Lawmakers pressing for information war with Russia, China

When NATO revealed this week in Brussels that it would be expanding its presence in countries that used to be part of the former Soviet Union, Russia launched a social media counterattack, turning to Facebook and Twitter to denounce the move in flowery language.

“This statement by the NATO Secretary General is a kind of final aria of a Russophobian play for taxpayers of the NATO member states, who are to open their wallets wide for fighting against imaginary Russian military threat,” the Russian Ministry Defense said on Facebook.

It’s a shot in a war of information that some lawmakers say the United States needs to spend more time and effort – and money – to counter. “It’s a serious problem,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, Ill., quoting what he’s heard from officials from other countries. He said those officials believe the way Russia portrays events helps undermine U.S. standing among their people.

Now, some members of Congress are pushing for the administration to do more to develop a strategy for combating misleading portrayals of world events that emanate from Russia and China.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from the Southern California city of Torrance, has joined about a dozen other lawmakers in asking the federal government to set up a committee of senior officials and spend $20 million over 10 years figuring out how to confront propaganda from Russia and China. The group also wants to expand the role that Voice of America, the government-funded broadcast organization, plays in other countries – specifically in Eastern European countries that share a border with Russia.

Passage of their legislation, the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016, might even trigger a propaganda war that the country has not seen since Ronald Reagan was president – which Anthony Pratkanis, a University of California in Santa Cruz professor who specializes in the art of social persuasion, says might be a good thing.

“Some of the strongest presidents have had the strongest international communication strategies,” he said. “Think of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan being on the opposite ends of the political continuum. They were key to communicating what America meant and explaining why we’re doing certain things of value, of democracy. They were the two strongest presidents of the 20th century, so they obviously had a strong effect.”

The art of war is evolving so much that it needs a dedicated intergovernmental panel to keep up with it, congressional advocates say.

Gone are the days of colorful posters with pictures of Uncle Sam claiming to want you, or urging the purchase of war bonds. Now U.S. officials engage in public social media spats with officials from Russia and other countries over things like air strikes in Syria and international waters disputes – a war of words capable of reaching millions of people across the globe.

“During World War II, it was leaflets and radio. During the early parts of the Cold War and now, it’s mostly television and Twitter and other social media,” Pratkanis said. “So the tactics, the techniques need to develop and be modified, but the core issues of influence are always the same.”

Russian officials often make public displays of discontent with NATO via the country’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, and depict the United States and its allies as incompetent or as bullies. Last week, Russia called out Britain, a NATO member, for sending a frigate toescort a Russian submarine through the narrowest part of the English Channel.

“The Russian defence department is surprised that detection of the slowly moving submarine in surface trim and escorted by the tug boat demanded joint efforts of the Royal Navy and the NATO allies,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense stated in a June 8 Facebook post. “It would be strange if the Royal Navy with the NATO allies failed to detect the submarine.”

A few months earlier, Russia baited the spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, Col. Steve Warren, into a Twitter fight over air strikes in Syria, where both the United States and Russia are waging separate military campaign.

“Yesterday at 13:55 (MSK), 2 A-10 attack aircraft of US AF entered Syrian airspace from Turkish territory made strikes on objects in city,” Russian officials said on the country’s Ministry of Defense Twitter account.

“@MOD_Russia’s tweets are wrong,” Warren responded on an official military Twitter account. “Furthermore their bombing is reckless and indiscriminate and their efforts are strategically shortsighted.”

Russia continues to ramp up its use of information warfare to generate public support for its aggressive actions abroad, Lieu said. A member of the House oversight committee’s national security subcommittee, Lieu said he’s concerned that the U.S. government hasn’t designated an agency to monitor and combat disinformation campaigns.

“President [Vladimir] Putin’s complete domination of media in Russia, strict messaging and obfuscated campaigns in neighboring countries all serve to change public perception and ultimately the facts on the ground,” Lieu said.

Kinzinger crafted the bipartisan legislation to compliment the Countering Information Act of 2016, which was drawn up by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. Both bills call for the creation of a Center for Information Analysis and Response to expose and respond to foreign propaganda. Additionally, both bills mention Russia and China, but Kinzinger made clear during an interview on Capitol Hill that Russia was his main concern.

“This stuff is all very important,” Kinzinger said. “So it’s not just an information thing, it’s also about what we need to do as a country to win the war of ideas without shooting more. That’s how we won the Cold War.”

Russia’s absorption of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its subsequent backing of Russian partisans in eastern Ukraine was the event that focused attention on Russian use of media. Two years later, Russian still engage in what lawmakers describe as “sophisticated” information attacks, while the U.S. response is limited to joint military exercises with other allies in the region and provided a moderate amount of non-lethal military equipment to Ukraine.

The United States needs to do more to win the war of ideas with Russia, Kinzinger said, and that is why legislation to create an intergovernmental panel needs to move forward.

“Look, you have people that want freedom, but when you have a country that’s basically a big gas station, that uses energy as a weapon and then invests a lot in misinformation – we can either cede that part of the world to Russia and say, ‘Bring all the boys home,’ you know?” he said. “Or we can fight back.”