Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (36 page)

Along different lines, China has also embraced the age of global economics and information exchange for its own purposes. As we described in our “Cyber Wars” chapter, Beijing is the world’s leading cyber thief, and its assault on Western, especially American, targets occurs daily. It is in the cyber arena that China is waging much of its intelligence warfare. China’s intelligence efforts, however, have subtler aspects, intimately related to the global economy and to the U.S.–China trade relationship. Although the Communist Party remains in power,
China’s embrace of global capitalism and technology has made it a much more decentralized adversary than in the days of Mao. Combined with its economic leverage—especially over the United States, its debtor—this new nimbleness serves the regime’s purposes well.

During the Cold War, the Soviets would never have dared intrude into the communications of Americans at home and abroad. These days, American diplomats, employees of banks, news media, NGOs, oil companies, chemical companies, entertainment personnel, and numerous other professionals fully expect to be monitored wherever they are in Russia and China—as well as at home in the U.S. Thus we see an irony of the triumph of market capitalism: The free flow of information and labor across borders was supposed to soften the power of totalitarian governments. Instead, the Axis has successfully used the new freedoms to extend the reach of oppressive or coercive state behavior, which is now easier to engage in and harder to scrutinize. Decentralization, long touted as a positive force for spreading democracy, has turned out to be a mixed blessing. Now, instead of trying to identify the relevant spokes on one wheel, we are dealing with seemingly countless wheels.

Yet the challenge the United States faces in this area is ultimately one not of capacity but of will. We are certainly capable of taking a harder line against Putin’s various depredations and human-rights abuses, and we can set in place firmer policies with regard to Beijing’s economic coercion. But to respond more forcefully, we must first recognize that our adversaries do not bear us good will and are not susceptible to mere pleas. No resource should be spared to provide better protections for our military, technological, and private-sector secrets. At the same time, the U.S. must find a way to strengthen the performance of our intelligence community, which exacts a lavish price tag from taxpayers even though it underperforms, again and again, when it matters most.

If the Cold War terrain has changed, one fact hasn’t: The same battle for global dominance across the continents continues, only under different names. Russia and China understand this; the United States and the West seem unwilling to acknowledge it. We do not participate in the intelligence game with the same intensity as Moscow or Beijing. They know what they’re playing for and what they’re willing to do to achieve their goals.

Can the same be said about the United States and its Western allies?

CHAPTER 8

Propaganda Wars: Losing Ground in the Battle for Hearts and Minds

“The core, the binding fabric of this unique civilization—is the Russian people, Russian culture.”

—
VLADIMIR PUTIN
¹

“To achieve the great revival of the Chinese nation, we must ensure there is unison between a prosperous country and strong military.”

—
XI JINPING
²

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

—
BARACK OBAMA
³

“Y
ou’re bandits. Democratic bandits. You’ve destroyed thousands, maybe millions of people [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. I’m living through being democratised with a truncheon on the head by the West every day. Who needs that kind of democracy?” Thus spoke Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, in a rare interview.
⁴
Lukashenko is widely known as the “last dictator in Europe” owing to his obviously fixed elections and repression of dissent.

In the same interview, given to a London
Independent
reporter in 2012, he cited the chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union and argued that he had brought safety and security to his country. “These were terrible years of anarchy, and not only in Russia. I don’t need your democracy! Belarusians don’t need this democracy if there’s no economy. If a man can’t work in his own country and earn his living, if he can’t take a piece of land, if he can’t build a house, plant a tree, raise his children because he’s scared to let them go outside.”
⁵

No one who lived through the Russia of the 1990s—with its endemic corruption, violence, massive unemployment, and spiraling social problems—wants to go back there. What the Belarus dictator offers instead is stability: “So Lukashenko is a bad guy! Go out on the street, look around—everything is clean, neat, normal people walking around. There’s no way that the dictator can’t take at least some credit for that.”
⁶
More recently, Belarus’s economy has faltered, but the dictator’s argument has been persuasive to many—and he is one of Vladimir Putin’s staunchest allies. During a May 2012 visit, Putin referred to “brotherly Belarus” and praised “the special nature of our relations.”
⁷

A few months later, in Beijing, more than 500 rural Chinese farmers paraded through the streets holding portraits of Mao. “Down with the Japanese imperialists!” they chanted. They had come to the capital from Heibei Province, a distance requiring a bus trip—the kind of transportation and logistics that suggested a government role. “How else could 500 farmers come from the provinces?” asked a Chinese blogger.
⁸

The farmers were just one part of a broader national protest in September 2012. Huge crowds trashed Japanese-owned businesses—a Panasonic plant, a Toyota dealership, and 7-Eleven stores, among others. They torched Japanese model cars. Chinese police helped direct the protests, steering the demonstrators to proper areas. “I need to
lead the crowd and guide them to march in an orderly fashion,” a policeman wrote.
⁹

September 18 is a traditional day of protest in China, commemorating the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. But at the same time, with the two nations mired in an intense dispute over a set of islands in the East China Sea, the protests had a contemporary feel. And their massive size and seamless coordination seemed to make clear that the Communist Party was directing the dissent toward a desired target—the Japanese—both to whip up nationalist sentiment and tamp down internal criticism of the regime’s domestic policies. Nationalism has long served that function for governments.

