PoliticalWarfare.org

Exclusive: New 'Strategic Influence' book is finally available

After years of anticipation, my anthology, Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda and Political Warfare is now available to the public.

The book won't be available in bookstores or on Amazon until October, but you can get it online through this blog.

Strategic Influence is the work of 13 scholars and practitioners in the fields of public diplomacy, counterpropaganda and political warfare. The book surveys the subjects from the American Revolution, through the Cold War, to present-day wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We strove to make the book the best single volume on the subject. It's a combination of scholarly, personal narratives and the policy essays from some of the best minds in the business - some recognizable, some emerging. Here's the table of contents:

• The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers. J. Michael Waller, Institute of World Politics;
• What 'Strategic' Public Diplomacy Is. Carnes Lord, Naval War College;
• Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. Carnes Lord;
• Cultural Diplomacy, Political Influence and Integrated Strategy. John Lenczowski, Institute of World Politics;
• Mediators of the Message: The Role of Religion and Civil Society in Public Diplomacy. Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation;
• Conducting a War of Ideas with Public Diplomacy. Robert Reilly, former director, Voice of America;
• Counterpropaganda: We Can't Win Without It. Herbert Romerstein, former director, Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, U.S. Information Agency;
• Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda. Andrew Garfield, Glevum Associates;
• The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful Template for Strategic Influence. Herbert Romerstein;
• Political Warfare: Means for Achieving Political Ends. Angelo Codevilla, Boston University;
• Political War vs Political Terror: Case Study of an American Success Story. John J. Tierney, Institute of World Politics;
• The Importance of Words. J. Michael Waller;
• Hearts and Minds Online: Internetting the Messages in the Infosphere. Hampton Stephens, World Politics Review;
• Toward a Theory of Low-Intensity Propaganda. Stephen C. Baker, Institute of World Politics;
• Red-Teaming Strategic Communications and Political Warfare. David Spencer, National Defense University;
• A Comprehensive Approach to Information Operations. Andrew Garfield;
• Synchronizing Rhetoric, Policy and Action. Juliana Geran Pilon, Institute of World Politics;
• An Immediate-Term Wartime Message Strategy. J. Michael Waller;
• Getting Serious About Strategic Influence. J. Michael Waller.

Strategic Influence is published by the Institute of World Politics Press. The original edition was published for restricted circulation in 2007. This edition was revised in 2009 but was not available until today, and will not be generally available to the public until October 2010.

The book is only available at present - as a paperback and as an e-book - by clicking here.

Serbian nonviolent action manual can be useful for Iranian resistance

Iran's broad-based political resistance will benefit from the study of other nonviolent revolutions against dictatorships. I think the Iranian opposition is now so viable - extending even within elements of the regime itself - that a little moral support from the outside world can go a long way to helping the Iranian people bring about the change they need.

Iranians can draw lessons from revolutions against communist and extreme nationalist regimes. Here's an excellent starting point: Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points - A Strategic Approach to Everyday Tactics, published in Serbia.

I really like this common-sense, universal, strategic approach. The US Institute of Peace sponsored this project, which produced the book in several languages.

(Download the English version here: Download NonviolentStruggle. Download the Persian-language version here: Download Nonviolent_farsi)

Here's the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Introduction to Strategic Nonviolent Conflict

Chapter 2. The Nature, Models and Sources of Political Power

Chapter 3. Pillars of Support: How Power is Expressed

Chapter 4. Assessing Capabilities and Planning

Chapter 5. Planning Skills: The Plan Format

Chapter 6. Targeted Communication: Message Development

Chapter 7. Let the World Know Your Message: Performing Public Actions

Chapter 8. Building a Strategy: From Actions to Campaigns

Chapter 9. Managing a Nonviolent Campaign: Material Resources

Chapter 10. Managing a Nonviolent Campaign: Human Resources

Chapter 11. Managing a Nonviolent Campaign: Time as a Universal Resource

Chapter 12. Building the Real-Field Campaign and the Inverse Planning Model

Chapter 13. Working Under Repression: Morale and Communications

Chapter 14. Working Under Repression: Responding to the Opponent's Sanctions

Chapter 15. How to Use This Book: The "ART" Model of Multilevel Knowledge Transfer

