Liam Taylor - Russia Influencing the Presidential Election

Summary: Last Friday, the Obama administration made a statement accusing Russia of the hacking of emails dealing with the dreaded upcoming election, in order to tamper with the process. Apparently, this is the first time the United States has officially come out and formally accused Russia of hacking, although there have been many incidents where this has supposedly happened before. Russian officials denied the accusation stating that it was crazy, and how Putin's websites and emails are hacked and attacked everyday by people in the U.S., but they never "blame the White House every time this happens." The situation escalated even higher when John Kerry basically said military actions taken by Russians should be investigated as "war crimes."

Analysis: This article was written last Friday, October 7 by CNN's Evan Perez and Theodore Schleifer. They seem to be unbiased, and just stating the facts. However, I think they wrote this to inform us citizens about what is going on between the U.S. and Russia, and to show how our relationship is quickly deteriorating. I think this article is quite important because right now, everyone is so focused on the debate, and not only it is affecting us, but it's also affecting our relationships with other countries of the world. If Russia becomes our enemy rather than our ally, that's one less person to help us if we get involved in a major war. Also, Russia is a massive country that has a lot of influence on the world, so if they despise us, that can't be very good for the U.S. either.

Synthesis: So, reading this, I was reminded of the most recent chapter I read and the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine essentially said that any external powers that intervened with America's political system were looked upon as hostile. This was partly because of countries like Russia trying to intervene with the Latin American states and colonies back in the early 19th century. In this current situation, according to the Obama administration, Russia is intervening with our politics. Although, we don't exactly know how they are interfering because the statements in the emails are not going to be revealed, but this issue just proves that people, no matter what, will always try to get into others peoples business, and that doctrines like Monroe's Doctrine truly do live on forever, especially if the people agree stand by it.

 http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/07/politics/us-blames-russia-for-targeting-election-systems/index.html