“You’re just projecting.” That’s a familiar phrase in domestic quarrels. Yet in their relationships with one another, governments can also do a fair bit of projecting. And in today’s foreign-policy climate, characterized by trolling as much as it is also defined by past grudges, Russian President Vladimir Putin stands out as a true king of projection.
As the U.S. intelligence community recently reported, Russia attempted to “denigrate” Joe Biden during last year’s election and undermine confidence in the United States’ democratic institutions. To be sure, there’s a geopolitical element to all this. But there’s also a psychological one in a country that underwent one of the greatest national humiliations of the 20th century.
