Information Warfare: The Structural Alliance of Civil Society and Foreign States

• In Event: Propaganda, Disinformation, and War

Abstract

Two domains of politics are domestic politics and international politics. In their simplest forms, domestic politics involves two actors, civil society and the domestic state, and international politics involves two actors, the domestic state vs. another (foreign) state. When we consider domestic and international politics together, there are three actors, in two diadic relationships: the domestic state-civil society diad and the domestic state-foreign state diad.

Relations among these actors are structured in predictable ways. The domestic state is challenged by the other two actors: domestically by the civil society, which seeks to reduce the autonomy of the domestic state, and internationally by the foreign state, which seeks to weaken the domestic state. From this it follows that these two challengers have a common interest: both civil society and foreign states seek to weaken the domestic state.

Thus there is a third diad: the civil society-foreign state diad. These two actors have a structurally-defined common interest.

From the perspective of a foreign state, civil society offers a back-door to the domestic state. A foreign state can support its rival’s civil society, providing “support to resistance” (Irwin, 2019) in order to subvert the domestic state. This is an avenue for political or kinetic subversion.

From the perspective of civil society, a foreign rival state may be a source of support for domestic social movements. Civil society may benefit from foreign “democracy promotion” programs that offer the promise of “liberation” from the domestic state (Diamond, 2015).

These two situations – subversion and democracy promotion – may be indistinguishable. Democracy promotion may be subversive, weakening the state and making both state and society vulnerable to foreign attack (Gerasimov, 2016/2013).

On the other hand, subversion may really promote democracy. Foreign subversion may be beneficial. This is most evident when the subversion is information-based, as in the case of cross-border news and information. For example, the 2016 hacking of the US Democratic National Committee, attributed to Russia, exposed malfeasance in the American political system that was then corrected. Similarly, in 2004 Russia’s RT was the only news service that aired the Presidential debate between the Green Party and the Libertarian Party candidates, a debate that widened American political discourse. Decades earlier Soviet propaganda campaigns highlighting institutionalized racism motivated the US federal government to support civil rights reforms (Dudziak, 2011). All three of these subversion efforts benefited US democracy.

Episodes that Russia considered subversive may have similarly benefited Russian domestic governance. Exposure of doping at the Sochi 2014 Olympics led to reforms in athletics administration. Release of the Panama Papers in 2016 may have discouraged corruption by public officials.

Thus from a domestic perspective, foreign subversion may be beneficial. Foreign information operations may supplement domestic investigative reporting. Foreign states have means and motive to expose malfeasance by their target states, as seen in both the (alleged) Russian exposure of the DNC and the (alleged) US exposure of Russian doping. Moreover, unlike domestic media, foreign states are reliably independent of domestic states and so are harder to silence. In summary, it is not impossible that inter-state competition could benefit domestic politics.

The main domestic threat from such foreign subversion may be not that democracy is undermined but rather that democracy is over-empowered, to the point of ungovernability. A broadening of public debate may ultimately cause social division. Exposure of malfeasance may ultimately reduce trust in institutions. More research is needed to conceptualize a metric by which democracy promotion can be distinguished from subversive over-democratization.

References
Diamond, L. (2015). Liberation technology 1. In In search of democracy (pp. 132-146). Routledge.
Dudziak, M. L. (2011). Cold war civil rights. (Vol. 73). Princeton University Press.
Gerasimov, V. (2016). The Value of Science is in the Foresight. Military Review, 96(1), 23. Originally published in Military-Industrial Kurier, 27 February 2013.
Irwin, W. 2019. Support to resistance: Strategic purpose and effectiveness. JSOU Report 19-2

Author

• Hans K. Klein, Georgia Institute of Technology