You cannot write a credible National Security Strategy today that ignores one of the biggest ongoing current threats to American national security: Russia’s effort to undermine our democratic institutions and divide our nation both internally and from our allies, notes Duke University professor Peter D. Feaver, co-editor of Foreign Policy’s Elephants in the Room. It would be like writing an NSS in the late 1940s and not addressing global communism. Or in the early 1990s and not discussing nuclear proliferation. Or in the early 2000s and not mentioning militant Islamist terrorist networks.
Russia’s influence and propaganda “is continuing in the United States and across Europe,” said analyst Nada Bakos. “To me it’s probably a little like pre-9/11 when there was pre-warning analysis being written and delivered to policy makers and they’re not really getting any feedback or any strategies,” she said.
A recent paper, “Making Sense of Russian Hybrid Warfare: A Brief Assessment of the Russo-Ukrainian War”, fails to “make sense” of Russian Hybrid Warfare, but succeeds in accomplishing something much more important by focusing on certain specific Russian doctrinal innovations, analyst Adrian Bonenberger writes for Foreign Policy.
The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for organizations interested in submitting applications for collaborative policy advocacy initiatives to coordinate and amplify existing business and human rights efforts to advance Internet freedom:
In support of the U.S. policy to promote an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable global Internet, DRL’s goal is to promote fundamental freedoms, human rights, and the free flow of information online by supporting civil society to advocate for rights-respecting policies and practices with governments, commercial enterprises, and technical bodies to ensure the same human rights guaranteed offline are protected and respected online. In line with this goal, DRL seeks to expand ongoing efforts in the fields of business and human rights and Internet freedom by empowering civil society to promote best practices for respecting human rights within the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, specifically among small and medium enterprises (SMEs). DRL invites organizations interested in potential funding to submit proposals outlining program concepts that reflect this goal. RTWT
Hannah Thoburn, a Penn Kemble fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, discusses Weaponizing Kleptocracy (above).
