atlantic voices vol 5, no. 07 (july 2015)
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Information WarfareTRANSCRIPT
ATLANTIC TREATY ASSOCIATION
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 1
- Flora Pidoux
Information warfare is not a new
concept as the recourse to propaganda and
misinformation is a frequent tool to
reinforce one’s camp and counteract the
potential impact of the opponent.
Propaganda is used to bring individuals
together around a common cause, to
reinforce the role of a leader, a political
movement or a cause, and/or to vilify an
enemy who presents an opposite model and
tries to impose it. These methods were
widely used during the Cold War when the
East and the West were trying to contain
one another while expanding their models
to the rest of the world.
Today, those methods are still common
practice as state-owned media, censorship,
counter-propaganda and the dissemination
of false information are still widely used,
such as in the case of the Ukraine crisis.
Social media and new technologies are also
playing a crucial role in spreading the word
about ISIS’s fight, propaganda that the West
is finding difficult to counteract.
This issue focuses on these two cases in
an effort to discuss the implications of
information warfare for the security of the
Euro-Atlantic region and the world at large.
Information Warfare
Volume 5 - Issue 7 July 2015
Contents:
Confronting Insurgent Propaganda
Mr. Quint Hoekstra analyzes the use of propaganda by insurgents to support
their efforts to change the society they live in. Building on examples from the
past, the article applies the concepts of propaganda and information warfare to
the case of the Islamic State and its insurgency propaganda.
Battles In The Information Space: Exploring Russia’s Hybrid Strategy During The Ukraine Conflict
Ms. Jenny Yang, through the analysis of the definition of information warfare
and key policies in Russia, sheds light on the Russian conception of information
warfare, exploring how Russia’s focus on information has evolved and intensi-
fied over time, as illustrated in the Ukraine crisis.
Media as means to conduct information warfare
(Photo: Globalresearch.ca)
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 2
By Quint Hoekstra
T he Islamic State’s propaganda is
omnipresent. In the newspapers, images
are printed of the recorded beheadings of
Western aid workers in Syria. On television,
documentaries are abound about young people moving
to the Caliphate. And on the internet, videos of the
destruction of Iraqi historic sites have gone viral. The
Islamic State, despite being several time zones away
from Western media consumers, has managed to
deeply penetrate Western media outlets with their
message. It is a message of death and destruction, but it
is also one that sells. Over the past year, thousands of
Western citizens have travelled to the Caliphate with
the aim to join the Islamic State’s army.
The difference between the Islamic State’s media
strategy and that of the United States-led mission to
counter the Islamic fundamentalists, Operation
Inherent Resolve, is worrying. Since September 2014,
this coalition of over 60 states and organisations has
fought against the Islamic State insurgents. Yet to this
day, its media visibility remains low. Bombing sorties
are flown out of the public eye, with little information
reaching mainstream media. NATO member states are
therefore currently losing their propaganda war against
the Islamic State. This article investigates how
insurgents have adapted to changes in the media
environment and asks why NATO members have so far
been unable to adopt an equally effective propaganda
strategy. It concludes with several recommendations
on how to proceed.
Defining Propaganda
War, Clausewitz said, is an ever-changing
phenomenon, and the protagonist who best adapts to
changes in the environment is the more likely one to win.
Today’s wars, such as those currently fought in Ukraine
and Iraq, are all about information and propaganda. Of
course, guns still fire and bombs still explode, but these
wars are less of a kinetic affair than those of the past. The
rising importance of the media has meant that conflicts are
now just as much decided on the battlefield as they are in
the information sphere. In this new environment, success
depends in large part on the effectiveness of the
protagonist’s propaganda strategy.
Propaganda can be understood as acts of
communication by a government or political organisation
that has the specific intent to change the target audience’s
political behaviour. Propaganda distribution may take any
form; oral (e.g. radio), written (e.g. leaflets), visual (e.g.
television), or cyber (e.g. Facebook). An often forgotten
form is propaganda of the deed. Here, the belligerent
commits an act, such as a bombing, to convey a specific
political message to a wider audience. A case in point is
the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 on the streets of London,
an act carried out to demonstrate the two perpetrators’
objection to the British military’s activities in the Middle
East.
