Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR' ON TERROR (GWOT) Years 1 and 2, ie 9/11-2003
Losing a Battle for Hearts and Minds by J Michael Waller 
Insight on the News - National Issue: 4/22/02 Losing a Battle for Hearts and Minds By J. Michael Waller Will the U.S. military's hard-fought gains against international terrorists be undermined because the people back in Washington still don't understand how to win hearts and minds? That's what some supporters of President George W. Bush are beginning to fear as the U.S. government finds itself incapable of waging effective public-diplomacy and political-warfare campaigns abroad. And this just as the military side of the war on terrorism promises to take more difficult and contentious turns. Across the federal government, the situation is the same: A national-security and foreign-policy bureaucracy that is managing the military and diplomatic dimensions of the war effectively is bumbling and botching the crucial information campaigns around the world needed to discredit terrorists and their supporters and foster support for the military effort. The United States may be managing its relations with governments adequately, but it is not yet winning the hearts and minds of the peoples. The State Department has a huge public-diplomacy apparatus designed to reach foreign populations, but it appears incapable of effective mobilization. The Pentagon has yet to re-establish the strategic-information office that the Clinton administration abolished. The CIA's information-operations staff has shriveled to one-tenth of its size during the 1980s. And the White House, which used to coordinate sending of the U.S. message to the public and the world while countering enemy propaganda, doesn't seem nearly so serious about doing the job today. John Lenczowski, director of the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft in Washington, puts it this way: "The United States is failing and has consistently failed since the Reagan administration to use its most powerful tools of statecraft, which have to do with telling the truth to the public and the peoples of the world - having relations with peoples of the world and not simply with governments as a way of ensuring that hostility toward our country does not emerge as a result of misinformation, disinformation and other forms of falsehood." Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich, who ran some of the Reagan administration's most difficult but successful public-diplomacy campaigns, agrees. "We're the world's greatest public-relations and advertising power, but we don't seem to be able to get the message out," he says. To date, most U.S. public-diplomacy and information operations in support of the war effort have been piecemeal, tactical and mostly reactive instead of strategic, comprehensive and anticipatory. A long-term strategy has yet to be developed, according to administration officials. That, critics say, leaves the enemy to define the terms of debate and severely complicates U.S. diplomacy and military planning. "The United States ought to have a political-warfare capability, which is another corollary of public diplomacy, but there is no place in the U.S. government that considers it its business to conduct political warfare abroad," Lenczowski says. "One might think it would be preferable to exercise political persuasion and conduct political action before resorting to killing people to defend our interests but, apparently, this is not within the conceptual framework of the foreign-policy establishment." For even reactive public-diplomacy and information operations to be effective, the United States needs mission-oriented leaders throughout the government who can think and act creatively and quickly. As a Reagan National Security Council director for Soviet affairs in 1983, Lenczowski was an active player in the global-information campaign the United States used to prove the Soviet Union deliberately shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, apparently killing all 269 aboard, including Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.). Reich is hopeful that the newly created post of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, held by former advertising executive Charlotte Beers, will make up for lost time. Beers, say sources in the State Department and at the Pentagon, seems to get it. "She is capable of thinking out of the box and has supported some bold initiatives in sensitive areas," a Pentagon official says. But Reich cautions: "The bureaucratic body is rejecting the idea." And it isn't as if U.S. officials are unaware of the problem. For years the FBI has listed foreign influence operations, or "perception management," as one of eight "key-issue threats" to national security - ranking with terrorism, attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, weapons proliferation and espionage. According to the FBI's National Security Threat List: "This issue concerns foreign-power-sponsored or foreign-power-coordinated intelligence activity directed at the U.S. government or U.S. corporations, establishments or persons, which involves manipulating information, communicating false information or propagating deceptive information and communications designed to distort the perception of the public (domestically or internationally) or of U.S. government officials regarding U.S. policies, ranging from foreign policy to economic strategy." Under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, the Pentagon had its own Public