Key Reflections
* Russia’s interests in counter-terrorism, geopolitics, the Arab Spring, and espionage all converged as part of a ‘disinformation fusion centre’ to malign as well as spread propaganda and disinformation.
* The Kremlin’s synergy is unique as there is connectivity between their intelligence services and cyber community, creating an ecosystem using oligarchs, expats, and influential foreigners as extensions of power.
* Russia’s current campaign against Ukraine is deliberately less noisy in the information space compared to before, but troop mobilisation on the border suggests a much more direct and hostile intent.
* Russia dominates the disinformation output, whereas China is more advanced in the use of artificial intelligence and synthetic media. Globally, Russia seeks to degrade, China opts to usurp.
* The battlespace is divided up based on language and platform, and China wants to expand its influence internationally. China will likely overtake Russia in a few years.
* China is operating at four levels: technology infrastructure, social media applications, global content, and control of the internet and media environment.
Transcript:
SG – Dr. Sajjan Gohel
CW – Clint Watts
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP dive brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak to Clint Watts, a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Non-Resident Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. Clint previously served in the U.S. Army as well as the FBI, supporting the U.S. Special Operations Command and Intelligence Community. His research and writing focuses on terrorism, counter-terrorism, social media influence, and disinformation warfare campaigns by state actors. Clint’s work has led to him testifying before four different U.S. Senate committees. Clint is the author of Messing With The Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News. His writing has appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, as well as being a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC.
Clint Watts Thank you for being part of NATO DEEP Dive
CW: Thanks for having me.
SG: It’s a pleasure. One thing I’d like to start with is to take you back actually to when we first met, which was in Tbilisi, Georgia, back in 2007. Now we’d gone for a conference on counter-terrorism. But one of the important segways that emerged from that trip was the relevance and prevalence of Russia, and just how much of an impact Russia was having on Georgia. Back then, much of Georgian territory had come under occupation by forces that were seen as loyal to the Kremlin and that has increased over time. I’d be curious to get your opinion as to when you thought Russia was not just important geo-strategically but was actually impacting on the sovereignty of countries and the agenda that was being orchestrated by the Putin regime.
CW: It’s a fascinating transition because we were there in Tbilisi, with all of these random counter-terrorism, like, reps from different countries that oftentimes didn’t get along with each other. So, when I think back about it, like we were there, right before Tbilisi became kind of an epicentre of a different conflict, right? It was another location right on the frontlines of the new emerging Russia. And what struck me was, I would say, around 2010 to 2012, Putin and the Kremlin, were making a decision for how to achieve what they want, which essentially was to take back, really regain the Russian populations in their near abroad that they lost that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, but also to do their version of reset with the United States, but also use that as a way to undermine NATO, and they recognise the value of NATO.
So, in that, probably about the time I saw you was the first time I started considering this with regards to Russia, and they were popping up in different places, in the extremist environment because of Chechnya. You know, they had foreign fighters and there was kind of this legend going around everywhere: “Chechens in Afghanistan,” “Chechens in Iraq,” and these sorts of things. So, their interest was piquing and they saw it, I think, in the late 2000s moving into the 2010s, as a bridge to parts of the United States and the West that they want to fight counter-terrorism too. Separately, they started to realise the advantages and a build-up sort of fashion of the information space. And they’d always understood the information space better than the West does.
The West takes that for granted. We tend to say, “oh, you know, free information in the environment and the marketplace of ideas and best ideas always went out, you just give it oxygen and it grows.” Whereas the Soviet Union, transitioning into Russia, which is Vladimir Putin, and then Putin’s kind of right-hand man for the information space of managed democracy, Vladislav Surkov, recognised the opportunities of the internet in a new way. And I think that really came to them during the Arab Spring. They did not like the instability, they were witnessing the breakup of some of their old allies, but at the same point, they saw a mob descend, without any leadership really, to a place of consequence in several different countries, whether it be Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and create mass instability. And they recognised the power of that information environment, and they sought to move towards it.
Separately, they had always done the espionage part, so hacking and delving, going after people’s secrets, following their opponents, any sort of defectors. So, they understood that part. So, what they were able to do is take lessons learned from the social media space and the information space, at the same point, identify their objectives very clearly. So, one was to align in counter-terrorism with the West, so it would seem like it’s kind of an us against them. Separately, they knew they could come back to active measures, which was to win through the force of politics, rather than the politics of force inside these countries.
