Book Review: Losing Arab Hearts and Minds by Steve Tatham

August 28, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

In the global information environment, the media influences public opinion and government policy around the world. It conveys to the public not only what the government is doing, but provides a feedback loop to the government through the coverage created by editors and reporters in response to their listeners, viewers, readers, and sponsors, whether advertisers or owners. Policies can no longer be presented to the public in the abstract as they are constantly measured against images on television, in the newspaper, and online, around the clock and around the world.

Reports on American Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication are filled with examples of how the United States failed to engage the Arab public since 9/11. These have come from the Defense Sciences Board, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, and numerous think tanks, and more will appear as we near the end of 2008 and the end of the Bush Administration. There are also several books on the subject, see below for more on these, however none closely examines the critical relationship between the U.S. Defense Department and the Arab media and public. There is one book that does explore this “last three feet” of engagement and you’ve probably never heard of it.

Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion is by Steve Tatham, a serving officer (now Commander) in the Royal Navy. He was the Royal Navy’s public spokesman in Iraq from 2002-2003 and is uniquely qualified to give an outsider’s “inside” view of the Coalition’s engagement with the Arab media, or rather their intentional non-engagement with Arab media.

Drawing on first hand experience and other resources, Steve carefully and thoroughly describes the media affairs of the Coalition, notably of the United States. He does so on a foundation he establishes in the first one hundred pages as he explores the biases of the Americans, the British, and the Arab world. This includes superb analysis of the public statements from the Bush Administration, the American media environment (including “The Fox Factor”), lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf War, and Hollywood influences. He also looks at the major Arab media and their evolution, America’s response, such as the creation of Al-Hurra, with a scholarly, yet conversational, examination. His insider’s view of operations at and the people running the Information Centers in Doha, Kuwait, and Bahrain amplifies the theme of the book: that the United States public affairs were focused almost exclusively on the American public.

The tactical maneuvering of ignoring the Arab media created substantial handicaps in our ability to get the word out. By excluding a critical link to the Arab public, the very people the President would claimed was the purpose for the invasion (“to bring democracy”), air time would be filled not by our information and explanations. The resulting information product would spiral down.

To exclude significant media who speak to major target audiences was a combination of naivete and even arrogance and was not restricted to the Arab media. Threaded through the book is the truth the United States, and the military in particular, has only recently begun to come to grips with: that perceptions matter more than intent and that operational activities must be formed and guided by the information they generate and not followed ad hoc by a communication plan. Steve quotes an Al Jazeera executive, who said

By merely disseminating a point of view the battle is not finished. It take more than information to convince public opinion of your good will towards the Arab world.

Steve does a superb job exploring the frustration, prejudice, and ignorance displayed by America toward the Arab media and Arab public opinion and how it undermined the engagement and understanding of a critical, if not the critical, audience in the global struggle for minds and wills. Losing Arab Hearts and Minds is required reading for those interested in Public Diplomacy, Strategic Communication, Information Operations, and general military-media engagement. The failure of the Coalition, and the United States Defense Department specifically, to engage the Arab media was lost the battle for ‘hearts and minds’ before it really began.

Related Reading:

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today by Marc Lynch (2006). Excellent source on the changes of and influences on the Arab public.
Reporters on the Battlefield by Chris Paul and James J. Kim (2004). This RAND monograph examines the relationship between the U.S. military and the media
American Encounters with Arabs: The "Soft Power" of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East by Bill Rugh (2005).
The Media and the War on Terrorism by Stephen Hess and Marvin Kalb (eds) (2003). This Brookings publication is a collection of roundtable sessions and interviews on the American media’s adoption of the government message.

Essential reading: the difference between public diplomacy and propaganda, by John Brown

August 27, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

John Brown, formerly of the Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, wrote a terrific short discussion of the differences between public diplomacy and propaganda. I recommend you read it.

At its best, public diplomacy:

Provides a truthful, factual exposition and explication of a nation’s foreign policy and way of life to overseas audiences;

Encourages international understanding;

Listens and engages in dialogue;

Objectively displays national achievements overseas, including in the arts.

At its worst, propaganda:

Forces its messages on an audience, often by repetition and slogans;

Demonizes elements of the outside world;

Simplifies complex issues;

Misrepresents the truth or deliberately lies.

Both public diplomacy and propaganda, at their best or their worst, can achieve credibility with their audiences. However, the best public diplomacy achieves credibility through careful presentation of fact and thoughtful argumentation, while the worst propaganda achieves credibility by falsification and sensationalism. As a rule, public diplomacy at its best, which appeals to the intellect, is believed in the long run, while propaganda at its worst, which inflames atavistic emotions, is believed only for short periods. The best public diplomacy convinces audiences that its content and purpose mesh, and that therefore it is honest; the worst propaganda leads audiences to believe that its contents do not reveal its true purpose, and that therefore it is dishonest.

Defense Media Activity: centralizing information practice and understanding

August 26, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

From the Defense Media Activity website:

The Department of Defense (DoD) is undertaking an initiative designed to modernize and streamline media operations by consolidating military Service and DoD media components into a single, integrated and transformed organization, the Defense Media Activity (DMA).

