Analyst: Canceling presidential elections was a strategic win for Russia

Romanian professor Corneliu Bjola analyzes the case of the Romanian presidential elections and C?lin Georgescu’s social media campaign to warn about the effects of information warfare on NATO’s eastern flank.   The implications extend far beyond Romania, underscoring the urgent need to integrate robust security measures into NATO’s strategic framework, says Bjola, professor of digital diplomacy at the University of Oxford, in a feature article hosted by the North Atlantic Alliance website.   The cancellation of Romania’s elections highlights the limitations of reactive measures in countering hybrid threats, the professor emphasizes.   Democratic systems, he argues, are currently ill-equipped to handle the challenges of the digital age, where hostile state actors and private entities exploit vulnerabilities in cybersecurity, social media governance, and public awareness.   Interference in Romania’s elections exemplifies Russia’s approach to informational coercion, which does not rely on a single decisive action but rather on “persistent operational friction”—a sustained, cumulative process that builds influence over time and can be strategically activated when needed.   Russia’s informational operations in Romania did not emerge spontaneously in the weeks or months leading up to the elections. Instead, they were the result of a long-term effort to establish networks, shape narratives, and cultivate a disinformation ecosystem that could be mobilized at a critical moment, says Corneliu Bjola.   The cancellation of the presidential elections following intelligence revelations about foreign interference was, in itself, a strategic success for Russia, the professor believes. Whether or not Georgescu secured victory was secondary, he argues. The primary objective was to erode trust in Romania’s democratic institutions and signal to other NATO states that their elections are just as vulnerable.   The Romanian case should serve as a wake-up call for NATO and its allies, underscoring the urgent need to shift from reactive crisis management to proactive, systemic resilience against hybrid information warfare.   Read the entire article here: https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2025/02/07/algorithmic-invasions-how-information-warfare-threatens-nato-s-eastern-flank/index.html.   Corneliu Bjola (PhD, University of Toronto) is Professor of Digital Diplomacy at the University of Oxford and Head of the Oxford Digital Diplomacy Research Group. He is also a Faculty Fellow at USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy and a Professorial Lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. His research examines the impact of digital technology on diplomacy, with a focus on public diplomacy, international negotiations, and countering digital influence operations. His recent work explores AI’s role in diplomacy, assessing its potential to enhance decision-making, optimize negotiation strategies, and improve crisis management, while addressing challenges such as ethical concerns and algorithmic bias in diplomatic communications.