Speaker
Description
Strategic competition is increasingly unfolding below the threshold of armed conflict, where influence over perception, legitimacy, and coordination might determine the outcomes without the use of force. While widely acknowledged, influence is still treated as an auxiliary component of military and political strategy, framed through information operations or psychological warfare. Furthermore, recent debates appear to have been affected by conceptual inflation, whereby the heavy use of ‘war’ terminology has obscured influence as a distinct strategic arena.
This paper aims to fill this gap through a case study that analyses how China and NATO conceptualise influence as a strategic practice that affects cognition, understood not as individual psychology but as a collective environment in which decisions are made. China and NATO’s strategies are compared as contrasting approaches to the use of influence to exercise power: China's Three Warfares strategy treats cognition as an object of long-term conditioning to limit adversaries’ coordination and advance China’s objectives without open conflict; conversely, NATO approaches cognitive warfare from a defence perspective, emphasizing counter-parts analysis, resilience and ethical considerations.
This comparison reveals that the distinctions between China and NATO are not based on technology or capabilities, but rather on their strategic thinking, which appear to be characterized by a conceptual asymmetry. Because cognition underpins collective sensemaking, interaction between organizations employing different strategic logics may generate misalignment. The latter can result in mismatched comprehension leading to delayed responses, coordination difficulties, and, in situations of persistent competition, an increased risk of escalation.
This paper aims to demonstrate that overlooking cognition as a core strategic variable risks missing how advantage is created in alliance-based security systems long before any force is used, which may produce far-reaching consequences for grand strategy, military planning, and international cooperation.
| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
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| Would you like to be considered for travel funding through the NetSec COST Action? | Yes |
| Are you a member of the NetSec Management Committee? | No |
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Strategic Studies and International relations |
| Which of the following best describes your stage of the career? | PhD Candidate |
| In which country is your home institution? | Italy |
| What is your gender? | Female |