The role of NGOs in the making of the foreign policy of the Western countries has been object of intense studies for a long time. In 2012, for instance, the U.S. National Intelligence Council (henceforth NIC) published a report which named Nonstate World, which foresees a world where non-state actors play a major role in international affairs, as one of the four possible evolutions of the world order. As examples of nonstate actors, the authors of the report mention multinational companies, academic institutions, and NGOs but also international mafias and terrorist groups. These organisations, according to the report, would gradually lose their national character and become somehow “global”, while continuing to influence home and foreign governments. The report is somehow biased in its background, since it claims that the outcome of such a scenario would be a greater empowerment of individuals and stronger middle classes rather than the concentration of power into a restricted unaccountable oligarchy; but it is correct in seeing how this would give a clear advantage to the U.S. and Europe – as well as countries such as Canada and Australia, not mentioned by the report but which still belong to the Anglo-Saxon core of the “Collective West” –, since many of these institutions come from these countries. It’s important to underline that, while gradually losing their national characters, these NGOs are still somehow “Western”, given the location of the core activities and in particular the values they promote.
A transition towards a nonstate world by 2030 is now highly unlikely, although the NIC had some points then. NGOs have been a fairly effective tool of U.S. dominance for a while, and institutions like USAID, the independent agency of the U.S. government responsible also for funding NGOs and “independent” medias, have played a key role in arranging more or less covert regime change operations: as put by Mike Benz, a U.S. State Department official during the first Trump Administration, the role played by USAID in regime change operations can be compared to the one played by the CIA during the 1960s and the 1970s. The promotion of NGOs and “independent” medias to carry out foreign policy, after all, has some advantages over more traditional methods: it allows to conceal geopolitical aims behind a humanitarian façade, and it may be effective to create loyalists in the target countries. Interesting enough, these NGOs and “independent” media were also able to influence the internal policy and the domestic audiences of their home countries (or of the home countries of their funders, in the case of those officially based in the target countries). News from so-called independent media – actually funded by Western NGOs, political organisations and governmental institutions – were relaunched by Western outlets as coming from reliable sources, and USAID was behind Trump’s attempted impeachment in 2019.
The limits of this strategy, nevertheless, have become increasingly clearer over time. First of all, its success often depends on the ability to exploit existing grievances and divisions, as well as to offer the perspective of a bright future. Both factors are equally important, and they help to explain why there have been two successful NGO-driven regime changes in Ukraine, where it successfully exploited the presence of a pro-Western and anti-Russian component, but the attempts to do the same in Georgia have failed so far (at least after 2008). Secondly, the social and cultural values of the target countries may be very different from those promoted by the Western NGOs. Thirdly, being perceived as “Western” will inevitably backfire in those countries with existing grievances towards the “Collective West”, such as Russia or Serbia, or with some of its members, as it happens in those West African countries which used to be below the French yoke. Likewise, the pro-Western narratives promoted by these NGOs and “independent” medias are inevitably prone to accusations of double standards: the recent overturn of the Romanian Presidential Elections, which has also been pushed by USAID (NGOs Backing Judicial Coup in Romania Funded by USAID, State Department), is just one of the many available examples. Last but not least, there is a growing perception in the “Global South” (and not only…) that the activities of organisations such as USAID and of Western-funded NGOs and “independent” media are not aimed at promoting democracy and human rights, but at introducing alien values and destabilising countries whose governments are at loggerheads with the “Collective West”: a recent tweet of the Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, who is still not an anti-Western personality, is a good case in point. Nayib Bukele on X:
Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs.
