For years, China and Russia have been using cyberattacks, economic coercion, disinformation, election meddling, and other tactics to disrupt and destabilize the political systems of the United States and other guardians of the international order.  As a result, calls have emerged for the United States to go on the offensive, waging political warfare against China and Russia, just as they wage political warfare against the U.S.

 

The possibility of actively waging political warfare against China and Russia is a high-stakes decision, but it’s not something entirely new to the West.  In fact, the United States undertook concerted political warfare campaigns designed to sow instability, division, and weakness in Eastern Europe and within the Soviet Union itself, at two key points during the 20th Century Cold War.  One such campaign came between 1947 and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution; the other came during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

 

During these periods, Washington employed an array of measures including radio broadcasts into the Soviet bloc, covert paramilitary actions, economic denial policies, human rights campaigns, and many other efforts intended to undermine Communist rule and impose competitive costs on the Kremlin and its satellites. Throughout the Cold War, moreover, the United States used political warfare to harass, weaken, and overthrow Soviet-aligned governments in the Third World.  All of this was in addition to U.S. and allied efforts to resist Moscow's offensive political warfare campaigns.

 
The history of U.S. political warfare programs during the Cold War illustrates what political warfare is and what forms it can take.  It also points to possibilities for waging political warfare today.

 

As Professor Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins University explained in a recent report for the American Enterprise Institute, political warfare is not a one-size¬fits-all concept.  In fact, political warfare campaigns are defined by at least nine factors or dimensions, which include being:

 

1. offensive or defensive,
2. overt or covert,
3. hard or soft,
4. catalytic or corrosive,
5. direct or indirect,
6. unilateral or multilateral,
7. governmental or nongovernmental,
8. meant to restrain or meant to provoke, and
9. part of a minimalist or maximalist strategy of competition.

Understanding each of the nine dimensions of political warfare provides greater insight not only into what the United States and its allies could do but into what our adversaries in Beijing and Moscow are likely to do.

 

The first and most basic distinction is between offensive and defensive political warfare.

 

Defensive efforts are meant to frustrate an adversary's political warfare initiatives and protect one's society (or allies) from malign influence.  In 1948, for instance, the United States hurriedly assembled a defensive political warfare campaign-involving economic assistance, support for friendly politicians, public diplomacy, and other measures intended to reduce the possibility of Communist political takeovers in Italy and France. As the Cold War progressed, Washington deployed counter-intelligence measures and coordinating mechanisms, such as the Reagan-era Active Measures Working Group, to identify and combat Soviet disinformation. Today, an example of defensive political warfare is the effort to identify and counter Russian and Chinese election meddling.

 

Offensive political warfare, by contrast, means taking the fight to the adversary by destabilizing an enemy regime, raising its costs of doing business, or otherwise undermining its ability to compete.  In the 20th century, the twin goals of U.S. political warfare were "holding our own world together as well as increasing the disruptive strains in the Soviet world."

 

Analysts have suggested various possibilities for waging offensive political warfare in today's competitions: sanctioning corrupt or repressive officials, introducing (or amplifying) unbiased information going into the Chinese and Russian systems, supporting advocates of internal liberalization, and even pursuing covert measures to foment instability.  Critically, the goal of an offensive strategy need not be to overthrow the Chinese or Russian governments (although that could be an objective).  It could simply aim to divert their attention and energy, increase domestic and diplomatic difficulties, and disadvantage them in strategic competition.

 

The second dimension is between overt and covert activity.

 

We often think of political warfare as something that happens in the shadows, and previous campaigns have indeed had a vital covert component.  In the late 1940s, the Truman administration's defensive efforts in Italy and France involved covert support to friendly trade unions and political parties.  On the offensive side, the CIA and Office of Policy Coordination ran clandestine campaigns to infiltrate armed emigres back into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in hopes of destabilizing Communist regimes; in the 1980s, U.S. support for the Solidarity movement in Poland was also carried out covertly.  In the Third World, covert operations against regimes such as Fidel Castro's Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua were mainstays of Cold War strategy.

