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1511. Five Authoritarian Pandemic Messaging Frames and How to Respond

Author:
Naďa Kovalčíková and Ariane Tabatabai
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, authoritarian actors have engaged in robust information-manipulation campaigns. China—where the virus originated and spread due to the government’s initial cover up and mismanagement—became the champion of these efforts. Iran and, to a lesser extent, Russia, followed its lead, seeking to shift the global conversation from China’s and their own failures to confront the disease head on. They have also tried to place the blame to the United States and Europe, portraying these democracies’ responses as inadequate and highlighting their shortcomings. Their efforts have contributed to a coronavirus infodemic, which the World Health Organization has defined as “an over-abundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” This infodemic has fueled the ongoing public-health crisis by further undermining trust in democratic institutions, the independent press, and facts and data. The coronavirus infodemic is likely to continue to evolve, given that the fight against the pandemic is far from over, but its contours have already been drawn, making it possible to assess the information-manipulation efforts undertaken by malign actors during the last months. Understanding how and why they have engaged in information manipulation leads to an initial set of recommendations on how to contain the infodemic as well as how to prevent similar efforts that could stymie responses to future public-health pandemics. We identify five messaging frames used by China, Russia, and Iran in the first six months of the pandemic with implications for public health, democracy and governance, and transatlantic relations and offer recommendations to address them. Every crisis goes through several stages, and it is necessary to detect and monitor evolving tactics and frames used by malign actors in the globalizing information space early on. By doing so, democracies can ensure a more effective mitigation, robust preparedness, rapid response, and as painless a recovery as possible when facing public-health emergencies or potential economic, security, or environmental crises.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Misinformation
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and United States of America

1512. Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interference in Democracies

Author:
Josh Rudolph and Thomas Morley
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
In addition to more widely studied tools like cyberattacks and disinformation, authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China have spent more than $300 million interfering in democratic processes more than 100 times spanning 33 countries over the past decade. The frequency of these financial attacks has accelerated aggressively from two or three annually before 2014 to 15 to 30 in each year since 2016. We call this tool of foreign interference “malign finance,” defined as “the funding of foreign political parties, candidates, campaigns, well-connected elites, or politically influential groups, often through non-transparent structures designed to obfuscate ties to a nation state or its proxies.” A typical case involves a regime-connected operative funneling $1 million to a favored political party, although buying influence in a major national election costs more like $3 million to $15 million. Rather than start our analysis by focusing on any given policy area, we review open-source reporting in 16 languages to identify malign finance cases credibly attributed to foreign governments. Finding that approximately 83 percent of the activity was enabled by legal loopholes, we catalogue the resulting caseload into the seven most exploited policy gaps. Broader than just money flowing through straw donors, shell companies, non-profits, and other conduits, malign finance includes a range of support mechanisms innovated by authoritarian regimes to interfere in democracies, from intangible gifts to media assistance. As such, policy strategies to address these vulnerabilities are not limited to campaign finance reforms, but also include greater transparency requirements around media funding, corporate ownership, campaign contacts with foreign powers, and other issues. In addition to identifying loopholes, our case study informs the scope of our recommended policy solutions, which are meant close off channels for foreign financial interference without infringing upon the speech rights of domestic political spenders or jeopardizing bipartisan support. Each of our recommendations balances these trade-offs differently based on empirical, legal, political, and administrative considerations vetted in consultation with more than 90 current and former executive branch officials, Congressional staffers from both parties, constitutional law scholars, and civil society experts. This report is organized around each of the seven U.S. legal loopholes that need to be closed, starting with the most urgent priorities, plus an eighth chapter on the need for stronger governmental coordination.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Democracy, Finance, Foreign Interference, and Dark Money
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and United States of America

