Category: Psychological Struggle

USAID: Why the Story that U.S. Foreign Assistance Is Working Must Be Told

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

USAID: Why the Story that U.S. Foreign Assistance Is Working Must Be ToldForeign aid, from humanitarian relief to reconstruction and stabilization programs, are at their core public diplomacy missions. They communicate interest, respect, and generate understanding of both sides. They are also absolutely essential in today’s global struggle for minds and wills. The mother of all reconstruction and stabilization programs, the Marshall Plan, included the “standard” rebuilding but also incorporated education programs, cultural exchanges, and rebuilding civic society.

However, foreign aid has little in the way of a domestic constituency. Like public diplomacy’s international information programs, there’s little awareness within the United States not just about the effectiveness of these overseas endeavors but that anything is being done at all.

USAID just released a significant and interesting report on how it needs to improve engagement both overseas and here in the United States.

Unfortunately without comment (time constrained), I highly recommend this report. ‘Tis the season for reports on changing America’s voice, so if you have limited time, I recommend this be very near the top of that pile.

Foreign assistance is at the center of the most comprehensive reformulation of this nation’s strategic doctrines in more than half a century. The development community will play a key role in meeting the nation’s unprecedented challenges.

Our own well-being as a nation is closely linked to events in developing countries on fronts including trade and investment, infectious diseases, environmental protection, international crime and terrorism, weapons proliferation, migration and the advance of democracy and human rights, among others.

Americans, however, have only a rudimentary understanding of the design, scope and impact of U.S. foreign assistance programs. Public opinion is characterized by misconceptions and prejudices that must be countered if we are to sustain the foreign assistance commitment that our humanitarian and national security objectives require.

Detect a bit of Smith-Mundt in there? You should… The Act was passed largely because America’s “whisper” was inadequate to support the mother of all foreign aid programs: the Marshall Plan. Despite the American role in liberating the continent, “knowledge of the United States [was] being systematically blotted out” by Communist information activities that were compared to a “tremendous symphony orchestra” playing all the time. The Smith-Mundt Act was passed to make known what we were doing and to counter distortions and misinformation propagated by the enemy. Together, the Marshall Plan and the Smith-Mundt Act constituted a denial of sanctuary program central to Kennan’s containment that was not, contrary to many modern believes, based on force of arms but on the force of ideas and deeds.

In other words, USAID should be very interested in returning to the principles, purposes, and intent of the Smith-Mundt Act.

Download the report here.

See also:

Noteworthy

~ Matt Armstrong

“All this leaves the Pentagon chief in the unusual position of arguing for greater funding for the State Department, which was sidelined under Rumsfeld.” – Anna Mulrine writing about Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in US News & World Report. This sentence, the first of the last paragraph goes directly to the of America’s public diplomacy/strategic communication problem: a lack of leadership at State that not only sidelines the Department but creates a spiral to the bottom by undermining Congressional confidence (and thus limiting funding) and the perceived utility of the Department across the Administration. Secretary of State Rice has so marginalized herself in these debates that she is an implied problem better left undisturbed and unmentioned.

SIGMA has a website: “SIGMA is a new concept in public service "think tanks"– we are a voluntary association of speculative writers who have spent our careers exploring the future. We offer that experience and expertise pro bono to the government for the good of the nation.” Full disclosure: I’m a friend of SIGMA.

“A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.” – Novosti. The quoted “political analyst” is Professor Igor Panarin, “a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.”

“…armed groups attack humanitarians to prevent them from winning the minds and wills of populations.” Chris Albon at War and Health. Public diplomacy is not just about informing and discussing with people the alternatives but building an alternative future. Foreign Aid, reconstruction and stabilization or core efforts of the struggle for minds and wills. It is worthwhile to remember that the Marshall Plan, the mother of all reconstruction and stabilization programs, was very much a denial of sanctuary program in the struggle for minds and wills. It is also worthwhile to know that the enemy’s response to that program caused Smith-Mundt to be passed.

Google hosts millions of Time photos here.

Scripting Jihad: pulling back the curtain and exposing uncertainty and manipulation from MSNBC (h/t JMW)

Readings on Future Threats

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025

"Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" is the fourth unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. Our report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many possible "futures," we offer a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.

