Strategy of Information Confrontation of Countries of the Collective West in the Arab Countries of the Middle East and North Africa

The phenomenon of information and psychological confrontation with its components have been in the focus of attention of local and foreign researchers since the middle of the 20th century. As technology develops, the information front is becoming increasingly important: superiority over the enemy in the information and psychological sphere in modern conflicts is sometimes more significant than superiority on the battlefield. Currently, given global tensions, there is yet another aggravation in information confrontation in the Arab world, involving both Western and Eastern countries, including Russia. The current configuration of the conflict is significantly different from all previous ones: the bloc nature of cooperation between countries is gone (as was the case during the Cold War), while advances in information and communication technologies have allowed each side of the conflict to make an info-psychological impact on all countries in the region at once. To build a more effective national information policy, it is necessary to study in detail the approaches of other countries, determine the main and secondary vectors in their work, and identify the mechanisms of information and psychological impact. An analysis of the info-psychological strategies of the leading Western states (USA, Great Britain, and France) showed there was no unified approach to the implementation of activities in the information field at the theoretical and practical levels. The current state of disunity between the countries under consideration, with the leading role of the United States as the leader of the collective West maintained, is caused by both historical prerequisites and objective political and economic reasons. In the current situation and given the efforts to counter Western propaganda by Russia, China, and Iran, the information and psychological campaigns by the United States, Great Britain, and France are less effective than before, which nevertheless does not mean they have totally collapsed.