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The problems with calculating influence: the story of the Belt and Road Initiative

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By Katherine Nichols

 

Image Credit: Illustration by Andrew Rae in ‘What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says
About China’s Influence’, New York Times, 13 September 2017.

 

‘Unfavorable views of China reach historic highs in many countries’ reported Pew Research Center in October. On top of pandemic backlash, many people are realizing that China’s rise and subsequent diplomatic initiatives are not as benign as they once appeared. But if the overwhelming majority of people view China in a negative light, why are governments so worried about Chinese influence? 

China’s foreign policy strategy is a clear example of sharp power influence — ‘efforts that pierce, penetrate, or perforate the political and information environments in target countries’. President Xi Jinping’s outreach framework, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), hinges on a collection of investment and development projects stretching from East Asia to Europe. Through Wolf-Warrior aggressive diplomacy, however, China exerts more influence than just economic power. The intensive investment projects of BRI bought China leverage at the international scale, creating risks for the West in both national security as well as protection of democratic values.

The malign influence captured by sharp power is increasingly the modus operandi of 21st century geopolitics, but researchers have yet to decide how to make sense of it. East Asia experts and policy-makers in the West are scrambling to understand the intentions and methods of China’s global influence. The BRI is a prime example to demonstrate the various types of influence and explain why many questions remain. 

The Brand: Measurement of Effect

When President Xi coined BRI in 2013, he essentially launched the branding for China’s foreign policy, drawing on inspiration from the concept of the ancient Silk Road.  If we think of the BRI as a marketing tactic, much like the UK’s new Global Britain, we can use the same techniques that are applied to calculate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to measure the influence of this foreign policy brand. Namely, we can quantify how many people were exposed and are now aware of, or better yet, understand the BRI. We can take polls to see how public perception of China and its foreign policy has changed, or look at  whether countries have changed their actions in relation to China by increasing business deals through the BRI, for instance. 

What researchers can’t tell you with certainty yet is whether those changes in action are a direct result of BRI. This is a deciding factor in assessing the effectiveness of an influence campaign. 

Researchers such as Gary Buck recognize the importance of this question. Buck designed four-stages of Measurement of Effect, and is working on a fifth – Measurement of Context — to help us accurately discern whether influence campaigns actually have an effect. But as it stands now, any numerical descriptions for how much an influence campaign has changed the population’s behaviour is likely a ‘best guess’. 

The Tools: Learning What Influences 

BRI demonstrates that any word, image, action or non-action, speech, diplomatic agreement, or economic investment can be used to influence global audiences. Public and cultural diplomacy (literature, film, religion, sport, music, etc.) is usually what people think of in terms of building up a country’s brand internationally. BRI does indeed have a large cultural aspect — such as this drama series following a father-son duo promoting BRI through dance or this pop music video described as ‘Tswift meets state propaganda’— but the real nuts and bolts of BRI lie in its economic strategy. 

With BRI, President Xi wasn’t just selling a brand, he was buying it. China began investing in international businesses and organisations. China’s annual foreign direct investment in the EU surged from $840 million in 2008 to $42 billion in 2017 and investment in Africa skyrocketed from $75 million in 2003 to $5.4 billion in 2018. The investments took the form of business acquisitions, infrastructure construction, and aid development projects. 

Researchers can tell you for certain that China is attempting to gain global influence via economic investment. What they can’t tell you is how much influence a trade deal buys. How do you quantify the effects of a diplomatic negotiation on the attitudes and behaviours of the general public? Moreover, some of these more tangible tools of influence, like building telecoms infrastructure, have long-term, iterative effects. Researchers still lack a method to calculate influence over time. 

The Intent: Language of Influence

It wasn’t long after the investment surge that the West started to realise that BRI may not be benign. China was ‘laying a debt trap’ for governments seeking to borrow investments. Developing countries more dependent on the investments from China began openly supporting China’s way of governance. In one instance, the leader of Kenya’s ruling party spoke in support of modeling his party off of China’s Communist Party. In another, thirty-seven countries signed a letter defending China’s massive detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang in response to a letter from twenty-two countries condemning China’s actions. In effect, China was buying support for their value-based initiatives, most of which are problematic for the West.

When countries not as dependent on Chinese investments condemned China’s human rights record, China publicly threatened their government leaders and baited ending the economic relationship — the tactics of so-called Wolf-Warrior diplomacy. China repeatedly claimed that they were not exporting a ‘China model’ of governance, despite all appearances of just that. Most recently, however, President Xi confirmed the suspicions of international relations analysts: China’s goal was not only to grow more independent, but also to increase other countries’ dependence on China. 