Some of our preliminary assessments are highlighted below:

  • The whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.
  • The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
  • Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
  • The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.

Related: BBC’s Key Points, Enterprise Resilience Management’s key points, Jonathan Landay’s comments at Nukes and Spooks, and Tom Barnett’s disappointment.

See also: 55 Trends Now Shaping the Future of Terrorism (March 2008) and 55 Trends Now Shaping the Future (April 2008)

Al-Qaeda is not the only threat

~ Matt Armstrong

John Sullivan, the co-founder of the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning group and lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, focusing on emerging threats, reminds us that Al-Qaeda is not the only threat. As such, public diplomacy and strategic communication planning that focuses only on Al-Qaeda is too limiting.

From Danger Room:

While the public and media are occupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential conflict with Iran, the downward spiral in Pakistan, and a global economic meltdown, a new, rapidly-evolving danger — narco-cartels and gangs — has been developing in Mexico and Latin America. And it has the potential to trump global terrorism as a threat to the United States.

Read the rest at Danger Room and a longer article on Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency at Defense and the National Interest.

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s racial epithet

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

MountainRunner friend Spencer Ackerman nails it on Zawahiri’s use of "House Negro" in Al-Qaeda’s latest propaganda:

With an American president as loathed as George W. Bush around the world, it’s easy for Al Qaeda to portray the U.S. as venal and stupid and brutish as he’s proven. Obama complicates the narrative significantly: the very color of his skin, precisely what Al Qaeda mocks, symbolizes America’s willingness to change. That’s exactly what Al Qaeda fears most. …

Still, as Ilan Goldenberg notes at Democracy Arsenal, "Al Qaeda’s narrative is now under siege and it’s clearly uncertain about how to react." That sort of disruption is precisely what the U.S. needs to rapidly exploit. In both policy and public-diplomacy terms, the clay is still wet. Why haven’t we seen the State Dept.’s blog hit the Zawahiri "House Negro" tape yet?

I have all the respect for the DipNote staff, and America.gov for that matter, but they just don’t have the agility or flexibility to respond to this message. Of course the argument could be made that a response highlights the attack. But in this case, as with most, we know the message is being received and a reply like Spencer’s strikes at AQ’s vulnerability. AQ is losing the struggle for minds and wills and this very message highlights that they will grasp at anything to attempt to regain control of the narrative.

DipNote and America.gov should be one of the many platforms used to post accessible responses. Reposting the above is out of the question, but at a minimum a short response echoing or linking to Spencer is better than silence and would get traction. I can think of several @state.gov people that could bang out a credible response.

State’s foreign media hubs are one thing, but what about online? I’ll wager Defense has already started to respond to this the Zawahiri message on the Internet. State needs to respond both to U.S. audiences (ostensibly DipNote’s mission) and abroad (America.gov’s mission). Seriously, even China is implementing an agile response capability.

I don’t think we’ll see anything from DipNote or America.gov on this. It would be great to be wrong. Prove me wrong.

See also:

The internet and “public opinion” in China

~ Matt Armstrong

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

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

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

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

Read the rest of Jim’s post here.

Can Facebook defeat terrorism?

~ Matt Armstrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading “Can Facebook defeat terrorism?
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Quoting History: Policies and Actions Must Anticipate Psychological Impact

~ Matt Armstrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers

~ Matt Armstrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More to come here at MountainRunner.

The Spectrum of War and Peace and the Role of Public Diplomacy

Spectrum of War and Peace (2008)
~ Matt Armstrong

I was on the wrap-up panel at the end of an unnamed conference a few months ago where I verbally presented the idea of a spectrum of war and peace as it related to the subject matter. Movement along this spectrum, as I described it, changes the appropriateness, and effectiveness, of different elements of power and methods engagement. But at no time, especially in today’s global information environment, global diasporas, and the relative increased power of individuals and non-state actors relative to states and state-actors, does the power of persuasion through information go away.

