CN-RU CogWar Coordination

Since the announcement between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping of a “no limits partnership” on the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, concerns have swirled over the potential for a new axis of revisionist authoritarian powers. Spearheaded by Moscow and Beijing, such an alliance could not only threaten the Eurasian landmass but reach across oceans to challenge the United States in the Western Hemisphere. However, the full implications and scope of the China-Russia partnership, particularly as it may pertain to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), remain both undertheorized and underexplored.

For this reason, the CSIS Americas Program designed a novel tabletop exercise to better understand the consequences of China-Russia coordination in LAC. Specifically, the exercise considered a scenario in the aftermath of a disputed election in Guatemala, where the future of the country’s relationship with Taiwan was at stake. Players from a wide cross section of think tanks, academia, and government conducted two iterations of the same exercise, one in which the China and Russia teams were not able to coordinate, and one in which they were.

The findings from this exercise have major implications for future U.S. policymaking. First, when given the opportunity to coordinate, China and Russia eagerly did so and were able to secure a favorable outcome to the initial crisis. However, on the subsequent game turn, the United States, which had invested in building more long-term influence within Guatemala, nevertheless secured its preferred policy outcome in both iterations of the game, including preserving Guatemala’s status as a diplomatic ally of Taiwan. This suggests that U.S. influence in LAC appears to remain sizeable, but closer China-Russia cooperation should be accorded more gravity than it currently receives in policy discussions.

This exercise made a number of assumptions about the strategic and policy preferences of China and Russia. Importantly, the second turn of the game introduced an additional dynamic of a mining concession that the United States, China, and Russia were all interested in securing. While the China team was consistently unwilling to divert resources to this objective, Russia viewed the mining concession as its primary focus across games, creating a fissure in the Beijing-Moscow partnership even when the two were able to coordinate. While the authors believe this scenario adequately models a possible future scenario, changes in Chinese or Russian interests or the sequence of events could have significant effects on the outcomes. The exercise thus is intended to underscore broad trends, not predict exact outcomes.

Background

On October 27, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt purported to have received a secret map outlining plans by Nazi Germany to carve up the Western Hemisphere. While the authenticity of the map has been disputed, even at the time of the speech, the president’s fear of a potential German challenge within the Western Hemisphere was palpable: “This map, my friends, makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America but against the United States as well.” For the United States, blessed with the natural barriers of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, an ascendant Axis power leveraging connections to the Americas posed the only genuine territorial threat to the U.S. homeland. Indeed, concerns over adversaries successfully establishing a foothold in the Western Hemisphere figured in U.S. war-making policy in World War I as well, when the Zimmermann telegram generated furor over Berlin’s efforts to enlist Mexico in waging war on the United States’ border.

At the time of Roosevelt’s speech in 1941, Germany was not alone in conjuring designs against the United States and its allies. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent declaration of war by Germany less than two months after Roosevelt’s remarks, laid to rest any doubt about the Axis’s position toward Washington. By declaring war virtually simultaneously, both Berlin and Tokyo hoped to divide and dilute U.S. industrial strength by forcing it into a two-front war in the Atlantic and the Pacific. The move was part of a series of coordinated efforts by the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy to rewrite global order in their image. Today, many scholars and policymakers believe that a new axis is forming, oriented around the growing cooperation between Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China, with important players such as Iran and North Korea joining the ranks on occasion.

On February 4, 2022, a mere three weeks before Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Putin and Xi held a meeting in Moscow at which they declared a partnership that both leaders purported to be greater than a traditional alliance. In the words of the two, this would be a “no-limits partnership.” At a follow-up meeting a little over a year later, Xi told Putin: “Now there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.” Putin nodded in agreement. Xi’s comment was more than a parting platitude; the notion of “changes unseen in a century” has been identified by scholars as foundational to China’s view of itself as an inexorably rising power set to overtake the United States as the world undergoes unprecedented changes that will catapult China into the driver’s seat of history—and make it the progenitor of a new world order. The brief exchange is illustrative because it indicates that the China views Russia as a key partner in its mission to overtake the United States. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s steadfast support of Russia, and the economic effects of such support amid a coordinated effort to isolate and sanction Russia, have signaled the beginning of a new era of alliance building.

