”Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.” – Epictetus
Tribes, states, and groups have always competed for territory and resources, and this competition naturally extends to a competition over meaning. Meaning helps a society understand itself by presenting their history and thereby explaining their place in the world. Such stories are necessarily selective as they highlight some events but at the same time downplay or intentionally forget others. This selective process does not necessarily make the whole narrative false. A good narrative always contains bits and pieces of the truth. It is the interpretation of how these bits and pieces fit together into a coherent and meaningful story that is open for different versions. The true power of narratives comes from how they combine truth with selectivity. It is possible to tell different stories using the same or similar bits and pieces. What is new is not the existence of narratives, but the technologies through which they are created, amplified, and contested. The danger emerges when societies begin to treat these selective narratives not as interpretations but as complete truths, rendering them vulnerable to adversaries who understand how to exploit those blind spots.
The attempt to shape how people understand events and history is as old as politics itself. A good example of this is found in Maurice Joly’s book Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (1864), in which a ruler, widely understood as a satire of Napoleon III, uses not force but management of information and political narrative to control public opinion, thus creating a narrative that is convenient and not entirely accurate. One insight from Joly is that censorship alone is often ineffective. The mere suppression of critics and facts can draw unwanted attention to just the things the regime wants to remain hidden. The solution to this, according to Joly, is to flood the public sphere with the message that the regime wants people to have. The idea is to shape the environment, within which the people understand and judge events. Just as Clausewitz argued that commanders must shape the battlefield for strategic advantage, politicians and leaders must likewise shape the information environment. Facts are not necessarily denied. Instead, it is better to embed them within a narrative that is repeated so frequently and so consistently that it dominates how those facts are interpreted. The true political power comes, therefore, not only from controlling the facts from influencing how they are understood and presented.
To understand why current responses fail, we must distinguish between the two modes of influence. Disinformation traditionally denotes the deliberate creation and dissemination of false facts, fabricated statistics, invented events, or forged documents. Narrative warfare operates orthogonally: it accepts factual reality but contests interpretive frameworks. The former asks ’what happened?’; the latter asks, ’what does it mean?’ Consider the difference between claiming ’NATO troops attacked civilians’ (disinformation, if false) versus contextualizing a real NATO airstrike within a pre-existing narrative of Western imperial decline (narrative warfare). The facts of the strike may be undisputed; the warfare occurs in the selection, emphasis, and historical framing of those facts. Current counter-influence strategies remain fixated on the first mode (fact-checking, bot detection, and provenance tracing) while remaining vulnerable to the second.
The principle is ancient. The Roman statesman Cato the Elder is, according to tradition, famous for ending many of his speeches, regardless of the topic under discussion, with the phrase Carthago delenda est (”Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed”). By repeatedly connecting political discussion to the perceived Carthaginian threat, Cato embedded the idea within Roman political thinking. Repetition transformed a political preference into an accepted strategic necessity. This is the power of hammering in the same message repeatedly. This insight remains remarkably modern. Contemporary influence operations rely on two basic principles, flooding the public sphere with alternative interpretations and reinforcing the same answer/message/perspective. The goal is frequently not to determine what people know, but how they understand what they know. To understand why this matters, it is useful to begin with an ancient Roman god.
The Romans depicted Janus as a figure with two faces. One looked toward the past. The other looked toward the future. As the god of doors, passages, beginnings, and transitions, Janus presided over moments when one state became another. Unlike many mythological figures, Janus was not associated with conquest, heroism, or victory. His significance lay in perspective. Janus saw more than one direction at the same time. There is a strategic lesson in that image. Nations require stories about themselves. Such narratives create legitimacy, foster belonging, and help explain why collective action is necessary. Janus reminds us that no story captures the whole picture. States are motivated by both ideals and their interests. The challenge identified by Janus is not new. Individuals and nations alike present a public face while concealing less visible motives, fears, and ambitions. Both perspectives contain elements of truth. The challenge is recognizing that neither captures the whole picture.
