Introduction: The rise of the trolls
Trolling, the instigating of conflict or provocation for amusement, has spilled out of the darkened recesses of the web and ‘online’ culture, where it originated, and established itself in everyday political discourse. The practice, once the preserve of legions of anonymous ‘shitposters’ who competed to be the most offensive and transgressive users on niche websites like 4chan and 8chan, has become embedded in public life. The world’s (sometimes) richest man, Elon Musk, is widely described as a troll.Footnote 1 So is the President of the United States, Donald Trump.Footnote 2 Trolling is a staple of national political campaigns in the US and beyond. Indeed, Trump declared to a rally of supporters in Charlotte, North Carolina that ‘we like to troll’.Footnote 3 It is also a noteworthy, though understudied, feature of international relations. States have frequently used trolling to provoke their opponents. It has been a notable aspect of Russian subversive statecraft. But something has changed, particularly since Trump’s second inauguration: trolling has become extremely prominent in international diplomacy. Diplomatic encounters which have historically been characterised by formality, reserve, and politeness have increasingly been the setting for political leaders to troll their targets. This article is concerned with this development, and with exploring the strategic logic of diplomatic trolling.
No analysis of trolling in diplomacy would be complete without significant attention to its prominence in the second Trump administration. Indeed, a key characteristic of MAGA (Make America Great Again) diplomacy is the routine, seemingly reflexive and, as this article contends, strategic trolling of international partners, examples of which include his well-documented needling of former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. However, it is a development that extends beyond US diplomacy. There has been a broader expansion of trolling discourse among politicians and political commentators. Where diplomats might previously express disagreement or disappointment about receiving criticism, now they frequently describe being trolled by the speaker, as happened with the EU’s response to US Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech to the 2025 Munich Security Conference, where he accused the EU of democratic backsliding and denying freedom of speech. Symbolic acts which were previously described as examples of public diplomacy have been recategorised as trolling. Following Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Albania renamed the streets on which the Russian embassies in their countries stood as ‘Ukrainian independence street’, ‘Heroes of Ukraine street’, and ‘Free Ukraine street’. These acts were widely considered as instances of trolling aimed at Russia.Footnote 4 Trolling in diplomacy – and discourses about it – have become more widespread and pronounced.
Elements of this development have been examined by political communication and international relations scholars, particularly the diplomatic practices of the Trump administrations and Russia’s use of trolling in subversion and propaganda campaigns. Several recent studies on diplomatic performance and decorum, and populist communication styles, have examined how figures such as Trump disregard diplomatic norms of restrained and tactful communication.Footnote 5 Researchers have also illustrated Russia’s use of humour and satire in its international news, and through the social media accounts of its diplomats.Footnote 6 However, while these studies have may have analysed instances of trolling, few have used trolling as their central concept, or considered the use of trolling in offline, in-person diplomacy.Footnote 7 Nor have scholars of strategy examined in detail the strategic logic of using trolling internationally. This article addresses this oversight. It offers a new theoretical framework and research agenda that captures the strategic logic of trolling in international diplomacy and statecraft. It argues that diplomatic trolling has become less a tool deployed tactically in pursuit of limited political objectives, or simply for the ‘lulz’, and more a strategy deployed in pursuit of a post-liberal power politics.
This article explores how trolling has evolved from the online world to the realm of formal international diplomacy. Its theoretical framework posits that the strategic logic of trolling consists of five elements: coercion, agenda-setting, identification, delegitimisation and (dis)ordering. Trolling is a tool to coerce others, by asserting power and pushing boundaries, using aggression, ambiguity and deception. It is a tool of agenda-setting, by focusing attention and outrage on the troll’s preferred agenda, rather than the strategic priorities of others. It is an instrument of identification, signalling ideological consistency with both domestic constituents and other leaders who share a similar willingness to troll and to disrupt the liberal international order. It seeks to delegitimise the out-groups it targets through bullying, humiliation and deception: in the case of the Trump administration, for example, it is a means to ‘own the libs’ on a global scale.
Perhaps more crucially for international relations, it is a (dis)ordering strategy. Diplomacy, Hedley Bull suggests, embodies the rules, norms, and procedures through which political actors negotiate how to exist peacefully together.Footnote 8 By normalising aggression, threat, bullying and humiliation in international diplomatic encounters, trolling undermines diplomatic norms and corrodes the international order they have evolved to uphold. Trolling as a strategy enables those who wield it to take maximalist positions, but because trolling is inherently deceptive and ambiguous, the troll can retreat when challenged without suffering significant political costs, claiming that their demand was not intended to be taken seriously. In this way trolls can undermine the norms of the postwar rules-based order, proceeding until they meet resistance – following Lenin’s alleged advice of pushing if you find mush, and withdrawing only when you hit steel.
Defining trolling
Trolling is a widely studied phenomenon. At the point of writing searching for ‘trolling’ on Sage Journals yields 7878 results; Taylor & Francis, 12982. This research spans many disciplines, including psychology, sociology, computer science, communication, and security studies.Footnote 9 Research on trolling has also been produced by state or state-affiliated organisations,Footnote 10 think tanks and non-government organisations,Footnote 11 and it is often reported on by news media.Footnote 12 There is a broad understanding that trolling is ‘antagonistic, antisocial or deviant’ and involves instigating conflict for amusement.Footnote 13 But it has no universally agreed upon definition.Footnote 14 Various definitions inflate or deflate the scope of behaviours that constitute trolling. Some downplay the significance of the intention to provoke; others foreground it.Footnote 15 Some locate trolling exclusively online; others are more open regarding where trolling can take place. Part of the challenge is the subjectivity inherent in trolling – who is permitted to define an act as trolling, the instigator or the recipient? Nonetheless, this article contends that there exists enough conceptual clarity to offer both a workable definition and a breakdown of the key features of trolling behaviours for the purposes of assessing trolling in diplomacy. It proposes its own definition: that trolling refers to deliberate, deceptive, and transgressive acts of communication, performed to provoke a reaction, for the benefit of the troll and their in-group, at the expense of their target, or out-group.Footnote 16
Many alternative definitions of trolling locate it squarely online but this article contends that this need not be the case.Footnote 17 There are at least two approaches to considering trolling as an offline phenomenon. One is historical precedence, amounting to a case that tolling existed before the web, but boomed following the widespread adoption of online communications. David Rudrum argues cogently that it is a natural form of communication, traceable to the ancient Greeks and on through William Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde.Footnote 18 This approach is contentious too, though, as whilst one can draw parallels between historical examples and contemporary behaviour, it is arguably ahistorical to disassociate trolling as conceptualised today from online behaviours and cultures that have evolved over the past two decades. The other approach is to argue that contemporary trolling practices began online, and it may still be primarily an online activity, but it has spread offline across politics and diplomacy.Footnote 19 It is a digital activity that has broken free of its mooring; people are behaving in an online manner offline.