While propaganda as a concept gained notoriety in the
1940s in the hands of Nazi-Germany and the Soviet
Union, its practice, however, is legitimate both during
war- and peacetime, and has been common before and
after the Second World War. Propaganda messages can be
directed for a limited goal, such as joining a street protest
or a labour strike, or it can be part of a larger strategy to
achieve broader political outcomes. In the latter situation,
propaganda serves as a means to establish a coherent and
compelling narrative about a nation or a cause. The
Scottish Nationalist Party’s strategy during the Scottish
Confronting Insurgent Propaganda
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 3
independence referendum of 2014 is a good example. Here,
political messages were extensively used to foster the idea of
a free and prosperous Scotland.
Evolution of Insurgency Propaganda
Insurgents are no stranger to propaganda. Their practice
of it can be traced at least as far back as 1892, when an
American citizen called Alexander Berkman used a
propaganda of the deed approach in an attempt to instigate an
anarchist revolution. By assassinating the chairman of the
Carnegie Steel Company, Henry Frick, Berkman hoped to
free the population from the ‘parasites in carriages riding on
our backs, and sucking the blood of the workers’. Frick,
however, survived the attack while Berkman was convicted
to 21 years in prison.
During the 20th century, insurgents would have much
greater success with propaganda tactics. It started with Mao
Tse-Tung, who used it to help bring
about a communist revolution in
China. His model differed from
Berkman’s in that he waged a
prolonged, rather than short,
campaign. A common Maoist tactic
was to send one or two insurgents to
a remote village with the sole aim of
slowly winning over the local
population. In the 1960s,
Communist revolutionaries tried to replicate Mao’s success
in Latin America. Here revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro
and Ernesto Guevara believed that there was a shortcut to
winning popular support. They adopted a strategy that
became known as focoism, in which populations would be
won over simply by initiating attacks against the government.
These attacks provoked the government into overly
repressive acts, which then drove the people into the
insurgent’s arms. While this tactic proved successful in
Cuba, it failed elsewhere.
A decade later the Palestinian Liberation Organisation
(PLO) realised that new technologies could be used to
create novel forms of propaganda. The organisation
started with hijacking airlines in order to raise money
and free fellow insurgents from prison. Realising the
powerful effect of television, they then switched to an
even more dramatic type of tactic by holding eleven
Israeli athletes hostage during the 1972 Munich
Olympics. Operationally, the mission was a big failure;
all hostages and three of the terrorists were killed.
However, the PLO’s propaganda of the deed tactic was
successful in raising global awareness for the Palestinian
cause.
Creative forms of insurgent propaganda therefore
proved to be highly effective. This led the Provisional
Irish Republican Army (PIRA) to try their own bold
strategy in 1981. Complaining about prison conditions,
inmates of this Northern Irish nationalist insurgency
decided to go on hunger strike.
The most famous of them was
Bobby Sands, who got elected
as Member of Parliament
during his strike but succumbed
to his hunger soon after. Just
like the PLO’s act, this tactic
generated great international
attention, especially in the
United States, where the PIRA
enjoyed large support amongst expatriates.
Modern Tactics
In the 21st century, insurgent propaganda has again
taken on a new form. The most infamous of these
groups is Al-Qaeda, who spread its message in the 1990s
around the Muslim world via sermons delivered on
cassette tapes and later CDs to any ear willing to listen.
But in order to increase international attention and
followers, the Islamic extremist group soon resorted to
spreading terror. First attacking American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, they then bombed the USS
Propaganda poster calling for the Communist Revolution
in China (Image: Revolution1314)
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 4
Cole in 2000 and then carried out the 9/11 attacks.
