Tag: Strategic Communication

Posting will resume next week

~ Matt Armstrong

Back from DC where I gave a presentation titled "Network at Network Speed: the Power of Now Media" at an off-site for a USG (not State or Defense) organization. The presentation combined my presentations on public diplomacy and strategic communication by USG and overseas, including insurgents and terrorists and the utility of social media while understanding technology is not a silver bullet. I challenged the client to think about their product (not widgets but ideas, “hope” as the principal put it) and the value of engaging internal and external resources, clients, constituents, supporters, etc. through social media and thinking of ways to leverage the merging of “old” and “new” media.

When a presentation turns into a breaking-the-schedule over-four hour discussion engaging everybody in the room (positively), it connected.

Regular posting will resume next week, although it will be a short week with a return trip to DC beginning Thursday (this with the family: first half is a business trip for my wife and last part is business trip for me, in the middle is family time… blossoms?). In the meantime, I’ll repeat my last "while I’m away" post and again recommend the following posts if you still haven’t read them:

There have been two updates to MountainRunner.us: the blog’s About page and a new logo.

Event: InfoWarCon (Updated)

~ Matt Armstrong

InfowarCon 2009 discusses Information Operations, Information Warfare, Cyberwar, Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy issues learned in Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Lebanon, Gaza and Georgia-Russia to predict the future of IO.

When: April 23rd and 24th

Where:  Gaylord National Harbor Resort and Convention Center

Contact: Joel Harding at info@crows.org or call (703) 549-1600

Hosted by the Information Operations Institute, a part of the Association of Old Crows.

I have a panel at InfoWarCon to discuss the direct and indirect impact of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 in the modern global information environment. A revised title of the panel should appear shortly: Strategic Communication in a Global Information Environment. This is conceptually an extension of the 2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium.

I am working on two events of my own earlier that week. Details to be announced as they become finalized.

Highlights for InfoWarCon are after the fold.

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Persuasive politics: Revisit the Smith-Mundt Act

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

In the The Washington Times:

Persuasive politics: Revisit the Smith-Mundt Act

Matt Armstrong
Friday, December 19, 2008

"Repairing America’s image" is a popular mantra these days, but discussions on revamping America’s public diplomacy are futile if the legislative foundation of what we are attempting to fix is ignored. A sixty year old law affects virtually all U.S. engagement with foreign audiences by putting constraints on what we say and how we say it. Perhaps more importantly, it limits the oversight by the American public, Congress, and the whole of government into what is said and done in America’s name abroad. The impact of this law, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, must not be ignored if policymakers hope to improve how the United States communicates overseas.

Read the whole op-ed here.

Registration is now open plus other announcements

~ Matt Armstrong

Registration for the Smith-Mundt Symposium – A Discourse to Shape America’s Discourse – is now open. Registration is free, open to the public, and required to attend the event on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

The Symposium will be held at the Reserve Officer’s Association across the street from the Senate and House office buildings in Washington, D.C.

For details on this event, see http://mountainrunner.us/symposium/about.html.

There is also a discussion forum built specifically for this event: http://mountainrunner.us/symposium/. From here you can register to attend the Symposium as well as discuss the Smith-Mundt Act and suggest and discuss questions for the different panels. This site will host the electronic library to be available to registered attendees prior to the Symposium.

To register for the Symposium, go to http://mountainrunner.us/symposium/ and click on Registration in the menu bar near the top. Even if you cannot attend the Symposium, because you are reading this you will probably find the discourse at the website interesting and your contribution will increase the value for everyone.

Send any questions, comments, or issues, including registration problems, to Matt Armstrong at blog@mountainrunner.us.

