Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are using disinformation, sabotage, espionage, propaganda, cyberattacks, and other techniques to undermine democracies, damage economies, and divide their rivals. CEPA’s Global Shadow War Initiative will track such attacks and propose ways to counter them, said Alina Polyakova, President and CEO.
“From Europe to the Indo-Pacific and beyond, Russia and China are aligned in their intent to unseat US global leadership, and others who share that intent are supporting these efforts,” Polyakova told CEPA’s Honors Gala in Washington. “This is full spectrum war, designed to be perceived as below the threshold of open war.”
Understanding and beating the threat is a “core pillar” of CEPA’s work, she said. The new initiative will seek to build alliances, identify the most effective and proactive responses, and translate them into workable policies.
“Just as our adversaries enable each other across the world, we must do the same,” she said. “We must work together — business leaders, policymakers, and impact drivers — to enable each other’s ability not just to deter, but to win.”
Technology, including AI, can be used to build models for alliances to identify and respond to security threats in a “nimble and cutting-edge way,” she added. “We certainly cannot rest at a moment like this, when authoritarian leaders seek to fragment and divide us. This is the moment to rise above and come together.”
The new program of work was supported by former US National Security Adviser Lt Gen (rtd.) HR McMaster and former German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, co-chairs of CEPA’s international leadership council.
“This axis of aggressors . . . believe that we are weak, decadent and divided,” McMaster said, before listing the occasions when China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have come together at summit meetings to claim they have taken over leadership of the world. “How is it really going for them?” he asked.
Of their proxies, Venezuela’s Maduro is in jail, Syria’s Assad is in exile in Moscow, and Iran is in crisis, McMaster said.
“And what is the status of Iran at this moment? How’s the Chinese economy going? And Russia’s destroyed its country,” he told the audience in Washington. “I think we should be confident in confronting this aggression, and CEPA has laid out in their fantastic study how to do it, how to understand the shadow war, then what to do to win.”
Russian shadow attacks in Germany and across Europe are increasing in intensity, Kramp-Karrenbauer said. She added that on a recent trip to Asia she had seen the same tactics being used against allies there.
“There is no question we, as democracies, are under attack from a global shadow war,” she said. “We are currently ill-equipped to respond in a definitive and assertive way; this is why CEPA’s work on this issue is so critically important.”
A recent speech by Putin highlighted his vision of a Russian Europe, where the continent becomes his sphere of influence, and he can do as he pleases, using all means at his disposal, she said.
“We are very committed to one goal, that we make sure that Vladimir Putin is never going to win this war, to win his war in the spotlight against Ukraine or his shadow war against Europe and the free world,” she said.
Thomas Penny is an editor and writer based in London. He has worked for local, national, and international news organizations, including the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg News, and CEPA, and is now a freelance specializing in international relations, politics, and conflict.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
