OPINION:
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Earlier this month, the Department of Justice indicted two employees of the Russian propaganda network RT on charges of money laundering and violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act in a scheme to pay conservative influencers to promote pro-Russia talking points.
The influence of Russian propaganda in conservative circles is real. According to polling from my organization, the Ukraine Freedom Project, about one-third of Republican primary voters believe at least one of several narratives that are demonstrably false and originated in Russia.
For example, 16% of GOP primary voters believe that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bought two yachts for $75 million. That number jumps to 39% among Joe Rogan viewers and 32% among Candace Owens viewers.
The owners of the yachts in question point out they were never sold. The story originated on the website of a Florida police officer who moved to Russia in 2016.
While almost all the media coverage of the indictment focused on Russia’s efforts to influence the 2024 election, little attention has been paid to the massive Russian propaganda victory revealed by DOJ documents that has impeded American support of Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
Page 21 of the DOJ affidavit cites notes from an April 16, 2022, strategy meeting run by Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, known as his right-hand man and the architect of the Russian dictator’s propaganda efforts.
In this meeting, six weeks after the beginning of the war, Mr. Kiriyenko laid the groundwork for the Kremlin’s propaganda strategy, listing the number one priority “to be effective” as creating a “nuclear psychosis.”
And effective he has been.
The Biden administration has been obsessed with “managing escalation” since the beginning of the war, which has slowed Ukraine’s war effort and led to the preventable deaths of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
Just a few months after the launch of the Kremlin nuclear psychosis propaganda campaign, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the administration’s “key goal is to ensure we do not end up in a circumstance where we’re headed down the road toward a third world war.”
President Biden himself said in October 2022 regarding Mr. Putin: “I spent a fair amount of time with him. He is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical and nuclear weapons.”
The National Institutes of Health defines psychosis as a condition in which a person “may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.”
It’s worth noting that the U.S. has sent Patriot missiles, Abrams tanks, missile and artillery systems, F-16 fighter aircraft and billions of dollars’ worth of other weapons, some of which were driven across the Russian border into Kursk.
None of this has triggered World War III.
The Biden administration’s fear-forward foreign policy has led to a directive banning Ukraine from using U.S. missiles on Russian soil except in very limited circumstances. With 16 airbases and scores of military targets within the 180-mile range of U.S. weapons, the Russians have a vast area from which they can launch attacks that Mr. Biden defends for them by fiat.
The Russians are using safe airspace to launch “glide bombs,” a devastating 3.3-ton munition modified with wings that allow it to glide as much as 42 miles from where it was launched. The launching aircraft stays protected behind Mr. Biden’s curtain. Russia is using more than 100 of them a day. The targets tend to be supermarkets and shopping centers.
In the few months they have been used, glide bombs have killed hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children.
The Biden administration could drastically curtail these civilian deaths by allowing Ukraine to attack the airbases inside Russia, launching these strikes using U.S. missiles.
But the nuclear psychosis continues to grip the administration.
In August, when asked about easing the restrictions, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh responded: “And of course, we’re worried about escalation. So just because Russia hasn’t responded to something doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t in the future.”
White House national security communications adviser John Kirby doubled down a week later, saying, “We’ve been watching escalation risks since the beginning of this conflict, and that ain’t gonna change.”
Russian bombing of Ukrainian civilians ain’t gonna change either — not without a little courage.
While many mourn the loss of President Ronald Reagan’s mantle in the Republican Party, perhaps it’s time to recall the greatest Democratic wartime president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
• Steven Moore is a former House Republican chief of staff who has been in Ukraine since the fifth day of the war. He has testified before the U.S. Helsinki Commission about the influence of Russian propaganda.
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