Lukashenko’s devotion to order and Beijing’s appeal to nationalism are just two instances that illustrate the broader phenomenon of Axis and Axis-friendly countries rallying public support by appealing to fundamental, visceral impulses: the need for stability, the fear of chaos, anger at foreigners, and nationalist pride. All these elements, and others, form what has become an increasingly compelling Axis propaganda model—one that implicitly and explicitly rejects the Western democratic model of openness, untrammeled free markets, and a liberal, tolerant, multicultural society. For millions, these ideals, which Americans especially hold dear, are dangerous and threatening.

After the Soviet Union fell, many assumed that the Western model—individual liberty, democracy, and economic freedom—had been as responsible for the triumph as military might. Yet two decades later, we seem to be losing the argument. Why?

In large part, it’s because the world has arrived at one of those cyclic stages where upheaval induces fatigue and fear. Electorates around the world are exhausted by the radical changes that globalism, free markets, and democracy have ushered in. They wish to slow down the rate of change, and they have elected dictators who promise them
stability and protection; they have tolerated the abrogation of democratic freedoms for the sake of order. The Axis takes advantage of such fears. They make Americanization synonymous with a multitude of sins—especially chaos.

What we are seeing is a massive challenge to the Western worldview. Around the world, events have seemed to contradict our fundamental assumptions. Freedom has brought not wealth to millions, but dissolution of wealth—first in the post-Soviet years in the Warsaw Pact countries, then in South America, and finally in Europe and the U.S. after the financial crisis. Assessing the rivalry between India and China, the world saw better economic results for the less democratic model in China. The example of Iraq also weighed against the West. Who wants freedom if it leads to carnage?

Russia and China have used this new skepticism about freedom to develop appeals and arguments for their hybrid systems, which are far from democratic yet not as monolithic as the old Communist powers. This hybrid quality, in fact, is the key to their appeal: Russia and China promise economic prosperity and national security, but they also make clear that the American promise of individual rights is not part of the package. Millions in Russia, China, and elsewhere have embraced these alternative models.

For all the concern we have expressed over military and nuclear strength, about cyber-war tactics and economic competition, the war over ideas and values is every bit as important. It is this field of conflict that could determine the outcome of the struggle. America and the West offer the same set of compelling values to the world as we always have, and these values remain humanity’s best hope. But we are failing to convince the world of this as we once did (and it’s hard not to wonder if we’re failing because we doubt these values ourselves). Faced with rapid and often frightening change across the globe, we are not offering a clear road map to the future.

Russia and China do, and they busily make their case, in word and deed.

THE AXIS VALUE PROPOSITION

At first glance, except for their unifying anti-Americanism, there could be no more disparate countries than Russia and China. Ethnically, culturally, and geographically, they inhabit largely different worlds. One might describe Russia as a once-socialist, pseudo-democratic oligopoly and China as a pseudo-socialist, market-oriented, one-party state. But, in fact, they share fundamental political and economic flaws.

Both suffer from deep and widespread corruption. Both operate a barely disguised kleptocracy from the top down. Both are run by elites terrified of the instability inherent in the system’s inequities. Simmering ethnic issues trouble both countries with no apparent solution on the horizon other than intimidation and repression, while the majority ethnic group equates the nation’s cultural identity with its own. And, of course, lack of transparency in government goes hand in hand with rule by cliques, closed networks, and mafias.

Add up these elements and you get strong clues to why Western social and political principles pose an active threat to the Axis nations. You also get a definitive explanation for the kind of messages the Axis feeds to its citizens at home and allies abroad: a tacit ideology heavy with pressure to conform. Axis propaganda derives directly from the systemic weaknesses in Russia and China, and from the need to hide them while offering compensatory illusions.

One such illusion is nostalgia for national greatness—in a word, nationalism, which Axis elites use more and more frequently to rally their domestic populations. The purpose and the effect of this dangerous tool we all know from historical precedents.