The Report of the 1967 United States Advisory Commission on Information

~ Matt Armstrong

The U.S. Advisory Commission on Information was one of two oversight commissions established by the Public Law 402, otherwise known as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. The other commission focused on cultural and educational exchange. Today, there is one commission, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, that does not have a legal obligation to produce annual reports and, according to Title 22, it “shall have no authority with respect to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board or the United States National Commission for UNESCO.”
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American Public Diplomacy Wears Combat Boots: the Pentagon’s $300 million to “engage and inspire”

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

American public diplomacy wears combat boots. Not only is the Pentagon in the critical last three feet of engagement virtually and in person with audiences around the globe, especially in contested areas, but it is the Defense Department that is putting up the money to expand public diplomacy. The Pentagon’s 3-year, $300 million contract for private companies to “engage and inspire” Iraqis to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government, described by Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus in the Washington Post, is more than an effort five years too late. It is one more shining example of the significant failure of the U.S. Government to come to grips with the present need and commit the resources necessary to engage in the Second Great War of Ideas that began in earnest nearly a decade ago.

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Principles of Strategic Communication

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 8 Comments

This is Part I of two posts on describing “Strategic Communication.” Part II is here. 

In the coming months, reports and Congressional legislation will attempt to change how the United States communicates with the world. Called “public diplomacy” or “Strategic Communication,” the importance of this type engagement has finally come to the forefront of our national security debate, at least for those taking a serious look at the present and future. Irregular conflict, the present and future reality of war, is based not on our ability to “kill our way to victory” but to operate in a local and global information environment.

When there are no capitals to take or “hearts” to be “won,” real security comes through enduring engagement of local and global groups in a modern proxy struggle for minds and wills. Operating “by, with, and through” such groups not only extends our reach, but acts as a force multiplier against adversaries who elicit support in the global information environment for money, recruits, and sympathetic actions. Think Hamburg, Madrid, London, and Glasgow.

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The Brownback Bill: S.3546 to Establish the National Center for Strategic Communication

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 5 Comments

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) this week introduced S.3546 titled “The Strategic Communications Act of 2008.” The Senator knows the bill will not be passed in this Congress and feels more discussion on the subject matter is required. His bill is, in part, intended to provoke that discourse.

The National Center for Strategic Communication is largely based on the National Counter Terrorism Center model. The bill recognizes that the current system is flawed and needs to be fixed. Driving this bill are concerns over the present-day quality of broadcasting, concerns over the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and a general failure of the public diplomacy apparatus to function effectively since 9/11. To the delight of many I know, this bill nukes the BBG.

The bill, as presented (but prior to receiving its number), is available here (Adobe Acrobat 6 or later is required). I (and others) are interested in your thoughts on the bill.

What follows are some of the concerns I have raised in off-the-record and constructive and relevant meetings (e.g. beyond the Brookings event). The problems are such that I do not support this bill in its present form.

It emphasizes the “us versus them” construct as it focuses on who we are and not the increasingly important struggle between foreign audiences. “Us versus them” is extremely important here at home but “them versus them” is more important beyond our shores.

It only focuses on a specific group, using a word, “Islamist”, that is indistinguishable to most of the globe from general Muslims. Equally, if not more important, this singular focus does not establish a comprehensive ability to participate in future informaticized wars, conflicts, and struggles. It is very likely the next “war” will be information-based without bullets or bombs, or with those “kinetics” in complete support to the information activities of the adversary, be it state or non-state. The focus in this bill does little to prepare the United States for a broader struggle.

The director has limited reach into other USG thinking, planning, and personnel. Personnel concurrence, agreements on the selection of personnel, is absent and budgetary oversight is limited to this new silo of excellence. A possible solution is a 1206-style budget model.

Public diplomacy is ripped out of the State Department, effectively making it only a Department of State when the central criticism is it must be acting as a Department of Non-State and engaging publics. Most “traditional” diplomacy is conducted in public to pressure and create awareness in foes, allies (ours and theirs), “swing voters”, and our own public. By removing public diplomacy, the proactive, engaging, narrative and context-based practices of public diplomacy are torn from the Department. What is left is public affairs that largely operates reactively, by press release sans context, and largely under the theory that one can and must inform without influence.

Public diplomacy and strategic communication elsewhere in USG remains untouched even as it is ripped from State. The advisory panel is inadequate. The military, ironically, operates completely opposite from the American public. Whereas John Q. Public looks at the law as a guidance of what cannot be done, the military constantly refers to the law (and strategy documents) to see what they can do. There must be a channel established to permit and even encourage, but not necessarily legislate (which is what they want to avoid), the military to use the NCSC.

The U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy was intentionally left untouched. This bill must push for revised criteria for USACPD membership. The original Commission’s were filled with professionals with experiences in media, persuasion, and communication. In fact, the original Commissions were “blue ribbon” panels presenting public reports to Congress that were critical critiques aimed at improving operations and effectiveness every six months.

The necessary professionalism in international engagement is not addressed. A motivator behind this bill was VOA Iran broadcasts and arguments that feature selection was based on objectivity. The bill must focus on professionalism. VOA staff, BBG staff, etc are by and large a very professional bunch. A major purpose of the Smith-Mundt Act was to make permit America’s international broadcasting to raise the level of professionalism because, while well-intentioned, the quality was at times poor and the messages possibly counter-productive.

A link to capacity-building is required. Foreign audiences often need to see and receive capacity-building to appreciate the “them versus them” discourse. They need development assistance, electricity, etc. To counterinsurgency experts, it comes as no surprise that Smith-Mundt, the information and counter-misinformation act, was passed largely in response to enemy activity against a major capacity and educational program, the Marshall Plan.

Private media support should be expanded as domestic media, especially, pulls back from international coverage. The Smith-Mundt Act legislated that private media be used whenever possible. The Informational Media Guarantee, a supplement to the Smith-Mundt Act put into the Marshall Plan, helped get U.S. media products, from newspapers to Disney films, overseas. This should be expanded.

The principles of the bill should be focused less on specifics, and on broader common ground. Some suggested language to be included is here.

While there are several parts of the bill that concern me, one pleases me. The Brownback bill removes the distortions to the Smith-Mundt Act in 1972 and 1985 by eliminating the prohibition against domestic dissemination. See specifically Sec 4(c)2 of the bill, or page 5, line 5: “by striking subsection (a)”. Subsection (a) of 22 USC 1461 reads:

(a) Dissemination of information abroad The Secretary is authorized, when he finds it appropriate, to provide for the preparation, and dissemination abroad, of information about the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, and other information media, and through information centers and instructors abroad.

Subject to subsection (b) of this section, any such information (other than “Problems of Communism” and the “English Teaching Forum” which may be sold by the Government Printing Office) shall not be disseminated within the United States, its territories, or possessions, but, on request, shall be available in the English language at the Department of State, at all reasonable times following its release as information abroad, for examination only by representatives of United States press associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, and stations, and by research students and scholars, and, on request, shall be made available for examination only to Members of Congress.

The bill does, however, offer a definition of “strategic communication” (note: most refer to the concept in the singular “communication” and not the form in this bill):

The term “strategic communications” means engaging foreign audiences through coordinated and truthful communications programs that create, preserve, or strengthen conditions favorable to the advancement of the national interests of the United States.

As for an external to State Department entity doing America’s public diplomacy, that’s for another post but suffice it to say that some outreach must remain within the functional departments while becoming increasingly cooperative and engaged in the interagency process. What is missing in everything to date is a functional rethinking of what public diplomacy and strategic communication really mean. Without understanding the needs and requirements, how can we build the systems?

Enough by me on this right now. What are your thoughts?

National Defense Authorization Act and Strategic Communication, Propaganda, and the SCMB

~ Matt Armstrong

The defense authorization conference report passed last night with provisions related to Strategic Communication, referred to as Public Diplomacy by some tribes, but not all. The following comes from the Joint Explanatory Statement to accompany S. 3001, the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

Reports on strategic communication and public diplomacy activities of the Federal Government (sec. 1055)

The House bill contained a provision (sec. 1074) that would require the President to submit to Congress a report on a comprehensive interagency strategy for public diplomacy and strategic communication efforts for the Federal Government.

The Senate bill contained no similar provision.

