A sense of unease is growing among the ideologues of liberal globalism. Their cognitive warfare operations, it seems, are not hitting the mark with the intended impact:
“The United States Navy needs to get its swagger back – particularly in the realm of public diplomacy. The sea service missed a major opportunity to wage cognitive warfare against China on August 11, when a China Coast Guard cutter accidentally collided with a frontline People’s Liberation Army Navy destroyer… there is real strategic and political value to telling the US Navy’s story well – and with a measure of bravado and cheek – while throwing shade at China and other antagonists. But a cognitive-warfare offensive can’t be solely about trolling the Chinese Communist Party. There must be a sober component to it as well. For instance, the standing US Army deployment of a Typhon anti-ship missile battery to the Philippine island of Luzon left Beijing sputtering over the prospect that the US military and its allies were mustering the wherewithal to defeat its gray-zone aggression and block its access to the Western Pacific”[1].
Their playbook appears to demand this: after Ukraine struck a Russian D-74 artillery piece from 1955, the immediate response should be a triumphant jeer “Russian army is putting on a fascinating antique show in Ukraine. At some point they will be down to muskets or bows and arrows… Putin is clearly not far from running out of equipment altogether, as he is being forced to dust off ancient T55s and D74s. He is also running short of men. If the West stands strong behind Ukraine it cannot be long until the dictator is forced to negotiate”[2].
This tactic leans on a classical foundation. As cognitive operative James Holmes reminds us, Aristotle himself preached that: “rhetoric involves far more than intellect. It demands that an orator or writer stir passions among listeners or readers “[1].
That said, there’s a critical misreading. Aristotle argued that passion must work in concert with intellect, not replace it entirely. When smug ridicule, utterly unmoored from objective reality, is presented as a strategic directive, it paves the way for catastrophic failure.
If you ignore reports that “USS Connecticut (SSN-22) hit an uncharted seamount”[3], while the Russians “are now producing three times as much ammunition in three months as the whole of NATO produces in a year”[4] and also the fact that “Russland jahrlich etwa 1500 Panzer herstellen konne, wahrend die USA lediglich 135 Panzer pro Jahr produzierten”[5], the inevitable price for such bravado is to be paid in the coffins of returning compatriots.
In the realm of cognitive warfare, words are munitions with lethal consequences and those who wield them bear responsibility – especially when these mockers send others into the meat grinder while keeping themselves safely distant.
1 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/laughing-at-chinas-wolf-warriors-jh-083025
“Laughing at China’s Wolf Warriors” (James Holmes, The National Interest, August 30, 2025);
2 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/01/russian-army-d74-t55-antique-weapons-ukraine/
“The Russian army is putting on a fascinating antique show in Ukraine” (Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, The Telegraph, 01 September 2025);
3 https://news.usni.org/2021/11/01/investigation-concludes-uss-connecticut-grounded-on-uncharted-sea-mount-in-south-china-sea#more-89568
“Investigation Concludes USS Connecticut Grounded on Uncharted Seamount in South China Sea” (Sam LaGrone, USNI News, November 1, 2021);
4 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/magazine/mark-rutte-interview.html?searchResultPosition=1
“The Head of NATO Thinks President Trump “Deserves All the Praise” (Lulu Garcia-Navarro, The New York Times, July 5, 2025);
5 https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/bommende-ruestung-russland-kompensiert-verluste-in-alarmierendem-tempo_id_260767339.html
“Russland ersetzt Panzer und Munition im Eiltempo” (FOCUS online, 04.04.2025).