Beyond Defence: A Proactive Strategy for the West in the Information Domain

The information war is not a future threat—it is the defining battlefield of the present.

Authoritarian regimes—Russia and China—are using narrative control, psychological operations, and digital manipulation not only to protect their regimes but to destabilise and divide the democratic world. The west cannot afford to treat this as a marginal or soft-security issue. It must recognise information dominance as a core pillar of modern statecraft.

Structural asymmetries—in decision-making, funding, and narrative control—have given Russia and China a significant head start. But this imbalance is not irreversible. With sufficient political will, strategic investment, and agile execution, democracies can turn the tide. 

To shift this trajectory, the west must stop playing defence. It must reclaim the initiative by understanding the adversary’s advantages, disrupting their tactics, and investing in its own narrative power. This paper outlines the current threat landscape and proposes a set of proactive, scalable strategies for NATO, the EU, and national governments to respond. In order to reclaim initiative and assert democratic values in the information domain, the west must:

• acknowledge of the fundamental structural differences in the information ecosystems;
• establish strategic autonomy in the information space;
• increase strategic spending in the information war;
• focus on pre-bunking as a strategic defence layer;
• build an intelligence-led monitoring capability;
• explore offensive avenues;
• mind ethical boundaries for offensive information operations;
• engage civil society as force multipliers.

The west cannot afford to remain reactive. The information war will be won not only by defending our values, but by strategically projecting them into contested information environments. The next chapter of this conflict must be one of initiative, coherence, and sustained ambition. It is about reasserting the strategic and moral leadership of democratic societies in the 21st century. To win this war, we must take back the initiative and start setting the agenda again.