While China and Russia have long cooperated in pursuing similar ends, most notably by using their respective permanent seats on the UN Security Council to shield one another from international criticism and accountability efforts, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 drastically ratcheted up cooperation between the two powers. In particular, Russia’s growing isolation from the rest of the global economy has left it dependent upon China as a financial lifeline. China, for its part, has been eager to buy up heavily discounted Russian oil and gas, previously destined for Europe, and allow tensions in eastern Europe to draw attention away from its own military provocations around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. During a vist Putin’s made to Beijing in May 2024, the two countries reaffirmed their ties with a sweeping joint communiqué, stating, “Russian-Chinese relations stand the test of rapid changes in the world, demonstrating strength and stability, and are experiencing the best period in their history.” Furthermore, during a recent diplomatic visit to multiple European countries, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas that China was unwilling to allow Russia to lose its war in Ukraine, lest the United States turn its full attention toward China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The alliance has also attracted a number of camp followers, most notably Iran and North Korea. Both have played a key role in Russia’s war effort against Ukraine. Iranian Shahed drones bombard Ukraine’s cities and civilian infrastructure, while North Korean artillery shells and soldiers have been shipped to the front lines to feed the voracious appetite for ammunition and manpower. While such cooperation is deeply concerning, especially from a regional stability perspective, as both Tehran and Pyongyang have demonstrated they are more than capable of generating security concerns for their neighbors, the two remain decidedly junior partners in the alliance. At present, only Beijing and Moscow have the combination of economic, diplomatic, and potentially military capabilities to challenge Washinton’s interests not just on the Eurasian landmass, but within the United States’ own shared neighborhood.

If China and Russia’s “no-limits partnership” were to extend into true cooperation in LAC, both countries would already have sizeable foundations to build upon. In the short to medium term, this cooperation could have deleterious effects on U.S. economic, political, and even physical security within the Western Hemisphere. The two countries could conspire to develop preferential access to the region’s critical minerals and energy reserves or spin mutual support networks to help evade sanctions. Coordinated messaging campaigns could frustrate U.S. diplomatic efforts to shore up democracy and human rights and simultaneously lay the groundwork for expanded Chinese and Russian security footprints in the hemisphere. In the event of a crisis or conflict between the United States and Russia or China, such efforts would likely accelerate into overdrive to create a hostile operating environment for the United States close to home and defang Washington’s long-standing strategy of denying the Western Hemisphere to adversaries.

If China and Russia are coordinating, a natural starting point would be in the media and information space. While Beijing and Moscow’s abandonment of Tehran in the face of recent Israeli and U.S. airstrikes suggests that the new axis, if it exists, may not be as strong as previously thought, exerting influence in the media and information domain has relatively low barriers to entry and potentially high returns on investment. Digital media can propagate messages hundreds of thousands of times without requiring new physical infrastructure or significant capital investments. Both countries have built formidable media apparatuses in the Western Hemisphere and already cooperate either formally or informally with one another to promote media content of mutual interest. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been illustrative of this latter form of cooperation, with China’s media presence in the region helping to amplify Moscow’s messaging that the war was provoked by NATO intransigence and U.S. imperialism and is thus defensive in nature. One report from the National Defense University traces this process of dissemination, noting how LAC journalists sympathetic to Moscow’s cause often have their articles platformed on Russian and Chinese state-affiliated media accounts like RT, Sputnik Mundo, and China Global Television Network. These “super spreaders” of Chinese and Russian propaganda are further boosted by Iranian networks like HispanTV and Venezuelan outlets like TeleSUR, which also have an interest in spreading anti-U.S. messages. Evidence also suggests that China and Russia have already cooperated on media operations in specific contexts, with a report from the International Republican Institute finding that Chinese and Russian outlets engaged in a “virtuous cycle of disinformation” in Argentina, sharing and re-sharing one another’s content to magnify desired anti-U.S. messages.

The ability of media networks to amplify one another means that coordination in this space is particularly useful, having a cumulative effect that makes disinformation or propaganda campaigns more effective the more media outlets buy into them. In the event of a conflict or crisis scenario, Chinese and Russian media in the region would likely amplify one another to flood the information space with bogus or otherwise biased content seeking to at the very least keep the majority of countries neutral—and perhaps sway some governments into backing the policy positions of Moscow or Beijing.