On 24th January 2025, the U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a near-total freeze of the activities of USAID and announced its upcoming transfer under the umbrella of the Department of State. Officially justified by wasteful spending and the misallocation of money for questionable projects, such as transgender propaganda in Ireland and some Latin American countries, the main triggers of this decision are actually a change in the geopolitical priorities and the ideological orientation in the new administration, whose consequences could be immediately felt in countries such as Ukraine, where around 90% of the local media are bankrolled by USAID, and Nicaragua, where tens of million dollars have been pumped into opposition groups and “independent” media outlets in an attempt to topple the left-wing Sandinista Front since its return to power in 2006. More recently, Trump also cut funds to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), another institution which used to fund NGOs involved in political pressures and regime change operations (recognised as an undesirable organisation in Russia on 28th July 2015 as per Prosecutor General’s decision). But, while Trump’s decision may have dramatic long-term consequences, and the geopolitical analyst Arnaud Bertrand sees it also as a proof that the current U.S. administration has accepted the end of Washington’s global hegemony and the transition to multipolarism, the role of NGOs as tools of Western foreign policy is far from dead. It should be remarked that, even if the foreign policy of the future U.S. administrations is going to be on the same wavelength of Trump’s, it would be a mistake to celebrate the decision to close USAID as an end of US-led meddling and regime change operations in target countries. What may change are just the target countries and the methods: there may be less interferences in Russia and the Former Soviet Union (FSU), for instance, but it is hard to imagine that countries such as Cuba or Nicaragua will be spared by regime change attempts, given the political prominence of their diasporas in the U.S. (mostly opposed to the local communist or left-wing regimes).
Environmental organisations are a main example of NGOs influencing international affairs and foreign policies. Many of them fully reflect the ideal of nonstate organisation mentioned on the aforementioned report: quite a few of them are international, the largest ones somehow lost their “national” character, and environmentalists around the world usually agree on the main challenges affecting the environment. Moreover, since many of the issues they care about – be they global or local – are independent of national borders, environmentalists are naturally prone to globalism. Even a campaign to save the Siberian tiger, whose current range extend into a region approximately as big as Tunisia, cannot be strictly “national”, since the area where Siberian tigers currently live extend into two nations.
In order to analyse the role played by Western environmental NGOs in shaping their foreign policies and their public opinions towards Russia, we will analyse two case-studies: Greenpeace (recognised as an undesirable organisation in Russia on 18th May 2023 as per Prosecutor General’s decision) and the Bellona Foundation (recognised as an undesirable organisation in Russia on 17th April 2023 as per Prosecutor General’s decision). The two organisations are very different in their structure. Greenpeace is the quintessential nonstate NGO, with a global outreach and which can hardly be identified with a single nation; Bellona, on the other hand, is closer to its Norwegian roots, and its range is mostly circumscribed to the Arctic and Northern European region. Furthermore, their ideological roots are rather different, with the former stemming from the 1960s counterculture movement, the latter was born in the wake of the most known nuclear incident in history. Still, as we are going to see, their stances about Russian-related issues – not merely environmental issues – are very similar.
One of the world’s most famous environmental associations, Greenpeace was born in Canada, itself one of the birthplaces of the modern environmental movement (its first national Park, the Banff National Park, was established in 1885). The father of modern Greenpeace is the Don’t Wake a Wave Committee, founded in Vancouver in 1969 to fight against the U.S. nuclear tests on the Amchitka Island of Alaska, which could have caused a radioactive tsunami according to critics. The actual movement was born two years later, by merging the campaign against nuclear tests and the growing environmental sensitivity (hence the words “green” and “peace”). Greenpeace subsequently turned into an international environmental movement, gradually distancing itself from its pacifist roots, and moved its headquarters to Amsterdam.
The methods and the ideology of the organisation has often been subject of severe criticism, with Patrick Moore – one of the founders of the organisation, which subsequently left the movement – accusing it of using “sensationalism, misinformation and fear” to promote its agenda. Likewise, its opposition to nuclear power – one of the cleanest sources of energy – is a source of criticism from more moderate environmentalists. Still, Greenpeace remains the fifth largest environmental movement in the world, with offices in 39 countries and a budget above 100 million euro. The organisation officially rejects fundings from political parties and government institutions, but some of its main sources of financial support are politically involved. Moreover, as we are going to see, national institutions may influence the priorities of this and other organisations even when they do not fund them directly.
