Japan Institute for National Fundamentals

　
Since the Cold War era, the U.S. government has invested national budgets to tell the truth to the people of totalitarian states such as the Soviet Union, East European countries, China, and North Korea. In contemporary terms, it has waged “cognitive warfare.” Instruments of the cognitive warfare have been the Voice of America (VOA), the Radio Free Europe (RFE), and the Radio Free Asia (RFA).

Journalists for these broadcasters have been given the independence to gather information on their own and write articles, rather than simply broadcasting government propaganda. They contributed greatly to the collapse of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and East Europe. Even since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government has continued to communicate the truth to residents in China and North Korea through shortwave radio and websites in Chinese, Korean, Tibetan, Uyghur, and other languages.

Trump terminates funding for the VOA etc.

Upon returning to power, however, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 14 to terminate funding for these broadcasters, suspending the important cognitive warfare against totalitarian regimes. Since his first term as president, Trump has exerted pressure on the VOA and other broadcasters by claiming that they have been overly critical of his administration.

The VOA placed all 1,300 employees on leave and suspended its activities. The RFA suspended Chinese, Tibetan, and Laotian language radio broadcasts, and drastically scaled back its Korean, Uyghur, Burmese, and Cambodian language radio broadcasts. It continues to disseminate news through its website and other channels modestly.

On April 22, the U.S. District Court in Washington ruled the Trump administration’s action as unlawful and ordered the administration to suspend the shutdown of the VOA and other government-funded media outlets and return their employees to work. The administration is expected to appeal the ruling, leaving the case unsolved.

Japan should start new broadcasting soon

In light of the above situation, I propose the Japanese government to take the lead in cognitive warfare in East Asia or the Indo-Pacific region.

Even after the collapse of Soviet Union and East European regimes, the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship and the hereditary dictatorship of North Korea have continued totalitarian rule and horrific human rights violations against their people, while shifting from class-based communism to a kind of fascism based on extreme ethnicity. Such violations have also affected Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. Since the inauguration of the first Shinzo Abe administration in 2006, Japan has emphasized value-based diplomacy. Japan also initiated the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” during the second Abe administration, winning the support from the United States.

However, cognitive warfare to tell the truth to people suffering under totalitarian rule has so far been the exclusive domain of the U.S. Japan has only been conducting shortwave broadcasts on a small-scale, aimed at rescuing Japanese abductees in North Korea. Meanwhile, the Japanese government has invested a large budget in activities to spread Japanese culture around the world. Japanese culture has already been overflowing in the world even without government support. From now on, the government should fund cognitive warfare, including history wars. It should promptly create a Voice of Japan modeled after the VOA and a Japanese-version Radio Free Asia.

Tsutomu Nishioka is a senior fellow and a Planning Committee member at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and a specially-appointed professor at Reitaku University. He covers South and North Koreas.