Robert Gates: US needs to stress strategic communications to advance national security interests

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the United States needs to focus on strategic communications to update its national security interests.

Gates, who served under both Bush and Obama administrations, argued in a Washington Post op-ed that while a country’s most important non-military instrument is economic, the U.S. has neglected other instruments, like strategic communications. He said that Russia and China have more advanced strategic communications than the U.S., noting the two countries have built strong approaches to disseminating information.

“We have, however, seriously neglected other instruments of power that were fundamental to winning the Cold War: telling our story to the world, telling the truth to populations of countries ruled by authoritarian governments and exposing disinformation spread by those same governments,” Gates wrote.

“Strategic communications and engagement with foreign publics and leaders are essential to shaping the global political environment in ways that support and advance American national interests,” Gates added. “In this crucial arena of the competition, however, Russia and China are running rings around us.”

Gates wrote that Russia used “propaganda and disinformation” in the wake of the Cold War to persuade its residents and undermine Western countries’ efforts. He wrote that China has a “comprehensive” approach when it comes to communications, saying the country has “extraordinary global strategic communications and foreign influence operations” all over the world.

Gates said that the U.S. “dismantled” its strategic communications implementation after the Cold War, explaining that an undersecretary position in the State Department tasked with overseeing the strategic communications had not had someone who was Senate-confirmed 40 percent of the time since it was created in 1999.

He said that the U.S., especially the State Department, does not have the resources to revamp a communications strategy.

“Further, there is no government-wide international communications and engagement strategy, and certainly no sense of urgency,” he wrote. “In short, the country that invented public relations is being out-communicated around the world by an authoritarian Russia and increasingly totalitarian China.”

He said that the White House and the State Department should develop a plan for strategic communications and that the U.S. should push for more efforts “to breach the digital communications firewalls that allow China and Russia to propagate false narratives.” Gates wrote that the Senate should also confirm Elizabeth Allen, who is President Biden’s nominee for the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. 

“But that’s just a “starter set” of actions,” he wrote. “More will be needed to strengthen this critical instrument of American power — an instrument that was essential to our success in the Cold War and will be even more important in the global contest that lies before us.”