It seems the Defense Department is finally realizing that it too needs a central coordinator of information. Very probably the leadership role will be on the order of what State Department’s Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is supposed to be in the absence of a United States Information Agency (USIA) or its Director who was to sit at National Security Council meetings and be in the take-offs of policy.

There are too many information assets within the Defense Department, some on the right track, others not, but always fighting some kind of turf war. I won’t get started on the Air Force’s attempt to boot up Cybercommand. It’s one thing to have a hacker and counter-hacker team, but it’s another to claim information transmitted through a certain medium is your domain. Do we have a bureau to address information in newspapers and another for radio broadcasts? No…

Back to the DMA, interestingly it does not have a news feed or other means of staying in touch. Perhaps they’re waiting for the “energetic and imaginative executive” to lead them. See also Walter Pincus in the Washington Post on same.)

The War of Ideas: UK edition

August 26, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

The new Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Jim Glassman, reinvigorated the concept that the “War of Ideas” is central to our national security. It is, as he describes it, a field of battle whose purpose is to “use the tools of ideological engagement — words, deeds, and images — to create an environment hostile to violent extremism.” While admittedly the phrase isn’t perfect, as he acknowledges, it conveys purpose and mobilizes the Government for the struggle minds and wills.

How do you arm yourself for this struggle? You understand the adversary and its support systems. In the case of Al Qaeda, an organization that has arguably lost much of its central operational capabilities (although there are arguments it is rebuilding and gaining strength), you undermine the brand on which hopes and myths are based. To be effective, the message must reach all elements of societies in all corners. The key effort must be to separate the base from the group and to isolate the group. Creating questions in the support group and the ‘swing voters’ that the adversary cannot answer, has proven it cannot answer, reduces the moral, social, and financial support, not to mention their ability to recruit.

On this point, read The Guardian’s Britain’s secret propaganda war against al-Qaida:

The document also shows that Whitehall counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit new media websites and outlets with a proposal to "channel messages through volunteers in internet forums" as part of their campaign. …

The report, headed, Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications, says: "We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg, a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media." …

The government campaign is based upon the premise that al-Qaida is waning worldwide and can appear vulnerable on issues such as declining popularity; its rejection by credible figures, especially religious ones, and details of atrocities.

The Whitehall propaganda unit is collecting material to target these vulnerabilities under three themes. They are that al-Qaida is losing support; "they are not heroes and don’t have answers; and that they harm you, your country and your livelihood".

Of course, this isn’t original. A certain element of the Defense Department has been working the angle of attacking Al-Qaeda’s brand for a year or more. What is new is that it’s in the public sphere.

Open Source Counter-Propaganda

August 22, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 6 Comments

In order to win the “War of Ideas” we need to mobilize and empower the masses. It’s one thing to talk about New Media, it’s quite another to make it available. Commercial outsourcing information activities is one thing (and potentially distasteful resulting from incredibly poor short-term judgement), outsourcing the struggle for minds and wills to indigenous population is another. The struggle must be, after all, ultimately conducted by, with, and through the local population for legitimacy, participation, and durability of the message and effect. After thinking more about Sean’s observation on improved connectivity in Baghdad, a friend and I were talking. While “neutral” media websites provided CENTCOM may not be the answer (we arguably squandered this opportunity five years ago), getting information and communication technologies into the hands of the general public is.

The insurgent is using off the shelf software and free tools to capture, brand, and transmit their messages. Why not do the same for ordinary Iraqis? We’ve talked about doing the same in Iran a few years ago: distribute free Farsi blogging tools and hosting to facilitate online discussions.

This “open source counter-propaganda” must be used to expose misinformation, atrocities, and adversarial “say-do” gaps as well as promote the positive and success stories.

Something to think about. The advantages will outweigh and beat the disadvantages in the long run. Capacity and connectivity are good.

(H/T Mike)

See also:

Public Diplomacy tip: speak to audiences as if they were investors, because they are

August 22, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

From the interesting (and required) Hill and Knowlton blog, another tip for public diplomats (or global communicators) and those looking to revamp America’s global engagement.

Lots of hits on your [Investor Relations] website does not equate to IR success. It may just be your webmaster and employees hitting the site and inflating your stats.

Putting together an impressive IR presentation with lots of cool graphics does not equate to IR success. Cool graphics are no substitute for good performance and direct communication of your strategy.

Hosting an event and having lots of analysts and investors in the room does not equate to IR success – I hate to tell you this, but many of those guys in the room are probably there for the free lunch.

Meaningful and engaging communication with analysts, investors, and prospective investors – now that’s IR success.

This meaningful and engaging communication happens via telephone, email, one on one meeting, group meeting, quarterly earnings call, or blog interaction.

For some reason, many companies (especially small caps) don’t get this.

Yup, for some reason, people in general just don’t get this.

See also:

Richard Barrett’s Al-Qaida’s Strengths and Vulnerabilities

August 22, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

As the United States concludes the seventh year of what has been described as a Global War on Terror and the Long War, too many are still too far from understanding the true nature of the adversaries strengths and sources of power. The overdrawn focus on a tactic, terrorism, has ignored the basic attractiveness to the adversaries cause, whether Al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah.

