Category: Psychological Struggle

Censoring the United States, Preventing Domestic Discourse

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Part three of converting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009 (NDAA) into a haphazard and piecemeal restructuring of America’s global information activities.  Part One was on the Strategic Communication Management Board.  Part Two was about creating a national strategy for public diplomacy and strategic communication.  Part Three is about censoring the domestic discourse because the media failed its responsibilities. 

By a voice vote last week, an amendment (PDF) by Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH) was attached to the NDAA.  The potential impact of the Hodes Amendment could be extreme and more reaching than the author and its supporters intend.  The amendment is based on the mistaken belief that one can — and apparently must — inform without influence and that information can be stopped at the water’s edge.

Briefly, while other parts of the NDAA puts the Defense Department in the lead of U.S. strategic and tactical communication, this amendment makes it clear that this international communication will actually be extra-national communication. 

The amendment’s first and last paragraphs:  

No part of any funds authorized to be appropriated in this or any other Act shall be used by the Department of Defense for propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law.

DEFINITION.—For purposes of this section, the term ‘‘propaganda’’ means any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.

This language will do more to bifurcate America’s conversation with the world than most anything else could possibly imagine.  Already, as a result of the Smith-Mundt Act, the U.S. is prohibited from speaking to Americans with the same voice it speaks for foreign publics.  As the Defense Department has become the primary public diplomat for the United States, purposefully and through lack of empowering State through leadership and funds, the impact will be severe.  This legislation, as worded, prevents most Public Affairs functions which are, in fact, intended to influence the American public to influence Congress and the Executive Branch.  The most innocuous examples of this include recent efforts of both the Navy and Air Force to redefine their roles to the American public to influence Congress.  At the other end, it will mean the adversary (terrorists, insurgents, other states) speaks to Americans without a counter-narrative or meaningful and effective efforts to counter-misinformation.  It also means what the U.S. says to foreign audiences is unfit for American eyes and ears.   

Perhaps the solution isn’t just realizing the value of information, but realizing physical threats can be the same as informational threats that can debilitate through perception and disruption.  

More to come.

See also:

Better Dead than Read?

~ Matt Armstrong

First, an example of why you want to use somebody else’s computer account: David Betz posts on a Guardian article describing how a graduate student was detained for six days on account he was researching al-Qaeda’s tactics. 

Second, Kim Andrew Elliott reminds us why we should use security filters on our laptops:

Fear of Aljazeera. A Syrian-born American who teaches at Brno’s Masaryk University was detained for 20 minutes by Czech police after a passenger on his bus noticed him revising, in his laptop computer, a paper titled “Al Jazeera and the Decline of Secular Ideology.” The Prague Post, 21 May 2008

Developing a National Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Strategy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

And so the push to make the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Bill of 2009 a vehicle to fix America’s communication with the world continues.  Today, Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash) was to introduce an amendment (38k PDF) instructing the President to

develop and submit to Congress a comprehensive interagency strategy for strategic communication and public diplomacy by December 31, 2009 [and] requires the President to submit a report describing the current roles and activities of the Departments of Defense and State in those areas, as well as to assess and report on a key recommendation by the Defense Science Board, by June 30, 2009.

Taking its lead from last year’s U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication, the Smith Amendment instructs the U.S. Government to put public diplomacy and strategic communication in direct support of foreign policy objectives, specifically in the areas of counter-terrorism and countering ideological support for terrorism (CIST).  The amendment requires consolidating USG’s communication leadership and the consideration that one or more positions at the National Security Council be created. 

Today, I spoke with Rep. Smith about this amendment.  We talked about State’s capacity — he acknowledged the universal truth that State is under-resourced — and the de-professionalization of the public diplomacy corps as a result of the merger —  he agreed and said the same occurred in the development sector.  The Congressman said it was his intention to empower the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (which should be Jim Glassman as Senator Coburn is no longer blocking his confirmation).  The Congressman worked with the House Foreign Affairs Committee to craft the language and does not seem to favor any specific recommendation.  (Rep. Smith and Representative Mac Thornberry (R-TX) are behind the NDAA section on the Strategic Communication Management Board.)

Continue reading “Developing a National Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Strategy
“ →

American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots: Proposed Strategic Communication Management Board to advise the Secretary of Defense

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

The leadership of information and policy and implementation is once again to be merged.  The Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, H.R. 5658 (as reported in House), would establish the Strategic Communication Management Board (SCMB) “to provide advice to the Secretary on strategic direction and to help establish priorities for strategic communication activities.”  While members of this advisory body may and are likely to come from all parts of the government, it consolidates the shaping and execution of government-wide strategic communication, our public diplomacy with the world, within the Defense Department.  

H.R. 5658 is sponsored by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) and co-sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA).  The Senate version does not include the same language.  No word on whether Section 1031 (see below) will survive negotiations.

According to House Armed Services Committee report 110-652 the decision to create the body is fallout from the dissolution of the Strategic Communication Integration Group just a couple of months ago. 

The committee is concerned about the state of strategic communication and public diplomacy (SC/PD) efforts within the Department of Defense. The committee believes that the dissolution of the strategic communication integration group (SCIG) was a major setback to the coordination of SC/PD efforts. While the SCIG resources and authority may not have been adequate to completely manage the Department’s SC/PD effort, the Board remained a focal point within the Department and positively contributed to the effort to mitigate conflict and confusion.

The advisory board will provide the leadership that used to be come from and be vested in public diplomacy professionals.  This is, however, an increasingly rare breed with the passage of time, the personnel system in State, and overall a failure to understand what is necessary to effectively conduct a vigorous information and education campaign with the peoples of the world. 

