Muzzling the Bear
Europe Must Get Strategic About Countering Russia’s Information Offensive
This article is based on a report Muzzling the Bear – Strategic Defense for Russia’s Undeclared Information War on Europe, published by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, where the author served as a visiting fellow.
Russia has engaged Europe in information warfare. So far, Europe lacks a functional defence strategy. It needs to deploy one soon, but without compromising its freedoms and its values.
The Kremlin has prepared its attack. The technological developments made information a commodity – easy to obtain and cheap to disseminate. Free press in the West and its commitment to treating differing views equally gave the Kremlin a tactical breach. Oil revenues were poured into useful friendships in Western policymaking circles, academia and the media. These connections helped Moscow create a bridgehead to deploy increasingly sophisticated cyber- and information warfare tools. The new Russian military doctrine treats information as a dangerous offensive weapon. It has been tested – in the aftermath of 2008 war in Georgia, Moscow lost ground initially but quickly recovered by successfully arguing for moral equivalence. As events in Ukraine unfolded, this information weapon was fully deployed against Europe – its institutions and its values.
Before venturing into conflict, Putin’s regime has built the line of defence. The Kremlin curtails the freedom of information in Russia and subjects its citizens to indoctrination more ample and more cynical than that of Soviet times. In its neighbourhood, where Russian-language media remains widespread, Moscow has attempted to monopolise the media debate or to overwhelm it by a powerful mix of lies and conspiracy theories. Today, Moscow remains a fortress to policymakers in the West.
The Iron Curtain has been replaced by one-way mirror, through which the Kremlin can carefully observe the West, while keeping its motives inscrutable.
Europe cannot riposte to Russia by mirroring its tactics. That would compromise its values of free speech and the freedom of information. A vertically integrated, politically controlled command and control systems for information warfare are gracefully unthinkable – let alone not feasible – in Europe. To be sure, the Western response requires political will to recognize what is at stake. But this movement should be led by the broad array of non-governmental organisations, think tanks, political parties, journalists and other non-government actors.
Europe’s strategy must rest on two inter-linked pillars – boosting home defences, and countering the offensive from more than one angle.
Politicians and policymakers should recognise that fist lines of defence have been breached. Europe has to understand how substantial the scale of penetration of the Russian propaganda is in its information space, as well as the dangers it entails.
The European public has the right to be informed about the epidemic of Russian misinformation.
Within the liberal framework of freedom of speech, Europe should attempt to limit the impact of Russia’s propaganda machinery on European citizens.
To do this, the media in Western Europe should start to know Eastern partnership countries much better.
Having permanent correspondents in Baku, Chisinau, Kyiv, Minsk, Tbilisi, and Yerevan could help form an objective view of the events and people’s aspirations, while countering the Russian narrative claiming that it pursues its legitimate interests. The Western think tanks need to develop closer cooperation with the vibrant scene of local NGOs and think tanks and encourage the recruitment of experts from the EaP countries.
More resources need to be invested in exposing the Russian propaganda where the events in the EaP countries are concerned.
Think tanks and media outlets such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFL/RL), in addition to their news feeds, could invest more resources in producing systematic comparative analysis of how the same news were covered by the Western media, the media sources in the EaP countries, and the Russian media. It would be highly useful for the Western media, which often unwittingly uses the misinformation spread by the Russian propaganda machinery.
On the other hand, the policy should attempt to develop offensive capabilities though fostering access to objective analysis and information on the governance system of Putin administration, the tactics it pursues vis-à-vis Europe and the former Soviet countries.
The Western media and think tank community should expose domestic and political developments in Russia.
More effort needs to be put into cultivating networks of arts and media celebrities who are willing to participate in exposing the Kremlin propaganda and the vicious nature Putin’s regime.
The EU has made some welcome initial steps recently in its attempt to counter Russia’s information warfare strategies, like funding alternative Russian language media outlets and setting up a permanent unit at the EU institutions to counter the Russian propaganda. These initial steps need further financial and political support. In designing the European response to the challenge of Russian propaganda, one might also envisage the creation of a steering group of lawyers and journalists to produce a white paper on the legal and professional ethical aspects of the strategy to prevent Russia from abusing the liberal framework for free speech and freedom of information in the West.
Salome Samadashvili is the former Head of Georgia’s Mission to the European Union. Since November 2013 she served as a visiting fellow at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies. Currently Amb. Samadashvili heads the Centre for Strategic Communications and Democracy in Georgia.
