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Romanian Supreme Court Cancels Election, Overthrows Results of First Round
Recently, unknown dark horse anti-NATO candidate Călin Georgescu shocked the world by winning a plurality of the vote in the first round of Romania's presidential election. Key to his victory was an intense social media campaign, with a particular emphasis on Tik-Tok.
Romania's Supereme Court has today declared these results null and void. The full opinion setting out their reasoning has yet to be published, but this is almost certainly due to allegations of Russian interference. I have not seen any credible accusations that votes themselves were fraudulently cast, only that Georgescu's campaign recieved improper (illegal?) assistance from Russian media operations. This is IMO the most important outstanding question.
On one hand, allowing countries to subvert foreign elections seems obviously bad [1]. On the other, throwing out election results based on foreign social media posts seems liable to create a valid threat of a denial of service for elections absent something like The Great Firewall (which is itself a potential threat to open society).
I see why both sides would presumably be frustrated by this, but I don't have a real Platonic ideal of an alternative to suggest. Governance, at least good/fair/democratic governance, is hard.
Is there a steelman for simultaneously believing that a) we should have relatively porous borders and lax immigration controls, and b) foreign interference in domestic elections in the form of social media posts is a bad thing? Because surely there are many individuals who have expressed support for both positions.
If the Russians first crossed the southern border illegally and then started trying to drum up support for right wing populism, would that be ok and democratic? Now they're just undocumented residents instead of foreign nationals, right? You could say "no that's still election interference", but then it just seems like you're saying "advocating for the side I don't like is election interference", which is a bad look.
We also don't have any jurisprudence I'm aware of on how rules for "foreign propaganda" mesh with the First Amendment. Could FDR ban publishing Der Stürmer by German sympathizers in 1942? That looks a lot like an act of Congress restricting the press, but honestly you'd have trouble getting me to march in support of the publishers. What about in less-declared conflicts? Did the Soviets ever try to just publish Pravda above-board in America?
Could FDR? yes... Of course he could. The constitution wouldn't matter.
He had the Espionage and Sedition Acts and the Office of Censorship and the public trusted him. Had he told them we were banning publishing Der Stürmer the courts likely would have deferred to him during wartime.
Note that the internment of the Japanese Americans involved:
This wasn't just a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments but an assault on the very concept of equality under the law. The Supreme Court upheld internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944).
And FDR just unilaterally did it. With an Executive order.
Long story short, constitutional rights can be expected to become elastic during wartime.
Pretty much, and this is the reminder to the American audience that many Europeans feel they are in a war context due to the nature (and the justifications) of the Russian war in Ukraine. One can disagree with it, but the European geopolitics is reflecting the sort of balances and compromises that come with significant geopolitical insecurity.
In a way, this is what the birth of a more strategically autonomous, multipolar Europe looks like. The Europeans are following in the footsteps of the American policy transition of the early cold war, when covert actions and interference rose as way to address concerning developments near home and further abroad.
Where are you getting this from? I never heard anyone say this, so while there might be some people believing it, I wouldn't call it "many". In any case canceling elections due to a "war context" without a formal declaration of war seems like shameless authoritarianism.
...from various European diplomatic and government reporting, many of which have been posted in The Motte over the years, as well as personal engagements?
I call it a war-context rather than simply war because while there are no direct European Union/NATO-member involvement in combat operations, it's not exactly hard to find acknowledgements of the contextual perceptions on views of the Ukraine War (explicitly noted as a reopening a war in Europe to change territorial borders) with demands for reshaping the European security order (with pre-war terms that would only be achieved by war), reasonings for why supporting Ukraine is important for more than moral reasons,, the Russian gas cutoff that accompanied (the fulfillment of long warned/disbelieved geopolitical hostage taking and an understood consequence of a war), Russian-associated sabotage efforts (of which there was just a naval vessel standoff in the Baltic), the perceived role and purpose of Russian information activities (to influence election results) and political-ally cultivation in European politics (including support for Russia-amiable leaders like Orban who then go on to develop their own more authoritarian shifts), beliefs that Russia has attempted direct coups of European community members (especially Moldova), the reasons why Trump's NATO non-support threats are so concerning (because the perceived need for NATO has overwritten nearly two decades of increasing NATO skepticism), and various others.
If you do not believe many Europeans view themselves in a major geopolitical conflict with Russia which includes stakes of state and governmental survival, we will have to disagree. If you think that this conflict is unfair to be described as a war-context despite much of it happening in the context of the Ukraine War, I am open to other terms. I would support some varient of 'Cold War,' but the cold war was a war context in many ways, so that would confudle the distinction.
I would still maintain the point that many Europeans do not share an American-centric perspective of Russia as a not-really-significant threat, and view the Ukraine conflict's greater context (as in, the context that led to the Ukraine conflict rather than Ukraine itself specifically) with far greater concern. This greater concern, in turn, drives decision making and value-compromising that would not occur in less concerning geopolitical contexts.
And I am not trying to dissuade you from that perception. Instead, I am trying to make a point that the lack of shame is driven due to the perception of necessity in geopolitical conflict.
'We are afraid of Russia' is not a mere figleaf excuse insincerely held to justify self-interest by people who are not afraid of Russia.
Geopolitical fears, in turn, drive the substitution of value/rule-prioritizing deontological ethics in decision makers with more utilitarian/consequentialist models, particularly due to increasing the dependence on institutions biased towards more consequentialist professional ethics (i.e. military and intelligence services) and partly because the raising of stakes can lead to belief that failure will see the losses of action occur regardless. (i.e. the cold war fear that letting a Communist foothold solidify would lead to a different authoritarian of worse geopolitical effects than your own supported strongman).
What we are seeing by and from the Europeans is sad, but very much consistent with shifts from when stakes are perceived to be low (and thus deontological consistency has lower costs) to a higher-stakes competition perception. We know that the EU leadership elite has a capacity to accept the elections of governments that they strongly dislike- see the Poland PIS and Orban- and we are now seeing differences in behavior that correspond in differences to attribution.
This is a perception difference that creates a gap with many Americans, who do not view the stakes of the Russia conflict as particularly high-stakes outside of nuclear escalation risk, which itself is a reason to de-prioritize the other elements of the conflict. Which, in turn, feeds into European leadership perception on the need to act for themselves, contributing to the cycle.
The consequence of fear-driven actions, however, is that much as it's hard to make someone understand that their paycheck depends on them not understanding, it's hard to find shame in people who believe what they are doing is necessary to avoid worse outcomes. Shame for these sort of things comes later, when the sense of urgency has faded (and often retroactive information consideration makes past dilemmas seem obvious), or from outside, by people who didn't share the context-perception in the first place.
Some Europeans, especially in Eastern Europe, are genuinely concerned by Russia. Others (including many politicians and newspaper writers I read) are blowhards who switch seamlessly between "Ukraine is losing, we must send missiles so they can resist" and "Ukraine is winning, we must send missiles so they can finish the job" depending on the latest reports. The idea that Russia is about to sweep Europe is ridiculous.
Personally, I think there is a pretty sizeable contingent of Europeans whose performative fear of Russia is driven by the usefulness of being able to suppress dissident parties and call local dissent 'Russian misinformation'. It may well be that they have convinced themselves, of course. But in my personal circle (UK) anti-Putin sentiment is driven far more by disgust than fear.
They most certainly do not.
We are now seeing increasingly bald authoritarianism due to their failures to destroy right-wing governments in more subtle fashion - financially and procedurally. Plus the looming threat of populism in their own countries driven by their absolute failure and arrogant incompetence.
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