Well intentioned, this Congressional recognition that leadership of U.S. Government-wide strategic leadership in public diplomacy is missing but this choice further militarizes America’s public diplomacy and foreign policy.  Instead of addressing the shortcomings of and strengthening civilian institutions, Congress chose a path of least resistance.  This places Defense policy at the head of communication, driving it, shaping it, and likely at the forefront of implementing it.  Communication is thus in support of Defense policy and subject to Defense priorities.  As the House Report notes,

The committee believes that the SCMB’s near-term priority should be the development of a comprehensive Department-wide strategy that can be used to effectively inform and guide the disparate and vast community involved in strategic communication activities. Such a product should simultaneously serve as a Department perspective for informing a more comprehensive government-wide strategic communication strategy.

While on its face the SCMB may not broaden the Defense Departments mandate and area of operation, it represents a further entrenchment of the Pentagon as the sole protectors of our national security.  We’ve seemingly forgotten the range of the tools of our national power. 

Perhaps the best contemporary example of the problem of putting DoD in front of strategic initiatives with foreign populations is AFRICOM.  Despite it’s noble (and necessary) aspirations, and despite its novel organizational plan that inserts the State Department at the co-deputy level, AFRICOM has been unable overcome its Pentagon-parentage. 

The SCMB should not be under the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (or his designee), but under an empowered Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy that drops the “and Public Affairs” distinction for reasons of bureaucracy and institutional cultural but combines the elements of domestic and international communication to focus on the global information environment.  This should be the first step toward separating and resurrecting a new and independent agency along the lines of the United States Information Agency, but updated, to provide a professional development path and separate policy and implementation to protect continuity, legitimacy, trust, all of which requires a substantial degree of independence to avoid the tactical pressures of White House politics.  This agency (or some other organizational unit) would not only be on the take-offs and crash-landings of policy, but sit at the National Security Committee table, rather than advise somebody who advises somebody else. 

In the meantime, Congress continues to place policy and information activities within the same organization, the very defect many say was the chief problem of moving the United States Information Agency into the State Department.  This is also a chief defect Congress sought to correct when it debated and passed the Information and Educational Exchange Act sixty years ago, the Act more commonly known as Smith-Mundt. 

It is time Congress stepped up to the plate and acknowledge a whole-of-government approach is required.  The current architecture of America’s information programs is broken and too often we speak with a voice that wears combat boots, using the wrong language, or not speaking at all. 

The language of SEC 1031 is misleading.  Today’s fight is not just a psychological fight of ideology with those the Defense Department is (properly or improperly) assigned to deal with, but one of relevance as the prestige and strength of our economy and diplomacy degrades. 

The text of Section 1031 is below the fold.  Thanks CS for the tip on H.R. 5658.

Continue reading “American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots: Proposed Strategic Communication Management Board to advise the Secretary of Defense
“ →

Required Reading: The Spectacle of War by Andrew Exum

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

Read Andrew Exum’s excellent The Spectacle of War: Insurgent video propaganda and Western response (or PDF version here) at Arab Media & Society.  Andrew describes what I call precision-guided media to mobilize supporters through a combination of traditional media such as radio and television, to New Media like websites, discussion boards, YouTube, and SMS.  Modern insurgents have moved well beyond the international sympathy of the Zapatista to, as Andrew describes, fostering and relying on a re-interpretation of nationalism to mobilize and elicit responses near and far.
An excerpt:

A key difference between the kind of insurgent propaganda broadcast by Hizbullah in the 1990s and the kind broadcast by the insurgents of Iraq is that whereas the propaganda broadcast by Hizbullah was often aimed at its enemy, Israel, the propaganda broadcast by the insurgents of Iraq is neither aimed at the Americans nor, for the most part, Iraqis. As evidenced by the languages in which BaghdadSniper is available, much of this propaganda is aimed at inflaming young Muslims spread from Lahore to London. It’s having an effect, too. A recent study by al-Qaeda expert Jason Burke demonstrated that insurgent propaganda videos on the internet had played a significant role in the radicalization process of young British Muslims convicted of planning or carrying out attacks on civilian targets in the UK.

Audrey Kurth Cronin describes the process by which young Muslims are radicalized via insurgent propaganda on the internet, a kind of “cyber-mobilization” revolutionizing warfare to the degree that Napoleon’s levée en masse revolutionized continental warfare at the end of the 18th Century. When the armies of Napoleon marched across Europe, France’s enemies were caught off-guard by the size of the armies and the way in which they were quickly raised from the whole of the population. In the same way, the militaries and security services of traditional nation-states in the West and Middle East could be surprised by the way in which jihadist armies are raised and deployed, drawn as they are from the disaffected children of the Egyptian middle class and the residents of the slums of Paris and London both. For both, the insurgent propaganda functions as a kind of empowering “call to arms.” British journalist Amil Khan, who has worked extensively with radicalized youths in the UK, says the following:

These videos give you an alternative narrative. Instead of feeling like your community is powerless or weak, they give you the sense that ‘your people’ can be strong – and even stronger than the world’s leading powers. It’s a seductive alternative to the self-image many Muslims, you and old, have that their community, the umma, couldn’t organize a picnic much less challenge the world’s only superpower.

