Category: Public Affairs

Strengthening State by Making It More like Defense

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

AmericanDiplomacy.org has an interesting article by three students at the Joint Forces Staff College, LTC Shannon Caudill, USAF, MAJ Andrew Leonard, USA, and SgtMaj Richard Thresher (what, nobody from the Navy or a Coastie?), titled Interagency Leadership: The Case for Strengthening the Department of State.

In short, they argue State’s geographic focus should drop its early-20th (arguably late-19th) Century European view of the world and adopt the map of the Defense Department’s Combatant Commands.  The authors argue State “should be the pre-eminent diplomatic and interagency leader abroad, but it must be reorganized to become more relevant, robust, and effective.”  They also note Congress’s reticence to fully fund State… They also note Congress’s reticence to fully fund State (no, that’s not a typo, that’s history repeating itself). 

Their recommendation is a smart one.  In fact, CSIS would recognize it as a means to implement Smart Power:

DOS should create a Regional Chief of Mission (RCM), responsible for leading and synchronizing interagency capabilities to project the full range of national power elements. This diplomatic post would work in tandem with the geographic combatant commander and ensure a diplomatic face is planted on the region, not just a military one. It would also provide a regional leader for coordinating the non-military elements of national power and take the lead role in integrating interagency approaches to fulfill government objectives.

However, beyond the importance of having leadership that understands the importance and utility of the full range of national power, there are several structural issues at State that must be dealt with, arguably before the reorganization.  These include updating the personnel system, including increasing interagency billets, and increasing professional and academic education opportunities.  Changes to these would really put State on par with Defense and would facilitate State’s New Map (a book idea for somebody… may Tom’s fifth).  This would really strengthen State and complete the transformation the authors imply is necessary.

I recommend the essay. 

Smith-Mundt: a symposium to discuss its purpose, intent, and impact (the symposium that isn’t likely)

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Policy and strategy makers from all corners of America are finally realizing that the so-called “War on Terror” is a war of ideas – a war of information.  It is now accepted that cultural understanding and public opinion are equally as important as any bullet or any bomb.  Indeed, the ability of the United States to collect and disseminate information will be vital to the security of the nation for the foreseeable future.  Yet the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, an outdated Cold War relic designed to create an effective counter-propaganda capability through information activities and exchanges, to protect the American people from communist sympathizers (mostly within State), and to protect the American broadcast industry from government-funded competition, is hamstringing U.S. information capabilities.  It is one of the most influential laws affecting America’s ability to fight the War of Ideas, and it is not helping.  And yet, so few really understand this law, it’s purpose, their intent, or even worse, its real impact today.

The “little” matter of Pentagon Public Affairs “co-opting” media analysts has brought to the public sphere — once again — the issue of Smith-Mundt, whether realized it or not.  The amount of misinformation about legislation designed to counter misinformation, ah the irony, is enormous and reverberates through Congress, the Pentagon, and across the traditional and new media discussion spheres. 

Last year, John Brown, formerly of USC’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, and I began talking about putting together a conference in the sixtieth anniversary year of Smith-Mundt.  Six months ago, we began sending out a proposal for an academic conference to promote and discuss new scholarly research on the subject.  No takers so we changed the format to a more accessible symposium (with shorter lead time required for speakers… no longer would papers be required) and despite significant interest (most of the panels are tentatively filled and many have expressed interest in attending), we could not find an organization to fund our modest event. 

Continue reading “Smith-Mundt: a symposium to discuss its purpose, intent, and impact (the symposium that isn’t likely)
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What’s Behind the Hidden Hand is the Real Story

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

David Barstow’s Behind the Analysts, the Hidden Hand story about the Pentagon’s manipulation of the media’s military analysts misses the point in the quest for sensationalism.  On the one hand, this is a story about leveraging a group to relay talking points, which sounds a lot like the White House Press Corps in general during a popular Administration, or a host of other media-government interactions, some of which Barstow mentions.  On the other, this highlights a selective view of domestic influence operations and a failure to look holistically at the importance of global perceptions in the Defense Department under former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. 

I won’t get into the first point, but will make a few comments here on the second.

First the obvious question: isn’t this a violation of Smith-Mundt, the law perceived as prohibiting the propagandizing of Americans by their government?  The short answer is no, it isn’t.  Smith-Mundt, which institionalized the Voice of America as well as cultural exchanges to counter adversarial messages, only covers activities by selective parts of the State Department, specifically those that communicate with audiences beyond our borders.  It doesn’t cover the Department of Defense, but Defense has self-imposed the restriction through a rule, not legislation by Congress or military doctrine.  BUT, Defense has liberally applied the concepts of Smith-Mundt, limiting information operations and PSYOP (see also here).