Success will be measured not in dissuasion in the use of a tactic, but in the principles of the act the tactic symbolizes. The general aggregation of the many adversaries does not serve the purpose of effective engagement but potentially blinds us to the required solutions that, to put it in political term, will separate the adversary from their base. In the short term, success is not a binary condition of win or lose, but a constantly evolving struggle as the adversary adapts to survive and compete.

This has been packaged as a “War of Ideas.” In his first speech as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Jim Glassman described this “War” central to our national security whose purpose to “use the tools of ideological engagement — words, deeds, and images — to create an environment hostile to violent extremism.” Many people, he noted, do not like this term, especially the practitioners. (My suggestion is the time tested “struggle for minds and wills”, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as “War of Ideas” even if it’s more appropriate.)

The term is one thing, the concepts it represents is another. Richard Barrett’s concise report Seven Years After 9/11: Al-Qaida’s Strengths and Vulnerabilities (PDF, 15pp) describes the primary target of the War of Ideas. Exploring the strengths and vulnerabilities, Barrett arrives at a containment and strangulation solution based not on kinetic engagement supported by information, but informational engagement supported by smart kinetics.

Where Al-Qaida succeeds is in providing a framework for individuals to express their opposition to whatever it is they oppose, even if the roots of their anger lie in issues completely unknown and uninteresting to the Al-Qaida leadership. Al-Qaida manages to offer its supporters a sense of belonging and importance by taking personal or local grievances and setting them in a global context. … Its opponents should therefore avoid intentionally or unintentionally saying or doing anything that appears to support its claims, from the use of terms to describe Al-Qaida to the introduction of policies that would appear to confirm its argument that the Muslim world is under attack.

Recognising the self-destructive nature of the movement, the international community should help Al-Qaida suffer from its internal contradictions and lack of coherence; it is not well-organised, nor particularly effective, and depends greatly on its ability to exploit events through effective propaganda. That propaganda relies greatly on media that are available to all sides. A free debate, whether on the Internet or elsewhere, is likely to weaken Al-Qaida, particularly as its skill lies more in spreading propaganda in set piece films,
videos or audio tapes, rather than in the interactive, consumer led form that has come to dominate the web.

Most importantly, the international community must continue to prevent by all means possible the opportunity for Al-Qaida leaders to connect in person with their supporters. The best ways to prevent this is to keep the leaders concerned about their own security and to keep them pinned down in the remote areas of the Afghan/Pakistan border and allow them to suffer the fate of all other outsiders who have attempted to establish themselves in the region.

As Under Secretary Jim Glassman noted, the Al Qaeda ideology contains the seeds of its destruction. It’s time we nurtured those seeds.

See also:

Outsourcing the fight to counter misinformation

August 21, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

Briefly, success in the contemporary conflict environment, counterinsurgency or otherwise, depends on winning the struggle for minds and will. In this, information must conquer information. Perceptions must be met not by brute force, but the psychological equivalent. In Iraq, IO is being outsourced to private firms to bring support in the informational battlespace. From PRWeek:

The US military expects to hire a firm to provide “information operations” support in Iraq to counter insurgent misinformation tactics. The bids were due on Friday, August 22.

Army public affairs officer Paul Boyce said the reason for the RFP is primarily the military’s need to counter misinformation spread by hostile parties. Stopping rumors is a particular need for the Army, but finding out about those rumors is difficult if the language and culture of the area of operations is not well understood.

“We’ve had an insurgent population that has sought to kill our soldiers,” Boyce said. “By communicating with people in Iraq in as many ways possible what we’re trying to do to help them, and what we’re trying to do to prevent people from using these ruthless roadside bombs that blow up people in streets, in schools and mosques, we find that a very important thing.”

Work for the account involves a wide range of communications activities, including monitoring and analyzing Arabic and Western media; spokesperson training; and development and dissemination of TV, radio, newsprint, and Internet “information” products, according to the RFP, originally issued by the Department of the Army’s Joint Contracting Command in late July.

The minimum amount for the one-year contract, with two, one-year options to renew, is set at $250,000, and the maximum amount is $300 million.

Boyce noted that while the US military has gone to considerable effort to train soldiers in Arabic languages and improve their understanding of local culture, development of that sort of knowledge takes so much time and effort, and the need is so great that contractors are simply needed to meet the demand.

“Oftentimes, outside contractors bring outside talents or abilities, or previous experiences that might not necessarily be readily available within the government,” Boyce said. “Or they can bring a dedicated resource to the task [that might] already be used elsewhere within the government.”

As described in a “statement of work,” provided by the department of Multi-National Force-Iraq called Strategic Communications Management Services, insurgents in Iraq have sought to discredit US and allied forces, as well as the Iraqi government, through various means, including psychological warfare, terrorism, murders, and other “asymmetric” means intended to counter the US allied forces’ stronger military.