This article adopts the latter approach, arguing that diplomatic trolling can include both online and offline behaviours. In this respect, our study builds on Tobias Lemke and Michael Habegger’s research on the unforeseen consequences that can emerge when traditional diplomacy and digital diplomacy blur together.Footnote 20 Their study focused mainly on what happens to how diplomats communicate when they engage with audiences online. And, contrary to earlier suggestions that this development would lead to improved dialogue with foreign publics, they expressed concern that adopting social media communication practices might be leading diplomats to act in a more adversarial and troll-like manner. Our study takes this idea to the next stage by showing how, having mastered trolling practices honed in the digital media environment, diplomats and states people are applying them during in-person diplomatic encounters.
As with its definition, there is no consensus on what behaviours constitute trolling, or how to distinguish trolling from abusive or disruptive behaviour more broadly.Footnote 21 Mindful of the critique that trolling is sometimes used as a catch-all term to cover almost all behaviours that violate the norms of a given community, this article characterises trolling in international relations as a behaviour that instrumentalises three key elements to differing degrees: aggression, deception, and humour. Aggression in trolling involves transgressing norms of interpersonal or diplomatic communication by being deliberately provocative, offensive, or antagonistic, with the intention of humiliating or coercing others. This manifests in various ways, from direct threats and cruel irony to mock sympathy.
Deception is core to traditional definitions of trolling. Online it is strongly associated with anonymity, which trolls have exploited to shield themselves from accountability. Deception in diplomatic trolling works differently because a leader or politician cannot remain anonymous or antagonise people by stealth. Rather, diplomatic trolling relies on another element of deception: being purposefully ambiguous about the seriousness of any given communication, notwithstanding the inherent and traditional seriousness associated with a diplomatic statement delivered publicly.
Third, diplomatic trolling – as with trolling in any forum – instrumentalises in-group humour. Indeed, trolling is inherently imbued with humour, though often a narrowly cast variety. Rather than using humour in an inclusive sense, sharing a joke that the target may also find funny, trolling humour is about making jokes at the target’s expense. Seeking ‘lulz’ – ‘a sort of primeval, chaotic joy derived at the expense of others’, is fundamental to the idiom.Footnote 22 This manifests in several ways, ranging from references to memes or cultural codes shared by the in-group, extreme sarcasm, caricaturing, mocking social norms and taboos, to finding comedy in generally being transgressive and causing offence. Trolling typically utilises satirical or ironic humour, and frequently involves ridiculing a target. Trolling humour is also polarising, as it intentionally plays on a distinction between an in-group who are ‘in on the joke’, and an out-group who are not. In diplomacy, as online, this humour forms a defence mechanism against accountability or responsibility – as the troll can always claim that they were not really being serious.
Whatever combination of aggression, deception and humour is used, trolling is a subversive and performative act. Whether online, offline or some combination of the two, trolls choose an arena in which they can interact with their preferred audience. Within that setting they deliberately transgress behavioural norms for political or personal gain. The strategic logic of trolling is inherently linked to its subversiveness.
The evolution of trolling
To explain the strategic logic of trolling it is important to understand how it has evolved across politics, security affairs and diplomacy. The claim that trolling has emerged as a common, even mainstream, feature of politics is hardly novel. Over the past decade there has been a notable rise in the discourse surrounding trolling, the rise itself indicative of the normalisation of the practice. American and British politicians have commented on the barrage of trolling they regularly face.Footnote 23 In UK parliamentary debate the term was mentioned once in the year 2000, re-emerged in a House of Lords debate on Digital Technology in December 2011, and has been mentioned frequently ever since.Footnote 24 Political commentators have routinely discussed the rise of trolling in the context of contentious political issues, like Brexit in the UK, or the rise of Trump in the US.Footnote 25 Among academics, the definitive study is probably Jason Hannan’s Trolling ourselves to death, which explains how trolling has escaped from the internet into mainstream politics, arguing, as this article does, that this ‘4chan-isation of politics’ has a subversive effect on liberal democratic discourse.Footnote 26
Research on the increased prominence of trolling in international security over the last decade mainly focuses on Russian propaganda and subversion, especially Russia’s use of troll farms to influence and disrupt online debate around particular topics.Footnote 27 These have included, to name but four, Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election; Russian culpability for downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine in 2014, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, UK in 2018, and Russian campaigns to undermine faith in western-developed COVID-19 vaccines.Footnote 28 But Russia is not the only state that routinely uses trolling. Walter and Ophir’s comparative analysis of six countries’ online propaganda (China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Venezuela) illustrates that each state deploys trolls covertly against a variety of targets.Footnote 29 Even before Donald Trump became US president, during Barack Obama’s presidency, the US State department used trolling to counter jihadi insurgents online: reportedly tasking the Centre for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications to join relevant social media networks, ‘find users sympathetic to enemies of the state, and troll them until they see the error of their ways’.Footnote 30 Researchers have also examined how targets of trolling campaigns respond, particularly Ukrainian efforts to counter Russian online trolling; Taiwanese efforts to counter campaigns by the People’s Republic of China; and Finnish efforts at information resilience.Footnote 31
Less discussed is the phenomenon of direct diplomatic trolling. These communications feature the characteristics of trolling – aggression, deceptiveness, and humour. But unlike the previous examples, where states often trolled using proxies to achieve a degree of deniability, there are cases of diplomatic establishments openly trolling their targets online. Venezuela’s late strongman Hugo Chavez was a prolific critic of the United States and frequently used Twitter to troll his detractors. This included suggesting to President Bush that the US should perhaps invade, if Venezuela was that big a problem, the subtext reading ‘like you did in Iraq’.Footnote 32
Russia has long used official embassy Twitter accounts to troll its adversaries and detractors, but other countries have hit back.Footnote 33 Under the Obama administration the US Embassy in Moscow routinely published provocative, trolling tweets to ridicule crude Russian forgeries and manipulated images that were published with the intent to discredit US policy and its diplomats.Footnote 34 In 2014 the British Embassy responded to what it characterised as the Kremlin’s confusion on the point of whether or not Russian armour was in Ukraine by posting on its Twitter account a ‘guide to help’ the Kremlin spot its own tanks.Footnote 35
Taken together, these examples underline several key points about the use of trolling in international statecraft. First, that governments from across the ideological spectrum have identified trolling as a core munition of information warfare. Second, that there is clear evidence that trolling continues to spread from digital propaganda campaigns to open, offline diplomacy. Third, that different regimes use the three elements of trolling – aggression, deception and humour – in different ways – although how they do this would benefit from further, systematic research. The evidence indicates that autocracies and leaders with authoritarian tendencies have tended toward more aggressive trolling, including threats to annex other countries, threats against critics, and performative cruelty towards their regime’s designated enemies.Footnote 36 Conversely, liberal democratic trolling has often prioritised using humour to ridicule the target by highlighting the absurdity of their arguments and actions rather than bullying them into submission.
