Committee: CRISIS

Agenda: Russia's intervention in democratic electoral events

I. Introduction

Elections are one of the most important fundamentals among constituents of liberal democracy. Since

it is impossible for everyone to participate directly in domestic politics these days, modern democracies have

implemented the system of representative democracy, where group of elected officials bear burdens of

representing public opinion and carrying out daily tasks. Thus, election is one of the most powerful channels

turning public opinion into actual political outcomes. However, this strict procedure tends to fail to keep its pure

reflection of public opinion nowadays, due to numbers of factors including foreign interference in the process.

Recently, Russian interference in 2016 American presidential election has been revealed to be true with several

other scandals arising.

This is a critical tipping point in world history.

In the United Kingdom, a parliamentary committee has

reported that it cannot “rule out” the possibility that

“Russian interference” caused a voter-registration site to

crash ahead of Britain’s referendum on EU membership.

Also in February, Macron’s campaign reported

thousands of attempted hacks of its computer servers and

accused Russian state media outlets of spreading

slanders about Macron. The Russian election intervention to damage Hillary Clinton and lift Donald Trump was

alerted by the intelligence agencies in United States.

However, these are just few examples of these circumstances. There had been more and by the looks

of it, there will be more. Using private e-mails pilfered by hackers, an internet reaching out to every home and

social media promotion, Russia is affrighting people in all nations: democracy, a system of government that

promotes every citizen’s right to elect their representatives, will have to endure the pain of retreatment. It is not

just a delusional fear. Seeing the incidents all around the globe, we can now claim that the threat against the

foundation of liberal democracy is official. The world needs offensive and defensive measures for this crisis.

II. Background Information on Key Agreements

A. United Nations Charter

Looking into Chapter 1, Article 2, Paragraph 7 of the UN Charter, we can see how the UN and the

international community is clear about foreign intervention into the domestic affairs of different states.

“Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters

which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such

matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of

enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.” - Chapter II

In other words, the international community is firm in its stance that nothing in UN’s Charter

authorizes its signatories to interfere with other states’ domestic jurisdiction. The only exception would be

Chapter VII, which allows the member nations to intervene against “the existence of any threat to the peace,

breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” - Chapter VII

B. General Assembly Resolution

Taking a look at the UN General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX) of 21 December 1965 -

“Declaration of the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their

Independence and Sovereignty”, we can observe and understand how the UN General Assembly has expanded

the general principle/norm of not intervening in other states’ domestic jurisdiction. Some crucial parts from the

Resolution that express the consensus of non-intervention: “No State has the right to intervene, directly or

indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any State”, “Every State has an

inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems, without interference in any form

by another State”, “All States shall respect the right of self-determination and independence of peoples and

nations, to be freely expressed without any foreign pressure”

III. CASES

A. Russian interference in 2016 American presidential election

Rumors about the relationship between

Russia and Donald Trump had widely spread

among presidential election campaign in 2016.

This scandal, which later revealed that most part

of it was true, accompanied many issues with

mass ripple effect among both American politics

and public opinion. When rumors started to

spread all over the state, it hurt Hillary Clinton’s

campaign regardless of their trustworthiness.

Some of the rumors became the starting point of massive chain reaction. These were soon revealed by polls;

Clinton’s favorable rating approximately dropped by 8%.

In October 2016, the US government publicized their "confidence" that Russian government

organized the hacking of the DNC—Democratic National Committee—and number of Democratic Party’s

subordinate organizations. Main target of the hacking were private emails; thus causing the public release of

thousands of emails and private conversations – most of them about the damaging revelations of Hillary Clinton

and the Democratic Party. However, intelligence agencies couldn’t define the purpose of the hacking at the

beginning, whether it is only to hurt Clinton or if there are any further intentions of helping Donald Trump’s

campaign. Through the public’s eye, it was kind of obvious that the attempts to hurt Clinton were due to her

responsibility for recent changes in relations between US and Russia. One of the estimations insisted that Putin

organized hackers in order to undermine the US election and create chaos, to somewhat retaliate against Clinton.

Putin is known to believe that Clinton had financially supported protests which took place in 2011~2012 which

resisted against Putin’s decision to become president for the third time. Some Russian media even mentioned

Clinton as warmonger.

After two months, the CIA reported to US senate that it was actually true that the intention of the

hacking was to help Donald Trump. Their announcement was based on its recent complete analysis, which

revealed that Russian hackers have also breached Republican individuals, House members, and organizations

beforehand the election. It was also evident enough that number of entities which were financing “troll farms”

that mainly spread fake news about Clinton, were related to the Russian government. Agencies found strong

evidence proving solid relationships between individuals and Russian government who had been on intelligence

agencies’ radar before. However, RNC—Republican National Committee—officials have never admitted their

systems hacked, rather implying that some staffs’ emails were stolen.