…

The ripple effect from insurgent use of improvised explosive devices in Iraq intended to kill and destroy Coalition forces and equipment is severe. Recording and branding the attacks for global distribution as marketing vehicles of not only David versus Goliath imagery but to gain support against their peers is secondary, or even tertiary to their strategic impact. The strategic value of IEDs to the insurgent is the psychological insecurity they create by inducing a negative spiral in training, techniques, and procedures that goes against the requirements for effective counterinsurgency. The deployment of armored Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) was indicative of the reduced trust of the indigenous population. The resulting withdrawal from the “sea of the people” by Coalition forces severely undermined counterinsurgency efforts as the increased distance between the indigenous population and the warfighter “actually assists the enemy in accomplishing his objectives.”

Target: French and other NATO publics

August 19, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

The large, coordinated attack against the French is a judicious use of force by the Taliban. Instead of picking targets of opportunity in a game of attrition, it is very likely this operation was executed primarily for specific informational effects. Nukes and Spooks asks which of two theories of the attack is applicable. More than likely, it is both. If so, we should be concerned.

So why did it happen? There are two theories being considered here at the Pentagon. One is political and the other is strategic.

The first is that the Taliban was retaliating against the French for sending 700 more troops in Afghanistan under pressure from NATO and the Bush administration. French President Nicholas Sarkozy took a lot of criticism from his people in April, when the additional troops arrived. And today, some Frenchmen charged that their troops died for America, not France.

By attacking the troops, the Talbian sent a message to future NATO allies that their troops are not safe.

The second is that the Taliban is trying to rattle Kabul, psychologically. They are under no illusions that they can take the capital, the theory goes, but if they can keep launching these kind of attacks, residents will be paralyzed.

Today’s Recommended Reading on Public Diplomacy

August 19, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

Several recommendations for you on the subject of public diplomacy.

Check out and subscribe to Craig Hayden and Shawn Powers’ Intermap.org.

The Intermap website and blog presents news, opinions, and research on issues related to communication-centric foreign policy, public diplomacy, global media and news flows. More broadly, this site aims to investigate the intersections between communication, media studies and international relations scholarship that deal directly with how global controversies and politics are carried and sustained through media. We call this media argument: where media outlets, technologies, and tactics represent the symbolic and visual space for the contest of ideas between nations, citizens, non-state actors.

Recent posts:

Recency
What’s new about New Media and Persuasion? <—a response to my recent New Media post
“The Myth of Moderate Islam.” Really?

Read David Steven’s June post The new public diplomacy and Afghanistan at the Global Dashboard.

… I believe there are three key interlocking problems:

A lack of understanding. …

A lack of interoperability. …

A lack of understanding and interoperability translates into persistent strategic and tactical failings. …

The starting point for change is to:

Accept that influence is now core currency for all arms of international relations – foreign policy, development assistance, and military operations.

Build a common language and joint concepts across these disciplines – not just at a national level, but internationally, in order to allow the effective operation of multinational, multi-sectoral coalitions and networks.

However, the barriers to change are sizeable, while the knowledge to surmount them is fragmented across sectors and disciplines. The first battle for ‘hearts and minds’ therefore needs to be won in our own organisations – within governments, between governments, and between governments and a range of non-governmental organisations.

See Marc Tyrrell’s 3-part series a lengthy and very scholarly discussion on asymmetric conflict as a struggle for minds and wills

It is important to remember that the goal of warfare for many of the current groups is control over the interpretive framework of a population, not actual, physical control over the geographic area, that will flow inevitably from control over the framework and massive military costs. For many of these groups, kinetic operations, “violence”, is merely a means to an end that is shaped not by the logic of violence but, rather, by the logic of communications; a lesson learned from Vietnam where the insurgents lost almost all of the battles, but won the war.

Posts:

Also, check out the latest addition to the blogosphere, Chasing the Flame. This is Samantha Powers’ project to “tell the story of the peace-maker Sergio Vieira de Mello and introduce audiences to the kind of conviction and insight that inspires movements.” That movement is to build a “movement for a smart U.S. foreign policy.”

Rethinking Smith-Mundt: responding to Sharon Weinberger

August 17, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

I appreciate Sharon Weinberger’s thoughtful three-part response at Wired’s Danger Room (Part I, Part II, Part III) to my interim paper “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” over at Small Wars Journal. Several points in her impassioned response deserve attention. However, to begin, it is important to understand that researching and writing “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” was more than an “esoteric” pursuit. Derisively labeling our adversaries exploitation of information as “asymmetric conflict” as if it was something unfair, we clung to our guns as it were as we continued to imagine a bureaucratically controlled global environment (more on asymmetry here). However, even as the Russians roll into Ossetia and Sarkozy recreates the part of Chamberlain, the Russians have not neglected the power of information to affect foreign public opinion. They have used cyber-warfare to block access to Georgian information while actively propagating Russian messages and images.