And so, we came onto them in January 2014, which was the first time we stumbled into them in the online environment, that was around the conflict in Syria, where they were impersonating accounts across the landscape of particular Americans and American accounts that look like and talk like Americans. And then we happen to stay on that trail, and they use those same accounts to go after the US election. So, I think what’s remarkable is they understood that the only thing worse than no information, like the Soviet era, is too much information, that you can really flood the zone, that you could do all of this remotely, that a strategy that they had that failed, active measures during the Cold War, was now possible and can be successful in the post-Cold War world, due to the information environment.
And so, when I look at their goals, undermining NATO: they’ve achieved that. Sewing chaos in democracies and democratic institutions: absolute success. Carving out and regaining battlespace, or actual ground in countries of the former Soviet Union, whether that be Ukraine or with allies, like Syria, or in Libya: success. Now whether the cost-benefit calculation is correct, I think is debatable, but what I do recognise is that they have a very deliberate plan, they know how to execute it, and I think that’s what we see unfolding up to this very day in Ukraine.
SG: So, you’ve touched upon a lot of important areas which seem to intersect. We’re talking about Russia’s interests in counter-terrorism, geo-politics, then the aspect of the Arab Spring, as well as that old element that was a carryover from the days of the Soviet Union, which was espionage. And then you’ve got the advent of new media technology. So, are we saying that all of these basically converged in a very convenient way for the Russians and they developed a strategy in exploiting it to the maximum to further their own agenda whilst also undermining that of the West? In particular, NATO, the U.S., European Union?
CW: I think that’s absolutely correct. It’s the convergence of several things that they were doing. And sometimes I’ll refer to it as a ‘disinformation fusion centre’ as a way to think about it. But I think the principal part to always remember is that they are information led in terms of their national power. They don’t have a strong hand to play diplomatically, but they don’t toss it away, they use it to reinforce their information campaigns. Militarily, still very strong, one to one, but not strong enough against NATO. And economically very limited, both due to mostly being an extraction economy or a criminal economy in the cyberspace, and not really being able to lever in a way to put themselves in a position that like China might be able to. And that’s partly because their system is kind of just organised crime running a state, that’s how it collectively operates.
So, when you look at what they did in the information space, they took, okay, how do we compromise targets? You think back 30 years ago, you break into their house, you steal their letters, you dump them to the newspaper. Then they elevated that in the 2000s, okay, now you hack into someone’s account, you take their secrets, or you plant some secrets, you malign them, so you’re just trading targets. Step one. What’s the next step? Okay, let’s take it to the next level, which is let’s use non-stop walls propaganda to amplify that which we’ve already seeded. And so that’s layering and then okay, what’s the next thing? Well, let’s go into foreign audiences and create personas that look like and talk like the target audience, so that they’re more trusted, to amplify our propaganda and to sew more disinformation around that what we did in a compromising fashion in a cyber-attack, which is essentially what they did through WikiLeaks and DC leaks and around a lot of the elections.
And then I think the fourth layer is, what’s our goal? And they really had it, which was, can we go into western democracies and elevate people to positions of power, help boost politicians or take down opponents, in certain cases, such that there’s a more pro-Russian view across the board. And we see a larger retraction in the West. Simultaneously pursuing devolution essentially, go after alliances, NATO, can we break it up? Individually, any of the NATO countries vis-a-vis Russia’s struggle? So, if we can do that, that’s a success from Vladimir Putin’s perspective. The other is the European Union. And then third, which I think oftentimes gets forgotten is, can we even create chaos and break up inside individual countries like pitting Scotland against the greater United Kingdom, or Catalan, like, can we do this inside Spain? Or can we push people and just nudge them such that they’re so tied up in internal chaos that they can’t possibly worry about Russia? So, I think what’s remarkable is they iteratively kind of built on this. The first foray was Ukraine, the next one was Syria, then it was the elections, Brexit, U.S., France, Germany. They have been on a very linear trajectory, in my mind, with the information led approach, and I don’t see it stopping, I think it’s unfolding today in Ukraine.