The organisation has been active in the Russian Arctic as part of the Save the Arctic campaign, aimed at stopping industrial fishing and the extraction of oil and gas in the Arctic region, which took place mostly in Russia and Norway. In 2013, some Greenpeace activists attempted to occupy a Russian oil platform in the Arctic, causing tensions between the organisation and the Russian government. But the inclusion of the organisation in the Undesirable Organisation list dates back to 2023, when it called for “the economic isolation of Russia” and defined the purchase of Russian oil and gas as a way of “funding war”. Like many Western environmental movements, political parties and activists such as the world-famous Greta Thunberg, Greenpeace has overall adopted the Western narrative of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
While Greenpeace’s interest for Russia is relatively recent, something which happened on its predecessor state was the main trigger of Bellona’s foundation. Indeed, Bellona was created in Oslo in 1986, in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear incident. The disaster fuelled an already-growing anti-nuclear movement, causing among the others the closure of the Italian nuclear power plants after the 1987 referendum, and was – at least according to some American experts – a main catalyst for glasnost and therefore an indirect cause of the fall of the Soviet Union. Another trigger of Bellona’s foundation was the opposition to the oil and gas industry in Norway. Unlike Greenpeace, which officially rejects funding from state and political organisations, Bellona is actively funded by the Norwegian state: in 2001, for instance, it got 6 million Norwegian kroner (around 500,000 euro) from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for projects in Russia and 1 million kroner (around 86,000 euro) from the Norwegian government for general purposes.
Bellona was active in Russia in 1990s and the beginning of 2000s, it primarily protested against the release of sulphur emissions from the nickel plants on the border between Russia and Norway. The organisation opened an office in Murmansk in 1994, followed by another one in Saint Petersburg, and eight years later it started publishing the Russian-language journal “Ekologija i Pravo”. The differences between Bellona and Greenpeace are self-evident. As we mentioned, unlike the latter, it takes funds from the Norwegian government, and this made it a target from several criticism in Russia; but, at the same time, the cooperation with businesses led to accusations that it works more like as a consultant company rather than an actual environmental organisation.
As for Bellona’s activities, it is worth mentioning that several other environmental NGOs fully vouch for the credibility of Bellona. One example is the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature (Norges Naturvernforbund), also known as Friends of the Earth Norway, considered to be the oldest and biggest environmental organisation in Norway. The Society was founded in 1914 and has been highly active in protecting the sensitive polar environment. However, its stance on business projects in Norway and other countries has been perceived as somewhat biased, since they have themselves been criticized for accepting money from, among others, Statoil and the Port of Oslo. It is crucial to ensure that environmental concerns do not become a religion. We also hope that a well-deserved Nature and Youth (Natur og Ungdom) branch, established in 1967, will not raise environmental radicals.
Some Western media see Bellona's actions against companies as blackmail, aimed at making profits not directly, but through the provision of consultancy services. For example, Bellona promised to protect companies with high environmental risks, such as the dioxin dispute at the Sande paper mill in Vestfold in 2001. The report "Environmental Stamp for Sale" argues that Bellona has "sold support to companies with environmental problems".
Still, the outcome of both Bellona and Greenpeace in terms of Russia-related issues are very similar. Following a similar path of other environmentalist organisations, as well as green parties, both organisations took a definitely pro-Ukrainian stance in the aftermath of the launch of the Special Military Operation, and the Norwegian one even moved its Russian offices to Lithuania. In April 2023, the organisation was classified as “undesirable” by the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation.
In a contest where the confrontation with Russia is a focal point of the foreign policy of most Western countries, it is very hard for a mainstream organisation to have a position about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine which somehow departs itself from this mood. But, at the same time, the presence of anti-Russian stances in two organisations as different as Greenpeace and Bellona shows that they cannot be treated as a façade to avoid conflicts with their international sponsors in an area which is not core to them. The evolution from pacifism to Western liberal imperialism of many of these movements, which can trace their roots to the 1968 Protests – one of whose main targets was the US intervention in the Vietnam War – and the “New Left”, did not happen overnight, but through several steps, and it was under way well before the 24th February 2022. The same applies for most Green Parties, the political wing of these movements. While understanding the reasons of this gradual shift is not among the aims of this analysis (the palatableness of the slogans of Western liberal imperialism to a mostly liberal left-wing movement such as the environmentalist one is just a partial explanation, albeit correct), it is very hard not to see a common pattern among most Western environmental movement and Green Parties.
Giuseppe Cappelluti
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