DEFENDING the Truth - The Royal Navy & Russia

 

The Royal Navy destroyer HMS DEFENDER has found herself at the heart of a global news story, following her innocent passage in international waters recently. Last week the ship, part of the Carrier Strike Group 21 deployment, visited the Black Sea, and went to the Ukraine for a routine port visit. Sadly, Russian reaction this was loud and vociferous, although ultimately about as effectual as non-alcoholic vodka…

For centuries, the Royal Navy has exercised its right to sail globally on innocent passage through territorial waters – it is one of the most fundamental parts of being a maritime power, the ability to sail at a time and place of your choosing to a location of your choice.

Unfortunately, the Russian Federation, following its illegal annexation of Crimea several years ago, incorrectly regards these waters as their territorial waters, something not recognised by other nations. This therefore led to a strong response by Russia to try to persuade the RN to stand off. Ultimately, they failed.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There are several implications from this incident which are worth considering in a little more detail, as they could have a long-term impact on a variety of areas. Firstly, the incident stands as a continued reminder of the importance of the ‘FONOP’ as a tool of maritime power. The ability to sail unhindered is critical, and it is vital that it is upheld by states committed to global norms.

Transiting these waters via recognised shipping channels was entirely appropriate, and it is essential that these sorts of transits are done. They send a powerful message to another nation that arbitrarily declaring territorial waters, or trying to declare them closed on spurious grounds does not change internationally accepted rules and regulations. It is a powerful response to an illegal action.

The best analogy that can be offered is that it is akin to the UK illegally annexing Ireland, then declaring that the waters off the Irish coastline were UK territorial waters, and then aggressively responding when Russian ships sailed by. There is absolutely no justification for this sort of response.

The willingness to carry out a FONOP and ‘poke the bear’ is important as it helps set boundaries to Russia. Part of the challenge in dealing with this complex state is that if boundaries are not set, then it will become ever more adventurous and willing to take risks – by seeing where a line is drawn, it also helps Russia understand Western appetite to contain its aggressive activities.

In many ways the incident highlights the changing nature of the relationship between Russia and the West. After years of trying to co-operate and bring Russia on a path of engagement and co-operation for mutual benefit, for example by joint exercises and discussions, we have reached a return to arguably Cold War patterns of activity.

Deployments will be conducted in an atmosphere of mistrust and concern, with boundaries being tested, misleading information provided and tension rising, although never bubbling over into actual conflict. Much like in the Cold War, the near future seems likely to be more ‘tepid information war’ rather than a story of more positive links.

We should also be careful to ensure that the Russians do not shape this narrative into something that it is not. The UK is not alone in transiting via international waters close to other nations borders. The Russian Navy is a regular visitor to the waters off the UK, and is usually escorted in an appropriate, professional and safe manner to ensure that the Russian ships are able to transit properly, do not ditch waste illegally, and in the highly likely event of their breaking down, do not cause too much of a disruption to other shipping.

Indeed, HMS DEFENDER has previous form with the Russian Navy, having escorted Admiral Kuznetzov during that elderly vessels last deployment some years ago, on her return from conducting airstrikes to massacre innocent civilians in Syria. 

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

In terms of the Russian response, the key message to learn here is that information warfare is a discipline that requires no troops, but which can have a strategic impact out of all proportion to its size.

Simply put, when the Russians broke the news of the transit, they used incorrect information to falsely claim they had fired on the ship – within minutes it seemed as if the UK and Russia were on the brink of war. The fact that such claims were utterly false is neither here nor there, it gave Russia control of the narrative, and allowed it to dictate the opening salvo of information.

Russia has an interesting relationship with the concept of ‘the truth’ – it is rare to get honest, open, and accurate accounts of what has actually occurred. Rather information is used as a powerful weapon to shape opinions and create narratives that suit the Russian Governments interests, even when these stories change as the incident continues – for example during Salisbury the Russian narrative changed over 40 times to suit the circumstances of the day.