SG: This linear trajectory that you mentioned, in some ways, you’ve, you’ve kind of answered it, but I’m just curious to get more clarity on it, because you talked about the fusion centre that Russia has created. We know that many countries, historically, even currently, are always interested to influence and shape the agendas of nations and regions. Is there anything specifically unique about Russia’s campaign system that we really need to highlight and bring to greater attention? Because I often find that for those that watch it, it’s very apparent, but it doesn’t necessarily get the global attention that it really does need to.
CW: There are some aspects of it that are unique to Russia in ways that other countries can’t replicate. One, it’s the tie-in of their intelligence services with their cyber community, hackers, coders, things like that, and the tie-in of their intelligence community with information outlets. I think that’s what is interesting. They have a way of sort of building out this ecosystem in the overt, semi-covert, and covert space in such a way that it’s very effective. And then that next layer is they tie in contracting, which is not that different—it is different, but it’s not entirely different—from defence contracting in Western countries. But, using cut-outs, oligarchs as extensions of power, I think that’s the second aspect, which is not just like hiring a company to do something but literally saying oligarchic you know, whether it’s [Yevgeny] Prigozhin, [Konstantin] Malofeyev or others, “you pursue your interest, and at the same time, pursue my interest.” And it’s a cost-effective way to expand Putin’s influence around the world without having to deploy massive armies the way the U.S. would or the way NATO would. And so, they get a lot of strategic advantage in that. There are some weaknesses with control, but in general, it’s a benefit to both parties.
I think the last part is the way they use their own Russian emigre, that have gone abroad and also the way they use foreign influencers to their advantage. On the first part, Russia has greater strength where there are more Russian citizens abroad, Germany being the top amongst those in the West. But I think in the former Soviet states, that’s what you see unfold in Crimea and Donbass. Second, they hire, equip, train—working at the party and sort of people level—agents of influence, who either wittingly or unwittingly are doing the work for Russia inside the audiences of the West. And so, Russia today, for example, inside the U.S. on election night, 2016, they had three hosts, it was Larry King, former CNN, very well known, Ed Schultz, former MSNBC, and Jesse Ventura, one of the world’s top conspiracy theorists. They’re able to draw an audience. And so, that’s an American, talking about how bad America is on a Russian channel. That’s impressive that they know how to think that through. So, I think if anything, it’s the way they know how to conduct the art, and then layer that with technology. They also have some weaknesses, vis-a-vis China and some other countries, that they’ll never be able to reach the maximum potential of their system. But at the same point, they wield it impressively well.
SG: It’s very interesting, the aspect that you brought up in terms of how Russia today had recruited several well-known personalities from the US and the Jesse Ventura example stood out because you’re looking at someone for, I remember growing up, used to be a wrestler in [then] WWF and then I think was governor of Minnesota.
CW: Yes.
SG: So, they certainly know, I guess, the aspects of pop culture dynamics that could be utilised from within the US and utilise that for their strategic messaging. Do you think that the purpose of this is to distract countries from Russia? Or is it to cripple these countries through strategic messaging? Or is it a combination of both?
CW: It’s both. One is to restate the view of Russia abroad. And that’s absolutely worked in the case of the United States. I mean, the whole idea that Russia was concerned about American gun rights, but they have no gun rights in Russia, or Russia’s worried about free speech on RT in the U.S. But if you’re a journalist, you might fall out of a balcony in Moscow. This doesn’t make any sense, right? But yet, Americans will use that as justification to watch things like RT, or to consume, Russian state propaganda. So, yeah, it’s just kind of strange. So that part, I think, is very successful. I also just find it interesting because when I go out and talk to people, they will ask me the question: “How did Russia figure out how to get into the American audience space?” Well, they hired a bunch of Americans, like it’s not rocket science, really. It’s not like some advanced strategy to go, “hey, I want to build audience, how would I do that?” “Well, I hire people with audience inside that country.” And I think any business would do that, they’re trying to achieve the same, the same objective.
What I appreciate about the Russian system—I don’t like it— is it’s well thought out, it’s very simple in its Daily Execution, its synergy is kind of natural, and they don’t sweat mistakes. So, like, if they mess up something and it doesn’t work, they’ll abandon it, whereas in the West, we would have an investigation at Parliament or Capitol Hill in the U.S. to figure out who made this terrible message, right? Russians would just brush it off and come right back the next day. And the military, the intelligence services, the information services, the diplomats are all in on the game and reinforce each other without having a lot of meetings. So, if we did it in the U.S., U.K. environment, it would be like 19 meetings and everyone would have to approve the message., because the message is like groupthink, it’s very boring, it goes out super lame. Russia is the inverse. Here are five general things we’re going to talk about, in between, do what you want, everyone’s got a little element of freedom.