One of the most important take-aways from Andrew’s article is what he doesn’t talk about.  He describes strategic communication by the insurgents that incorporates violent, military footage.  But the political-military objectives have a socio-political foundation based on socio-economic disenfranchisement and cultural, religious, and ethnic connections.  Andrew, naturally, focuses on the American military response to adversarial propaganda and misinformation, but what about the State Department and the other non-military information assets in the United States?  Those are not, unsurprisingly, mentioned.  Why?  Because the Defense Department is the only institution funded and staffed to address adversarial propaganda and misinformation.  It also has the educational float to send its experts to its own educational system for extended periods to devise new doctrine and train the future cadre of practitioners.

Today, as Andrew points out by omission, American public diplomacy wears combat boots as civilian institutions languish, engaged in a kind of neutered beauty contest more typical of the end of the Cold War than the beginning.  For the entire twentieth century, strategic communication that targeted foreign and domestic public opinion had been a civilian function.  From the Committee for Public Information in World War I, the Office of War Information and the Voice of America in World War II, through the United States Information Agency and the numerous language radio stations and other State Department public diplomacy missions such as cultural exchange, strategic and tactical communication, was the responsibility of civilian institutions.  This was called public diplomacy even though, in the words of Edward Gullion, propaganda was “the nearest thing in the pure interpretation of the word to what we were doing.”

In examining America’s ability to react and respond to insurgent propaganda, Andrew rightly calls Smith-Mundt into question as a functional barrier to Defense Department operations (Andrew, thanks for the shout out, by the way).  Andrew is correct in attributing DOD inaction on Smith-Mundt, but it should be characterized as a DOD interpretation of the Act.  This interpretation, which is unevenly and at times illogically invoked, is surprising to many on the public diplomacy side of American strategic and tactical communication, especially United States Information Agency veterans.  I noted in a post some six months ago that former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (and Public Affairs) Karen Hughes was surprised to learn just a couple of months before leaving office that DOD believed itself to be covered by Smith-Mundt.

In describing the imperative for U.S. acknowledgement of the problem, Andrew could have written the following:

As important as any fact in the field of foreign policy today, and perhaps much the most important, is the fact that the Insurgents have declared psychological war on the United States, all over the world.  It is a war of ideology and a fight unto the death.

Andrew didn’t write that, though.  Replace Insurgents with Russians and you have a quote attributed to Ambassador Averell Harriman in October 1946.  This was the thinking behind Smith-Mundt: to create and make permanent the  institutions to fight the war of information.  Ironically, Smith-Mundt was passed sixty years ago to address the very failure Andrew discusses.  The Act was not intended as the prophylactic most think of it as today, especially those in DOD.  The purpose of Smith-Mundt was to institutionalize and make permanent civilian strategic and tactical communication capabilities through truthful information propagation, education, and cultural exchange to counter misinformation.  Today, this capacity is too often absent and incapable in the contested spaces to warrant barely a footnote by Andrew on Radio Sawa.  As he notes, our messages are too often silenced on the take-off because of fears of influencing instead of informing.  The messages are too often shaped by how they’ll play in Iowa than in the target audience.  Or, they are just plain bad and counterproductive.  This was what Smith-Mundt fixed.

There is more on the Smith-Mundt issue to come.

For now, go read Andrew’s article.  It is your weekend or Monday assignment.

See Also:

Of budgets and priorities and the War of Ideas

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

It has been noted that the whole of the U.S. Government is not engaged in the War of Ideas.  This war, the inappropriateness of the noun “war” notwithstanding, is a war of information, of understanding, discourse, perceptions, and confidence.  It is, at its essence, a psychological struggle that requires a holistic effort and intelligent staffing and budget priorities.  However, increasing budget numbers can only do so much if the whole picture isn’t being considered. 

Success for an Information Age economy, requires strength, stability, and confidence.  The gravest threat to the United States is not a weapon of mass destruction, but weapons of mass disruption.  This type of WMD is not restricted to “dirty bombs” or attacks on unprotected chemical industries, water supplies, or food supplies.  It can, and will likely, be more subtle. 

image In Unrestricted Warfare, two Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, describe a new type of war, a “non-military type of war which is prosecuted by yet another type of non-professional warrior.”  What the colonels go on to describe isn’t the sympathetic Muslim with access to a few pounds of explosive material, but a “financier” or a “stock speculator” or a “media mogul” who, for their own reasons, wreak havoc in a special kind of terrorism.

Worse, we can do it to ourselves, which we are. 

The blogosphere jumped on the recent announcement that RFE/RL let go a key analyst: Daniel Kimmage.  With Kathleen Ridolfo, who was also fired, Kimmage was co-author of Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War Of Images And Ideas and author of the more recent Al-Qaeda Media Nexus: the Virtual Network Behind the Global Message.   Kimmage will undoubtedly land his feet, as will the other analysts. 

imageThe budget cuts that have Kimmage and others going elsewhere, as well as the demise of Newsline, is in part an indication that we’re losing the War.  The steep decline of the dollar against the Czech Koruna has made operations significantly more expensive.  While a short-term solution is to increase funding for RFE/RL, under the Broadcasting Board of Governors.  The BBG could re-allocate is scarce funds from questionable ventures or increase spending, but that’s plugging the hole in the dike. 

The long-term solution is to look deeper and inward and realize the United States is threatened by more than physical attacks, but psychological and economic attacks that may or may not be orchestrated, or even engineered by outsiders.  Some may look at this as symbolic of the end of empire, but it is simply losing focus and playing too tactically. 

The announcement from RFE/RL is really just a small issue dealing with an amount, as friend Marc Lynch points out, “which doesn’t even amount to a rounding error in the Pentagons budget” (or David Betz’s point that the whole RFE/RL budget is the equivalent to 1/2 of an F-22 pilot). This cut is symbolic of a deeper failure that we must confront if we’re to win the War of Ideas and if “victory” will have any meaning at all. 

