为什么美国从来没有政变：因为那里没有美国大使馆。
为什么美国从来没有政变：因为那里没有美国大使馆。
冷戰期間，美國72次試圖改變他國政府
Lindsey A. O'Rourke的分析
中情局以 "高度自信 "得出结论，俄罗斯在总统选举期间进行了秘密干预，以促进唐纳德-特朗普的候选资格。他们这一评估的依据是，发现俄罗斯安全机构入侵了共和党全国委员会、民主党全国委员会和希拉里-克林顿的竞选团队--并向维基解密发布了部分民主党文件，以破坏克林顿的候选资格。
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美国对其他民主国家的黑客攻击由来已久
如果是真的，俄罗斯的行动让人联想到冷战时期的秘密政治战，并带有互联网时代的扭曲。以下是我的研究发现的关于这些努力的六个关键事项。
我们对秘密政治战了解多少？
显然，研究秘密干预行动是很困难的。根据定义，这些行动是为了让干预国能够合理地否认它的参与，将责任转嫁给其他行为者。鉴于各国在政府透明度和新闻自由方面的规定差异很大，要获得可靠的跨国数据是不可能的。再加上盛行的阴谋论，很难将历史事实与虚构分开。
关于唐纳德-特朗普在外交政策危机中的决策的8个问题
为了解决这些问题，我在过去几年里调查了关于冷战期间美国支持的秘密政权更迭的指控。我通过查阅国家档案馆、国家安全档案馆和总统图书馆的相关文件来完成这项工作。幸运的是，美国政府的解密规则、国会调查和新闻报道相结合，揭示了这些行动的大量情况。
1.1947年至1989年间，美国曾72次试图改变其他国家的政府
这是个了不起的数字。它包括66项秘密行动和6项公开行动。
当然，这并不是俄罗斯干预2016年美国总统选举的借口。这72次美国行动是在冷战时期--这意味着，在大多数情况下，苏联在暗中支持另一方的反美势力。然而，看看这些美国行动，我们可以调查一个大国的秘密活动，因此我们可以深入了解这种干预的原因和后果。
2.大多数取代另一个国家政府的秘密努力都失败了
例如，在冷战期间，美国的秘密行动中有26次成功地使美国支持的政府上台；其余40次则失败。
成功在很大程度上取决于秘密战术的选择。在此期间，没有一个美国支持的暗杀计划真正杀死了他们的目标，尽管有两位外国领导人--南越的吴廷琰和多米尼加共和国的拉斐尔-特鲁希略--在美国支持的政变中被外国中间人杀死而没有得到华盛顿的祝福。
抽干沼泽地 "是否意味着克里姆林宫认为的那样？
同样，支持试图推翻外国政权的激进团体的秘密行动几乎总是失败。在36次尝试中，只有5次推翻了他们的目标。赞助政变则更为成功：14次未遂政变中有9次让美国支持的领导人上台。
3.3.干涉外国选举是最成功的秘密策略（俄罗斯可能不会惊讶地知道这一点）。
我发现了16个案例，在这些案例中，华盛顿试图通过暗中资助、为其喜欢的候选人提供建议和传播宣传来影响外国选举，而且往往是在一个选举周期之后才这样做。在这些案例中，美国支持的政党在75%的情况下赢得了选举。
当然，我们不可能说如果没有秘密援助，美国支持的候选人是否会赢得选举；在美国干预之前，许多人在民意调查中处于领先地位。然而，正如中情局情报局局长雷-S-克莱恩（Ray S. Cline）曾经说过的那样，成功的秘密政权更迭的关键是 "在正确的时间以正确的方式提供恰到好处的边缘援助。"
在这次选举中，克林顿赢得了286万张普选票，但由于威斯康星州、密歇根州和宾夕法尼亚州的77,744名选民而失去了选举团，俄罗斯的秘密活动是否提供了 "恰到好处的边际援助"，从而通过压制民主党的投票率使天平倒向特朗普？
现在无法确定，但数字肯定很接近。如果克林顿在这三个摇摆州复制了奥巴马2012年的投票率，她将以超过50万票的优势赢得这三个州。即使她能够转化这些州1%的特朗普选民，她也会以合计55,000票的优势获胜。克林顿的竞选活动无疑受到了许多打击：高的不利评级、不准确的民调、联邦调查局局长詹姆斯-B-科米的信和战略失误。不过，俄罗斯的秘密活动可能使这些问题更加复杂。由于维基解密(Wikileaks)缓慢地提供被黑客攻击的电子邮件，整个10月的新闻周期充斥着令人尴尬的反克林顿的故事，使她在辩论后无法建立起势头。
4.政权更迭很少像介入国所期望的那样成功。
特朗普当上总统可能不会像人们希望或担心的那样给俄罗斯带来福音。克林顿在第三次总统辩论中警告说，普京 "宁愿让一个傀儡当美国总统"。
然而，正如我和亚历山大-唐斯在最近的《国际安全》一文中所指出的，通过政权更迭而建立的领导人一般不会长期充当傀儡。一旦上台，新领导人会发现按照外国支持者的要求行事会招致国内的强烈反对。因此，他们倾向于缓和自己的政策，或者完全反对外国支持者。事实上，已经有报道称，鉴于特朗普的不可预测性，克里姆林宫对他的胜利感到 "买家的悔意"。
5.秘密的政权更迭会对目标国家造成破坏
我的研究发现，一个国家的政府被推翻后，其民主程度降低，更有可能遭受内战、国内不稳定和大规模屠杀。至少，公民对他们的政府失去了信心。
即使俄罗斯没有使特朗普当选，它也成功地破坏了对美国政治机构和新闻媒体的信心。
正如历史学家蒂莫西-斯奈德(Timothy Snyder)在9月指出的那样，"如果民主程序开始显得摇摇欲坠，那么民主理念也会显得有问题。因此，美国将变得更像俄罗斯，这就是一般的想法。如果特朗普先生赢了，俄罗斯就赢了。但如果特朗普先生输了，人们怀疑结果，俄罗斯也会赢。"
6.潜规则的最好解药是透明。
国家暗中干预，这样他们就不必为自己的行为负责。在有报道称俄罗斯黑客因DNC黑客事件的成功而胆大妄为的情况下，揭露莫斯科的手是阻止未来对美国和即将举行的德国、法国和荷兰选举的攻击的第一步。在55%的美国人说他们对俄罗斯干预选举感到不安的时候，这也可能是消除虚假信息和恢复对美国民主机构的信心的最佳途径。国会已宣布进行两党调查，奥巴马下令就外国对美国总统选举的隐蔽干预提交一份全面报告，时间可追溯到2008年的选举。