Much more important is that Public Affairs, that entity that informs without influencing, actively and effectively engaged in perception management on the home front while dismissing the real war of perceptions, the war of ideas of in Iraq and around the globe.  For me, this is a key point that reflects less on Tori Clarke and more on Rumsfeld. 

One last comment, this story makes Tori Clarke’s “outing” of the Office of Strategic Influence more interesting.  Fighting to protect her turf, she proved her skill at manipulation and disinformation at exposing an office that is the essence of public diplomacy and more specifically the United States Information Agency (which highlights the void created by an absent and/or hamstrung State Department that Defense moved into).  Between Clarke and Karl Rove, we could have built a formidable information capability to attack the enemy and their propaganda, which at times was increasingly attractive because of our failure to understand the power of perceptions and the impact of the “say-do gap.”  Too bad she couldn’t be better utilized for good to restructure our information assets from Public Affairs to Information Operations to PSYOP to Public Diplomacy (nothing should be read into the order). 

This deserve more treatment than I have time for here right now.  More later, either in this blog or elsewhere. 

See also (external links):

See also (internal):

Information Operations From an Asian Perspective

~ Matt Armstrong

Update: At the request of the author, MAJ James Yin, the paper is removed pending publication in the Journal of Information Warfare, co-authored with Phil Taylor.  I’ll post a link when it’s available.

Another paper on Information Operations by a Major, this time it’s MAJ James Yin of the Singapore Armed Forces.  It was presented at the Information Operations & Influence Activity Symposium at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.  MAJ Yin’s abstract:

This paper is a comparative study of the practice of influence in its various forms i.e. propaganda, public diplomacy, psychological operations, public affairs, cyberwarfare, EW etc. in Asia. It will highlight the state of development, differences in concepts, organization and application of influence in Asian countries as compared to the Western models dominating discussions on information operations and influence today. By doing so, it attempts to provide alternative angles of approaching information operations and influence that could contribute to the generation of solutions to address challenges faced by policy-makers and practitioners today. Finally, such a study will serve to broaden the body of knowledge in influence to include both Eastern and Western viewpoints.

Yin examines 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. 

Yin is currently at the University of Leeds (no doubt working with Phil Taylor) and wisely incorporated Smith-Mundt into his analysis (although he cited colleague Mike Waller’s Public Diplomacy Reader and not this blog…). 

If IO is in anyway interesting to you, this is required reading.  Hat tip goes to Under the Influence by David Bailey.

See also: Planning to Influence by USMC MAJ Matt Morgan

The paper about the divide between Public Affairs / Information Operations you never read

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

In “Planning to Influence: A Commander’s Guide to the PA/IO Relationship“, United States Marine Corps Major Matt Morgan analyzes restraints on effective information activities within the Marines, but it speaks to the whole of Defense communications.  Adapted from the executive summary of his masters thesis at Marine Corps U., it is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.  Matt couldn’t get it published when he wrote it two years ago so today it is posted here with his permission.

More than a decade of innovation in the global information environment has radically changed the way the world communicates, and our enemies have gained new advantage in building support for their causes and inciting hostility against us. While Marine Corps leaders have long understood the importance of information in the form of command, control, communications, and intelligence, it is only relatively recently that influence and perception have become widely recognized as critical factors in all aspects of military operations. Dealing with perception in operational design, however, is complex, and integrating influence into the Marine Corps Planning Process proves difficult. Complicating factors include a lack of naval doctrine on the conduct of information operations (IO) and policies that restrict collaboration between the primary activities dealing in the cognitive dimension of the information environment—that is, public affairs (PA) and psychological operations (PSYOP).

Who is MAJ Morgan?

Maj. Morgan is currently serving in Iraq as the Strategic Communication Policy Advisor to the Commanding General, Task Force 134, Detainee Operations. Additionally, he has served as Chief of National Media Outreach, MNF-I Strategic Effects, and was deployed in 2003 to the Horn of Africa as Public Affairs Officer for CJTF-HOA. Maj. Morgan is a graduate of Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the principal author of the United States Marine Corps Strategic Communication Plan.