 

However, political warfare can also take place in the sunshine, not just in the shadows. Ronald Reagan's rhetorical offensive against the Soviet Union in the 1980s was political warfare in that it was intended to increase the ideological pressure on Moscow and its satellites, and it was carried out entirely in public. Meanwhile, the National Endowment for Democracy supported trade unions and civil society organizations in Poland, financed opposition newspapers in Nicaragua, and otherwise worked to promote liberalization in the Communist bloc.  The calculation was that unembarrassed support for democratic values was itself a form of pressure. The United States could throw the competition off-balance simply by standing up for its own best traditions and values.

 

If a key goal of political warfare is to exploit the weaknesses of a competitor's regime, then initiatives that openly and forthrightly target an autocracy's worst tendencies can be particularly powerful. They can also help avoid a constant danger of covert initiatives, which is that they will be exposed and publicized, with all the blowback which follows.

 

The third dimension is hard vs soft.

 

"Hard" political warfare undermines an opponent by exerting pressure and inflicting pain.  In today's competitions, initiatives might include punitive tariffs meant to weaken Chinese economic growth or aggressive public diplomacy campaigns meant to delegitimize the Russian and Chinese regimes at home and abroad.  Meanwhile, “soft” political warfare can weaken opponents not by directly confronting or pressuring them but by using more creative approaches including inducements, in order to expose and exacerbate weaknesses.

 

The Marshall Plan, for instance, represents soft political warfare at its best.  It was intended, in part, to subvert the Soviet empire through the profoundly unorthodox approach of offering to include Moscow and its satellites in the reconstruction of Europe. As the State Department knew, this offer would confront Stalin with an impossible choice: Accept Marshall Plan aid, thereby opening up Eastern Europe to Western influence, or reject it, thereby earning the enmity of populations that desperately needed reconstruction assistance.  The Kremlin took the latter approach, showing the brutal, exploitative face of its hegemony in Eastern Europe, and creating a legitimacy deficit that plagued it for decades.

 

A fourth dimension depends on whether the political warfare campaign is intended to be catalytic or corrosive.

 

The most spectacular forms of political warfare are catalytic: They are meant to trigger some dramatic near-term change.  Cold War-era operations designed to bring down hostile regimes in Guatemala, Iran, and other countries fit this mold.  So did some prominent US propaganda initiatives.

 

In 1953, U.S.-sponsored radio broadcasts spread awareness of severe unrest in East Germany in hopes of encouraging other East German citizens to protest Soviet domination. The CIA¬sponsored publication of Nikita Khrushchev's secret de-Stalinization speech in 1956 had a similar motive, and it indeed intensified the upheaval that convulsed the Soviet bloc that year.  The idea, CIA Director Allen Dulles commented, was "to keep the pot boiling."

 

While less dramatic, some of America's most successful political warfare initiatives of the Cold War were "corrosive" rather than catalytic.  These initiatives focused on “cost imposition” rather than transformation. Their goal was simply to keep discontent in the Soviet bloc simmering, air the failings of the Communist regimes before a larger domestic and global audience and increase the strain on those governments over time.

The classic example of this approach was broadcasting by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. By providing accurate information on the abuses and failures of Soviet bloc regimes, one CIA official later observed, the broadcasts would not "quickly bring the walls of the dictatorships tumbling down like those of Jericho.  "But they might," over time, improve the chances for gradual change toward more open societies.

 

The catalytic versus corrosive distinction can help frame debates about how to wage political warfare against China and Russia today. Washington probably could not incite significant near-term upheaval in either country; and trying might be quite dangerous. But America could take steps, such as creating greater awareness in Russia of Putin's corruption and the human toll of his war in Ukraine or dredging up reminders of Tiananmen Square and other crimes of the Chinese Communist Party, that could potentially challenge these regimes' legitimacy over time.

 

Successful political warfare does not necessarily involve stimulating outright revolt. It can simply entail pursuing policies that, gradually and cumulatively, erode the foundations and sap the competitive potential of a hostile regime.

 

The fifth dimension of political warfare is direct vs. indirect.