The other major hurdle in assessing BRI is one that blocks the track to analysing influence more generally. There is not yet a universal vocabulary with which to discuss the strategies deployed. What do we call the BRI — influence operation? Malign influence? Propaganda? There is no lingua franca of influence. Even the terms we do have definitions for, such as propaganda and influence operation, are often avoided by governments and scholars because of their negative connotations and subjectivity. There are diplomatic repercussions for accusing a country of meddling in domestic affairs, influence operations are neither inherently good nor bad, and can’t one country’s public diplomacy be another’s propaganda?  

Calculating Influence

From my observations, there are three steps that researchers and policy-makers can take to more accurately identify, label, and calculate influence.

1) Agree on the terms. We can lean on existing glossaries and books that tackle the nuanced vocabulary of influence side by side. Consistency is key for public understanding, international cooperation and expert analysis of this new, complex security threat.  

2) Continue committing resources to Measurement of Effect (MoE). Gary Buck, the expert previously mentioned, once likened the MoE phenomenon to that of driving the speed limit — publicly most people think it’s a good thing to do, but nobody really does it. Buck offers a system of MoE that tests early and often, taking measurements at the four key objectives of influence campaigns: message exposure, knowledge transfer, attitudinal shift, and behavioural change. It’s a strong start toward accurately analysing sharp power with considerable room for growth. 

3) Accept that we cannot quantify everything. Grand strategic communications campaigns, such as BRI, are a different beast than short-term influence efforts (e.g. election campaigns). With tools ranging from press statements to business acquisitions, it may not be possible to quantify how much influence each has on global populations. When the amount of influence is incalculable, we should devote more effort to studying the manner of influence. We can use tools such as the Taxonomy of Influence Strategies to provide a language for influence manner and generate influence profiles (e.g. level of risk, cooperation, and agitation). By understanding how a country influences, we can better understand how to respond. 

There are multiple hurdles facing influence measurement, but we cannot manage what we cannot measure. It’s time we face the elephant in the room and start driving the speed limit.

 

Katherine recently completed her MA in Strategic Communications from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research focuses on the arts of influence and diplomacy. You can find her on Twitter @kat_nichols_

Why do so few Scholars Study the Intersection of Climate and Security?

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by Matthew Ader

Climate change or security, a question of the one or the other? (Image credit: Lisa Benson)

I have had two and a half hours of teaching on climate change and security in two years, and I am unlikely to get any more. BA and MA courses at the King’s Department of War Studies do not offer any modules about climate change. Neither do security studies courses at Exeter, St Andrews, Oxford, or Cambridge. The US has equally slim pickings. Where tuition does exist, it tends to focus on human security and development; not strategy and operations.

And yet climate change is reshaping the world in unpredictable ways. Multiple governments even named it as a major security threat. Academics correlate climate change, if a little tentatively, with increased rates of conflict. However, scholars of strategy and war do not seem to focus on it. I surveyed thirty-four International Relations and Security Studies journals – all those with an H-Index above 30. Since 1995, these journals have, between them, published 45 articles about the intersection of climate change and conflict. As a matter of contrast, just one of those journals, International Organization, published 4356 total articles in the same period.

This initial survey reveals a worrying gap in the literature. Security courses that rely on this research are the incubator for future policymakers and analysts, while academics are often called upon to advise governments. A failure to address climate change risks depriving the next generation of security leaders and thinkers of a solid grounding in an important subject. At best, this may leave governments scrambling to cope with unforeseen challenges. At worst, it could lead to the creation of bad policy – or even open the door for malign actors who take advantage of climate change to push other agendas.

Why has security academia not fully engaged in this subject? Partially, it is because academics are very busy and have many existing commitments. Undertaking novel research or designing new courses, especially when the literature is so sparse, is time-consuming. It is also risky; work on climate change may not be valued in the same way as more conventional topics when hunting for jobs. Worse still, there is little research funding in climate change and security. Ministries and Departments of Defence have declared climate change to be a threat but have yet to put their money where their mouth is. These challenges, combined with the broader structural precarity of academic careers, militate against researchers investigating climate change and security.

These generally applicable concerns are worsened by personnel policy. Security studies departments are not hiring climate change experts. For example, of the eighty academics in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, only two mention climate as a research interest. This makes cross-sectoral research more difficult. Even more concerning still is that such a deficit reduces opportunities for students interested in climate and security to study the issue. This, in turn, perpetuates the existing scarcity, creating a negative feedback loop. Of course, it would be unfair and inaccurate to blame this purely on hiring practices. A department cannot hire scholars who do not exist. However, it is at least partially a chicken-and-egg problem. The lack of cross-sectoral research and limited tuition opportunities addressing climate and security make it harder to attract additional academic talent to the field.