Finally, these cases illustrate how states have viewed trolling as having tactical utility, particular in terms of ridiculing contradictory, hypocritical or absurdist adversary statements or claims. However, trolling can also be strategic, in the sense of being a means to achieve a state’s or a leader’s broader political ends. The idea of trolling as an instrument of strategy has been analysed by scholars, but rarely. For instance, Kurowska and Reshetnikov, in their discussion of ‘Neutrollization’, argue that trolling in Russia helps preclude a shared meaning of any event or act, without which it becomes impossible for citizens to agree on responses or actions that could lead to domestic political challenge.Footnote 37 Far from trolling for short-term ‘lulz’, trolling serves the longer-term national-strategic aim of securing the regime’s survival, by persuading citizens that political engagement is pointless, thus effectively demobilising any potential resistance.Footnote 38 But this otherwise excellent study is focused only on Russian online trolls. What is missing from the literature is a broader discussion of what might be considered the ‘trolling turn’ in international diplomacy and the strategic logic behind it. It is to this issue that this article now turns.
The strategic logic of trolling
Drawing on the literature on trolling, on strategic theory, and on international relations theory, we argue that there are five ways that trolling serves a strategic purpose: Coercion, Agenda-Setting, Identification, Delegitimisation and (Dis)ordering. These purposes overlap; a given incident of trolling may involve each one in different ways.
Before discussing each of these in more depth it is necessary to engage with two direct counterpoints to the argument that trolling is conducted for strategic purposes, both of which are relevant in the context of the current dominant force in diplomatic trolling, Donald Trump and the MAGA administration. They are that a political figure may troll for personal enjoyment, or out of habit, rather than for strategic purposes. That is, they are trolling because they are a troll. Indeed, trolling as traditionally conceived, online, was personal rather than strategic. ‘The only reason for a troll… to do anything’, one researcher summarises, ‘is amusement derived from another person’s anger’.Footnote 39 However, a perpetrator’s joy in any given instance of trolling does not preclude it from having strategic purpose. Both can coexist.
To see this in practice consider two instances of diplomatic trolling. In meeting newly elected Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney in May 2025, Donald Trump explained how he ‘did have a lot of fun’ trolling former Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau by repeatedly referring to him as ‘Governor’.Footnote 40 This reference fit Trump’s narrative that Canada ought to become the 51st state of America and therefore ruled by a Governor – as the different states in the US are – rather than by a Prime Minister. But regardless of the enjoyment it was an implicit threat of annexation; a means for Trump to delegitimise a leader who had often criticised him, deploying a form of communication laced with aggression, deception, and humour. For another example, former Prime Minister Angela Merkel recalled Russian President Putin deliberately bringing his dog to a meeting with her in 2007, having been made aware beforehand that she was afraid of dogs.Footnote 41 Putin later denied this, issuing a public apology to Merkel after her memoir was released in 2024. This denial is scarcely plausible, however, given that in 2006 he presented her with a giant stuffed dog rather than bring his dog to their meeting – arguably an act of trolling in itself.Footnote 42 Merkel recalls how much ‘he was enjoying the situation’, visibly smirking at her discomfort, but also how she understood the incident as an act of aggression, a statement of domination, reportedly telling a journalist that ‘I understand why he has to do this – to prove he’s a man.… He’s afraid of his own weakness’.Footnote 43 This was transparently a diplomatic power play against a geopolitical rival delivered with deception, aggression, and dark humour.
The second counterpoint to the idea of strategic trolling is whether political actors are trolling out of habit rather than in a calculated way. Regarding figures for whom online trolling has been a formative part of their political careers, extending this into international diplomacy may be partially habitual: something they used to gain power, and now something they use while in power.Footnote 44 But to equate something that is habitual with being un-strategic, or lacking strategic effect would be mistaken. For example, while Trump is reported to have described his public disrespect of Justin Trudeau as ‘an epic troll’, he also saw it as a strategy calculated to ‘get policies cut his way and help with negotiations’.Footnote 45 Similarly, J.D. Vance’s aggressive, deceptive, and, to his base, humorous tenor may be a habitual part of his ‘owning the libs’ style of politics, but it is also a way to signal his loyalty and his credentials as Trump’s successor.Footnote 46 Finally, the use of trolling in an in-person diplomatic encounter may well be habitual, but it can still reflect the troll’s understanding of how to set the news agenda in the social media age. Recognising that the details of a formal diplomatic meeting may not cut through the noise online, leaders may choose to engage in in-person trolling precisely to generate viral clips and soundbites, and in this way focus audiences’ limited attention spans onto their agenda. This is another way in which diplomatic trolling could be seen as a performative act for an online audience, even if it is taking place offline.
Ultimately, it is impossible to determine intent definitively without consistent access to political actors’ minds.Footnote 47 But there is little to indicate that political actors who employ trolling do so only out of habit and without purpose. Indeed, in international diplomacy it is reasonable to assume that political actors think about what they want to say before they say it. This seems especially likely in official diplomatic exchanges, which tend to be heavily ritualised with extensive protocols regarding who says and does what, and when.Footnote 48 Leaders and diplomats also know that every word they say will be pored over and reported. Those who troll strategically, indeed, count on it.
Coercion
For trolling to have strategic purpose, it must be instrumentalised to achieve political goals. Trolling in diplomacy frequently serves a key purpose, coercion: to compel an actor to behave in a desired way. Trolling, in this sense, bears some similarity to Thomas Schelling’s concept of coercive diplomacy. It may not be identical to coercive diplomacy as Schelling conceived of it, as the humour and deception that trolling involves gives it a different character. But the underlying coercive logic of the two concepts is similar. It may be ‘vicious diplomacy’, as Schelling put it, but it is diplomacy nevertheless.Footnote 49
Trolling, like coercive diplomacy, is about inflicting suffering on others for political effect. As Schelling explained, unless it is done ‘for sport or revenge’ (which trolling can be), it is done ‘to influence somebody’s behaviour’.Footnote 50 There is a bullying element to trolling; it aims to ensure the target’s compliance. And as with bullying, what matters is not necessarily the pain inflicted by a given act of trolling, but the anticipation of the pain to come.Footnote 51
Until recently, this coercive dynamic was better recognised in the trolling of journalists by (frequently, but not always) authoritarian regimes to coerce them to self-censor any criticism of the government for fear of further punishment. Recognised examples span the globe – and in some cases, such as Russia’s ‘Internet Research Agency’, Brazil’s ‘Office of Hate’, and Indias ‘IT cell’, these have been linked back to government organisations.Footnote 52 The different dynamic observed in this article, though, concerns the boom in coercive trolling taking place in formal diplomatic exchanges in which performative politeness, rather than performative aggression, was the norm.Footnote 53
Many of the examples of diplomatic trolling throughout this article reflect these coercive logics and are loaded with implicit menaces.Footnote 54 By being deliberately uncivil, aggressive and actively trying to humiliate others, a diplomatic troll may hope that a leader is more likely to grant concessions to avoid similar humiliation in future. Alternatively, the victim may choose to stay silent when trolled to avoid their country being singled out subsequently. Either way the troll can claim victory – they have either gained concessions, demonstrated their power over others or coerced them into silence – and they can project this success both internationally and domestically.
