More on information warfare directed at the American public

This is another piece in the Summer 2008 Parameters that is a basically arguing for the need to our military to wage information operations aimed at propagandizing the American public, Waging Communication War by Kenneth Payne. He writes:

Communication in this period became a force multiplier - reassuring local populations and building productive information relationships, and helping to shore up support for the policy goals with domestic American audiences. General David Petraeus’s appearances before Congress, ostensibly about oversight, were useful for building domestic support for a costly deployment and a revitalized counterinsurgency strategy.

Sound strategy, then, is an essential prerequisite of effective communication. But the relationship should not only be in one direction. Strategists would do well to reflect on the opinion of audiences, leveraging them in pursuit of policy goals, and working with the grain of the audience rather than against it. If war is conceived as a violent struggle of wills between opposing forces, and moreover, one in which these forces are competing for the will of a population, then shrewd commanders should reflect on the characteristics of the audiences with which they are communicating. To persuade an audience, one ought to have a persuasive message, and this makes understanding the audience vital. (my emphasis)

The more I hear of this kind of argument, that war is "a violent struggle of wills", and not just of wills of the opposing armies, but the "will of a population", the more it seems to me an inherently undemocratic notion when it defines public opinion of the warring country as a specifically military factor, failing to make the critical democratic distinctions between military responsibilities and civilian.

Payne makes that tendency even more explicit:

That is a tricky communication challenge given the views of a large segment of the domestic American audience, where a slim plurality favors bringing forces home quickly, and with whom the war in Iraq is becoming increasingly unpopular. This domestic audience is vital for the counterinsurgent, but is typically neglected in studies of counterinsurgency. Sooner or later, as the French discovered in Indochina and Algeria, lackluster domestic support produces tangible battlefield results - resources may not be forthcoming, the public is no longer prepared to accept the price in blood, treasure, and prestige of sustaining the unpopular defense of nonexistential causes.

Democratic states have proved to be poor counterinsurgents. They lack the repressive brutality that totalitarian regimes demonstrate in suppressing political dissent; they operate on a democratic cycle that is much shorter than the timeline typically required for counterinsurgency; and the attitudes of the domestic audience have the ability to definitively shape policy, by means of the ballot box or by exerting pressure on elected officials. (my emphasis)

I should note that the polls showing only a plurality of Americans are in favor of "bringing forces home quickly" from Iraq make a distinction between "quickly" and "within a year". Large majorities for years now have fallen within those two categories. And most antiwar activists consider a year to be the quickest feasible withdrawal time. His presentation is very misleading on that point. It would be more accurate to say that a plurality wants to get the troops out of Iraq even faster than most antiwar activists think is even feasible.

What can you say to this? Democracies tend to oppose colonial-type wars that involve protracted warfare because normal people generally don't like war! And any remotely sane approach to war of any kind has to attempt to make some reasonable assessment of costs in comparison to possible benefits.

French people who came to oppose the Algerian War were right that the costs were greater than any reasonably possible benefits to France. Americans who made a similar assessment about the Vietnam War were also right. And people who now favor a withdrawal from Iraq are right in their desire, and more reasonable in their cost-benefit assessments than McCain and other war zealots.

Part of the problem of discussing the Will of the home population as a technical military factor is that it effectively hides the usually-implied ideological argument, which is that it is illegitimate for the people of a country to make the judgment that a particular war is costing more than it's worth to their country. That's not democracy. And it's that kind of thinking that made the Founders worry that a standing army would be a danger to democracy.

Tags: counterinsurgency, iraq war, kenneth payne