A Battle of Will: Counter-Influence Infrastructure for Integrated Strategic Deterrence

By Lieutenant Colonel James Leidenberg, U.S. Army

Editor's Note:  Lieutenant Colonel Leidenberg's thesis won the FAO Association writing award at the Eisenhower School, National Defense University.  The Journal is pleased to bring you this outstanding scholarship.

Disclaimer:  "The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or the U. S. Government."

Now more than ever, the U.S. and other nations must answer the call to protect the international rules-based order with an unambiguous response. In the aftermath of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia’s aggression tests the international system’s strength to preserve global peace and deter future conflict. U.S. leaders, alongside partners and allies worldwide, are working together to leverage all sources of national power to deter continued and future aggression to preserve the international order and peace. In this effort, diplomatic, economic, information, and military instruments of power mutually reinforce a unified response to threats from Russia and others exploiting the crisis. “United We Stand, Divided We Fall” is a simple phrase as old as Aesop’s fables and oft-repeated in American oratories and songs in perilous times. Still, today it offers a reminder of the power of collective strength. The integrated strategic deterrence (ISD) approach is needed now to unify and synchronize all instruments of power across broad alliances to preserve national interests while deterring conflict. A new intellectual architecture must underpin and coordinate collective action to counter the whole-of-government efforts of adversaries undermining and delegitimizing the international systems, namely Russia and China. 

The following paper recommends a new intellectual infrastructure to counter Russian and Chinese efforts to undermine the international order based on a study of Cold War and post-9/11 institutions with similar purposes. The paper contends that the new intellectual infrastructure will achieve unified action across the U.S. government and its international partners to counter global threats to international peace and prosperity. The author provides a recommended framework for a counter-influence intellectual infrastructure and its justification below.

Recommended Framework to Support Integrated Strategic Deterrence Policies

The new concept of integrated strategic deterrence (ISD), as defined in the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS), requires national solidarity and coordination across the government in advance of conflict. The ISD approach will counter Russia and China by establishing a new raison d’être underpinning a long-term U.S. grand strategy as an organizing principle for action to provide ontological security against the malign influence. However, such a unified approach requires a new counter-influence intellectual infrastructure. In the war on terrorism, the U.S. created a similar intellectual infrastructure for counter-terrorism. This paper proposes an informal information sharing framework facilitated by the National Security Council modeled after the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) with processes and coordination efforts similar to the Cold War-era Active Measures Working Group. This framework connects the strategic communication, knowledge, and information management across the entire federal government with the authorities and processes to align decision-making and counter malign influence operations. This new counter-influence infrastructure would best achieve unified action across the government to counter Russia and China’s whole-of-government approach to undermine the U.S. and international institutions designed to promote the rule of law and international order.

Leveraging a whole-of-government approach to influence our adversaries’ ability and will to challenge American interests is similar to political warfare methods described in the literature. A standard definition of political warfare is “the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace [with] the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.” The administration’s ISD approach proclaims to align all means of power and communicate America’s collective determination to protect American interests at home and abroad. In today’s strategic environment, the disjointed and inconsistent international policy creates increasing risks of “perceived erosion of America’s deterrence, which invites opportunistic adventuresome that is inimical to U.S. core interests.” In this way, the coordinated influence created by the government’s clear communication and unified action is not political warfare but deterrence.

Recognizing the World As It Is and Re-envisioning It As It Can Be

After defeating agents of tyranny in World War Two (WWII), America leveraged its power to contain and deter Soviet aggression and promote democratic ideals through an extended Cold War. America’s leaders did so by “organizing for victory” to “incubate long-term strategic thinking.” The United States’ unprecedented power and influence changed the world. Its raison d’être centered on leveraging its national power to protect democracy and promote free trade. It aligned the government and people in unity of action against a common threat, the Soviet Union. However, after the Cold War, America’s role in the world became less well defined, and its purpose began to drift. In the 1990s, the U.S. emerged as a global peacekeeper in Europe, Africa, and Asia, but it withdrew in the late 1990s under domestic political pressure and operational failures abroad. 

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, America’s military fought to contain global terrorist threats while managing two decades of protracted conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. In the three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the institutions and frameworks created to preserve peace, deter authoritarianism, and prevent conflict are struggling to achieve their prescribed purpose. While navigating a global pandemic that killed millions, the international institutions faced the collapse of Afghanistan, the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, territorial tensions in the South China Seas, increasing aggression and saber-rattling from North Korea, and continuous conflict in the Middle East. The post-Cold War era of peace in a globalized world never emerged. Instead, American leaders have met the realities of a resurgent Russia and revisionist China looking to use the current instability to rewrite the post-WWII international rules and norms in their favor. 