While these suicide attacks may appear irrational,
they are not. As Robert Pape of the University of
Chicago points out, suicide attacks are effective in
gaining publicity, signalling credibility, and raising the
costs of resistance for the adversary. Moreover, the
9/11 attacks successfully provoked the United States
and their allies into an expensive, deadly and prolonged
ground war in Afghanistan and contributed to its ill-
fated decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Since then, the rise of the Islamic State has been a
real game changer in insurgent propaganda. The Islamic
States follows an innovative model, which relies on
social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to
communicate with key sympathisers elsewhere. These
actors, known as re-disseminators, then redistribute
information to others. This way, insurgents make clever
use of new information technology to influence world
opinion, mobilise supporters, and eventually destabilise
governments. Not only do they use the internet as a tool
for communication, they also use it to bypass state
censors, thus allowing insurgents to reach their wider
target audience directly.
The Islamic State’s recorded beheadings, for
example, now instantly reaches people’s smartphones
around the globe. To this end, the insurgents have even
created a specific media department called Al-Hayat.
This department produces the glossy internet magazine
Dabiq and leads the insurgents’ social media campaign
by uploading videos about life in the so-called Caliphate.
As Neville Bolt of King’s College London says, by
creating powerful media events, insurgents are currently
better able to deliver their narrative than their (state)
adversaries. Yet while virtual efforts are a crucial
element in contemporary warfare, these insurgents do
acknowledge that the physical battle remains important.
This is also reflected in the Islamic State’s two separate
lines of effort; it runs a military campaign aimed at
winning the battle on the ground and a separate
propaganda campaign aimed at winning the battle in
cyberspace. It is precisely this combination of the virtual
and the physical that has been the recipe for its recent
success.
The above shows that over the past century and a half,
insurgent propaganda has evolved continuously. Starting
with simple acts of propaganda of the deed, insurgents
then developed more sophisticated forms of propaganda
before adopting new technologies, such as television and
later the internet, to develop powerful ways to spread
their message.
NATO’s Efforts
NATO member states, by contrast, have made no
such progress. While the government use of propaganda
developed quickly at the start of the 20th century, the
horrors of Nazi propaganda have effectively frozen this
evolution. The Second World War left Western citizens
highly sceptical about the government use of propaganda.
Deeming it too Orwellian, the United States government
was even long forbidden to distribute government-made
news to its own citizens. Yet such anti-propaganda laws
have also obstructed governmental efforts to develop the
powerful narratives that are necessary to defeat an
insurgency. These stories come in two forms:
counternarratives and alternative narratives.
Counternarratives are stories aimed to discredit the
information the adversary is spreading. Islamic
extremists, for example, have claimed that the West aims
to subjugate Muslims and convert them to Christianity.
This narrative can be countered by spreading information
that disproves this, such as evidence that Western forces
stationed in the Middle East have increased the capacity
for local governments to govern themselves, and have
helped fund new mosques.
Discrediting the Islamic extremist narrative is,
however, fraught with difficulties. David Betz of King’s
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 5
College London is right when he says that the West does not
have the necessary credibility to mingle in discussions about
the various interpretations of Islamic theology. What
Western governments could do, however, is build an
alternative narrative. In this scenario, the protagonist
presents a different scenario to rival that of the insurgency.
NATO member states are well positioned to engage with
this option; they have an excellent track record when it
comes to using capitalism to generate widespread
prosperity, using liberalism and democracy to create
harmonious societies and using the rule of law to keep
governments honest.
Yet to this day, NATO member states still struggle to
get their message across. In a study on the contribution of
NATO member states to the International Security
Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), Beatrice de Gaaf
(Utrecht University), George Dimitriu (Dutch Defence
Academy) and Jens Ringsmose (Syddansk University), find
that Western governments struggle to convince even their
own domestic audiences about the wars they fight, let alone
develop narratives targeting the civilian population of a
country they are currently operating in.
Over the last two decades, this problem has been
further exacerbated by the profound changes that have taken
place in the global media landscape. Traditional news
outlets, such as CNN and the New York Times, have lost
their once all-powerful position. New actors, such as social,
digital and citizen media, have become increasingly popular.