As Francis Fukuyama argues in Identity (2018), the decline of the great ideological struggles of the twentieth century did not eliminate the human need for meaning and belonging. Instead, political conflict increasingly shifted toward questions of identity: who we are, how we are recognized, and what role we believe we should play in the world. These questions can easily be seen as just cultural questions but that misses the point. These are not merely cultural questions. They are strategic questions because identity shapes interests, priorities, and perceptions of legitimacy. The search for identity provides meaning, belonging, and a sense of place in the world.
This is why nations require myths. Not myths in the sense of falsehoods, but myths in the sense of foundational stories. The American Dream. Mother Russia. The Century of Humiliation. The European Peace Project. Whether entirely accurate is often less important than the function they perform. Such narratives transform populations into communities, shared memories into shared identities, and collective interests into collective purposes. The power of such narratives lies precisely in the fact that the individual components may be true. What changes is not the facts themselves, but the framework through which they are interpreted. Identity can never be separated entirely from power. The stories nations tell about themselves shape their sense of purpose, status, and rightful place in the world. As a result, recognition is never merely a matter of self-understanding. It also influences what role nations believe they should play, what treatment they believe they deserve, and what actions they consider legitimate.
A useful illustration of Fukuyama’s insight can be found in the years preceding the First World War. Europe was not divided by irreconcilable ideologies. Most of the continent’s great powers shared broadly similar assumptions about monarchy, empire, nationalism, and international politics. Yet they increasingly viewed the world through questions of identity, status, and recognition. Germany sought recognition as a rising great power deserving what its leaders called a ”place in the sun.” France sought to restore its standing after the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. Russia viewed itself as both a great power and protector of Slavic peoples. Britain understood itself as the leading global power and guarantor of a vast imperial order. Austria-Hungary faced a different challenge: preserving the identity and legitimacy of a multinational empire at a time when nationalist movements increasingly challenged imperial authority. It was this tension between imperial cohesion and rising national identities that would ultimately place Sarajevo at the centre of a European crisis. Each state possessed tangible interests of security, influence, and power. Yet each also possessed a story about who it was, how it should be recognized, and what role it was destined to play in the international order.
This is precisely the dynamic Fukuyama describes. Recognition is not simply about how individuals see themselves. It also concerns how communities and nations understand their place in relation to others. Political actors do not only ask what they want. The question is always who they are. That question makes national identity central, and with that comes questions of status and prestige as well as influence in the world order. Ultimately nations come to believe they are entitled to acknowledgment and respect, or even worse, they see their role diminished. The road to WWI was shaped by more than what schoolbooks normally address. It was shaped by competing identities seeking recognition. Strategic objectives became linked to a nation’s perception of its rightful place in the international order. Compromise became more difficult because concessions were not interpreted solely as losses of advantage. They could also be interpreted as losses of status and dignity. They were defending narratives of national purpose and identity. The tragedy of 1914 illustrates that conflicts driven by identity and recognition did not disappear with the ideological struggles of the twentieth century. In many ways, they have returned to the centre of international politics. The traditional competition between states, over resources and materials, is increasingly accompanied by efforts to shape how societies understand themselves. This creates fertile ground for influence operations
Successful operations rarely create entirely new identities as such efforts seldom succeed. More often, contemporary influence operations seek to strengthen interpretations of an existing identity. Much as Maurice Joly suggested more than 150 years ago, the objective is not to suppress every competing view, but to shape the framework through which events are understood. Grievances are amplified, selected historical memories are highlighted, and contemporary events are woven into a larger story about who ”we” are and how the world should be interpreted. Influence is achieved not only by shaping what people know, but by shaping how they understand themselves. Identity, belonging, prestige, victimhood, and national purpose become strategic assets because they shape how societies interpret both their interests and the world around them.
Digital platforms have significantly accelerated this process. Narratives can now be distributed globally within seconds. This process is strengthened by both real online communities and by troll networks (AI-generated or driven by humans). Combined with the right algorithms, these forces can create and maintain an overall false narrative, by playing on emotions like grievance and victimhood combined with revenge and righteousness. The result is communities that strengthen preferred interpretations of history, reinforce existing assumptions, and encourage societies to embrace some aspects of their identity while ignoring others.