Very briefly, let me say a few words on what should be a longer and separate post: Does Smith-Mundt apply to the BBG and does it apply RFE/RL’s to-be-launched English-language website (www.rferl.org).  In my opinion it is supposed to based on the intended coverage of the Act.  Should it?  No, and if you’re a reader of this blog you knew that.

On the King’s of War blog David notes Kimmage is scheduled (still?) to speak next week, 21 May 2008.

The email announcement from RFE/RL president Jeffrey Gedmin describing the cuts and a new resource is after the fold. 

Continue reading “Of budgets and priorities and the War of Ideas
“ →

Contracting out foreign military training

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

I am firmly opposed to contracting anything related to foreign military training on the basic belief that outsourcing prevents development of lasting military-to-military relations and inhibits military cultural exchange and personal relations.  Democratic ideals, whether from Americans, French, Germans, or British, rely upon an underlying premise that the military is subservient to the elected government.  Also, placing our own soldiers next to foreign militaries demonstrates a commitment that outsourcing does not. 

On this topic, read Peter W. Singer’s recent article on this: Lessons Not Learned: Contracting Out Iraqi Army Advising

One of the key questions surrounding the government’s escalating uses of military contractors is actually not whether they save the government client money or not (this, however, is getting harder to argue with the more than $10 billion that the Defense Contract Audit Agency believes was either wasted or misspent on contracting in Iraq. Rather the crucial question that should asked at the onset of any potential outsourcing is simple: Should the task be done by a private company in the first place?

This issue of what is an “inherently governmental” job or not is at the center of a raft of recent legislative approaches on the private military issue: the mark up by the Senate Armed Services Committee to prohibit armed contractors from “performing inherently governmental functions in an area of combat operations,” Representative David Price and Jan Schakowsky’s announcement this week of a bill seeking to prohibit intelligence agencies, including the CIA, from hiring private contractors for military detainee operations, like the infamous CACI interrogators at Abu Ghraib, and presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s bill that would require the Pentagon and State Department to develop a strategy for ensuring that its contracts do not “have private companies and their employees performing inherently governmental functions, emergency essential activities, or mission critical activities.”

While I’m not convinced Price or Obama’s bills are the answer (mostly for lack of information), the real issue is not what is “inherently governmental”, but what is appropriate for the mission.  This includes factors such as skill retention (paying somebody else to do your job means you forget how to do your job), longevity (it may be cheaper in the long run and with all factors considered to keep the job in-house), effects (how do the perceptions of policy makers and local host populations of contractors shape results), and other hard to measure elements (institutional memory, military-to-military relations).  Each of which Singer mentions. 

It is completely understandable why a hard-pressed force would contemplate contracting out advising the Iraq military. From a bureaucratic standpoint, it’s the easy way out. Despite repeated calls by such top military thinkers as Colonel John Nagl, the U.S. Army still does not have an official advising capacity. Advising has never been something “Big Army” has been all that interested in doing (it has traditionally been viewed as a career drag) and moving officers and NCOs into these roles would mean moving them out of other units. By contrast, all the muss and fuss can instead be handed off to a company to handle.

But just because a company can do the job, doesn’t always mean it should. Advising the Iraqi Army has been determined by our national leadership as a task that is essential to our successful war effort. We should treat it that way in how the job is executed.

Yes.

See also:

Kim Andrew Elliott on Senator Coburn’s letter to Stephen Hadley

~ Matt Armstrong

And another voice joins in.  Very briefly, see Kim’s response to the letter from Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) sent to Stephen Hadley I posted earlier this month. 

Senator Coburn calls for U.S. international broadcasting to be used for “democracy promotion” in Iran. Democracy involves the people making choices about their nations. Those choices are informed by a free press. Yet Senator Coburn mocks the concept of international broadcasting citing multiple points of view to “let the Iranians decide for themselves.”
     Instead, Senator Coburn writes: “The U.S. taxpayers should not subsidize content presenting a balance between the truh and the regime’s malicious propaganda. U.S. broadcasts should be the balance by the regime and others.” In other words, U.S. international broadcasting should be all pro-U.S., all anti-Tehran regime, sort of like Radio Moscow in reverse. …
     And so Senator Coburn’s sustained tirade against U.S. international broadcasting has entertainment value. Here is the champion of fiscal responsibility advocating an international broadcasting strategy that would be an absolute, utter, complete waste of the taxpayers’ money.

See also:

Recommended Reading

~ Matt Armstrong

Plowing through books and interviewing folks on the phone, so no verbosity tonight. 

Pat Kushlis at Whirled View: Smith-Mundt is a Moot Case – Except It’s Not.  That reminds me of an incomplete post I have titled “Websites you’re not supposed to see”… 

Also at Whirled View, Pat Sharpe comments on the decision to build a golf course next to the Green Zone: Let Them Eat Golf Balls

Next week (13 May 2008), COL H.R. McMaster is at AEI: After the Iraqi Offensive: An Address by Colonel H. R. McMaster

Marc Lynch drew my attention to a recent report worth reading: Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson, WINEP, Highlighting Al-Qaeda’s Bankrupt Ideology.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies has a free report titled America’s Expensive Defense.  From the conclusion:

Whatever the short-term outcome, the DoD will need in a broader review to provide greater vision and detail about the long-term strategy and missions of the military than it has to date. Questions going to the heart of defence planning would need to be addressed, leading to a determination about whether such a large and expensive military can be justified. These questions would include: how central are counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, and post-conflict stabilisation and reconstruction missions to the future of defence planning? What is the nature of the threat and what is the correct role of the military, as opposed to other tools of statecraft, to cope with it? What is the US strategy for dealing with the broader issue of failed and fragile states, and what is the proper role for military forces in coping with that challenge? To what extent should forces be shaped around potential future challenges from a resurgent Russia, a rising China, and regional powers such as Iran? What assets does the military bring to bear in dealing with other challenges to the international system, such as global poverty, governance, health, international crime, proliferation and climate change?

