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DEFENCE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS the Official Journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence

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DEFENCE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS the Official Journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Volume 2 | Spring 2017 DEFENCE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS The official journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: PRACTICAL TRAPS AND ETHICAL PUZZLES ‘HACKING’ INTO THE WEST: RUSSIA’S ‘ANTI-HEGEMONIC’ DRIVE AND THE STRATEGIC NARRATIVE OFFENSIVE THE RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE ON INFORMATION WARFARE: CONCEPTUAL ROOTS AND POLITICISATION IN RUSSIAN ACADEMIC, POLITICAL, AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE EXAMINING THE USE OF BOTNETS AND THEIR EVOLUTION IN PROPAGANDA DISSEMINATION PUTIN, XI, AND HITLER—PROPAGANDA AND THE PATERNITY OF PSEUDO DEMOCRACY THE SIGNIFICANCE AND LIMITATIONS OF EMPATHY IN STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS BRITAIN’S PUBLIC WAR STORIES: PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT OR VANISHING FORCE? A CLOSER LOOK AT YEMEN WEAPONISED HONESTY: COMMUNICATION STRATEGY AND NATO VALUES 1 ISSN 2500-9478 Defence Strategic Communications Editor-in-Chief Dr. Neville Bolt Managing Editor Linda Curika Editor Anna Reynolds Editorial Board Matt Armstrong, MA Dr. Emma Louise Briant Dr. Nerijus Maliukevicius Thomas Elkjer Nissen, MA Professor Žaneta Ozoliņa Dr. Agu Uudelepp Professor J. Michael Waller Professor Natascha Zowislo-Grünewald Defence Strategic Communications is an international peer-reviewed journal. The journal is a project of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE). It is produced for scholars, policy makers and practitioners around the world. It does not represent the opinions or policies of NATO or NATO StratCom COE. The views presented in the following articles are those of the authors alone. © All rights reserved by the NATO StratCom COE. Articles may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or publicly displayed without reference to the NATO StratCom COE and the academic journal. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Riga, Kalnciema iela 11b, Latvia LV1048 www.stratcomcoe.org Ph.: 0037167335463 [email protected] 2 3 FOREWORD ‘The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets,’ declared the new President of the United States recently. The election of Donald J. Trump has coincided with, perhaps arisen from, a period of unusual turbulence in early 21st century geopolitics. Events have become difficult to read, no less predict. For all that Twitter diplomacy, ‘twiplomacy’, has sought to inject concision and clarity into politics, the reverse appears to be unfolding. Truth, untruth, and post-truth: conversations around how domestic and foreign policy are communicated to populations by elected and indeed unelected politicians have shone the spotlight on what it means to call a fact a fact. Indeed, why it matters to draw a distinction between truth and lies. And why a question of ethics not simply efficacy is ever present in the decision making of strategic communicators. These are strange times too. Bewildering, to be more accurate. Insurgent ideologues lay claim to absolute truth. There can be only one truth, and that truth is theirs. So goes their rhetoric. For them there is no ‘say-do gap’. To question their view is to make a black and white choice between life and death. Daesh, for one, appears unconcerned by nuance. At the same time, some sovereign state actors have directed their broadcast media to suggest there is no single truth. Rather, there are multiple ways of viewing the same event. Consequently, a confusion of perspectives must be considered before a particular version— that state’s or broadcaster’s own version—emerges and shines through like a beacon to illuminate our understanding. RT (formerly Russia Today television) claims the philosophical high ground at the expense of more prosaic journalistic practice. To complicate matters further, many Western politicians make increasingly extravagant claims to evidence their arguments. Colourful assertions, however, are quickly dispelled with a brief look into the archive. Nevertheless, their messages are repeated, retweeted, and recycled so that the official record becomes clouded if not eclipsed. Sediment upon sediment of half truths and brazen cheek become today’s history in the making. This would be a heyday for fact checkers were it not for the realisation that they are overwhelmed by the speed of events and short attention spans of consumers. Dynamic change, witnessed and spread through global feedback loops of television, press, and social media only serves to create a febrile environment for rumours, lies, and deliberate manipulation. 