Written evidence from The Henry Jackson Society (AFP0017)

The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) is a think-tank and policy-shaping force that fights for the principles and alliances which keep societies free, working across borders and party lines to combat extremism, advance democracy and real human rights, and make a stand in an increasingly uncertain world.

About the Authors

James Rogers is Director of the Global Britain Programme at HJS, of which he is also a founding member. Formerly, he held a number of positions at the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia and the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris.

Mr Rogers has also worked on research projects for several other institutions, including the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre at the Ministry of Defence and RAND Europe. He holds a BSc Econ with First Class honours in International Politics and Strategic Studies from Aberystwyth University and an MPhil in Contemporary European Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Dr Andrew Foxall has been Director of the Russia and Eurasia Studies Centre at HJS since 2013, and in 2017 became Director of Research. Previously, he held academic positions at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Oxford. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Dr Foxall’s research focuses on economic, political and security trends in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. He is the author of Ethnic Relations in Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2014 and 2017) and has written for international newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.

Dr John Hemmings is Director of the Asia Studies Centre and Deputy Director of Research at HJS, and is an Adjunct Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, he was a Visiting Fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS and a Research Analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, working on Northeast Asia security and defence policies.

Dr Hemmings regularly provides briefings to a number of government departments including the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence, Department of International Trade and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

James Thorp and Mia Simon – Research Assistants at the Henry Jackson Society – have provided help with research, referencing and formatting.

1. INTRODUCTION

●       According to Freedom House, states can be divided into three different forms of government: “Free”, “Partly Free”, and “Not Free”.[1] Countries that are “Not Free” are autocracies. Lacking effective constitutional and democratic oversight, an autocracy is therefore any form of political regime that is based on arbitrary power.

●       From the vantage point of 2019, autocracy – as a mode of government – appears to be on the rise. According to Freedom House, in 1999, 85 countries were “Free”, 60 were “Partly Free” and 47 were “Not Free”. In 2019, the figures were 86, 59 and 50, respectively.[2]

●       While the balance between “Free” countries (democracies) and “Not Free” countries (autocracies) looks quite stable, the figures mask an underlying trend. According to Freedom House, 68 countries experienced net declines in political and civil freedoms in 2018, marking the thirteenth consecutive year in the decline of global freedom.[3]

●       Worse, there has been substantial “backsliding” in “Free” countries over the past two years. This includes the countries of the Euro-Atlantic region, within both NATO and the European Union. According to Freedom House, after many years of teetering on the brink, Turkey descended into an autocracy (“Not Free”) in 2018, while Hungary became a semi-democratic country (“Partly Free”) in 2019.[4]

●       The established European democracies have not been immune from destabilising forces either. The election of 94 far-right Alternative for Germany parliamentarians (of a total of 709) to the German Bundestag in 2017 shocked many, while the rise of the “Yellow Vests” movement in France since late 2018 – and the resulting police violence – made Paris and many other French cities look like zones of conflict.

●       While the curtailing of freedom around the world and within the Euro-Atlantic space is alarming, it is when autocracy takes root in or strengthens in major powers that it becomes most dangerous. The lack of checks and balances on arbitrary power in large autocratic states means that they tend to be more conflict prone than their democratic brethren, both in relation to internal (in)stability and external adventurism.[5]

●       Indeed, with the growth of authoritarianism in Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the two countries have become increasingly willing to challenge the rules-based international system. Last year, Tom Tugendhat MP correctly labelled Mr. Putin’s government as a “violent, deranged regime”, not least because of its attempts to assassinate British residents and due to its revisionist geopolitical activity in Eastern Europe.[6]  Equally, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the PRC has become increasingly autocratic, having rolled-out a quasi-totalitarian “social credit system”, while engaging in revisionist activity in the South China Sea.[7]

2. DEMOCRACIES AND THE RULES-BASED INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM

●       Over the past century, international relations have been structured progressively through the construction of a so-called “rules-based system” or “liberal international order”.[8] In no small part, this “system” or “order” mirrors the domestic political systems of liberal democratic nation-states, of which the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) have been the most powerful exemplars.

