Month: November 2008

The internet and “public opinion” in China

~ Matt Armstrong

No time to comment, but Jim Fallows posted a worthwhile (and timely) post on the internet and public opinion in China.

Outsiders who follow Chinese events have known for years about Roland Soong’s EastSouthWestNorth site*, which draws from Chinese-language and English-language sources for reports and analysis.

I’ve just seen this post, from a few days ago, which strikes me as something that people who don’t normally follow Chinese events should know about. It’s the text of a speech Soong prepared for last weekend’s annual Chinese Bloggers conference (but did not deliver, for family-emergency reasons). In it, he discusses the differences the Internet has, and has not, made in the Chinese government’s ability to control information and maintain power within China.

This is a subject easily misunderstood in the United States, where people tend to assume either that the cleansing power of the Internet will ultimately make government efforts at info-control pointless, or, on the contrary, that the bottling-up effectiveness of the Great Firewall will protect the government from the power of an informed citizenry.  (My own Atlantic article on the subject here.)
Soong elegantly illustrates why such categorical assumptions miss the complexity of what’s going on. The whole speech is worth reading . . .

Read the rest of Jim’s post here.

Can Facebook defeat terrorism?

~ Matt Armstrong

Maybe. From Gutenberg to pre-Revolutionary pamphleteers to the Internet, increasing the access to information has been a catalyst for change. Yesterday, Steve Corman looked at this question and noted that

[w]hile Facebook played an important role in the development of the protest march, it can be better described as a catalyst than a cause.

The media, formal and informal, new and old, is the oxygen both terrorist and counter-terrorist movements require to exist and thrive. The advantage of the latter over the former is truth, transparency, and promising futures. New Media’s ability to engage, mobilize, and empower transcends geography and time. It simultaneously reaches locally and globally, providing instant and “time-shifted” access to text, pictures, and videos. It also fosters trusting peer relationships that add credibility to messages and the movement itself.

Today, the State Department announced an event to facilitate more catalysts for change:

Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School and the U.S. Department of State Convene the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit

Dec. 3-5 Summit in New York to Bring Together Global Youth Groups, Tech Experts to Find Best Ways to Use Digital Media to Promote Freedom and Justice, Counter Violence, Extremism and Oppression

New York, NY, November 18, 2008—Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School, the U.S. Department of State and Access 360 Media are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month in New York for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools. 

Rising star Jared Cohen (author of Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East) is a major force behind this event. The rest of the press release is below the fold.

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Communicating with the public

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes understanding the difference between public diplomacy, public affairs and strategic communication can be challenging. This is especially true in the absence of accepted principles and practices. The result is confusion on the roles and responsibilities and misaligned titles.

The below quote is real and from a conversation I had a while ago about an setting up an event to communicate directly with the public, bypassing mainstream media. The person in question could not green light the event, because, as the person said,

I have to run it by public affairs because I don’t do public diplomacy.

To make this a hat trick, the speaker was a Director of Strategic Communication. Some readers will look at this and say, “huh?” while others will get it (and even say “OMG!”). The only way this could get more convoluted is by adding Information Operations or PSYOP to the sentence.

The purpose of this anecdote isn’t to mock the person in question but to highlight that we still have a way to go to get on track.

You must be agile to be effective in the global information environment

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

The presidential campaign was a close-to-home example of how speed is essential to modern campaigns of informing and persuading. You must be quick and adept in your response lest your adversary beat you with an effective blow, truthful or not. Truth may be the greatest ally in any struggle for minds and wills from presidential politics to countering Al-Qaeda propaganda in Iraq. But truth is useless if you can’t get the word out.

A barrier to getting the word out includes not having “public affairs authority” to release a statement, or video to counter, or even preempt, adversarial narratives of all sorts of engagements. Only when the media, or the media consumer, is hostage to you does this work. If they have an alternative, even an adversary with a questionable or non-existent track record on the use of facts, they’ll go. The cause is most often a zero-defect approach to information, which is laudable, but this can be costly.