Far away abroad, in Moscow where massive hacking took place, Putin seemed quite pleasant with the

outcome. According to US intelligence agency, Moscow held several basecamps for group of campaigns,

formed to interfere with the American election. In addition, US intelligence agency announced that many

campaigns had been on their mission for months. According to Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman of Kremlin,

Russia had been linked to several similar interference issues with the Netherlands, Estonia, Germany, Britain

and other nations with some successes. These kinds of operations were able to be publicized since some Russian

officials felt guilty about series of operations. One of them who felt guilty, Sergi Ivanov--Kremlin’s chief staff—

felt uncomfortable watching handful amount of attempts to interfere in a failed coup attempt in Turkey. After

Moscow’s camps got an access to bunch of emails from the DNC, they reformed and fragmented those sources

into small pieces. After collecting and reforming umpteen emails and information, they put them on the internet

through participants in the propaganda effort. Intentionally reformed emails and information led to somewhat

destructive misinterpretations of the original documents. For instance, WikiLeaks released a number of reformed

emails before the day of the Democratic convention. Those emails were from around May 2016, and distorted

forms of them appeared as if the DNC was solely pulling for Clinton. In this case, the date of many online

postings was removed, so readers would have no idea unless they searched for the original document.

Otherwise, little proportion of the whole document became controversial among the public.

US intelligence agencies stated

that this kind of attempt to harm certain

politicians is surprisingly, not very rare.

According to US intelligence officials,

Russian hackers continuously tried to breach

into major US institutions’ network such as

the White house, even before this year’s

election. They mainly used phishing emails

to trap someone to click and disarm firewalls

of the network inside the server. Actually,

their method worked; John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign clicked the phishing mail.

Important thing is that it was not an intended incident. He first knew that certain email was absurd, and

requested a technician to check whether it is safe to open or not. The technician however, accidentally approved

that the email is fine, thus allowing hackers to access more than 60,000 of Podesta’s emails. Through that route,

the hackers also breached the Democratic National Committee (DNC), looking through every document in the

network. The leak of classified information flowed to the WikiLeaks website, which published them before the

US election. It caused massive harm to Clinton’s campaign, even changing currents of public support amid the

race. Security experts say that two major Russian-related groups were organizing the hacks; one from Russian

spying agency FSB, and the other from Russian military intelligence.

Reacting to flooding investigation results and announcements at that moment, Donald Trump himself

and his campaign strongly denied number of intelligence assessments and additionally dismissed plenty of

concerns and speculations about Russian interference in the election. Trump’s transition team said "These are

the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," in a statement, an hour after

Washington Post reported CIA’s latest announcement about Russian connection within the 2016 election. Even

Trump himself used the word “ridiculous,” reacting to a lot of suspicions and speculations. He also said, "I think

Figure 1 (Left; John Podesta, Right; Hillary Clinton)

it's just another excuse. I don't believe it. I don't know why and I think it's just -- you know, they talked about all

sorts of things. Every week it's another excuse...No, I don't believe that at all." He also added, "[t]hey have no

idea if it's Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean they have no

idea." Actually, Trump’s strong denial had no factual support. He couldn’t rebut to CIA announcements; he just

repeatedly insisted that a series of events are political effort full of lies and manipulations with intention to

undermine his victory in 2016 election.

Before Donald Trump replaced Barack Obama in

the White House, Obama expressed grave concerns about the

situation. In the interview with NPR—National Public Radio

—he said "I think there is no doubt that when any foreign

government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that

we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our

own choosing." It seemed that he even considered multiple

options to take direct action toward Russia; he once said Putin

is "well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it." Some expected he would

activate new sanctions against Russia and order Russian diplomats to leave the country immediately. According

to anonymous US official, many options were in careful determination because "right now it's like the old cold

cyber war and the last thing you want to do is turn it into a hot shooting war." In the last moment before Obama

got replaced by Trump, Obama ordered his team for a thorough investigation about Russian action.

B. Russian interference in 2017 French presidential election

Two days before the French election 2017, nine gigabytes of emails of the center- left candidate,

Emmanuel Macron were leaked.

Michael Rogers, director of the National

Security Agency (NSA), confirmed that there was some

electoral interference on Moscow. “If you take a look at

the French election … we had become aware of

Russian activity.” His statement clarifies Russia’s

involvement in hacking operations aimed at influencing

France’s democracy. Macron campaign appeared to be

a target of the Russian hacker group Fancy Bear, also

known as Pawn Storm or APT 28.

The Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based multinational security software company, has also spoke out that

there were some failed efforts to hack the look-alike websites created to trick the Russia. Four Macron-themed

fake domains were under the attempts of hacking and those efforts were detected to be done by the

aforementioned Russian hacker group, APT 28. Even before the email leakage crisis, the Macron campaign had

some complains about the attempts of attack and blamed Russia for its possible suspect. After all, the En

Marche, the center-left political party of France created by Emmanuel Macron, confirmed that hackers had

compromised it in some extent. At the same time, they warned that there were numerous false documents

fabricated to spark scandals.

