The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and his Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West by Malcolm W. Nance

The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and his Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

by Malcolm W. Nance

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History & Foreign AffairsPolitics & Power

Voter databases hacked, Democratic officials' emails leaked, bots spreading pro-Trump disinformation: in Nance's account, 2016 was one operation in a long Russian campaign against the US and Europe. He dates today's active measures and kompromat to Putin's second term, and concludes Trump went from unwitting asset to willing one.

Core ideas
  • Axis of Autocracy: Nance's name for a Putin scheme to turn democracies into authoritarian ethnonationalist states, alongside Russian backing for far-right movements meant to weaken NATO and the EU.
  • Hybrid warfare: Russia combines cyber operations, espionage, propaganda and special operations, and Nance casts Steve Bannon as central to a pro-Moscow conservative movement.
  • The evidence question: Publishers Weekly says Nance offers no evidence for his central claims, so how much of the willing-asset case can you check?
Published2018
Pages352
ISBN9780316484817
ReadSep 2024

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