submit to a future without hegemony. So the US intelligence apparatus and its military state partners have declared war on Russia, rehashing Cold War hysteria in the process.