A related challenge is that climate change does not fit within traditional models of security analysis. It is not a human actor, it does not deploy discrete methods, and it is difficult to analyse through the conventional lenses of IR theory or grand strategy. Grappling with the climate requires scientific and geographical knowledge which falls outside the specialisms of most security scholars. For example, the fierce debate among geographers over the linkage between climate and conflict depends on comparing rainfall data against incidences of violence. Unless an academic is trained to a high level in meteorological modelling, they are unlikely to be able to engage with the discussion in depth. The one partial exception to this is the Human Security field. Human security, with its focus on different issues impacting ordinary people, has covered climate change in more detail. However, its perspective has more to do with development and local interventions than big-picture decision-making. While there are absolutely insights to be gained from that discipline for national policymakers, it does not answer the broader questions required to inform strategic decision-making.

Lastly, while we are seeing the impacts of climate change now, its most dramatic impacts lie in the future. Mass climate migration, unprecedented littoral urbanization, and irreversible water scarcity are not science fiction but their true implications are only just emerging. Scholars are understandably reticent to engage in speculation – it is risky and can lead to poor quality research. This is especially true for security studies and international politics, which are wildly unpredictable. As General McMaster noted, “we have a perfect record of predicting future wars…and that record is 0%.”

This is compounded by the creeping nature of climate change. On 12 September 2001, nearly every security scholar turned their attention to terrorism and the Middle East. I’m sure that a similar statistical analysis of journals from 1985 to 2000 would show relatively few articles about Salafi jihadism, but academics were able to apply their existing knowledge to the new problem. It is not clear that this will happen with climate change, because there will probably not be a single dramatic event which changes conversations and research priorities. Rather, it will incrementally alter global conditions over the span of decades, shaping a new normal.

Such a slow-moving emergency is unlikely to attract enough research to effectively inform policy – especially given that great power competition, terrorism, and biosecurity will, among other issues, remain pressing concerns throughout the period. This is worsened, as noted, by the requirement for expert scientific knowledge to properly study climate change. In short, there is unlikely to be a catalyst for the study of climate change, and if there is, security scholars may struggle to obtain the necessary scientific knowledge to properly engage with the issue in a timely fashion.

There is no single policy prescription that can magically fix this deficit. However, it is a problem – and it must be rectified. Climate change is actively reshaping the world. If security academics do not provide perspectives on it, the security implications may be ignored. Worse, they might be dishonestly weaponised to achieve a larger agenda. We have seen this already with alt-right groups using fear of climate migration as a recruiting tactic. The past four years have clearly shown that radical ideologies can find purchase at the highest levels of government. In the absence of informed views from authoritative sources, decisionmakers may turn to confident ideologues for answers.

At the end of that lecture on climate change, I asked the lecturer what the strategic plan was for dealing with the mass migrations, droughts, and water wars he predicted. He said that there was not a single one. The gap in the research is no one’s fault. But catastrophe does not care about intention. Policymakers will require effective advice to navigate the new challenges of this century. The academic community should mobilise to provide it – and security academics should lead the charge.

[1] This was achieved by searching their archives for all articles from 1995-2020 with “climate change” in the title and manually sorting through. This method is necessarily vulnerable to personal judgement and can exclude work on topics adjacent to climate change & security i.e. food scarcity.

Matthew Ader is a second-year student doing War Studies. He has worked as an intern in a number of security consultancy firms. His academic interests gravitate loosely towards understanding challenges and opportunities for Anglo-American strategy in the 21st century (and also being snide about Captain America’s command ability). He is also an editor for Roar News, and has written for a number of security publications – most especially Wavell Room. You can follow him on Twitter: @AderMatthew.

Strife Series on National Perspectives in North-East Asian Rivalries, Introduction – One Region, Different Standpoints

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By Andrea Fischetti

 

Northeast Asia is a region of crucial importance, from a strategic and economic point of view.

 

East Asia is home to one fifth of the world’s population, and some of the global economic powerhouses. In particular, the second and third world largest economies, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan, are located in Northeast Asia. The region may subsequently be characterised as one of crucial importance for international affairs not only for the size of its economy, but also from a strategic point of view.