Countering Chinese and Russian Instruments of Power. China and Russia adapted to fully leverage all instruments of national power in a mix of hybrid warfare, modernization, and achieving information advantage in ways to mitigate or deny traditional strategic deterrence capabilities of the U.S. and its global partners and allies. Admiral Charles Richard noted in congressional testimony that “both Russia and China can unilaterally at their choosing, go to any level of violence, go to any domain to go worldwide, with all instruments of national power.” Although Russia is a threat to American interests, the interim National Security Guidance noted that China “is the only competitor capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.” 

China’s Strategic Weapons Development and Aligning State Power. Although Russia continues to threaten U.S. interests, the Department of Defense (2020) report to Congress on a 20-year retrospective report on China’s Military Power defined China as a long-term threat to U.S. national interests.  The 2018 NDS also outlined inter-state competition as the most significant National Security threat and specifically identified China as rising above terrorism.  The previous NDS directs that the “reemergence of long-term strategic competition, rapid dispersion of technologies, and new concepts of warfare and competition that span the entire spectrum of conflict require a Joint Force structured to match this reality.”  For China, President Xi will continue the deceptive execution of its 100-Year plan to supplant the West to enable China to become the dominant global power, preferably without direct armed confrontation or engagement.  However, China is building capacity in all domains and for all instruments of national power should conflict ensue. China’s long-term strategy threatens U.S. strategic choices.  The new NDS suggests that a new approach to integrated deterrence can achieve the desired effects to counter China and China’s non-state actors’ hybrid threats in the gray zone. The strategic environment tests international norms that establish acceptable statecraft and adversarial forms of competition as operations increase in the gray-zone short of armed conflict.  Several RAND studies offer cases of Chinese responses to deterrence in applying national power. Of note, traditional instruments of power are providing less effectiveness. Finally, the author assessed that China’s state-directed biannual and five-year guidance aligns its application of intellectual power to achieve its strategic ends through controlling the information environment.

United We Stand, A Unifying Call to Arms

Today, America’s deterrence strategy no longer fully achieves the deterrent effect needed to restrain global malign actors’ aggression and escalation of conflict. There are inconsistent and contradictory messaging and actions across the government that reduces America’s full deterrent potential. Agencies across the government operate without a common view of our enduring national security objectives or an infrastructure that enables the efficient coordination and communication of an integrated interagency strategy and policy development. In sum, adversaries cannot accurately assess America’s raison d’être and the willingness to defend it because it is unknown. Across the Department of Defense (DoD), diverging approaches and concepts emerged to respond to rising threats posed by America’s near-peer adversaries seeking to establish regional hegemonies. Among recent proposals is a common notion of integrating all instruments of power for deterrence effects. The military’s reliance on a mix of conventional and strategic deterrence weapons and concepts is becoming less capable of deterring potential adversaries from developing their strategic deterrence weapons and concepts where they see information dominance as decisive. This notion is not novel, but its application in defense strategy for integrating actions across multiple domains and instruments of power requires significant changes.

Playing the Same Strategic Game

It is common in national security policy spheres to read or hear the metaphor that Russia plays Poker, the U.S. plays Chess, and China plays Go. Each country indeed approaches its use of national power differently. China and Russia have aligned diplomatic, economic, military, and informational capabilities to support their national security objectives in a world where they assess influence in the information domain as critical to success. However, China’s version of integrated deterrence is unlike U.S. traditional deterrence or strategic deterrence because it seeks to achieve aims through “coercion, which includes deterrence and compellence.” Still, a well-designed ISD approach that includes people, tools, and processes can gain and retain a relative advantage through coordinated interagency action that both deters and compels. 

The Rise and Fall of America’s Strategic Counter-Influence Infrastructure

After WWII, America developed the intellectual institutions within the government agencies to aggregate, process, and create understanding leveraged by policymakers on how to execute strategic thought. The shape and quality of this infrastructure have changed significantly over the years. No better example exists of an enduring national strategy well-communicated and achieved than the creation of the strategy of containment cemented with the publication of the National Security Council Memorandum 68 (NSC-68). The core containment strategy retained enduring ends and strategic concepts that adapted with new means and ways as the environment and technology changed. In fact, this is an example of how the more adaptive the strategy’s design, the longer it remains relevant and achievable. In the aftermath of WWII, early national security strategic intellectual institutions emerged under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to focus on national security policy creation and implementation.