These organisations are unique in that they distribute news
recorded by citizens on their mobile telephones. Former
BBC World presenter Nik Gowing argues this transition has
been particularly difficult for those organisations who use
traditional, hierarchical organisational structures. With the
democratisation of hand-held digital technology, Gowing
argues that information power has shifted from large
organisations, such as governments, to individuals. Now,
anybody who witnesses a major newsworthy event can
record it with their telephone and reach a global audience.
This can quickly and easily lead to a scandal that
undermines a government’s official narrative. Just one
example is the leaked ‘trophy photos’ of Lynndie England
and Charles Graner that recorded the torture practices in
the Abu Ghraib prison and deeply undermined NATO’s
war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most Western militaries have not yet adapted to the
new media environment. Instead of viewing the use of
propaganda and information warfare in general as a core
component of contemporary war, they continue to
perceive it as a secondary and supportive aspect of their
campaign. And instead of increasing the release of
positive information about their operations, they have
become even more tight-lipped. Embracing the Cold
War-era mantra that every bit of information can be
turned into a weapon, they believe that the less
information is released to the public, the smoother an
operation is likely to perform. Most states participating in
the bombing campaign against the Islamic State therefore
give little detailed information about the number of
sorties flown and the number and type of targets hit.
How NATO Members Should Respond
To defeat current-day insurgents like the Islamic
State, Western militaries need to overhaul their attitude
toward information warfare and propaganda. The
opening of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre
in Latvia in 2014 is a good start. Yet so far it has only
publically released two documents. More is therefore
needed. Its focus is also set too narrowly on Russia. The
current operations against the Islamic State may not be an
official NATO mission, but NATO members are strongly
involved. The Latvian centre of excellence should
therefore also focus on events in the Middle East.
But most importantly, NATO member states must
acknowledge the effects of the new media environment in
which they operate. The application of kinetic power
alone will be an insufficient tool to win today’s wars.
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 6
Governments must therefore embrace, not fear,
information sharing. It is often better to respond
quickly with an imperfect answer than it is to respond
late with a perfect reply.
Western strategists must also learn from the field of
marketing on how they can better persuade adversary
audiences without the recourse to violent means. For
inspiration they could turn to a small Syrian activist
group called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. These
activists go to great lengths and personal risk to post
short videos on the internet about what life is really like
in the Caliphate. By exposing the atrocities committed
by the Islamic State they offer a powerful
counternarrative.
NATO members can also do much more to exploit
their own intuitively appealing narrative. What the
alliance offers is a safe, secure, and prosperous society
that protects human rights. The Jihadist story, by
contrast, is intuitively much less appealing. It centres
on death, murder, strict living rules and human rights
violations. So far, the Islamic extremists have been able
to sell their message to thousands of people by virtue of
their superior packaging. NATO should respond by
developing their own digital material that makes better
use of the advantages of the West’s narrative. This
information, which should clearly be branded as a
NATO product, should then be disseminated online
through intermediaries.
The above is not meant to suggest that today’s wars
can be fought with words alone. Soft power will not
suffice; weapons will still be necessary. But the
relentless bombing of the claimed Caliphate’s territory
will be of no avail if global audiences are not captivated
by the coalition’s superior narrative. Increasing its story
-telling capabilities is a crucial step for NATO members
to win today’s conflicts.
Quint Hoekstra is currently studying for a Master
degree in Conflict, Security and Development at the
Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He
holds a bachelor degree (with distinction) in Political
Science with a specialisation in International Relations and
Organisations from Leiden University. In 2013 he
completed a research internship at the Royal Netherlands
Navy.
Berkman, Alexander. 1912. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association.
Betz, David. 2008. “The Virtual Dimension of contemporary insurgency and counterinsurgency.” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19(4): 510-540.
Bolt, Neville. 2012. The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries. London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
Carter, Joseph A., Shiraz Maher and Peter R. Neumann. 2014. #Greenbirds: Measuring Importance in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks. London: The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.
De Graaf, Beatrice, George Dimitriu and Jens Ringsmose. 2015. Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War: Winning domestic support for the Afghan War. London: Routledge.