In the end, we’re all marching to the same goal. So, help each other out and we’ll kind of get there. And you’ll see that when diplomats walk out— [Sergey] Lavrov is amazing, he’ll walk out and repeat something that had just been posted on social media. And they’re not having big coordination meetings and overly bureaucratic, sort of dogma, they just kind of go out and, and execute. And so, I find that remarkable. And that’s why they achieve effects with even dumb or very weak messages, it’s just due to their deliberate commitment to using information in a very strategic way.
SG: In a very warped way, it seems as if they’ve understood our technology better than we do, and are using it mercilessly to their advantage, and they’re not crippled down by the layers of bureaucracy that our countries in the West are having to deal with.
CW: That’s right, they almost operate like a new media start-up with their mindset. And they’re doing things they would never allow at home. So, they have a very smart and nuanced approach to these things.
SG: Well, you spoke about Ukraine a few times, we’re now into the early part of 2022. Where do you see things going in Ukraine? There is this talk and concern of Russia’s disinformation campaign, but also a military campaign? Is it something we need to be concerned about is the threat of a military campaign genuine? Or is this part of the psychological operations that the Kremlin are trying to create?
CW: I can see Ukraine both ways. I’m more concerned now than I was last year. And so, my reasons for that is the last I think of spring summer, when they mobilised on the border. It felt like an exercise to really test NATO resolve and see what we would do in the west to counter them or whether we would react or not. They were very noisy in the information space. Meaning that they were telegraphing a lot of their activities, they were doing a lot of placements and amplification inside Ukraine. So that was interesting to watch. And it kind of felt like a giant feint, to a degree, to see what they could get. This time feels different. They’re trying to be a lot less noisy in the information, social media space. They are being pretty deliberate about their demands, even if they are ridiculous, Putin is, making demands he knows the West will never agree to which just stall time to see if any concessions can be made, short of war, why not take them. But the mobilisations on the border, I was reading, right before I jumped on here, I was reading that the military mercenary groups inside Russia were doing recruitment, some of the mercenaries thought they were going to be going back to Africa, instead, they got told they’re going to Ukraine. Which means that’s like a different kind of recruitment, it’s next level, contract or cut out, paramilitary kind of stuff. I think this is pretty serious. And I, I’m watching every day just like everyone else.
The middle mark that I’ve heard for when Russia will invade is the third week of January, if they’re going to do it. I don’t know if that’s true and I have no special information, by the way, but kind of bracketing or using a little Bayesian analysis, that seems like the window in there if they’re going to execute, and the pickup of the rhetoric, the sort of information space, it seems totally possible. And I think, also, this is consistent with the general strategy vis-a-vis the United States and the West, which is when, when a Democrat like Obama or Biden are in office, challenge him with military force, and if they block, move and take it. When the Republicans, like Trump, are in there, look to negotiate and try and get Crimea for free or Donbass for free, maybe they’ll— the West—will just give it up. So, I think it’s an interesting, cyclical strategy we can look at. I just don’t know; it seems that everyone thinks that Russia, if they were doing, they would take what they want, but I just don’t know that the costs are there yet. And maybe the Russians don’t know either, at least at this point.
SG: It seems as if they are judging on a day-to-day basis, how the West is reacting and in terms of relations of how that is happening, reacting to them based on whether they feel confident and emboldened or whether they are feeling deterred. Is there anything in your opinion that the West needs to be doing to deter this Russian aggression, that’s not happening? What are the smart options that are perhaps being considered and what are the ones that are not being implemented as yet?
CW: Well, I think the traditional ones of sanctions are all there. That’s the U.S. drumbeat “we will sanction you.” There’s always more and more sanctions, right, and so that’s there. I think the things that are not being answered are one: how does Europe get de-coupled from energy with Russia, meaning energy resources, things like pipelines, how gas flows, how do these countries stand on their own? They need Russia economically to some degree. And so that’s not being addressed so that gives Putin an edge, where he can still push and pull, and everyone wants to play in between things.
