How Will Trump Punish Russia Next?

Samantha Vinograd, politico.com

When it comes to sending messages to bad actors, presidents have a standard bag of tricks to choose from. 

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Excerpt:

In national security, punishing people can be an art form. Figuring out the right tool to use—and how high to raise the volume in response to bad behavior—takes a lot of careful thought and analysis about what really matters to your target and what your own end goal is. The U.S. announcement—which followed similar announcements from several other countries—that it will expel Russian diplomats and shutter the Russian consulate in Seattle in response to a Russian chemical weapons attack on British soil was likely the result of careful deliberation.

But don’t assume that’s the last of it. I spent a lot of time in the Situation Room debating how to respond to naughty global players—President Vladimir Putin and others—and President Donald Trump has a lot of other tools to use if he wants to punish Russia. So far, Trump has exercised only the most basic one. Here’s what could be next. ...

4. Play mind games

Information warfare and psychological operations campaigns are complex. We’ve carried them out before, with various degrees of success. For decades, and during the height of the Cold War, an entire executive agency, the U.S. Information Agency, was dedicated to running public diplomacy programs [JB emphasis] abroad, which could include foreign influence campaigns. The USIA was disbanded in 1999, and today the State Department’s Global Engagement Center is supposed to lead U.S. efforts to counter Russia’s disinformation. But the center’s funding was delayed, and hiring is barely inching along. Plus, even when fully funded and staffed, a single office at the State Department is nothing compared to what the USIA used to be—and certainly can’t compete with what the Russians are doing.

Re-upping the discussion on whether a dedicated effort to turn things around and do in Russia exactly what the Russians are doing in the U.S.—develop and release propaganda to influence, confuse and demoralize the Russian people, would be on the list of options on any good punishment package. It is possible that there are covert programs either under way or under discussion to match Russia’s misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and it’s a sure bet that the option to scale up programs is a frequent topic of conversation in any Russia discussions. ...

Samantha Vinograd is a CNN national security analyst. She served on the White House National Security Council for four years under President Barack Obama and in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush.