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A sound psychological warfare effort emerges

The New York Times is reporting on a new military effort to exploit the enemy's ideological and cultural weaknesses in a new mode of attack.

This is an exciting development, because it shows adaptation of a much more sophisticated approach that a handful of psychological warfare experts have been promoting for years. The very report in the Times is almost a psychological operation in itself, revealing what is almost surely a tiny effort and magnifying it into something big - and playing on the paranoia inherent in ideological extremist movements.

While I don't claim credit for any of the developments, as others were working on them apart from my efforts, it's striking to see how the details in the March 18 New York Times article closely parallel the policy recommendations in my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, and in the early drafts which circulated through the Pentagon and CIA since 2004. The ideas in the Institute of World Politics-sponsored book aren't new: They date from the times of the ancient Hebrews, Aristotle and Sun Tzu, and as the Times says, were practiced during the Cold War. But they're new to the war effort.

Here are some of the points in the article that the book advocated. The quotes are taken from the March 18 NYT story. The numbers in parentheses are the corresponding pages in the book.

• Sow confusion, dissent and distrust among the enemy. "To counter efforts by terrorists to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and Web site postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organizations, officials confirm." (65, 74, 130-131)
• Amplify voices of certain Islamic authorities. "At the same time, American diplomats are quietly working behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamic clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence." (70-73, 122, 139)
• Plant seeds of doubt in terrorists' minds to exploit cultural shame and religious beliefs. ". . . if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis." (123, 132)
• Fight the terrorists in their battlespace: Online. "Terrorists hold little or no terrain, except on the Web. 'Al Qaeda and other terrorists’ center of gravity lies in the information domain, and it is there that we must engage it,' said Dell L. Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief." (30-31, 144)
• Establish combat teams to exploit terrorist computers for propaganda purposes. "Some of the government’s most secretive counterterrorism efforts involve disrupting terrorists’ cyberoperations. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them." (122)
• Make better use of captured intelligence to humiliate and demoralize the enemy. "Other American efforts are aimed at discrediting Qaeda operations, including the decision to release seized videotapes showing members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leaders, training children to kidnap and kill, as well as a lengthy letter said to have been written by another terrorist leader that describes the organization as weak and plagued by poor morale."
• Exploit local cultures and rhetoric against the enemy. "Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders." (38-75)
• Amplify local voices to sow doubts and break the enemy's will. "For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will. "'I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. 'What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.'" (32-34, 138-144)
• Widen rifts between terrorists and their friends. "Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces. And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds. Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say." (123)
• Peel away at the concentric rings of support around the terrorists. "'Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter,' [Pentagon special operations policy planner Michael G.] Vickers said. 'But if we can deter the support network — recruiters, financial supporters, local security providers and states who provide sanctuary — then we can start achieving a deterrent effect on the whole terrorist network and constrain terrorists’ ability to operate." (34-35, 76, 120-123)

Footnote: This is a very productive piece of journalism. I would be remiss in not pointing out that one of the co-writers, Eric Schmitt, was also a co-writer of the February 19, 2002 New York Times report that falsely branded the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) as a disinformation unit. That careless report was the product of a turf battle in which Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke leaked the false story to the Times with the intent of inflicting political damage on OSI and forcing it to be shut down. This is indeed what happened. Clarke has never been held accountable for this action (nor has Schmitt or the New York Times), which set back psychological and ideological warfare operations by three years or more.

Memo rips Foreign Service's 'gripping culture of excused inaction'

A senior State Department contractor who completed a year's tour of duty in Baghdad has written a scathing memo describing how the Foreign Service bureaucracy is undermining the war effort in Iraq.

Manuel Miranda, Director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft in the embassy’s Political Section, addressed the February 5 memo to Ambassador Ryan Crocker as a “departure assessment.”

The memo is the most withering internal critique of the State Department bureaucracy that I have ever seen - and it is consistent with what I have been hearing for years. I quote at length from the memo below, and attach a copy of the original here: Download mirandamemo1.pdf

From his State Department in Baghdad, Miranda was a senior adviser to the Iraqi Prime Minister's office. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Miranda has extensive international legal and business experience and also served as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as counsel to the US Senate Majority Leader. He also has written for the Wall Street Journal. 

