War fatigue? The power of communication to keep Western unity alive

Around the turn of the third millennium, two thousand years after the first Christian evangelists, a new term popped up in the English language: ‘technical evangelist’. ‘Developer evangelist’ soon followed, as technology executives sought to generate credibility for a specific product or service in the industry amid the rapid technological advancement of the early 21st century. 

Against the return of full-scale war to Europe and the reach of Russian disinformation, has the age now come for a ‘collective defence evangelist’?  

Marie-Doha Besancenot, NATO’s new Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, says that there is a lot of honest talking to do in favour of protecting the Atlantic alliance and Ukraine. The merits of democracy, collective defence and helping Ukraine with military, financial and humanitarian aid are all up for discussion — and are often contested, polls show. 

Besancenot can speak first-hand of this. At the NATO Youth Forum that took place simultaneously in Miami and Stockholm in May — in an effort to reach audiences beyond Washington and Brussels — the event involved those not already engaged in defence topics. 

“The main message that I got from young people was that ‘we are a sceptical generation’ in the sense that they don’t take values for granted,” she says of her trip for the event with 1,000 in-person and 15,000 online participants. There, they could hear from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as other experts and leaders, about what NATO is doing right now, why and how.

“Young people use the word ‘sceptical’ in a proud way, which is new to me and my generation,” adds Besancenot, who began her career in 2005. “That means that we can’t just show up and talk about democracy. We must explain why we believe in democracy, why is it beneficial to them as young citizens and let them decide.”  

Winning the argument 

Getting the message to stick is harder, polls show. In Europe, the European Commission’s DG COMM Public Opinion Monitoring Unit analysed a range of recent surveys from across the EU and beyond. The key findings showed that support for the European Union’s overall response to the invasion, while still very strong, decreased when compared to 2022. If humanitarian aid actions are supported by almost 90% of EU citizens, and support for sanctions on Russia remains very high, numbers have slipped since the Russian war of aggression began. Humanitarian aid maintained the highest approval, dropping by only three percentage points. Support for financial and military aid have decreased by nine and eight percentage points, respectively, according to a trend analysis of Eurobarometer surveys.  

In the United States, a study by the Pew Research Center published in May found that shortly after the invasion, 42% of Americans said the country was not providing enough support to Ukraine. This share has since decreased by nearly 20 percentage points. Meanwhile, the share of those saying that Washington is providing too much support to Ukraine has grown from 7% in March 2022 to 31% in April 2024. 

Public communication may not be the first weapon that comes to mind when thinking about defence, but it can play a powerful role in keeping citizens engaged and supportive of their governments’ actions in solidarity with Ukraine and each other. That is noteworthy when considering Russian disinformation campaigns, notably in Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the United Kingdom. NATO’s North Atlantic Council denounced the malign Russian efforts in a formal statement in May. 

Being conscious of the audience that NATO and allied governments are trying to reach is also crucial. “Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by wars and conflicts, so it is NATO’s business to care about this. In my field, which is communication and disinformation, it’s also a valid point. It is NATO’s business to focus on women as audiences too, and make sure they are well informed,” she added. 

‘Not charity’ 

Communication is also a way to ensure citizens of allied countries understand and support NATO as a values-based alliance, whose final goal is to maintain peace. Besancenot, sitting down at the European Defence Agency’s offices in Brussels, lays out the work done with campaigns, events and grants, which are currently framed by NATO’s 75th anniversary. It is also an electoral year in many countries, amid the rise of populism and the far right.  

President Vladimir Putin seems to be banking on a sense of war fatigue in the West to help achieve a Russian victory in Ukraine. “Ukraine is not charity. Support to Ukraine is an investment in our own security, and our leaders often make that case,” says Besancenot, a graduate of France’s École Normale Supérieure and who spent a year at the French War College in 2021-2022. She took up her NATO post in September 2023. 

From Miami to Lviv 

If getting the word out among the young in Miami was intellectually complex, Besancenot’s outreach to people in Ukraine, also in May, presented a different series of challenges. For starters, the Lviv Media Forum, supported by NATO, was partly held in a bomb shelter. The second largest of its kind in Europe, the event emphasised the power of storytelling to combat information fatigue.  

Gone are the days when shooting a photo of what is happening at the front is enough to raise awareness. Now, international and national journalists in Ukraine — the latter group formed only by women as men are on the frontlines — must spend much more time in war zones to find personal stories and make sure that their coverage resonates with people at home. 

“Reporters have had to turn to that kind of in-depth, very human storytelling to make sure that the interest is still there”, says Besancenot. 

The freedom and democratic spirit in which Ukrainian media continue working even when the country is under martial law is striking, Besancenot says, as reporters continue to freely question their leaders, cover developments, and often have honest exchanges with soldiers who were, until recently, also civilians. “They have managed to keep that space for Ukrainian independent media to ask those questions. The intention is to ensure that the country has the best tactics and prevents casualties,”she says. 

Besancenot can rely on a diverse team to fine-tune NATO’s communications efforts. After a decade in the private sector, she was convinced that as a woman and a civilian, she had a lot to bring to the defence realm. “It is such an obvious fact that if you have diverse teams that reflect the whole society instead of having very similar profiles, you just simply can make better decisions that are profitable in the long run. It is very clear. I believe in that very deeply,” she says. 

And so, the evangelising for collective defence, for Ukraine, and for democracy goes on.

NATO’s four main communications objectives: 

• Deterring adversaries 
• Reassuring allied audiences 
• Showcasing allied unity  
• Maintaining trust in what NATO is and does