The fact of the matter is we have just begun to realize that the comfortable world we, as Americans, grew accustomed to since the late-1960’s and early 1970’s, is gone. The global information environment, with its satellite communications, 24/7 news, text messaging, and immediate access to video and images has substantially reduced the autonomy of leaders provided by the raw, supreme power of militaries provided over the last four decades. With few exceptions, war is no longer war among leaders but among the people and between the people. Small groups now have an amplified voice and strategic reach to run the show. Increased communications skills of our adversaries better leverage the digital age, as well as the analog age’s culturally attuned rumors, has changed the objective of war. Whether restricting access to information through cyber-warfare, inserting distortions into the information ecosystem with distortions, the purpose of conflict has become not to destroy the enemy while preserving oneself, but a contest “in spirit, will, and intelligence on a silent battlefield.” Conflict through bullets or economies is transformed as “attitude warfare” or “perception warfare.” It is now organized processes of persuasion.

The U.S. Government, consultancies, and the presidential candidates are all finally realizing the tremendous value of information and the informational effects of policy and actions. While bureaucratic inertia has prevented systemic changes for years, this may be changing. There are several major reports, and a couple of pieces of draft bills, that look to revamp America’s architecture of engagement (think variations on USIA 2.0). Virtually any discussion on restructuring America’s informational engagement with the world includes at least one (almost always) erroneous statement on Smith-Mundt. “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” was written with this in mind.

As described in “Rethinking Smith-Mundt,” the Act was written and debated during a time when “hot war” was unlikely between the major powers, a time before “Us” and “Them” were firmly established. But this was not the Cold War so many invoke today (it was not 1968) with massive military power at the ready and missiles aimed at the other’s capitals. Economies were not substantially linked and the key threat was not invasion but subversion. As our Ambassador to Russia said in 1946, the most important “fact in the field of foreign policy today…is the fact the Russians have declared psychological war on the United States, all over the world.” It was, he continued, “a war of ideology and a fight unto the death.” The struggle for authority and relevance had shifted from the arena of power to the arena of ideas and international persuasion.

However, Sharon’s impassioned critiques of my recommendations are based not on the lessons learned from the past, of a holistic approach to informational activities based on truth. Her comments are based on a selective, band-aid approach to the modern beauty contest known as public diplomacy today. I know we both agree that what is called “public diplomacy” today is broken. Many believe the term itself has become so burdened to be nearly as radioactive as “propaganda.” Even the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy rebuked the State Department for not tasking its public diplomacy officers with “public diplomacy.” Sharon experienced this and the failure of the bureaucracy to even comprehend “public diplomacy” during her brief stint as a Foreign Service Officer.

For a high-level thematic response to Sharon’s posts, see Steve Corman’s Real vs. False Distinctions in Rethinking Smith-Mundt. As Steve notes, Sharon is concerned about an “anything goes atmosphere.” I share this concern, which is why I want oversight and transparency, two elements previously central to the Act (related: 1948 Brookings report). TO be honest, “Rethinking Smith-Mundt” was less about modern recommendations than about dispelling myths about the Act. It was more about finding (surprising) common ground with history for today’s policy makers and report writers. The similarities between past and present were implicit as I didn’t want to bang the reader on the head in an already long and dense read. With that, below I go into more detail to respond to two of Sharon’s more significant of assertions.

Continue reading “Rethinking Smith-Mundt: responding to Sharon Weinberger
“ →

Unasked in NYT’s “photography as a weapon”: does the media have an obligation to check its facts?

August 13, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Relying on the mainstream media to debunk foreign propaganda is increasingly difficult. Errol Morris, writing on the New York Times opinion blog, discusses the Photoshopped Iranian missile launch. This case, like an increasing number, was caught by “New Media” effectively acting as an “Old Media” watchdog. While many papers issued retractions after the catch, the impression was set. The clarifications that rarely, if ever, received the same front-page treatment as the error they were correcting may not have been noticed.

Twenty years ago, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman noted that changes in the media were changing the information landscape in the United States. The increased concentration of media ownership changed the motive from a duty to inform the public to one of profit and an increased dependency on outside sources from the government, corporations, or “elite” experts for analysis. The recent Pew Research report shows that twenty years later the trend is worse as media has further retreated from the realm foreign affairs.

The result is easy manipulation of domestic by foreign and domestic communicators. The photography as a weapon discussion is aspect of this. Another is the Pentagon Pundits (aka “Hidden Hand”) scandal where substantial blame properly rests on the media as forewarned by Chomsky, although they have deflected much of what they’re due. (On this subject, see also this post.)

Outside the scope of this post is how do you reconcile the trashing of transparency and truth by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke who both orchestrated the leveraging the military analysts and “outed” the Office of Strategic Influence to protect her turf. Her skill at manipulation and disinformation in exposing an office that was essentially a public diplomacy office within the Pentagon (no, the place it should be, but it was 2001 and State is just now stepping up in 2008, so cut some slack) had no place in strategic communication, public diplomacy, or public affairs. Clarke manipulation highlights the failure of the media to investigate and understand the news it covers.

Read the discussion at the New York Times.

Also, for the truly interested, I suggest Robert Entman’s Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Are the Russians violating US sovereignty in the cyber war?