鉴于这些指控有多么严重，特别是考虑到当选总统特朗普拒绝接受情报界的一致结论，在就职典礼前公开发布这些报告可能有助于纠正美国民主。
Lindsey A. O'Rourke是波士顿学院的国际政治助理教授。
The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that Russia intervened covertly during the presidential election to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy. They based this assessment on the discovery that Russian security agencies had hacked the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — and had released selected Democratic documents to WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton’s candidacy.
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The U.S. has a long history of hacking other democracies
If true, Russia’s actions are reminiscent of Cold War covert political warfare, with an Internet-era twist. Here are six key things my research uncovered about those efforts.
What do we know about covert political warfare?
Obviously, studying covert interventions is tough. By definition, the operations are designed so that the intervening state can plausibly deny it was involved, deflecting blame onto other actors. It’s impossible to get reliable cross-national data, given how widely countries vary in their rules about government transparency and freedom of the press. Add in flourishing conspiracy theories, and it can be hard to separate historical fact from fiction.
8 questions about Donald Trump’s decision-making in a foreign policy crisis
To tackle these problems, I have spent the past several years investigating allegations of U.S.-backed covert regime changes during the Cold War. I’ve done so by going through relevant documents from the National Archives, National Security Archive and presidential libraries. Fortunately, the combination of the U.S. government’s declassification rules, congressional inquiries and journalistic coverage has revealed a great deal about these operations.
1. Between 1947 and 1989, the United States tried to change other nations’ governments 72 times
That’s a remarkable number. It includes 66 covert operations and six overt ones.
Of course, that doesn’t excuse Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. These 72 U.S. operations were during the Cold War — meaning that, in most cases, the Soviet Union was covertly supporting anti-U.S. forces on the other side. However, a look at these U.S. actions allows us to survey the covert activities of a major power, so we can glean insight into such interventions’ causes and consequences.