●       There are three interwoven components to this rules-based system:

○       Politically, it is comprised of nation-states that accept that liberal democracy is the most legitimate domestic governing regime;

○       Economically, it is underwritten by globalisation, whereby the world is progressively opened up and linked together in a more integrated economic system;

○       Diplomatically, it is founded on expectations of peaceful change, whereby its members structure their relations through a plethora of international legal regimes and international organisations.[9]

●       Indeed, the rules-based international system could be seen as the result of attempts by London and Washington to “domesticate” the international system to the extent that it resembles an international society, based on a clear set of rules, established to prevent selfish, arbitrary and revisionist behaviour.[10]

●       Consequently, the rules-based system is not “natural” nor necessarily permanent; its continued existence depends on the willingness of its members – not least the UK and US – to uphold it and its principles, particularly when confronted by powerful autocratic states that seek to delegitimise it or revise its fundamental components.

3. THE REVISIONIST CHALLENGE FROM AUTOCRATIC REGIMES

●       Autocratic regimes loathe the rules-based system as much as they fear the democratic nations that undergird it. Liberal democracy is both a radical idea and revolutionary act – producing a genuine nation-state – whose very existence undermines autocracies by offering an alternative to repressive, dictatorial rule. Autocracies fear the free and dynamic civil societies in democratic nation-states, which can expose corruption and malpractice in their own systems leading, potentially, to the fall of governments.

●       While weak autocracies can be a nuisance – such as Argentia in the 1980s, Serbia and Iraq during the 1990s, or North Korea today – it is when authoritarian regimes in large, powerful countries seek to generate legitimacy through their foreign policies that the rules-based system, as well as the UK and its allies, can come under the greatest threat. Large autocracies have the material means to pursue geopolitical aggrandisement. This urge can become particularly strong when an authoritarian regime is unable to generate legitimacy through internal development or economic growth, but can also exist in and of itself.

●       The last attempt at revolutionary systemic transformation came from the Axis Powers in the 1930s, which sought to militarily overturn the nascent rules-based system to impose a racist “New Order” over much of Europe and a “Co-Prosperity Sphere” over much of East Asia. The Soviet Union also mounted a class-based revolutionary challenge to the rules-based system – albeit more indirectly – during the Cold War.

●       The collapse of the Soviet Union left the UK and US – and the democratic world more generally – in a position of pervasive influence. During the post-COld War period, it has been common to hear – whether in London, Washington, Brussels, Paris or Berlin – that Russia and the PRC were destined to be “strategic partners” for the West or that they would become “responsible stakeholders” in the rules-based system.

●       While this view is much less common since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the PRC’s militarisation of the South China Sea, many people still think that Russia and the PRC are either failing or potential democracies. They are not. Russia is a kleptocracy, and a succeeding one, while the PRC has descended increasingly into totalitarian rule, not least through the use of new surveillance technologies such as the so-called “social credit system”.[11]

●       As the PRC and Russia have gained in power, both have begun to attempt to reshape the rules-based system in accordance with their own interests – or rather, the interests of the regimes that (mis)govern them. Both may even see legitimacy in revisionist agendas. Mr Putin provoked war in neighbouring Ukraine, leading to a (short-term) boost in his approval ratings.[12] Meanwhile, Beijing has stoked-up an angry nationalism in response to imagined slights during the so-called “century of humiliation”, particularly in relation to the South China Sea.[13]

●       Historically, revisionist activity tends to take two different forms, which are not mutually exclusive:[14]

1. Counter-systemic revisionism seeks to revise the existing rules-based international system by actions that aim to replace it – in whole or in part – with an entirely new system. It can come through military aggression, or more indirect strategic competition that seeks to exploit the seams between peace and war (so-called “grey zone” struggle). The former was pursued in the past by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, while the latter was practiced by the Soviet Union. The PRC may now be engaged in this form of revisionism.