And to close with something humorous: I received an email from somebody at VOA asking if I was aware of their unofficial blog the other week.  In jest, I replied asking whether it was illegal for them to email me and inform me of this because of Smith-Mundt.  I haven’t heard back…

Afghanistan: Americans have the wristwatches, but who has the time?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Two suggested reads on Afghanistan.  First, read John Mackinlay’s The Taliban’s Propaganda of the Deed Strategy.  In this post King’s College’s Insurgency Research Group blog, Mackinlay recognizes that the Taliban has learned the value of media (citing a to-be-published paper by Steve Tatham) and, his dominant theme, admonishes the media for accepting the propaganda. 

The [National Day attack] demonstrates a classic propaganda of the deed partnership in which the insurgents with growing skill select a media-significant target and with witless incomprehension international reporters beam the most sensationally damning images of the event around the world so as to deliver the worst possible interpretation. There is no need for a Taliban subtext or even a photo caption, the images speak powerfully for themselves sending messages of a stricken regime put to flight in their gilded uniforms by the daring fighters of the Taliban.

Mackinlay concludes with questions:

Why not explain the propaganda context of their images or better still embargo the use of all images when reporting a sensational terrorist incident, including the endless resuscitation of images of previous attacks? But short-termism and golden–goose-egg syndrome ensure that no ambitious editor will forgo immediate profit to prevent the emergence of a regime in which their own function would be banned.

Continue reading “Afghanistan: Americans have the wristwatches, but who has the time?
“ →

Book Review: Information Operations: Doctrine and Practice

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

image

The United States is unquestioningly involved in a global struggle for the minds and wills of men and women.  The fundamental weapon in this struggle is information.  Informing the people, fueling ideology, suggesting tactics, fostering perceptions, and deception is information in action.  Giving information context is critical, without context, it is as useful as a bullet on the ground.  If you don’t pick it up and use it, someone else will to your detriment.  It is also useful to hide or deny the existence of the bullet. 

As New Media changes the notion of power, influence, and access, success and failure in modern conflict increasingly relies on adaptability to and in the global information environment.  Over the last several years, we’ve seen the U.S. military make tremendous strides and become, as necessity has required, a learning organization.  The can be seen in significant changes in doctrine, from Counterinsurgency Manual (FM 3-24) to the Operations Manual (FM 3-0).  Both address the effects of information with an entire chapter (unfortunately) named “Information Superiority”.

Whether modern military operations are kinetic (things going boom) or not (humanitarian assistance), there is a need to manage and disseminate information to inform and influence.  This is done either through the Public Affairs or somebody else.  Collectively, that “somebody” else is Information Operations, or IO.  Understanding what IO is, and perhaps more importantly what it is not, has been challenging for those not practicing it (but even then, there’s some confusion). 

Over the last several years, only a few military monographs of note have explored the role and purpose of IO.  As far as text or reference books, only Leigh Armistead’s edited work is the only substantial post-9/11 resource.  There’s a new book that incorporates the lessons and evolutions of the last several years

Dr. Christopher Paul’s Information Operations–Doctrine and Practice: A Reference Handbook is a necessary update to IO literature.  It is setup and reads like, just as the title states, a reference handbook focused on military IO.  Chris, a social scientist, methodologically pulls together relevant doctrine, pertinent works, historical examples, and provides analysis, challenges, and tensions of and between the elements of IO.  

In analyzing the elements of IO, Chris is guided by three major themes.  The first is integrating IO with higher (and broader) spanning the whole of the U.S. government.  Second, recasting IO’s five core capabilities — psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), operational security (OPSEC), electronic warfare (EW), and computer network operations (CNO) — into two pillars, one based on systems and the other on content.  And third is the tension between “black” and “white” information. 

There is nothing inherently controversial in the book.  Although some may take exception with (absolutely correct) statements like “Counterpropaganda features prominently in PSYOP doctrine, but it is also part of the public affairs portfolio.”  And, he continues,”It isn’t clear who has the lead.” 

To most practitioners, there may be nothing new, but Chris has done a tremendous service in bringing together and discussing all the elements of IO.  If you have Armistead’s fine book on your shelf, this book replaces it with new discussions and analysis on the transformations that have occurred over the last several years, including Defense Support for Public Diplomacy, Blogs and OPSEC, civil-military operations, the tension with Public Affairs, among others.

If you are studying, or simply interested in, military information operations, then this is a required resource that puts it all in one place with details not found in any other book or paper.   

Recommending terminology: DHS and NCTC docs are available

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has the original Department of Homeland Security and National Counter Terrorism Center documents encouraging changing the terminology in the “War on Terror.” 

Here’s the DHS report, dated January 2008: Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims (searchable PDF, 5.5mb).

Here’s the NCTC report is an executive summary of the DHS report above, dated 14 March 2008: Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide for Counterterrorism Communication (searchable PDF, 1.4mb).

A long time ago I had a boss tell me something, pay attention to the listening you’re creating.  These recommendations follow that same dictum.  It’s not what you say, but what they hear that matters. 