Diplomacy Directorate to complement the large public-affairs office and to run information campaigns abroad. As Insight reported last summer ("Winning Page From Reagan Playbook," Aug. 20, 2001), the Clinton administration abolished that directorate, and the new Bush administration has not reinstated it. Subsequent to the appearance of the Insight article, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Department of Defense set up a new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) to run information operations abroad in support of U.S. strategic-defense goals. However, OSI hardly had gotten off the ground when the bureaucracy and turf-jealous senior officials leaked misleading, inflammatory and utterly dishonest stories that falsely portrayed OSI as intending to plant "disinformation" in the press. According to former Pentagon sources, authentic plans included countering Iranian-government propaganda in Afghanistan, countering Iraqi propaganda in the Middle East, correcting disinformation from radical Islamist clerics and drawing students away from jihadist terror-training madrassa schools in Pakistan, while opening up access to information in closed areas that are fertile recruiting grounds for terrorism. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Torie Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman, is widely believed to have masterminded the disinformation leak and the subsequent spin of falsehoods that created outrage in the press against OSI and its mission in order to pressure Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to abolish it. Since the controversy broke in February, Insight has tracked down allegations of Clarke's involvement and has found them to be highly credible. Clarke has refused all comment on the issue. Insight reporter Sam MacDonald has called the Pentagon Office of Public Affairs more than 20 times requesting that Clarke respond to the allegations, and has been rebuffed each time. At one point, Clarke told a deputy to tell a Navy officer to tell Insight that she was "too busy" to take the question. Clarke's unusual refusal to address the allegations appears to indicate that she indeed was a mastermind of the leak that embarrassed the president, destroyed OSI and crippled the Pentagon's ability to wage information warfare against terrorists and their sponsors. Lenczowski agrees with Rumsfeld's oft-repeated view that the Pentagon needs such an office - and quickly. He notes that the president, like Rumsfeld, has stepped in personally to fill a void. "Fortunately, President Bush has once again recognized the power of presidential rhetoric and telling the plain truth, which is the first step toward regaining the corollary instrument of public diplomacy, which is maintaining credibility in the eyes of both adversaries and allies." Reagan veterans point to tried-and-tested tools that the Bush administration easily might renew and adapt to present-day realities. A small but important Cold War instrument was an interagency Active Measures Working Group, directed by the National Security Council, to anticipate and counter Soviet disinformation and propaganda operations. The U.S. Information Agency housed a small but highly effective Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, while the CIA had between 200 and 250 officers and staff running influence operations abroad. All that is gone except for the CIA office, which sources say is reduced to one-tenth of its former size. Traditional and powerful tools of U.S. public diplomacy, such as the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and radio services for Iraq, Iran and a new station for Afghanistan, remain valuable parts of information operations. Some have a powerful Internet presence. However, they are becoming dwarfed by new, often privately funded, foreign news and propaganda outlets that have proved extremely damaging to U.S. interests. The popular pan-Arab al-Jazeera TV network, based in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, is a global mouthpiece for anti-U.S. propaganda and a favored propaganda medium for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network (see "Live From Qatar: It's Jihad Television," March 4). VOA Director Robert Reilly (see Picture Profile, March 4) notes that al-Jazeera's $35 million annual budget is nearly twice that of the VOA's own TV-programming budget. Yet the State Department is resisting an initiative by House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) that would expand the powers and budget of the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and bring the U.S. broadcasting services back to their original role as foreign-policy tools. As the fight against terrorism continues and expands to more contentious ground, the U.S. military might win on the battlefield while its civilian leadership loses at the strategic level by failing to make its own case, to correct inaccurate or dishonest news reporting and to counter enemy propaganda at home and abroad. Reich, a Vietnam combat veteran, sees a historical parallel: "We didn't lose the Vietnam war in the jungles of Vietnam, but in the streets of Washington, D.C." In Lenczowski's view, the United States must maintain its credibility not only with foreign governments but with foreign populations if it is to win wars and maintain superiority: "As Napoleon said, the moral factor counts for the most in military conflict, but it also counts in the conduct of our diplomacy." J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight magazine. |