August 11, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

The purpose of Computer Network Operations (CNO) and Electronic Warfare (EW) are, put quite simply, to create and deny access to information. Typically considered tools to interfere with the decision making of leaders, they are being used by the Russians to shape international opinion. Georgian CNO, having been defeated and on the retreat, moved some sites to Google-hosted services. Whether these are in the United States or not is unknown. The question hasn’t been raised so far, perhaps because Google largely operates in its own pseudo-sovereign realm.

The Associated Press is reporting that some Georgian sites (maybe the same sites?) have been moved to U.S. servers:

The website of the president of Georgia, the small nation that is battling Russian forces over a breakaway enclave, was moved to a U.S. hosting facility this weekend after allegedly being attacked by Russian hackers.

The original servers located in the country of Georgia were “flooded and blocked by Russians” over the weekend, Nino Doijashvili, chief executive of Atlanta-based hosting company Tulip Systems Inc., said Monday.

Making this particularly interesting is the question of whether these servers are U.S. sovereign territory. If so, then the Russian hackers, government or not, are attacking the United States. This would be like a foreign national taking refuge inside an American embassy and the local police charging in after them. This is at least the position of some of the U.S. government even if they don’t realize it.

How so, you ask?

Simply put, the U.S. Government is prohibited from engaging discussion boards, blogs, etc. hosted on U.S. servers in part because of the modern interpretation of Smith-Mundt, but not entirely. The concern is the U.S. Government, mostly military as they are the most active in the informational sphere, may influence American citizens by virtue of the fact the server is on American soil regardless of the physical location of the users. So-called “public affairs authority” changes things a bit and permits access, but there remain special considerations for engaging U.S.-based servers.

So, if the U.S. considers U.S.-based servers as the equivalent of U.S. physical territory for the purpose of informational engagement, how is a foreign attack on the same not an incursion against the United States? This dichotomy is going to hurt us sooner than we think.

As I noted earlier, the Georgian dilemma highlights the extreme importance of information in wars among people and the critical requirement to get your side of the story into the information ecosystem. This war of bits and bytes is ultimately a war of perceptions. There is a “tremendous symphony” playing globally right now that involves the government of Russia as well as private sympathizers (e.g. private citizens acting on their own or with encouragement) that is drowning out the Georgians. The Russians cannot have information superiority unless they deny their adversary the ability to communicate, and then they can propagate their message without a counter-narrative, truthful or not. The cyber attacks are muzzling Georgia to prevent opportunities to portray the Russians as anything but “peacekeepers” and “defenders.”

(H/T on the AP article to Jeff Carr)

Outsourcing to break the “cyber-lock”

August 11, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Noah Shachtman at Wired draws our attention to an interesting bit of virtual geography: George is largely “cyber-locked” (see the Packet Clearing House diagram). The solution? Outsource to Google:

Civil.ge, the Georgian news site, is "under permanent [cyber] attack." So they’ve switched their operations to one of Google’s Blogspot domains, to keep the information flowing about what’s going on in their country.

"In a sense," notes Jim Stogdill, "they must be saying ‘we can’t keep our sites up, but we don’t think [Russian hackers] can take down Blogspot, given Google’s much better infrastructure and ability to defend it.’"

Yes, and the cost was probably attractive attribute as well.

Besides the interesting reliance on the private sector, the Georgian dilemma highlights the extreme importance of information and the ability to get out your side of the story. The war of bits and bytes is ultimately a war of perceptions. The cyber attacks are efforts to muzzle the Georgians and to prevent opportunities to portray the Russians as anything but “peacekeepers” and “defenders.”

See for example Joshua Keating: “Georgians feel betrayed and abandoned by their American allies. The Russian media isn’t really reporting it that way though.”

WaPo: When American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots, we waste money and opportunities

August 11, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

Dana Hedgpeth at the Washington Post describes U.S. public diplomacy as it used to be, except the context is today, in Iraq, and instead of USIA officers, it’s the American military. Instead of cultural or public affairs funding, it’s the Commander’s Emergency Response Program. The purpose of CERP is to fund “short-term, small-scale urgent humanitarian relief and reconstruction.”

Army documents show that $48,000 was spent on 6,000 pairs of children’s shoes; an additional $50,000 bought 625 sheep for people described in records as "starving poor locals" in a Baghdad neighborhood. Soldiers ordered $100,000 worth of dolls and $500,000 in action figures made to look like Iraqi Security Forces. About $14,250 was spent on "I Love Iraq" T-shirts. More than $75,000 sent a delegation to a women’s and civil rights conference in Cairo. And $12,800 was spent for two pools to cool bears and tigers at Zawra Park Zoo in Baghdad.

In truth, the news story highlights a significant problem when American public diplomacy wears combat boots.

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Follow up on American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots

August 7, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

The struggle today is not a struggle against a tactic, but for the minds and wills of groups and individuals around the world. This is not a “battle” to be won or lost, but a continuing struggle to create resistance against threats to America’s national interests and security.

The importance of communicating in the modern environment is critical. It requires informational activities that disregards often quaint notions of state borders, including our own. We lament the ability of a guy in a cave to out-communicate the United States, but the group that was a virtual unknown in 1998 faced little opposition in the information war. We lost that fight as much, possibly more than, Al-Qaeda won it. We are in an era when the value brute force is severely diminished. Increasingly, the pen, or keyboard and camera-phone, is mightier than the gun.