The notion of national greatness is part of a broader illusion involving a theme of conservatism at home and abroad—a pivotal development that the West has yet to notice or address. Meanwhile, the true activating principle of the state is continuity in power, with all the methods of modern surveillance and control deployed to head off trouble wherever it might arise. Shutting down untrammeled free speech by controlling the media, the Internet, and foreign NGOs fits into the strategy, along with mysterious assassinations that rub out vocal dissidents and whistleblowers.

Even more troublingly, the Axis has had great success in exporting its formula actively and by example. More and more countries now seem to prefer the Axis model of curbing opposition by invoking national exigencies, even when individual countries profess a closer allegiance to the West. Large swaths of the globe now desire stability above all, and they are thus more receptive to Axis propaganda, which promises exactly that. Across Eastern Europe, from Hungary through Belarus to Ukraine and Georgia, from Turkey to Egypt across the Middle East and Central Asia, the Putinist example has become the norm: jailing journalists and opponents, suborning the judiciary, censoring websites, and controlling media ownership while amassing executive power. The great wave of democratic movements championed by the U.S. during the post-Soviet era has hit a wall. Many states now operate from a fear of internal weakness. The West has failed to anticipate the wave of conservatism overtaking the globe; the Axis is deeply tuned in to it.

In contrast to the sometimes vague aspirational principles that America espouses, China and Russia focus on promoting things people need—food and jobs—or, failing that, things that people feel passionately about, such as national identity, religion, or culture. China achieves this by implicitly bribing its populace: In exchange for political docility, it enriches its citizens. The message is clear to potential allies such as Sudan or Zimbabwe: China can use the same methods to help
keep other regimes in power. Russia offers a different method: appeals to culture, religion, morality, Russian pride, and anti-Americanism.

A closer look at both models makes clear how compelling they are for troubled populations, especially when compared with the muddled, amorphous American message. Two case studies—one Russian, one Chinese—illustrate the tenacity of the Axis nations in putting their models into practice. They succeed not only through their ruthlessness but also through the clarity of their vision. This was never more apparent than in the Georgian elections of 2012.

What Happened in Georgia, and Why It Matters

On October 1, 2012, the pro-American, former Soviet Republic of Georgia held a national parliamentary election. The winning party would nominate its leader as prime minister. The prime minister would work closely with President Mikheil Saakashvili, perhaps the most vocal anti-Kremlin head of state still in power around Russia’s periphery. Georgia was invaded by Russian tanks in 2008. Large chunks of Georgian territory had been occupied, including regions held by separatists, which were then effectively integrated into the Russian Federation. Moscow had ripped away and swallowed pieces of Georgia—this after centuries of Czarist and Soviet domination. Anti-Russian feeling in Georgia was centuries old. Yet in the 2012 election, the opposition party, Georgian Dream—what many called the pro-Moscow party—won the election.

How was this possible in a country that had virtually defined its post-Soviet identity through its refusal to kowtow to Russia, in a country that had escaped from Russian domination despite massive pressure? What happened to the Georgian people that they would elect a leader so clearly linked to their mortal enemies in the Kremlin? How was the electorate persuaded to vote against the incumbent
party that had delivered modernization, growth, transparency, and dynamism—even through a global recession—at a rate unprecedented in Georgian history?

Propaganda, that’s how.

Bidzina Ivanishvili, a 56-year-old Georgian oligarch, headed up Georgian Dream. It was no secret that Ivanishvili’s money came from Moscow, where he had lived until 2003. In an attempt to de-emphasize his Moscow connections, the oligarch made a show of selling his Russian properties in the months preceding the election. Behind the smoke and mirrors of the media blitz, nobody knew exactly what Ivanishvili owned, how much of it he had sold, and how much he was able to take out of Russia—especially at a time when Putin had signed a decree forcing oligarchs to repatriate funds they had stashed abroad. It was public knowledge that Ivanishvili could not sell his shares in Gazprom and Lukoil without special permission from the Kremlin. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to conclude that Moscow permitted him to withdraw tens of millions—by some estimates, more than $100 million—in order to influence the elections.

Some 10 days before the vote, Georgia’s opposition TV stations began showing grainy black-and-white videos of prison abuse apparently secretly taped in Georgian prisons. The images were lurid, including scenes of a man being sodomized with a broomstick. The videos had an instant, electrifying effect on the mood of the country. The international media picked up the videos, and political pressure intensified. Saakashvili and his party found themselves on the defensive, taking heat from all sides. He fired several key officials, including the interior minister and the head of prisons, while arresting others and promising a full-scale investigation. Meanwhile, the opposition exhorted its supporters to hit the streets and demonstrate against government corruption and secrecy.