Europe, Africa, Russia, France, information war, information operations, world politics, national security.
The article examines information operations conducted by European countries in North Africa and the Sahel – during the armed invasion of the Anglo-French alliance in Libya (2011) and at present. A study of the forms and methods of information aggression used by European countries (primarily France) in Libya, and later in the «triangle» of the Sahel Alliance (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger), showed that their «information operations» in Africa are reduced mainly to propaganda (including its most aggressive forms) and disinformation (the dissemination tool for which is often «fake news», including its «deep» varieties – deepfakes). The «fake news» effect is reinforced by «post-truth» techniques (emotional interpretation of events that have already occurred and changes in attitudes towards them through the prism of emotional reassessment of newly discovered or already known facts and details). Operational games are not present in the operations conducted by European countries, which, in turn, significantly distinguishes the information operations of France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. from similar operations conducted by the United States. In times of crisis, French information warfare specialists first resort to aggressive information pressure in the form of threats, aggressive propaganda, blackmail, bribery; then they try to break the resolve of their opponents with disinformation, throwing in false assessments and sowing panic; and only after that does the transition to classical methods of «soft power» occur, when cultural expansion is included in the arsenal of methods of pressure on the African population and elites. In cases where propaganda does not work, and «hard power» (in the form of direct armed invasion) cannot be used, the French find themselves at a loss – as was the case in the «Sahel catastrophe», during which French military contingents were expelled from three countries in tropical Africa – Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Manoilo Andrey Viktorovich – Sc.D. in Political Sciences, Leading Researcher, INION RAS
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