According to the WashingtonPost, the Army is continuing to engage the private sector for its public outreach. The hiring of a public relations firm offering "exclusive editorial content" to pro-military blogs (does this blog count?) is the type of engagement and outreach the Administration should be participating in. WhirledView noted the lack of visible participation of American public diplomacy recently while I noted the discrepency between the one hundred plus million in Bush’s recent announced funding of public & cultural diplomacy and the Pentagon’s continued feeding of the PR / PD beast for years to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. (See also Paul Kretkowski’s Beacon posting on the language initiative.)

The understanding of strategic communication for long-term results is clearly understood and grasped by the Pentagon. The Quadrennial Defense Review currently underway will undoubtedly include the US Armed Forces continuing to hold the center stage for public diplomacy (where is Karen Hughes in this and civilian public diplomacy?) in Somalia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, etc.

William Arkin emphasizes in his WashingtonPost blog posting the war between good and bad news. I see this project as a means to shape the role of the US military in the eyes of the domestic and foreign publics. Arkin may be more right when he wrote "It is planned to be an official counter to the perceived unwillingness of the mainstream media to report the "good news" from Iraq and the war on terror". I am focusing more on the what Hass M&L AE said: The Army believes that military blogs are a valuable medium for reaching out." Donald Sensing is one of the "select" blogs chosen to receive the "exclusive editorial content."

Hass M&L was not apparently chosen lightly as they have seem to have an existing presence and skill in reaching into the blogosphere:

When individual consumers communicate by the millions on message boards, web sites and weblogs, and when news, gossip and rumors spread virally across the blogosphere, corporations ignore these conversations at their peril. Smart corporate communicators are increasingly addressing consumer-generated media in their strategies.

The Pentagon, or at least the military leadership (i.e. "military elites") have seen the need for outreach to local "communities", something the executive branch does not. From the effective destruction of USIA and various public diplomacy programs, especially after the end of the Cold War, successive Administrations have paid varying attention and dollars on efforts to "do a better job of communicating [American] ideals" to the world audience. The Green Berets have already been an outreach organization. Military to military liasons and training and exchanges have been a successful and useful tool for engaging other countries, friend and foe. This Administration, and others before, and seen fit to outsource much of this engagement, especially the training, to non-military (at least active duty) entities such as Clinton’s outsourcing of training to MPRI in the Balkans. This is a case of the military continuing to maintain, or even retrieve, their reputation, especially when career military officers are continuing to lose faith in their civilian leadership.

Unlike the White House attempts to cobble together some outreach through a myriad of programs without a real unified sense of purpose (Karen Hughes is doing what again? Watching the Rose Bowl right… amazed at the size of Indonesia in relation to her home state… and demanding women drive). The stated purpose of the Department of Defense (DoD) website DefenseLink.mil (also at .gov, defense.gov, and dod.gov,.mil; “DefenseLink”) is to support the Department’s mission by providing “official, timely and accurate information about defense policies, organizations, functions and operations.” This portal into American military information is a well-designed launch point for any search of public and official information for “military members, DoD civilians, military family members, the American public, the Congress, and the news media” across all branches”. In the modern interconnected network environment, it is worthwhile to note the absence of any mention of a non-American audience.

It important to also consider the growing role of the US Armed Forces (USAF) in the domestic sphere, something they had been loathe to do in the past and which many in the military may still struggle with. This is also clear when one contrasts the DefendAmerica website with the Pentagon’s multimedia defenselink.mil website (it has its own skillfully presenting video feeds… yes, plural). The purpose of DefendAmerica is “to keep the public informed about efforts by the United States and its coalition partners to combat global terrorism” by offering “the latest news, photographs, transcripts and other information about the U.S.-led war on terrorism.” Both sites highlight the “words and activities of key U.S. Defense Department and coalition officials”. The goal of DefendAmerica is to provide “something not so readily available in the mainstream media: daily news reports and photographs by U.S. military photojournalists on the frontlines as well as in supporting units.” DefendAmerica is a more focused public facing website while DefenseLink faces both inward and outward.