I have only skimmed them, so no deep remarks now except that to repeat these are long overdo.  haven’t read them yet, so no remarks I haven’t had a chance to read yet.  I am, as always, interested in your observations and comments.

H/T Counterterrorism Blog

A time to be flip: Psychology of the Spectacle, Sputnik in the Post-9/11 Era

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Laika, the world's first space traveler, aboard the Sputnik II space capsule before her November 1957 launch into death and immortality. (Credit: AP)Very briefly, say it isn’t so:

Hollywood and our office of civil defense fed this fear. Montages in Sputnik Mania attest to the proliferation of apocalypse films, and clips from government advertisements include messages recommending that individuals build shelters and build them right [away].

I thought we never propagandized our own… never… Smith-Mundt made sure of that, right?  Didn’t it? 

On a serious note, read from the Global Media Project:

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, “the first man made object ever to leave the atmosphere and successfully orbit the earth” on October 4th 1954, America reacted with fervor (Sputknikmania.com). It was the height of the cold war and this bold display of Soviet strength struck terror in the hearts of political and military strategists who saw in the rocket “an intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially carry a nuclear bomb.” On the Monday following Sputnik’s launch, “political and military leaders appeared in print, on the radio and on TV, telling [the American people] that Sputnik was a threat to [their] security [and] that it was launched as an aggressive attack.” Sputnik, they said, was “the first shot in a cold war that could quickly become very hot” (Sputnik Mania).

Missing is the impact of the “CNN Effect” (yes, CNN didn’t exist and yes, I agree the “Effect” in our time is less than advertised, but you get the point…): the leadership initially felt the launch was a non-issue.  It was only after pressure from the media and Congress did the propagandizing begin.

(h/t Tim at Ubiwar)

Interesting: Modeling Crowd Behavior

~ Matt Armstrong

Briefly, Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences has an interesting tool to model crowd behavior.  This has interesting use in other areas. 

There are two adaptations to this that I’d find most cool.  Change the information input (car bomb / explosion causing the stampede) to be more subtle and over time (i.e. information and misinformation campaigns).  Track physical and ideological movement.  I know of some work in this space already, but this could build upon them. 

Second, use these environments to test human interfaces with unmanned systems, both autonomous the teleoperated (remote controlled).  That, to my knowledge, has not been done.  I talked to some folks about doing this last year….

American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots

~ Matt Armstrong

image “American Public Diplomacy wears combat boots” is the opening sentence in my forthcoming chapter (written last year)in the yet to be released Public Diplomacy Handbook, co-edited by Nancy Snow and Phil Taylor.  Recent “revelations” have reinforced this point and highlight a systemic problem with how the State and Defense Departments can and do approach information activities.  And no, this isn’t about Barstow’s Hidden Hand.

The USA Today’s Peter Eisler wrote about several Defense Department news sites that have been up for a while.  Triggering this appears to be that CENTCOM has finally joined EUCOM and AFRICOM in sponsoring targeted news services in the languages of the target geography.  Other commands will follow suit as part of the Trans-Regional Web Initiative. 

Despite the protests of some, which I’ll get into below, this is neither illegal or unethical.  It is, however, indicative of a greater systemic problem within the U.S. government problem. 

In the past, as requirements dictated, a radio station, newspaper, or language service to enhance an existing outlet was stood up when a new audience needed to be included (or USIA personnel were tasked for what is seemingly now a quaint notion of a human interface).  Back in the day when there was a real ideological / information war going on (i.e. before detente), this was done through various radio services, USIA and, in some way part, the State Department. 

These sites are (likely) run from as Public Affairs functions and are thus dedicated to “news” and “facts”.  There may be, and hopefully is, input from the Information Operations folks to help narratives, which Eisler indicates is happening through the request and selection of articles to be posted.  The sites focus on themes — “promoting democracy, security, good government and the rule of law” — and do little on the creation of narratives, which is most obviously done through the editorial pages, which these sites do not have. 

Today, as this blog has oft, and not singularly, said, State’s inability, or limited ability, to participate in the war of information creates a void the Defense Department has been forced to fill.  This isn’t just an issue of resources, but the result of bureaucratic culture and structure limits.  In State, the Public Affairs mandate is to “help Americans understand the importance of foreign affairs”, thus making Public Diplomacy own such an effort.  Both State’s Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy are under a singular individual, who yet to be confirmed.  What about the Broadcasting Board of Governors?  Hardly.  RFE/RL?  No, for a variety of good reasons, they’re not configured to snap-on new services or to do so in this manner.  No, USIA used to provide this capability to the U.S., but no longer.  In the absence to counter misinformation and overt propaganda, truth news services are going online by Defense. 

The criticism the USA Today article is based on the provenance of these sites.  The transparent concerns are mired in concerns that Defense is sponsoring these sites more than anything. 

Journalism groups say the sites are deceptive and easily could be mistaken for independent news.

“This is about trying to control the message, either by bypassing the media or putting your version of the message out before others (and) … there’s a heavy responsibility to let people know where you’re coming from,” says Amy Mitchell, deputy director at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. A disclosure on a separate page “isn’t something most people coming to the site are likely to see.”

Ms. Mitchell’s issue hinges on her first point.  The media’s fear that they’ll be bypassed and not have the ability to control a message is deep.  It is, to her, the traditional media’s responsibility to disseminate its version of the news.  Is it clear where Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty or Fox News is “coming from” without a history of reading?  Where is the About page indicating the mission of Fox News anyway?

