Donald M. Bishop, "Quotable: Jeffrey Lewis on possible Russian disinformation," publicdiplomacycouncil.org
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Saturday, September 17th 2016
“Twitter has been aflame with reports that the United States is moving the few dozen nuclear weapons stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to Deveselu military base in Romania. I am calling bullshit on this one — but it’s bullshit in a telling way. It’s most likely Russian propaganda, all part of an elaborate strategy to build opposition to U.S. missile defense efforts and deflect criticism of Moscow for violating arms control treaties.”
Subhead: A classic disinformation campaign about U.S. nukes reveals a lot about Moscow's military anxieties.
Author: Jeffrey Lewis
Source: Foreign Policy
Date: August 22, 2016
Key Quotes:
- Twitter has been aflame with reports that the United States is moving the few dozen nuclear weapons stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to Deveselu military base in Romania. I am calling bullshit on this one — but it’s bullshit in a telling way.
- It’s most likely Russian propaganda, all part of an elaborate strategy to build opposition to U.S. missile defense efforts and deflect criticism of Moscow for violating arms control treaties. This is a particularly irritating manifestation of the bullshit asymmetry principle: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
- The evidence to suggest that there are U.S. bombs in Romania is pretty thin. An anonymous person blindsided a former Romanian president with a “sources say” question that he was dumb enough to answer — allowing Romanian media to cover it as though sources actually say — and then an obscure EU-focused website called EurActiv stated the outrageous rumor as outright fact, citing nothing more than “independent sources.”
- The Romanian government has already denied it — and, come on, the story never made much sense to begin with. For one thing, there are no storage facilities at Deveselu for the nuclear bombs. The United States has specific security requirements for its nuclear weapons, and Deveselu does not meet them.
- For another thing, the NATO-Russia Founding Act contains a political commitment by NATO not to store nuclear weapons in former Warsaw Pact states. The United States and its allies could renege on this commitment, of course, but that is the sort of thing that would require consultation among NATO members. Consultation means talking, which NATO is really good at. That process would take months, if not years, and would be bound to leak.
Donald M. Bishop, "Quotable: Jeffrey Lewis on possible Russian disinformation," publicdiplomacycouncil.org
- The whole thing reads like a pretty classic Russian disinformation operation. A few anonymous sources make a claim in an obscure foreign newspaper. That allows Russia’s state media to “cover” the allegations without quite taking responsibility for them. The story gets redistributed by the usual nitwits — looking at you, Breitbart! — and useful idiots connect the dots for Moscow.
- The Soviets used to do this all the time. One of my favorite examples is the claim that HIV is a U.S. bioweapon gone rogue.
- The Russians are using the concern about nuclear weapons located at Incirlik to push the idea that those weapons might come to Romania, largely in an effort to stir up local opposition to missile defense.
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