Two years ago, when Garry Kasparov, the chess champion turned political dissident, began to warn that Vladimir Putin sought to undermine liberal democracy—not only in neighboring countries, but all over the West—he was widely written off as a crank. After Russia managed to hack the servers of the Democratic National Committee and spread fake news on an industrial scale, his warnings were finally recognized as all too prescient. But it is only over the past weeks, as journalists around the world have broken dozens of stories about Russian meddling in the democratic process, that the sheer scale of this effort has become apparent. [...]
“Russian Officials Scrambling as Plan to Delegitimize Western Democracy Moving Way Faster Than Intended,” reads a recent headline in the Onion. It’s a good joke. But the scary truth is that Russia is emboldened, not discombobulated, by its own success. Fresh off a spectacular victory in the United States, the country is now redoubling its efforts to undermine democracy from Canada to Croatia and from Greece to Sweden. [...]
Whether Putin is acting rationally, then, depends on what one is willing to count as a rational goal. If we posit that he is merely seeking to cement his rule and grow the Russian economy, his actions make little sense. But if we understand that he is trying to make Russia a major power that can instill fear in its enemies and serve as a role model to its vassals, he is masterfully playing the mediocre hand he has been dealt. [...]
Today, that sense of purpose has eroded. Most schools and universities are so focused on preparing their students for lucrative careers that they have abandoned the larger goal of forming responsible citizens. As Rep. Lee Hamilton and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued nearly a decade ago, “civic education has been in steady decline over the past generation, as high-stakes testing and an emphasis on literacy and math dominate school reforms. Too many young people today do not understand how our political system works.”
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