Gowing Nick. 2009. ‘Skyful of Lies’ and Black Swans: The New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Hoffman, Bruce. 2006. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hudon, John. 2013. Foreign Policy. http://foreignpolicy.com/ 2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ (June 9, 2015). July 13.
Mackinlay, John. 2009. The Insurgent Archipelago: From Mao to Bin Laden. New York: Columbia University Press.
Pape, Robert A. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97(3): 1-19.
Shy, John and Thomas W. Collier. 1986. “Revolutionary War.” In Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 815-862.
Sly, Liz. 2015. The Washington Post. “Inside an Undercover Network Trying to Expose Islamic State’s Atrocities.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-state-learned-to-exploit-the-internet-activists-are-turning-the-tables/2015/06/09/8d3e490a-0964-11e5-951e-8e15090d64ae_story.html (June 13). June 9.
Von Clausewitz, Carl. [1832] 1984. On War, ed. transl. Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
About the author
Bibliography
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 7
By Jenny Yang
L uciano Floridi, a leading theorist in the
philosophy of information, asserts that
information has always played a central
role in conflicts. Telecommunications technologies
such as the radar, computer, satellite, GPS, and the
Internet were developed initially for the military
domain. However, in today’s wired world,
information can be considered a weapon precisely
because the targets themselves are increasingly
informational in nature. Information is the optimal
weapon because it is discreet,
inexpensive, easy to produce,
and is able to move across state
borders freely. According to
Russian General Makhmut
Gareev, technological advances
mean that information warfare
has become more sophisticated
over time, with computers and
communications systems
facilitating the swift collection
and dissemination of information. As early as 1995,
General Gareev noted that information warfare was
a decisive element in future conflicts, suggesting that
in place of direct armed attacks, conflicts may change
into latent, undeclared wars. Twenty years later, the
crisis in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea is a perfect
illustration of how strategic control over information
could mean the difference between an armed
intervention or “an intervention without a single shot
being fired” — as stated in President Putin’s own
words. Before the Euro-Atlantic Alliance can address
how to counter this type of modern warfare in which
information plays a central role, we must first
understand what information warfare is, how it works,
and how it can be employed on the battlefield.
To begin, we will examine different definitions of
information warfare, aiming to shed light on the Russian
conception of information warfare. Then, through
examining policy frameworks such as Russia’s National
Security Concept and Russia’s Military Doctrine, we
will investigate how Russia’s
focus on information warfare
has evolved and intensified
over time. Using Ukraine as a
case study, we will explore
how this approach to
information was applied and
how the use of mass media
played a role in sowing
confusion and destabilizing a
target country. And finally,
we will consider various strategies NATO can employ
to counter offensives in the information realm.
What Is Information Warfare?
NATO’s Science and Technology Committee
defines information warfare as “defensive and offensive
operations, conducted by individuals or structured
organisations with specific political and strategic goals,
for the exploitation, disruption, or destruction of data
contained in computers or transmitted over the internet
and other networked information systems.” In
Battles In The Information Space: Exploring Russia’s
Hybrid Strategy During The Ukraine Conflict
NATO Allies signing MoUs for the establishment of the NATO
StratCom Centre of Excellence in Riga
(Photo: NATO Stratcom CoE)
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 8
comparison, Russia’s definition of information warfare is
far more broad and comprehensive, extending beyond the
realm of information systems and technology. According
to the 2011 Yekaterinburg Convention on International
Information Security, Russia defines information warfare
as a “conflict between two or more States in information
space with the goal of inflicting damage to information
systems, processes, and resources, as well as to critically
important structures and other structures; undermining
political, economic, and social systems; carrying out mass
psychological campaigns against the population of a State
in order to destabilize society and the government; as well
as forcing a State to make decisions in the interests of their
opponents.” Hence, we can see that in addition to the
technical component, the Russian definition encompasses
elements such as the use of influence over a country’s
political, economic, and social systems as well as
psychological campaigns in order to destabilize a target
country.
In the same vein, many Russian defence experts
support this comprehensive conception of information
warfare described in the 2011 Yekaterinburg Convention.