Ascertaining whether the relationship between Beijing and Moscow represents coordination or convergence, and the practical implications of both, has major implications for the United States’ own strategy toward LAC. Especially as U.S. policymakers still largely view China and Russia as separate and distinct actors in the region, a new strategy may be needed to think about how to deal with an integrated threat from two authoritarian adversaries, as well as how and when it may be advantageous to potentially drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.

The Tabletop Exercise

To test the implications of China-Russia collaboration in LAC’s media and information environment, the CSIS research team developed a unique tabletop exercise (TTX), which was conducted over the course of two iterations and featured a total of 20 participants, representing former government officials, think tank experts, and academics. The scenario at the center of the exercise revolves around a contested election in Guatemala and the role that U.S., Chinese, Russian, and Guatemalan authorities would play in the information domain to influence their desired outcome in the crisis. Both iterations of the exercise were identical, with one exception: In the first iteration, the teams representing China and Russia were not allowed to speak to one another at any point during the exercise; in the second iteration, they were permitted (though not required) to communicate and coordinate their activities.

The scenario begins after a theoretical narrow electoral defeat of the incumbent Semilla party in the second round of the 2027 Guatemalan presidential elections by a new pro-China party (deemed “Crecer” for the purposes of this exercise). However, numerous reports of irregularities have led the Arévalo government to push for a recount before certifying the results. The decision has drawn accusations of hypocrisy and mass protests throughout Guatemala, risking a major crisis of legitimacy for the eventual winner. The potential to flip another formal diplomatic ally of Taiwan has also drawn the attention of China, while Russia sees an opportunity to foment chaos within the United States’ neighborhood and potentially advance its position within Central America. With this context in mind, participants were divided into a total of five teams to begin, representing the governments of the United States, China, and Russia, and the incumbent and opposition parties in Guatemala.

Each iteration of the exercise was played in two turns. Turn 1 followed a discussion-negotiation-adjudication framework, beginning with teams convening to review their goals and prepare strategies for their turn. The U.S., China, and Russia teams each received an activity budget (see Table 1) approximating their relative capacity to influence the media and information space in Guatemala.

▲ Table 1: Activity Budgets and Rationales

Following initial discussions, the U.S., China, and Russia teams were able to send one representative to meet with each of the Guatemalan teams to share plans and negotiate outcomes. The U.S., China, and Russia teams then assembled their respective activity agendas for the end of the turn. Teams could use their activities to either support the Semilla or Crecer parties in their bid for the disputed presidency, or work to expand influence in Guatemala. Furthermore, these activities could be either overt or covert. Overt activities were revealed to the entire group at the end of the turn. Covert activities were shared only with the TTX facilitators and revealed only at the end of the exercise.

After revealing all overt activities, both the Semilla and Crecer teams could choose to either endorse one overt activity or expose one covert activity. Endorsing an overt activity meant it counted as twice as effective for the purposes of the final score tabulation, representing the added legitimacy offered by local actors cosigning a country’s message. Exposing meant a team could force any other team to reveal one covert activity at random, simulating the ability of civil society organizations and individuals to track down media influence campaigns. Covert activities revealed this way were then negated for the purposes of the game.

The turn concluded with a simulated dice roll, representing the still uncertain nature of the election. The dice roll began with a 50/50 chance for either Semilla or Crecer to win. Each activity in support of one party further increased that team’s odds by five points. For instance, if in total the U.S., China, and Russia teams allocated three activities in support of Semilla and five in favor of Crecer, the final odds would be 60/40 for Crecer to win. After the winner was announced, both the Semilla and Crecer teams consolidated into a single team, representing the new government of Guatemala.

The second turn of the TTX took place six months into the administration of the new Guatemalan government, as it was contemplating two major policy proposals:

1. Whether to continue Guatemala’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan or switch to the China; and

2. Whether to grant a new nickel mining concession on which U.S., Chinese, and Russian companies have all bid.

In addition to there being two policy outcomes teams could seek to influence, the overall activity budgets of each team were adjusted based on the outcome of the previous turn. These modifications are explained below.

▲ Table 2: Turn 2 Activity Budget Adjustments

As with the first turn, teams began with an internal discussion phase, followed by a negotiation step where the U.S., China, and Russia teams could send one representative each to meet with the unified Guatemalan government team. Rather than seeking to influence the outcome of the election or expand influence, in this turn, teams could either influence the vote on Taiwan in either direction or advance their country’s case in the vote on the mining concession.

