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
From Bombs and Bullets to Hearts and Minds by Nancy Snow 
Trust, Diplomacy & Public Perception: From Bombs and Bullets to Hearts and Minds by Nancy Snow Paper presented by Nancy Snow to the "Communicating the War on Terror" conference in London at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, plenary on "Trust, Rumours and Public Perception," 5 June 2003. [sadly, Nancy had to pull out of the conference - at which Prof Taylor was also speaking - at the last minute because of a family illness, but here is here paper anyway] From 1992-1994, I was employed as a government propagandist by the U.S. Information Agency and State Department in Washington, D.C. Of course, we didn't call what we did then propaganda, which was too loaded a term and associated with dastardly regimes like Stalin and Hitler. Our euphemism was public diplomacy. The task then was to "tell America's story to the world" and in the context of the post-Cold War environment of freedom, peace dividends, economic prosperity and a united pro-Western front, our task seemed simple enough. President Clinton was pushing the Clinton Doctrine, which placed U.S. competitiveness and integration of the world economy at the heart of foreign policy. USIA's mission was linked to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, with the belief that remaking the world in the image of a U.S.-led free market economy would end ideological clashes. By the mid-90s, USIA has lost its mission compass and without a domestic constituency to save it, was sacrificed on the political altar. Officially abolished as an independent agency in 1999, USIA was folded back into its State Department origins where it existed in obscurity until September 11, 2001. In a split second, it was clear that the propaganda war was underway and the U.S. Government needed to get back in the business of promoting and articulating U.S. positions. Further, the U.S. needed to do a better job of confronting its poor global image, which in the post-Saddam era has reached its nadir. We are now a nation very much in isolation from the rest of the world, with a reputation more for mistrust than honesty, hostility than goodwill. What went wrong? To counter Osama and Saddam, the U.S. deployed food drops, initiated short-wave radio broadcasts, and tasked a recently departed Madison Avenue veteran in advertising who formerly sung the praises of Uncle Ben's rice to do the same for Uncle Sam. What's not to like about us? We give the world superstars and super missiles, blockbuster films and bunker-busting bombs, not an easy campaign for the slogan engineers at J. Walter Thompson. In fall 2002, a 15 million dollar paid media ad campaign to the Muslim world under the moniker, Shared Values, and fronted by a U.S. State Department financed group called the Council of American Muslims for Understanding (CAMU) failed miserably. The one formal press conference undersecretary of public diplomacy Charlotte Beers gave at the National Press Club in Washington December 18, 2002 featured six American protesters who disrupted Beers' address with a "You're selling war, but we're not buying" slogan of their own. The omnipresent post 9/11 question, "Why does the world hate us since 9/11?" has spawned a lot of speculation, perhaps none more famous than the remark by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) who asked rhetorically, "How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm overseas?" How in the world did the United States lose the public relations battle to a dictator like Saddam Hussein, whose murderous track record is very well documented? As Robert Seiple wrote in an article called "The Privilege of Power" (Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2003), "Hussein gets elevated, not merely as a potential victim, but in some cases hero status, while leadership of the U.S. is uniformly mocked." Polling data over the last year (CFR, Pew Center, Gallup) indicate that the majority of the world now sees the United States as brand aggressor to the world and the biggest threat to world peace. A May 2003 poll of more than 15,000 people in 20 countries, including the Palestinian Authority and conducted by the nonpartisan U.S.-based Pew Research Center shows that global alliances like NATO and the United Nations are fraying. As expected, the Pew Center poll supported the fear that many of us non-combatant U.S. citizens had that the U.S. war in Iraq would inflame anti-American sentiment. PRC director Andrew Kohut reports that anti-Americanism has deepened in the Muslim world but also widened to the far reaches of Africa and Asia. One year earlier, a Gallup survey, the largest in history conducted in nine Muslim countries, found that a majority surveyed have a poor opinion of the United States, don't believe Arabs carried out the September 11th attacks, and considered the U.S. war in Afghanistan morally unjustifiable. More recent polling in Europe suggests that most British, French, Italians and Germans think that the U.S. is motivated by its own interests in the war on terrorism and ignores the concerns of its allies. On 60 Minutes in January 2003, young South Koreans said that they feared President Bush more than Kim Jong Ill, the dictator of North Korea. An April 1, 2003 article in The Economist reported that once the war in Iraq began, the public in the U.S., Great Britain, and Australia, the three main coalition-of-the-willing (to use the rhetoric of the Administration) rallied around its