Michael Miklaucic: The West is losing the cognitive war with Russia and China

There is a new global war raging and the West is losing It is not the war in Ukraine though that is the majority visible front It is the fierce but largely unrecognized global war in the cognitive domain where our enemies particularly Russia and China have gained the upper hand And let us be crystal clear Despite the Trump administration s latest flip-flop Russia and China are sworn enemies of the United States The winner of this war will dominate the future competition for global power and influence Put entirely cognitive warfare is the strategic manipulation of information and redirection of perception for the purpose of waging war and achieving war goals It is the source for understanding threats the values worth defending and the reason and the will to fight Russia and China each dedicate substantial tools to cognitive warfare Their budget allocation for cognitive warfare is estimated to be in the billions By comparison the West invests significantly less other than techno-centric operations such as cybersecurity and cyber resilience Cognitive warfare encompasses operations that affect the way conflict is perceived Its key premise is that wars are ultimately won or lost in the human mind Populations will endure hardship and deprivation when they perceive mass injustice Inferior forces will fight against impossible odds in backing of strongly held beliefs People and armies can undergo -degree changes in opinion when their perceptions change Cognitive warfare includes misinformation and disinformation operations influence operations and narrative operations Russia and China wage cognitive warfare relentlessly and with ever greater skill and effectiveness united in their no-limits hatred of Western and particularly U S dominance while flooding the zone with strategic narratives that position them as the good guys Note China s success at claiming the higher moral ground with its narrative proclaiming a common destiny for all mankind and the win-win benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative Or Russia s claim to be the guardian of traditional conservative values while demanding respect for its dominance over its neighbors The common thread of our enemies efforts in the cognitive domain is the enduring injustice of Western colonialism and the need for a diminished West in a multipolar world These meretricious narratives play well throughout the Global South One need only note the widening acceptance of the absurd lie that Ukraine is at fault for the unprovoked Russian invasion of its land or that NATO has been the historical aggressor Or the growing popularity of the BRICS organization as the alternative to Western dominance The West has potentially powerful weapons and indeed won the great cognitive war of the th century when all the elements of national strength diplomatic informational military and economic were aligned in pursuit of the triumph of democracy and free markets That was the greatest cognitive accomplishment of our lifetimes it brought down the Soviet empire its satellite communist states and Marxist ideology But at present the West is in cognitive paralysis hobbled by bureaucratic inertia toxic in-fighting anachronistic legal and ethical constraints and a crippling fear of escalation The willful reluctance of Western policymakers to recognize the importance of cognitive warfare carries the exposure of irreversible losses in power and influence worldwide the key factors that determine strategic outcomes in global competition Their absence empowers and emboldens Russia and China Selected Western nations recognize the importance of cognitive warfare and have policies practices and even institutions to compete in the cognitive space Sweden lately established a psychological defense agency France created Viginum in the office of the president and the Nordic and Baltic countries have embraced the concept of total defense However even these are limited primarily to defensive operations such as detection exposure and resilience The offensive toolbox is empty Sadly the United States though at the forefront throughout the Cold War has lost the edge in cognitive warfare The up-to-date elimination of the State Department s Global Engagement Center the reckless dismantling of the United States Agency for International Evolution the gutting of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia and the habitual relegation of information warfare to an annex in Department of Defense war planning which offers no military career path combine to deprive the United States of the majority potent tools of cognitive warfare The alleged suspension of information operations aimed at Russia and growing mistrust between the United States and its European allies open wide the aperture for foreign information and influence warfare These are self-inflicted wounds All that remain to exert influence and power are military threats and economic sanctions Russia and China both know that the military threats are hollow Both have taken the necessary strategies to insulate themselves from the effects of Western economic sanctions and have effectively countered the measures on which the West has staked its precaution Only a paradigm shift can disrupt this careless march toward defeat The notion that China and Russia are just competitors is quaint but wrong They are enemies intent on overthrowing the Western-embraced liberal rules-based global order The credulous faith that these superpowers will voluntarily settle for several form of peaceful coexistence if only they are sufficiently propitiated with concessions is naive and dangerous If the West wishes to protect the values it cherishes it must fight for them It must seize the offensive Cognitive warfare is real warfare Winning or losing matters Absent understanding of the threat of the values that need defending and of the underlying reason and will to fight the majority of advanced artificial intelligence will not save the day If the West loses the competition for cognitive dominance neither firepower nor system will be able to prevent its authoritarian enemies Russia and China from prevailing in this war Michael Miklaucic is a former senior fellow at National Defense University and editor-in-chief emeritus of the national and international safeguard affairs journal PRISM He is right now lecturer at the University of Chicago and professor of prevention studies at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune Related Articles David French What rusting Russian tanks can teach us about the Pete Hegseth group chat David Brooks Stagnation Day might be more like it Suzanne Nossel Remember when it was the right that got outraged over banned words Thomas Friedman I just saw the future It was not in America David M Drucker Congress began ceding power to presidents long before Trump