Chapter 16. How to Use This Book: Online Learning and Support

Annex 1. Methods of Nonviolent Action

Annex 2. 10 Years of Nonviolent Conflict in Serbia

Download your copy here: Download NonviolentStruggle

How dictators censor us

Dictatorial regimes and movements continue to censor the American media through implicit or explicit threats of retaliation. Anne Applebaum notes the problem in her Washington Post column that:

• Yale University Press censored a book about the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and didn't include important cartoons that the author had included in the manuscript.
• GQ buried a story (first broken in the US by David Satter) in its September 2009 issue that pointed to the former KGB as being behind a series of bombings of Russian apartment buildings that Vladimir Putin used as a pretext to invade Chechnya; the story was purged or never posted on GQ's website and censored out of its Russian-language edition.
• Google has merrily censored its Chinese-language search engine to come up with few if any significant results on the Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan or democracy.

"These three incidents are not identical," says Applebaum. "Yale Press refused to print the cartoons because the university fears retaliatory violence on its campus. Conde Nast [publisher of GQ] refused to promote an article on the Russian secret service because it fears a loss of Russian advertisers. Google refuses to let its Chinese users search for 'Tiananmen' and other taboo subjects because Google wants to compete against Chinese search engines for a share of the huge Chinese market. All three companies exhibit greatly varying degrees of remorse, too, from Conde Nast (none) to the Yale Press (a lot) to Google (ambivalent: Google founder Sergey Brin initially argued that the company would at least bring more information to China, if not complete information).

"Nevertheless, the three stories lead to one conclusion: In different ways, the Russian government, the Chinese government and unnamed Islamic terrorists are now capable of placing de facto controls on American companies -- something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. In a world that seems more dangerous and less profitable than it did in the pas t, either greed or fear proved stronger than these companies' commitment to free speech."

Incidents like these are nothing new. One almost forgets that CNN ran deliberately biased coverage of Saddam Hussein's regime as the price its executives paid for the dictator's permission to operate a "news" bureau in Baghdad (a la Peter Arnett). Harvard University is notorious for its apparent faustian bargain with Chinese benefactors to water down its academic skepticism of the Beijing regime - and to invite People's Liberation Army intelligence officers to Cambridge as part of an "exchange" program. And so much more.

A Soviet political warfare manual comments on 'socialist education'

With all the controversy now about propagandizing schoolchildren, I dusted off an old Soviet political warfare manual titled Communists and the Youth: A Study of Revolutionary Education. Published in the USSR in 1984, the 255-page book sat on my shelf, unread, since I got it while infiltrating a Soviet front organization during United Nations International Youth Year celebrations in 1985. Today I cracked the cover the first time - and how relevant it is to today's debate! Here's an excerpt from the introduction, with some sections highlighted for emphasis:

"'The hot student summer' of 1968 affected nearly 50 countries of the capitalist world. Bourgeois publishers jumped at the opportunity to cash in on the events, and hurriedly printed everything connected with this event, even collections of graffiti and glossaries of the 'insurgents' slang. The bourgeois mass media gave wide coverage to the student battles. And soon the Western publishing conveyor began churning out more profound 'studies' prophesying the appearance of a new 'thinker class' and the dawn of a new era called 'the revolution of the young.' What made this more alluring was the fact that the waves of the student tempest continued to swell from time to time, especially on American campuses.

"It would be wrong to belittle the force and significance of this student unrest, its extent, the political awakening and attempts of social self-assertion by the young people of the 'sixties. But this student action, which had quite a considerable impact when it did erupt, was, on the whole, spontaneous and chaotic. Led principally by anarchist, Trotskyite, and ultra-left elements, the student protest had a pseudo-revolutionary colouring.

"But youth will not automatically come to the side of the revolutionary forces. For them to do so there has to be a persistent, painstaking, daily work by the progressive forces, and especially by the communist and workers' parties. And objective and subjective factors play a special role. . . .

"Alongside the objective conditions for the growing breadth and depth of social action by the youth, the subjective factor is equally significant: the correct ideological and political orientation of the young, the ability of the communist parties and youth leagues to impart the protest by the youth a conscious and organized nature, and their ability to educate them in a genuine revolutionary spirit.

"In an antagonistic society the ruling classes determine the content, objectives, forms and methods of the system of education officially recognized in that society. However, this does not exclude that other classes are involved in educational activities, activities directly opposed to the objectives of the official education. Here, the question is to change the character of education. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party [Communist Manifesto], Marx and Engels wrote: 'The Communists have not invented the intervention of society and education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.'

"The founders of Marxism-Leninism pointed to the close interconnection between the process of education and the revolutionary transformation of society. They considered that the educational process was of a political character, and said that the revolutionary class of society - the working class led by its vanguard, the Communist Party - had to play a special role in education.

"At this point one should explain the correlation of the ideas 'revolutionary education' and 'communist education.' Thus, in a bourgeois society, it is a question mainly of revolutionary education, primarily of giving the progressive section of the youth a Marxist world outlook, and class self-consciousness, and of educating these young people in the course of revolutionary practice and revolutionary action. . . .

"Communist education became of general state and political significance only after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution and when the building of a socialist society was initiated. There was a fundamental change in the entire character of social education, which became a component of the building of socialism and communism. . . .

"In several instances, especially during the transitional period of the building of socialism, it is correct to use the term 'socialist education' as the initial stage of communist education. . . .

"The struggle to win the youth is one of the most important aspects of the ideological struggle in the modern world. The outcome of the class struggle of today and tomorrow largely depends on whom the youth will follow."

Source: Communists and the Youth: A Study of Revolutionary Education (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984), pp. 1-11.

Political warfare of the American Revolution documents available

My new compilation of American Revolutionary War propaganda and political warfare is now available. Founding Political Warfare Documents of the United States is a 367-page compendium of some of the best examples of American and British propaganda and political warfare: leaflets, pamphlets, declarations, speeches, letters, essays, articles, official documents, cartoons, and satire.

Authors include Samuel Adams (of course), James Otis, John Hancock, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, the Sons of Liberty, the Continental Congress; and the British Parliament, General Thomas Gage, the dreaded Parliament, and King George III.

I designed this book for my students, as a reader for my Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future course at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security and international affairs in Washington, DC. (Class meets Thursday nights starting September 3, and there's still time to sign up.)

It's too soon to order Founding Political Warfare Documents of the United States on Amazon and the other big online booksellers, but the book is available online right now from Crossbow Press.

New York Times faked out by forged letter

The New York Times didn't bother to verify the authenticity of an emailed letter it received, purportedly from the mayor of Paris, France, and went ahead and published the contents anyway.

The email criticized Caroline Kennedy for seeking the US Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. "We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling," the email said. The author supposedly was Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe (pictured).

A sharp-eyed editor of a Franco-American website discovered the hoax, thinking the wording sounded out of place for a mayor of the French capital city.

Delanoe's office pronounced the letter a forgery. "We have asked the New York Times for a denial and an apology," a spokeswoman tells the Associated Press. "Clearly, this was never sent by Bertrand Delanoe."

The Times is not entertaining questions from reporters, preferring to control the bad news by referring journalists to the paper's website for a pre-packaged explanation.

The steadily declining journalistic standards of New York Times editors account for the mistake. The paper received the unsolicited email, purportedly from Delanoe, accepted it for publication, edited it, sent the edited version back to the sender, "and did not hear back," the paper said, according to AP. Editors went ahead and printed it anyway.

Here's what the Times posted today on the "Opinion" section of its website under the heading "Editor's Note": "Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy. This letter was a fake. It should not have been published."

"We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future." Let's count the many more ways the Times allows its readers to be spoofed. 

Fightback in Hollywood: Attend this weekend's film festival

There's a cultural revolution taking place in Hollywood, where anti-American orthodoxy is facing a challenge from an underground of new and established actors, directors and producers.

You can have a taste of it yourself and party with some of the people at the upcoming American Film Renaissance Festival. It takes place in the Washington, DC area from October 1-4.