In this area, North Korea in particular has been in the limelight during the past year due to its aggressive nuclear program and tests, which resulted in strategic and diplomatic tensions.  This country, however, is not the only cause for disputes in Northeast Asia. The whole region is deeply divided in terms of culture, ideology, and politics, resulting in some cases, in inter-state relations characterised by “hot economics, cold politics”.[1]

Although current tensions in East Asia are considered of increasing importance by the international community, many of the Northeast Asian divisions and rivalries are primarily fuelled by historical roots. Amy King and Brendan Taylor identify a “history spiral”[2] in this region: a competitive approach to “re-remembering”[3] and rewriting history, common to all regional actors. The lack of effective international multilateral organisations is a further reason why this region is “ripe for rivalry”.[4]

Therefore, the purpose of this series is to explore the national perspectives of Northeast Asian countries. Understanding what Pyongyang’s priorities are, how Japan sees itself, what worries China, and where do the differences between Taiwan and China come from, can help to understand regional disputes as well.

In the first article, Ashley Ryan takes us to Pyongyang, where the North Korean thought and perspective on international affairs is unveiled. She analyses the strategic thinking of Kim Jong-un and explains what is the ultimate goal of Pyongyang, arguing that what North Korea has been doing so far is both rational and coherent in strategic terms.

In the second article, Andrea Fischetti explains why Japan is a pacifist country, and how Japan’s pacifism affects Tokyo’s approach to disputes with its neighbours such as China and South Korea. According to Fischetti, the post-war period largely shaped culture and society of Northeast Asian countries, and the differences in culture and society now encourage rivalries as countries have different perspectives on the same issues.

In the third article, Dean Chen explores the Taiwan issue and the nature of cross-strait relations, analysing Taiwan’s national perspective. The author argues that Taiwan and China have mismatching identities, which from an ontological security perspective, results in a rivalry characterised by misunderstandings.

Lastly, in the fourth article, Riccardo Cociani analyses the strategic and political challenges that the North Korean tensions pose to Beijing. Adopting a Chinese perspective, he explores China’s approach to tackling these challenges, with an eye to regional security.

This series offers a unique opportunity to explore the ideas and points of view of some of the main regional actors in Northeast Asia. Thanks to Ryan, Fischetti, Cociani, and Chen, these different perspectives come together in one place, and all contribute to further our understanding of Northeast Asian rivalries.

Andrea (@A_Fischetti) is a MEXT scholar and conducts research on Japan’s national identity and East Asian Security at the University of Tokyo. He is also a Series Editor for Strife. He recently earned his MA in War Studies from King’s College London, following a BA with First Class Honours in International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies. He worked for a year in the House of Commons. A recipient of the JASSO Scholarship (日本学生支援機構), he was a visiting student at the Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University. More information about Andrea can be found at www.about.me/afischetti

Notes:

[1] Dreyer, J. T., 2014, pp. 326-341.

[2] King, A. and Taylor, B., 2016, p. 113

[3] King, A. and Taylor, B., 2016, p. 112

[4] Friedberg, A. L., 1994, pp. 13-14

Image source:

Here at https://spfusa.org/chairmans-message/flurry-of-east-asia-summits-signals-thawing-of-icy-relations/ 

Bibliography: 

  • Dreyer, J. T. (2014) China and Japan: ‘Hot Economics, Cold Politics’. Orbis, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 326-341.
  • Friedberg, A. L. (1994) Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993/94), pp. 5–33
  • King, A. and Taylor, B. (2016) Northeast Asia’s New ‘History Spiral’. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 111–119.

Strife Series on Counterterrorism and Human Rights, Part I – Countering terror in a liberal democratic state: a case of norm contestation

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By Lenoy Barkai

European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France

Counterterrorism strategies around the world challenge human rights through breaches of privacy, arbitrary detention, dubious judicial procedures and in the worst cases – torture. What is it about terrorism that pushes the liberal state over the edge? And is its capitulation to the pressures of terror indicative that liberal ideas and internalised norms run only skin deep? When faced with terror, do states reveal themselves to apply brute-force and be power-driven realists at heart?

Counterterrorism challenges self-imposed human rights standards

According to the ‘spiral model’, human rights norms get internalised by violating states through a step-by-step process[1] as they progress chronologically and unidirectionally along five phases of socialisation. Violating states begin by denying both the violation itself and the legitimacy of universal human rights norms. As pressure by domestic and transnational human rights advocacy networks escalates, however, such states begin to make concessions. These are initially cosmetic and tactical in nature, but once even marginal change takes hold, the model predicts an inevitable progression towards accepting and ultimately fully internalising universal human rights norms. According to this model, the probability of state recidivism is highly unlikely.[2]

Nevertheless, it appears that when it comes to fighting terrorism, even the most liberal of democracies have sought to (re)test the limits of their self-imposed human rights standards. We find instances of human rights being loosely interpreted, subordinated to other rights (security, freedom) or even brazenly ignored. How is it that terrorism challenges the liberal democracy’s most entrenched ideals?

