STRATEGIC INFLUENCE PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, COUNTERPROPAGANDA, AND POLITICAL WARFARE Strategic Influence Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare J. Michael Waller, editor THE INSTITUTE OF WORLD POLITICS PRESS Washington 2008 Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare Published by the Institute of World Politics Press 1521 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20036 USA www.iwp.edu Cover design by Bridget Sweetin www.sweetin.net Copyright © 2008 by the Institute of World Politics Press Revised edition All rights reserved. With the exceptions of reviewers, students and scholars who wish to quote brief passages for literary or non-profit purposes, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, by any system now known or to be invented, without the publisher’s written permission. ISBN-13 978-0-9792-2364-8 Other IWP Press titles by the same author Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War The Public Diplomacy Reader For Katie To the memory of Ed Waller and all the other victims of the terrorist bombing in Bali, October 12, 2002 “Our arsenal of persuasion must be as ready as our nuclear arsenal and used as never before.” Edward R. Murrow Director, U.S. Information Agency, 1963 Contents Introduction 15 Public Diplomacy 1. The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers 26 J. Michael Waller 2. What ‘Strategic’ Public Diplomacy Is 43 Carnes Lord 3. Public Diplomacy and Soft Power 61 Carnes Lord 4. Cultural Diplomacy, Political Influence & Integrated Strategy 74 John Lenczowski 5. Mediators of the Message: The role of religion and civil society in public diplomacy 100 Jennifer Marshall 6. Conducting a War of Ideas with Public Diplomacy 120 Robert R. Reilly Counterpropaganda 7. Counterpropaganda: We Can’t Win Without It 137 Herbert Romerstein 8. Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda: An interim assessment of the war of ideas in Iraq 181 Andrew Garfield 9. The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful template for strategic influence 197 Herbert Romerstein Political Warfare 10. Political Warfare: Means for achieving political ends 206 Angelo Codevilla 11. Getting Psyched: Putting psychology to work to shorten conflicts and save lives 224 Michael Cohn 12. Political War vs. Political Terror: Case study of an American success story 244 John J. Tierney 13. The Importance of Words 269 J. Michael Waller 14. Hearts and Minds Online: Internetting the messages in the infosphere 282 Hampton Stephens Toward the Future 15. Toward a Theory of Low-Intensity Propaganda 295 Stephen C. Baker 16. Red-Teaming Strategic Communications & Political Warfare 325 David Spencer 17. A Comprehensive Approach to Information Operations 349 Andrew Garfield 18. Synchronizing Rhetoric, Policy, and Action 368 Juliana Geran Pilon 19. An Immediate-Term Wartime Message Strategy 388 J. Michael Waller About the contributors 406 Acknowledgements This book is the product of the enthusiastic and diligent work of many people. First, I would like to acknowledge and express my appreciation for the research and editorial assistance of some of the graduate research associates currently or formerly at The Institute of World Politics: Mark Beall, Shawn Brimley, Erin Carrington, Jay Gress, Bryan Hill, Amleset Kidane, Mallorie Lewis, Brian Newsome Charles Van Someren and Nicole Villescas. They did the hard part: the copy editing, formatting and chasing down of details. I would also like to thank Alex Alexiev, Jim Guirard, Stephanie Kinney, Michaelis Persianis, and IWP Professors Juliana Geran Pilon and Douglas Streusand for their many ideas, insights and expertise that helped shape the direction of this volume. Professor Herbert Romerstein, author of two chapters on counter- propaganda, wishes to thank Dr. Klaus Kirchner for his valuable advice and for help in obtaining some or the rare World War II leaflets cited in Chapter 7. Dr. Kirchner is the author of 15 volumes on World War II leaflets and two on World War I. He donated all 17 volumes to the library of the Institute of World Politics. Prof. Romerstein would also like to thank Elinor and Tom Wright, Henry Durkin and Dick Markel for help with German translations, Dmitry Kulik for help with translation from Russian and Ukrainian, and Lawrence Peck for help with Korean translations. Lastly, I wish to thank John Lenczowski, President of The Institute of World Politics, for his unfailing support of this project since it began as an idea exchanged in passing on the staircase. Introduction Why do we twist ourselves with angst at the thought of secretly placing truthful, positive stories about our military in the beleaguered newspapers of a country where we are at war? Why do innovations like “strategic influence” abroad to help our friends and defeat our enemies provoke such emotional opposition at home? Why is such outrage so much greater than the sorrow that our errant bombs or bullets kill innocent civilians in what we mechanically call collateral damage? Why do we prefer to have our troops killed than