Andrey Kokoshin, the former Deputy Minister of Defense
and former Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, states
that information operations are able to assert
informational, psychological, and physical influence on
government personnel as well as on economic and military
entities. Furthermore, Andrei Illarionov, former advisor
to President Putin, highlights that information warfare
plays a central role in this new mode of hybrid warfare in
which a full-spectrum of non-military means, whether
political, informational, or economic in nature, are
employed to exploit a country’s vulnerabilities. Political
scientist and former KGB officer Igor conceives of
information warfare as “a kind of warfare between parties
in which special (political, economic, diplomatic, military
and other) methods and measures” are used to achieve
one’s defined goals. Therefore, many Russian officials
and defence experts agree that information warfare can
be defined as the pursuit of certain objectives through
measures spanning multiple domains such as the political,
economic, diplomatic, and psychological spheres.
The Growing Importance of Information in
Russia’s Defence Policy
In fact, as far back as 2000, the importance of
information was already being addressed in Russia’s
Military Doctrine, noting that modern war included
“active information rivalry, and the confusion of public
opinion in the individual countries and in all global public
opinion.” Likewise, Russia’s 2000 National Security
Concept warns that Russia faces a growing threat posed
by countries striving for dominance in the information
sphere. A decade later, Russia’s 2010 military doctrine
claims that an intensification of the role of information
warfare is a key feature of contemporary military
conflict. In other words, information warfare can be
applied in order to achieve political objectives without
recourse to military force. Interestingly, in Russia’s
2014 Military Doctrine, the information space has
undergone progressive ideologizing. For example, the
document warns that Russia and especially Russian youth
are susceptible to information warfare and subversive
attempts to undermine the “historical, spiritual and
patriotic traditions in defence of the Fatherland.” The
2014 doctrine also stresses the insidious nature of soft
power wielded by civil society organizations and foreign
organizations. In May 2015, Russia banned foreign
organizations deemed undesirable ahead of the 2016
elections.
The Winter Internet Uprising of 2011-2012
Overall, this intensification of focus on the
information space can be traced to the Russian Winter
Internet Uprising of 2011-2012, in which netizens
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 9
protested against then-Prime Minister Putin’s run for
a third term as the President of Russia. The impact of
social media was evident after several protests were
organized online, eventually leading to mass arrests
on May 6, 2012. In response, Russia’s state-
controlled NTV channel created a film claiming that
the U.S. State Department was behind organizing the
protests against Putin. A website also claimed that the
protests in Russia were triggered by a secret U.S.
military base in Alaska “beaming high-frequency
signals into the brains of Russians.” After the 2012
presidential election, controls such as the
criminalization of libel, heightened restrictions on
Internet and social organizations were swiftly
adopted. Domestically, we can see a trend towards
more repressive measures in an
attempt to control
communication networks and
social media.
Russia’s Media Influence in
Ukraine
Nowhere else is Russia’s
strong media influence more
apparent than in Ukraine, in
which 60% of the books purchased were in Russian
and ten Russian-language websites exist for every
seven Ukrainian-language websites. According to
researcher Andrzej Szeptycki, the dominant position
of Russian media in Ukraine is a key factor in
Ukrainian opposition to NATO accession. In
December 2005, at least 7,000 people rallied in Kiev
in an anti-NATO demonstration. In May 2006, public
protests in Crimea prevented American troops from
participating in the joint U.S.-Ukrainian Sea Breeze
manoeuvres. In June 2006, the Crimean Supreme
Council declared the zone a “NATO-free territory”
and in December 2006, local parties in Crimea
organized a referendum on NATO accession in which
98% of respondents voted against NATO accession.
In 2010, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to suspend
seeking NATO membership altogether.
Case Study: The Ukraine Crisis
During the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in 2014,
television and radio studios as well as broadcasting
and transmission towers were the first to be taken
over in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, showing the
strategic value of communications infrastructure. Pro-
Kyiv media was banned and was replaced with
Russian channels, meaning that the central
government was unable to broadcast information to
regions under attack. A few days after the annexation
of Crimea, President Putin
awarded medals of the
Order of Service to the
Fatherland to four hundred
journalists, editors, and
television hosts —
underlining the important
role the mass media had
played in the information
campaign in Ukraine. State-controlled Russian media
outlets used manipulated images and videos from
Syria, Kosovo, and Chechnya, presenting them as
reality in Eastern Ukraine.
