Defence CommitteeWritten evidence from Paul Bell, Director of Albany Associates
THE CASE FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS AS A KEY UK DEFENCE CAPABILITY
“At its heart (of the problems confronting the British military in contemporary and future conflict) is the belief that future campaigns will need to focus on altering the behaviours of others, either in advance—and therefore deterring conflict—or as a coupled component in the process of combat and post combat operations.”
The Shrivenham Papers -- Defence Academy of the United Kingdom: “Behavioural Conflict”—Andrew McKay and Steve Tatham
Summary
In the new security environment, warfare will become increasingly psychological. Militaries will be forced to focus increasingly on the ability to identify, understand and influence how people think and feel. Success in conflict—and deterrence—will depend increasingly on competent psychological operations, influence, strategic communications campaigns and key psychological insights gained through counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and attempts at nation-building over the past decade. Establishing or paving the way for legitimacy in any conflict situation will eventually count more than raw military power itself.
Behind the military threat posed by every potential enemy state and non-state actor there lies a more fundamental state—their state of mind and the states of mind of those they depend upon for support, or regard as their enemies. In an increasingly volatile, unpredictable and information-fuelled world, dealing with emotional and highly opinionated states of mind will emerge as the key battle-ground; states of mind may even come to eclipse the role or relevance of recognized sovereign states.
This short paper argues that the UK needs to prioritise investment and develop its expertise in this extraordinarily cost-effective and essential element of national defence. The UK is uniquely positioned to develop this capability and become a centre of worldwide military excellence in this sphere. Key components of the resource already exist in the UK through specialist contractors and globally recognized experts in the field of information operations.
Introduction
Asymmetric adversaries will become the norm. However, even when facing sovereign state threats, the mobile phone, tablet, PC or TV screen have become the new “front line” in a battle of competing “narratives” and the quest for legitimacy. Prevention as a strategy has shifted beyond the traditional deterrent of mutually assured destruction between state actors, to a more complex scenario involving a multitude of actors with a range of actions, in which the principal task is to be able “to interrupt the narratives of those who threaten our values and interests and to support those who champion them”.
1. The meaning and role of strategic communications
The average person in any conflict or potential conflict zone lives in an environment characterised by some degree of fear, deprivation, disorder, uncertainty, perhaps chronic violence, and has probably done so for years. There will almost certainly be other critical cultural and psycho-social issues around prejudice, discrimination, revenge, hatred and mistrust. To launch a military campaign into such a theatre without some kind of plan and competence to stabilize, isolate or unite certain key factions would likely place the entire mission at risk.
The role of strategic communications is to help people, and groups, avoid the wrong choices, and enable enough to make the right choice that the coalition that supports us ultimately succeeds. When Petraeus said, “people are the decisive terrain” that is what he meant. Without popular support, no solution is sustainable, and popular support means people must repeatedly make the right choice, day after day after day. Not a single vote, or a single act, but repeatedly and in very difficult circumstances. Our challenge is helping them choose wisely.
The central focus of all campaign planning therefore must be the task of shaping the loyalties, beliefs, narratives, and behaviours of the local population. Strategic communications isn’t just a “war fighting” tool but the heart of campaign planning for all tools—kinetic and non-kinetic. It’s the piece that comes first. Our core task is to transform a conflict dynamic to one of peaceful political engagement. All else follows from that goal.
As part of the conflict transformation effort, strategic communications has two key jobs to do: first, to undermine the ability of obstructionists to mobilize violence and achieve their strategic goals through force. We need to systematically challenge and deconstruct the loyalties, narratives, and justifications which are critical to widespread violence—to deny them both voice and the appearance of legitimacy.
The second job is equally important—to reconstitute the social and political structures that enable peaceful and orderly daily life. To build a “coalition for peace.” “Coalition”, because it’s political, something that must be built. “Peace”, because that’s what we’re building: a just, inclusive, productive, and therefore enduring, peace.
The vocabulary of conflict transformation is nothing new, but its practical application is still in its infancy as a systematic, incremental, theorized, pragmatic, strategic, social and political process. Understanding the dynamics of any conflict (military, psychological, social, political) is challenging enough; intervening in, and shaping, those dynamics is something else altogether, particularly if we’re not to break the golden rule: do no harm.
2. Some lessons learned
Hard lessons in strategic communications have been learned in recent years from front-line conflict environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan, such as:
It’s not about us. It’s about our target audiences, and more specifically their relationships with each other. We’re not selling a product to a single target audience, we’re shaping their mutual relationships—how they see each other, and their circumstances. As a corollary to this, it’s not about the facts per se; it’s about the underlying narrative framework which makes sense of people’s lives and experiences. That’s what needs to be tapped into, with compelling stories that help reshape the narratives that polarize and divide—not just change how people feel and think, but the framework for their perception and judgments.
It’s not about messaging, it’s about effects. Any messaging needs to be rooted in the “ground truth” and aspirations of ordinary people. It should speak in their own voice, not in ours. The key to achieving those effects is to engage people’s emotions. We’re not winning an argument; we’re moving people. We put emotional resonance at the core of the creative process, so our target audience “takes ownership” of the message.