Trying to counter this is a real issue – in the West we have a much more comfortable relationship as a society with our governments and work on the assumption that news reported by Governments is factual and objective. When an MOD spokesperson says something, we are generally comfortable that this reflects the truth of what is going on, and that they are not trying to deceive and mislead us.

In turn our media reports these facts, and interprets them accordingly, but there is a general level of comfort that Governments speak truth and provide honest and accurate explanations for their actions, even if we do not always agree with them.

By contrast Russian Government and media activity is far more blurred, actively changing stories, providing outright falsehoods, and editing or omitting material to create the narrative that suits the interests of the Russian Regime.

In this case it suited Russian interests to falsely claim about opening fire on the UK, presumably to appear tough to external audiences and send a message to other nations considering a transit that there would be a strong response to future provocations. The aim would also appear to be to shape external foreign public opinion to encourage nations to not risk provoking the bear, and achieve a fait acompli in that by not transiting these waters, nation states implicitly accepted Russian sovereignty over them.

For an internal audience, the message seems to have been to reiterate that Russia is strong and sees off aggressors to the Fatherland, and that the Russian armed forces will do all they can to protect Russian borders from unwanted visitors – including using weaponry to deter further visits.

Thankfully though this narrative was quickly skewered by the fortuitous presence of media reporters onboard the ship – in this case MarkNichol from the Daily Mail and Jonathan Beale from the BBC. This sort of embarkation is entirely normal, and RN ships often have reporters onboard to cover various visits and operations to help tell the story of what the Royal Navy is doing – for example, Chris Terrill is currently embarked on the QUEEN ELIZABETH filming a third season of his documentary about the ship and her life.

What worked well was that within a very short period of time, the UK had been able to robustly respond to the Russian narrative by providing the truth and had independent reports able to provide video and written coverage of events showing what really happened.

The speed of response here by the MOD was fantastic – without doubt the MOD communications team at all levels excelled themselves in responding to what was rapidly becoming a global news story by providing calm, factual and objective reporting, and rapidly changing the narrative from one of Russian claims of opening fire, to that of focusing it on disputes and tensions.

This situation could quickly have gotten out of control and out of hand, so the speed of the reaction and the ability to provide information that could calm nerves and restore a sense of proportion was powerful. There is no doubt that a huge amount of credit is due to the MOD Civil Service and military teams who managed to defuse this so quickly.

The situation though highlights just how important being able to respond to the media and information environment is. Media is not something you just worry about after the event or assume that its someone else’s problem – increasingly we see the information space becoming the actual battlespace where nations, ideologies and views collide together in virtual combat, to try to claim a physical victory.

The information space is going to take increasing importance in future operations as both sides see it as a chance to obtain an advantageous position. To tackle this requires effective training at all levels in how to respond, how to act appropriately and how not to make mistakes under pressure.

For example, the DEFENDER transit was a very tactical incident, but what if a young sailor had made a mistake – perhaps training weapons on a Russian cameraman, or making obscene gestures? A small spur of the moment mistake, but one that could give a snapshot in time image that could be played again and again by the Russian state to show how hostile the British are.

The pressure on even the most junior of personnel to stay calm, focused, and able to get on with the job, even under severe provocation is going to increase – particularly with a camera pointing in your face. Understanding how the information environment can and does use screen grabs or single frames to shape a debate, and training people how not to respond will be ever more important- get it wrong and years of good work can go up in flames.

At a wider operational level fighting the information war is going to require ever more slick and effective cross government communications. Ensuring that responses are made in a timely manner, they are factual and reflect HMG positions and that all departments can support them calls for very speedy machinery of government.  This in turn calls for more thinking on how best to deliver this.

Trying to strike a balance between delivering speedy accurate responses and ensuring government support for it is challenging -particularly in a crisis. There are perhaps more conversations needed about the permissions for media communication and how to balance off the need to respond to tactical incidents with the need to provide a swept up strategic response.