Miranda won't be a media favorite because he supports the war effort in general, and backs what General David Petraeus and the other warfighters are trying to do in particular. His criticism to Ambassador Crocker was directed squarely at the “Foreign Service and the State Department’s bureaucracy” as being “at the helm of America’s number one policy consideration.”

“We have brought to Iraq the worst of America – our bureaucrats – and failed to apply, as President Roosevelt once did, the high-caliber leadership class and intellectual talent, whose rallying has defined all of America’s finest hours," he said.

“After a year at the Embassy, it is my general assessment that the State Department and the Foreign Service [are] not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq. It is not that the men and women of the Foreign Service and other State Department bureaus are not intelligent and hard-working, it is simply that they are not equipped to handle the job that the State Department has undertaken. . . .

“The purpose of the Surge, now one year old, was to pacify Iraq to allow the GOI [Government of Iraq] to stand up. The State Department has not done its part coincident with the Commanding General’s effort. This is not the fault of the intelligent and hard working individuals skilled at the functions of the ‘normal embassy.’ The problem is institutional. The State Department bureaucracy is not equipped to handle the urgency of America’s Iraq investment in blood and taxpayer funds. You lack the ‘fierce urgency of now.’

“Foreign Service officers, with ludicrously little management experience by any standard other than your own, are not equipped to manage programs, hundreds of millions in funds, and expert human capital assets needed to assist the Government of Iraq to stand up. It is apparent that, other than diplomacy, your only expertise is your own bureaucracy, which inherently makes State Department personnel unable to think outside the box or beyond the paths they have previously taken.”

Miranda assailed what he called "the Foreign Service’s gripping culture of excused inaction.” Among his points:

·         “. . . neither the State Department nor its Foreign Service is competent to manage or lead personnel who have been hired and brought to Iraq as experts, or to synchronize expertise, funds, and programs to support the GOI.”

·         “The American people would be scandalized to know that, throughout the Winter, Spring and Summer of 2007, even while our Congress debated the Iraq question and whether to commit more troops and more funds, the Embassy was largely consumed in successive internal reorganizations with contradictory management and policy goals. In some cases, administrative and management goals that occupied our time reflected the urgencies and priorities that could only originate in Foggy Bottom and far-removed from the reality or urgencies on the ground. The fact that over 80 people sit in Washington, second-guessing and delaying the work of the Embassy, many who have been to Baghdad, is an embarrassment alone.”

·         “. . . the State Department’s culture of delay and indecision, natural to any bureaucracy, is out of sync with the urgency felt by the American people and the Congress in furthering America’s interests in Iraq. The delay in staffing the Commanding General’s Ministerial Performance initiative (from May to the present) would be considered grossly negligent if not willful in any environment.”

·         “. . . if the management of the Embassy and the State Department’s Iraq operation were judged by rules that govern business judgment and asset waste in the private sector, the delays, indecision, and reorganizations over the past year, would be considered willfully negligent if not criminal. In light of the nation’s sacrifice, what we have seen this past year in the Embassy is incomprehensible.”

·         “The Embassy is also severely encumbered by the Foreign Service’s built-in attention deficit disorder, with personnel and new leaders rotating out within a year or less. . . .

·         “. . . there is a near complete lack of strategic forethought or synchronization between Embassy staffing and program initiatives and funding . . . Only the military takes seriously the Joint Campaign and its metrics of achievement, while State Department leaders use it only when advantageous.”

·         “The waste of taxpayer funds resulting from such mismanagement is something that only a deeply entrenched bureaucracy with a unionized attitude, like the Foreign Service and Main State [Department], could find acceptable.”

·         “This past year, the State Department and the Embassy has been led by two misguided premises: first, the obsessive aim that the Embassy be turned into a ‘normal embassy’ and, second, that the State Department cannot be faulted for things that the GOI is not doing, i.e. ‘the Iraqis need to do this themselves.’”

