Find the Right Balance Between Civilian and Military: Don’t Just Strip the Department of Defense of Capabilities to Inform, Influence, and Persuade

By Christopher Paul, Ph.D.

As Matt has repeatedly noted in this space and elsewhere, "American public diplomacy wears combat boots."¹ That is, the Department of Defense (DoD) employs the majority of the resources (funding, manpower, tools, and programs) used for U.S. government efforts to inform, influence, and persuade foreign audiences and publics. Most of us agree that this is not the ideal state of affairs. The Department of State (DOS) or other civilian agency should have the preponderance of the United States’ capabilities in this area. Both the White House and DoD concur.²

Congress would also like to see DOS doing more in this area–and DoD doing less. To date, most of the congressional attention has focused on DoD. Section 1055 of the 2009 Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act called for reports to Congress from both the White House and DoD on "strategic communication and public diplomacy activities of the Federal Government." DoD information operations (IO) were attacked by the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which slashed the proposed FY 2010 appropriation for IO by $500 million. (See the mountainrunner discussion "Preparing to Lose the Information War?")

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Psychological Operations by another name are sweeter

By Christopher Paul

Originally posted at Small War Journal. Reposted here by permission of SWJ and Chris Paul.

The Department of Defense has decided to change the name of military psychological operations (PSYOP) and this is a good thing. I make this assertion despite concerns about the name change raised by others in this space (See The Branch Formerly Known as PSYOP and PSYOP: On a Complete Change in Organization, Practice, and Doctrine).

Although most psychological operations are no more than messages and broadcasts aimed at changing the opinions, attitudes, or behavior of foreign citizens, officials or troops, they have come to have a sinister connotation in the minds of U.S. citizens and policymakers alike. The very term PSYOP summons dark thoughts of orbital mind control lasers, dastardly propaganda, or deception.

In truth, the vast majority of contemporary PSYOP are based on wholly truthful information. PSYOP personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan prepare air-dropped leaflets, develop posters and handbills, make radio broadcasts, and operate loudspeaker trucks. They carry messages ranging from what enemy soldiers should do in order to safely surrender (dropped as leaflets during the opening days of the war in Iraq) – to posters or radio spots with the phone number for a tip line Afghan citizens can use to report Taliban activity. Changing the name of these useful efforts is good; eliminating the possibility of them including falsehood would be even better.

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Guest Post: PSYOP for everyone

By Christopher Paul

An Army intelligence officer I met recently at a conference related an anecdote to me about the psychological operations (PSYOP) personnel his team was co-located with on a previous deployment. He shared that the PSYOPers would get upset when they perceived the actions of maneuver elements as impinging on (or ignoring) their domain: “They can’t do that without talking to us, that’s a PSYACT [Psychological Operations action]!”[1] The intel guys would overhear this and then tease them about their protective approach to influence.

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