On September 23, 2024, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced additional sanctions against the Russian Rossiya Segodnya media group and its five subsidiaries, including the Russia Today (RT) television news network. This announcement seems timed for the US presidential election, which is just over a month away.

Blinken accused these media outlets of spreading “Russian government propaganda and disinformation,” of engaging in “covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies” and of functioning as a “de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.” To dispel the impression that these new bans are motivated by domestic political calculations, he tried to project Russian media as a global problem. He alleged that the outlets meddle in the sovereign affairs of nations in coordination with Russian intelligence services — that their goal is to manipulate elections not only in the US, but worldwide.

It is difficult for outsiders to believe that “Russian disinformation” can so easily influence US elections. US democracy has strong roots and cannot be destabilized by foreign propaganda; surely it is not so fragile.

In democracies, elections are won or lost on a multitude of issues: national and local issues, the electorate’s understanding of the contending parties and individuals’ positions, the media’s influence, the electorate’s political awareness, the voters’ perception regarding how the candidates’ platforms could affect their own well-being and so on. The final results often are not known until the actual voting takes place.

So the idea that foreign actors could manipulate elections in India, the world’s oldest democracy, seems far-fetched.

Blinken’s alliance and goals

Blinken asserts that RT “possess[es] cyber capabilities” for “covert” operations around the world. He says that the network uses oblivious US citizens to spread “Kremlin-produced content” and attitudes to the public. He elaborated, stating that Russia utilizes similar strategies “around the world.” One example is how the Russian capital of Moscow allegedly runs the online platform African Stream across social media. Blinken says that this platform claims to give a voice to Africans everywhere, but “in reality, the only voice it gives is to Kremlin propagandists.”

As a counter, Blinken states that the US is building a “more resilient global information system, where objective facts are elevated and deceptive messages gain less traction.” He adds that the US is going to promote campaigns that protect the freedom of the press — ones that strengthen the populace’s media literacy, to help people “better distinguish fact from fiction.” The US is coordinating with other governments via the State Department Global Engagement Center in an effort to quash information manipulation.

Blinken announced that the US is partnering with the United Kingdom and Canada to combat “Russian weaponization of disinformation.” In his words, the three nations are beginning a “joint diplomatic campaign to rally allies and partners around the world” to join them in addressing this Russian threat. Further, he instructed US diplomats everywhere to share their acquired evidence of RT’s capabilities and targeting strategies. While each government will decide how it responds to this, the US advises its allies to treat “RT’s activities as they do other intelligence activities by Russia within their borders.”

Blinken claims that the US “respects and champions freedom of expression, even when it comes to media outlets that wittingly spread government propaganda.” He says the nation will keep protecting media freedom around the globe. However, the US will not watch idly while actors like RT conduct hidden operations to support Russia’s diabolical schemes. The US, he adds, will aggressively combat subversive Russian ploys, namely those of “invading sovereign nations, fomenting coups, weaponizing corruption, carrying out assassinations, meddling in elections, and unjustly detaining foreign nationals.”

US hypocrisy and Western narrative control

To put it lightly, many of Blinken’s claims are highly debatable. Worse, they contradict the US’s own policies and actions on the global level.

The US treats freedom of expression as a core value and considers dissent to be an intrinsic part of democracy. In this case, however, the nation is sanctioning Russian media and placing legal curbs against its own citizens who appear on RT to criticize US policy on the respective Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. So the Biden administration is violating its own declared values. As a further blow to freedom of speech, the social media company Meta, undoubtedly pressured, has also barred Russian media on its platforms, including the outlet Sputnik and the aforementioned RT. 

This US double standard is not surprising. When non-Western nations place curbs on their own media or suppress dissent, the US quickly condemns it as a breach of democracy — even when their goal is to thwart rioting and violence. Yet the US does not seem to recognize the contradiction between its sanctions against RT, which violate the principle of freedom of expression, and limited restrictions that foreign countries implement to domestically curb social unrest, which it routinely condemns.

The West largely controls the flow of information globally. It can create and control narratives at the international level. Its power to disseminate distorted narratives about foreign nations makes those nations feel vulnerable. In fact, as far back as the 1970s, the developing world tried and failed to promote a new international information order — the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) — to fix this vulnerability.

Today, some major non-Western countries are trying to break into this quasi-monopoly on global information flows, but are handicapped. The West has several advantages: Its native language, English, is the language of international trade and business. Its print media and news agencies have long exercised global domination. The US also controls the social media space with its audiences worldwide. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a 2024 interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson that Russia could try to promote its own narratives, but this would require an enormous, risky investment. Since this space is dominated by the West, Putin is uncertain that such an effort would yield success.

People widely believe that the CIA is connected to the US mainstream, social media and Hollywood. Allegedly, it gets work from journalists abroad. The capacity of the National Security Agency to intercept communications worldwide, including illegal tapping of communications of enemies and allies alike, is well-established.

It is widely accepted that the US media, its democracy promotion organizations and its intelligence agencies promote regime change in foreign countries. A recent op-ed in the Financial Times by Bill Burns and Richard Moore — the heads of the US’s CIA and the UK’s MI6, respectively — publicly displayed their role in policy-making in the Ukraine conflict, for instance.

Largest democracy vs dominant democracy

India knows all about the US’s hypocrisy when it comes to suppressing free speech. The nation has protested the nation’s interference in its internal affairs.

In India’s case, Russian media has not interfered in the functioning of our democracy or our elections. We have not been victims of Russian propaganda or disinformation. Russian media has limited access to the Indian media space, while the Western media, especially that of the US and UK, dominates the dissemination of international news in it.

Even if some European countries also allege that Moscow interferes in their elections, there is no evidence that Russian media linked to Russian intelligence seeks to manipulate the outcome of elections “worldwide.” It is certainly not the case with India, whose colossal democracy would surely be affected if Russian meddling were as prominent as other nations say.

The US and the rest of the West continue to dominate the global information system, which India has experienced at its own cost. Western journals and broadcasting networks like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, Le Monde, Foreign Affairs, BBC, France 24 and DW are politically oriented against the Indian government. They, alongside human rights organizations and groups that promote democracy and religious freedoms, spread distorted information about Indian developments. Even official US State Department reports do this.

India would therefore have questions about the US’s efforts to build “a more resilient global information system, where objective facts are elevated and deceptive messages gain less traction.” The US missions in India are tutoring local journalists on “fact-checking” — this fact-checking presumably comes with a bias for the US’s claims about India.

It would be ironic if the UK and Canada raised issues about Russian media with India. These two nations harbor people whom India considers terrorists; those who question India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, attack our missions and threaten to kill our leaders and diplomats, among other things. India has no such problem with Russia.

It is not likely that the US would raise the issue of RT’s operations in India directly with the Ministry of External Affairs. They would already know what India’s response would be. This is not a bilateral issue between the US and India and should not be treated as such. The Global South will almost certainly be largely unresponsive as well.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.