Moreover, the authorities granted and institutions established in the National Security Act of 1947 better coordinated national security efforts across instruments of power. The new alignment of the national security enterprise operationalized and developed a core national security policy that focus the government on common cause culminating with the creation of NSC-68. John Lewis Gaddis’ Strategies of Containment detailed how national security policies adapted after NSC-68 between administrations but still retained a core strategy of promoting democracy while countering and containing the Soviet threat to American interests around the globe.

The evolution of institutions implementing the containment strategy adapted to the changing strategic approaches and the operational environment described in John Gaddis’ Strategies of Containment. Despite adaptive strategies, Gaddis highlights the long-term unifying focus on countering “dramatic manifestations” of international communism that originated with President Eisenhower’s Administration. Coordination across the government sought to leverage a unifying theory of victory or success to drive mutually reinforcing efforts across all instruments of national power. After defeating the Soviet Union, the United States struggled to maintain a consistent strategic direction that secured long-term National Security interests. The Cold War focused America’s strength against a common and well-defined threat. At its end in the 1980s, the U.S. had competitive strategies to compel the Soviets to compete in economic and technological that they could not catch up through programs. During the Cold War, an ecosystem of Soviet domain experts, scientists, economists, and strategists existed to coordinate between agencies for coherent policy. 

The counter-influence infrastructure for the adaptive strategic approaches included the people, the processes, and the technology to create and implement the containment strategy. Paul Kennedy discusses this ecosystem as imperfect in the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. This ecosystem worked as an in-between for the military, economic, and political strategists and inner circles to attain some policy efficiencies and remain focused on the ends while reducing waste on the means. However, less than five years after Kennedy’s publication, the U.S. began the most massive divestment of intellectual capacity in the 1990s. At the time, policy advisors warned of the risks of divestment and the dangers of “the transfer of people, technologies, capital, and facilities to non-defense activities, the majority of firms of all sizes have managed to decrease their defense dependency and to increase sales to civilian markets.” Resources aimed at focusing strategic thought disappeared as federal money went away. Early in the post-Cold War era in the 1990s, the U.S. ‘divested’ a significant share of its intellectual capacity resident in the government and military to pass along its benefit to support the growth of the science and technology advancements and commercial industries as part of the “Peace Dividend.” Over the last three administrations, America’s intellectual institutions atrophied as deterrence efforts aimed at Russia and China fell in priority among the many national security objectives. In the void, the government began what has become a quarter-century of reactionary, conflicting, and disjointed strategies across the government and our global partners. The issue is not the loss of intellectuals, inventors, engineers, and scholars. The problem is the loss of coordinated efforts across the federal government with long-term goals in mind.

Reintegrating the Intellectual Infrastructure

After the Cold War, the great Intellectual Divestment drove private sector innovation into the 20^th Century. Inside the government, the modernization and high-tech investments resulted in the reduction of headquarters structures and the elimination of intellectual organizations like the Active Measures Working Group, which created global and theater strategies for counter-Soviet campaigns at home and in different regions. In its place, the government redoubled investments in the private firms remaining from the drawdown to produce more high-tech, high-cost platforms. The approach enabled the reduction of end strength and platforms.

The military relied on its technological superiority and more lethal weapons systems to guarantee peace. This strategic concept is more extensive than just the DoD. Much of the government took American freedom of action for granted in its decision-making around the globe. Government agencies scattered their efforts in different directions with different objectives without a threat to focus action. However, today’s environment is far less permissive and increasingly contested. The DoD cannot effectively implement its new Joint Warfighting Concepts to prevent the rise of strategic hegemons without all instruments of power aligned. With a functional intellectual infrastructure across the entire government, the DoD can leverage all available capabilities to maximize the deterrence of adversaries by shaping their calculus of the cost and risk of action. Hypothetically, one can envision a modern George Kennan and new NSC 68 as possible if new processes and technology align to support strategic policy decisions to counter the malign actions of America’s adversaries.

