Chandigarh: In recent years, the term ‘Deep State’ has become an oft-used tag to designate a shadowy and unofficial network of powerful individuals, operating inside most countries, to influence internal political outcomes, alongside manipulating economic, foreign and national security objectives.
Typically comprising intelligence and security operatives, military personnel, and bureaucratic and business elites, this amorphous, but lethal Deep State entity seeks continually to surreptitiously further its goals.
In effect, the Deep State concept implies that real power in a nation is held, not exclusively, by the visible and largely elected group termed the Establishment, but by a clandestine assemblage of institutions and individuals, furtively operating singly or collectively in mysterious ways and away from official oversight.
These cagey cabals are also credited with manipulating decisions which, at times run contrary to their respective governments’ interests, in an endeavour to maintain control and establish alternate status quo’s.
In implementing all this, the Deep State manifests its influence in numerous ways, of which engineering polls to ensure the election of a sympathetic political party or candidate to high office via a combination of covert funding, media influence and disinformation campaigns, topped the list. Conversely, the Deep State was also known to undermine and topple governments it had earlier helped install but thereafter considered them unfavourable to its self-seeking interests and goals.
Influencing news and foreign policy
With the combined authority and influence of its closet operatives, portrayed in recent years in numerous Hollywood thrillers, the Deep State in countries like China, Russia, the US and Europe, frequently resorted to shaping its script around wars, coups or military interventions in numerous beneficial ways.
These included resorting to social media, dragooning sympathetic and corruptible print and electronic news outlets, copious advertising and covertly sponsoring political propaganda. One action attributed to the Deep State, however, remains influencing foreign policy through a combination of undercover operations, information control and behind-the-scenes political manoeuvring.
Resorting to old-fashioned bribery and honey-traps of luring senior officials and leaders into sexual liaisons and resorting to blackmail later, too were employed. In many instances, it has been known to collaborate with corporate or military-industrial interests, or both, to ‘sponsor’ proxy wars in strategic and resource-rich regions like Africa, West Asia and Latin America, amongst others, for personal gain.
Deep States often work to suppress political dissent and undermine civil liberties, especially if their collective interests are threatened. Extensive surveillance programmes, for instance, are linked to Deep State actors from the US’s National Security Agency via the October 2001 Patriotic Act, adopted after the 9/11 attacks.
Other than wiretapping and telephone surveillance, the Act sanctions ambiguous ‘sneak and peek searches’, financial intelligence monitoring, expanded detention powers, arbitrary expansion of terrorism-related definitions and the indefinite detention of alleged suspects, without trial.
The practice of discrediting independent and established journalists
Another of the Deep State’s abiding tactics is media control, censorship and spreading disinformation widely by discrediting independent and established journalists, commentators and news outlets that challenge its influence and power. Whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, for example, who had exposed government, corporate and Deep State wrongdoing, were ruthlessly targeted, harassed and to some extent silenced in numerous ignominious ways, which continue to be perpetuated against many other such dissidents.
Economic manipulation to secure the interests of powerful elites like military-industrial complexes (MICs), multinational corporations and numerous other financial institutions, too are within the Deep State’s plethora of activities. Silently, but effectively its actors support bailouts or economic packages for large corporations, banks and industries, in addition to banefully swaying market policies to serve the interests of defence contractors, energy companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers by manipulating regulations and legislations governing their operations.
Another key activity attributed to the Deep State, particularly within the military and security and intelligence agencies, was the execution of covert operations. These included assassinations, ‘black’ and surveillance tactics that bypassed legal oversight, violating norms under the guise of protecting perceived national interests and the elimination of professed threats. The Deep State is often blamed for fostering trade deals and military pacts, that are later revealed to have significant and, at times adverse impacts on public policy, but were never discussed or debated at the time.
Deep State’s relationship with defence contractors
Coined by US President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961, the MIC label remains a telling euphemism to describe the Deep State’s relationship with defence contractors and not only the country’s military but with many others overseas. Over decades, the US’s MIC has been charged with perpetuating conflict around the world to further its collective commercial interest to ensure continued profitability.
Such Deep State measures, aptly dubbed ‘war economy’, were heavily focused on the production and export of materiel to militaries involved in ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon and other countries in West Asia.
The Deep State also effectively shields itself from public scrutiny and accountability by resorting to executive orders prohibiting all and any inquiry into its undertakings. Hence, much of its shady pursuits were invariably kept hidden from elected representatives and the public, thereby foreclosing all and any option of control or oversight. Some commentators, however, view the Deep State classification as overblown and dramatic and employed by conspiracy theorists merely to explain away complex evolving situations that had a momentum and trajectory of their own.
But the Deep State’s omnipotence has been amply vindicated by eventual periodic revelations of its activities involving operatives from the CIA, KGB and other countries’ security agencies. While its full scope of activities is difficult to quantify, historical examples of its influence in shaping wars, economies, and political regimes lend some credibility to the idea that such shadowy networks do exist and can be both silent in their methods, and deadly in their outcomes.