States have attempted to imbue their counterterrorism strategies with a preventative logic in order to prevent violent attacks from happening in the first place. When applying a criminal-justice model, court-admissible and sufficiently damning evidence needs to be collected at a preliminary stage of the investigation. Such preventative logic means capturing terrorist suspects at the point when they are only planning to build the bomb, not in the moments before they self-detonate in a crowded marketplace. But this same logic serves to highly incentivize snooping, internment, loose legal grounds for widespread arrest, and even, in the most drastic cases, torture. When applying a war model, a more indiscriminate military response may be rationalised. But faced with a terrorist organisation’s adaptive strategy and embeddedness within the very fabric of society, the military becomes a blunt object. The distinctions between combatant and non-combatant, between legitimate and illegitimate targets, as seen through the lens of the war model, becomes blurry and uncertain.

The use of preventative logic does not, however, presume that human rights violations are necessary. For instance, preventative logic can be the driving force behind starkly different counterterrorism strategies to similar issues – such as strengthening youth community centres in at-risk areas on the one hand and waterboarding on the other.

However, more problematic is when a different sense pervades counterterrorism strategies. It arises commonly in the aftermath of an attack when the public reacts with incredulity: How was this not prevented? How could the authorities not see this coming? What was impossible to predict from a particular point (t-1) appears crystal clear at a later point (t), i.e. in retrospect, when the plot is traced backwards from execution to conception. Often, intelligence agencies are blamed for non-provision of information, or for not acting on such information. In brief, what the public here demands of the authorities is a pre-emptive logic. But pre-emption is a creative logic. It demands imagining not only where, when and how an attack is probable (as with prevention), but where it is merely possible. Thus, the space and depth of a pre-emptive investigation are almost limitless. And the violation of human rights moves from the realm of incentive (where a choice is involved) to necessity. For Marieke de Goede, adopting a pre-emptive logic demands ‘a world of limitless resources in which each and every potential target could be investigated and disabled.’ And yet this world, she notes, ‘is inappropriate in a democratic society.’[3] This precisely reflects the strain around government snooping and individual and societal privacy measures.

Does pre-emption necessitate illiberal practices?

The proliferation of human rights violations when it comes to countering terrorism illustrates the ongoing norm-contestation inherent to identity formation. Terrorism and counterterrorism, after all, are intrinsically relational phenomena. Each action elicits a reaction that in an iterative process defines and redefines the actors and goals involved, setting them up in a chain of strategic interaction. Alexander Wendt contends that with each interaction, ‘actors are also instantiating and reproducing identities – narratives of who they are – that in turn, constitute the interests on the basis of which they make behavioural choices.’[4]

Thus, the emergence of human rights norm violations by liberal democratic states does not necessarily reveal ‘their true essence’ so much as the manifestation of contested pressures on a continuously reproduced identity. The ‘spiral model’ logic is perhaps better understood as running backwards and forwards, vertically and horizontally. If state identities are constantly in a process of (re)formation, human rights norm violations need not become concretised as the new normal.

Human rights violations in the face of a terrorist threat are not a natural given. But similarly, human rights advocacy cannot afford to become complacent. In order to perpetuate, human rights norms need to be continuously reproduced. Counterterrorism strategies have demonstrated that, given the right pressure combinations, internalised norms are retractable. The logic of prevention is imbued with incentives to violate human rights. But in each case there is a choice involved – a choice to apply a preventative logic within the bounds of universal human rights norms, a choice not to succumb to the pressures of adopting a pre-emptive counterterrorism approach which by definition demands their violation. That choice is determined by contestation from domestic public pressure, from international institutions, from transnational networks. If the ‘spiral model’ has shifted into reverse, the capacity exists to propel it back.

Lenoy Barkai (@LenoyBarkai) is an International Relations MA candidate at King’s College London. She holds a Bachelor Degree (Hons) in Foreign Languages, Literature and Music and is a CFA Charterholder. Her research interests include political violence and human rights, with a focus on European security and foreign policy. 

Notes:

[1] Risse, T., Ropp, S. & Sikkink, K. eds. (1999). The power of human rights: International norms and domestic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.1-38.

[2] Shor, E (2008) Conflict, terrorism, and the socialization of human rights norms: The spiral model revisited. Social Problems. 55(1) 117-138. Available from DOI: 10.1525/sp.2008.55.1.117.

[3] de Goede, M. (2014) Preemption contested: Suspect spaces and preventability in the July 7 inquest. Political Geography. 39. 48-57. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2013.08.001

[4] Wendt, A. (2003) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_Court_of_Human_Rights_Court_room.jpg