At the end of the turn, the U.S., China, and Russia teams again revealed overt activities. The Guatemala team was then able to reveal up to two covert activities, divided across one or two teams. Activities revealed this way were negated for the purposes of the game.

The unified Guatemalan government team then headed to a vote internally on both issues. Players were encouraged to envision themselves as individual members of the government who can take contrary stands based on what they have heard from the U.S., China, and Russia teams for this decision. After this vote concluded and the results were reported, the TTX facilitators revealed all activities from the U.S., China, and Russia teams and tallied their totals as additional votes, representing the power of information operations to shape the outcome of political decisionmaking.

After players completed both turns of the first iteration, they restarted the exercise using the same teams. The gameplay was identical, except that in the second iteration, the China and Russia teams were allowed (though not required) to coordinate their decisionmaking.

The Findings

Over the course of the two game iterations, the CSIS research team documented internal team discussions and the specific actions that these groups decided upon. The following section outlines some of the major takeaways from this analysis.

Were China and Russia Likely to Cooperate?

It was notable that, when given the opportunity to collaborate in the second iteration, the China and Russia teams almost immediately began to work together. The resource restrictions that both teams faced in confronting a preponderance of U.S. influence seemed to naturally drive this partnership. In particular, during turn 1 of the second iteration, Russia and China allocated their full share of activities to supporting Crecer’s electoral bid. This proved a potent package of overt and covert activities that saw a Crecer sweep in the second iteration, compared to a narrow defeat during the first iteration.

▲ Table 3: Activity Distribution, Turn 1, Game 1

▲ Table 4: Activity Distribution, Turn 1, Game 2

However, during turn 2 of the second iteration, Russia only allocated one of its activities to supporting a diplomatic switch on the part of Guatemala, with the vast majority of its activities aimed at supporting a Russian victory on the mining concession. This development reveals two especially interesting insights into the potential effect of a Russia-China alliance. First, whether Guatemala recognizes Taiwan or China is arguably of little importance to Russia, so the fact that this team was willing to allocate even one of its activities suggests that an alliance scenario could lead to some degree of authoritarian altruism between Moscow and Beijing. However, the fact that Russia’s support for this change in recognition remained limited despite fulsome dialogue with China suggests that the degree of cooperation may be limited, especially when Russian economic interests are also at stake.

▲ Table 5: Activity Distribution, Turn 2, Game 1

▲ Table 6: Activity Distribution, Turn 2, Game 2

Second, it is important to note the way in which the behavior by members of the China and Russia teams changed when coordination became possible. In the first iteration of the TTX, both teams generally sought to persuade the Guatemalan actors through appeals to the benefits of cooperation. During the second iteration, both were more willing to resort to overtly hard-edged measures, including allusions to economic pressure against the government of Guatemala. The China team was particularly willing to engage in such threats. This change in team behavior could be seen as an indication of the increased confidence China and Russia have when they feel able to count on one another’s support.

How Did the United States Fare?

In both iterations of the game, the United States was able to secure its preferred outcomes by the second turn. Its strategy remained unchanged: In both instances, the U.S. team elected to use its full complement of actions in step 1 to expand influence. This strategy broadly comports with stated U.S. policy of nonintervention in regional affairs, particularly in the context of a disputed election. In its conversations with the Semilla and Crecer teams, the U.S. team consistently sought to avoid the appearance of selecting either party’s claim to legitimacy and stressed measures like recounts and international electoral observation missions as an alternative means of defusing the initial crisis without placing its finger on the scale.

It is important to note that the two-step structure of the game may have given the United States an advantage in the second turn. The TTX design deliberately left the decision on recognition of Taipei up for debate irrespective of which political party prevailed, in order to represent the complex nature of this decisionmaking. However, there was persistent debate within the government of Guatemala as to whether to move forward with the switch. Accordingly, while China and Russia were successful in influencing the outcome of the election in turn 1 of the second game, they failed to secure enough votes from the Guatemala team during turn 2 to effectively switch recognition from Taiwan to mainland China. The United States, meanwhile, was able to exploit these divisions, as well as the reluctance of the Russia team to expend more of its activities on encouraging a Guatemalan diplomatic pivot to China, to not only preserve Guatemala’s recognition of Taiwan but also secure the mining concession for a U.S. company.