There are three major issues facing the Department of Defense today. Two of these, the War on Terror and Transformation, receive prominent attention with their own headers, sub-domains, and look and feel. The third issue is more substantial, wide-ranging and subtle: civil-military relations. This third issue receives only one directly attributable story labeled “Face of Defense”. The theme of a military made up of neighbors and friends is threaded through many stories and pictures to confront the increasing detachment, or disengagement, of the military services as an occupation or calling from the civilian whole. This is probably the largest domestic challenge facing the Pentagon today.

Studies largely fail to investigate the impact of “shock and awe” in modern effects-based operations through either television or the internet, presumably the two media channels with the greatest, in increasing order, opportunity of personal salience and connection to the moving pictures. That DefenseLink is modeled on a news site is no coincidence. The delivery of news attempts to pre-empt the so-called CNN Effect of 24hr news cycles through a constant flow of information to the best they can.

Multi-prong approaches of military information operations are short-circuited on DefenseLink and the larger public diplomacy arena because of limited influence on the other elements of national power. Attempts to control perceptions only go so far. A recent public opinion poll showed an increasing concern that Washington is too quick to use a military response to foreign policy challenges in lieu of soft power alternatives. The civilian leadership’s attempt to use the military to displace “American ambassadors and the State Department as the primary instruments of American foreign policy” were returned with public and embarrassing rebukes of the military elites, most notably by General Eric K. Shinseki and his Congressional testimony of requiring several hundred thousand troops to invade and secure Iraq (and more recently by Paul Bremer).

With these issues facing the Pentagon, and career officers dedicated to protecting the nation and committed to their service to the country and doing what is right (polls on morality in the military shows the military believing they are more moral and better role models than civilian counterparts), it is not surprising the Pentagon continues to expand its information operations. As a book by and for the Joint Forces Staff College puts it:

The real key to making [Information Operations] effective is to ensure that the horizontal integration and coordination of the interagency organizations are conducted early on, that is, in the peacetime environment.

The Army has recently refined that one year old definition by adding details:

The integrated employment of the specified core capabilities of Electronic Warfare [EW], Computer Network Operations (CNO), PSYOP [psychological operations], Military Deception, and Operations Security [OPSEC], in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversarial human and automated decisionmaking, while protecting our own.

The hiring of Hass M&L and others, Lincoln Group contract in Iraq its pay for play idea may be an outlier, is the natural and good practice since there is significant monitoring of the Pentagon by foreign and domestic press, publics, governments, and militaries. This requires a full range of information to be available to frame debates and establish the desired vocabulary, which the Hass contract will assist with. Good information may travel, but bad and sensational information travels faster. The Pentagon’s need to “utilize all elements of national power–political, economic, and military” is understood but limited mostly by the political control of the civilian leadership of the Executive branch of government. Most of the information available on DefenseLink reflects this influence and also the environment in which the information is presented.

The identity of the Pentagon has been evolving, especially over the last five years as not an extension of the Presidency, but as part of the American foreign policy project in its entirety. AFIS-branded news reinforce the position of the SecDef more than some studies would indicate, including public policy. With fewer military veterans among the civilian elites holding policy making positions in the US government (USG), the realities of military engagement becomes an abstract concept countered only by subordinated military elites. Going to war had required mobilizing the leadership, media, and public to maintain an understanding and congruent strategy to prevent swings of public opinion. So why, if this entity is not directly responsible for foreign policy is public diplomacy an issue for this actor? The evolution of the American civil-military relationship has become such that the Department of Defense, with both its civilian and military elites, has moved into a new position in world affairs over the last several decades. The power granted to and held by the SecDef and the simultaneously increasing public audiences of the military elites have created an environment where the military now its own public-face that has gone well beyond public relations.