Is Russia Running Circles Around the United States?

On this week’s episode of The E.R., David Rothkopf, Rosa Brooks, Kori Schake, and Susan Hennessey discuss the ongoing debate about Vladimir Putin’s motives and end goals. With each week bringing revelations (today, it’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s contact with Russian officials), it’s hard to get a handle on what’s real and what’s just bizarre regarding the investigation into the Kremlin’s involvement in the U.S. election. Whatever the case, it has become increasingly apparent in the last six months that Russia is striking from all sides with an intense information-war campaign, and that Washington is not the only target. Did Moscow have a hand in Brexit? How is it aiding and abetting the rise in global populist movements?

Even more concerning and unprecedented, argues the E.R. team, is that the Trump administration doggedly refuses to take any action against Russia. Instead, they seem to be aligning more closely with Moscow than with long-trusted U.S. allies. From the threats to NATO, to the desire to upend the EU, to support for the far-right, it seems our current president is not just fawning over Putin’s leadership, but supporting his anti-Western ideologies.

Susan Hennessey is a fellow in national security in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. She is also managing editor of the Lawfare blog. Follow her on Twitter at: @Susan_Hennessey.

Kori Schake is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where she focuses on military history, and a former foreign-policy advisor to Sen. John McCain. Follow her on Twitter at: @KoriSchake.

Rosa Brooks is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and teaches international law, national security, and constitutional law at Georgetown University. She is the author of the newly released book “How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything.” Follow her on Twitter at: @brooks_rosa.

David Rothkopf is the CEO and editor of the FP Group. Follow him on Twitter at: @djrothkopf.

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