Continue reading “The Spectrum of War and Peace and the Role of Public Diplomacy “ →

Making Diplomacy Public

~ Matt Armstrong

Continuing on the subject of defining public diplomacy, it’s important to recall that a key feature of international relations is and always has been the need for and ability of individuals to affect – and defend against – influence. Classic realpolitik authors from E.H. Carr, writing in The Twenty Years’ Crisis, and Hans Morgenthau, in Politics Among Nations, described the importance of public opinion and national morale in international relations.

Briefing 2.0 by Sean McCormack (see similar from the UK) and roundtable discussions by Under Secretary Jim Glassman are important to loop the public into the process. It can also spark an interest by the mainstream media, something the DOD Blogger Roundtable is rather proud of.

It is essential the public, both foreign and domestic, be realized as central to the enduring psychological struggle of minds and wills. They are not only the target the persuasion from information activities to cultural and educational exchanges, but the agents of influence themselves. As I wrote in the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy,

Continue reading “Making Diplomacy Public
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Defining Public Diplomacy: Preparing for a new Administration

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 8 Comments

What is public diplomacy? It can’t be everything otherwise it is nothing. Is it a dialogue or a monologue? It is based on the speaker, the means of engagement, or the targeted audience? Is “convening” discourse between, within or between foreign audiences public diplomacy? What about the content or force of the message? Is public diplomacy passive hoping to “win hearts” or can it be actively engaged in a psychological struggle to change minds and encourage the will to act in an audience? Does it have to be focused on physical security or can it apply to all elements of national security from economics to global health?

Continue reading “Defining Public Diplomacy: Preparing for a new Administration “ →

Kristin Lord on DOD’s $300m “Public Diplomacy” push

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

The Brookings’ Kristin Lord asks why the DOD is getting resources for public diplomacy in the Christian Science Monitor:

Today’s public diplomats wear boots, not wingtips. Increasingly, the Defense Department is at the forefront of US efforts to engage public opinion overseas. While the State Department formally leads the effort, the Pentagon has more money and personnel to carry out the public diplomacy mission.

This trend is risky. The message foreign publics receive – not the message the US sends – changes when the Pentagon is the messenger. Putting our military, not civilians, at the forefront of US global communications undercuts the likelihood of success, distorts priorities, and undermines the effectiveness of US civilian agencies.

…

The Pentagon should play an important role in public diplomacy, but as a partner – not the principal. For its part, the Congress should give public diplomats the tools they need to do their jobs, and then hold them accountable.

Read the whole article here. The first line should sound familiar…

An example of Smith-Mundt protecting the people from the State Department

~ Matt Armstrong

In 1947, as Congress weighed the fate of the Voice of America, then described as America’s “fast” engagement with the world, Secretary of State George C. Marshall said it was essential to make known what our motives are. It is, he continued, hard for us to understand how much we are misrepresented and not comprehended. It was well understood that policy was linked to perception and that everything we did reflected on who and what we were. Everything we do and say, and everything we fail to do or say, reflects upon as, as Eisenhower later said.
Continue reading “An example of Smith-Mundt protecting the people from the State Department
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Arming for the Second War of Ideas: the Department of Global Affairs

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Some suggest the War of Ideas is simply between us and “violent extremists”, “Islamists”, or some other derivative label for Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and associated movements from the Middle East to South Asia and eastward. There is even proposed legislation that places boundaries on who the adversaries are. However, while some of our policy makers continue to ignore or even reject the importance of information and persuasion in international relations from economics to war, our major competitors do not.

The dean of international relations at the Russian foreign ministry’s Diplomatic Academy said

The Russian government must prepare to fight information wars which are becoming an ever more important part of geopolitical life, restoring parts of the Soviet-era system and going beyond that as well…

The Chinese meanwhile are spending time exploring informatized warfare, “attitude warfare”, “perception warfare”. All of which are fundamentally based on Sun Tzu’s dictum of defeating an enemy without fighting. Unrestricted Warfare will attack the enemy’s strategy and diplomacy, contend for “hearts, minds and morale”, and focus on enemy’s decision-making skills and personal traits.

Interfering with the OODA loop is not new to us, even Hans Morgenthau described the importance of morale and the quality of diplomacy (as did George Kennan in his intentions on containment).