1513. Leaks, Lies, and Altered Tape: Russia’s Maturing Information Manipulation Playbook

Author:
Jessica Brandt and Amber Frankland
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
In 2016 the Russian government and its proxies interfered in the U.S. presidential election in a “sweeping and systematic” fashion. Thanks to multiple bipartisan investigations and the work of researchers and journalists, rich detail about that operation—and the tools Russia’s disinformation agents used to execute it—are available to the public. In 2020 Americans are again preparing to elect a president. As the U.S. intelligence community assessed, and FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed in recent testimony before Congress, Russia is conducting a “very active” interference campaign. Since 2016, Russia’s interference activity in the United States, and elsewhere around the world, has not abated. That’s because elections are a flashpoint for Russian information operations, but not the start or endpoint of this activity, which targets a broad range of polarizing or contentious political events. Over the past four years, the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) the Russian government and its proxies use to manipulate information and carry out deceptive campaigns have matured. These include: Co-opting authentic domestic voices and institutions, often by co-locating trolls within a target population, renting social media accounts of local actors, entrapping local leaders in “interviews” with purported journalists, recruiting real activists to foment protests, or mimicking or appropriating the names of local groups; Exploiting the anticipation of manipulation to claim that manipulation has occurred, often through false flag operations, or the amplification of homegrown conspiracy theories; Practicing tailored influence, by working through micro-influencers and in closed groups; Exploiting the full information ecosystem to launder a narrative, by seeding it with authentic domestic actors, deploying quasi-transparent Russian-supported media properties, and exploiting data voids. Broadly speaking, we are witnessing a marked shift toward harder to detect, more targeted information operations that cover greater swaths of the information ecosystem, likely carried out by Russian military intelligence. That is a very different challenge than the one policymakers faced in 2016, when the threat was not yet fully comprehended, and in 2018, when the threat appeared to be largely driven by Internet Research Agency (IRA) trolls. While it is important to glean lessons from those experiences, it is also important that policymakers not overlearn them, and in doing so, miss the consequential changes to Russia’s information manipulation strategy that are now underway. These changes are occurring partly to evade increasingly sophisticated detection capabilities and policies on the part of social media platforms. But they are also occurring for a more fundamental reason: the Russian government and its proxies do not need to rely on large quantities of troll farm content to upend U.S. domestic politics with corrosive narratives that undermine trust in democratic institutions and belief in the existence of truth itself. The fire is already raging—it needs only a nudge here or there to be redirected to good effect. This paper is not meant to be a taxonomy of Russian TTPs generally, but to highlight evolving trends with relevance to policymakers. It is an effort to help stakeholders of all types—journalists, regulators, and researchers—look beyond individual campaigns to see the full picture of Russian activity as it is changing and to anticipate what might be to come.
Topic:
Elections, Disinformation, Foreign Interference, and Leaks
Political Geography:
Russia and Eurasia

1514. Treasury’s War on Corruption: A U.S. Treasury Department Strategy to Fight Kleptocracy and Root Dirty Money Out of the U.S. Financial System