leadership. In these countries, (and in Denmark, whose navy provided support to allied operations in the Gulf), a majority supported the war. But in the rest of the world, there was a clear majority against it (Canada, New Zealand, France, Portugal, Spain, India, Pakistan), even among western allies such as the Japanese. Two of America's and Britain's traditional allies, Canada and New Zealand, decided not to join in the war. In both countries, there were more who were against it than favored it. In Spain, where conservative Jose Maria Aznar signaled firm support for the coalition, over 90 percent of the public registered opposition to the war. On Sunday, March 30th, 2003, two hundred thousand people marched in Rabat, Morocco, where the U.S. flag was burned. In Jakarta, Indonesia, one hundred thousand marched chanting "American imperialist, number one terrorist." In April, UN secretary Kofi Annan said that in this war, there will be no winners. Once the Iraqi war effort was in full swing, there seemed little hope of winning Muslim public opinion, despite government protestations. To quote Tony Blair's op-ed in Al-Ahram (the pro-government Egyptian newspaper), "Our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people but with Saddam, his sons and his barbarous regime which has brought misery and terror to their country." Like President Bush, Blair insisted that administrations in Washington and London had wanted to avoid military action and that by using military action they are "doing all that is humanely possible to minimize civilian casualties and finish this campaign quickly." Unlike the last Gulf War in which CNN dominated the narrative and General Schwarzkopf was our video game commander, Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar, dominated the regional airwaves. Qatar was also home to General Tommy Franks Central Command and America's Fifth Fleet. Al-Jazeera, which was criticized by the U.S. and Great Britain for promoting sensationalism and acting as a mouthpiece for the Iraqi Ministry of Information, is a symbol of a new Arab region, so unaccustomed to freedom from press censorship, and in search of its own ratings-driven audience. According to Mamoun Fandy, an Arab newspaper columnist, reporters and producers at Al-Jazeera knew what their viewers wanted to see: images of Arab empowerment and Muslim resistance because of past defeats and humiliation. The U.S., by its very influence and prowess, can choose to follow the advice of the United Nations and global community at will. Under President Bush and the Bush Doctrine, our international relations post/9-11 is operating under the rubric, "The best defense is a good offense." Should the U.S., the last remaining superpower, be apologizing for its status as the number one nation in terms of cultural, economic, military prowess? To some, no. To others, we can ill afford not to engage the world in methods that are more than our own national interests. How can we take the Soft Power of American persuasion, influence, creativity and culture (film, TV, pop) and transform it into something positive? We (governments, military, civil society) must do two things: not only recognize the increasing negative perception that so many have of us in the world, but more important, work to overcome these negative perceptions through ways that are mutually beneficial. We may have to start by "walking our talk." To the world, American values of fair play, the Golden Rule, and our cherished Constitutional freedoms of religion, association, and press are held up to the world as part of a propaganda and public diplomacy campaign to win hearts and minds to American policies and national interests. These values are also seen as universal in appeal, but the rhetorical appeal of these values is not matched by America's actions in the world. In 2002, the U.S. Congress initiated the Freedom Promotion Act to use international exchanges, Sister Cities programs, English language training, international broadcasting, etc. to make U.S. values a reality for others. In part, this is what our own President promised to deliver post-Saddam Hussein to the people of Iraq. A promise made must be kept if we want to improve our reputation in the world. In American-led global communications, the phone is off the hook at two primary levels. (1) There exists a disconnect in the official propaganda campaign coming out of Washington between how the Administration shapes its motives in the world and how others see U.S. actions in the world play out. In part, the Washington "dialogue of the deaf" is due to the reality that American values are incongruous with American interests. U.S. interests that emerge from Washington and New York are largely about economic access and advantage and using our global military presence to protect our economic interests. We need not wonder why the terrorists struck our economic and military heart on September 11. U.S. values are more political, cultural, and social. This battle, between interests and values, is a battle between Realpolitik (might makes right) and Soft Power (right makes might). So far, Realpolitik has always won, because a sole superpower can change the rules of the game at will. The United States is so powerful that it can be inconsistent in its foreign policy and get away with it. More than any other reason, this is why America is hated today. This is in part why John Brady Kiesling, a former career diplomat with the State Department, resigned his position before the outbreak of war. He wrote in