As for the other criticism,  

The websites suggest a pattern of Pentagon efforts to promote its agenda by disseminating information through what appear to be independent outlets, says Marvin Kalb, a fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

I’m not exactly sure what the Pentagon’s agenda is, but this does suggest a pattern that of needs that are not being fulfilled by any other organization, needs that used to be addressed by an ability the United States, through a variety of machinations, deemed unnecessary. 

My criticism of the sites is that they aren’t focused enough.  Sites that support multiple languages for multiple audiences frequently, as they should, re-order (emphasize & de-emphasize) the information as the audiences likely have different interests and priorities.  For example, look at how the headlines change at the French Foreign Ministry’s website based on the selected language (language options — French, English, German, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese — are available in the top-left of the page). 

As the military further entrenches itself as our public diplomats, despite its protests,  and an increasing number of the world’s population shapes their opinion of the United States through the actions of soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Secretaries of Defense in new and traditional media,  it makes sense that they would sponsor news services.  They shouldn’t, and they’ll probably be the first to admit it, but who else will do it? 

Another chance to raise Smith-Mundt: Is the State Department and President Bush “legitimizing” the actions of the enemy by continuing to use “jihadi”?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 5 Comments

Briefly, you probably already know that the State Department approved the change in terminology recommended by the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC), which in turn was based on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report, “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims.” 

Yesterday, Jeffrey Imm, at Counterterrorism Blog, notes the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, released this week, wasn’t updated to reflect the new lexicon. 

…it is apparent that these new guidelines are not being reflected in the State Department annual terrorist report and in comments from President Bush.

In the April 2008 State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 released today, anyone can clearly see the use of the terms “jihad”, “jihadist”, “jihadi”, “mujahedin / mujahadin”, “caliphate”, “Islamist” — as nouns describing enemy terrorist activity and ideology (not just in the titles of Jihadist groups’ names).

Such usage can been easily found in the Microsoft Word version of the State Department report:
– “jihad”: pages 63, 75, 81, 107, 126, 127, 174, 187, 272
– “jihadi(s)”: pages 10, 93, 94, 103, 107, 122
– “jihadist”: pages 116, 117, 120, 121
– “Islamist”: pages 17, 52, 62, 75, 87, 93, 95, 122, 188, 271, 291

These references are clearly describing State Department counterterrorist analyst descriptions of enemy terrorist individuals, activity, and ideology. For example, such phrases in the annual State Department terror report as: “promoting jihad and recruiting potential suicide bombers” (p. 75), “a recruitment network for foreign jihadis” (p. 93), “recruiting jihadists to fight” (p. 117), “numerous cells dedicated to sending Jihadi fighters” (p. 122), “AQ leadership has called for jihad against UN forces” (p. 174) — don’t sound like a view of “jihad” as a “spiritual struggle”.

Moreover, in President Bush’s April 28 press conference, he referred to the enemy as “jihadists” – to an assembled press corps that never asked him a single question about the remark.

In last week’s reported NCTC memorandum and DHS report on the proper terminology in describing the enemy, the NCTC is quoted stating that “[n]ever use the terms ‘jihadist’ or ‘mujahedeen’ in conversation to describe the terrorists…calling our enemies ‘jihadis’ and their movement a global ‘jihad’ unintentionally legitimizes their actions.” As described in last week’s article on this subject, I pointed out that this viewpoint challenges many of the key passages in the 9/11 Commission Report.

This raises a (humorous) question that Imm asks:

Does the NCTC and DHS now think that the State Department and President Bush are “legitimizing” the actions of the enemy by using such terms?

Why is this humorous?  A motivating factor behind Smith-Mundt was the fear that the State Department would undermine the President and the United States by being too soft or even sympathetic to the enemy propaganda.  Between this example, which is somewhat excusable for reasons of the bureaucracy but still should have been prevented, and Senator Tom Coburn preventing the confirmation of Jim Glassman as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is it any wonder we need to revisit Smith-Mundt?  So much of what brought about the Act sixty years ago is repeating itself today.

I recommend reading Jeffrey Imm’s whole post, The Continuing Debate Over “Jihadists” As The Enemy, that includes a discussion on why nouns and verbs are so important.  See also Jim Giurard’s post on the same here.

UPDATE: For the original DHS docs, see this post (h/t CT Blog).

(H/T Steve at COMOPS)

GOOOOOOD MORNING IRAQ! Engaging the people with more than foot patrols, on the air in Iraq

~ Matt Armstrong

Radio Station coverage in Iraq Noah Schachtman at Danger Room has a brief post on the transformation of a unit from traditional warfighting to being effective at counterinsurgency.  I’ll be brief as well, but not as brief as Noah, who gives the heads on an Army Times article ‘Our unit is the transformation’: Unexpected mission leads battalion to be a constant presence on the streets of Tikrit.

The second caller of the day sounded drunk. He demanded to know why the Americans had not built new schools or hospitals.

Turns out, he also was blind.

he began losing his sight five years earlier and couldn’t find a doctor.

“Now I can’t see a camel,” he told Lt. Col. Rick Rhyne, who was sitting in a cramped radio studio along with an interpreter and the show’s host, a gregarious fellow known only as Mr. Lebanon.

The blind caller blamed his failed eyesight on the U.S. presence. Rhyne, commander of the 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, told the caller about the new construction and other activities coalition forces had provided that were aimed at improving lives of the locals.

The article gives some good examples of the value of personal contact and the product of building trust at the tactical level.

There is payback on the morale of our forces as well:

Pfc. Ellis Branch, also a member of the engineer unit, actually wants to be in the city.