It’s not about a one-off message, it’s about sustained engagement. Strategic communications is a “deep battle” effort to shape the long-term environment. Campaigns take time and repetition to deliver cumulative effects, and people need time to reason, and feel, and practice new behaviours. The process needs to unfold in time. So it’s not about any single message or media channel. We need to create a long-term presence in every media format, touching the target audience in multiple aspects of their daily lives. It’s also not just about media, but about finding ways to catalyse and shape the activities of the population—initiating and sponsoring events that give people a chance to get involved, that magnify voices supportive of settlement and generate a sense of public engagement and common purpose.
3. The application of strategic communications to prevention and the New Security Environment.
What we’ve learned about shaping conflict environments can be applied elsewhere—to the many fragile or failing states which pose a growing security threat. As asymmetric warfare becomes the global mode of violent engagement, increasingly the psychological and sociological domain is becoming the real “battle space.” These conflicts are promoted, amplified, judged and, as a result, effectively fought through the media. To quote the MoD’s recent paper on the future character of conflict: “A battle of narratives will take place in a decentralised, networked and free-market of ideas, opinions, and even raw data—amplified by modern technology and at a much higher tempo.”
For example, al Qaeda understands this, and seeks to use the media to inflict a series of psychologically debilitating information operations on its various audiences. Operational success for al Qaeda could never come through achieving its formally stated objective of establishing a Caliphate by military means, or inflicting anything remotely resembling a military victory against the West. Their objectives are more psychological than kinetic: to induce a disproportionate and irrational psychological impact which has the effect of making those audiences more aware of their presence.
The New Security Environment means that successful, sustainable intervention outcomes depend on more than our ability to inflict military defeat on our enemies—or at least those who actually stand up to fight. Of much greater importance is how to deal with their cause, ideology and levels of support in their communities, since that is at the heart of their ability to recruit and continue their war. Sustainable success must inter alia be rooted in a critical mass of popular disapproval of our opponents.
The logic of the New Security Environment also suggests that a confrontation with another state may see the latter employ a sophisticated mix of regular and irregular forces including proxies, conventional and guerrilla tactics, information operations and high-end technologies such as the cyber domain to avoid our conventional strengths. This enemy too will need to be countered in the critical psycho-social space—employing effective strategic communications campaigns to minimize the impact of their actions and messages on the wider population and maximize pressure on their organization, ideology and supporters. It’s not really “warfare” in the classic sense, but about social change, not so much the “long war” as the “long change.”
Ultimately two key insights emerge. Firstly, that our success is dependent on the ability to know, understand and influence how people think and feel about key issues. Secondly, that the best way to fight an asymmetric opponent is to intervene in his environment before he can degrade, shape and control it to his requirements.
This is seldom easy. It will require different modes of thought on our part, and new modes of action. But we’re adapting our means of force, our kinetic operations, and we need to adapt our non-kinetic means. All will agree that effective persuasion is to be preferred to effective violence, if at all possible.
The need for Stabilisation and Development Operations in pre or post-conflict situations, or in fragile or failing states, is not in itself a new idea but it has come strongly into focus since 9/11. A strong military role is often essential in such operations, but the spectrum of tasks involved is frequently wider than those for which the military are trained and require civilian skills and input from other public and private sector organisations. Hence the so-called Comprehensive Approach.
Both UK and US governments recognise this. To quote former US Defense Secretary Bob Gates: “…having robust civilian capabilities available—diplomacy, strategic communication, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development—could make it less likely that military force will have to be used in the first place, as local problems might be dealt with before they become crises.”
The operational challenges of applying this approach across all agencies are well known to all with recent operational experience, but the impetus remains. As with the US, the UK’s national (security) interest will best be served by a Comprehensive Approach to conflict, conflict resolution, stabilisation operations and counter-insurgency/anti-terrorist campaigns, but only if it can be supported by world-class strategic communications.
Finally it is worth noting that the conflict dynamics of the New Security Environment also have implications for the “home front”. When defence and security operations at home and abroad are conducted in the glare of the media, a loss of confidence or failure of the collective nerve can become the greatest vulnerability. Strategic communications can assist the government in presenting a compelling and coherent narrative about what we are trying to achieve in the interests of national security. This is a distinct line of operation from those which are conducted in operational theatres abroad, but it is nonetheless integral to the overall effort.
4. A call for leadership by the UK
Our final point is perhaps more of a challenge: that the UK has the potential to become the world’s pre-eminent exponent and practitioner of strategic communications and psychological operations in the domain of national security interests.
Most state militaries have developed dedicated strategic communications and PSYOP capabilities. Most, however, are still mired in derivatives of Cold-War propaganda thinking and often look crude and ineffective when put alongside the psychological and sociological nuance and allure of contemporary terrorist products. The understanding of human emotions is at a premium. The US has struggled greatly in this department. Donald Rumsfeld criticised what he called the “five and dime store mentality” of US strategic communications, awarding it no more than a “Grade D or D+” in its performance in the so-called “war of ideas”. For Britain, the resource to establish a centre of excellence already exists. We need to be able to understand and change our enemy’s mind-set without necessarily getting him to like us.
Experience teaches that there is a multiplicative effect that well-executed strategic communications has in proportion to relative spend—as defined by positive influence on the attitudes and behaviours of the given target audiences. A relatively insignificant investment in the UK’s defence capability in this area—less than 1%—could pay massive dividends, and indeed make us the envy of the world in terms of our ability to influence the various theatres in which we operate.
March 2014