a Feb. 27th New York Times op-ed, "The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security." (2) There is a major disconnect between American news coverage as a whole and international news coverage. To an extent, the war in Iraq was not the TV war of Vietnam but the Internet and Al-Jazeera War, where the U.S. was unable to control and manage both the messenger and the message. If you compared the U.S. and international news coverage, you would have found two different wars underway - Operation Iraqi Freedom on Fox News Channel, Showdown with Iraq on CNN, and another war dubbed "America's Imperial War for Domination and Occupation" not only beaming into the living rooms of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon but also across Asia and Europe. In true Hollywood fashion, U.S. interests and American power in the world as packaged and manufactured by us to the world come across as the triumph of good over evil. Any ambiguity in a truly complex world is dismissed. Instead, America's chief propagandists like President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld hand down dichotomies - "us versus them," "good versus bad," "those who are for us and those who are against." In that context, this may very well be "a clash of civilizations" as Samuel Huntington claims or at least a clash of propagandas and perceptions between what is perceived as "America's Imperial War" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The global antiwar protests of 2002 to the present and that followed the anti-economic globalization protests of 1999-2001 suggest that the world's citizens are responding in record numbers to governments that have failed them, governments that are increasingly bankrupt in moral leadership (trust) and resources. The message of many of these protesters for the commercial and government propagandists is the following: The Empire has no clothes. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, governments will have to start trusting (in her words, stop doubting) the ability of people to change the face of global society, from one of clashing civilizations, preemptive strikes, to talking and walking together. We Americans have a large task to rebuild trust - we must better understand the world in which we yield so much awesome power. We need to see the world with honest eyes, as it is, with all of its messiness and ambiguity. We need to strive for consistency, both in our celebration of diversity and protection of human dignity. We need to do this even if the short-term impact suggests that hard and difficult choices have to be made. If we Americans can live with a permanent war on terrorism, we can certainly live with higher prices for oil, for example, and fewer military bases dotting the globe. We Americans need to listen better, decry arrogance, and cultivate humility - all difficult work requiring a major cultural change. Propaganda of the American image cannot come primarily from the U.S. government or any official source of information. We are misunderstood and increasingly resented by the world precisely because it is our President and our top government officials whose images predominate in explaining U.S. public policy. Official spin has its place, but it is always under suspicion or parsed for clues and secret codes. The primary source for America's image campaign must be drawn directly from the American people. First, it's the private citizens of the United States who are more comfortable with acknowledging with some degree of humility that the U.S. has made mistakes in its past. Government officials seem to have a hard time with that one. Open criticism of a country's policies tends to embarrass government leaders. Over time it can be the trump card in the deck of negotiating a peaceful (and lasting) settlement of international conflicts. The American people can better illustrate that we are a people willing to learn from our mistakes and can redirect our dealings with other nations to mutually beneficial ends, not just purposes that serve official Washington. Second, it's the American people who can better initiate direct contact with people in other countries whose support and understanding we need on the stage of world opinion. The American public is the best ad campaign going for the world. We've got the greatest diversity in people and culture and it shows in our receptiveness to learning, our generosity, and our creativity. We need to magnify these qualities to the world, but in the same spirit, listen more, talk less. It is also the American patriotic duty of dissent that can best illustrate to the world what a free society means. Senator J. William Fulbright wrote in The Arrogance of Power: "To criticize one's country is to do it a service and to pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing&My question is whether America can close the gap between her capacity and her performance. My hope and my belief are that she can, that she has the human resources to conduct her affairs with a maturity which few if any great nations have ever achieved: to be confident, but also tolerant, to be rich but also generous, to be willing to teach but also to learn, to be powerful but also wise." Senator Fulbright wrote this at a time when as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee he vigorously opposed President Johnson on America's involvement in Vietnam. American citizens who took to the streets to denounce U.S. policy in Vietnam heavily influenced his opposition. Now we are seeing the same spirit of dissent toward this U.S.