The most active battlefield of the 21st century is not Gaza or Ukraine, but the war over information.
America’s adversaries, such as Russia and Iran, have used the West’s free flow of information against the United States by exploiting political divisions and boosting extremists. Left and right And they are spreading disinformation while at the same time promoting a glamorous and romanticized vision of their dictatorship.
And the US is being outdone financially and strategically by their “soft power” efforts.
But the United States can also go on the offensive in these authoritarian regimes by empowering their people, exposing corruption and human rights abuses, and dismantling domestic propaganda.
Washington once understood the need for soft power, or direct diplomacy from nations to foreign peoples. During the Cold War, U.S. soft power played a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and was arguably the driving force behind the 1989 revolutions in Czechoslovakia and Romania.
But since the end of the Cold War, the United States has stuck to traditional warfare. Spent It has spent $916 billion on its military, more than the next nine countries combined.
In March, President BidenRequested a budget It will spend $950 million on the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government agency responsible for international broadcasting, a 7.4% increase over the 2023 budget but nearly one-thousandth of the military budget.
In comparison, ChinaBillions of dollars Cyberpropaganda and global disinformation Russia’s Budget This is about $2 billion, and Iran Spent $200 millionIt was broadcast on national television last year.
Moreover, Russian and Iranian propaganda is highly focused on tarnishing America’s image in strategic regions. In contrast, USAGM’s budget covers six separate organizations across five continents, meaning that only a small portion of its annual budget reaches critical regions like Iran.
Iran is increasingly being pressured by its regional ambitions, anti-Western agenda, Human rights violationsThreat to global stability Axis of Resistance Proxy power. Given the regime’s unpopularity among its people, strong soft power could be a real force for change.But in 2023just $17.3 million was allocated to VOA Persian, and just $9.2 million to Radio Farda, USAGM’s two Persian-language broadcasting networks.
Though budgets are small, these services are effective: VOA Persia reports that its weekly viewership isMore than 15 percentThat’s roughly half of Iran’s population of 90 million. By comparison, Fox News’ annual budget for 2023 is more than $12 billion.averageIt receives around 14 million views per week, which is roughly 4% of the US population. Meanwhile, Radio Farda has a strong presence on social media, Raise over 1.5 billionHe has a large audience on Facebook and Instagram and is well known in Iran for his exposés.
But a lack of funding led Radio Farda to remove a powerful AM radio transmitter in Kuwait that broadcasts directly to Iran in 2018, according to a senior USAGM official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The budget cuts Iranian obstructionWhile broadcast radio would be ineffective, blocking streaming 24 hours a day would be unsustainably expensive, especially for a developing country like Iran.
The budget for Russia is also too low to be the most effective: just $7.8 million for RFERL’s Russian-language services, not including an additional $3 million for minority language services, $9.5 million for VOA Russia, and $12.3 million for Current Time, a Russian-language program for former Soviet republics. But these services still reach Russia. 10 percentAccording to USAGM, the weekly death toll among Russia’s population stands at 1 million.
For these authoritarian regimes, internal and external messaging has different purposes. The external messaging to the West is to sow chaos, while the internal messaging aims to maintain stability. Within Russia and Iran, state-run mediapaint Western democracies areHostileandImmoral himselfThriveandStable Guardian of Order and Morality Western EncirclementMoscow and Tehran hide their imperialist ambitions as a defense against Western aggression.
For example, Russian propaganda has two main theories about the Ukrainian war. The first is Needs to be protectedRussian speakers in the Donbas region of Ukraine 2014 Maidan RevolutionThe second most frequently cited is The invasion was necessaryTo prevent NATO expansion and to prevent a nuclear war with Russia – the West is the aggressor and Russia is just trying to prevent a regional war.
This logic is a throwback to the Soviet era. Soviet invasion of AfghanistanIn 1979, internal propaganda argued that if Moscow had not invaded, the United States would have occupied Afghanistan and established a beachhead for invading what was then the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Iran’s message is:victimTo maintain stability, Western-backed disinformation campaigns demonize their own minorityThey attack communities and undermine attempts by Iran’s fragmented opposition to unite against the regime.
Tehran masks its regional ambitions as a defensive policy against the United States, which, according to the administration, is trying to create illegitimate client states in the region. The irony of Iran using proxies to fight potential US proxies is not lost on the administration, but on its people. “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life is for Iran” has become a common slogan in anti-regime protests over the past 15 years.
According to a 2023 poll by the Dutch Gaman Institute, 81% of IraniansAgainst existenceMeanwhile, a 2023 poll by the independent Moscow-based pollster Levada Center found that more than 80 percent of RussianssupportVladimir Putin.
But this could soon change.
The invasion of UkraineWas nervousAccording to the pro-Kremlin polling agency WCIOM, trust in state channels as an objective source of information is at 1.5%.DroppedSince 2019, the number of respondents who believe Russian state television can be trusted has increased from 46% to 26%, but only 5% of respondents under the age of 25 consider Russian state television trustworthy.
Given the fragility of both regimes, the United States should increase government-sponsored broadcasts aimed at the people of both regimes. The purpose of these broadcasts should be to dismantle the regimes’ narratives and expose what they are trying to hide. But any increase in funding must be done with transparency and congressional oversight.
In June, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) releaseA three-year investigation into USAGM cited a poor vetting process, political bias, and the ignoring of whistleblower complaints. To make matters worse, VOA’s Russian service HiredJournalists who previously worked for pro-Kremlin state media.
Furthermore, VOAUnder attackIt declined to designate Hamas as terrorist, choosing instead to follow Associated Press guidelines and call them “extremist.”
Despite these challenges, USAGM agencies continue to advance U.S. interests. The information they provide defeats sophisticated disinformation and empowers people living under dictatorial regimes. Increasing the activity of these networks will make U.S. soft power more effective in the fight against Moscow and Tehran.
Joseph Epstein is director of legislative affairs for the Middle East Truth Fund and a research fellow at the Yorktown Institute.