·         “The impulse to transform the Embassy into a ‘normal embassy’ displays most starkly the State Department bureaucracy’s endemic problems, including inflexibility and the inability to understand alternative management principles, use expertise and funds in any manner outside the State Department’s normal experience, the inability to respond to the urgency of America’s presence in Iraq, and the inclination to make excuses and blame the Embassy’s failures on others.”

·         “The second mantra, that political success in Iraq depends entirely on Iraqis, amounts to little more than excuse-making by people who cannot imagine alternative paths and who are limited by their own limited experience in government and economic development.”

·         “Simply put, Foreign Service officers are not equipped to manage process-oriented assistance programs and yet we have put into their hands hundreds of millions of dollars. Any American graduate school study group could do better.”

·         “In this excuse-making culture, the State Department has been an albatross around the neck of the Coalition command, whose leaders and personnel have a leadership profile radically opposite to the State Department’s. Among other things, the State Department has failed to assist Coalition initiatives by delaying or failing to supply the civilian expertise needed in a thoughtful and timely manner and also delaying decisions on funding and staffing vital to GOI (and our) success.”

·         “In the greater degree of importance, the Foreign Service culture has created a situation where important information is kept from vital decision makers. In my year in Baghdad, I have seen the Embassy intentionally keep information from: the White House and relevant policy-making agencies; the State Department in Washington (because ‘we cannot trust that they will not leak to the press’); and the Commanding General (because ‘we do not wash our dirty laundry in public’).”

·         “I have also witnessed a relentless culture of information-hoarding within the Embassy. The dysfunctional failure to communicate and share information is beyond anything that can be imagined under any circumstances. It is endemic of a bureaucracy that is far beyond its pale of competence and experience.”

·         “Needless to say, I have also witnessed the failure to coordinate and communicate with allies and international organizations.”

·         “. . . despite the countless and deeply-researched written products created by the Embassy over 5 years, and by contractors who are paid millions of dollars for the work product, the Embassy has no system in place to retrieve vital information about Iraq, its government and laws, and past experiences and decisions.”

·         “Embassy (and Coalition) personnel are in a constant state of information-gathering that relies mostly on luck and personality, and is always retaking the same ground.”

·         “Only American bureaucrats, without practical legal or business experience, who spend their careers abroad, could fail to understand the role of legislative practice in our own country, or the need for a concerted, professional support effort in our Embassy in Baghdad.”

·         “America’s success in Iraq will not be had with older or more Foreign Service officers doing the little that the Foreign Service is competent to do. The last thing that we need in Baghdad is more Foreign Service officers. We need experts, experienced human capital managers, and leaders who can think outside the box to synchronize staffing, funding, and urgent needs.”

·         “In addition . . . there are no lack of Americans who are willing to come to Iraq. At the Embassy today, there are Americans who have foregone incomes five times greater than what they make now and who put aside careers to serve. If I thought the State Department were competent, I would have been glad to sign on for more than a year. Recruitment is not your problem. Your system of staffing is.”

·         “The State Department would do the nation a service if it admits that it is not equipped to do the job you have undertaken. Our Congress has an obligation to give you the oversight our national sacrifice demands. We are now living our latest error.”

War of ideas? What, me worry?

Top Bush Administration national security officials practically admit that they are doing nothing to wage the war of ideas against Islamist extremists.

In a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT) asked the nation's top security and intelligence chiefs about what they are doing to counter enemy propaganda at home and abroad.

The answer, as Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Times: "Not much."

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller told the Senate that the FBI is doing nothing to combat enemy propaganda (even though the Bureau routinely did such things since before World War II). All it's doing, he said, is "outreach" to Muslims here at home so they "understand the FBI" and address the "radicalization issue," he said, according to Gertz.

National Counterterrorism Center chief Scott Redd acknowledged in the hearing that the "war of ideas" is one of the "four pillars" in American war strategy, but said there is no "home office" for that pillar in this country.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell "said the intelligence community does not conduct any battle of ideas against terrorists in the United States unless there is a foreign connection," Gertz writes. Fair enough. But is it acting on a comprehensive strategic level, or are the efforts still piecemeal?