 

Some political warfare takes dead aim at one's rival. Covert destabilization activities, support for anti¬government dissidents, and other such measures seek to weaken or impose costs on authoritarian regimes by directly targeting their weaknesses. But political warfare can also be indirect: It can attack authoritarian regimes by shaping the broader global milieu.

 

The late Cold War provides a good example. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Carter and Reagan administrations undertook an array of initiatives-promoting human rights and democracy in countries worldwide and sponsoring covert action programs against Communist regimes in Afghanistan and Nicaragua-that did not directly challenge the stability of the Soviet political system. Yet they nonetheless undermined that system by reversing the sense of ideological momentum Moscow had built during the 1970s, demonstrating-to observers in the Soviet Union and worldwide that democracy, not Communism, was globally ascendant and thereby weakening the ideological narrative on which the Soviet system was based.

 

The relevant contemporary parallel might be efforts to strengthen democracy in the Russian and Chinese "near abroad." By supporting the consolidation and protection of democratic institutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, the United States can challenge Putinism in Russia by providing an unflattering contrast to the Kremlin's "managed democracy."  By helping Taiwan maintain its sovereignty and protect its domestic institutions from Chinese meddling, the United States can challenge Beijing's narrative that political democracy and traditional Chinese values cannot successfully coexist.   In political warfare as in strategy, much can be said for the indirect approach.

 

The sixth dimension of political warfare is Unilateral vs. Multilateral.

 

The United States undertakes some political warfare initiatives alone. Many (but not all) covert operations against Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the Third World were carried out unilaterally, as were many covert and overt propaganda activities. The advantages of this approach are obvious: Unilateral action protects against a watered-down, least-common-denominator strategy for political warfare, and it preserves greater secrecy and operational security. This latter point was made painfully clear when a notorious British double-agent betrayed a number of joint U.S.-British operations in the Soviet bloc during the late 1940s and 1950s.

 

The downside of unilateral efforts is that they may not have as much effect as a more broadly coordinated campaign.  They may also unnerve or even alienate allies that see U.S. policy as excessively provocative.  As a result, Cold War-era administrations often attempted a multilateral approach.

Throughout the Cold War, NATO members worked-more or less effectively to coordinate their approaches to trading with the enemy.  During the early Cold War and again in the 1980s, for instance, the United States pushed its allies to undertake multilateral economic warfare campaigns against Moscow in hopes of weakening the Kremlin's economic potential and straining its relationships with Eastern European satellites.  In both cases, those efforts resulted in greater multilateral pressure, but only after bitter debates within NATO-led the United States to moderate its initial hard¬line position.  Likewise, during the 1980s American diplomats worked closely with European allies to develop a coordinated “Western critique” of Soviet-bloc human rights abuses, on grounds that this "ideological counter-attack" would be stronger if it represented a common NATO position.

 

U.S. officials will confront similar trade-offs in the coming years. The more Washington perceives a need to pursue forward-leaning, covert political warfare initiatives against Beijing and Moscow, the greater the temptation to pursue them unilaterally.  But the broader and more multilateral those initiatives are, the greater the effect they are likely to have.

 

The seventh dimension of political warfare is Governmental vs. Nongovernmental.

 

Like most aspects of U.S. foreign policy, political warfare is normally conducted by official or quasi-official state organs, including the CIA, State Department, and National Endowment for Democracy.  Political warfare, however, can also be a nongovernmental affair.

 

In the last decade of the Cold War, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (or AFL-CIO) subverted the Soviet bloc by supporting organized labor and civil disobedience in Poland.  The AFL-CIO conducted this campaign for its own reasons, even though its president, Lane Kirkland, had a famously poisonous relationship with Ronald Reagan.  But it did so in parallel with a covert CIA program.

Nongovernmental actors have also played prominent roles in defensive political warfare. In recent years, cybersecurity firms and independent experts in the United States and other Western countries have exposed malign Russian internet activity.

 

For U.S. rivals, nongovernmental actors can often be dangerous and implacable enemies.  Beijing complained furiously in 2012 when the New York Times revealed massive corruption by the Chinese elite, fearing-with good reason, that the exposure would trigger public anger at the regime.  Similarly, the Kremlin has long accused U.S. and Western nongovernmental organizations that support human rights and civil society of seeking to destroy Putin's sovereign democracy.