“I like it a lot better. I can’t stand sitting in one truck for more than 10 hours up and down [Main Supply Route] Tampa,” he said. “Being boots on ground feels like you’re accomplishing something.”

One last comment: a dollar says LTC Rhyne won’t, even if scheduled, appear at the DoD Blogger’s Roundtable. 

Subtitle for this post: America’s public diplomacy wears combat boots…

Worth Reading

~ Matt Armstrong

Too much on the plate, but some links worth your time to read Wednesday morning (or whenever)

For background to both of the above, you should know about Abu Yahya al-Libi, the AQ wannabe leader who authored the points on slide 10 Marc highlights.  So, for more recommended reading:

And related to that, we have a lexicon shift finally happening in the U.S. 

Changing topics, back to the Hidden Hand story:

I’m surprised nobody commented on Effects-Based Public Affairs (possibly related) or that IO begins when Law/Policy prevents PA from engaging. 

Forthcoming: a review of Chris Paul’s book.

That’s it for now.

Unrestricted Warfare Symposium 2008: Proceedings are available online

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Whether you did or did not attend this year’s URW Symposium at Johns Hopkins University (10-11 March 2008), the proceedings are available online (hard copy typically arrives much later, but I didn’t couldn’t make it this year, so I won’t be getting a book).  A few presentations stand out, even if 80% of the content was surely in the accompanying narrative. 

The first is COL Karen Lloyd’s Experiences from the Field: Using Information Operations to Defeat AQAM (al-Qaeda and Associated Movements).  COL Lloyd is from J3, Joint IO Warfare Center.  The slides don’t give away anything new, except for one not about AQAM:

image

Effects-Based Public Affairs.  More on this later.

See also Mark Stout’s (Institute for Defense Analysis) Listening to the Adversary About the “War of Ideas” as well as the rest here.

Strategic Miscommunication and Smith-Mundt

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Briefly, Andrew Exum wrote a very good response over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free to the media’s recoil that some their analysts, who weren’t vetted, may have been influenced by a skilled influence operation to manage the perceptions of Americans of the war.  What a shock.  Isn’t that why the media is supposed to vet their analysts in the first place?  In the rush to get a face on the air, and keep him (any “hers”?) there, they skipped the background checks or simply ignored what came back.  I can understand the one-off, but this was systemic and ongoing. 

To my surprise, Smith-Mundt has not been recalled as often as I expected.  However, Andrew does highlight Smith-Mundt and its purpose of preventing the government from using information created for overseas broadcast from being used within our borders.  He makes the argument that “the most significant clause in the act remains a good one: propaganda cannot and should not be directed by government officials toward the people they represent.” 

If we, in fact, look back we’ll find something interesting.  Smith-Mundt intended, if implicitly and through behind the scenes handshakes, that propaganda designed for overseas broadcast to be shared with the people through the American media.   

There are two important aspects of Smith-Mundt to consider here.  First, one of the pillars of Smith-Mundt was preventing the U.S. government from bypassing the media in its conversations with the general public.  Various reasons were given, the most notable of which was the foreseen impact on the profits of newspaper and radio companies both large and small and the infringing on their First Amendment rights to speak.  The latter was directly related to concerns that the dominance of previous government agencies, the Committee for Public Information (President Wilson’s domestic propaganda office) and the Office of War Information (President Roosevelt’s domestic propaganda office), in speaking to the public would drown out private media, and oh yeah, alternative views. 

Second, Smith-Mundt’s prohibition was against direct dissemination of materials designed for overseas information campaigns by specific U.S. information and exchange agencies (i.e. VOA, later USIA, parts of the Department of Stateetc).  The media, scholars, the public, and Congress, were permitted to view and access the material.  It was not until 1972, 24 years after Smith-Mundt was enacted, were the limitation expanded to prohibit virtually all access and dissemination of information created for overseas use by the same agencies.  Also keep in mind that Smith-Mundt came out of the Foreign Relations / Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate and House and not a domestic oversight committee, such as telecommunications. 

Propagandizing the American people was never off limits.  Just briefly, consider the monthly tests of air raid sirens, the now-campy warnings of communism and atomic warfare, deep cooperation between the military and Hollywood, and a slew of other campaigns of influence and persuasion undertaken by the government or by private parties on behalf of the government.  Those were intended for overseas consumption and weren’t created by government overseas broadcasters, so were fair game to be broadcast at home, in schools or through the media. 

In other words, Smith-Mundt is not, and never was, applicable and would not have prevented the “Hidden Hand.”  The generals were not sharing information designed for or intended for overseas consumption, they where not sharing information from State, and the government itself was not directly informing the public. 

This doesn’t make what they did excusable.  Far from it, as Andrew capably points out.  The biggest concern we should take-away from David Barstow’s Hidden Hand, is what Andrew closes with (and I mention here):

In the end, I was more heartened by the revelations about the Pentagon’s strategic communications programme than I was disgusted. What disgusted me, by contrast, was that while this well-oiled effort was underway in America, our strategic communications efforts in Iraq and the greater Middle East remained bumbling and inept.

In 2004, for example, when the US mistakenly and horrifically targeted a wedding party in Iraq, killing 40 innocent people, the spokesman in Iraq at the time lamely insisted that “bad people have parties too.”

Now that was something to get upset about.

The fact is, the United States and its allies have largely ceded the strategic communications battlefield to the insurgents and terrorists since 2001. If the Pentagon invested as much time and effort communicating to the audience of al-Jazeera as it does communicating to the audience of Fox News, more Americans soldiers in Iraq might be home by now.

See also: