Okay. Now that I've had time to clear my head. Here's some motives based on what's known so far.
* The Kremlin views the ideal of a liberal/democratic world order and views an U.S. and EU as key players to destabilize as a perceived threat to Russia in general and Putin's leadership in particular. Of note: after the USSR ended the leaders of Russia up until Putin were abysmal. Putin might be corrupt and half-assing leadership but he's viewed favorably by the populace (and possibly the Kremlin and Putin himself) because all the previous post-Soviet leaders were no-assing it. So a hunch of my own is that Russia's government thinks all of its eggs are in one basket (Putin) and think that if that basket falls over then Russia is done for. And what better way to ensure an end of democratic ideals than to wreck economies and screw up politics in countries that pride themselves on such?
* Putin himself has an extreme dislike of Hillary Clinton because he thinks that she helped foment 2011-2012 protests against his governance. So he'd have a preference for the opposition in general.
From the paper
"We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the presidency the Russian influence campaign focused more on undercutting Secretary Clinton’s legitimacy and crippling her presidency from its start, including by impugning the fairness of the election."
Really, did the American public get influenced by Russian propaganda, and I have no doubt that many governments try to sway outcomes in their favor, do you really think Russia made that deciding vote? Was James Comey part of that?
Okay. Now that I've had time to clear my head. Here's some motives based on what's known so far.
* The Kremlin views the ideal of a liberal/democratic world order and views an U.S. and EU as key players to destabilize as a perceived threat to Russia in general and Putin's leadership in particular. Of note: after the USSR ended the leaders of Russia up until Putin were abysmal. Putin might be corrupt and half-assing leadership but he's viewed favorably by the populace (and possibly the Kremlin and Putin himself) because all the previous post-Soviet leaders were no-assing it. So a hunch of my own is that Russia's government thinks all of its eggs are in one basket (Putin) and think that if that basket falls over then Russia is done for. And what better way to ensure an end of democratic ideals than to wreck economies and screw up politics in countries that pride themselves on such?
* Putin himself has an extreme dislike of Hillary Clinton because he thinks that she helped foment 2011-2012 protests against his governance. So he'd have a preference for the opposition in general.
Sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-...-on-russia-and-the-u-s-election-idUSKBN16R229 and https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
From the paper "We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the presidency the Russian influence campaign focused more on undercutting Secretary Clinton’s legitimacy and crippling her presidency from its start, including by impugning the fairness of the election."
Really, did the American public get influenced by Russian propaganda, and I have no doubt that many governments try to sway outcomes in their favor, do you really think Russia made that deciding vote? Was James Comey part of that?
Not entirely, no. But I do think they were a major factor. Of course Hillary's campaigning ended up being rather incompetent which didn't help either.
I think it was a confluence. As things usually are.