2. Anti-systemic revisionism seeks to disrupt the existing rules-based international system to the extent that it (or parts of it) no longer functions in the way that it was intended to function. It is a kind of “poor man’s revisionism”, insofar as the autocracies engaged in it lack the means and vision to generate a new order. It aims simply to destroy and dislocate. Mr Putin’s regime in Russia currently practices this form of revisionist activity.

●       Authoritarian revisionism often begins as a threat at the regional level, which expands – if left unopposed – to become a comprehensive challenge at the global level.

3.1 THE REVISIONISM OF THE PRC

●       Since he came to power in the PRC in 2012, Xi Jinping has pursued a foreign policy that combines elements of anti- and counter-systemic revisionism. It is still not altogether clear what the PRC intends for the world, but recent Chinese initiatives reveal a deeply disturbing intent:

○       In the South China Sea, the PRC has recently indulged in overt geopolitical revisionism by ignoring or tearing up the rules – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea – over which Beijing presided in helping to generate, building large military bases on artificial islands, and engaging in aggressive naval manoeuvers.[15]

○       In the broader Eurasian space, the PRC’s “Belt and Road Initiative” – a thirty-to-fifty year grand strategy, with economic, diplomatic and political components backed by funding of over $1 trillion – appears bent on reordering the region under Chinese economic and political command, if not outright control.[16]

●       Alongside these counter-systemic revisions, the PRC has also expanded its attempts to shape global narratives. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to influence the global media to win a battle over “Discourse Power” (话语权, huayuquan), in which its perspectives and framing of events are the dominant ones.

●       One of the main ways the PRC has done this is through increasing the budget and work of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) – the agency responsible for conducting Beijing’s influence operations. In 2015 alone, it is estimated that the PRC spent US$10 billion on strategic communications abroad.[17] Meanwhile, according to the British Council, since 2013, the PRC has opened almost 200 new Confucius Institutes around the world, with the US and UK attracting the largest number.[18]

●       The PRC has also actively targeted foreign media, especially inside the UK. The current CCP motto is “Report on China; influence the world”.[19] The PRC media pay British newspapers (such as the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph) to print Chinese state-written content.[20] Liu Xiaoming, the PRC’s Ambassador to the UK, has written over 40 commentaries for leading British newspapers over the past five years (2014-2019).[21] In addition, the Ambassador meets regularly with newspaper editors, including those of the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Evening Standard, all of whom have published his writing.[22] The extent of PRC influence in the British media is hard to ascertain, but as Annex 1 shows, it can open existing political divisions and reshape them to serve Chinese agendas.

●       The China Global Television Network – a group that was ordered by the US to register as a “foreign agent” earlier this year – is currently establishing a large European hub in Chiswick Park, looking to hire more than 300 producers and journalists to convey the world through Beijing’s eyes.[23] According to human rights campaigners, CGTN has aired confessions of detainees and prisoners in the PRC, causing a number of complaints to be filed with the UK Office of Communications (OFCOM).[24]

●       The PRC believes that Western think tanks play a decisive role in framing the world through Western narratives and has undertaken a campaign to fund them to influence their research agendas. It is noteworthy, but inconclusive, that very few think tanks now write on the Hong Kong democracy movement or the Uighur situation in Xinjiang. The PRC has also been known to carry out cyber-attacks on think tanks to access data on members and affiliates, as in the case of Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in 2010 and the Henry Jackson Society in 2018.[25]

●       The PRC has also sought to influence university departments through student groups, departmental funding, and partnership programmes. The China Scholarship Council has partnered with many UK universities, including the universities of Oxford, Nottingham, Exeter, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Cardiff, among others, to provide scholarships to doctoral candidates on behalf of the PRC’s Ministry of Education.[26] The China Scholarship Council has been reported to have curtailed academic freedom by freezing funds whenever universities are considered to be allowing anti-PRC activities.[27]

●       The PRC’s attempts to shape media narratives about itself are also visible in the China Media Centre (CMC) at the University of Westminster. The CMC provides media training for Chinese and Western journalists, undertakes research on Chinese affairs, and hosts events (including at 11 Downing Street and in the Houses of Parliament).[28] In 2008, Dr Hugo de Burgh, Director of the CMC, told a Danish audience that the Centre “works extensively with the State Council Information Office”, which is China’s chief information office.[29] The CMC constitutes the single most substantial attempt by an autocracy to reshape the UK’s future media environment.