use strategic influence as an effective weapon? Such disjointed logic defies human decency. As the United States struggles to shape coherent messages to the world, it must form not only the means through which it delivers its ideas, but the very philosophy of how it wages a “war of ideas.” The near-universal default is “more public diplomacy” – the U.S. government’s communication with the publics of the world – without really knowing the limits of public diplomacy and the many other humane, non-lethal options available to assist our diplomats and warfighters. But saying we need more public diplomacy is like saying we can alleviate world poverty if only we spent more on foreign aid, or win wars through the application of greater military force. Sheer volume is not the answer. Our public diplomacy approaches and applications are inconsistent with the realities of today’s international environment. Advances in information technology and the proliferation of electronic media outlets have leveled the ground between the U.S. and small powers, non- governmental organizations, and even individuals, who can undermine Washington’s carefully crafted messages rapidly and constantly, networking horizontally and virally, attacking in swarms and refuting, distorting and drowning out the American voice, and agitating increasingly shrill and even deadly opposition. Public diplomacy and the far broader field of strategic communication, as developed, are missing key components and functions. Lacking are roles and capabilities between the soft policies of attraction and the lethal policies of military force. A wide void spans 15 16 STRATEGIC INFLUENCE the two – a void easily filled, as it has been in the past, but with few trained practitioners and even fewer policy advocates. Yet that void is precisely where the enemy is fighting the war of ideas. Within that gray area the U.S. and its allies would be expected to wage counterpropaganda and political warfare to substitute or augment the military. Military transformation has been a cornerstone of the United States’ ability to fight the latest generations of terrorists and insurgents. The 9/11 Commission mandated a similar revolution in the intelligence community. Yet the owner of one of the key elements of fighting the war of ideas – the State Department – has made only the most rudimentary of attempts to transform its cumbersome diplomatic processes and its ineffective public diplomacy machinery since the 2001 attacks. Mentalities and institutions that served well during the Cold War are not necessarily what the country needs today, but many of the tried- and-true Cold War strategies and tactics provide invaluable lessons that deserve careful – but quick – study and consideration. Many of the timeless means and methods used successfully in the last major ideological conflict can be applied to today’s geopolitical changes, cultural shifts, technological advances, and asymmetries of insurgency warfare. Which brings us to the purpose of this book. Strategic Influence is a collection of 19 essays meant to help orient a more integrated, holistic approach to winning the “battle of hearts and minds” and “war of ideas.” Those terms have become clichés, but they accurately characterize the type of global conflict underway. That is why one finds it strange that the public diplomacy community has yet to engage as one would expect in time of battle or war; its leaders and its rank-and- file have done the political equivalent of getting themselves repeatedly wounded and killed in battle (when they have engaged at all), and frequently commit fratricide against the troops and themselves through a lack of urgency, poor planning, inadequately trained personnel, and a general approach more of trepidation than innovation. One cannot consider public diplomacy strategy or strategic communications outside the context of diplomatic grand strategy. No grand strategy can exist apart from military strategy, and a military strategy with a weak information and influence component will fail in modern ideological warfare. In counterterrorism and counter- insurgency, most of the fight is psychological and political. “The political and military aspects of insurgencies are so bound together as to be inseparable,” the U.S. Army says in its 2006 Counterinsurgency field manual. “Most insurgent approaches recognize that fact. Military Introduction 17 actions executed without properly assessing their political effects at best will be reduced in effectiveness and at worst are counterproductive. Resolving most insurgencies requires a political solution; it is thus imperative that counterinsurgent actions do not hinder achieving that political solution,” according to the manual. The Army’s 2008 Stability Operations field manual integrates civil and military affairs even further, to win the peace after winning wars, and to prevent wars from taking place at all. Like it or not, then, the U.S. must conduct its public diplomacy with war aims in mind – even though much of the activity will properly have little or nothing to do with the war at all.