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, reports Gertz, "also said nothing is being done domestically to battle Islamist extremist ideas. The department's incident management team, he said, is focused on civil rights or civil liberties — not fighting terrorists' ideology." Not even when the ideology threatens citizens civil rights and civil liberties.

Pointed critique proposes solutions for Iraq IO failure

In a blunt but productive critique of Coalition information operations (IO) in Iraq, an IO practitioner offers a way out of the mess.

Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) Senior Fellow Andrew Garfield writes in the Middle East Quarterly that US-led efforts to communicate with Iraqis have been unimaginative, disorganized, largely irrelevant to the target audiences, slow to anticipate or respond, and often wasteful of funds and resources. The bottom line, he argues, is that current IO strategy is not supporting the warfighters in Iraq. The enemy is running IO circles around us.

My read on Garfield's article is that our IO policy is getting our guys needlessly killed.

The "insurgents," Garfield says, have mastered various forms of political and cultural communication, from high-profile images and videos of their attacks to the simple stuff like grafitti, art, poetry, songs, leafletting, publishing and multimedia productions.

While US-led forces should reign supreme in all those areas - and monitor the enemy's visual imprint to diminish its psychological presence - the effort fumbles. "The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists," Garfield says.

The insurgents, terrorists and militiamen are adept at exploiting TV cameras to project their message globally, while "US authorities handicap themselves. US military lawyers fear 'blowback' to US domestic audiences, which they interpret as a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibited domestic distribution of propaganda meant for foreign audiences. As a result, US commanders forbid coalition authorities to openly engage on the Internet. The decision has ceded this key tool to the Iraqi insurgents," he adds.

Indeed, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 pertains only to the State Department. Congress narrowly defined the law to pertain exclusively to State and to what became the US Information Agency, which has since been absorbed into the State Department. Military lawyers and PAOs who invoke Smith-Mundt to limit Defense Department information ops are flat wrong. This blog published an alert about Smith-Mundt last May.

Garfield identifies wastefulness in US-funded information operations: "While the coalition has spent a hundred million dollars on advertising in Iraq, the strategy of re-awarding huge contracts to advertising firms who spend tens of millions of dollars on nationally-broadcast radio and television commercials but who cannot demonstrate effective audience penetration is questionable. Local Iraqi firms have designed the most effective commercials at a relatively low cost. For example, one commercial showing the impact of an improvised explosive device on an Iraqi family cost only $15,000 to make. However, most coalition advertisements, perhaps one hundred times more costly, lack resonance and relevance among ordinary Iraqis, even as they saturate the airwaves."

Some US-funded ads, he says, have done more harm than good. Lack of IO coordination is another problem: "There is an interagency process meant to coordinate the coalition's information campaign but, in reality, this becomes a forum for information sharing rather than a mechanism for command and control."

Garfield calls for "a single command authority" to "guide and supervise all information and psychological operations and public affairs staff," rather than have the current competing structure with many chiefs and little grand strategy.

A slow message approval process has killed excellent initiatives. Senior officials, Garfield writes, "take days if not weeks to clear information operations products, even excellent products developed by Iraqis for their own ethnic groups." Approval of an advertisement for a newspaper in an Iraqi city like Fargo, North Dakota, requires passing through a colon of staffers, lawyers and senior officers up to the three-star level. Garfield proposes a quick approval process modeled after that of private news organizations.

Garfield provides a mother lode of observations and ideas to fix the current chronic IO problem in Iraq. Everyone in the IO community should read and debate it. To read the article, click here.

Now available: The Public Diplomacy Reader

It's finally out: The Public Diplomacy Reader, more than 500 pages of some of the most important articles, letters, speeches and documents about public diplomacy and strategic communication.

Published by The Institute of World Politics Press and edited by your humble blogger, The Public Diplomacy Reader has already been assigned as a textbook at National Defense University.

Carnes Lord of the US Naval War College calls The Public Diplomacy Reader "unique and outstanding." Voice of America historian Alan Heil says the book has "a commanding sweep of history." And former VOA Director Robert Reilly says that the Reader is "indispensable for both students and anyone wishing to win the 'war of ideas.'"

