Check out what surely must have been a special collaborative project with Hollywood to shake off the Commie-sympathizer image of State: State Department File 649

The overriding message was: State Department officers bravely serve America abroad. The acting was terrible and the storyline thin and predictable. It was good for some laughs at how outrageous it was though.
Also, if it was an accurate portrayal of Foreign Service Officers back in 1949, it is not now. We don’t carry guns and we don’t single handedly take on Mongolian warlords. Anyway, an interesting movie and fun piece of history if not cinematic excellence.

In 1947, Congress repeatedly told State to purge itself of Communist sympathizers (and Socialist New Dealers for that matter).  The House Rules committee went so far as to say it wouldn’t support any legislation backed by the State Department for this very reason.  In 1948 there was Alger Hiss. 

Did State have a Hollywood liaison?  Dunno, but they needed one.  Was the role originally for an OSS officer?  

From the review, I don’t think I’ll watch to figure it out. 

The other day I posted a link to Andrew Woods’s article in the Financial Times about Major General Doug Stone’s minds and will campaign in the detainee facilities.  Two days ago, another article in the same vein by Andrew went up on Slate.  I recommend you read it.

What is striking here is not that the United States is waging an ideological battle with Islamic extremists. As Robert Wright elegantly argued in 2002, the war on terror is a semiotic war, and religion provides many symbolic and narrative weapons. Rather, it is remarkable that the Pentagon would have the chutzpah to locate what Stone calls the "battlefield of the mind" in its own detention centers.

Prisons are where so many Islamist identities are born, nurtured, and plugged into violent networks. It was in Cairo’s prisons that Sayyid Qutb crafted an intellectual framework for modern Islamist terrorism, and Ayman al-Zawahiri underwent the transformation that would lead him to launch al-Qaida. Or think of our own little "jihad university" on Guantanamo Bay. Detention centers present a second-order problem, too, in how the global public receives them. The torture at Abu Ghraib may have been the best thing the United States ever did for al-Qaida. And now, along comes a Marine reservist from California, hard as hell, McKinsey-savvy, who claims he can turn detention facilities into a strategic asset. Can it possibly work?

…

To say that the United States should play no role in religious deradicalization programs while its tanks roll through Baghdad is not to say they shouldn’t exist. It’s just that heavy hands don’t wield soft power. As the Crisis Group concludes in their review of Indonesia’s deradicalization programs, "economic aid … is ultimately more important than religious arguments in changing prisoner attitudes." This won’t be the case for everyone—"bad men" from well-to-do families, like Zawahiri, will never be bought off. But even Zawahiri can be defeated if his audience has something better to believe in. They won’t condone his violence if it seems as unilateral as our invasion of Iraq; most of them already don’t.

One of the sharpest Cold War thinkers, George Kennan, argued that the way to win the hearts and minds of the unaligned countries was through social and economic development programs—not military action. In our better moments, we even funded art programs and literary journals that were explicitly anti-American, under the theory that free speech itself is more important than the contents of that speech. Kennan’s thinking has resonance today. Rather than make appeals directly to the detainees’ faith—which may or may not work, and are offensive regardless—we ought to seek to empower people with economic and social opportunity. Open societies, after all, become liberal societies, even when they begin in detention centers.

Read the rest at Slate.  Happy to put you in touch with Andrew as well.  Just email me. 

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo in the New York Times, by Scott Shane

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

Foreign outreach called deficient: Panel urges more training in the Washington Times, by Nicholas Kralev

Each U.S. embassy has a public-affairs officer who is in charge of a large section with both American and foreign employees.

There are usually at least two more Foreign Service officers. The so-called information officer, or spokesman, follows local media and responds to press inquiries. The cultural-affairs officer manages various outreach programs.

None of those officials, however, is engaged in the public aspect of public diplomacy full time, said the bipartisan commission’s report, which was published last week.

"This is the first report to point out that there is no one overseas whose primary job responsibility is to interface with foreign audiences," said Matt Armstrong, an analyst who writes a blog on public diplomacy at mountainrunner.us.

Ok, so that headline is a bit of self-promotion… but isn’t that what public diplomacy is about? 😉

15 Hostages Held by Colombian Rebels Are Rescued in the New York Times, by Simon Romero

Colombian commandos disguised as rebels spirited 15 hostages to freedom on Wednesday, including Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician held for six years, and three American military contractors, according to the hostages and the Colombian authorities.

See also: PMC "Hostages" in Colombia (16 Jan 2006)

Andrew Exum sparked some discussion with his post at the Small Wars Journal blog last week with his questioning the definition of Information Operations.

… how many of you have ever looked up the official Department of Defense definition for ‘Information Operations?’

According to JP 3-13, Information Operations, the term is defined as “the integrated employment of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.”