However, like it or not, American public diplomacy still wears combat boots. The military does not like it and neither does the State Department. The Defense Department should not be, as I wrote yesterday, America’s ambassadors to the world. This is especially ironic considering fewer American’s know someone in uniform.

Yesterday I commented on the reality of America’s international engagement. In doing so, I shifted the blame from the Defense Department to the leadership of the State Department as well as on to the Congress. Only recently has the State Department, for example, begun to push to increase the size of the Foreign Service Officer corps. The most visible pressure, however, continues to come not from the State Department, but from the Defense Department.

It should not be a surprise that over the last seven years, the Secretaries of Defense have seemingly fielded more questions about the resurrection of USIA than the Secretaries of State, or the Under Secretaries for Public Diplomacy for that matter.

While “War of Ideas” is not entirely accurate, it is appropriate considering where we are today. The term will die by January 2009, but by then, forward momentum will have been achieved. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman is playing the right game to influence U.S. policy makers. The unfortunate phrase does not further militarize America’s foreign policy, it simply reflects an existing condition.

Below, without additional comment, are some key quotes from last week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on “Defining the Military’s Role Towards Foreign Policy” that reinforces both points.

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American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots, it’s wrong but it’s true

August 6, 2008August 5, 2020 ~ Matt Armstrong

Last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing with the subject Defining the Military’s Role Towards Foreign Policy. The purpose was to explore, in Senator Joseph Biden’s (D-Del) words, “an important trend affecting this country…the expanding role of the military in U.S. foreign policy.” He went to say that “there has been a migration of functions and authorities from U.S. civilian agencies to the Department of Defense.”

Today, American public diplomacy, its international communications with the world, wears combat boots. The Secretaries of Defense have used their podium to communicate not only to the American public but to the world far more effectively than the Secretaries of State since 9/11. At a time when fewer Americans know someone in uniform, it is increasingly the U.S. military that is in the critical “last three feet” of engagement with foreign publics in the most unstable lands. Around the world, images of combat boots and “digicams” (the new “digital camouflage”) lead while cameras don’t seem to find the civilians. Maybe it’s because there are so few there.

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New Media and Persuasion, Mobilization, and Facilitation

August 5, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Cross-posted at CTLab.

There’s a lot of talk about the Internet as a tool to broadcast information. For many groups today, the media is as essential as oxygen, without it they suffocate and fade away. Not only do they need the media to highlight their cause and influence decision makers, but more importantly they need it to build support for their actions and propagate their message. In other words, it is for advertising the cause and intimidating the competition.

How is the “new” different than the “old”? The “old” method of mediated communication, notably newspapers, required significant overhead and was vulnerable to disruptions in getting supplies and distribution of content. In the late-1940s, when newsprint and presses were in short supply in Europe (and access was limited in the East), radio filled a void. Of course listening required both electricity and, of course, radios. But once you had a radio, you could tune-in to “banned” broadcasts without a trace (provided the radio wasn’t overheard), unlike a newspaper which needed to be physically acquired. It could also be broadcast across large geographic territories, ignoring political boundaries. This medium fell short in building active networks of support as listening was passive and you could not know if you were you one of one or one of many.

The Internet is different. Not only does it provide a hyperactive information environment filled with content from countless trusted and untrusted sources, but consumers of information are increasingly on equal footing with professional broadcasters. The informal media may, at times, even be superior to the formal media in their access and analysis. The recent Pew Research report documents the cut-back in foreign affairs coverage by the major media as the U.S. media increasingly focuses on profits rather than a duty to inform the public and on government and corporate sources rather than elite experts. The void will, and is, be filled by somebody, including the blogosphere, YouTube, social networks, and other forms of mediated and unmediated communication.

New Media is more than 24/7 news cycles. It is the ability to create trusted peer relationships, or the appearance of, to create legitimacy of information as well as depth and breadth of acceptance. This can be done as traditional media or other new media outlets pick up on a bit of “news” for redistribution, giving the impression of validity as the sources go up from one to many, often in excess of the three needed to create a “fact.” It is easier to see you’re not alone in the New Media environment, something that was not possible with radios and film (unless you risked gathering as a group).

There are several defining characteristics of the new media environment. The obvious are hyperconnectivity, persistence of information, inexpensive reach, and dislocation with speaker and listener virtually close but geographically distant. New Media also democraticizes information in the sense that hierarchies are bypassed, permitting both direct access to policy and decision makers and the possibility of “15-minutes of fame” (if even only one minute or less) to everyone. Information can be created and consumed by everyone regardless of “eliteness,” CV, and at minimal cost to any party.

To the insurgent and terrorist, New Media’s capacity to amplify and increase the velocity of an issue that is critical. They increasingly rely on the Internet’s ability to share multiple kinds of media quickly and persistently to permit retrieval across time zones around the world from computers or cell phones. The value is the ability to not just persuade an audience to support their action, but to mobilize their support and to facilitate their will to act on behalf of the group (or not to act on behalf of another group, such as the counterinsurgent).