Due to media sources challenging the legitimacy of
the interim government in Kyiv, police officers in
Ukraine were unsure which side was legitimate and
whose orders to follow. In fact, many police
commanders disappeared or changed sides in Eastern
Ukraine. After the annexation of Crimea, more than
5,000 Ukrainian soldiers and navy personnel
continued to serve in the Russian forces, partly due to
Anti-Putin protests in Moscow
(Photo: Ivan Sekretarev / AP)
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 10
the mass media’s successful attempt to weaken morale
and foment dissent and distrust against the central
government. The strategy used in Crimea and Eastern
Ukraine corresponds to the strategy articulated by
Russian General Makhmut Gareev. General Gareev
argues that the systematic broadcasting of biased or
incendiary materials containing a mixture of partially
true and partially false information can undermine public
trust in the government and security forces, destabilizing
countries targeted by information warfare. Primarily,
one reason why this category of information warfare is
particularly difficult to address is because the
preliminary phase resembles conventional tools of
diplomacy used by Moscow
during peacetime. For instance,
gathering information, liaising
with influential contacts,
establishing media outlets,
funding cultural and educational
projects, and supporting
government-friendly NGOs all
legitimately fall under the
domain of diplomacy and outreach. Moreover, the
approach favoured by Russia is able to channel the
West’s own openness as a weapon. For instance, EU
legislation currently prohibits member states from
banning the dissemination of false information if the
broadcaster is registered in another country. The EU’s
audiovisual media market and TV without frontiers
directive mean that certain Russian broadcasters licensed
in EU countries are able to violate hate speech laws
because procedures make it too cumbersome to take the
channels off the air. The Baltic countries and Finland
have composed a joint letter to the European
Commission proposing the establishment of a Russian-
language TV channel in order to offer an alternative
source of information to Russian-speaking diasporas in
Europe.
Countering Misinformation Effectively
To effectively counter misinformation, Russian media
specialist Peter Pomerantsev believes that Brussels and
Washington should invest in developing and
strengthening media channels, which will directly appeal
to the Russian-speaking diaspora — especially in the
Baltic countries where Russian state-funded news stations
and media prove popular. There is currently a 3.5-milion
Russian-speaking diaspora in Germany alone,
outnumbering the respective populations of Estonia,
Lithuania, or Latvia. According to information warfare
expert Leigh Armistead, new
threats in today’s security
environment cannot be
neutralized through weaponry
or armed occupation. In effect,
they can only be fully eliminated
through a “battle for hearts and
minds.”
On a more concrete level,
civilian communication infrastructures in regions
susceptible to hybrid attacks should be reinforced and
strengthened. Even if radio towers, broadcasting stations,
and Internet cables were to be damaged, precautions
should be taken such that the government would be able
to communicate effectively with its citizens across the
country. Resources should be devoted to promoting
media literacy and critical thinking skills so that the
general populace would be better able to identify
unreliable sources of information.