The strategic implications of using formal diplomacy to troll other leaders and diplomats in this way, we argue, requires further investigation, and has received only limited attention in international relations scholarship. A notable entry point in this regard is Krebs and Jackson’s work on rhetorical coercion.Footnote 55 Describing their approach as ‘coercive constructivism’, they argue that rhetoric can coerce other actors by trapping them in a position where they are compelled to endorse a stance they would otherwise reject’.Footnote 56 Whether those doing the coercing mean what they say is irrelevant. What matters is that actors can be ‘rhetorically manoeuvred into a corner, trapped into publicly endorsing positions they may, or may not, find anathema’.Footnote 57 Having accepted or endorsed a given position, the political actor may feel compelled to follow through with it, rather than face accusations of weakness, hypocrisy, insincerity or incompetence for reversing their position.
Trolling in diplomacy fits within this conceptualisation of rhetorical coercion. The aim is not to persuade the target of the rightness of one’s position but to ‘deny them the rhetorical materials out of which to craft a socially sustainable rebuttal’.Footnote 58 Trolling seeks to trap the target in a position where they either say nothing and accept the troll’s humiliation of them, or react oppositionally, and risk triggering further conflict or punishment. The key to trolling’s success as a diplomatic strategy is how far trapping an opponent in this position can be used to extract more favourable outcomes. But domestically the strategy can yield dividends whether or not concessions are extracted. Leaders who practice this mode of communication can derive political capital from having ‘owned’ the victim by placing them in this seemingly impossible position.
The MAGA administration has provided several instances of this kind of coercive trolling. Perhaps the most pronounced example concerns the now infamous meeting between Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, on 28 February 2025. This meeting demonstrates rhetorical coercion in action. In a clear departure from what was up until then considered a diplomatic norm in such a setting, Trump used a televised meeting to humiliate Zelensky, dismissing the idea that Ukraine had any leverage in negotiations to end the war with Russia (‘You don’t have the cards’), with Vance repeatedly accusing him of showing insufficient gratitude for US support (‘Have you said thank you once?’).Footnote 59 The sense that Zelensky was being trolled was enhanced when Trump turned for an early question to Brian Glenn, a reporter from the alternative, right-wing news channel, Real America’s Voice. Having asked Trump the softball (non-)question, ‘Ultimately, your legacy will be as the peacemaker and not the president that led this country into another war’, Glenn then turned to Zelensky and asked ‘Why don’t you wear a suit?’; ‘Do you own a suit?’, triggering laughter across the room. It was a line of questioning that had followed Trump sarcastically telling Zelensky ‘oh look, you’re all dressed up today’ earlier in the day.Footnote 60 Zelensky was rhetorically trapped. Accepting the verbal abuse he received risked significant audience costs with Ukrainian citizens, with whom he might lose popularity because of the vicarious shame, humiliation and anger they might feel if their leader did not stand up to his abusers. It could easily be used by Russia to make him look weak. However, reacting aggressively would have further undermined support for Ukraine in America, particularly on the Trumpian right, on which Russian talking points – such as the claim that it is Ukraine’s own fault that Russia invaded – often get more airtime and sympathy than Ukraine’s.Footnote 61 Failing to secure more material support would also undermine Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Blindsided by the meeting, Zelensky ended up deciding that accepting Trump’s trolling was preferable to opposing it. He thanked the US profusely on social media in subsequent days, and ended up signing a revised mineral extraction deal that Trump had proposed.
Beyond bullying and aggression, trolling in diplomacy can coerce by instrumentalising deception and ambiguity. By being deliberately ambiguous about whether the troll means what they say or not, particularly in the context of a particularly outrageous or aggressive statement, a diplomatic troll can influence how an actor assesses the costs and benefits of a given action. This may be especially useful to deterrence. Strategic theory has long accommodated the idea that deliberate ambiguity about the threat an actor poses may be a stronger deterrent than those predicated on certainty.Footnote 62 Equally, should the deterrence fail, the strategic ambiguity and humour inherent to trolling provides an effective way to resile from positions when one faces excessive costs or resistance. Ordinarily, political actors might experience audience costs, such as a loss of credibility, if they adopt a position and then retreat from it. But the ambiguity of trolling potentially gives them diplomatic cover. They can troll a target repeatedly, gain repeated concessions, but then if the target chooses to retaliate and the political, economic or military costs appear too great, the troll can retreat in good order and claim that it was just a joke: they never meant it in the first place. This flexibility is core to the notion that trolling is a win-win strategy.
Archetypal examples of trolling as an instrument of strategic ambiguity are Donald Trump’s repeated threat to annex Greenland since early 2025 – threats so outlandish that they were widely considered to be trolling, rather than serious.Footnote 63 However ambiguous the undertone of violence in Trump’s remarks and J.D. Vance’s subsequent visit to a US military base in the territory, the instances were a means to coerce concessions from Greenland itself, the Kingdom of Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory, as well as a means to deter Russia and China from closer engagement in the area. How serious Trump’s threats are remains unclear at the time of writing – they may have been sincere expressions of intent to annex an ally’s territory – though to date he has not carried them out. But in delivering the threats in such an outlandish manner, consistent with the trolling idiom Trump regularly adopts, he retains the option to claim the whole thing was a joke, intended to troll his critics.
Agenda-setting
A second way trolling serves a strategic function is through agenda-setting. Being able to set the international agenda is in itself an indication of power and influence. But to have strategic effect, agenda-setting needs to enable an actor to achieve their political objectives. One of the reasons China invests so much in international news and propaganda campaigns, for instance, is to focus the international agenda on its domestic and international achievements rather than its human rights record. If other countries feel more positively about China, and their citizens are less aware of its flaws, China is more likely to achieve favourable outcomes in international negotiations. Whenever news outlets report instances of Russian trolling, or the latest Russian hack or spying scandal, and speculate on the extent to which these shape public opinion abroad, these stories inflate perceptions of the Kremlin’s influence. This outsized perception of Russian influence, so the logic goes, may make it easier for it to gain concessions from other countries without needing to resort to force.
