Stephen Kotkin
70 μ£¥³¤ ¬μμ¬
and judges, to undermine trust in American media, and to have the
American public believe that the U.S. political system was rigged.
Moscow aimed to divide Americans into tribes, hoping that griev-
ances would turn into dysfunction and maybe even social collapse.
But the United States is a politically diverse nation, and its wide
political dierences are normal and unthreatening, because the coun-
try has the democratic institutions to allow their expression and com-
petition. Neither the ¶³ nor its post-Soviet successors were ever
going to destroy the U.S. system from without, try as they might.
Then came Trump. Obviously, the Gorbachev-Trump analogy is
imperfect. The United States is not a communist regime but a consti-
tutional order with the rule oÊ law, a dynamic market economy, and an
open society. Indeed, one reason that most Republicans have not gone
berserk over Trump’s behavior is that they believe, correctly, that U.S.
institutions are resilient. (Other reasons include the fact that they
agree with Trump’s policies, fear electoral defeat without his support,
and depend on him to keep the White House out o Democratic
hands—a goal supported by almost hal the electorate.) Still, a specu-
lative juxtaposition o Gorbachev and Trump can help one fathom
how the μ’s counterintelligence investigation eectively morphed
into a criminal probe o the Trump campaign, and then o the presi-
dent himself, eventually leading to the Mueller report.
Trump was voicing lines straight out o the ¶³ playbook: the press
is the enemy o the people, American law enforcement is corrupt, ¤¬¢£
is obsolete, U.S. trading partners are rip-o artists. All the while,
Trump’s family and associates were meeting secretly with Russians and
lying Ãrst about the fact o those meetings and later about their sub-
stance. These meetings took place in the context oÊ Trump’s decades-
long attempts to do business in Russia and other countries o the former
Soviet Union. Overpriced real estate is, to an extent, a business built on
money laundering, with all-cash buyers needing to wash funds o dubi-
ous provenance and looking for partners who neglect to perform due
diligence. Any serious investigation oÊ Trump with subpoena power
that looked into his businesses would pose a grave legal threat to him
and his family. (The Mueller report brieÁy mentions Trump’s attempted
property deals in Georgia and Kazakhstan. It remains unclear whether
these or related matters are part o the 12 ongoing criminal investiga-
tions that the special counsel’s oce handed o to other authorities, the
details o which are blacked out in the public version o the report.)