The Macron campaign compared the hacking

directly to the hacker targeting of Clinton campaign. He

said “Intervening in the last hour of an official campaign,

this operation clearly seeks to destabilize democracy.” In

the case of the United States, the justice itself could have

been the reason behind the hacking. However, from forty

eight hours ahead of the election, the French law

prohibits the responses to any scandals either truth or

untruth. Accordingly, the action seems to be intended to reduce the possibility of official feedback. Le Pen's

campaign cannot legally comment on the leak.

After the crisis, Jean-Marie Le Pen and the

entire far right party of France has been criticized for

being close to Russia. Her party received large amounts

loans from Russia. Adding to that point, her visit to the

Kremlin was welcomed immoderately by the Russian

government. She has been acting suspicious as if she

had some underground transaction with the Russian

government. She said “I would envisage lifting the

sanctions quite quickly,” which implies existent of relationship between her and Russian government.

C. Russian intervention in electoral events of United Kingdom

Foreign governments such as Russia and China may have been involved collapse of EU referendum

voter registration site which could have possibly led to the creation of tens of thousands of disenfranchised

people. Thus, Ministers were forced to extend the deadline to register to vote in the EU referendum. At the time,

the government said it was the result of an unprecedented spike in demand, with more than 500,000 people

trying to register on the final day. However, the report by the Commons public administration and constitutional

affairs committee (PACAC) which was published a few days later said the crush had indications of being a

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), a cyber-attack where the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network

resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected

to the Internet.

“The crash had indications of being a DDoS ‘attack’.

We understand that this is very common and easy to do

with botnets... The key indicants are timing and relative volume rate.”

Russia has been involved in the United States and French presidential elections using cyber-attacks, being the

prime suspect of the crash of the registration site. Whatsoever, the United Kingdom has chosen to leave the

European Union (EU) and the crisis in the Britain still has some uncertainty. This is a quote of the Cabinet

Office spokesperson; “We have been very clear about the cause of the website outage in June 2016. It was due

to a spike in users just before the registration deadline. There is no evidence to suggest malign intervention.”

After the official interview of the spokesperson, the British Labor Party politician, Ben Bradshow claimed that

the citizens’ right to know has been invaded regarding the Russian interference of the voting procedure. He has

spoken out in the interview with Business Insider that “[o]ur govnerment clearly knows more than they’re

letting on and I think it’s slightly suspicious that they’re not being more open about it.” It is an ongoing debate

whether Kremlin interference actually took place in the United Kingdom or not, but Russia was the greatest

winner of Brexit after all. From the Brexit, Russia has gained wealth enough to gain suspicion.

The prior events had some strong evidences regarding the interference of Russia, whereas the incident

that took place in United Kingdom show relatively small amount of certainty. This can possibly mean two

things: the decline in reputation of the Russian government or the decline of government integrity in United

Kingdom.

Unlike the unceasing attempts of hack in the United States from the state election in Arizona and

Illinois to the entire United States’ presidential election, thankfully there were no signs of information leakage in

the presidential election that will take place in June. The United Kingdoms’ election is not over yet and the

the Defense Secretary of the United Kingdom, Michael Fallon warned that the nation must be sensitive of any

attempts by Russia to influence the election in June.

IV. PAST ACTIONS

Under the basic stance of United Nations written down in the United Nations Charter, the Russian

intervention itself is definitely a notable crisis. According to the General Assembly’s aforementioned resolution,

it emphasized that it is very unjust for the foreign forces to make the judgments regarding the choice of a

political, economic, social and cultural system, and the formulation of foreign policy since it invades the

principal of State sovereignty. Even if we limit the events to the field of elections, there were a lot of cases of

interventions. Nations such as Bolivia (2002), Chile (1964-1970), Georgia (2003), Italia (1954), Korea (1948),

Ukraine (2004), and United States (1968-2016) have suffered from the infringement of their right to choose

freely and thus went through the judgment of international court or many other counter measures. To reflect

more to the Russian crisis, there is an example of Nicaraguan elections. In 1986, the United Nations was sued by

Nicaragua for its interference without armed forces. Dealing with the crisis in Nicaragua, the international court

reaffirmed that interference is “to intervene, directly or indirectly, with or without armed force, in support of the

internal opposition within a State.” Still, due to military, economic, political, social pressures, there are many

cases that failed to gain international attention and accordingly, the assailants of such crisis were not punished

with in any measures. The Russia is now the definite suspect of the electoral intervention and every nation are

worried for the further intervention of Russia as well as the possible emergence of similar cases. With resolution

against the Russian interventions in electoral events, the international society should highlight the importance of

keeping the nations’ own color: having the right to decide their representatives.

V. CONCLUSION

Fundamental rule of democracy is that its citizens have their own right to elect their officials of their

favor. Global society should be seriously warned if any kind of outer force tries to influence and degrade

fundamentals of modern democracy. Russian example of interference shows the possibility of public opinion

manipulation, and also its consequences. International society should cooperate to stall these kinds of efforts and

to protect pure liberal democracy.

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