France Strikes to Address Misinformation Weakening Western Alliance
Moreover, French prosecutors also made efforts to address online influence when they raided X offices in Paris to investigate alleged political interference. The country doubled down on the European Union’s €120 million (about A$201 million) fine on the platform last year to send a signal to tech billionaires who allow their digital services to be used by malicious actors.
Narratives emanating from the US matter far beyond Paris. For middle powers, including Australia, that traditionally considered Washington as a trusted partner, this presents a strategic dilemma.
Canberra’s security rests on a networked order in which the European and Indo-Pacific theatres are increasingly connected. Australia’s participation in coalitions supporting Ukraine and its shared interest in deterring coercion rest on the assumption that Europe remains a credible security actor. So when disinformation erodes alliance trust, it complicates strategic planning far beyond Europe’s borders. Furthermore, it sends dangerous signals to enemies regarding the alliance’s fragility.
In a landscape where disinformation breaks down trust between partners, allies need to monitor and analyze developments, coordinate responses, and focus communications and messaging on what matters most.
Monitoring and analysis should track not only adversarial narratives but also distortion emerging from friendly political ecosystems. This is analytically uncomfortable but strategically necessary, as hybrid threats can also use proxy ecosystems.
The next step is to invest in a coordinated rebuttal that is factual and proportionate. France’s experience suggests that innovative corrections, delivered with tact and humor, can hinder the spread of narratives. While France has already started, other NATO members and like-minded partners that also benefit from its rebuttals should also make a stand to defend allies’ cohesiveness publicly. Germany did this through an Instagram post by the foreign minister.
Third, allied strategic communications need to reconnect with what matters most to the partnership. For NATO, that’s burden-sharing narratives. The US’s National Defense Strategy, released in January, explicitly emphasized shared responsibility and allied capability development. If that principle is taken seriously, public messaging could focus on burden-sharing efforts that are accurate and strategically productive. Allies should reinforce the fact that deterrence is most effective where European, US and Indo-Pacific capabilities are mutually reinforcing, not interchangeable.
Finally, middle powers such as Australia can support efforts to build up information resilience by sharing their experience of what works. Canberra’s efforts in countering foreign interference in the Pacific may offer lessons-learned for Paris, which faced similar threats from Azerbaijan in New Caledonia.
Instead of debating within themselves whether they should depend or not depend on the US, middle powers should use their collective diplomatic voice to reinforce allied strength, perhaps one joke at a time.
Eric Frecon is a visiting fellow at ASPI. Fitriani is a senior analyst at ASPI. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
