While the United States has been preoccupied with a midterm election of historic scale, the rest of the world has continued encountering its own problems, including a week of bomb threats and malicious hacking incidents across Europe. The evidence points pretty squarely at Russian actors who are taking advantage of the upcoming meeting of 27 European heads of government and state in Dublin.
■ After threats against aircraft, the malicious actors issued threats against media outlets, particularly in Ireland and the UK. It was serious enough that the normally unarmed Irish police forces brought out the armed response units. Two things become evident in the wake of an incident like this.
■ The first is that any threat sufficiently credible to draw out a serious response creates a whole other series of problems beyond the direct costs of the police reaction. It tests who takes a threat seriously and who does not. It tests what those response plans look like and how effectively they are activated. It tests how much damage can be created through a false alarm and smokes out errors and omissions that can be studied (by both the adversary and the defender). In a sense, the whole thing can behave like an intelligence-gathering operation for the villains.
■ The second thing that should be evident is that it’s idiotic for anyone to cling to the dual notions that America should care only for itself and that it can do so best by bullying, steamrolling, or ignoring its allies. Coordination, mutual trust, and teamwork are how sensible parties work with other people they respect.
■ It clouds the environment for distinguishing friend from foe if friends adopt foe-like behavior. The world is complicated and hostile enough as it is. The future will be improved only by those who decide to be constructive teammates about it, no matter how powerful they are.