Trolling another country, leader, or traditional allies by being deliberately outrageous and offensive generates significant media attention but also focuses minds on fundamental issues. This form of agenda-setting has strategic utility both domestically and internationally. Domestically it solidifies a base. Claims like Donald Trump’s Greenland threats, his trolling of Justin Trudeau or J.D. Vance’s excoriation of the EU draw global media attention and drive massive engagement on social media platforms, whose algorithms prioritise the spread of outrageous, emotive content. The amplified outrage from the victim, criticism from the troll’s domestic opponents, puzzlement from international observers, and adulation from the troll’s supporters at the ‘owning’ of a particular target-group focuses the domestic conversation on the selected agenda, be it ‘unfair’ Canadian trade practices or ‘free-riding Europeans’. In constantly invoking an apparently never-ending cycle of ‘enemies’, the practice of troll diplomacy also echoes the approach to politics described by Tim Snyder as the ‘politics of eternity’ – a political agenda that ceases to be about progress, but instead concentrates on identifying a never-ending cycle of enemies at the gate against which the nation needs to be saved.Footnote 64 This is a politics common to populist-nationalists who often position themselves as the saviour who will ‘make the nation great again’.Footnote 65
Internationally, there is some evidence that troll diplomacy can focus attention and influence behaviour towards the troll’s micro and macro strategic objectives. For the Trump administration, troll diplomacy has been a key pillar in its pursuit of a core strategic objective: to pressure European NATO members to increase their defence spending. Key in this regard was J.D. Vance’s aforementioned speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, which was widely considered as shockingly transgressive in terms of diplomatic norms and widely reported as an act of trolling.Footnote 66 For all the resentment and consternation among European leaders, several later promised to increase their defence spending, suggesting that the hostile and mocking tone of the diplomacy may have cut through in a way that more traditional approaches of previous administrations (most of which would have agreed with Trump that Europe underspends on defence) did not.Footnote 67 Linked to this is the grand-strategic logic of troll diplomacy. In the context of Trump’s wider diplomatic strategy this trolling marks a clear statement that the administration sees little value in maintaining the post-1945 liberal world order. The break with established norms of diplomatic communication, alongside rhetorically attacking old allies whilst warming to old enemies, indicate that the administration is determined to set a new global diplomatic agenda where its priorities dominate.
Identification
One of the most well-recognised purposes trolling serves is to identify with an in-group.Footnote 68 This is illustrated especially clearly by the Trump administrations’ domestic uses of trolling. During his first term, observers had already noted how trolling provided a shared experience for Trump’s supporters, particularly when the outcome was ‘owning the libs’ – that is, provoking outrage among liberals and Democrats. As one critic put it, Trump’s trolling of liberal opponents enabled his base to ‘find community by rejoicing in the suffering of others’.Footnote 69 This reinforces a growing hyper-partisanship in US politics in which opposition politicians are no longer seen as well-meaning people with alternative views, but as enemies who warrant abuse, humiliation and ridicule. The strategic benefit in electoral politics is to mobilise one’s base, however corrosive this is to democracy and social cohesion.Footnote 70
The second Trump administration has continued to use trolling to maintain in-group support but has escalated its use across a wider range of tools. For most of Trump’s first term, White House official social media accounts were used to publicise factual updates to inform citizens about what the government was doing. From the outset of his second term, however, observers noticed that these were morphing into something akin to a 4chan image thread, posting provocative, transgressive and, from the administrators’ perspective, humorous images and memes.Footnote 71 These included a photograph of a woman handcuffed and crying to celebrate the arrest of an apparent illegal immigrant; a post celebrating the deportation of a Lebanese university professor with a photo of Trump waving goodbye from a McDonald’s drive-through window; an image of Trump wearing a crown as if he was a monarch; an AI-generated image of Trump as the Pope during the mourning period following the death of Pope Francis in April 2025. While these posts appear to be designed to speak almost exclusively to the MAGA faithful, even some supporters indicated concern at using the account this way. ‘If you guys could stick with the grim shock and awe, and leave the edgy gloating to those of us who don’t work in the White House I think that would probably be better for optics’, suggested one X user.Footnote 72
Using trolling to distinguish between in- and out-groups extends to the international stage, where trolling other countries is a means to differentiate between friends (or supplicants) and enemies. Trolling is, at its root, provocative; it ‘creates an urge to challenge it’.Footnote 73 In this sense trolling creates binary subject positions that the victim can choose to fill: friend or enemy. Those that challenge trolling mark themselves out as potential enemies and targets for future trolling and punishment. Of course, politicians establishing binary positions is not new. Cold War geopolitical rhetoric was frequently Manichean. George W. Bush told the world that ‘you are either with us or against us’ as he embarked on the ‘War on Terror’ following 9/11. As with troll diplomacy these examples are implicitly coercive discourses – ‘join us, or else’. But whereas Bush’s includes a call for actual allies, with trolling the subject position of ‘friend’ is illusory. The troll is not interested in friendship or genuine alliances. To accept their trolling is to have submitted to coercion, to have appeased them, to have marked oneself out for future exploitation and extortion. In this way the strategic logic of identification, agenda-setting, and coercion interact.
But diplomatic trolling also works to identify an international ‘in-group’, specifically like-minded leaders. Whilst politicians who practice troll politics frequently disdain the notion of a rules-based world order and the value of their traditional alliances, they do recognise when their interests coincide with others and frequently work to cultivate those relationships. As Anne Applebaum has noted, these relationships function through a web of financial, military and political links.Footnote 74 But they also function through a convergence of rhetorical style, and the widespread adoption of the idiom of trolling. For instance, in 2012 Belarus’s autocratic President, Victor Lukashenko, faced criticism from Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s foreign minister – and first openly homosexual minister – who described him as ‘Europe’s last dictator’. Lukashenko’s rebuttal: that it is ‘better to be a dictator than gay’.Footnote 75 Lukashenko’s comment can be seen as trolling the LGBT community, along with any liberal citizens or news outlets who were paying attention, but also as a signal of solidarity with other leaders who espouse ‘traditional values’ and who share similarly anti-liberal sentiments. Most significant in this regard is Vladimir Putin, whose trolling operations employ the anti-LGBT ‘Gayrope’ (i.e. ‘gay Europe’) narrative as a core element in his campaign against liberal democracy in Europe.Footnote 76
Using trolling as a tool of international identification can also manifest materially, in a form of the meme-ification of the diplomatic encounter. In 2025 Binyamin Netanyahu gifted Donald Trump a golden pager, referencing Israel’s audacious attack on Hezbollah in 2024, in which it simultaneously detonated explosives hidden in thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives.Footnote 77 Keeping artefacts from significant national security incidents is not uncommon – Osama bin Laden’s Kalashnikov is on display at the CIA’s in-house museum, for example.Footnote 78 Nor is the exchange of ceremonial gifts with a national security resonance new – for instance, Winston Churchill presented Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad at the Tehran conference in 1943 as a mark of respect for the sacrifice endured by the Soviets in defending the city.Footnote 79 Traditionally these acts have been imbued with a degree of solemnity. But the crudeness of the golden pager bore clear hallmarks of trolling. It conveyed aggression, humour, deception. It signalled Netanyahu’s affinity for Trump, and their shared desire to own-their-particular-version-of-the-libs and undermine the liberal international order. And it set a trap to identify critics, whose outrage at the gift could be used to claim that they were Hezbollah sympathisers rather than national patriots.
This use of trolling to signal affinity with, and attract, similarly inclined leaders, raises questions about which form of power best characterises trolling. On the surface, trolling may appear to be an example of ‘sharp power’ – underhand, manipulative, malign.Footnote 80 And, indeed, it certainly bears those hallmarks. But given that it signals affinity with other leaders and movements who share similar political ideas, particularly their mutual disdain towards liberalism and the liberal international order, it might more accurately be seen as a form of autocratic soft power.