The U.S. is still not armed for the Second War of Ideas, a war we’re already 7-10 years into. To be effective, we need a Department of Non-State, functionally if not bureaucratically, armed with the appropriate tools and comprehensive collaboration across agencies and countries and organizations. But we also need a Department of State as traditional diplomacy is not obsolete. The War Department changed to the Defense Department at the end of World War II and the beginning of the First War of Ideas, maybe it’s time to change the Department of State to the Department of Global Affairs.

Ideas are not confined by geo-political borders, including our own. Myopic and temporally challenged visions of who the enemy is and will be and where and how the struggle takes place must be challenged.

See also:

Noteworthy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

“An overview of the review team’s mission obtained by The Post says that including other government agencies and other nations in the planning will ‘mitigate the risk of over-militarization of efforts and the development of short-term solutions to long-term problems.’ … Another priority is to take a regional approach to the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including more robust diplomacy with neighbors and a regional economic development effort.” – from a Washington Post article by Ann Scott Tyson on General David Petraeus’s 100-day assessment of strategy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.

“We also pride ourselves on our ability to move ahead of the sound of guns. If we can move ahead of the sound of guns, and prevent them, we’re all better off.” – SOCOM Commander Adm. Eric T. Olson quoted in the Los Angeles Times. SOCOM’s operating mantra of “by, with, and through” the indigenous population is how informational activities must also act.

“The United States’ current counterterrorism strategy lacks any efforts to break the terrorists’ ties to the communities that conceal them and the culture of martyrdom that inspires them.” Malcolm Nance in Foreign Policy (subscription req’d)

“As we’ve noted before, today’s jihadists don’t just use the Internet, occasionally.  ‘They don’t exist without the Web,’ says Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla. Everything from recruiting to training to propaganda is handled online.” – Noah Shachtman at Wired. Twenty years+ ago is was “media is the oxygen of the terrorist.” Today, New Media and traditional media are the oxygen of the terrorist, the insurgent, the counterinsurgent, and the counterterrorist.

“A project at the University of Sao Paulo aims to overcome one of these hurdles by using the sun to power a self-contained wi-fi access point.” – BBC World Service. This is an ICT4D application that empower and engage poor communities in susceptible regions. See also Picking ICT Targets and ICT to Deny Sanctuary.

“When conducting HA missions, PSYOP is necessary for initiating and coordinating reliable communications among aid workers and with the local populace. … CA operations cannot succeed without winning “the hearts and minds” of the people, and PSYOP cannot succeed without CA support.” – short paper by Myrtle Vacirca-Quinn, M.D. Sternfeld and Luis Carlos Montalván at Small Wars Journal.

“German diplomats, for example, spend a year in a sort of Foreign Service boot camp and are expected to speak fluent French and English before being posted abroad. American diplomats typically get seven weeks—most of it spent learning rules and regulations, not economics or political science or history or even management skills—before they’re thrown into a consular job somewhere overseas.” Andrew Curry writing about the Foreign Service Officer Test in Foreign Policy. See also the report by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

“This is the imperative to rely far more on traditional diplomacy, public diplomacy and foreign aid delivered through civilian means to begin to repair America’s face and effectively conduct its business abroad.” – Pat Kushlis at WhirldView.

Last note: I have the Paret edition, how about you?

Propagating emotional responses for supporting the cause

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 11 Comments

image

Recommended reading: Lines and Colors’ post on Propaganda:

It’s commonly thought that “propaganda”, a technique of spreading misinformation, or slanted opinions, for the purpose of manipulating opinions, has been utilized primarily by oppressive regimes like Imperial and Nazi Germany in the early part of the 20th Century or the Soviet Union or Communist China in the latter part.

That in itself is a form of propaganda, which can be, and often is, utilized by Western democracies. Propaganda is simply a technique, not a set of values. It can just as easily be employed in a “good” cause as an “evil” one.

What distinguishes propaganda from information, aside from the fact that it is often disinformation, is that it is calculated to appeal to the emotions and circumvent rational judgment. One of the key features of propaganda is that it most often (almost always, in fact) taps into the power that images have to reach us on an unconscious level.

(h/t JB)