The second is the information space and the information space as it relates to populations in the West advocating for Russia’s position. You see that in the US on one of our cable channels, Tucker Carlson is basically calling for the U.S. not to oppose Russia, which is unheard of like that’s a crazy viewpoint. You’re having a lot of domestic angst across western countries and inside the United States about why are we opposing Russia anymore? Do we still need NATO? You know, these sorts of things. So, I think that’s a second element of it.
And the third is the West, and in particular, the U.S. is in a weak position militarily as they’ve tried to remove themselves from foreign battlefields, in Afghanistan, or Iraq. And because of that, any notion of war using military force fields is almost off the table, which puts the U.S. in a tremendously weak position in Ukraine, because would we actually go and fight for Ukraine? You know, will the NATO alliance show up on scale? Would we use air power? So, it’s just strange to watch, because I think Putin knows all these things and he just continues to test resolve, and then looks and says, “Do I take these sanctions and invade? What’s my cost benefit analysis?” And I think that’s what the deciding factor is because the West seems to only have one trick in its reservoir now, and that’s to do some sort of economic penalties.
SG: Well, I guess time will tell, unfortunately, as we get eerily close to that time that you mentioned, where perhaps a decision will have to be reached. And one hopes that Russia doesn’t go beyond the precipice and cross the Rubicon to make an ill-fated decision that will have long-term consequences in the region. So, it’s a very worrying situation that has emerged, and one that unfortunately keeps raising its head now and again, as in when the Kremlin seems motivated to instigate those tensions.
Clint, another thing that you have been looking at in great detail has been the role of China—its growth, its world importance. And you’ve also been looking at Chinese influence campaigns. I’d be curious to get your perspective on that— does that differ in terms of strategy to Russia? And what is ultimately the goal of what China is trying to achieve?
CW: Yes, so my least favourite phrase right now is “China is stealing Russia’s playbook.” They are not doing that in the information space—they learn from it, they will take a technique or two, but they are doing something much more next level that has not reached its peak performance, and so it’s not quite as effective yet, but will change how we think about influence over time.
In terms of influence, the Chinese are operating at four levels: infrastructure, and things like Huawei. The second would be in terms of applications—think of TikTok and the growth of all of these applications around the world. Third is content—so they are massively expanding their content around the world and trying to use all the Western social media platforms to change narratives. They’re not successful yet, but they’re trying to do it. And then the fourth is control—they can control their own internet, their own media environment, they control that of a lot of the countries that they are now highly invested in. And that is something Russia cannot do.
One addition to that, I would say, is on the technology front, is their ability to use things like artificial intelligence, synthetic media—off the charts compared to what you see Russia doing. So, Russia seeks to degrade, China seeks to replace. And by that, I mean, if I could sum it up, it would be, Russia goes around the world telling everybody, “You suck, you suck, you suck.” China goes around the world telling everybody, “We’re great, we’re great, we’re great.” And that’s a superior position to be in over time. This is everything from private sector media buys in foreign countries, deploying bots in a very similar way but with synthetic media on top, it’s advancing their One Belt, One Road initiative around the world through media outlets. We’ve discovered, just in terms of their social media influencers they’re deploying, which, until recently, were not as effective as the Russian influencers, I would say now are more effective just due to their volume. We’ve encountered more than 200 of them, they speak more than two dozen languages and have tens of millions of followers on Western social media platforms, sometimes labelled as Chinese state media, sometimes not.
And then the last part, which is the most recent, which is buying Western influencers. So going into Western countries, like the UK, the US, paying individuals to say things—the CCP once said—by people that look like and talk like the target audience, that’s that thing that Russia was able to do. And so, when you put this all together, and you look at the growth of their social media accounts in number and type, the growth in terms of their communications in volume, they will surpass Russia, because they can also do things like establish the parameters around what apps people use, what infrastructure they use, and that is game-changing in terms of influence over time.
SG: You spoke about influencers and platforms that China’s using—are there specific examples that you could give, just so that people perhaps are aware of what is going on which they may not necessarily be always cognizant to, that it could be tied to an information campaign orchestrated by another country?