3.2 RUSSIA’S REVISIONISM

●       Russia has a nineteenth century view of the world, in which “great powers” have “legitimate interests” and enjoy “spheres of influence” around their borders. For Russia, this means, at the very least, hegemony and the power of veto over the countries of the former Soviet Union.

●       Russia is a revisionist power that regards the existing rules-based international system as unfair. For at least the last dozen years, Russia has been actively challenging this system and seeking to: weaken the Atlantic alliance; challenge NATO; and, undermine the EU. The Kremlin is hostile towards democracy, liberalism, and multiculturalism, and sees the existing system – premised on the rule of law – as an existential threat. Accordingly, it is trying to rewrite the rules that underpin it.

●       Russia has developed a number of tools in order to undermine the rules-based international system. It has invaded and dismembered two of its neighbouring countries, Georgia and Ukraine, and in doing so engaged in regular and irregular warfare. It also engages in frequent military bluffing and saber-rattling, both toward its neighbours and the West more broadly.

●       Russia has also developed a range of non-military tools, including: abuse of the international legal system; cyberattacks; covert information operations; the targeted use of corruption and organised crime; diplomatic divide-and-rule games; interference with energy supplies; military saber-rattling; and, the use of social media to affect public opinion.

●       In the UK, Russia has: created outlets of the propaganda mouthpieces RT and Sputnik, of which the former has been found guilty by OFCOM of breaching the broadcaster’s code of conduct; reportedly paid the Daily Telegraph to circulate a monthly supplement of state-authored content (entitled “Russia Beyond The Headlines”); used universities to give legitimacy to a state-backed cultural agency, the Russkiy Mir Foundation, which promotes Russia’s position on global issues; created a political front operation, Conservative Friends of Russia; allegedly undertaken “hack-and-leak” operations, with the cyberattack on the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative; and, carried out assassinations and attempted assassinations of its opponents and critics.[30]

●       Given that for much of the post-Cold War period the UK viewed Russia as a lucrative emerging market and welcomed the influx of Russian money, it has inadvertently aided Russian revisionism. Russia turned the UK into a laundromat for illicit money. The UK is implicated in some of the largest corruption scandals of recent years, including that uncovered by the lawyer-turned-whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky and those involving Danske Bank and Troika Dialog investment bank.[31] Last year, Scottish Limited Partnerships were implicated in the so-called Russian Laundromat scandal, in which up to £56 billion of illicit funds were funnelled out of Russia in the early 2010s.[32]

●       Russia has also taken advantage of the UK’s hesitance to introduce more robust financial supervision, particularly for London’s stock exchange, which has long been a vehicle for Russian companies and oligarchs to raise money in shares and bonds.

4. HOW SHOULD THE UNITED KINGDOM RESPOND?

●       The UK should be willing to engage with Russia, the PRC and other autocracies pragmatically, and should be prepared to work with them where interests overlap. Pressing global issues that cannot be solved by any single country – from terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to climate change – require coordinated action. But the desire for coordination should not trump British interests or those of UK allies. Cooperation with autocracies should only be on British terms or those of our allies, not on theirs.

●       If Britain is to protect its economic and political interests from the designs of autocratic revisionists, it also needs to begin preparing for an era of long-term strategic competition against them. This will require a step-change in British domestic and global policy, as well as stronger alignment between both components.