Headlines and Links

~ Matt Armstrong

Some quick links to other posts you should read.  No time to comment.

Also, in case you missed it, from Inside the Pentagon (sub req’d):

The Pentagon’s Strategic Communication Integration Group (SCIG) ceased to exist this month, opening a new chapter in the department’s efforts to communicate with the world. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England decided not to renew the group’s charter, so it expired March 1, officials familiar with the decision told Inside the Pentagon. The termination of the group was not announced publicly. …

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen complained that officials are too fixated on the word “strategic” when in reality the lines between strategic, operational and tactical issues are blurred almost beyond distinction, particularly in the realm of communications (ITP, Jan. 10, p1). In a memo to England, Mullen argued that U.S. deeds — not Pentagon Web sites or communications plans – are the best way to impart the country’s intentions on the world stage. The Pentagon should focus less on promoting its own story globally and more on listening to Muslims worldwide and understanding the subtleties of that community, the admiral wrote. …

And then lastly, since this has been the week of putting forth operational and strategic arguments on the use of information and persuasion, and as one colleague has noted my, um, disagreement with Smith-Mundt (although he makes one statement that’s untrue, I’ll let you figure figure out which of the three it is), a piece of domestic propaganda that today we think is illegal across the board (which reminds me of this distantly related post):

Synchronizing Information: The Importance of New Media in Conflict

~ Matt Armstrong

My post over at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy shifts gears from the strategic to the operational.  Synchronizing Information looks at the need to synchronize our information systems to effectively engage asymmetric adversaries using New Media. 

The effectiveness of information campaigns today will more often dictate a victory than how well bullets and bombs are put on a target. Putting information on target is more important when dealing with an asymmetric adversary that cannot – and does not need to – match the military or economic power of the United States and her allies.

Insurgents and terrorists increasingly leverage New Media to shape perceptions around the globe to be attractive to some and intimidating to others. New Media collapses traditional concepts of time and space as information moves around the world in an instant. Unlike traditional media, search engines and the web in general, enable information, factual or not, to be quickly and easily accessed long after it was created.

The result is a shift in the purpose of physical engagement to increasingly incorporate the information effect of words and deeds. Thus, the purpose of improvised explosive devices, for example, is not to kill or maim Americans but to replay images of David sticking it to Goliath.

Read the rest here.

Not Afraid to Talk: our adversaries aren’t, why are we?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

For an unabridged version of the below post, go here. Otherwise read on.

GWU professor Marc Lynch, perhaps more commonly known as Abu Aardvark, revealed the positions on public diplomacy of the current presidential candidates:

I came across something interesting while doing some research on public diplomacy for an unrelated project.  Since at least the 9/11 Commission Report, almost every foreign policy blueprint or platform has for better or for worse mentioned the need to fix American public diplomacy and to engage with the "war of ideas" in the Islamic world.   I expected all three remaining Presidential candidates to offer at least some boilerplate rhetoric on the theme.  What I found was different.

Marc highlighted the differences between the presidential candidates on what is arguably the most important and yet least understood element of our national security. At the end of his post, he challenged John Brown, Patricia Kushlis, and this blogger to offer our thoughts.  Patricia at Whirled View responded, as did John Brown and a few others. I suggest you read their responses.

Continue reading “Not Afraid to Talk: our adversaries aren’t, why are we?
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Pressure and Aggression No Longer Guarantee the Achievement of our Goals – We Must Consider ‘Culture-Building’

~ Matt Armstrong

imageSo says the Iranian Intelligence Ministry through its new public service announcement promoting Iranians to report suspicious activity.  MEMRI has the transcript and the PSA that ran last week. 

The video intends to scare Iranians of American soft power that purportedly seeks to undermine the regime from within using cultural warfare, which has been "on the back burner in Iran for years."  The U.S. cabal, headed by a CGI John McCain, a "senior White House official" who "orchestrates numerous conspiracies" against Iran, is told a plan to make use of leading cultural figures and that a lot has already been achieved through international scientific conferences. 

The story is simple: be afraid of engaging with foreigners, watch for suspicious activities of your friends and neighbors and your son, who is willing to betray his country for a chance to visit the U.S. There are a few scratch-your-head and go "huh?" in this 4min+ commercial, but hey, we’re not the target audience. 

By the way, only the Americans are CGI.  Apparently they couldn’t get McCain, George Soros, Gene Sharp ("theoretician of civil disobedience and velvet revolutions"), and Bill Smith to agree to be filmed for this.  Maybe they were respecting the Writer’s strike.  The rest of the PSA is live action with non-union actors.