The agreement includes the House provision with a clarifying amendment. We note that numerous studies from independent commissions, the Government Accountability Office, and the Defense Science Board have indicated a lack of clearly articulated strategic goals for the Federal Government’s efforts at strategic communication and public diplomacy. Taken as a whole, these studies point to deficiencies in the U.S. approach to this mission that have not been adequately addressed by previous strategies, or by any other official government initiative. For example, these studies indicate that the Federal Government’s approach to strategic communication and public diplomacy has not been effective enough at garnering greater participation from the private sector, academic institutions or other non-governmental organizations. We commend the establishment of the Global Strategic Engagement Center at the Department of State, but note that its role within a whole-of-government approach to strategic communication and public diplomacy still needs to be further clarified.

“Strategic communication and public diplomacy”… the NDAA conference report didn’t, and wouldn’t, define either. To some, PD is a subset of SC. To others (including me), they are synonymous as everything we say and do, as well as what we fail to say and do, has an effect. I this the fissure between the two is based largely on the modern perception of public diplomacy based on the last few decades of beauty contests rather than the full spectrum psychological struggle for minds and will that preceded and has more relevance to our requirements today than the engagement model of the 1980’s.

Back to the NDAA, Rep. Paul Hodes’s (D-NH) broad brush and knee-jerk reaction needs, thankfully, clarification, but it’s not adequate.

Prohibitions relating to propaganda (sec. 1056)

The House bill contained a provision (sec. 1075) that would prohibit the use of Department of Defense funds for propaganda purposes not specifically authorized by law. The Senate bill contained no similar provision. The agreement includes the House provision with a clarifying amendment. We intend the term "publicity or propaganda", as used in the provision, to have the meaning given to such term in decisions of the Government Accountability Office on this subject.

The Strategic Communication Management Board was not adopted.

The House bill contained a provision (sec. 1031) that would require the Secretary of Defense to establish a Strategic Communication Management Board to provide interdepartmental and interagency coordination for Department of Defense strategic communication efforts.

The Senate bill contained no similar provision.

The agreement does not contain the provision.

While the SCMB didn’t make it, permission to establish an advisory panel to improve coordination between DOD, DOS, and USAID did.

Standing advisory panel on improving coordination among the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the United States Agency for International Development on matters of national security (sec. 1054)

The House bill contained a provision (sec. 1071) that would require the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to jointly establish an advisory panel to review the roles and responsibilities of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the USAID on matters of national security and make recommendations to improve collaboration and coordination.

The Senate bill contained no similar provision.

The agreement contains the House provision with an amendment allowing the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the Administrator of the USAID to jointly establish an advisory panel to advise on ways to improve coordination among the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and USAID on matters relating to national security, including reviewing their respective roles and responsibilities.

Side note: the report also prohibits contractors from interrogating detainees. 

Understanding Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 6 Comments

When talking about Public Diplomacy, what definition do you use? What’s your understanding of the concept of Public Diplomacy, or Strategic Communication while we’re thinking about this? While I’m still working on a concise phrase, here are some thoughts from others on Public Diplomacy.

The purpose of public diplomacy is to “promote the better understanding of the United States among the peoples of the world and to strengthen cooperative international relations.”

How you do this is by making “known what our motives are, what our actions have been and what we have done to assist peoples outside our borders.” It is important to do this because “it is very hard for us here at home to comprehend the degree with which we are not comprehended and the degree with which we are misrepresented.”

Why you do this is because “real security, in contrast to the relative security of armaments, could develop only from understanding and mutual comprehension.”

Perhaps a tactic is Under Secretary Jim Glassman’s concept of a “convener of discussions,” for example, because “truth can be a powerful weapon on behalf of peace.”

The goals for public diplomacy efforts could be

  • Tell the truth.
  • Explain the motives of the United States.
  • Bolster morale and extend hope.
  • Give a true and convincing picture of American life, methods and ideals.
  • Combat misrepresentation and distortion.
  • Aggressively interpret and support American foreign policy. 

