It is astonishing how a history book could re-gain its resonance and topicality some 70 years past – after the events described in the monograph had long been considered bygone. History tends to repeat itself, indeed. Rather mystically, this edited book appeared shortly before the unwinding hype on the proliferation of 'hybrid war(fare)' [1] – and certainly is an original and important source in the unfolding debate on war in both strategic studies as well as the public discourse more generally.

Fake News and disinformation, which have come to shape the centrifugal hype of the international public, political and scholarly debate today, are essentially yesterday's 'news' – they are part and parcel of old-style geopolitics and propaganda waged in a new interconnected, socially enabling and technologically amplified setting. So is much of the discussion on hybrid and political warfare unfolding today, which is nothing but just a new whirl of the political scripts written and bred since at least some seventy years ago, as the edited volume on The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare vividly demonstrates with its institutional-political focus on 'the war of ideas and ideals' (p. 1). In this struggle, both information and narratives, identity and culture, political movements, democratic procedures, social media, law and economics, and the like (including corruption!) can easily become weaponized. This presents a core idea of an 'organized political warfare', i.e. an international political action and constellation of being at-war-while-at-peace and, as a matter of fact. This very constellation echoes a reality that re-emerged in today's Europe and further afield in the wake of Russia's and other illiberal powers' assertive, confrontational (and even belligerent) foreign-political moves, including incremental instances of verbal and (mainly, economic) material conflict – all short of armed fighting (so far).

Eleven essays by nine authors that make up this edited volume each address an organization and/or activity sponsored by the Free Europe Committee, Inc. (FEC), aka The National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc. (NCFE) before 1954 – a US government-funded entity, which had been operational in 1949-1971 as part of the US cultural Cold War against the Communist foe. Importantly, this edited volume analyses the roles and performance of a range of other NCFE/FEC-sponsored organizations than the two most-known – and, thus, also much more studied – institutions, i.e. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Non-radio divisions, such as National Councils (pp. 32-37; 47-50), Free Europe University in Exile Inc. (FEUE) / Collège de l'Europe libre in Strasbourg (pp. 439-514) or the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) (pp. 397-437), do as well fall under the book's scope. Mainly, the geographical scope of the book revolves around the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that found themselves under Soviet agitprop attack back in the Cold War times – and which, ironically, find themselves being targeted by contemporary Russian comprop again. The revival of the propaganda machine is largely connected with the invention of 'hybrid warfare' – a new fashionable term for the good old 'political warfare', as the book well illustrates in its analysis of 70 years old events. Galeotti's (2019) fresh account on the matter makes a clear point about the indivisible 'fraternity' of political and hybrid war(fare) ideas. [2]

The contemporary scholarly searches for the meaning of Russia's hybrid war(fare) – with its emphasis on blurring the lines between legal and illegal, domestic and international, authentic and inauthentic, and last but not least war and peace – tend to be preliminarily ending at where Lynn's exploratory account started, i.e. outlining an ambiguous, Cold War-epitomic world-political constellation of being 'at war while at peace' (esp. pp. 7-21). In the book-opening chapter, Lynn (p. 7) posits that it seems fitting today to examine a different, unconventional type of war, that is 'the psychological war for "men's minds" that shortly was to follow the armistice [of the World War II]':

'Termed the "Cold War", it was fought with great intensity by all sides while the world was at "peace". It pitted the Soviet Union and the worldwide Communist movement against the forces of democracy led by the United States in a propaganda war that lasted the better part of four decades' (p. 7).

If we examine the contemporary discourses on the challenge of illiberalism to the liberal democratic ideology and the rules-based international order, little seems to have changed. Significantly, the propaganda component of the ongoing political warfare is the defining feature of hostilities. Here, a parallel is drawn to Cold War-era realities, where 'white', 'grey' and 'black' propaganda, too, all profiled the organized political warfare of both sides, the liberal democratic world and the communist alternative. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that this edited volume focuses on the establishment and functioning of the Committee for Free Europe, Inc. – a quintessential part of US policy of 'containment' and 'liberation' back in time (…. and now again?!). It traces the origins of the Committee back to George Kennan's 'top-secret memorandum' dated April 30, 1948, and the early stages of planning of organized political warfare while implementing the Truman Doctrine; enquires into the sources of funding and organizational structure; elucidates the within-institutional and wider public activities repertoire and provides an insight into the Committees' legacy and deactivation process throughout the 1970s up to the year of tectonic changes in 1989 (pp. 17-60).

