Strategic disinformation: a deterrent resource in crisis

Abstract

Diplomatic tensions between border countries are sporadic episodes, but they should never be discarded from political forecasts. A review of history makes it possible to verify that these critical
events are in a state of permanent latency, particularly in these latitudes, in which territorial claims and sovereignty persist. The political management of an event of tensions between States has many variables, among them and perhaps relevant in the whole, will be strategic deterrence, which will inhibit the intention of the counterpart to use force. This is the main concept of the article: the use of disinformation as a strategic resource during an episode of diplomatic crisis, in order to achieve a deterrent effect, helping to prevent an unmanageable escalation of the critical event and thus contain the risk of strategic aggression. This maneuver will distort the strategic context, incorporating one or more fictitious but plausible variables, designed to induce in the opponent the conviction of a change in the balance of potentials and thus disrupt his processes of analysis, generating doubts, uncertainty and finally a disincentive in the intention to use force.