According to researcher András Rácz, disinformation
campaigns are a ‘distract and delay’ tactic given that they
gradually weaken over time as falsehoods are eventually
dispelled. Rácz believes that the best way to bolster
resilience in a society is through good governance,
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with Ukrainian Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Photo: NATO images)
Atlantic Voices, Volume 5, Issue 7 11
Security’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Science and Technology Committee, Oct 06 1999. Floridi, L. (2014) “The Latent Nature of Global
Information Warfare.” Philos. Technol., 1(24), pp. 317-319. Gretskiy, I. (2013) “Ukraine’s Foreign Policy Under
Yushchenko.” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs. 22 (4), pp. 7-27. Husarov, V. (2014) ‘The Second Front – Information’,
Narodna Armiya Newspaper, Aug 12 2014, Reprinted by BBC News in ‘Ukrainian-Russian information warfare viewed’ BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, Aug 14 2014. Kuzio, T. (2010) ‘Ukraine blocks the Road to NATO
Membership’, Ukrainian Weekly, July 11 2010, 78(28), pp. 3-15. Kropaite, Z. (2014) ‘Lithuania bans Russian TV Station’,
EU Observer, April 9, 2014. Available at: https://euobserver.com/beyond-brussels/128267 NATO (2015) ‘NATO-Ukraine agreement paves the way
for further technical cooperation’, NATO News, April 24 2015. Available at: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_118967.htm NATO. ‘NATO’s Practical Support to Ukraine Fact
Sheet’, NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Feb 2015. Available at: http://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2015_02/20150203_1502-Factsheet_PracticalSupportUkraine_en.pdf NATO Stratcom Centre of Excellence (2014), ‘Report:
Analysis of Russia’s Information Campaign Against Ukraine’, Oct 2014. Oliker, O. (2015) ‘Russia’s New Military Doctrine: Same
as the Old Doctrine, Mostly’ RAND Corp. Jan 15 2015. Retrieved at: http://www.rand.org/blog/2015/01/russias-new-military-doctrine-same-as-the-old-doctrine.html Pomerantsev, P. (2014) ‘Yes, Russia matters: Putin's
guerrilla strategy’, World Affairs 177(3), pp.16. Pomerantsev, P. (2015) ‘The big chill: the battle for
Central Europe’, World Affairs. 177(5), pp. 37. Rácz, A. (2015) ‘Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine:
Breaking the Enemy’s Ability to Resist’, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 1(43), pp. 11-104. Siddique, H & Yuhas, A. (2014) ‘Putin signs treaty to
annex Crimea as Ukraine authorises use of force’, The Guardian, March 18, 2014. Szeptycki, A. (2011) ‘Ukraine as a Postcolonial State?’ The
Polish Quarterly of International Affairs 1(1), pp. 5-29. Thomas, T. (2014) “Russia’s Information Warfare
Strategy: Can the Nation Cope in Future Conflicts?” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 27(1), pp. 101-130. Zhang, X. (2015) ‘The Re-Politicization of Russian
Politics’, in Aris, S., Neumann, M., Orttung, R., Perovic, J., Pleines, H., Schroder, H., Snetkov, A. (eds) Russian Analytical Digest 1(168), pp. 2-5.
promoting media freedom, the rule of law, freedom of
association, and democratic legitimacy. To quote NATO
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, "Our best weapon
against disinformation is information based on our values
of democracy, freedom of speech and open societies.”
However, the reality may not be as cut-and-dry. As
the Ukraine crisis has illustrated, we should not assume
that freedom of information necessarily leads to a more
open or democratic society. Moving forward, it is
important to consider that information can be harnessed
and manipulated by authoritarian regimes in order to
generate confusion and undermine trust in government,
often with unpredictable and destabilizing effects on
society.
Jenny Yang is a Junior Research Fellow for the NATO
Association of Canada, pursuing her Master’s in International
Relations at the University of Cambridge. Previously, she has
worked at INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France. She was
invited by the Atlantic Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina to
attend the 2014 NATO Summer School in the Balkans. She
has also worked as an Advisor for the Embassy of Canada to
the Netherlands, in which she provided support to the
Canadian Permanent Representation for the Organisation for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
BBC News (2015) ‘Ukraine, NATO discussing project to counter Russian propaganda’, BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, June 21 2015. Chong, A. (2014) ‘Information Warfare? The Case for an
Asian Perspective on Information Operations’, Armed Forces & Society, 40(4), pp. 599-624. Darczewska, J. (2014) ‘The Anatomy of Russian Information
Warfare: The Crimean Operation, A Case Study’, Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), May no. 42, pp. 5-33. Darczewska, J. (2015) ‘The Devil is in the Details:
Information Warfare in the Light of Russia’s Military Doctrine’, Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), May no. 50, pp. 5-38. Ehlers, V. (1999) ‘Information Warfare and Information
About the author
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