CW: Sure. So, I think the way to think about it is, the battlespace is divided up based on language and platform. And so, one space in the information warfare world is inside China, on Chinese apps, in the Chinese language, and they own that space. And the US and the West are not even present there—we can barely even see it. The second is how they message to their Chinese diaspora on any and all applications from traditional to new social media across the board, in a very unified way. And that’s very heavy all around the world because there’s Chinese immigrants in all of these countries, Western democracies and others throughout Southeast Asia. But that can occur on some local platforms or traditional media, or it can also be on things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of the main channels
And then separately, it’s expanding into non-Chinese language influence, which we’ve seen them do in two dozen languages on mostly Facebook, but we’ve seen them on Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, YouTube—all of the main major platforms with video, they’re on all of them, essentially, at this point. They don’t have as much reach, but they’re growing, and they’re doing some things that are more sophisticated than other countries. So, I think that’s kind of a way to think about what they’re doing. And they’re absolutely putting a lot of deliberate effort and resources into achieving their goal.
SG: If you were going to be pushed to give an answer, and this is maybe an unfair question, in terms of both Russia and China’s information and influence campaigns, who do you think is currently more effective? Or is it that you can’t really draw that separation as yet as to who is more effective, who is less effective, because in some ways, the agendas are still different, as you were outlining?
CW: I would say in terms of information output per minute, it’s still Russia—they’re just better at achieving their goals with less. However, I would estimate it will only be maybe two years, if that, before China overtakes them. And the reason is, China is deploying worldwide in ways that Russia just cannot do—they don’t have the resources or money. And so, I think the second part of that, why China will overtake them is, even if pound for pound, investment dollar to influence, Russia is still doing better per capita, the volume is so much higher coming out of China that it will overwhelm whatever Russia achieves, meaning that China will be able to influence and employ technology, money, economic power, and information in places that Russia can never even reach or get to. So, I think that’s what the differential is, in that space is that China will overpower. And they’re increasingly having the ability to rewrite history about how people see China and also China’s space in the world. They seek to replace the Western system of democracy. Russia knows they never could do that and will always fight around the edges.
SG: Fascinating perspective on both Russia and China. To try and pivot both dynamics to another topic that I know we’ve spoken of in the past is Afghanistan. We have seen that the West has departed from Afghanistan. And there seems to be a strong interest and desire for both Russia and China to have influence inside the country with the now Taliban regime.
So, Clint, I’m curious to get your perspective on Afghanistan, and then perhaps also where you feel that Russia and China can be involved. How would you feel the situation will unravel there? Are you worried about the counter-terrorism dynamic? And are you also worried about the potential role of countries like Russia and China and what they could do in Afghanistan?
CW: Afghanistan’s end is where I and most people that have worked or researched Afghanistan, thought it would end—which is a stable democracy would never ultimately be there, its stability would always feed extremism, the US would not be able to sustain a century of democratic reform efforts. And it would have to end someday, and probably should have ended seven or eight years ago to some degree and would have ended with the same result.
So that part I don’t find surprising—the only surprise is that it took that long.
I think the second surprise is how poorly the US undertook the end—meaning that we’ve been working for years—the US and its allies, the UK—to basically let Afghanistan go. It was not a defeat—we absolutely destroyed al Qaeda there, we could kill the Taliban and its most extreme elements, day in and day out forever. But it comes down to, what is really the threat in the extremist space. And it’s always been about mitigating the threat—you can’t squelch all extremism forever by instituting a perfectly run democracy in a landlocked country that has hundreds of years of challenges in front of it. I was shocked just how poorly it unfolded. And I think that’s because the US tends to stick to this timeline talk all the time—they did this in Syria, about red lines and chemical weapons and timelines for withdrawal. And when you do that, you’re signalling to your adversary what your intentions are, such that they start to undertake manoeuvres separately. So, it did not have to end as poorly as it did. I think that’s what is sad about it—it could have been a more managed transition, and one that allowed the US to leave
Separately, in terms of the humanitarian disaster now and everything that’s going on, it’s going to be awful. It’s the equivalent of governance inflation, meaning not only were we sending billions and billions and billions of dollars into a country that had never seen that kind of money flowing into it, we altered the construct of the culture and society in such ways that people had to either choose to be with us or with the Taliban, or with us or with the extremists. And that will unravel and unfold in the coming months and years…there will be basically a general reset, I think, to the year 2000.