The introduction of China-Russia coordination, however, did force some degree of trade-offs in U.S. strategy between the first and second iterations of the game. For instance, during the first game, the United States allocated eight of its activities to preserving Guatemala’s recognition of Taiwan and four to advancing the U.S. company’s claim to the mining concession. In the second iteration, the U.S. team increased the number of actions supporting Taiwan to nine and decreased those in favor of the mine to three. In both instances, the allocation of U.S. activities seemed to reflect real-world priorities, wherein the preservation of Taipei’s diplomatic allies in the Western Hemisphere is of greater importance for Washington than the advance of any particular U.S. company’s economic interests.

Broadly, the lessons from the U.S. team paint an optimistic picture for Washington’s ability to influence the media and information space in LAC. However, this conclusion comes with important caveats. For one, the United States has more tools at its disposal to influence Guatemala than it may have other countries in the hemisphere; Guatemala not only has an institutionalist government but remains closely tied to U.S. economic and political affairs. For instance, participants on the U.S. team brought up a review of Temporary Protected Status of Guatemalans living in the United States as both a carrot and a stick for the Guatemalan government. In a South American country such as Brazil or Ecuador, with a lower level of economic dependency on the United States, information space interventions may be of more limited efficacy.

How Did the Strategies of Regional Teams Differ Between Games?

Both regional teams sought to extract maximal support from international actors during the first turn of the game. Crecer was overall more willing to countenance more underhanded forms of engagement, such as receiving an electoral observation mission led by BRICS+ members (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates). Semilla, by contrast, initially sought support from the United States, but the U.S. team’s reluctance to be seen as overtly supporting a particular side in the crisis meant these efforts met with few concrete results. In the first iteration, Crecer endorsed a move by Russia supporting its claim to victory, while Semilla exposed a covert Russian action. Ultimately, and despite Russian support, Semilla secured a narrow victory in turn 1 of the first iteration.

As previously noted, even when the winner of the election in the second game was Crecer, ostensibly a more China-aligned government, there was persistent division among the individual members making up the unified Guatemalan government team as to whether they should drop recognition of Taiwan in favor of the mainland. While this may represent a shortfall in the game design, as Crecer was designed to be an ostensibly pro-China political movement, the debate nevertheless reflected real concerns that countries considering such a diplomatic switch face internally. As such, the game suggests that Taiwan’s influence may be more durable than conventional assessments suggest. Indeed, while cases like Honduras’ recent switch to the China under President Xiomara Castro have raised concerns, previously states in LAC often considered changing diplomatic recognition only after careful consideration of the costs and benefits, or as one of a group of countries that switched recognition all at once to dilute the individual implications. Better U.S.-Taiwan coordination could help further insulate Taipei from China’s efforts to sway its remaining allies into its camp.

Also relevant was the heavy reputational penalty that the Russia team faced with the Guatemalan government across iterations, particularly in the mining sector. Despite the Russia team allocating a majority of its activities in both iterations to advancing the Russian company’s claim to the mining concession, the Guatemala team consistently preferred working with either the United States or China first. This may in part reflect the specific context of the scenario, given Russia’s involvement in recent corruption scandals in Guatemala, but it is likely still generalizable to LAC as a whole.

How Did Covert Action Influence Outcomes?

The potential for teams to take covert action introduced a level of information asymmetry to the game. When teams elected to undertake covert actions, it was generally nuanced and informed in part by participants’ assessments of what their respective country would do in the scenario presented. Perhaps the most notable change between games was the behavior of the China and Russia teams between the first and second iterations of the exercise. On turn 1 of the first iteration, China employed exclusively overt measures while Russia mainly used covert activities. On turn 1 of the second iteration, Russia still largely relied on covert measures, but China pivoted as well, with just one overt activity and two covert activities. The increase in covert activities may have reflected the China team’s reduced concern that its covert behaviors would be exposed, or its belief that if they were exposed, there was a sufficient mass of activities combined with Russia’s that it would not impact the team’s overall strategy. By contrast, during turn 2, the first iteration of the game saw all teams pursue a mix of overt and covert actions. However, in the second iteration of the game, China and Russia exclusively employed overt actions. This suggests the China and Russia teams may have been more strident in their efforts to impact the policymaking calculus of Guatemala when working together, and therefore willing to employ overt persuasion and even coercion, a trend which is borne out from the individual interactions between those teams and the government of Guatemala.