4 This is the world in which the second issue of Defence Strategic Communications appears. A world of renewed challenge and responsibilities. Nevertheless, a world of fascinating possibilities. Since its first appearance, this journal has been committed to enriching the understanding of the field and practice of strategic communications. For too long, pressing ethical, historical, and theoretical questions have remained under-researched. Attention instead has been directed at the so-called business end—at the ‘doing’ by soldiers and diplomats. Less effort has been focused on questioning how and why we decide to communicate in a particular way; or even whether we should. The result has been to over-instrumentalise what remains, even in the era of big data analysis and social metrics, a frustratingly complex art. Albeit some still aspire to call it a science. Yet passing a message from one person to another has never been as simple or predictable as it sounds. At least the expectation that an idea might be understood the way it was intended, that it might even go on to influence the behaviour of the other, invites a host of questions that shake our simplistic assumptions. This journal aims to invest fresh research and thought into the field of strategic communications; not merely in pursuit of pure knowledge, rather to reinvest in explaining how and why states and state challengers promote their ideas. Indeed, to dig deeper into processes of influence and change, of persuasion and coercion. The practical lessons from this approach were highlighted by former President Barack Obama who claimed ‘we have to be able to distinguish between these problems analytically, so that we’re not using pliers where we need to use a hammer’. To partly fulfil this objective, this journal seeks to promote a research-practice axis that should be an unbroken cycle of rejuvenation. We include contributions from both academics and practitioners in this issue. In so doing, we offer a template for the future. At the same time, this issue sets in motion a series of discussions to which we invite a considered response from our readers. The scholars Mervyn Frost and Nicholas Michelsen propose an ethical framework in the international system within which strategic communicators—that includes militant insurgents—must operate to avoid falling victim to the ethical traps that will only delegitimise thus confound communicators’ efforts. While foreign policy adviser John Williams calls for a renewal of faith in facts on the part of NATO member states to reaffirm accuracy and authenticity as the foundations of strategic communications. In short, his is a plea for a moral and practical response to the so- called post-truth era. Meanwhile political communications adviser James Farwell looks to the Arabian peninsula. He issues a challenge to overcome the disconnect between the projection of America’s foreign policy and its struggle to understand the Middle East and North Africa. His review essay highlights Yemen. And Farwell warns that NATO states overlook or misread its troubled politics at their peril. The need for sensitivity to local culture and how audiences think is a theme that increasingly preoccupies researchers. Thomas Colley interviews different voices across the British population and identifies distinct stories through which people process why they believe their country has undertaken military interventions into distant lands in recent history. Such stories frequently circulate under the political radar. A similar need to appreciate populations with whom strategic communicators engage, both at home and abroad, is voiced by researcher Claire Yorke. 5 She opens up a line of debate about the role of empathy. Again a timely discussion against the backdrop of populism and powerful leaders. Personal chemistry between national leaders suggests a different way of practising politics. But how that chemistry mixes with popular sentiment also serves to question whether we mistakenly see ourselves as thinking beings. Yorke proposes that feeling beings should be closer to the mark when we pursue national and international engagement. Meanwhile communications theorist Nicholas O’Shaughnessy weighs up the continuities and discontinuities of history. Drawing on new research into Nazi Germany’s propaganda culture, he reveals a state where far from information and communications being an add-on to policy making, they provided a totalising culture through which all governance was practised. Significantly, he proposes that many of the techniques long considered relics of 20th century propaganda have re-emerged in Russia and China today. But with a difference. The scholars James Rogers and Andriy Tyushka present a darker view of contemporary events. Turning their attention to Russia, they see a three-part strategic narrative emanating from Moscow. What they perceive as an effort to ‘desynchronise’ Russia’s European Neighbourhood, they argue, is aimed at confusing or distorting what it means to be European. This overlays a further strategic initiative to force division between
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