Delegitimisation
Trolling is a tool of delegitimisation. This is fundamental to the previous discussion of identification. The in-group is legitimate; the out is not. The crudest way this is done is through using aggressive trolling to offend and humiliate another international actor. Donald Trump’s recurrent reference to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada as ‘Governor Trudeau’ was an act of name-calling that sought to belittle Trudeau’s status as a national leader. The patronising tone with which J.D. Vance excoriated Volodymyr Zelensky, or Trump’s ambush of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in their Oval Office meeting in May 2025, was similarly demeaning to these national leaders.Footnote 81 As with any form of trolling, diplomatic trolling subverts the ‘normal’ mode of conversation based on mutual respect and listening, and replaces it with the pretence of a discussion, engaged in in bad faith. Dialogue in such encounters is fundamentally about coercion rather than understanding or compromise.
But beyond humiliation, the provocation and humour inherent in trolling can be used to delegitimise other actors in pursuit of strategic goals. Using trolling to provoke and delegitimise a target has a judo throw logic to it, similar to how insurgents use violence to provoke states to overreact and delegitimise themselves in the process. For example, one of the most popular types of article on Russia Today (RT) about US politics during the 2020 US presidential election was how a given provocation had caused outrage among liberal politicians and celebrities, which RT then used as material to accuse liberals of being irrational and over-emotional – and thus less serious or credible people.Footnote 82 A similar logic was evident when, during the Obama administrations, the US ran a trolling programme to antagonise Daesh social media operatives, in the hope that provoking them to react angrily would discredit their propaganda about the reality of life in the Caliphate.Footnote 83 This strategy is linked to the phenomenon of ‘nut-picking’ – ‘the practice of dredging through the online comments of your political opponents to find the most extreme, outlandish, offensive or idiotic view, and then taking it to be typical’.Footnote 84 The method functions by drawing the opponent to highlight themselves as a nut to be picked, making them complicit in their own delegitimisation.
Humorous trolling, using satire and irony, can also delegitimise international actors who engage in aggressive actions and rhetoric. When Vladimir Putin sought to justify the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for example, the Twitter account of Canada’s NATO contingent forwarded a ‘guide to Russian soldiers’ ‘who keep getting lost and “accidentally” entering Ukraine’, consisting of a map showing which territory in Europe was Russia and which was ‘Not Russia’.Footnote 85 In a more wide-ranging example, after Russia held sham referenda later in 2022 in the four territories in eastern Ukraine which Russia had (only partly) occupied, a Polish Twitter account posted a meme claiming that the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad should really be split between Poland and Czechia.Footnote 86 The claim on this territory – which the post named Královec – went viral to the point that an official tourist website – ‘Visit Královec’ – was set up, and the Czech language page of Wikipedia was updated to show the territory as part of Czechia. The parody even led to a protest outside the Russian embassy in Prague in October 2022 in which people could take part in a fictional referendum.Footnote 87 Government figures then jumped on the bandwagon. The Defence Minister, Jana Černochová, posted a fake CNN news reel claiming that her government was negotiating with US to buy warships so it could secure Královec, ordinarily a frivolous idea for landlocked Czechia. The Czech public broadcaster’s weather forecast included a report on Královec’s weather; the Czech postal service announced a new Královec-themed stamp, and a police report sought to inform motorists about speed restrictions in the territory. Poland’s prime minister and Slovakia’s president joined in the trolling, demonstrating its spread across the international diplomatic community.Footnote 88
Examples like this show how humorous trolling can be used to mock and delegitimise actors whose behaviour is perceived as transgressing international norms by highlighting their hypocrisy, aggression or dishonesty.Footnote 89 Such instances can be thought of as ‘counter-trolling’ in that they reflect the idea that the best strategy to respond to trolling is to ‘troll the trolls’.Footnote 90 As with other forms of trolling it can signal identification with an in-group – in this case victims of international aggression. But those using it may even hope that it can contribute to coercion or deterrence, on the basis that causing the target to lose face might lead them to moderate their actions to avoid further embarrassment.Footnote 91
(Dis)ordering
The most aggressive practitioners of diplomatic trolling are individuals who believe the international order does not serve their interest. It is no coincidence that some of the most prolific diplomatic trolls are leaders who are either autocratic or involved in engineering diplomatic backsliding: Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Donald Trump.Footnote 92 For these leaders diplomatic trolling is a means of exerting strategic effect in international relations by undermining the established international order and reforging an order where power operates unchecked.Footnote 93
Certain manifestations of this (dis)ordering phenomenon have been closely scrutinised in the literature on disinformation, such as Russia’s deployment of troll farms to subvert its adversaries’ elections and its use of international propaganda to spread news about ‘anything that causes chaos’ in liberal societies.Footnote 94 Whilst the specific impact of any particular campaign is difficult to measure, the strategic logic of such efforts is to create disorder, polarisation and distrust in other societies, thereby undermining social cohesion and domestic political legitimacy.Footnote 95 The strategic purpose of this is to weaken other countries and therefore increase the troll’s relative power, making it easier for them to revise the international order in their favour.
Diplomatic trolling contributes to disrupting international order in a similar way, due to its inherent divisiveness, its attempt to humiliate and ridicule leaders, and its use of ambiguity to make people less certain about what sources they can trust. However, diplomatic trolling also undermines international order by subverting diplomatic norms to the advantage of the troll. In conversation, trolling violates basic principles of cooperation, often mocks social norms and taboos, and more often tries to obscure meaning rather than clarify it: none of which seem helpful when trying to negotiate with others. Trolling a foreign leader is an explicit and un-friendly breach of centuries-established norms and rituals that have developed to ensure civil and constructive dialogue between nations.Footnote 96 Being deliberately transgressive or offensive in official diplomatic engagements is quite literally ‘undiplomatic’. Using trolling to intimidate international partners, to celebrate undermining citizens’ human rights, to promote the violation of international law, or to demonise allies, undermines the idea that cooperation based on shared, democratic values and the rule of law are useful sources of international stability, let alone influence.
The Trump administration’s troll diplomacy is a clear manifestation of this challenge to what was considered the established international order. Trolling Canada, Greenland, and NATO all signalled that ‘America-first’ was indeed policy. But, beyond this, the inherent aggression and ambiguity of the messaging indicated that it was not only the attitude towards allies and burden-sharing that had changed, but also the attitude toward fundamental, ordering norms, particularly the norm of respect for sovereign borders. By nodding to an abandonment of this norm and engaging in a more extortive form of diplomacy Trump pushes for maximalist gains in any dispute with a greater degree of threat and menace than previous US leaders.Footnote 97 But the ambiguity inherent in trolling affords the opportunity to follow through or not without suffering significant political cost.