Recommendation: Infrastructure for Adaptive Integrated Strategic Deterrence

ISD is the “framework for working across warfighting domains, theaters and the spectrum of conflict, in collaboration with all instruments of national power and with U.S. allies and our partners.” In the upcoming National Defense Strategy, the ISD approach will provide the necessary framework for escalation and de-escalation in these scenarios. Efforts to achieve integrated deterrence “include the best weapons systems and the latest technologies [to] include development of tools that make use of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, [as an] example,” alongside “developing new concepts of operation, the elimination of stovepipes between services and their capabilities, and coordinated operations on land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace… that are [integrated] together and networked in a way that is credible, flexible and formidable [to] give any adversary pause.”

A Functional Framework: Re-looking Cold War Processes and Institutions

The U.S. government has a long history through the Cold War establishing institutions to manage disinformation and counter Soviet influence. Most agencies created for that reason failed, except for one as noted in a 2012 INSS report by Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb of INSS that was accurately titled, “Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference.” Schoen and Lamb described the Active Measures Working Group formed in the Reagan administration as bringing together the State, CIA, FBI, DOD, USIA, DIA, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and NSC staff. Immediately, the group began to have unprecedented effects at identifying and analyzing Soviet efforts using different instruments of power that previously went unnoticed. From there, the informal interagency working group was able “to see patterns and tactics in the information they had compiled” and respond through informal coordination between multiple agencies to counter and exploit the newfound understanding of Soviet global operations.

Most importantly, the Active Measures Working Group generated knowledge that supported Congress to make informed decisions about laws to respond to vulnerabilities. As with many other Soviet-focused organizations, the Active Measures Working Group ceased to exist at the end of the Cold War, but it offers lessons moving into a new era of competition. The Active Measures Working Group brought together people, processes, and knowledge to fully leverage all instruments of national power to respond to Soviet threats.

Counter-Influence Policy Coordination Framework

The U.S. should establish an NCTC-like intellectual architecture under the National Security Council (NSC) as a model for countering the malign influences of Russia and China to undermine the U.S. interests and international organizations designed to uphold the rule of law. As defined in this paper, creating a new intellectual architecture to support ISD should not just become establishing another federal organization, process, or system. The intellectual architecture is a blueprint for knowledge transfer throughout the federal government through diverse structures and organizations that align national security efforts. It should not be rigid or independent from existing communication processes but rather integral to the entire government’s operations through intentionally designed processes, technology, and policies to align national security objectives. At the core of this new intellectual architecture, the National Security Council provides guidance and direction of federal efforts to counter the malign influence and retain information advantage in ways like the partnerships created through the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) after its creation. The new intellectual architecture will allow the United States to overcome the absolute impunity Russian and Chinese leaders have through internal information advantage. It also overcomes Russian and Chinese external influence operations against the U.S. and the international community to ensure ontological security and decision dominance. Without these ISD tools, Russia, China, and other adversaries will mitigate the U.S.’s diplomatic and military power advantage with both conventional deterrence and extended strategic deterrence capabilities.

Using the recommendations post-9/11 that prompted the creation of the NCTC, several parallels with a new infrastructure exist that are relevant to ISD across the federal government. Below is a sample guidance of possible guidelines that the NSC could issue and assign oversight to a directorate within the NSC that supports national security policy coordination across agencies (as adapted from February 2002 

Joint Committee).

[Figure 1: Sample NSC Guidance for NCTC-Like Counter-Influence Coordination]

Counter-Influence Coordination to Protect What Matters, America’s Strategic Interests 

The purpose of national strategy is to align the resources of a nation with the most effective and efficient means to protect and promote the national interest by achieving well-defined and necessary means. The enduring U.S. national interests remain national security, economic prosperity, and protection of democratic values since WWII.  China’s Integrated Active Defense Approach and Russia’s recent threats have endangered all three vital national interests. The U.S. government can address this gap by realigning institutions, processes, and authorities to enable grand strategists to better leverage our national capacity to protect our national interests so as not to “make implicit and untested assumptions about causality.” The realignment will secure our strategic interests in today’s hyper-competitive operational and information environment. 