The power of narratives in international relations can be demonstrated with the instruments of soft power. Normally, this means the use of popular culture productions like films and TV series in a way that repeatedly reproduce understandings of history and identity. Over time, these productions establish narratives about norms and values as well as a society’s role in the world. Successful soft power production normally avoids telling the audiences what to think, in favour of presenting a framework within which to think. The full power of this is found in the cumulative effect of repeating themes and portrayal of nationalities/historical figures. This continues until familiar characterizations gradually become part of a society’s interpretive framework. In essence, soft power operates in accordance with Joly’s use of narratives and includes Cato’s repetition. It shapes not necessarily what people know, but how they understand what they know.
Here the challenge identified by Janus returns. The stronger a society’s attachment to a particular narrative, the more difficult it becomes to recognize alternative interpretations. Multiple perspectives give way to a single, comforting story. The Greeks captured this danger in the myth of Narcissus. Unlike Janus, who could see more than one perspective at once, Narcissus saw only his own reflection. He became so captivated by the image that he mistook it for reality itself. The reflection was not false, but it was incomplete. National narratives often contain important truths, but they are strategically selective. The danger is not that they are false. The danger is that they become mistaken for the whole truth, turning a reflection into reality.
This selectivity is not necessarily a product of deception. It is often a consequence of identity itself. Nations require coherent stories. They need narratives that explain who they are, where they came from, and what role they should play in the world. As Fukuyama suggests, people seek recognition as much as prosperity. Narratives help provide that recognition by connecting individuals to a larger community and a shared purpose. The strategic challenge emerges when societies become so attached to a particular narrative that alternative interpretations become increasingly difficult to consider. This distinction explains why popular discussions of disinformation often focus on lies, fabricated evidence, or invented events, yet many successful influence campaigns operate through narrative warfare instead. Rather than creating an alternative reality, they seek to alter the context through which reality is understood. Real events, genuine grievances, historical episodes, and observable facts are selectively emphasized, connected, and interpreted in ways that support a particular narrative.
In this sense, modern influence operations often compete less over what happened than over what it means. The objective is to influence how societies understand themselves, their history, their interests, and their place in the world. By shaping the narrative, actors can reshape perceptions of legitimacy, responsibility, victimhood, and moral authority. The same set of facts may consequently produce very different understandings of who is acting defensively, who is acting aggressively, who is virtuous, and who is to blame. The greatest vulnerability emerges when external influence reinforces a society’s preferred interpretation of itself. A society becomes easiest to influence when the narrative promoted by outside actors aligns with the story it already wishes to believe.
This returns us to Janus. The strategic challenge of the twenty-first century is increasingly a contest over identity and the narratives through which societies understand themselves. Every nation requires stories. Every nation seeks recognition. Every nation possesses ideals, interests, ambitions, fears, and contradictions. Statesmanship does not require abandoning these realities. It requires acknowledging them. Janus offers a useful model. He sees more than one direction at the same time. He recognizes both what is remembered and what is forgotten, both the narrative and the interests that accompany it, both the virtues a society celebrates and the realities it prefers not to discuss. Nations become vulnerable not when they possess narratives, but when they lose the ability to look beyond them. The greatest strategic danger is therefore not simply that others deceive us. It is that we become unable to recognize the limits of our own stories.
In an age of persistent influence operations, digital platforms, and algorithmically amplified narratives, the danger Narcissus represents becomes increasingly significant. The most effective influence campaigns rarely succeed by convincing societies to believe in something entirely new, the traditional model of disinformation. They succeed, rather, by encouraging people to see only one side of what was already there. Encouraging people to mistake their selective reflection for the whole truth. The greatest successes in narrative warfare occur not when adversaries create entirely new stories, but when they reinforce the stories, societies already tell themselves. The difference between strategic awareness and strategic vulnerability may therefore be captured by the difference between two ancient myths. Janus sees multiple perspectives simultaneously. Narcissus sees only his reflection. The challenge for statesmanship is therefore not simply to defend against hostile narratives, but to retain the Janus-like ability to see beyond their own.