In terms of the future, I find it interesting because I hear a lot of people say they will retaliate against the US for how things went down. I don’t know that that’s the case—the Taliban will not. I think the strangest part of it all is the US will end up negotiating and working with the Taliban to suppress groups like the Islamic State in Khorasan, and that will be a very weird vibe, but not unprecedented either in our national security history.
SG: I think in Afghanistan, as the saying goes, there are many shades of grey, it’s never black and white. And you often find that now the people running the country are principally led by the Haqqani Network, which are a proscribed terrorist group, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, its leader, who’s the interior minister of the Taliban regime, he is actually on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and is seen as a very close ally of al-Qaeda. Do you have concerns that Afghanistan could once again become a cesspool for extremists in the same way that Syria and Iraq had under ISIS, and in some ways what Afghanistan was in the 1990s? Or do you think the conditions now are different?
CW: I think there’s one difference, which is the element of extremism in countries closer to Afghanistan that have a stake, and that’s Russia and China. If you look at the foreign fighter flows more recently into Syria, the two countries that seem to supply an increasing number per capita were Russia and China. They both have worries about extremism, and they both have stakes, just in terms of borders, but regionally in Afghanistan. And China has economic interest. Russia has sort of legacy interest. So, they, I don’t think, will allow extremism to crop up because it’s more likely they’ll be targeted more regionally in China or Russia, than the idea of going to the United States and doing a 9/11 attack.
Separately, I don’t want to say there’s no risk, there’s absolutely going to be an extremely safe haven of one form or another that is based in Afghanistan-Pakistan, there always has been, I think there always will be as long as I’m alive. And occasionally, there will be threats to the West that emerge from that. And it will be more severe, it will be more likely, I think, just based on immigration patterns and travel patterns that will happen in the EU and the UK in particular. But it doesn’t mean the US won’t be. So, I would not be surprised at all if Americans or American targets, American companies that are in the region—South Asia, Middle East—are again vulnerable to terrorism, and that the plot connects back to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. So, none of this surprises me, but I also think it’s going to be kind of a steady state status quo, unless there’s a major triggering event. Because the US is kind of pulled back in the world. I think, for extremists, it’s hard to argue that continuing to attack the US is always the best strategy, unless you just want to get your name out, kind of globally and into the public.
SG: I’m a historian, and you used the term “cyclical” earlier—I often find that when it comes to Afghanistan, these dynamics have an odd way of repeating themselves, even though the extremists perhaps may have learned from some experiences that they couldn’t defeat the United States. They also get a sense of being emboldened—that because the West has departed, and in their minds retreated, that this could perhaps lead to an opportunity to exploit tensions regionally. And then those regional dynamics expand transnationally.
I think the other dynamic will be, as you mentioned, Pakistan. What happens in Afghanistan is very much interlinked in Pakistan and vice versa. So perhaps, if Pakistan ends up having its own problems of extremism, which it seems to be going through right now, with extremist groups suddenly becoming influential politically inside Pakistan, that can then have a knock-on effect inside Afghanistan, and of course, it could then spread far wider. So, I guess it’s something that we will just have to keep watching, because this could evolve quite quickly. Or do you think that this is more of a slow burn, in terms of the problems that could emerge?
CW: I think it’s a slow burn, in part, because of COVID. The world is not functioning quite in the way that it normally would. It does in some parts of the world, not in the West in the same way. I also think there has to be a reason to mobilise versus the West. So, there’s a bit of a tumult right now, they’re fighting each other locally to a degree, Taliban versus the remnants of the Islamic State. Same in the Middle East, Syria/Iraq context, there’s still lots of local battling going on, but a lot of the Western presence has left, and the Russian presence is still there to a degree. So, I’m not sure which direction it will go, I feel like it’s in a transition period. It doesn’t mean that they won’t all mount an attack on the US. I’m just not sure that the US would respond in the same way today that it did on 9/11/2001.
SG: Interesting. You also spoke about the pandemic, perhaps acting in some ways as a stumbling block for terrorism to proliferate too quickly. So, I guess we can be thankful to the pandemic for some reasons! Talk to me about how the pandemic has impacted on extremism globally. In particular, do you think that that has brought out elements of radicalisation and extremism in terms of different ideological beliefs, including the far-right, that we had perhaps seen before to an extent, but they became much more prescient during the last two years, especially during the pandemic? Or was this a problem just bubbling beneath the surface waiting to implode?
