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U.S. Options for Responding to Sharp Power Threats
[DivergentOptions] Author and / or Article Point of View: The author is an undergraduate student of defense policies and an Officer Candidate in the United States Marine Corps. This article is written with the base assumption that foreign actions against the U.S political system is a top national security challenge and a continuing threat.Background: Recent U.S. news cycles have been dominated by the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the U.S political system. Other allied nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and New Zealand have also recently dealt with foreign political influence campaigns[1]. While historically nations have projected power either through military might (hard power) or cultural influence (soft power), rising authoritarian actors like the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran, and North Korea are resulting to a hybrid mix of classical power projection through emerging technologies with revisionist intent in the international system known as sharp power[2]. Sharp power is more direct than soft power, not as physically destructive as hard power, and does not cause enough damage to justify a military response like Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Sharp power actions are normally covert in nature allowing the perpetrator plausible deniability. Given the combined military and economic power of western democracies, sharp power is the preferred method for disruptive actions against the international order by authoritarian powers. The effectiveness of sharp power is amplified by the open nature of democratic societies, especially in the information age[3]. Other examples of sharp power attacks include the North Korean hacking of Sony Pictures, the Iranian hacking of a dam in New York, PRC surveillance of Chinese students in foreign classrooms[4], and Russian actions in Ukraine and Moldova[5]. Posted by: newc 2018-07-30 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=519618 |