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Characteristics of Modern Political Warfare

• Nonstate actors can conduct political warfare with unprecedented reach.
• Political warfare employs all the elements of national power.
• Political warfare relies heavily on unattributed forces and means.
• The information arena is an increasingly important battleground, where perceptions of success can be determinative.
• Information warfare works in various ways by amplifying, obfuscating, and, at times, persuading. Compelling evidence supplied in a timely manner is the best antidote to disinformation.
• Detecting early-stage political warfare requires a heavy investment of intelligence resources.
• Political warfare can generate unintended consequences.
• Economic leverage is increasingly the preferred tool of the strong.
• Political warfare often exploits shared ethnic or religious bonds or other internal seams.
• Political warfare extends, rather than replaces, traditional conflict and can achieve effects at lower cost.

Gaps in U.S. Information Capabilities and Practices

• Strategic-level communications are high-profile and bureaucratically risky, characteristics that militate against speed and initiative.
• The new Global Engagement Center (GEC), established by presidential executive order and located at the Department of State, focuses on third-party validators or influencers from the bottom up, whereas Military Information Support Operations (MISO) within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) remain more focused on government top-down communications.
• Interagency coordination and National Security Council guidance pertaining to message themes remain lacking.
• Unattributed communications may have counterproductive effects that should be anticipated and mitigated.
• Interagency coordination remains a fundamental challenge.

Effective Statecraft and Integration of Measures Short of War

• The term political warfare is not ideal for a variety of reasons, chief among them its association with actual warfare. It may be more useful to think of effective statecraft and an integration of measures short of war as necessary aspects of the U.S. arsenal.
• An integrated response to threats short of conventional war includes (1) the need for strategy, (2) the need for a whole-of-government approach to statecraft led by an appropriately enabled State Department, (3) the formulation and coordination of responses with and through other sovereign governments, allies, and partners, and (4) the improvement of military contributions to such an integrated approach.