Notably, Russian and Chinese officials seem to always believe the U.S. government is really pulling the strings in these cases. But this belief simply reinforces that authoritarian regimes take nongovernmental political warfare quite seriously.  Indeed, some of the most nettlesome tools of American political warfare, in the eyes of Washington's competitors, at least, are those that the U.S. government does not actually control.

 

The eighth dimension of political warfare is Provoke vs. Restrain.

 

Political warfare initiatives differ in the reaction they aim to elicit. Political warfare can restrain an adversary by, for example, dissuading an authoritarian government from repressing its population by imposing economic sanctions or simply publicizing its crimes.  Radio Free Europe broadcasts could not physically prevent Communist regimes from abusing their citizens, writes one analyst.  But if [a government] raised prices by decree, or jailed a dissident writer, or ordered its police to shoot striking workers, it would do so with the knowledge that the action would be covered by a free, uncensored, and widely credible radio station.

In the same vein, Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russian officials involved in human rights abuses or congressional proposals to sanction Chinese officials involved in repressing that country's Uighur minority can be seen as efforts to restrain rival regimes by raising the costs of autocratic behavior.

Conversely, political warfare can aim to provoke an adversary into doing something self-defeating.  In the 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon argued that it could be a good thing if U.S.-backed destabilization programs goaded the Soviets into bloody crackdowns in Eastern Europe because those crackdowns would forever tarnish Moscow's image within and beyond the bloc. "Every time naked Soviet power, military or otherwise, has to be exercised owing to the failure or unreliability of the puppet authorities," one secret analysis by the U.S. argued, "we should consider this a major psychological victory."'

 

Similarly, as U.S.-China competition becomes “a struggle for global hearts and minds” in the coming decades, America could conceivably benefit from pursuing hypothetical policies-supporting separatists in Tibet or Xinjiang which are meant to provoke the Chinese government into a repressive response that would discredit Beijing in the eyes of the world.  A clever, if cold-blooded, political warfare strategy can effectively trap an authoritarian competitor: It can present that government with challenges that it must either tolerate, at a cost to internal stability or brutally repress, at a cost to its moral credibility and global prestige.

The morality of this approach is, of course, incredibly fraught.  Policymakers who wage political warfare in hopes of provoking an authoritarian regime need to understand that success may come at a horrible cost for those who live under the autocrat's boot.

 

Finally, the ninth dimension of political warfare is Minimalist vs. Maximalist.

 

Political warfare initiatives can vary in how they fit into a country's larger strategy because political warfare is usually a relatively low cost.  For instance, when the Truman administration was determined to hold military expenditures down in the late 1940s, it waged the Cold War primarily through nonmilitary tools and political warfare methods were seen as affordable ways of holding the line and selectively exerting pressure on the enemy.

 

However, while political warfare can certainly be part of a minimalist "poor man's strategy," it can also be part of a more maximalist "rich man's strategy."  Following the outbreak of the Korean War, the Truman administration used political warfare initiatives as a complement to an expensive military buildup and part of a strategy of comprehensive pressure against the Soviet Union.  During the 1980s, the Reagan administration's political warfare campaign was one piece of a multipronged geopolitical offensive that included a major military buildup and enhanced competition in the Third World. The goal was not simply to hold the line but to maximize the strain on the Soviets as a prelude to winding down the Cold War on American terms.

 

Political warfare initiatives could fit into both minimalist and maximalist strategies today. If the United States resolves to devote the lion's share of its resources to compete with China, then political warfare could be part of a cost-conscious strategy for imposing costs on Moscow and other rivals, such as Iran. Alternatively, a more ambitious approach might use political warfare methods as part of a multifront pressure strategy aimed at rolling back Chinese and Russian influence overseas and perhaps even weakening their regimes at home.

 

So, what’s the bottom line?

 

Political warfare will remain at the center of foreign policy debates in the coming years, as U.S. rivalries with China and Russia deepen and American officials look to gain a competitive edge.

 

Given this trend, we offer the following forecasts for your consideration.