Author:
Josh Rudolph
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
The incoming Biden administration has signaled through speeches, articles, and interviews that one of its top policy priorities will be combating corruption and kleptocracy.1 With Russia and China’s increasing usage of strategic corruption and malign finance as geopolitical weapons, and with publics around the world—including in the United States—angry about economic inequality and perceived corruption at home, anti-corruption offers a unique opportunity to unify U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Diplomats and lawmakers agree that cracking down on corruption may be the most viable way to restore American leadership by meeting demands for accountability from citizens all over the world.2 Corruption will be the topic of a dedicated special session of the UN General Assembly in June.3 The issue should get support from leaders at a G7 summit in the U.K. around the same time.4 Fighting corruption will also be one of the three areas for new country commitments at the Summit for Democracy that President-elect Joe Biden plans to host during his first year in office.5 At that summit, the U.S. commitment will be a “presidential policy directive that establishes combating corruption as a core national security interest and democratic responsibility.”6 Making this U.S. and international anti-corruption campaign a lasting success will require more than words. In the months ahead, while the administration’s top leadership and the nation’s public health and economic experts are focused on ending the pandemic and rebuilding the economy, the U.S. national security and financial enforcement community should get to work laying the groundwork for a raft of powerful anti-corruption executive actions to be announced in time for the Summit for Democracy. Concurrently, U.S. diplomats should leverage those plans to insist that countries attending the summit make similarly hard commitments, setting a high bar for admission.7 Regulatory rulemaking by the U.S. Treasury Department could usher in several landmark reforms that have been recommended for many years by financial enforcers, multilateral standard-setting bodies, and anti-corruption watchdogs. This policy opportunity is possible because the reforms never overcame opposition by special interests during the period before corruption became a leading national security threat roughly five years ago, and then they were generally not prioritized by the Trump administration. The most potent achievable action available would be for Treasury to set rules requiring several types of professional service providers that enable corruption to institute anti-money laundering controls whereby they would have to identify their ultimate customers and start alerting Treasury of suspicious activity, as is required of U.S. banks.8 Of the industries enabling corruption by helping wealthy clients hide money, ten could be regulated immediately by revoking regulatory exemptions to the Bank Secrecy Act, including real estate agents, private equity and hedge funds, sellers of yachts and airplanes, and seven other types of exempted financial institutions.9 Other key enablers would require new regulatory determinations with strong legal and political backing, such as lawyers, accountants, company formation agents, and art dealers. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which administers the Bank Secrecy Act, must write stringent regulations to implement the newly mandated beneficial ownership registry, resisting pressure by special interests to water it down. Treasury should also leverage concerns about the recently leaked “FinCEN Files” to work with Congress on a major investment in FinCEN, potentially on the scale of the seven-fold jump in budgetary resources needed by Treasury to implement recent reforms to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).10 Treasury should publish its first-ever National Corruption Risk Assessment about the financial networks of kleptocracies and oligarchs, reviewing case studies and methods to assess vulnerabilities and risk. Treasury should create a cross-border payments database and make financial institutions scrutinize politicians’ accounts more closely. Treasury should continue supporting two policy initiatives that have developed strongly to pressure kleptocracies in the past couple years by internationalizing Global Magnitsky sanctions and collaborating with the International Monetary Fund on corruption engagement. The U.S. Treasury Department is uniquely positioned to roll out these and other policy, regulatory, enforcement, and diplomatic actions in the fight against corruption, because it is the only part of the U.S. government with a foothold in each area of domestic and international finance that will be key to rooting dirty money out of the global financial system and applying pressure on kleptocrats and their oligarch proxies. Many of Treasury’s most highly developed capabilities have grown out of past fights against top national security threats, such as terrorist financing. The two months following the September 11 attacks witnessed one of the most energetic and well-coordinated performances in Treasury Department history. With Treasury not yet organized and coordinated around anti-corruption, achieving anything like past feats would require Treasury to start by establishing a small team devoted exclusively to this new mission. Specifically, the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) should appoint a counselor dedicated to developing and advancing anti-corruption initiatives, from expanding the coverage of the U.S. anti-money laundering regime to prioritizing the threats of strategic corruption and malign finance across Treasury’s policy, intelligence, and enforcement efforts. Some of these projects could bear fruit in 2021, while others need longer-term development of capabilities to find kleptocrats’ money hiding within the financial system and prepare policy options to confiscate, sanction, or reveal it. The TFI anti-corruption counselor, who should be designated as early as possible in the administration, should have a staff of two and a mandate to coordinate with and leverage resources across the four principal TFI offices, while also cooperating with Treasury’s Office of International Affairs. And while the White House National Security Council should lead the overall fight against kleptocracy and corruption, the TFI anti-corruption counselor should serve as Treasury’s senior working-level point of contact for collaboration between Treasury and the rest of the U.S. government, as well as with international partners, civil society, and Congress. Combating corruption and kleptocracy will be one of the top priorities of the Biden administration, and Treasury has the resources to start delivering major results quickly. But to do so it must coordinate throughout the Treasury Department and with external partners to roll out big executive actions in 2021.
Topic:
Corruption, Finance, and Kleptocracy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and United States of America