In a few weeks The Public Diplomacy Reader will be available on Amazon.com, but until then, you can purchase it online directly from the printer.  Click on the following:  PAPERBACK EDITION $34.95    HARDBOUND EDITION $49.95   DOWNLOAD $19.95

Exclusive: New State Department strategy on strategic communication and public diplomacy

The State Department has issued a new National Strategy on Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy, but it isn't officially available to the public yet. PoliticalWarfare readers, though, can get it here.

The unclassified, 34-page strategy outlines a pretty conventional approach, mainly through the politically correct eyes of Washington-bound FSOs and political appointees. It starts out with an inspiring quote from the president delivered at a White House summit on malaria.

The strategy says some nice things about AIDS and the need to "build networks of women scientists," and other good stuff about minorities. A "Middle East Breast Cancer Initiative" is mentioned on page 23. Real solid stuff that I'm sure our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will appreciate.

Believe it or not, the strategic communication and public diplomacy strategy does address the war. So the document isn't a total loss. Thanks must go to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has issued reports year after year that slammed the State Department for having no strategy, and recommendations from governmental and private commissions. Kudos also to the State Department's Inspector General, who forced some changes at the public diplomacy shop.

This professor has given the strategy a quick read, and would grade it a gentleman's "C." (In graduate school, anything below a B- is failure, so the strategy isn't really ready for prime time. I'm trying to be charitable.) After I re-read it more carefully, I might change the grade.

Click the link for a PDF copy of the report, which contains no official State Department markings. Download stratcommo_plan_070531.pdf

I invite readers to comment about the report on this blog.

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes (pictured) says in an internal cover message, "This strategy is designed to provide a unified strategic framework for US government communications, yet be flexible and adaptable to meet the different needs and responsibilities of very diverse government agencies. 

"The plan was developed by the inter-agency PCC on strategic communications and is the result of extensive input from different agencies, as well as major recommendations from more than 30 reports on public diplomacy, GAO reports, IG recommendations and consultations with private sector communications professionals. 

"The plan is deliberately short so it will be read and used, rather than placed on a shelf. Attachments provide detailed examples of how to put the strategies into action, as called for by GAO and IG reports. We intend for the strategy to provide a comprehensive blueprint that brings all of our resources to bear on repreenting America as a whole, by highlighting the activities and programs all embassies and US Government agencies are undertaking. Toward that objective, we have asked each US government agency and embassy to develop specific action plans, as detailed on page 9, to help us implement the strategy."

RAND report: Cold War experience can strengthen moderate Muslims

By drawing from the Cold War experience of uniting democratic people against Soviet communism, the world can help moderate Muslims unite against Islamist extremists. That's the thesis of a new RAND Corporation report titled Building Moderate Muslim Networks.

“The struggle in much of the Muslim world today is a war of ideas,” said the report's lead author, Angel Rabasa, a RAND senior policy analyst. “This is not a war of civilizations; it’s not Islam versus the West. It’s a struggle within Islam to define the character of Islam.”

“We cannot come in as outsiders, as a non-Muslim country, and discredit the radicals’ ideology,” Rabasa said. “Muslims have to do that themselves. What we can do is level the playing field by empowering the moderates.” This empowerment should come not as an afterthought, but as a basic element of US strategy.  Click here to order or download the report.

No spin on no strategy

"In many parts of the world, America's Voice is becoming muted or going silent. . . . As far as I can tell, there is no long range, proactive strategic planning going on - based on solid research and calculated analysis of future political and economic realities."

- Myrna Whitworth,
Former acting director, Voice of America
Speech to Public Diplomacy Council
George Washington University, November 2006

New book calls for US political warfare offensive

A new book outlining ten ways to win the war against the terrorists calls for the US to wage political warfare against its enemies abroad. "While we wage it against each other incessantly - Republicans against Democrats, liberals against conservatives, etc. - we have largely failed to use political warfare against our enemies, or even to organize ourselves to do so," author Frank Gaffney argues in his book, War Footing. His solution: Give the Department of Defense responsibility for political warfare as an instrument of national defense. The editor of PoliticalWarfare.org assisted with this book.

Author: Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. Source: War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail (Naval Institute Press, 2005).