*This book is in the Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security (RCCS) Series (General Editor: Thomas G. Mahnken; Founding Editor: Geoffrey R.H. Burn)

How do states shape public opinion, build legitimacy, and compete for influence? How do governments of free societies exercise power over public opinion without sacrificing their principles?

These questions lie at the heart of twenty-first century strategic competition. Increasingly, the ability to shape attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors is as consequential as diplomatic engagements, economic leverage, or military might. Yet, the practices of persuasion—public diplomacy, public affairs, strategic communication, propaganda, political warfare, information, psychological, and influence operations—have largely developed as separate fields. This fragmentation has obscured their common purpose, their shared strategic logic, and their significance as instruments of statecraft. As a result, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners have lacked a comprehensive framework to understand and employ these instruments of national power.

Information Statecraft: Persuasion as Power in the Competition of Ideas provides that framework. By bringing together these traditionally separate fields, it reveals how persuasion functions as a core competency of statecraft—working alongside diplomacy, economic statecraft, and military power to advance national interests. In doing so, it fundamentally reframes persuasion: not as a supporting activity or collection of specialized practices, but as one of the principal ways that states exercise power and compete for global influence.

This shift in perspective transforms how strategic competition itself is understood. Geopolitical rivalry is, at its core, competition over the ideas that underpin domestic and global norms, rules, and institutions governing social, political, economic, and military interactions in the twenty-first century. As such, persuasive activities can no longer be viewed as isolated acts. Their true significance emerges only when they are understood as coordinated expressions of broader strategies designed to shape perceptions and influence decision-making.

The implications extend far beyond theory. Information Statecraft combines historical research and contemporary analysis to reveal persuasion as an enduring instrument of national power that has evolved alongside diplomatic, economic, and military capabilities throughout American history and into the digital age. It provides a more complete explanation of how democratic and authoritarian states alike—specifically the United States, China, and Russia—mobilize individuals, institutions, and public-private partnerships to shape narratives, beliefs, and behaviors in support of strategic interests in an increasingly immersive, contested information environment. It uncovers the enduring values and principles guiding American persuasive activities and the inherent tensions that free societies face between shaping public opinion and safeguarding individual liberty.

As geopolitical competition increasingly depends on the ability to shape attitudes and behaviors through persuasive, as well as coercive and inducement instruments, understanding information statecraft is no longer optional. It has become essential to understanding how states compete, how power is exercised, and how influence is evolving in the twenty-first century. Information Statecraft provides the conceptual foundation for understanding one of the defining instruments of national power in the modern world.