Today, I had the “pleasure” of again witnessing the challenge of not having PA authority. A request for interview came to me. I wasn’t the guy (not geographically desirable, plus there are better people to speak on the subject) so I forwarded the time-sensitive request to others. Of the several key individuals I pinged, all were well-qualified and eager to talk but unable to go on the record within the required window of time because they lacked PA authority. (Another was temporarily geographically undesirable, so that person doesn’t count here.) The result: the requestor went with someone else. In this case, the ‘someone else’ is fortunately a very knowledgeable and smart person that will give a top answer, however this person is tangential to the subject matter and not the preferred respondent. In other cases, we may not be so lucky.

These people were all educated, equipped, and (to some degree) encouraged to communicate (they were at least interested or enthusiastic). What they lacked was empowerment. We can debate the merits of centralized messaging, as well as the demerits, however in the fire hose of the global information environment, the ability to respond swiftly (and of course accurately) matters.

Remembering why East is west and West is East

~ Matt Armstrong

Right off the bat in my Middle East studies class in the United Kingdom (Aberystwyth, Wales, to be precise), we talked about the origin of “Near East” and “Far East.” I don’t recall the same discussion in similar classes in the U.S. For an informative discussion on the subject, check out the latest post at Strangemaps:

If you’re American, geographically inclined and a bit of a stickler, this cartographic incongruity is a bit of an annoyance. From the US, the shortest route to what’s conventionally called ‘the East’ is in fact via the west. Going in that direction, you’ll hit the ‘Far East’ before you’re in the ‘Middle East’. And Europe, or at least that part usually included in ‘the West’, lies due east. So East is west, and West is east, in blatant contradiction of what’s probably Rudyard Kipling’s most famous line of verse: Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

Defining Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

Previously, I offered a high level definition of public diplomacy. Below is a slightly modified:

Public diplomacy is the direct or indirect engagement of foreign publics in support of national security, political, cultural, and economic objectives.

Ok, so what about the following, more specific definition:

Public diplomacy involves understanding, influencing, developing relationships with and providing information to the general public and civic society abroad, in order to create a favorable environment for achieving national security, political, cultural and economic objectives

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Public Diplomacy and Smith-Mundt in the Asian Tribune

~ Matt Armstrong

From the Asian Tribune yesterday:

Sixty years ago, the elements of America’s national power – diplomacy, information, military, and economics – were retooled to meet an emerging threat. The National Security Act of 1947 and the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 were a direct response to a global ideological and military challenge posed by Communism.

Sound familiar? It should. The whole article was copied verbatim from this blog. Flattering, but give credit where credit’s due as requested under the Creative Commons License. I’ve asked they update their article with appropriate credit.

Pirates!

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

Pirates off Somalia pretty much launched this blog three years ago this month. Three years after a cruise used an LRAD to fend of pirates one hundred miles offshore and little firm called Top Cat was awarded a $50m contract, piracy remains a significant issue. So significant that blog friend Galrahn tell us Santa’s elves may have to resort to wooden toys (made from bamboo? where’s the bamboo coming from? doh!):

Could the Somalian pirates ruin Christmas? Maybe, according to PC World, who notes that shipping company’s in Mombai are so frustrated with Somalian piracy shooting up their ships heading through the Suez that they are contemplating moving materials around the Cape of Good Hope instead. What does that mean? Well, higher prices for one, delayed shipments for another.

To investigate, friend David Axe is headed off to Somalia to practice more citizen journalism and needs your help.

The first week of December, I will be heading to the Horn of Africa to cover theescalating piracy crisis. I’m working hard to get sufficient assignments to cover expenses, but it’s looking pretty bleak. This is expensive work — costs for me will total around $10,000 — and in recent years the rates for freelancers have dropped by around half. So far, the value of my assignments is just $2,200 $2,800. I’m committed to doing this work, cost be damned, but it’d be nice not to fall into complete financial ruin.

Help out Dave if you can.