2. Most covert efforts to replace another country’s government failed
During the Cold War, for instance, 26 of the United States’ covert operations successfully brought a U.S.-backed government to power; the remaining 40 failed.
Success depended in large part on the choice of covert tactics. Not a single U.S.-backed assassination plot during this time actually killed their intended target, although two foreign leaders — South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo — were killed by foreign intermediaries without Washington’s blessing during U.S.-backed coups.
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Similarly, covert actions to support militant groups trying to topple a foreign regime nearly always failed. Of 36 attempts, only five overthrew their targets. Sponsoring coups was more successful: nine out of 14 attempted coups put the U.S.-backed leaders in power.
3. Meddling in foreign elections is the most successful covert tactic (as Russia may not be surprised to learn).
I found 16 cases in which Washington sought to influence foreign elections by covertly funding, advising and spreading propaganda for its preferred candidates, often doing so beyond a single election cycle. Of these, the U.S.-backed parties won their elections 75 percent of the time.
Of course, it is impossible to say whether the U.S.-supported candidates would have won their elections without the covert assistance; many were leading in the polls before the U.S. intervention. However, as the CIA’s head of the Directorate of Intelligence, Ray S. Cline once put it, the key to a successful covert regime change is “supplying just the right bit of marginal assistance in the right way at the right time.”
In an election where Clinton won the popular vote by 2.86 million but lost the electoral college, thanks to 77,744 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, did Russia’s covert campaign give “just the right bit of marginal assistance,” thus tipping the scales to Trump by suppressing Democratic turnout?
It’s impossible to say for sure, but the numbers were certainly close. If Clinton had replicated Obama’s 2012 turnout in those three swing states, she would have won them by more than half a million votes. Even if she had been able to convert just 1 percent of these states’ Trump voters, she would have won by a combined 55,000 votes. The Clinton campaign undoubtedly had many strikes against it: high unfavorability ratings, inaccurate polling, FBI Director James B. Comey’s letter and strategic mishaps. Still, Russia’s covert campaign probably compounded these problems. Thanks to WikiLeaks’s slow trickle of hacked emails, the news cycle throughout October was flooded with embarrassing anti-Clinton stories, preventing her from building momentum after the debates.
4. Regime changes rarely work out as the intervening states expect.
A Trump presidency might not be as much of a boon for Russia as hoped or feared. Clinton warned in the third presidential debate that Putin “would rather have a puppet as president of the United States.”
However, as I show in a recent International Security article with Alexander Downes, leaders installed via regime change generally don’t act as puppets for long. Once in power, the new leaders find that acting at their foreign backers’ behest brings significant domestic opposition. They therefore tend to moderate their policies or turn against the foreign backer completely. In fact, there are already reports that the Kremlin is feeling “buyer’s remorse” over Trump’s victory, given his unpredictability.
5. Covert regime change can devastate the target countries
My research found that after a nation’s government was toppled, it was less democratic and more likely to suffer civil war, domestic instability and mass killing. At the very least, citizens lost faith in their governments.
Even if Russia didn’t make the difference in electing Trump, it successfully undermined confidence in U.S. political institutions and news media.
As historian Timothy Snyder pointed out in September, “If democratic procedures start to seem shambolic, then democratic ideas will seem questionable as well. And so America would become more like Russia, which is the general idea. If Mr. Trump wins, Russia wins. But if Mr. Trump loses and people doubt the outcome, Russia also wins.”
6. The best antidote to subterfuge is transparency.
States intervene covertly so that they don’t have to be held accountable for their actions. Amid reports that Russian hackers have been emboldened by the success of the DNC hack, exposing Moscow’s hand is the first step toward deterring future attacks against the United States and upcoming elections in Germany, France and the Netherlands. It may also be the best way to dispel disinformation and restore faith in U.S. democratic institutions at a time when 55 percent of Americans say they are troubled by Russian interference into the election,The United States is beginning this effort. Congress has announced bipartisan investigations and Obama ordered a comprehensive report on covert foreign interference into U.S. presidential elections going back to the 2008 election.
Given how serious these allegations are, and especially considering that President-elect Trump rejects the intelligence community’s consensus conclusion, releasing these reports publicly before the inauguration could help set U.S. democracy right.
Lindsey A. O’Rourke is an assistant professor of international politics at Boston College.
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