1515. From Russia With Love? Serbia's Lukewarm Reception of Russian Aid and Its Geopolitical Implications

Author:
Vuk Vuksanovic
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
LSE IDEAS
Abstract:
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic reached the Balkans, Serbia has energetically taken its partnership with China to the next level. This happened as Belgrade embraced China’s “mask diplomacy” campaign of supplying medical equipment to the countries affected by the pandemic. However, while Russia has supplied aid to Serbia to combat the pandemic, it has not received the same attention from the Serbian leadership and public the way China did. Therefore, the pandemic has proven to be a potent ‘revealer’ and reminder of the lack of substance and depth of differences in the Serbo-Russian partnership.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Partnerships, Geopolitics, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Serbia, and Balkans

1516. The Strategic Implications of Chinese-Iranian-Russian Naval Drills in the Indian Ocean

Author:
Syed Fazl-e Haider
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
China Brief
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
In early December, Major General Shao Yuanming (邵元明), the Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), traveled to the Islamic Republic of Iran for rare high-level military meetings. These meetings were held for the purpose of organizing a series of unprecedented joint naval drills between China, Iran, and Russia, which were held in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman from December 27–29. The drills took place just as escalating tensions between the United States and Iran reached a crisis point at the end of 2019. The exercise also signified a deepening relationship between Iran and the PRC in economics, diplomacy, and security affairs. China and Russia have both increased military and economic cooperation with Iran in the year and a half since the U.S. government pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). However, while Iran’s government has repeatedly touted its deepening relations with China and Russia as a show of diplomatic strength, its allies have been less public about the growing relationship. In December, Iranian officials lauded the trilateral exercises—titled “Marine Security Belt”—as proof that Iran can outlast crippling sanctions with aid from its non-Western allies, and declared that the drills signaled a new triple alliance in the Middle East (Tasnim News, December 29, 2019). [1] By contrast, officials from Russia and the PRC were more restrained, framing the joint exercises as part of routine anti-piracy operations, highlighting their peacekeeping priorities and seeking to depoliticize the drills (South China Morning Post, September 23, 2019; Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia), October 2, 2019).
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, Navy, Maritime, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Iran, Middle East, and Asia

1517. Fair-Weather Friends: The Impact of the Coronavirus on the Strategic Partnership Between Russia and China

Author:
Johan Van de Ven
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
China Brief
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
In June 2019, during a visit to the Kremlin by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation announced that they had “agreed…to upgrade their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” (Xinhua, June 6, 2019). This continued the warming of bilateral relations nurtured by Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who have met at least 30 times during their respective tenures. The strengthening of ties has seen unusually relaxed encounters between the pair, such as when they made blini (traditional Russian pancakes) together in Vladivostok in September 2018 (People’s Daily, September 12, 2018). In more substantive terms, support from Chinese state-linked financial institutions has played a critical role in the construction of a new wave of Russian energy infrastructure, ranging from the Yamal Liquified Natural Gas Project to the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline. However, the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has opened a stress fracture in the bilateral Sino-Russian relationship. After weeks of gradually escalating restrictions, reports emerged in late February that Moscow public transit drivers had been instructed to call police if they witnessed Chinese passengers using the transit system (Wangyi Keji, February 25). The PRC Embassy in Russia warned that such actions “will harm the good atmosphere for developing Chinese-Russian relations” (Novaya Gazeta, February 25). While China was initially restrained it its public criticism of Russian measures taken in the course of the COVID-19 epidemic, the decision of the PRC Embassy in Moscow to highlight the discrimination being faced by Chinese citizens in Moscow is a reminder of just how quickly tensions can arise between the two countries, even in the age of “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.”
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and Asia

1518. Terrorism in Afghanistan: A Joint Threat Assessment

Author:
Javid Ahmad, Sher Jan Ahmadzai, Robert Finn, George Gavrilis, and Andrey Kazantsev
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
This report aims to provide a clear-eyed assessment of terrorism and armed conflict in Afghanistan and related security threats for the United States, Russia and key stakeholder countries, approaching these issues with a cooperative outlook.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Armed Forces, Counter-terrorism, Borders, Illicit Financial Flows, and Regional Security
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, South Asia, and United States of America