The costs of trolling
This article contends that a strategy of trolling can yield dividends for those leaders who utilise it. Indeed, trolling in general is frequently considered a powerful strategy – a win-win – partly owing to its nefarious objectives. Should the target yield to provocation the troll achieves one of their aims; to ignore the provocation means abandoning the space or appearing supine – neither a palatable option diplomatically. It is an advantageous way to play what Robert Putnam identified as the ‘two-level’ game of diplomacy, that of balancing international and domestic considerations.Footnote 98 The subtlety (even in its most brutal form) of any given instance of trolling is such that the perpetrator can always resile from a stated position by claiming that they were not being serious and suffer little cost with their core constituency. This, in the short term, appears to be the case for the main practitioner of troll diplomacy, Donald Trump, but also applies to others like Viktor Orbán. The puzzle this poses, then, is why troll diplomacy has not evolved into a more significant or even the dominant form of international political discourse, rather than only being used by certain campaigns and certain figures? The answer this article suggests is that trolling has costs. These costs merit further study and, perhaps, more careful consideration by those who chose to troll.
The costs of trolling map onto our theoretical framework of Coercion, Agenda-Setting, Identification, Delegitimisation and (Dis)ordering. Using trolling to coerce others may harden opinion against the troll, raising the transaction costs of future negotiations.Footnote 99 Other leaders and parties must answer to their citizens, who may be angry that at their country being insulted, making it harder to sell concessions to their electorates.Footnote 100 Far from reducing the effects of friction in international relations, as Hedley Bull suggests diplomacy should do, these effects increase it.Footnote 101 Offending other countries risks diplomatic isolation. For countries with the economic clout of the US and China the risk is smaller. But for weaker countries, like Hungary, it is more significant. Risk appetite may therefore limit the diffusion of trolling behaviours in international diplomacy. Finally, using deceptive trolling to deter others through strategic ambiguity may be counterproductive in the many situations in international relations in which greater certainty is helpful – such as in trade relations, arms control and international conflict management. The more deceptive trolling is used, the harder it will be for actors who use it to convey their intentions clearly when they need to, as their interlocutors are less likely to take what they say seriously. Sincere criticism might be misinterpreted as ‘just trolling’, and ignored.
Trolling may also undermine the credibility of those that use it over the longer term. The actor who uses trolling risks coming across as unserious, disrespectful, insincere, and as acting beneath the standards expected of their office. Indeed, those who use trolling may experience diminishing marginal returns, as their interlocutors come to expect it and take it less and less seriously over time. For the leader that trolls, this could undermine their trustworthiness in future negotiations, making it harder for them to achieve their strategic objectives.
Using trolling to set the international agenda may highlight the troll’s preferred issues, but it also highlights the troll’s conduct in ways that may be generate blowback. In the context of Trump and MAGA trolling, a clear risk of blowback is that their actions hasten rather than arrest China’s rise. A central message in Chinese state messaging in the last fifteen years has been that the US is an aggressive, destabilising international actor and an unreliable partner with little regard for international law. Conversely, Chinese state propaganda frames China as a force for stability and order, and a respectful international partner.Footnote 102 The Trump administration’s trolling during his second term, including his threats to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, his arbitrary relabelling of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, all provide evidence China can use to support its strategic narrative. The risk is that one eviscerates one’s country’s soft power and grants a soft power victory to one’s competitors. The troll’s country loses international legitimacy relative to others.
Trolling is a potent tool for delegitimisation and identity politics. In diplomacy it may indeed serve to unite a political base, particularly if it develops a cultural resonance and becomes a source of community. Its capacity to polarise and entrench is a key element of its power. But the converse can also be true: trolling may coalesce your base, but it risks unifying your opponents. This effect is visible in online communities, but there is also some evidence of it in diplomacy.Footnote 103 After Trump had humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February 2025, a range of European leaders conducted a show of solidarity by accompanying him on his next visit that August, including the Presidents of Finland, France and Germany, the Prime Ministers of Italy and the UK, the Secretary General of NATO and the President of the European Commission.
That trolling can unite opponents against the troll appears to extend not just to international diplomats, but to foreign publics too. The causal effect of trolling is hard to prove, and it is likely to be one factor among many in shaping international outcomes. Nonetheless, strong circumstantial evidence suggests that Trump’s trolling of Canada early in his second term was instrumental in the seismic electoral shift that wiped out the 25 per cent polling leader of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party and led to Liberal Party leader, Mark Carney, winning the 2025 election. Even factoring in a polling bump from Carney replacing the unpopular Justin Trudeau as the Liberal Party candidate, it is hard to explain how Poilievre lost an unprecedentedly large polling lead in just a few months without including the backlash against Trump’s imposition of tariffs and repeated threat to make Canada the ‘51st state of America’ ‘so that they could vote for him’.Footnote 104 Trump’s threats to annex Greenland in January 2025 also contributed to a reduction in favourable opinion towards the US in Denmark from 48% to 20%. Meanwhile, 46% of Danes considered the US a direct threat to their country, and more of a threat than Iran or North Korea – striking figures for a long-term US ally.Footnote 105 Negative sentiment about being trolled in international diplomacy could have further knock-on effects, including undermining a nation’s brand, reducing tourism and economic boycotts. Trolling may alienate allies, who may decide to tolerate being trolled initially, while working in the background to reinforce or build alternative alliance networks. The fundamental risk of substituting deliberative and traditional diplomacy with inflammatory and adversarial diplomacy is the risk that the latter generates less predictable outcomes.
This risk also applies to those who chose to utilise ‘counter-trolling’, even when done satirically to highlight the aggressive or illiberal behaviour of others. This is notable in US political discourse. When Donald Trump sowed outrage for arbitrarily renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America early in his second term, few may have remembered that the legislation to do this was first proposed by a Democratic congressman, Steven Holland, in 2012. Holland’s proposal was non-serious: one of several ‘satirical bills’ which have been increasingly used in US politics to mock opposition politicians for the flawed logic or perceived unjustness of their policies.Footnote 106 Another satirical bill was designed to protest the harshness of the US state of Georgia’s abortion legislation, by proposing to fine men $100 for masturbation for being ‘an act against an unborn child’.Footnote 107 It can be argued that satirical bills are a way to use democratic processes to highlight injustice. But as Jason Hannan points out, they also ‘signal a breakdown in the deliberative process’, reducing it to a contest in which both sides fight in the gutter to score points against the other, rather than deliberate on how to govern society more effectively.Footnote 108 Applied diplomatically, a breakdown in communication and deliberation is widely considered to raise the risk of miscalculation or conflict.
Finally, disruption is a double-edged sword. Leaders who use trolling to disrupt the international system can readily do so. It is an easy, cheap means of spoiling, undermining, and damaging institutions and norms that, fundamentally, rely on consent, good will and good faith. However, whilst it is an effective strategy for subversion, coalescing a base, and signalling shared interests to like-minded leaders, its constructive power is very limited. There is no guarantee that it will produce the international order that its adherents want, or that the instability it generates will settle in their favour. Attacking allies makes it more likely that they will turn to others, creating alternative alliance networks that may not benefit the troll. Undermining one’s own soft power in absolute and relative terms may provide an opening to geopolitical competitors to secure the backing of others. If diplomacy is seen more as a venue to insult and troll others, rather than engage and negotiate with them, it risks creating a world order in which conflict is more likely and geopolitical challenges are harder to resolve, as actors willfully undermine the diplomatic tools and institutions traditionally used to mitigate conflict for short term political gain.