There is not an easy answer to this, but the challenge with the information war era is that incidents occurring at very low level can be on a Ministers desk within minutes of it occurring. Trying to ensure a suitably flexible response, and not break release chains of command or operate outside of an agreed government policy position will be the big challenge.

What this calls for arguably is investment in more people to become information experts – able to better understand the pressures of the front line and be able to respond quickly and effectively to emerging crises. If anything, people deployed into media billets are the new front line because they will shape how a nation, and the wider world, understands and responds to the news of an emerging crisis.

The story of warfare is that of both sides struggling and recounting the incident from their perspective and trying to ensure that their version of the truth becomes dominant. Not for nothing are most military histories written from the victors’ point of view.

But today we have to be able to write these stories and tell them not days, weeks or even months after the event (think of Trafalgar and the news reaching London), but minutes or even seconds later. The response time is so quick now that information warriors back in London are as integral to front line success as the troops or sailors deployed far from home are. There is nothing worse than winning the physical battle but losing the information war.

Thinking about how to counter this sort of information challenge requires more than just looking at the media ‘chop chain’ to see how information can be issued quickly. It requires thinking about how the truth can be provided to the public for all the world to see, to ensure that outlandish claims do not stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.

One reason the story was so quickly changed into one about dispute, and not opening fire, was that film footage was available from the UK perspective. It was in part luck that there were media embarked, and this will not always be the case.

Perhaps one area where the UK can take advantage of technology and embrace the transformation agenda is to look at ways of ensuring that the truth can be captured properly during contentious transits or issues. There is a lot of talk about using more drones at sea – one use for a drone could be to fly alongside a ship steaming on a FONOP to remotely film the transit, and then for the footage to be uploaded shortly afterwards if required to show what occurred.

This would have the advantage of providing hard evidence to show and support the UK position of what occurred – and could be advantageous during complex maritime operations where lots of forces come into close contact with each other (for example both in the Black Sea, the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz) – providing a video overwatch of events helps ensure the UK narrative can be seen and scrutinised.

There would be challenges with this, for example ensuring no operational security was compromised, but it may be one way to provide proof. Whether this proof is accepted though is a different question.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The problem with fighting in the modern information environment is that the audience and its ways of accepting the truth have changed. In WW2 it was easy to provide a simple narrative of ‘us vs them’ with German propaganda efforts seen as laughably and derisory. The population could only get its news from a small range of sources and generally accepted the truth as provided, due in part to a willingness by the UK Government to provide ‘bad news’.

Today the battle is totally different – the UK audience has access to a much wider array of media, across multiple channels and sources, and will interpret information differently. An astute opponent can hope to provide information too that muddies the waters of the debates and can cause disagreements between people as to what is true and what is a government lie.

Trying to ensure that one message gets across, while having to deal with multiple competing narratives and different perspectives is going to be increasingly difficult. So, to will be trying to work out how to send a message to international audiences – how do you create what you know to be the truth, and ensure this message is seen and understood in countries where the concept of ‘truth’ is both fleeting and easily manipulated?

This is where there is a much bigger challenge of trying to ensure that globally respected voices of impartiality, such as the BBC, continue to gain access into difficult areas and provide messaging that is both accepted and taken as the truth – and not just the spin placed on it by the British Government.

Operating in the information warfare age is going to be extremely challenging – it will place very junior personnel under significant scrutiny, and with little room for mistakes or errors. When mistakes are made, they have the potential to rapidly change the strategic narrative in a timescale that is arguably too fast for most governments’ decision-making apparatus to control.

There will doubtless be further incidents like this that require similar handling in the future – even on CSG21 there will be opportunities for complex FONOPS to occur – this may have been the first contentious part of this deployment; it will surely not be the last. Being ready to respond to future incidents like this and ensure that the truth will prevail is key.