Join actor/producer Robert Davi at the Sequoia restaurant in Georgetown after the screening of The Dukes on October 1; view the documentary Do As I Say on October 2, The American Carol on October 3, and the suspense thriller Dangerous Calling on October 4. Also on October 4: Drew Carey produced and hosts Shorts Block for Reason.TV; plus there's a showing of the documentary Blocking 'The Path to 9/11,' and the premiere of the satirical, funny, yet most un-funny U.N. Me about the United Nations by Ami Horowitz.

I've seen pre-screenings of most of these films in various stages of production. If you can see only one of them, go see my favorite, The American Carol.

The American Carol uses my favorite political weapon, ridicule, against the adversary. Produced by David Zucker (the guy behind Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Scary Movie 3 and 4, and a lot of other funny stuff) and featuring Jon Voight, both good friends of ours at the Center for Security Policy, The American Carol stars a fat slob filmmaking character named Michael Mallone who looks and behaves remarkably like Michael Moore.

"Mallone" wants to abolish the 4th of July as a national holiday and is treated, Scrooge-like, to haunting visits by three spirits - John Voight as George Washington, Kelsey Grammer as George S. Patton, and Trace Adkins as the Angel of Death - show him the true meaning of America and patriotism. It's hugely politically incorrect, especially concerning Islamist terrorists, among other things. Plus Bill O'Reilly's face-slapping cameo in a port-a-potty. Click here to see the trailer.

Trace Adkins, Robert Davi, Kevin Farley, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Leslie Nielsen, John Voight and James Woods appear in this hysterical satirical comedy. A pub crawl caps the screening at the Regal Ballston Common theater in Arlington, Virginia. Click here for ticket information.

Bloggers respond to my new magazine on global stability solutions

With the role of the private sector growing in the global stability field, I'm enthused to announce a new magazine devoted to the subject. One of the reasons for my enthusiasm is because I'm the editor. Another reason is that everyone from Mother Jones to Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show are choking on it.

Serviam's first issue just came out and has already been getting attention in the blogosphere. The magazine's name is Latin for "I will serve," and it stresses service to humanity through private sector solutions. Our lead editorial describes the publication's purpose.

Here's the link to our homepage, with info on the publication and how to subscribe.

Now for the fun: We're already getting some irreverent treatment among the bloggers at Wired, Mother Jones and Gawker. They compare our happy little magazine to Soldier of Fortune. In the words of the Mother Jones blogger, Serviam is a "sleeker, tamer version of SOF."

Not really, but we'll take that as a compliment considering the source. Gotta love the Mother Jones coverage:

It was only a matter of time before an entrepreneurial publisher seized on the private military contracting boom—and all those untapped ad dollars—in order to give Soldier of Fortune, long the preeminent mag for hired guns, a run for its money. That time has arrived and the mag is called Serviam (Latin for "I will serve"). Edited by conservative author and think tanker J. Michael Waller and published by EEI Communications (whose president, James T. deGraffenreid, is a board member of Frank Gaffney's hawkish Center for Security Policy), the magazine bills itself as a provider of "accurate and actionable information about private sector solutions to promote global stability." Serviam is a sleeker, tamer version of SOF, which, like the companies it caters to, is seeking to soften the mercenary image, casting soldiers-for-hire as international peacekeepers.

To hear Waller tell it in his inaugural editor's note, private security firms are as central to America's heritage as the pilgrims themselves.

Ephemerist, in his own blog, says our magazine will "make a great Christmas present." But I infer from the tone of his comment that he isn't really serious. BlogforDemocracy calls us "completely terrifying." The fan club of Keith Olbermann says Rachel Maddow talked about Serviam on the November 1 MSNBC show.

Many are upset that we actually show Captain John Smith of Jamestown and Captain Myles Standish of Plymouth for what they were: retired professional soldiers-turned-private security contractors who led the civilians to safety in America where they built a new society.

Gawker, based in Manhattan, is horrified about our historical review that asserts that America owes its first Thanksgiving to the 17th century's version of Blackwater. We're told by Very Important People in New York City that we've hit the big time with Gawker.

