Manufacturing Status Loss: Smearing Through Foreign Influence Operations

• In Event: (Mis)Information in Great Power Competition and Democratic Governance

Abstract

How do states compete for status – influence, prestige, and ranking in the international system? Conventional wisdom suggests that states do so by engaging in activities that enhance their status: obtaining nuclear weapons, joining selective international institutions, or winning interstate conflict. However, the existing literature has neglected an alternative strategy that states can adopt concurrently: reducing their adversary’s status through delegitimation. In this paper, I develop a theory of how states can smear their adversaries through negative information campaigns, executed through foreign influence operations. By advertising the target’s shortcomings or wrongdoings, smear tactics – i.e., “character assassinations” – can undermine the target’s status in the eyes of third-party states. I test my theory through a preregistered survey experiment in Canada, in which select respondents were exposed to Chinese negative campaigns on US intervention in the Middle East and the inadequacy of US leadership in the world. I find that a single instance of exposure to smearing reduces the respondents’ assessment of US status, ranging from 9% to 13% across different indicators such as US ranking, respect for the US, and US competence. Crucially, exposure to smearing reduces the respondents’ support for Canada to continue to participate in joint anti-submarine warfare (ASW) exercises with the US-led Quad to counter increasing Chinese military activities in Asia. My findings have broader implications for assessing the impact of foreign influence operations from rising powers – namely, how such strategies might undermine the target’s standing in the existing international order and ability to coordinate balancing efforts against rising powers.

Author

• Alex Yu-Ting Lin, University of Notre Dame