Creating Chaos

Covert Political Warfare, from Truman to Putin

Creating Chaos explores that dark side of statecraft, the covert use of political warfare in international relations – from its early practices during the Great Game between the British and Russian empires, through the Cold War era of ideological confrontation and forward into the hybrid political warfare of the 21st Century.

Creating Chaos presents and illustrates the full body of covert and deniable political warfare practices, tracing their historical development and their use by both America and Russia throughout the Cold War and beyond. Using the most current information available, Hancock, a “veteran national security journalist” (Publishers Weekly) examines the evolution of political warfare tools and tactics in the era of the global Internet and ubiquitous social media, evaluating their effectiveness and illustrating the rapidly increasing levels of risk associated with these new and untested cyberwarfare tools.

Virtually no books have studied actual political warfare beyond the Cold War, and only a handful have provided any insights into the new and rapidly evolving practices of the Russian Federation or of the political warfare aspect of NGOs or other surrogate actors.

A companion volume to Shadow Warfare: The History of America's Undeclared Wars, Creating Chaos introduces the nature and history of political action practices, exploring a number of formerly secret American and Russian hybrid warfare and active measures projects in detail. With that background for context, it then extends those practices into the twenty-first century and contemporary events, evaluating wellestablished practices as they are being used with the newest tools of the global Internet and social media. It demonstrates the exponential increase in their effectiveness—and the equally exponential risk and consequences involved.