By Henry Precht

BN Columnist

One set of facts finds agreement among the opinions of most commentators on the Russian scheme to interfere in our 2016 elections. It seems pretty clear that Moscow really didn’t want to see their harsh critic Hillary Clinton take charge in Washington. They much preferred to deal with friendlier candidate Donald Trump so they acted to influence the vote. To what extent is the debatable question.

I know, I know. Some of you readers dispute that our president was Moscow’s man. Let it pass, for that is not the subject I wish to discuss. Rather, I wish to look at the lack of introspection on the part of American media and pundits of whatever persuasion. Have you read any discussion of past initiatives of our intelligence agencies to control the outcome of supposedly democratic elections overseas?

If their memories worked hard at summoning up the past, the media might recall that the USA was almost openly instrumental in shaping the outcome of the early post-World War II elections in Italy. The Communist Party, which had led the most effective resistance to Fascist leader Mussolini, was poised to claim victory, but a huge campaign of American cash incentives gave supremacy instead to the pro-American Christian Democrats. In effect, we bought the election.

What, we might ask, is the difference between the 1940s and the 2016 vote? The answer is who is the malefactor. If we distorted the outcome of a vote as we did elsewhere in Europe — e.g. in Greece — or in Iran or Guatemala — it somehow doesn’t merit discussion or even mention. The Russians are persuaded that Washington messed around in their internal affairs to preserve Yeltsin and to threaten Putin. What’s the difference between the integrity of their vote and ours?

There is an important lesson to be leaned here, though it doesn’t make it below the fold on the inside pages of national newspapers. That is, when one side adopts a weapon or practice, the other side follows with equal or greater use of the same option. Poison gas was used by one side in World War I and copied by the other side. No one employed it in World War II and no one could be a follower. Hence, no gas attacks.

We — our press, pundits, and government — complain that our private and official entities are under cyber attack from Iran, North Korea, Russia and maybe others. We fail somehow to acknowledge that we have already fired the first shots in a cyber war against those nations. We are victims, but only after having assaulted others first.

These observations lead me to another, equally dubious generalization: we often — too often—use a weapon or a technique because we can. Because we have the ability to engage in cyber warfare, we engage in it without giving a thought to the reaction we may provoke. If we took into account the damage we may be stimulating with short-sighted actions, we would be a lot more conservative (in the true sense of the term) in our interactions with the world.

Or so I would hope. (Of course, we are not always the first to employ a new weapon or technique. Sometimes a small, capable country punching above its weight will sink its small talons into a great power it figures is paralyzed for some reason and cannot react.)

Henry Precht is a retired Foreign Service Officer.