●       It is important to point out that the recent successes of autocracies such as the PRC and Russia have occurred largely because of a breakdown in dissuasion and deterrence on the part of the UK, US and other democracies. To engage in long-term strategic competition, the UK ought to start looking once again at the world through the entwined strategies of dissuasion and deterrence:

○       Through deterrence and dissuasion, the objective must be to prevent an autocratic country or group of countries from doing things the UK does not want it or them to do. Dissuasion is most effective when the measures taken to dissuade are so absolute that the very idea of challenging them becomes itself unthinkable, to the extent that the dissuader (i.e., the UK and its allies) can – through spreading its own narratives – prevent others from thinking things that they might otherwise be able to think.

○       However, when dissuasion has not been practiced or has broken down, deterrence should be attempted. Deterrence and dissuasion are not the same: the former assumes that the country or actor to be deterred is hostile, whereas the latter does not. Equally, dissuasion does not necessarily involve the use of military tools, whereas deterrence requires by definition a hostile posture.

●       While carefully-prepared domestic legislation should mitigate the threat from autocratic revisionists within the UK (and its overseas territories), it will not be sufficient by itself. In an increasingly “compressed” and globalised world, the British domestic space does not stop at Dover, just as British foreign policy does not start there. Dissuasion and deterrence are “offensive” strategies and must be executed as such. The UK should be seeking to reduce the autocrats’ ability to expand their power before it reaches the shores of the UK, or the borders of British allies and partners.

4.1 DOMESTIC MEASURES: HARDENING THE NATION TO AUTOCRATIC ADVANCES

●       Robust measures should be taken to firm up the British domestic space and make it harder for autocratic forces to penetrate and corrupt from within. In particular, the UK should:

1. Review British laws to ensure there are serious criminal penalties for UK citizens who engage in treason.[33] While there is a fine line between freedom of thought and treason, those who work with or for proscribed or enemy autocratic regimes cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

2. Get tough on lobbyists and politicians through introducing legislation akin to the United States’ “Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA). The principle of FARA is simple: if an organisation or media outlet takes money from a foreign government, or from an entity close to it, it has to declare the amount it has received, and what it has done in exchange. Similar legislation should be adopted in the UK as a matter of urgency, and should be rigorously enforced.

3. Introduce more robust financial supervision for London’s stock exchange, which has long been a vehicle for autocracies to raise money in shares and bonds. In March 2019, for example, Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas company, issued €750 million of Eurobonds. Shortly afterwards, the Russian government issued US$4 billion of bonds. The bookrunner in both deals was VTB Capital, a subsidiary of VTB, a Russian state-owned bank subject to both EU and US sanctions.

4. Apply much tougher money-laundering laws to keep corrupt money out of the UK. One way to do this is to expand to use of “Unexplained Wealth Orders”, which require the foreign mega-rich to explain how they made their money or risk having their property and assets seized. Two years ago an investigative journalism project highlighted £18 billion of unexplained wealth belonging to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, mostly hidden in the West. Yet no order has been served so far against Russia’s corrupt elites.

5. Extend the use of sanctions against individuals from autocracies who are guilty of human rights abuses. Legislation to do this exists in the form of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, which includes a so-called “Magnitsky amendment”.

4.2 GLOBAL STRATEGY: PUSHING THE AUTOCRACIES BACK

●       The revisionist advances of autocratic states cannot be constrained by more robust domestic legislation alone. Britain cannot afford to shy away from the growing revisionist challenge from malign authoritarian states, particularly Russia and the PRC. Consequently, the UK should:

1. Establish a UK National Strategy Council to take the “Fusion doctrine” to its logical conclusion.[34] In particular, the departments of state – the FCO, Ministry of Defence, Department for International Development and Department for International Trade – need to be integrated more radically, so that they can counter revisionist autocracies more effectively. Following the example of Australia and Canada, DfID should be amalgamated into the FCO as an agency to maximise the FCO’s ability to direct Official Development Assistance in support of British strategic objectives.

2. Expand and strengthen the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s specialist capability for dealing with autocracies, both within their own borders and elsewhere. The FCO needs more language and regional expertise across, for example, the “frontline states” in Eastern Europe and in South-East Asia.

