Hybrid Warfare And Public Diplomacy: Cold War Propaganda Blowback Legacies For Bulgaria And Beyond

This analysis demonstrates that the instruments and personnel inherited from containment have been adapted to the post-Cold War environment to expand state influence. Their tactics include reliance on local clients in third states that major powers patronize to engage in indirect, often obscured competition for control within the broader nuclear setting. This paper outlines the reverberations of US-Soviet clandestine competitive interference within the internal politics of third parties, including disinformation campaigns. This competitive interference contributed to the contemporary vulnerability of nationalist public opinion constituencies to conspiratorial stereotyping, embracing so-called fake news. This examination of the nature of propaganda illustrates the implications of the lack of transparency in the external sources supporting, advocating and utilizing public diplomacy initiatives. A study found the Balkans to be most vulnerable to the propagation of fake news which include claims of conspiratorial networks to undermine Balkan national sovereignty. This paper highlights how US’ public diplomacy capacity to combat fake news is significantly affected by this Cold War legacy. The digital information revolution exacerbates these vulnerabilities. The US and the USSR legacy of intense Cold War propaganda disinformation combat should be addressed transparently today lest US public diplomacy initiatives inadvertently reinforce the circulation of fake news