NATO’s Information Warfare Strategy

On November 2023, NATO’s Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats published a disturbing ‘working paper,’ zoning in online information warfare: Case study on Russia’s war on Ukraine.

It received no mainstream attention. Yet, the contents offer unprecedented insight into the military alliance’s insidious weaponization of social media to distort public perceptions and manufacture consent for war.

They also raise grave questions about online trolling of dissident voices over the past decade and beyond.

The working paper ostensibly considers instances of humour put to effective use to counter disinformation and propaganda in online spaces, using Russia’s war on Ukraine.

It concludes, humour-based responses…in the information space and in the physical domain have been found to deliver multiple clear benefits for Ukraine and NATO.

Avowedly a practical review seeking to identify examples of best practice from both government and civil society for wider future application, the paper recommends Western states, militaries, and security and intelligence services master the art of online ridicule under the aegis of counter-disinformation.

It contends, humour…reaches the parts that other countermeasures – like fact-checking or media user education – cannot.

Mass deployment of memes, moreover, has the advantage of exploiting social media platform algorithms and addressing audiences that are not inclined to consume ‘boring’ products.

As we shall see, the true value in weaponizing “humour” for NATO is distorting the battlefield reality in Ukraine – and future theaters of Western proxy conflict – for public consumption.

Meanwhile, any social media user deviating from NATO-endorsed narratives can be subjected to intensive harassment, discrediting them and their message among a wide sector of online audiences, if not scaring them away from digital information spaces entirely. The working paper advocates the creation of an army of private citizens for the purpose.

The paper begins by noting that state-backed parody and mockery of the enemy in conflict are nothing new, citing satirical newspaper Wipers Times, distributed to British soldiers fighting in Western Front trenches during the First World War.

And the BBC German Service, which fought Hitler with humour. Today though, social media has democratized access and audience, therefore [opening] the playing field to self-motivated private individuals while [facilitating] their joining forces in informal collectives for greater effect.

Trolling…is the social media equivalent of guerrilla warfare, and memes are its currency of propaganda. ISIS is conducting memetic warfare. The Kremlin is doing it. It’s inexpensive. The capabilities exist. Why aren’t we trying it?

These excerpts are striking, for throughout the first 18 months of the proxy conflict, Russian failures and Ukrainian determination absolutely dominated Western media coverage of the war.

The narrative that the invasion was an unmitigated disaster and huge embarrassment for Moscow in every way, and Kiev could pull off a spirited underdog victory and repel the invaders, if not ultimately march upon the Kremlin, as long as sufficient Western Wunderwaffe arrived, was universal and indomitable.

In reality, while there were undoubtedly Russian failures and Ukrainian determination aplenty from the start, Kiev was economically and militarily crippled within weeks.

The Special Military Operation was concerned not with conquering every inch of the country but with compelling Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to implement the Minsk Accords and declare neutrality.

This was almost achieved in April 2022 via Turkey-brokered peace talks. But British then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev, offering the Ukrainians the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.

The scale of Ukraine’s losses, the dire situation for the country from day one of Russia’s invasion, and British and American intelligence connivance’s that produced the conflict, concealed from Western audiences by their governments and media, meant siding with and arming Kiev appeared to be the objectively sensible, reasonable, moral position.

After all, they were fighting an enemy that embodied absolute evil and incompetence. Helpfully, NATO was always on hand to relentlessly remind the public of both qualities – particularly the latter.

Public perceptions were rendered less critical. Serious, complex questions were simplified to the obvious. Clear groups were created – strong and intelligent ‘we’ and clumsy and stupid ‘they.’

And Western audiences, of course, associated themselves with the former while despising the latter.

Fast forward to today, and mainstream polls indicate that just one in ten Europeans believe Ukraine can win, with most believing a compromise settlement is the only way to end the conflict.

In June 2023, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive. Originally intended to start months earlier, it was much delayed due to adverse weather conditions and late weapon deliveries.

Officials in Kiev, many Western journalists and pundits, and NATO all heavily hyped the effort in advance. The group published many memes – some promoted a beach party for fellas in Crimea that Summer and others depicted orcs fleeing from swarms of leopards.

The latter played on a trope that Ukrainian political and military chiefs and the Western media were extremely keen to perpetuate – that Moscow’s soldiers, terrified of German Leopard 2 tanks, would abandon their positions as the armored vehicles advanced.

Instead, they were easily blown to smithereens by extensive minefields created by Russian forces while they waited for the counteroffensive to commence and low-cost lancet drones.

Within just a month, Ukraine had lost 20% of the vehicles and armor supplied by the West, with nothing to show for it.

This remained the case when the counteroffensive fizzled out at the end of 2023, with just 0.25% of the territory occupied by Russia in the initial phase of the invasion regained.

Meanwhile, casualties may have exceeded 100,000. This can only be considered an absolutely horrendous catastrophe from every angle.

The Washington Post published an extensive post-mortem on the counteroffensive in December of that year.

It is clear that among other failures, a fatal error in planning for the effort – overseen by the Pentagon – was the assumption that the Russians would flee in many areas.

No alternative scenarios were considered. The Wall Street Journal has also highlighted other egregious strategic shortcomings, which made the counteroffensive’s calamity inevitable.

It seems Ukrainians were dispatched on a suicide mission because Western military apparatchiks bought into the simplistic, misleading propaganda narrative of Russian failures versus Ukrainian determination.

Courage and resourcefulness are admirable qualities that Ukrainians have consistently exhibited since February 2022.

But they are no match – let alone substitute – for landmines, tanks, fighter jets, artillery shells, and other weapons of war. That confirming this self-evident fact came at the cost of so many lives is a criminal tragedy.

This may well explain why Keir Giles failed in his quest to become a standup comedian and why his jokes continue to fall flat to this day. But for all those who oppose war, his working paper is no laughing matter.

It is advocacy for the military alliance to create a permanent online harassment battalion to inflict psychological, emotional, personal and professional damage on them while convincing decent people to hate the oppressed and cheer the oppressors.

Mint Press / ABC Flash point News 2024.Un