3. Upgrade Britain’s global diplomatic and military presence to dissuade and deter autocratic advances: both the FCO and MoD should receive more funding, with military spending rising to as much as 3% of GDP – as recommended by the House of Commons’ Defence Select Committee.[35]

4. Focus the national effort on key geopolitical nodes, which might be exploited by autocratic revisionists. In cases where particular countries are targeted by revisionist autocratic states, the UK should seek to exert a countervailing force to usurp any counter-systemic and/or anti-systemic activities. Such countries would include Ukraine (and Eastern Europe more generally), the Gulf states, countries in South-East Asia, and Nigeria.

5. Reinforce the BBC World Service not to make it a governmental tool, but to make sure it is a worldwide platform to propagate British values and narratives. Funding should be increased to £1 billion per annum to give the BBC World Service the means to compete with broadcasters from authoritarian regimes.[36]

6. Support the British Council,  to reverse its decline, amplify its ability to spread British narratives, and to give it the means to compete with the PRC’s and Russia’s respective Confucius Institutes and Russkiy Mir Foundations.[37]

ANNEX 1

PRC “Discourse Power” in action: the curious case of “gunboat diplomacy”

●       The PRC has developed an intricate understanding of how to discredit views within the UK that it finds distasteful or antithetical to its own designs and replace them with messages that it wishes to project. This can be shown by the recent spat over the announcement by Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Defence, that the Royal Navy’s new supercarrier HMS Queen Elizabeth’s first operational tour would “include the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Pacific region” (emphasis added) in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) on 11 February 2019.[38]

●       According to a report in The Sun later that day, the PRC announced that in response to the Defence Secretary’s announcement, it would cancel proposed trade talks between Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Hu Chunhua, the Vice-Premier of the PRC.[39] However, a Treasury spokesperson stated “[n]o trip was ever announced or confirmed” – and no evidence has since appeared to contradict this perspective.[40]

●       Much speculation mounted in the British media as to whether the Defence Secretary’s speech had led to the alleged cancellation of PRC-UK trade talks. This was not helped by an ostensibly pre-recorded intervention by George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, which was broadcast on the Week on Westminster on BBC Radio 4 on 16 February where he stated that the Defence Secretary was “engaging in gunboat diplomacy of a quite old-fashioned kind.” He went on to explain that the only way to “deliver” in relation to the PRC was through “engagement”, for which he expressed his admiration.[41]

●       In subsequent reports by the Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The National and the Daily Telegraph, the former Chancellor’s comments about “gunboat diplomacy”, the alleged cancellation of trade talks, and the inaccurate focus on the South China Sea, were all repeated without question.[42] For example, on 15 February, the Financial Times – in a piece co-authored by the same reporter who previously interviewed the former Chancellor for the BBC – described “the Pacific region” as “China’s backyard”, despite the fact that the UK also has its own territories and interests there.[43]

●       Beyond the fact that elements of the British media covered the story from a de facto pro-PRC standpoint, the PRC subsequently seized on the opportunity to exploit a domestic British political debate and shape the resulting narrative to deflect attention from its own revisionist activity in the South China Sea.

●       This is evident by how, subsequently, Liu Xiaoming, the PRC’s Ambassador to the UK, intervened with forceful commentaries in the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, on the 20 and 26 February, respectively.[44] Using the former UK Chancellor’s intervention on “gunboat diplomacy” the week before as a prop, both of the Ambassador’s commentaries focused on the South China Sea instead of the Pacific region; both accused the UK Defence Secretary of dredging up the bellicose mentality of the Cold War; both accused him of engaging in “gunboat diplomacy”, a term that often carries historical baggage in the UK; and both tried to refocus attention on the carrot of peaceful PRC-UK economic relations.

●       What this shows is that the PRC is attempting to influence domestic UK debates by reinforcing narratives that discredit the British government, while simultaneously seeking to replace UK perspectives with its own. While it is difficult to counter such interventions due to the character of Britain’s open society, the UK needs to consider ways to prevent the PRC (plus Russia and other autocratic regimes) from directly “hijacking” existing domestic disputes and divides to further its own agenda.[45]

March 2019

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