From Nov-Dec 2005:

From ‘today’:

Note: two years ago I had a category for piracy, but I killed it to keep the category list clean and focused. In lieu of reinstating “piracy”, a new, broader and necessary category is introduced with this post: Non-State Actors.

Robots!

~ Matt Armstrong

Check out David Axe’s video series on military robots at GOOD magazine. It’s a good overview for anyone interested in unmanned systems, autonomous and tele-operated. Note: would have liked if he mentioned other “robot” systems (by his implicit definition) such as Patriot to AEGIS that had notable accidental kills: an allied pilot and a civilian airliner, respectively.

Think the U.S. is the only country with robots? Lots of other countries are deploying unmanned systems, like Pakistan. From Danger Room:

“Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters use not just mobile and satellite phones for communication, but also sophisticated military radios,” Defense News notes. So companies like East West Infiniti are building SIGINT [signals intelligence] for small drones and robotic blimps, to capture those conversations.

  • Site note: Whenever I post on robots, hits from China, Singapore, Korea, Pakistan, and Indonesia spike.

If they don’t know you won, did you?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere challenge the traditional conception of “victory.” What is victory when capturing the capital does not cause the population to succumb to your wishes, assuming of course there’s a central government to topple? This isn’t an issue in “traditional” conflicts, like World War I and II and even, to many, the Cold War. Or is it?

Nick Cull just returned from a trip to Russia to discuss public diplomacy at a Russian international relations university that “graduates 80% of Russian diplomats.” Not surprisingly, they talked about the end of the Cold War:

It became obvious that these students had not spent much time thinking about external determinants for the political changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s. For them the Soviet Union collapsed for its own internal reasons, unconnected to its foreign policy, defense, and rearmament decisions. When I pushed the case – mentioned that Americans believe they won the Cold War and merely debate which of their policy decisions provided the “winning blow” – they were surprised. They simply do not see the story in terms of America’s victory or Russia’s defeat. The model adopted by these students was more that the Soviet Union attempted to create an ideal system, entered into competition with the United States, the system failed, and the Soviet Union stepped back from the competition – rather like a tennis player bowing out with a stomach cramp. Their model clearly left the path open for Russia to return to the competition and resume play, but this was not their intent. They seemed genuinely worried by talk of a return to a Cold War and asked with some anxiety about the likely foreign policy of America’s next president. This mutual gap in perception is significant. Americans might do well to ask how victorious they really were if the defeated party does not acknowledge the loss.

See also:

Quoting History: Policies and Actions Must Anticipate Psychological Impact

~ Matt Armstrong

Six days after his inauguration, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Committee on International Information Activities, commonly referred to as the Jackson Committee because of its chairman William H. Jackson. The committee’s final report, submitted to the President June 1953, stated

We believe…that the Kremlin will avoid initiatives involving serious risk of general war, especially since it may hope to make additional gains by political warfare methods without such risk. …

Propaganda cannot be expected to be the determining factor in deciding major issues. The United States is judged less by what it says through official information outlets than by the actions and attitudes of the Government in international affairs and the actions and attitudes of its citizens and officials, abroad and at home. … The cold war cannot be won by words alone. What we do will continue to be vastly more important than what we say."

Eisenhower understood this completely. On several occasions he testified in Congress in support of the Smith-Mundt Bill. In 1952, as part of his foreign policy plank speech, presidential candidate Eisenhower had said much the same: “As a nation, everything we do and everything we fail to say or do will have its impact in other lands.”

In a National Security Council meeting to discuss the Jackson Committee’s report, Eisenhower stressed that the requirement to “make sure that the psychological factor in important Government actions was not overlooked" and that someone in the NSC would keep track of the “p-factor” of Government actions. The “p-factor” meaning psychological, propaganda, or persuasion.