 

First, China, Russia, and Iran will use every tool at their disposal to influence the 2020 elections and shape U.S. policies.

 

The Office of the Director of National intelligence has declared that exposing and thwarting these efforts is its top short-term priority. 

Second, in the weeks and months ahead the United States will explicitly reverse accommodationist policies vis a vis China that were put in place by prior administrations.

 

In a recent policy speech, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made clear that our past approach has failed, and he clearly stated that the Trump administration's China policy was to “induce a change of behaviors by the CCP."  The administration wants to achieve this goal in two steps at the same time. The first step involves becoming very confrontational with the CCP in terms of trade negotiations, charges of espionage, visa policy, and the closure of consulates.  By doing so, the United States basically matches the intensity of China’s aggressiveness. -- The second step will involve meeting with China at the negotiating table on various major issues. At that point, the United State will make clear that, unlike past U.S. administrations, it is willing to bear the cost of a confrontation with China.  This “one-two punch” will make it clear to both friend and foe that it’s no longer business-as-usual with China.

 

Third, the recent change in leadership at the United States Agency for Global Media (or USAGM) will enable it to return to its traditional role as an instrument of political warfare.

 

In recent years this organization, which includes Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, had become just another media organization that happens to broadcast in a huge array of languages.  To return the USAGM to its original mission of promoting the policies and principles of the United States around the world, the President appointed Michael Pack as the new CEO.  Initially, Pack “ruffled a lot of feathers” when he quickly removed all of his direct reports.  However, his efforts represent an important first step in returning USAGM to the valid role of shaping global opinion in the service of America’s political warfare objectives.

 

Fourth, because China is so integrated into the global economy, the U.S. will create maximum pain by focusing on tariffs and other “hard” economic warfare options.

China’s economy is very dependent on exports of manufactured goods and imports of food and energy.  Squeezing Chinese companies out of global export and capital markets will seriously constrain China’s affluence and ability to fund a massive military expansion.  And escalating reprisals against its neighbors will be met with even stronger sanctions by the U.S.-led alliance.  And,

 

Fifth, the U. K. will extend provisional citizenship to Hong Kong residents enabling up to 3 million to leave China.

 

Given the high educational attainment of Hong Kongers, this “brain drain” will have a disproportionate impact on the Chinese economy.  Meanwhile the arrival of these high value, English-speaking immigrants will be a boon to the economy of Taiwan as well as countries across the “Anglosphere.”  More importantly, this exodus will represent a major public relations “black eye” for China, solidifying its status as a “pariah nation.”  It will either have to watch as these people depart, give them sufficient incentives to stay, or effectively “imprison” them within China, bringing even more international sanctions; none of these options are appealing.

 

References
1. American Enterprise Institute. February 6, 2020. Hal Brands.  The dark art of political warfare: A primer. 
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-dark-art-of-political-warfare.pdf

2. Fox News. July 24, 2020. Brooke Singman.  ODNI 'primarily concerned' with China, Russia, Iran 'seeking to compromise' campaigns in 2020 election.  
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/odni-primarily-concerned-with-china-russia-iran-seeking-to-compromise-political-campaigns-in-2020-election

3. The Asahi Shimbun. June 1, 2020.  Asahi Shimbun.  S. & Japan Dueling China for Impact in Indo-Pacific Region.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13394985

4. com. 7/24/20. JOCELYN GRZESZCZAK.  Chinese State Media Says Pompeo Will Be Destroyed by 'Endless Resistance,' Have Legacy Worse Than Bannon, Amid Consulate Spat. 
https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-state-media-says-pompeo-will-destroyed-endless-resistance-have-legacy-worse-bannon-1520330

5. Fox News. July 24, 2020. Nick Givas.  Native scholar says Communist China has 'met its match' with Trump admin following consulate closure. 
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/scholar-communist-china-met-match-with-the-trump-admin-consulate-closure

6. The Daily Caller. July 22, 2020.  Varun Hukeri.  American Companies Used To Collaborate With The Nazis.  Now They’re Working With The Chinese Communist Party. 
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/22/companies-chinese-communist-party-nazi-germany-collaborators-uighur-camps-forced-labor/