I am confident there exist more confusing definitions in the U.S. military lexicon, but surely there cannot be too many. …

In response to the query, SWJ’s discussion board lit up.  The resulting posts went from at what IO is, the level it does or should apply (tactical, operational, and/or strategic), whether the goal of influence should be considered, whether it is simply non-kinetic activities, and more.  Naturally, there were the questions into what differentiates Information Operations from “Influence Operations” from Public Affairs from Psychological Operations.  There was the ever so brief mention of public diplomacy, but that was ignored and left hanging.  

Marc Tyrrell followed up with Notes towards a theory of Information Operations (IO).  The painfully smart Marc closes this post with a carefully arrived a definition of IO:

Information Operations are a) actions taken by actors, b) based on sensory input from the environment which is c) filtered through one or more interpretive maps, with d) an intentionality to either modify, deceive or degrade a targets sensory environment, input or interpretive maps while, at the same time, preserving ones own.

Continue reading “Recommended Reading on Information Operations
“ →

Recommended read: Andrew Woods’ The business end.

I’ve posted several times about MG Doug Stone and his Task Force 134, so it’s good to see an interview by MR friend Andrew Woods find a home.  Andrew traveled to Iraq several months ago for this interview and now it finally comes out in the Financial Times. 

This is a well researched and thought out piece that gets into what made Doug’s tactics work.  For anybody looking into the root causes of insurgency and wanting to go deeper than the superficiality of Huntington’s thesis, read Andrew’s article. 

Clipping from the piece doesn’t do it justice, but I’ll do it anyway.

Stone launched several programmes to quell the detainees’ anger and, according to the military’s data, 2007 was a good year for Detainee Ops. Since Stone took charge, the number of significant acts of violence between detainees or against guards is down 80 per cent, in spite of a prison population that has doubled since “the surge” of US troops. Detainee recidivism rates from 2003 to 2006 ranged from 7 to 9 per cent. By contrast, since September 2007, coalition forces have released almost 8,000 men (just 14 of all coalition detainees are women), of whom, Stone says, only 24 have been recaptured – a recidivism rate of less than a quarter of 1 per cent.

Stone says the best way to find out who is an extremist – or Takfir, as he calls them – is the religious discussion group. “It allows us to determine the guys that don’t really give a shit about the Koran in the first place – they’re using it as a discipline. Those guys are beginning to fall into the category of irreconcilables, and that’s helpful to me. I want to know who they are. They’re like rotten eggs, you know, hiding in the Easter basket. So we scoop them out,” he says, his hands raking through the air, “and what we see is a flattening” – a calm in the behaviour of the remaining detainees.

Stone remains the optimist: “Remember, I came out of Silicon Valley, where if you had a six-month lead on your competition, you win. You deprive them of cash, you have more cash … you get an installed base that’s bigger, you take their installed base away,” he says, using the financial term for operating system users.

“That’s thematically what I’m thinking about, you know,” he says, now jabbing his fingers at Pakistanis screaming on the cover of a news magazine. “How do I get this installed base to turn?”

Food for thought from the following quote:

Persuasion on an immense scale is here to stay.  Technological advance may have made this as important to diplomacy as the invention of gunpowder to the military. … We still write diplomatic notes, but we try to reach directly into as many foreign homes as we can.  Every other major power is doing the same. … I am convinced that unless the United States continues to utilize this new method we shall be left at the post by other countries which are becoming skilled in the use of mass media.

New methods in government, like new discoveries in science, can be used for good or ill.  Direct … contact with foreign individuals may be taken advantage of to proclaim falsehood as well as truth.  But the potentialities of the direct approach are very great in both directions, and we must understand and perfect the techniques to protect and advance our interests.

More below the fold.

Continue reading “Left at the post?
“ →

Modern conflict relies heavily on influencing societal groups that cross political borders and ignore geography.  Information campaigns are waged, neglected, and abused by all sides as they attempt to manipulate various audiences. blah blah blah… yeah, yeah, you’ve read it here before. 

To the point, are you looking for a one-stop shop for USG (U.S. Government) and other resources that talk about information, whether it is Information Operations, Strategic Communications, or Network Centric Warfare?  If so, check out the U.S. Army War College’s DIME website, specifically their links page.  (Public diplomacy falls under Strategic Communications and this blog is under Other Information.) 

By the way, DIME stands for Diplomacy, Information, Military, and Economic power.  These are considered the core elements of national power.  Some have expanded DIME to include Finance, Intelligence, and Law Enforces, which spells MIDLIFE (or DIMEFIL to the more “sensitive”).  Rarely you might see DIMES, which adds Sociology. 

Shameless plug that’s barely related: Did I mention that the Swedish Institute (the Swedish Public Diplomacy agency) also links to this blog?  More on SI later because if you’re interested in SC/PD, you should be interested in the SI. 