While the modern electronic environment gives strategic reach beyond what the pamphleteers of the New World had over two hundred years ago, the goal is the same: to persuade, mobilize, and even facilitate action. The reach of the new pamphleteer, if you will, is potentially global and while intended for specific audiences, they do not fear unintended audiences. The purpose is to create support (they prefer active support, but passive is acceptable) that is physical (such as sanctuary), financial (money), moral (backing by religious leaders), social (support of friends and family and fellow travelers), and of course to create a recruiting pool.

In 1952, presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower noted civilian leaders look upon public opinion as something to be followed while military leaders know that opinions can be changed. Today, we know civilian leaders do not take such a passive view of public opinion, especially when key legislation or positions are at stake. We also know that insurgents and terrorists know that opinions can be changed. In fact, it is this knowledge that empowers and enables them.

In this spirit, below are some images and comments from a presentation of mine on the tactical application of New Media to persuade, mobilize, and facilitate action by insurgents.

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The Art of Asymmetric Warfare

July 28, 2008 ~ Matt Armstrong

Very briefly, an important article by Jason Burke in the Guardian’s comment section on the Taliban’s approach to holistic warfare that includes what our doctrine still sees as unconventional and yet is the dominant form of warfare today and into the future (irrespective of whether the F-22 should be kept).

A US military officer quoted in the excellent report by the International Crisis Group into Taliban propaganda operations released a few days ago says, "unfortunately, we tend to view information operations as supplementing kinetic [fighting] operations. For the Taliban, however, information objectives tend to drive kinetic operations … virtually every kinetic operation they undertake is specifically designed to influence attitudes or perceptions".

This is strategic thought of extreme novelty, and in no small way helps explain the relative success of the Taliban so far in Afghanistan. In terms of a communication strategy it certainly goes well beyond the clumsy international coalition efforts which have remained largely focused on the international audience. Western press officers’ ability to talk to the Afghan public is hindered by their minimal language skills and the cultural gaps that separate them, and remains very limited.

Equally, the idea that military operations should be decided primarily according to their effect on populations and thus should be determined to a significant degree by the exigencies of modern media technology and by journalists is anathema to most western soldiers, most of whom see the press as a necessary evil at best.

The Taliban by contrast are quite happy to shape their military strikes according to the media demand. They know that spectacular attacks such as that on Kabul’s Serena hotel or the repeated attempts on President Karzai’s life are effective.

Their day-to-day media operation targets four audiences – international western, international Islamic, local and regional – in at least five different languages. They are careful to avoid statements that play on Afghanistan’s complex identity politics – though support for the movement remains overwhelmingly drawn from the Sunni Pashtun tribes and the history of the Taliban is replete with examples of persecution of Shia or Afghanistan’s less numerous ethnic minorities.

…

The ICG report is here and below is part of the report’s Executive Summary:

The Taliban has created a sophisticated communications apparatus that projects an increasingly confident movement. Using the full range of media, it is successfully tapping into strains of Afghan nationalism and exploiting policy failures by the Kabul government and its international backers. The result is weakening public support for nation-building, even though few actively support the Taliban. The Karzai government and its allies must make greater efforts, through word and deed, to address sources of alienation exploited in Taliban propaganda, particularly by ending arbitrary detentions and curtailing civilian casualties from aerial bombing.

Analysing the Taliban’s public statements has limits, since the insurgent group seeks to underscore successes – or imagined successes – and present itself as having the purest of aims, while disguising weaknesses and underplaying its brutality. However, the method still offers a window into what the movement considers effective in terms of recruitment and bolstering its legitimacy among both supporters and potential sympathisers.

The movement reveals itself in its communications as:

the product of the anti-Soviet jihad and the civil war that followed but not representative of indigenous strands of religious thought or traditional pre-conflict power structures;

a largely ethno-nationalist phenomenon, without popular grassroots appeal beyond its core of support in sections of the Pashtun community;

still reliant on sanctuaries in Pakistan, even though local support has grown;

linked with transnational extremist groups for mostly tactical rather than strategic reasons but divided over these links internally;

seeking to exploit local tribal disputes for recruitment and mainly appealing to the disgruntled and disenfranchised in specific locations, but lacking a wider tribal agenda; and

a difficult negotiating partner because it lacks a coherent agenda, includes allies with divergent agendas and has a leadership that refuses to talk before the withdrawal of foreign forces and without the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law).

…A website in the name of the former regime – the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – is used as an international distribution centre for leadership statements and inflated tales of battlefield exploits. While fairly rudimentary, this is not a small effort; updates appear several times a day in five languages. Magazines put out by the movement or its supporters provide a further source of information on leadership structures and issues considered to be of importance. But for the largely rural and illiterate population, great efforts are also put into conveying preaching and battle reports via DVDs, audio cassettes, shabnamah (night letters – pamphlets or leaflets usually containing threats) and traditional nationalist songs and poems. The Taliban also increasingly uses mobile phones to spread its message.