{"id":179632,"date":"2017-12-10T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/10\/at-least-there-is-symmetry-3\/"},"modified":"2017-12-10T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T00:35:00","slug":"at-least-there-is-symmetry-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/10\/at-least-there-is-symmetry-3\/","title":{"rendered":"At Least, There is Symmetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Russians made an offer to stop trying to effect US elections.<\/p>\n

It was rejected out of hand, because the US was unwilling to promise not to meddle in Russian elections<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has rejected a sweeping Russian proposal seeking a mutual ban on foreign political interference, three senior US administration officials tell BuzzFeed News.<\/p>\n

Russia first broached the subject in July, when one of Vladimir Putin\u2019s top diplomats arrived in Washington with a sheet of proposals aimed at addressing a top concern of the US government: A resurgence of Russian meddling in the 2018 elections.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

To test the possibility of a mutual agreement, Putin dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to Washington for a July 17 meeting with Under Secretary Tom Shannon, the No. 3 official at the State Department. The official US account<\/a> of the meeting offered only a bland summary of conversations on \u201careas of mutual concern.\u201d But three US administration officials, including one inside the meeting, said Ryabkov handed over a document containing a bold proposal: A sweeping noninterference agreement between Moscow and Washington that would prohibit both governments from meddling in the other\u2019s domestic politics.<\/p>\n

After examining the proposal, which has not previously been reported, US officials told Moscow there would be no deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said \u2018thank you very much but now is not the time for this,\u2019\u201d said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The US official described the Russian proposal in historic terms, likening it to the 1933 accord<\/a> between President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov that ended 16 years of American nonrecognition of the Soviet Union in exchange for a pledge not to interfere in US politics.<\/p>\n

Ryabkov proposed \u201cthat we come to terms and agree not to interfere in each other\u2019s internal affairs,\u201d said the senior US official. \u201cHistorically, it relates back to the agreements that were done at the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s administration when we were establishing a relationship with the Soviet Union for the very first time,\u201d said the senior official.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

When asked if the president weighed in on the proposal, a spokesman for the National Security Council said only that the White House and State Department \u201ccoordinated closely on the United States\u2019 response.\u201d The spokesman was quick to point out that deliberations over the noninterference agreement never advanced to the stage of formal bilateral negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

A second senior State Department official said any potential gains would come at too high a cost. \u201cWe would have to give up democracy promotion in Russia, which we\u2019re not willing to do<\/span><\/b>,\u201d said the official.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Advocates of a deal point to President Barack Obama\u2019s 2015 accord with China aimed at reducing commercial cyber espionage as an instructive case study.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Obama was criticized at the time for what looked to some like capitulation, experts now agree that the deal had at least some positive benefit,\u201d said Kimberly Marten<\/a>, the director of Columbia University\u2019s program on US-Russia relations. Martin cited a 2016 report by the network-security firm FireEye finding that Chinese hackers had carried out fewer attacks on US targets.<\/p>\n

She also said Putin\u2019s paranoia about US meddling in Russia\u2019s upcoming election could produce serious negotiations with Moscow. Putin \u201cwill almost certainly win another six-year term, unless the United States disrupts things by, say, releasing a cache of compromising material that turns the Russian population against him,\u201d she wrote in a recent article<\/a>. \u201cTo avoid that possibility, Putin might just find an anti-doxing agreement to be useful.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Apart from the misuse of the term “Doxing,” these reports place allegations of meddling in elections in a different light:  The US openly, and aggressively, meddling in foreign elections.<\/p>\n

This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Russians made an offer to stop trying to effect US elections. It was rejected out of hand, because the US was unwilling to promise not to meddle in Russian elections: The Trump administration has rejected a sweeping Russian proposal seeking a mutual ban on foreign political interference, three senior US administration officials tell BuzzFeed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[375,364,394,387,374,455],"class_list":["post-179632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-elections","tag-evil","tag-foreign-relations","tag-hypocrisy","tag-politics","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}