The Propaganda War
The Pentagon's brand-new plan for winning the battle of ideas against terrorists
Pentagon officials have just finished writing a document that they hope will help officials steer a path through contentious debates over how the military should handle communications, seen as central to the war on terrorism and, more generally, to the promotion of U.S. interests. The terrorists' increasingly savvy use of videos and the Internet to recruit followers and shape world opinion has given added urgency to the project. The document, called the "strategic communications roadmap," a copy of which was obtained by U.S. News, has been through 10 drafts by senior officials; final approval is expected in the next few weeks.
While U.S. counterterrorism and security strategies call for more robust engagement in the "battle of ideas," the Pentagon has been plagued by internecine skirmishing among various military disciplines, each of which has traditionally had a claim on different types of communications. Strategic communications is the military's umbrella term for a variety of disciplines having to do with information: public affairs, military support to public diplomacy, psychological operations, and battlefield uses of information, such as military deception.
According to Lt. Gen. Gene Renuart, the Joint Staff's director of plans and policy and one of the senior officials involved in the new information strategy, "the desire was to look at our doctrine, our training, our integration, how we work in the interagency [environment], and then ultimately create a culture that understood strategic communication is not just public affairs, information operations or psychological operations, legislative affairs or public diplomacy, but it is the totality of that that you have to work to be effective." The goal, Renuart explained, "is to lay out a process for the Defense Department that can position us for the next 15 years."
The new Pentagon road map calls for a series of steps, some of which have already been taken. A new Strategic Communications secretariat has been formed with 16 staff members who will research important or contentious issues, such as the recent Dubai ports debate or ballistic missile defense. A Strategic Communications Integration Group of four senior Pentagon officials (the director of the Joint Staff, under secretary for policy, assistant secretary for public affairs, and the Joint Staff's strategic communications director) will decide how to handle those issues, adjudicate policy disputes, and ensure that no government agencies are blindsided by others' activities. Recognizing that far more defense dollars are spent on weapons than on wordsmithing, the document's drafters also plan to seek more funds to expand and professionalize the education given to information warriors.
Doing better. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been agitating for some time for a much more proactive effort to get America's message out and to counter the terrorists' highly effective use of communications media. During a visit to the Army War College in March, Rumsfeld said, "If I were grading, I would say we probably deserve a D or D plus as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today. ... We have not found the formula as a country."
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