-led war against Iraq. We need to carry this message of what a free and open society represents to all corners and not let our government leaders dictate America's brand campaign on their own. In his 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell argued that language should express, not conceal, thought. However, he observed then "in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." Political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell's classic example of language control is the slogan, "War is Peace." Lest we think that it's impossible to hold two opposing ideas in our minds at the same time and actually believe in them, think about the language that defines our communicating the war on terror. When our President said on September 11, 2001, "We're at war," many of us may have thought then that war meant something with a definite conclusion, like the pending war in Afghanistan. Yet the slogan itself, "War on Terror," is a symbol of perpetual thinking about perpetual war. We move effortlessly from Afghanistan to Iraq, waging war for peace. Where next? In his book, Munitions of the Mind, Philip Taylor writes in the epilogue: "In a nuclear age, we need peace propagandists, not war propagandists - people whose job it is to increase communication, understanding and dialogue between different peoples with different beliefs. As much of the truth as can be, must be told. A gradual process of explanation will generate greater trust and therefore a greater willingness to understand our perspective. And if this is a mutual dialogue, greater empathy and consensus will emerge. We might not always like what we see about others, but we need to recognize that fear and ignorance are the principal enemies of peace and peaceful coexistence." If we were to accept Professor Taylor's challenge and propagandize for peace, we would need to accompany this increase in propaganda with an increase in education. Our young people and all of us who are lifelong learners need to understand how propaganda is used to promote war, how it has been used throughout modern history, and how propaganda functions to mediate information and opinions from power centers of government, corporations and media to populations and public opinion segments of society. Two, we need to understand what the war message is and how to counter it with a just-as-powerful and just-as-persuasive message of peace. Propaganda, whether for war or peace, is about communicating something or persuading people to do something. We need to study what is being said, how it is being said, the techniques used, and where education can be of the greatest service. Increasing propaganda for peace must also be accompanied by an increase in access to information and media, upon which educated opinions can be formed. Modern forms of communication, particularly the mass media, are major instruments of propaganda. It is the monopoly concentration in media that allows the propaganda refrain, "war is inevitable," to stick in our minds. It's like a song lyric you want to forget. We need to replace that lyric with something else, whether it's "peace is a possibility," or "peace is permanent, war is temporary." It is no longer acceptable to allow public opinion and public judgment to be bombarded with news and views from a restricted number of sources, particularly when these sources carry us from ABC's reality show Joe Millionaire to CNN's Showdown with Iraq to tomorrow's weather all in a breathless minute. Propaganda need not remain a tool of mass persuasion in absolutist regimes, totalitarian societies, under Stalin's brutish lead or Nazi dictatorship. Who among us can doubt that Gulf War II was staged in part due to a very efficient management of military-media relations on the part of those who want war, but also by a failure among our media institutions to challenge government leadership? Right now, every night as we sleep, the war propagandists, both state and stateless actors, are dominating the media landscape. This should come as no surprise because war is viewed by many as an efficient means of carving up centralized zones of power - the power to control, the power to dominate, both through message and force. Peace propaganda needs the same amount of diligence and hard work. If we spend too much time worrying about using propaganda for peace, we will continue to subject ourselves to governments and other interest groups who are more than willing and able to utilize propaganda methods for their own violent causes. If yours is the cause of peace, then utilize communications responsibly, truthfully, and effectively. This is a call to arms, to arm ourselves with knowledge, content, and context generated from open and diverse channels of communication. White House news conferences, CNN, and Al-Jazeera should not be watched in a vacuum separated from the world's people. If so, then the world will remain in the hands of the war propagandists. Dr. Nancy Snow is Assistant Professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton and Adjunct Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California (USA). She is the author of Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World and Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control Since 9/11, both from Seven Stories Press, New York. She is co-editor of War, Media and Propaganda: A Global Perspective (forthcoming, 2004) and is currently writing a book about media ownership and media activism in the age of terror and war. |