A short list of posts you may not have seen. 

General Petraeus and the ‘Information War’ by Felix Gillette

"Petraeus understood how to use the media," writes Mr. Engel. "He could boil down his thoughts to fifteen-second sound bytes, and always tracked the camera during interviews … He had what actors call ‘camera awareness.’"  …

Some sixteen months later, a number of the seasoned TV reporters in Baghdad told the Observer that they continue to appreciate Mr. Petraeus’ style of media engagement—i.e. less press conferences, more personal access, increased transparency, and the occasional banana in the market place. …

"Not only is Petraeus quite accessible to the media, but he’s managed to convey down the line to his colonels and captains that it’s okay to talk to the media," added Mr. McCarthy. "Under Casey, they were really trying to spin us. In Petraeus’ case, if it’s a bad day, he’ll say ‘it’s been a bad day.’"

 Col. Peter Mansoor on Health in Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Refugees as Weapons of War, and In Counterinsurgency, Hospitals are the Commanding Heights by Chris Albon

Two from Arabic Source: A Whole Lot of Paper that AQ Didn’t Want Us to See and What Makes An Expert?

 The Erosion of Noncombatant Immunity within Al Qaeda by Carl J. Ciovacco.

Very briefly, it is worth your time watch the video below, at least the first seven minutes.  Major General Doug Stone, formerly of Task Force 134, gave an exit interview after turning over command of detainee operations in Iraq.  I recommend watching his opening remarks as he speaks directly to the point who the detainees are, their motivation, and how he managed to attain a recidivism rate of… well “miniscule”, as he put it is the only way to describe it: only 40 returned out of about 10,000 released. 

The transparency and education and training programs have been core to this success.  In order to practice public diplomacy, strategic communication, information operations, or psychological operations, one must know the audience, the potential cleavages between the individual and the group, or sub-groups from the larger group.  He gets it. 

In short, MG Doug Stone understands the struggle for minds and will and good luck to him in his next billet. 

H/T AH.

Posting will be light for another few days…

• From the New York Times: What Do You Call a Terror(Jihad)ist? by P.W. Singer and Elina Noor 

IMAGINE if Franklin D. Roosevelt had taken to calling Adolf Hitler the “leader of the National Socialist Aryan patriots” or dubbed Japanese soldiers fighting in World War II as the “defenders of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

To describe the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army in terms that incorporated their own propaganda would have been self-defeating. Unfortunately, that is what many American policymakers have been doing by calling terrorists “jihadists” or “jihadis.”

• From Jim Giurard at Small Wars Journal (Parts 1, 2, and 3 out of 6)
  • Well Intended but Largely Mistaken Attacks on NCTC and DHS “War of Words” Advisories (Part 1)
  • Well Intended but Largely Mistaken Attacks (Parts 2 & 3)

Shared here by permission of the author, Information Operations from an Asian Perspective.

This article is a comparative study of the practice of state-sponsored influence activities in its
various forms (namely propaganda, public diplomacy, psychological operations, public
affairs, cyber warfare, electronic warfare and so on) in selected Asian countries (China,
Taiwan, Thailand and Japan). It highlights the state of Asian development, differences in
concepts, organization and application as compared to the Western models that today
dominate discussions on information operations and influence activity. By doing so, it
provides alternative ways of approaching Information Operations (IO) that might contribute
to the generation of challenges and solutions facing today’s policy makers. Finally, it will
serve to broaden the body of knowledge in influence activities to include both Eastern and
Western viewpoints.

Major James Yin of the Singapore Armed Forces and Phil Taylor of the University of Leeds examine China, Japan, and Taiwan “based on their ability to influence the balance of power in Asia-Pacific and their propensity to use cyber warfare” and Thailand because of its COIN operations against Muslim insurgents.

As if propaganda was ever out of style, graphic designers comment on the value of a good, eye-catching (or mind-catching) piece of information meant to propagate support for an idea or person (H/T A. Sullivan).  Meanwhile, someone else is looking to make a few bucks describing one of the many domestic propaganda machines. 

Recommended Books on the subject you may not have read (not in any particular order):

• War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication
• Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays
• Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda
• Premises for Propaganda: The United States Information Agency’s Operating Assumptions in the Cold War (see A.L.’s comments on this find)
• Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American “Neutrality” in World War II
• War of the Black Heavens
• Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy

Less recommended are the following containing interesting discussions and observations on the media’s role in (mostly domestic) persuasion and influence:

• The Media and the War on Terrorism 
• Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War Against Iraq
• Wary Partners: Diplomats and the Media

Promoted from the comments is a recommendation from Tim Stevens of Ubiwar:

• Politics and Propaganda: Weapons of Mass Seduction

And an example of how U.S. domestic policy can change due to the global information environment:

• Cold War Civil Rights (book review here)