Sources: Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad and The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989

Quoting History: the marginalization of public diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong

From The New York Times, March 31, 1986.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that ”we’re not going anywhere” in Soviet-American relations until Moscow and Washington agree to stop conducting their diplomacy in public. He called on both sides to resume regular, secret contacts. …

”We will get somewhere in our relationship with the Soviets when we’re able to have some discussions that are relatively quiet and direct,” he said. …

”I don’t say there isn’t always a public diplomacy aspect to this relationship, but there has to be more than that if we are going to get any place,” he said.

He said the Soviet side ”had started” the public exchange, which he found to be unproductive, but acknowledged that the White House had also fallen into the practice.

See also:

Learning about food prices and your waist in 4min20s

~ Matt Armstrong

Not much to add to the comments of Alex Evans at Global Dashboard on this trans-cultural message on the rise of food prices with ties to health and self-sufficiency.

I loved this public service announcement from the Japanese Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – easily the most succinct and accessible summary I’ve seen of why food prices have risen.  Also interesting to see how strongly the Japanese government is leading on messages of greater national self-sufficiency as the way forward.

Certainly a model of communicating complex ideas. I like the dancing cows…

Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers

~ Matt Armstrong

It’s not surprising that books about the wars we are in are so popular, but who would have thought some of the most popular readings would be U.S. Army doctrine? The purpose of doctrine is to provide guidance on how – and often why – to conduct operations. They used to be dry reads but now they are written to be accessible by those both inside and outside the military.

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, also known as FM 3-24, did remarkably well. The Army’s recently revised Operations Manual, or FM 3-0, is also popular. However, while FM 3-24 still does reasonably well on Amazon (over a year old and it’s in the top 5,000), the latest addition to the public library is the Stability Operations Manual, or FM 3-07. This is doing very well with apparently more then 250,000 downloads in the last three weeks. The growing popularity of official U.S. military instruction manuals is fascinating. It is likely a factor of both the militarization of our foreign policy and the transition of our Armed Forces to a learning organization that has the wherewithal and desire to understand and adapt to changing conditions.

The resources available to permit the time and manpower to develop these manuals and to reinforce the iterative learning processes is one the rest of Government lacks – save perhaps for the USIP. As a result, there has been a paucity of equivalent material aimed at policy-makers.

However, there is a new book that’s due to hit the market next month that addresses this void: Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers. At The Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman writes about the book:

There are lessons in the handbook that the U.S. government has clearly been reluctant to adopt. It explicitly instructs policy-makers to “co-opt” insurgents whenever possible — something that the Bush administration’s rhetoric about the “evils” of Iraqi and Afghan insurgents makes problematic.”The purpose of COIN,” the handbook says, “is to build popular support for a government while suppressing or co-opting an insurgent movement.”

Kilcullen added that negotiations are a two-way street in counterinsurgency. “A government that offers [insurgents] no concessions [will] usually lose,” he said, but “an insurgency that offers no concessions will usually lose.” Another piece of advice — one that resonates in the wake of the administration’s torture scandals — simply reads, “Respect People.”

Similarly, the handbook attempts to integrate civilian and military agencies into a concerted strategy — something the Bush administration has been unable to substantively accomplish in Iraq and Afghanistan. “COIN planning should integrate civilian and military capabilities across each of the four COIN strategy functions of security, politics, economics and information,” it reads.

More to come here at MountainRunner.

Armistice Day, known in America since 1954 as Veterans Day

~ Matt Armstrong

Peace

The above is from one my favorite blogs: The Daily Mirror: Larry Harnisch Reflects on Los Angeles History (yes, Los Angeles has history).

Besides remembering the end of the Great War, the War to End All Wars, take a moment to remember America’s veterans who served in defense our country so that we and others may live in peace.

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.

–General Douglas MacArthur – 14 July 1935

The Report of the 1967 United States Advisory Commission on Information

~ Matt Armstrong

The U.S. Advisory Commission on Information was one of two oversight commissions established by the Public Law 402, otherwise known as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. The other commission focused on cultural and educational exchange. Today, there is one commission, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, that does not have a legal obligation to produce annual reports and, according to Title 22, it “shall have no authority with respect to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board or the United States National Commission for UNESCO.”
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