Reminds me of counter-communist propaganda of the 1950s.  Not quite as campy though.

IMG00128 IMG00129

See also:

Another example of why we need to get our info house in order

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Kip at AM says what I’ve been saying: what the hell are we doing?  While the presentation of the child videos is better than the sterile mil-speak that announced the Zarqawi blooper reel, the separation of public affairs from information operations from strategic communications from public diplomacy certainly affected how the videos were released, the audiences, and ultimately the impact. 

Over a month to release those videos?  That’s better than other video and audio material that took longer or were never released at all that would have put a bright and disturbing light on the roaches.  

At some point you’d think we’d learn and move away from the zero-defect mentality.  The enemy has weaponized information and has maintained — by design — their version of public affairs approval very close to the point of collection that provides tremendous agility in turning around and distributing a media product.  We, the home of Madison Avenue and exploiter of global comm networks for internal comms, have so burdened our approval process that it takes over a month to release the kids video. 

Why the length of time?  Barring some other delay for synchronicity with another operation (which I doubt considering the sloppy and still sterile delivery here), three reasons: a) Information effects isn’t a priority; b) Information can’t be contained, in other words, fear of blowback; and c) A failure to grasp the value of information throughout the chain of command. 

Not only that, but because of a confused and flat wrong interpretation of a sixty year old law that intended to create a voice to speak to the world while working with domestic news agencies, the DoD has little to no creativity in disseminating this important information.  If IO was involved, it was a targeted whisper and not part of a collaborative effort with foreign speakers to shout this from the roof tops. 

Perhaps next time we should enlist UNICEF to help us with the next juicy opportunity to expose al-Qaeda for what they really are. 

First State, now the White House?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

From Opinio Juris: 

The White House is thinking of starting a blog — or at least a blog-like substance. From Dana Perino’s press conference today:

At 6:15 p.m., the President departs the White House on Marine One to head for his trip to the Middle East, the first stop being Jerusalem.
One note. As we leave for the Middle East trip today, we will begin posting periodic updates from the senior staff that’s traveling with the President on a website — on our website, whitehouse.gov. It will be called "Trip Notes from the Middle East." This is new to us. We encourage you to log on and to check back often to read some of the updates that the staff will be posting throughout the trip. So it will be just a little bit of a blog.
Q Blog?
MS. PERINO: A little bit like a blog, yes — dare I say.
Q Bolten? Hadley? You?
MS. PERINO: Probably all of the above. Ed Gillespie is also on the trip. And also Bill McGurn, our speechwriter, he’s on the trip. So they’ll be available at whitehouse.gov, and we hope to do something daily, but we’ll just see how the trip goes.
Q Is it just for the trip?
MS. PERINO: Yes, because it’s a trip to the Middle East. (Laughter.)
Q Trip notes — there could be another trip.
MS. PERINO: Well, we’ll see how it goes, and then we may do it in the future as well.

Will Barney post as well?

DoD to host an al-Qaeda Roundtable?

~ Matt Armstrong

The other day Noah posted on an upcoming cyber town meeting with al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zahwahiri. Putting on one of these events can be challenging. Allowing one month for supporters and apostates alike to submit questions and you’d need Allah’s help.

Blogger wrangler Jack Holt, DoD’s Chief of New Media operations, has sense of the challenge. Jack is the mind and force behind DoD’s Blogger’s Roundtable and while he’s not running CNN/YouTube debates, he’s running multiple teleconferences a week, sometimes more than one a day, with participants around the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq. He understands as well as any the hurdles the As-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media will face, even if As-Sahab is coordinating with Al-Fajr Center, as the announcement tells us.

So Jack told this blogger offline that he’d offer his toll-free number used for the Blogger Roundtables to host a Zahwahiri call in. Maybe this post will be read by #2’s public affairs officer and he’ll have his people talk to Jack’s people (will a DoD shortage of translators be a snag in the negotiations?).

My money is the questions for this cyber town meeting will be vetted better than they were for the CNN/YouTube debates.

On the topic of New Media, I’ll be at the Army War College next month for a workshop appropriately titled "New Media and the Warfighter" (pdf).

