atlantic voices - information warfare

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)


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


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)


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


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.


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


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)


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


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)


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)


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

Bibliography

http://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2015_02/20150203_1502-Factsheet_PracticalSupportUkraine_en.pdf



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