CW: I think the far-right has been a ten-year trajectory. And we saw it in the context of Russia in terms of disinfo[rmation] and influence activities. They don’t command the far-right, but they’re the connective tissue between lots of groups in the online space. The leader of the white supremacist group in the United States, The Base is a guy named Nazzaro—he lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nordic front in Sweden, two of their bombers had trained inside Russia. So, this has been a pretty steady growth in terms of these connections. But I also think it speaks to what is maybe the greatest threat to modern democracy, which is this authoritarian strain that is white, male, and predominantly Christian, if religious at all. And that is seen as domestic extremism in each of these countries but is also interlocked in ways that are highly similar to the jihadist extremism we saw a decade ago. Separately, elections are what oftentimes bring those domestic actors together. J.M. Berger always talks about that in states, election years are for domestic extremists, and historical or key dates and monuments are for international extremists. And that’s kind of a great way to think about it. We’re going into a midterm election next year.
This was all compounded or brought into a different sort of way with the idea of a stolen election that was not. The “Big Lie” is referred to here in the United States and the insurrection on January 6, combined with COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates, kind of two additional elements. Layered under that was the George Floyd protest and racial justice protest, which very much was about identity. It was Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, about white supremacy or not white supremacy. And so, when you combine all this together, it brought audiences with different primary objectives together across a lot of secondary objectives, meaning that anti-government views collided around the pandemic in ways that had never happened before. And they oftentimes coincided with far-right extremist groups inside the United States. I think over the horizon, it really just depends on how the next six months works out with the Omicron variant and the pandemic. In terms of the lockdowns, already you’re seeing major resistance and pushback inside the US to any additional lockdowns or mandates, and we’re not really having it. And I think in the UK, it probably sounds like it’s similar as well.
They’re not going to lock down again…the pandemic kind of rages on. And I really, I think it will come down to how severe are the infections and hospitalisations around Omicron and what that forces public health officials and elected leaders to do in terms of controls. By and large, though, what you’re seeing happen now is very similar to what happens when an extremist leader dies in other spaces…when people are pushed off the mainstream social media platforms, they have to coalesce in forums and fringe sort of communication networks. And that slows down the pace of their recruitment, their fundraising, their mobilisations to a degree. And so, there’s been a little bit of a depressor on their activity in recent days. That doesn’t mean that that won’t kick back up in a very intense fashion come next summer.
SG: Do you feel that the anti-vaxxer movement can become an extremist movement? In the sense that right now, it’s mostly focused on, sometimes, protests, a lot of it is online campaigning, but can it go actually violent? Can it go, in ways that perhaps we were not anticipating, that it could become more mobilised? Is this a new form of extremism that may trouble us in 2022?
CW: I don’t think it’ll be the same as white supremacist or anti-government groups, just because they don’t mobilise it quite the same way. I would say that the one phenomenon we’ve seen is the sort of evaporation of the QAnon movement has led to the acceleration of the anti-vax or anti-mask mandate movement. And it’s a lot of the same people, but this is their new cause célèbre to organise around. I think the issue is the scale—the violence is correlated, I’d say 1%, that’s just a ballpark figure. For every 100 people that show up, there’s 1% that are ready to mobilise to violence and are willing to do it. I don’t know that the protest movements that we’ve seen so far have reached that boiling point. There are coincidental incidences of attacks or violence at vaccine distribution points. What I do worry, though, is the sort of cascading terrorism phenomenon that can happen, which we saw with ISIS and al-Qaeda, is that one person executes an attack from one of these anti-vax or anti-mandate movements, and this kicks off at chain reaction of other people copying that, which we’ve seen during the ISIS era a lot. That’s kind of where my concern is, I think, for 2022.
SG: Well, on that sobering note, I think it’s perhaps a time to reflect on everything that you’ve laid out, Clint, because you’ve discussed so many important aspects that are relevant to the work that we do when it comes to the role of NATO, as well as the impact it has on our daily lives as well with the role of certain state actors and the extremist forces that sometimes they use and manipulate for their own strategic and nefarious agendas. I’m really grateful and appreciative once again for you joining us on NATO DEEP Dive. Thank you so much for spending the time with us.
CW: Thanks for having me.
SG: It’s a pleasure, and we hope to have you again.
Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
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