Pulling a chunk out of Ephemerist's comment, Gawker writes, "did you know that if not for mercenaries—sorry, Private Security Contractors—there would have been no Thanksgiving? It's true! Myles Standish was basically the forefather of Blackwater. Also, Capt. John Smith. PSCs are basically as American as apple pie. Yeah. Apple pie that shoots you."

Now that's a neat idea!

Sharon Weinberger, blogging on Wired magazine's "Danger Room," comments, "Will Serviam someday rank among the names of other well known defense titles, like Aviation Week & Space Technology or Jane's Defence Weekly (and with duly noted bias, I'll add in Defense Technology International). I have no idea, but I wish them luck!"

Bloggers Aaron R. Linderman and Christopher Fulford, on Statecraft & Security, find Serviam to be "interesting, innovative and enlightening." Watch those two - they're going places.

To top it off, Blackwater - an advertiser in Serviam - announced the launch of the magazine in its hot Blackwater Tactical Weekly newsletter.

Sleazy setup, Geraldo-style

Geraldo Rivera's evil "twin" is his brother Craig, producer of his bottom-feeding Fox News show. Craig played a dirty trick yesterday in his segment on Blackwater USA, the company that provides security for the State Department in Iraq.

Craig wanted me on the show, he said, to talk about the history of private security contractors (PSCs) in America. He had read my September 28 essay in RealClearPolitics.com about how PSCs have been the part of our history since Captain John Smith landed in Virginia in 1607, and Captain Myles Standish was hired to protect the Pilgrims on their Mayflower voyage to establish Plymouth Colony in 1620.

After a pre-interview over the phone yesterday (September 30) he mentioned that Geraldo had a family conflict and wouldn't be doing the show, and that a stand-in, a former prosecutor, would take his place. He asked if I could speak about some of the legal questions surrounding Blackwater and PSCs in Iraq and that I'd probably be asked on the show.

All well and good. What Craig Rivera didn't say was that I'd be up against the mother and brother of one of the Blackwater men, Jerry Zovko, whom extremists murdered and mutilated in Fallujah in 2004. And apparently he didn't tell them that they would be facing someone else, either.

It was a setup. The Blackwater segment came at the end of the show, following prurient segments on child-rape porn and other sensationalistic garbage. It opened with Craig's heavily biased (and factually inaccurate) video about Blackwater. Even so, I thought it would still be a good segment to talk about on the show. Instead, in a separate studio were Jerry Zovko's mother and brother who were there to tell their story - not discuss the history of PMCs.

So when the hostess asked me her first and only question - about legal accountability for Blackwater and other PSCs - the subject deteriorated on takeoff. I mentioned that the firms are now accountable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to the Attorney General, and to the State Department under what I take are very tightly written contracts. I added that such accountability isn't good enough for those who stand to make millions from suing Blackwater. Had I been allowed to finish, I would have blamed a California trial lawyer, not family members, as being the war profiteer.

But I couldn't get that part out because the brother of the dead Blackwater guard started yelling. He appeared to think that the Geraldo producers had set up his mother and him. He was visibly very angry. Who could blame him? It was clear that Craig Rivera hadn't been truthful with the Zovkos either when inviting them on the show. The hostess made a displeased comment, cut off the program, and that was the end of it.

All in all another sick Rivera stunt, setting up the family of a dead man. I sympathize with the Zovko family.

To view the video of the segment on Geraldo at Large, click here.

US Naval Institute Proceedings gives thumbs-up to war of ideas book

Proceedings, the magazine of the United States Naval Institute, runs a favorable review of my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War.

In the August 2007 issue, Lt. Dan Reiher, USN, says that the book "clearly demonstrates that the new thrust in the war of ideas does not have to originate in US government releases."

The Navy reviewer concludes, "By focusing primarily on the offensive aspects of strategic communication, the author has made a worthwhile contribution to what must be a key component of U.S. strategy in the terrorism war. For those who find themselves in a position to affect U.S. communication efforts, or to influence our image among allies and adversaries, this book should be placed at the top of their must-read list."

Proceedings does not publish the book reviews in its current online editions, but the attached document contains a copy of the review: Download proceedings_review_aug_07.pdf