Forget our ‘special relationship’ with the US – we need to play a dirtier game to keep a hold of democracy

If liberal nations of the world want to salvage what’s left of their enterprise, they can’t just stand aside and allow authoritarian regimes to manipulate the US colossus. They must enter the fray, writes Borzou Daragahi

Europeans should take a long hard look at the US in recent months. A possible madman has his finger on the trigger of global annihilation (AP)

Among the biggest takeaways from the revelations reportedly contained in the upcoming book by former US national security adviser John Bolton is the extent to which the president, Donald Trump, has reached out abroad for political help at home. The biggest mistake by the Democrats, Bolton argues in his book, The Room Where It Happened, was not that they impeached Trump for attempting to finagle political help from Ukraine, but that their inquiry didn’t go far enough. Trump had tried to win help from China, as well, and also sought to curry favour with Turkey.

Since 1796, when France sought to change the outcome of a presidential election in the US after it signed a treaty with Britain, Washington has long been open to foreign interference and influence peddling.

Under Trump, however, that intrigue has soared to levels not encountered outside of failed states such as Libya or Lebanon. Russia is accused of using so-called “active measures” to tilt the balance in Trump’s favour during the 2016 elections. Tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates shower Washington with lobbyist money. Israel brazenly confers with local allies in attempts to win from the US long-sought items on its wish list.

Foreign powers see in Trump a pliable instrument that can help them achieve their goals, whether its annexing Palestinian land, dismantling global norms on human rights, or winning weapons deals and precious Washington support for controversial wars.

As 2020 elections approach, liberal European and Asian nations should take heed of the threats and potential opportunities. Trump’s trashing of arms and environmental treaties, his coddling of authoritarians, his attempts to destroy international institutions such as the World Health Organisation and the International Criminal Court, pose a grave threat to the interests of all democracies.

If liberal nations of the world want to salvage what’s left of their enterprise they can’t just stand aside and allow authoritarian regimes manipulate the US colossus. They must enter the fray.

European efforts to influence Washington have been woefully inadequate. According to the registry of foreign lobbyists in the US maintained by the Justice Department, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands have exactly zero active lobbying operations in Washington right now. By way of comparison, Turkey has 10, including political parties of the opposition. The UAE has 21. Saudi Arabia has 32.

And those few European or democratic nations that do lobby Washington such as Austria, Australia, Belgium, Italy and Sweden focus almost exclusively on trade and tourism. Even global bit players such as Afghanistan, Albania, and Azerbaijan have lobbying operations, which can at the very least help them keep an eye on the seedier dimensions of Washington policymaking.

European officials haughtily dismiss suggestions they fight fire with fire. They insist that their age-old relations and contacts at the foreign ministerial level and through Nato suffice, and that they don’t need to get their hands dirty by playing the Washington game. “It’s not the way we operate,” one diplomat told me. “We are committed to transparent relations.”

But other nations have shown little such restraint. Already there is mounting evidence that Russia is again attempting to manipulate the US elections. “Social media accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-linked company behind an influence campaign that targeted the 2016 elections, have indeed already begun their digital campaign to interfere in the 2020 presidential election,” the scholar Young Mie Kim writes.

Russia’s disruption of the 2016 US elections showed how easily a country could pull off such an operation. The Trump administration’s tepid response demonstrated to many how little consequence there is for interference. “[T]he prospect of foreign campaign intervention in 2020 may extend way beyond Russia to countries such as China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and others that have a major stake in the electoral outcome,” writes Darrell M West, vice-president of the Brookings Institute in Washington.

The stakes for countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel to maintain a Trump presidency are high – even crucial given the animosity they have generated among Democrats now poised to win big, according to the latest polling data. Many countries are already likely scheming to bolster Trump’s prospects. Trump is desperate, sagging in the polls, and it’s naive to think he hasn’t already reached out to pals abroad for help.

The same European nations insisting on transparency when it comes to the US seem to have little problem employing more clandestine instruments of power when it comes to securing their interests elsewhere. France interferes in Libya, supporting one side in that country’s civil war. Germany and Sweden contribute troops to the French-led operation in Mali. Officers of European clandestine services are on the ground throughout the Middle East, keeping an eye out for both potential recruits and threats.

In any case, civilisations, empires and nations have long interfered in the internal affairs of rivals and allies when vital interests are at stake. It’s a tradition that harkens back to at least the Thirty Years War, when powers across the western hemisphere, including the Ottoman empire, Spain and France, meddled openly in the affairs of the tangle of warring statelets and fiefdoms across what is now Germany.

Europeans should take a tough hard look at the US in recent months. Its cities are burning. Its hospitals are flooded with pandemic victims. A possible madman has his finger on the trigger of global annihilation. It’s an academic question as to whether or not America is a failed state. But it’s definitely a threat to the world, and those who cherish democracy have a duty to focus closely on 2020 elections that could spell even more disaster depending on the outcome.

There is a telling precedent for intervening in the elections of a western ally, established by the US itself. Throughout the Cold War, Washington repeatedly deployed spies and propagandists to Italy to prevent communist politicians suspected of receiving support from the Soviet Union from being elected to the nation’s highest offices.

“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump famously called out in 2016 in an attempt to encourage the Kremlin to intervene in US elections and leak information damaging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Europe, are you listening?