▲ Figure 1: Distribution of Covert and Overt Activities

Limitations and Caveats

While the game sought to replicate real decisionmaking logic and tack as closely as possible to a realistic scenario, it fell short in some key aspects. First, as already noted, the merging of the Semilla and Crecer teams into a single government of Guatemala between turns 1 and 2 of the game did not always align with the stated policy preferences of the parties in the briefing book. For instance, while Crecer was depicted as a more pro-business, pro-China party, when the Crecer team won the election in the second game, there was a practically even split as to whether to change diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. While some level of internal dissent was encouraged by design to reflect disparate opinions within government, this level of contention was not necessarily expected and may have played a role in the U.S. victory in the second version of the game. This may be understood in part as a consequence of participants still being influenced by their roles in the first turn, and therefore unwilling to embody the policies of the prevailing party in the second turn. Future iterations of the exercise may be able to address this by stressing the shift in roles more clearly. Had the exercise merely dealt with a one-turn structure revolving around the winner of the election, the China-Russia alliance would have won handily by ensuring a Crecer victory.

Another weakness was the role that covert action played. While theoretically covert actions were intended to encourage participants to consider actions that they would otherwise not want to acknowledge to other teams, some participants highlighted that it was not necessarily clear when covert action would be preferable to overt. Although this may have skewed gameplay somewhat, it did not appear to significantly influence the broader strategies teams pursued during the exercise. Additionally, the iterative nature of the game, with participants playing the base case and cooperation case one after the other, may have impacted game outcomes by allowing participants to update their strategies. Overall, these challenges did not appear to change the nature of participants’ actions beyond the bounds of realistic policymaking; nevertheless, these could be areas to improve upon in future iterations.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Based on the findings of this exercise, it is possible to discern a number of recommendations for how the United States can better engage in LAC.

1. Widen cracks in the armor. Even in the alliance scenario, cooperation between China and Russia was not unlimited. Russia lent token support to China’s efforts to sway Guatemala away from its recognition of Taiwan but was unwilling to back this at the expense of its own pursuit of the mining concession. The United States should seek to identify fault lines in the China-Russia relationship where it can force these difficult choices on prioritization to dilute the influence of both countries, especially where the United States has strong reason to suspect a divergence in strategic priorities. In the media space, this could mean spotlighting Russian participation in controversial Chinese infrastructure projects, for instance, to increase the cost of coordination for both powers. The United States, for its part, must also be able to prioritize effectively to ensure economy of efforts. If the China-Russia partnership proves to be as durable as the worst estimates assess, there may be cases where the United States will need to cede ground in some strategic sectors, only to stand firm on an even more critical issue.

2. Don’t pick favorites, build influence. In both iterations of the game, the United States focused its first turn on building influence in Guatemala. This decision gave the U.S. team a broader activity budget to draw upon in the second turn. Rather than focusing on backing particular parties in the region, the United States should seek to build durable influence within partner countries that can help insulate them from Chinese and Russian media offensives. While the United States has historically neglected LAC as a region, it nevertheless continues to exercise significant influence when acting in a coordinated manner. However, leveraging U.S. influence in the LAC media and information space may prove increasingly difficult with the dissolution of agencies like Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Amid the recalibration of U.S. foreign assistance, one focus should be on strengthening in-country media ecosystems by supporting local journalists who can uncover and report on Chinese and Russian malign influence and better equipping local populations to sift through disinformation and misinformation. China has already pursued its own version of this strategy, leading media trainings that advance a model of journalism that disincentivizes criticism of political elites or investigations into the state. U.S. embassies can lead the charge in identifying local journalists and media outlets to prioritize for cooperation.

3. Bring in allies and partners. While the exercise only contemplated a limited number of actors given time and participant constraints, in a real-world scenario, various other entities would have a role in determining the outcome of comparable crises. In particular, Taiwan would likely have a vested interest in preserving one of its 12 remaining diplomatic allies. Canada and the European Union have also increased investments in countering dis- and misinformation. And despite recent headwinds, the United States still enjoys long-standing partnerships with LAC countries, with dedicated coordination channels and strong rapports between officials that run much deeper than those between China and Russia and LAC. The United States should seek to elevate the possibility of China-Russia coordination in LAC with these partners and develop a joint strategy to counteract them in the information domain.

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Ryan C. Berg is the director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

Henry Ziemer is an associate fellow with the Americas Program at CSIS.