Our Air and Space Power Special Project Director, Rick Newton, was published in PRISM, a National Defense University journal that promotes informed discourse among national and international security professionals.
In January 2023 activist Rasmus Paludan set out to intentionally offend Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While some might characterize what Paludan did as acceptable civil disobedience, others will call what Paludan did opportunism, an opportunity to get considerable attention. The effect was that his act of strategic political sabotage disrupted Sweden’s efforts to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. The difference between strategic political sabotage and civil disobedience is important because it guides how liberal democracies may tackle the challenges of legal protest.
In liberal democracies, strategic sabotage will happen. The freedoms citizens enjoy are undeniably a strategic vulnerability, but at the same time they are also a strength. The rights of expression, dissent, and peaceful protest ensure governments remain, as President Abraham Lincoln said, of the people, by the people, and for the people. The exercise of those freedoms, though, means citizens can and will do things that harm the greater political order. To effectively avoid the harm of political sabotage, governments must monitor links between activists and foreign powers. Once alerted to impending political sabotage, the government can then execute its deterrent strategies and execute programs that combine techniques of preemption, education, cooption, and prosecution to mitigate potential harmful effects.
Read the article here.
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