A Common Framework to Create a Common Vision

China and Russia adapted to fully leverage all instruments of national power in a mix of hybrid warfare, modernization, and achieving information advantage in ways to mitigate or deny traditional strategic deterrence capabilities of the U.S. and its global partners and allies. The American people value the rule of law and protection of citizens’ rights and grant government agencies the power to rule with well-defined authorities. America’s adversaries do not share these values and leverage centralized state controls and information manipulation and suppression to create synergy between its public and private sectors. Misinformation and disinformation influence the will to enforce international norms and rules by distorting the information environment while leveraging its other instruments of power for malign purposes. Information as a tool of power is a weapon to influence behavior. In this regard, absolute control creates the conditions to align and control the government’s actions and the people in a society and control the information about those actions that influence the people internal and external to the society. Absolute authority is less important than the integrated infrastructure adversaries have developed to orchestrate efforts. In this aspect, the West can learn from the flow and alignment of strategic policy options and communication between agencies to achieve a common and well-defined set of national objectives in the near and long term. 

Considerations for a New Theory of Victory

As the DoD expands its relationships with non-traditional partners across the government, the NSC remains the coordinating agency for a crisis. During the recent Ukraine crisis, a series of in-depth national security assessments on options for responses when through the Interagency Policy Committees (IPCs), Deputies Committee (DC), and Principles Committees (PC) to coordinate the nation’s response to national security situations. The recommended framework expands beyond crisis and looks long term. This recommendation supports future efforts to promote a grand strategy by directing unified actions to achieve long-term goals across all agencies. The recent 2022 NDS outlines this campaigning approach. However, it does not have guiding principles. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, the author recommends considering a multinational framework with guiding principles to tie into a new concept for how American power is applied to uphold international norms and peace (principles for unified action across alliances and strengthening mechanisms for peace and stability). Such a framework can guide future decisions across government agencies and focus the government’s intellectual capacity to align options that optimally achieve a larger purpose. In theory, these guiding principles could result in formalizing some of the mechanisms and options leveraged in the recent Ukraine conflict to connect the combined instruments of power of the U.S. and its Allies to reinforce the ISD efforts should other malign actors act against international norms in the future.

Conclusion

China will continue to leverage an Integrated Active Defense approach to achieve its 2049 Strategic Vision of a globally dominant China. Its whole government alignment to leverage all instruments of power requires expediting the DoD’s implementation of ISD. As evidenced in Ukraine, time is critical to setting conditions and achieving decision dominance needed to deter conflict. However, the U.S. must develop and employ an effective ISD approach by creating a new NCTC-like intellectual infrastructure (focused on people, processes, and technology) of overall strategic policy across the whole of government with the authorities needed to align agents of all instruments of power. Failure to do so may enable China and Russia to continue to find seams between domain, agencies, and multinational partners and leverage their instruments of national power in a mix of hybrid warfare, modernization, and achieving information advantage. The intellectual infrastructure supports the NSC, DoS, and DoD to leverage all tools of national power. The resultant tools support the DoD to apply more traditional strategic deterrence concepts that leverage the new Joint Warfighting Concepts to prevent the rise of strategic hegemons and reduce the risks of miscalculation. Without new tools to understand and act with agility, the traditional strategic deterrence capabilities of the U.S. and its global partners and allies may fail to prevent the escalation of regional or international conflict. China and Russia need to control their information environment to preserve their freedom of action at home and abroad. Therefore, information advantage is a primary mechanism to deny adversaries decision dominance or options by denying them to understand the operational environment’s three dimensions (physical, information, and human) and influence it. The U.S. and the free world will prevail in a battle of will. 

About the Author

Lieutenant Colonel Leidenberg recently completed a master degrees in National Security and Resource Strategy with a Data and Disruptive Technologies Concentration at the Eisenhower School, National Defense University. He holds a Master’s of Public Administration for Policy Management from Georgetown University, a Master’s of Business Administration from Liberty University, and has a current Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2004 with a Bachelor’s in History and commissioned in the United States Army as a Military Intelligence Officer.

Lieutenant Colonel James Leidenberg served multiple overseas assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea. He most recently completed his duties as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, G2 for the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. He served as the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade Planner in Korea and Battalion S3 Senior Operations Officer for the 532nd Military intelligence Battalion (Theater Operations Battalion). He deployed to Afghanistan as the Battalion Executive Officer for 163rd Military Intelligence Battalion. He later transitioned to the 504th Military Intelligence Brigade S3 Senior Operations Officer for the ISR Task Force in Afghanistan. He previously served as an OSD/Joint Staff/Army Staff Intern with follow-on assignments as the Joint Staff J5 Korea Policy officer and speechwriter for the Chief of Staff of the Army. He also served in Korea as the Executive Officer to the U.S. Forces Korea J2 and as Executive Officer to the Commanding General of the III Armored Corps at Fort Hood, Texas.