Importantly, it disentangles not only the strategic rationale but also functional aspects (including institutional set-up, funding, international coordination, and institutional adaptation) of organizations that formed part of the Western political warfare campaign. The histories of national councils and committees, composed of the US-based exile leadership from Central and Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, present the main research focus – and contribution – of this edited volume. Informed by the introductory framework on the inauguration of political warfare and the place of clandestine organizations sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe / Free Europe Committee (NCFE/FEC), the next ten chapters focus on individual (national or regional) networked political warfare institutions 'at work' – from the Council of Free Czechoslovakia (pp. 71-120), Romanian National Committee (pp. 121-198), Hungarian National Council (pp. 237-308) and Bulgarian National Committee (pp. 363-396) to the Baltic Freedom Committees (pp. 199-236) and the Free Europe University in Exile Inc. / Collège de l'Europe libre (1951-1958) in France (pp. 439-514). Two more chapters, that fall out of the general book structure but understandably cover Hungarian cases in a greater detail, are focusing on Imre Kovács, a Hungarian political dissident (pp. 309-322), and the Cold War activities of the Hungarian National Sports Federation (pp. 515-546).

An interesting case per se, presents the analysis of what is termed as the Polish 'schism', a disjoint Polish representation within the national Delegation to the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), written by Anna Mazurkiewicz (pp. 323-362). She also authors another chapter in this edited volume which focuses on the relationship between the ACEN and the FEC in the Context of U.S. Foreign Policy in 1950-1960 (pp. 397-438). Having done her archival research i.a. in the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Mazurkiewicz (p. 323) presents an illuminating account of 'divisions, disagreements and bitter arguments among émigrés' – a far from infrequent story of emigrated communities – within the Polish Delegation to the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN). The Polish case features as unique setting within the ACEN, as all other national groups but Polish formed a single delegation. In contrast, Poland's 16 people strong delegation was equally split among representatives of the Polish National Democratic Committee and the London-based Provisional Council of National Unity, which also opened its chapter in New York later on. Mazurkiewicz (2013) digs into the inner causal core of such a constellation and ponders, in a well-argued manner, upon the questions what were the reasons for such an 'unbridgeable cleavage' within the Polish delegation, what were the effects such a Polish 'dichotomy' had upon the national effectiveness within the ACEN and whether, under external pressure, such a division saw its end? Drawing on institutional design analysis as well as contextual developments within Polish domestic and in-exile politics, documented political speeches and memoirs from across the national delegations to the ACEN, the author succinctly explores and explains the emergence and persistence of these two Polish splinter organizations against the backdrop of country's liberation from the Communist embrace, its domestic stabilization and its persisting post-WWII resentment with 'bitter betrayal at Yalta' (p. 353). Here, too, one might draw a parallel with contemporary political struggle in the country.

Thus, addressing the past, this history book astonishingly cuts across some of the contemporary international politics' most perplexing issues – the revived relevance of organized political warfare in a technologically amplified and multiply connected world. It is also, ipso facto, making a point about history repeating.

As it stands, this edited volume resembles an evidence-rich and broadly-scoped exploratory account into the conceptual and institutional history of the 'political warfare' idea in general and its cultural and communication component in particular. Based essentially on archival studies (The Hoover Institution's and Eastern European national archives), this anthology can well be used for further explanatory (historical whether political) studies, like it is in case of Robinson et al.'s (2018) enquiry into the patterns of 'modern political warfare'. Certainly, Lynn's edited volume is among a handful – literally three – book-length contributions on the topic of 'political warfare': Pittner's The Art of Political Warfare [3], Robinson et al.'s anthology on Modern Political Warfare [4] and the above-mentioned Galeotti.

Scrupulous and erudite, this anthology represents a well-researched and well-written account on a once and future central political phenomenon: organized political warfare in the Euro-Atlantic space. Occasional name misspellings or typos do occur in the volume. It also would have benefited from a richer national, historical, and international political context coverage as well as comparative accounts (in addition to the single featured case of three Baltic states). These small deficiencies, however, hardly undo the value of the contribution this volume makes to both historical and political Cold War scholarship.

Given that the volume largely bases on historical and archival research, conducted by the authors i.a. in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University (which, in 2000, acquired the archival records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) and many other national research centers and university archives, this anthology is also a valuable source of historical data and oral history records that can be used for further studies into history or contemporary manifestations of political warfare.

This institutional history book with a strong contemporary political resonance is an apt companion for those interested in what is going on today in regional and global theatres of a struggle between the apologists of the liberal international order and its contestations. If paired with the more theory-focused literature on political and hybrid war(fare), this edited volume will provide an in-depth historical, institutional and policy-related insight for a holistic comprehension of past, current and future developments in the political struggle in Europe short of – armed – conflict.

References:

[1] Cf. eg. Tyushka, Andriy (2019), Hybrid War(fare): The Challenge of Contagion. Toruń International Studies, 12(1): 5-29.

[2] Galeotti, Mark (2019), Russian Political War: Moving beyond the Hybrid. London and New York: Routledge Focus.

[3] Pittner, Jr., John J. (2000). The Art of Political Warfare. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press.

[4] Robinson, Linda, Todd C. Helmus, Raphael S. Cohen, Alireza Nader, Andrew Radin, Madeline Magnuson, and Katya Migacheva (2018), Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.