Research avenues
How far the costs of using trolling in international diplomacy outweigh the benefits remains to be seen. This is partly because far more research is needed into the strategic effects of trolling when used in international diplomacy. How might research into this proceed?
It would be useful to develop a wider foundation by examining the extent to which trolling is being used more frequently in international diplomacy than previously. This could be done by analysing transcripts of official diplomatic engagements, and analysing media content using quantitative or qualitative content, framing and discourse analysis. These can inform how far trolling is shaping the international diplomatic agenda and provide some evidence of the effect it is having on understandings of what diplomacy involves. However, such research should note the important caveat that a greater prominence of trolling in public discourse does not necessarily mean that more diplomatic trolling is taking place. Broadening the empirical base of research into international trolling to a wider range of cases would be ideal. While we anticipate that our framework is generalisable to different countries, this needs to be established empirically.
How far regime type, relative power, ideology, personality and individual preferences shape trolling behaviour could be examined more systematically. Since the use of trolling in formal diplomatic encounters is relatively novel, it is not yet clear how far this is a permanent shift in diplomatic practice, or whether it is a temporary one, closely tied to the personalities or preferences of specific leaders. How far one can generalise about different regimes’ propensities to troll also requires research. For a simple example, while Donald Trump’s use of trolling is now familiar, expected, it is harder to imagine China’s leader, Xi Jinping personally adopting it as either tactic or strategy. Teasing out the reasons for such differences would be a valuable area of future research.
A significant, but also challenging, task is to assess more precisely the impact of trolling. It is always extremely difficult to measure the real-world effect of individual acts of communication on audience behaviour, given the vast array of influences humans encounter every day. Moreover, as trolling relies heavily on in-group references and jokes, it is questionable how effective it might be when communicating across different cultures, which may be less likely to interpret as intended the humour and ambiguity the troll employs. In this respect, assessing the limits of trolling’s effectiveness across cultures would be a fruitful endeavour.
It would be even harder to measure the longer-term effect of trolling on international norms and the character of international order. Nevertheless, the strong circumstantial evidence of, for example, Trump’s influence on Mark Carney’s Canadian election victory, suggests that studies based on careful process tracing could identify situations where diplomatic trolling exerts effect.
Strategic theorists could apply a range of theories to trolling and how others should respond to it. Whether ignoring the trolls, ‘feeding the trolls’ (reacting to their provocation) or ‘trolling the trolls’ (responding with humour) has more strategic utility in international relations is uncertain. Game theory, and theories of coercion and deterrence, could help illuminate the strategic dynamics of trolling and how actors respond.
Theoretical work into how power operates through trolling would also be useful. As we have argued, one avenue is to examine trolling as a form of autocratic soft power: a way for autocrats and would-be-autocrats to signal their shared disdain for democratic norms, individual liberties, and their desire to rule with impunity: ‘owning the libs’ on a global scale.
Little is also known about how diplomats and senior political figures perceive and respond to trolling from other diplomats. Plenty of journalists have written extensively about their experiences of online trolling and the pressure to self-censor that results, and politicians have written widely about the online abuse they suffer in office.Footnote 109 Methods such as elite interviews, surveys, and Q-methodology could help us understand how diplomats think about and respond to trolling in formal international diplomacy, and how far their training prepares them to deal with it.
Whether diplomats’ perspectives on trolling match those of their citizens could also be explored. Give trolling’s deceptive nature, it would be useful to examine whether audiences in different countries take it seriously, ignore it, or consider it politics as normal today. If citizens do come to see it as expected international political behaviour, questions remain about whether it would lose its power to coerce or delegitimise others. Experimental methods could examine how citizens respond to diplomatic trolling incidents, and surveys could examine audience perceptions of it. Such research would be valuable, however challenging.
Conclusion
This article is a response to two issues. The first is the prominent discourse surrounding trolling in international affairs that has accompanied the Trump administration. The second is the limited academic attention devoted to this development, or the use of trolling by diplomatic establishments more generally. It has highlighted that trolling has indeed migrated from its online origins to politics, international security affairs, and, now, to more conventional diplomatic communication and encounters. And the article has sought to explain the strategic logic underpinning why leaders choose to troll diplomatic interlocutors. It proposes a new theoretical framework to capture the strategic logic of trolling in international statecraft, consisting of five elements: Coercion, Agenda-setting, Identification, Delegitimisation and (Dis)ordering. Together these constitute the ways that trolling can be used not just tactically, or as a negotiating style, but as an instrument of strategy to help achieve an international actors’ political objectives. It has also established a research agenda to enhance our understanding of how and why trolling is used in formal, international diplomacy.
For leaders who wish to challenge elements of a rules-based or established order, trolling is an attractive strategy. Its aggression facilitates maximalist negotiation positions; the ambiguity inherent in trolling can invite caution or concession; and the element of humour functions as a reliable political escape hatch in the event of serious or dangerous resistance: deny it was ever serious, rile the base against the humourless ‘libs’, and move on. In these senses trolling is an advantageous strategy when playing what Robert Putnam identified as diplomacy’s ‘two-level’ game, but it is a high stakes one.
The risks for those who wish to disrupt established norms and institutions via this strategy are significant. For the victim, acceding to a troll’s demands is to risk being humiliated, and to risk making unwanted concessions. But for the troll, any short-term gains must be offset against the risk of a long-term loss of credibility or diplomatic isolation, which may impede their pursuit of their strategic goals. Only time will tell whether troll diplomacy represents a short-term trend or a permanent shift in diplomatic behaviour, and if the benefits outweigh the costs for those that employ it.
For the international community, and democratic societies in particular, the risks are serious. Trolling as it manifests in domestic politics has the potential to corrode public discourse to the point where democratic institutions cease to function: Hannan argues that we are ‘trolling ourselves to death’ though a ‘politics of unreason’.Footnote 110 Extending this politics of unreason to the once formal and ritualised world of international diplomacy risks creating a world where countries are less able to talk constructively to each other: diplomacy ceases to be diplomatic, and the international community becomes less able to resolve conflict or reach consensus on how to address real, shared challenges. These risks underline the importance of developing a better grasp of the strategic dynamics of trolling in international statecraft.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on the article, and the editors for their encouragement and efficiency throughout the production process.
Dr Thomas Colley is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in War Studies at King’s College London and a Senior Lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK. His research specialises in propaganda and political communication and their use in war and international politics.
Huw Dylan is a Reader in Intelligence and International Security at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is also an Associated Researcher at the Centre for Intelligence Studies in the Norwegian Intelligence School. His work is focused on intelligence in the Cold War and beyond, with a specific focus on deception operations, intelligence in diplomacy, and covert action.
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