PoliticalWarfare.org

CIA covertly funded Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago

As part of the Eisenhower Administration's campaign to subvert the Soviet Union from within, the CIA covertly arranged for Boris Pasternak's famed novel Doctor Zhivago to be published in Russian. The operation helped the dissident writer win the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe broadcaster Ivan Tolstoy tells the story in a forthcoming book. "Pasternak's novel became a tool that was used by the United States to teach the Soviet Union a lesson," Tolstoy tells the Washington Post.

The operation is considered a jewel in US cultural warfare against the USSR. Unpublished copies of Doctor Zhivago circulated underground in the Soviet Union. A recently revealed document from the Soviet archives shows then-Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov telling the Communist Party Central Committee in a memo that "Boris Pasternak's novel is a malicious libel of the USSR." A KGB memo said, "a typical feature of [Pasternak's] work is estrangement from Soviet life and a celebration of individualism."

The CIA is not commenting. The Post reports, "The agency's files on its cultural underwriting in Europe remain closed, historians said."

Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizes info ops

The new US Army Field Manual on counterinsurgency is a near-transformational document that emphasizes the role of information operations as a core element of defeating guerrillas and terrorists.

Published in December and released jointly by the Army and Marine Corps, the hefty manual was authored by Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus USA, now with a fourth star as the new chief of Central Command (CENTCOM).

We'll review this manual later. Click here for a pdf copy.

Stop building shrines for our enemies

The US believes it's doing the proper thing when it turns over the remains of dead terrorists and other enemies to next of kin for burial.

But the charitable action earns us no goodwill, and merely serves to help the enemy build the cult of martyrdom. Each terrorist body becomes a propaganda event; each terrorist burial builds a shrine.

The US should have a policy for what to do with terrorist bodies: No religious burial and no shrine. The enemy must know that when he dies, his body will be disposed of in an "unclean" way. We must leave no trace to inspire future terrorists.

Here's a simple proposal: Cremate the remains of all dead terrorists, insurgents and other enemy forces. Load the ashes aboard a military cargo plane, fly them way out over the ocean, and push them out the back for an unmarked burial at sea.

That will be a morally acceptable means of burying the dead and it will stop the proliferation of terrorist shrines.

Good move: Somalia shuts 3 enemy media groups

The new transitional Somali government has shut down three enamy radio and TV stations, accusing them of "carrying out programmes likely to cause unrest" and of broadcasting "propaganda."

The propaganda outlets are HornAfrik radio and TV, Shabelle Media Network, Radio Voice of Holy Koran and the offices of Al Jazeera TV, according to MiddleEastOnline.

Journalists and civil rights activists denounced the move, but to us at PoliticalWarfare.org, it seems like a smart move - something the US should have done in Iraq.

Walter Russell Mead gives thumbs-up to Carnes Lord's public diplomacy book

In the January-February 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Walter Russell Mead gives a positive review of Carnes Lord's new book, Losing Hearts and Minds? Public Diplomacy and Strategic Influence in the Age of Terror:

"Lord, national security adviser to the vice president during the George H. W. Bush administration, weighs in on the vital debate over public diplomacy, offering both analysis of and prescriptions for some of the most complex issues facing U.S. foreign policy today. Lord believes that public diplomacy is a matter of strategic importance and that bureaucratic disarray, intellectual confusion, and political squeamishness are preventing the United States from performing this task successfully.

"Whereas many writers on the subject focus exclusively on the State Department, Lord never forgets that both the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies have a history of engagement in the field as well. The Bush administration has not, argues Lord, handled public diplomacy particularly well, and neither did the Clinton administration. He makes a strong case that a broad review of public diplomacy is urgently needed, and his holistic approach and unblinking focus on the relationship of public diplomacy to U.S. grand strategy will greatly benefit such a review.

"Much of what Lord says will be controversial, but a healthy dose of controversy may help stimulate the wide-ranging debate this important subject urgently needs."

Deception: Appeal for acceptance, discourse on doctrine, preface to planning

"Deception: Appeal for acceptance, discourse on doctrine, preface to planning," by Walter Jajko, Comparative Strategy, November-December 2003.

The United States has rarely resorted to strategic deception, even when appropriate opportunities for its use have occurred and even though its adversaries have used it. The U.S. tends to view deception as unacceptable; yet, used knowledgeably and artfully, it can be a powerful, economic, and sometimes decisive instrument. Deception is an exceptional instrument of national security policy and an essential element of military operations. Deception targets the adversarial decisionmaker; his mind is the decisive battlespace. The indispensable conditions for the sustained conduct of deception are an apparatus, policy, philosophy, practitioners, and practice. The process of creating and executing a deception requires six rigorous and meticulous steps. The U.S. ought to use deception systematically to attack its adversaries' long-range, high-payoff targets.

Deception 101 - Primer on deception

"Deception 101 - Primer on deception," Joseph W. Caddell, Strategic Studies Institute, 2004.

Abstract to follow.

Strategic deception in modern democracies: The ethical dimension

"Strategic deception in modern democracies: The ethical dimension," Paper by Elizabeth Kiss, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University, October 31-November 1, 2003.

Abstract to follow

Strategic Communication: Report of the Defense Science Board

Now available to the general public in printed form, this landmark report from the Defense Science Board is revolutionizing the way diplomats, warfighters and other national security professionals think and act.

Strategic Communication lays out the framework for a new national doctrine about using information operations, public diplomacy, public affairs and other tools in an integrated fashion to promote US military and policy goals. A reprint by Crossbow Books. 102 pp.

Effectiveness of stability operations assessed

An Army War College Strategy Research paper discusses stability operations in post-invasion Iraq.  Col. Paul F. Dicker USAR, writes in "Effectiveness of Stability Operations During the Initial Implementation of the Transition Phase for Operation Iraqi Freedom," studies how the military, State Department, US Agency for International Development (USAID) and others fared in trying to bring order and recovery to the civilian population of Iraq. Publication date: July 2004.