"We in the west used to play dirty and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe's pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy's achilles heel. The Berlin airlift is a good example of what we once did well and have since forgotten."
"The allied airlift cost the equivalent of almost $3bn today, and needed a persuasive narrative to win public support. It's one that almost everyone still believes today: Berlin was blockaded, its land routes sealed, and women and children were starving. Except, while there was an airlift of supplies, there was no Berlin blockade. In the National Archives at Kew, I found documents from 1948 showing, in the Foreign Office's words, the blockade of Berlin is NOT a siege."
Western nations once employed aggressive grey‑zone and disinformation tactics during the Cold War. Contemporary Western reluctance to use such tactics has ceded grey‑zone and hybrid warfare space to Russia. The Berlin airlift exemplifies past Western capabilities in combined logistical, cultural, and information operations. The 1948–49 airlift was the largest air relief operation, cost the equivalent of almost $3bn today, and relied on a persuasive narrative to secure public support. Western measures included radio broadcasts (RIAS, precursors to RFE and Radio Liberty), cultural missions, educational initiatives, and deliberate disinformation. Archival evidence indicates the widely held claim of a complete Soviet siege of Berlin was a constructed narrative that became a persistent Cold War myth.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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