P.S. No doubt Walter Pincus would report from that transcript…

I might like you better if we slept together

~ Matt Armstrong

048_eu_filmIs the EU reaching in, out, or around with this montage? From Fortune:

They don’t call it the European Union for nothing

To highlight its role as a patron of the arts, the EU posts a mashup on YouTube featuring two dozen sex scenes from movies it has funded, followed by the line, "Let’s come together."

This government propaganda video, below, is not work safe for sensitive American workplaces. This promotion has some unions you won’t find in the U.S. Department of State’s "Portraits of America".

Monitoring what they say (and don’t)

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Read Abu Muqawama:

Andrew Hammond, who speaks wickedly good Arabic and is a close friend of Abu Muqawama’s violent Pashtun flatmate, has an article up on the Reuters wire on the thaw in relations between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.* This is bad news for consumers of the Arabic-language media, because Qatar-owned al-Jazeera was one of the few places where you could read or see anything critical of the Saudi regime. Rich Saudi princes have bought controlling interests in pretty much every newspaper (al-Hayat, ash-Sharq al-Awsat, an-Nahar, etc.) and television station (al-Arabiyya, LBC, etc.) in the Arab world. So a country that sends hundreds of suicide bombers to Iraq to kill "Shia apostate dogs" (read = innocent civilians), provided 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers and spreads the most extreme interpretation of Islam through the Islamic world never has anything bad written or said about it in the Arabic-language media. Great.
*Abu Muqawama has never actually seen his flatmate do anything violent, but he is Pashtun and asks Abu Muqawama to post entries describing him as "violent" every so often in order to boost his "street cred" with the Islamist militants among whom he spends his days drinking tea.

Heritage on Smith-Mundt

~ Matt Armstrong

I read through Juliana Geran Pilon’s Smith-Mundt article and I agree with Kim Andrew Elliott’s assessment that it has little to do with Smith-Mundt (for background on Smith-Mundt, see my post at Small Wars Journal… part one and one-half is here, part II is forthcoming).

While her intentions are laudable, her examples miss the point and her arguments conflate description of action with the action itself. In the end, she ironically she seems to be making the same arguments that brought about Smith-Mundt in the first place.

Continue reading “Heritage on Smith-Mundt
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History Channel show on MilBloggers…tonight

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Band of Bloggers on History Channel tonight, 8p (which for some of you is in a few minutes):

Explore the impact of blogging as a new medium for immediate and raw information. In the midst of modern day combat examine the unfiltered and raw evolution of military blogs and bloggers. Listen as soldiers who during their recent Iraq deployments reflect on the important connection they had with their blogging and how the band of military bloggers has revolutionized the way we understand combat. Experience firsthand, unfiltered accounts of the pain, the hardship, and even the simple beauty found in Iraq; stories that often go unseen in the media’s coverage of the war.

(H/T Cannoneer No. 4 at SWJ)

WTF? Pentagon vs. Hobby Shops

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

From Noah:

Inside the Pentagon reports that "your local hobby shop has recently had to charge little Timmy 40 cents extra to purchase an $8 toy model kit with the likeness of a U.S. military vehicle, according to the Hobby Manufacturers Association (HMA)."

Timmy has had pay up since defense contractors began pressuring scale-model manufacturers and distributors to pay licensing fees in order to use the designation or likeness of the life-sized military vehicles, HMA says.

The contractors have sought 2 to 8 percent of the costs of each unit from toy manufacturers, according to the association. This expense, which amounts to an increased cost of $6,000 for 15,000 units, is passed on to the consumer, driving down demand and putting small hobby shops in jeopardy, the association argues on its Web site.

So Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) included a provision in the House version of the fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to license trademarks, service marks, certification marks, and collective marks relating to military designations and likenesses of U.S. weapon systems to any qualifying company upon request.

“The fee charged for a license would be no more than required to cover the cost to the government, and the license would be non-exclusive,” the bill states.

The Pentagon, however, “strongly opposes” Andrews’ provision, devoting an entire page to the issue in its latest authorization appeals package. Such appeals are typically reserved for last-ditch efforts to save big DOD programs from funding cuts.

DOD “can envision no valid reason why a trademark owner should ever be compelled to allow another entity to use that intellectual property, even for reasonable license fees,” the appeal says.

The HMA, however, can envision several reasons.

One is that model kits can serve as a recruitment tool and free advertising for DOD. Another is that military designations are determined by a Pentagon system and the vehicles’ designs are funded by taxpayers.

While that last paragraph is important, more generally what the hell is Andrews thinking? Aren’t there better things to do with his and his staff’s time?