Do these sound good? I think the quotes and list are spot on. We’re trying to rediscover how to interact with non-state actors, and to influence or even undermine state or non-state actors through people-centric engagement, when we’ve gone through this before. As the discussions heat up around undoing the “unilateral disarmament” of our “arsenal of persuasion,” it is important to know that at one time we had a Department of Non-State: it was called the United States Information Agency, which, incidentally, was created five years after the above were written or spoken and nearly two decades before ‘public diplomacy’ was coined.

The sources for the above, in order of appearance, are below the fold.

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Rethinking Smith-Mundt: responding to Sharon Weinberger

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Strategic Communication of Unmanned Warfare

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

Modern conflict is increasingly a struggle for strategic influence above territory.  This struggle is, at its essence, a battle over perceptions and narratives within a psychological terrain under the influence of local and global pressures.  One of the unspoken lessons embedded in the Counterinsurgency Manual (FM3-24) is that we risk strategic success relying on a lawyerly conduct of war that rests on finely tuned arguments of why and why not.  When too much defense and too much offense can be detrimental, we must consider the impact of our actions, the information effects.  The propaganda of the deed must match the propaganda of the word.

As Giulio Douhet wrote in 1928,

“A man who wants to make a good instrument must first have a precise understanding of what the instrument is to be used for; and he who intends to build a good instrument of war must first ask himself what the next war will be like.”

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has said that there is too much spending geared toward the wrong way of war.  I find this to be particularly true in the area of battlefield robots.  Much (if not all) of the unmanned systems planning and discussion, especially with regards to unmanned ground combat vehicles, is not taking into account the nature of the next war, let alone the current conflict.

Last year I posted an unscientific survey that explored how a ground combat robot operating away from humans (remote controlled or autonomous) might shape the opinions of the local host family.  The survey also explored the propaganda value of these systems to the enemy, in the media markets of our allies, Muslim countries, and here in the United States.  The survey results weren’t surprising.

Serviam Magazine just published what could be construed as an executive summary of a larger paper of mine to be published by Proteus later this year.  That paper is about four times longer and adds a few points with more details.  In the meantime, my article that appeared in Serviam, “Combat Robots and Perception Management,” is below.

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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:

Understanding the Purpose Public Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong

Marc Lynch’s comments this week on my “powerful and pointed case” sparked a much needed discussion on what I see as the most significant piece of ignored legislation in all the reports and conversations on public diplomacy and strategic communications. My response is in two parts. This post looks at the definition and purpose of the thing called “public diplomacy” sparked by a statement by one of Marc’s readers. A second post responds directly to Marc’s “mixed feelings” of my critique of Smith-Mundt.

To start, Marc opened his post with a statement from Donna Marie Oglesby, a former counselor for the United States Information Agency in the Clinton Administration:

McCain appears less interested in public diplomacy than in what we used to call advocacy and is now called strategic communication. His interest is in the “war of ideas” and advancing American objectives in the global information battle-space."

While Public diplomacy is a nebulous concept without an agreed upon definition, a central tenant has always been to influence foreign audiences. At its heart, public diplomacy, and its precursors, has always been about advocating a position, inhibiting or preventing the adoption of adversarial positions, and is by nature a tool of national security, American or otherwise.

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IEDs as “Weapons of Strategic Influence”

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Armchair Generalist and Plontius discussed IED’s as Weapons of Strategic Influence last month. Some thoughts as Plontius apparently didn’t understand the real, and intended, ability of IEDs to influence public perceptions, and thus opinions, through both direct and indirect actions.

First, Plotinius looked at the mission of the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). JIEDDO sees IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) for what they are: tools of influence. IED’s cannot kill enough personnel or destroy enough material to reduce or eliminate American operational capabilities. But through persistence, they can, and have, cause a change in tactics, and posture, to achieve or supplement other informational victories.

IEDs, by forcing a change in tactics and openness alter the effectiveness of American military and civilian personnel. IEDs influence public perception of security not only in Iraq, but around the world, most notably in the United States. As a personal example, the mere suggestion that I might go to Iraq, Wife of MountainRunner immediately responded with a scenario of MountainRunner being killed by an IED. The inability of US forces to protect their own is amplified by insurgent media as well as domestic media, especially as casualties mount.

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