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Propaganda: can a word decide a war?

Parameters, Autumn, 2007 by Dennis M. Murphy, James F. White

(15.) Allan Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1978), 4.

(16.) Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston, Mass.: Little Brown, 1980), 183.

(17.) Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 176-86.

(18.) Winkler, 29. Donovan argued unsuccessfully against losing the Foreign Information Service. His intelligence and espionage organization became the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.

(19.) Ibid., 60.

(20.) Ibid., 97.

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(21.) US Department of State, Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy Policy Coordinating Committee, U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/87427.pdf.> (22.) While the National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication describes the "ways" and "means" of using information as power, it does not define the information element of power as a foundational starting point for those descriptions.

(23.) National Security Decision Directive 130, "US International Information Policy" (Washington: The White House, 6 March 1984), http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-130.htm.> (24.) The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism refers frequently to the "battle of ideas" but again without a foundational description of how the United States wields information as power.

(25.) Robert E. Neilson and Daniel T. Kuehl, "Evolutionary Change in Revolutionary Times: A Case for a New National Security Education Program," National Security Strategy Quarterly, 5 (Autumn 1999), 40.

(26.) Interestingly, the US government avoids using the term "propaganda" in any of its official publications (short of the DOD definition). Instead, the terms "psychological operations," "information operations," "public diplomacy," and "strategic communication" are found, apparently as an ironic twist to change American perceptions favorably toward the use of information to influence foreign audiences.

(27.) Thorn Shanker, "No Breach Seen in Work in Iraq on Propaganda," The New York Times, 22 March 2006, 1.

(28.) David E. Kaplan, "How Rocket Scientists Got Into the Hearts-and-Minds Game," U.S. News and World Report, 25 April 2005, 30-31.

(29.) Kevin Peraino, "Winning Hearts and Minds," Newsweek International, 2 October 2006.

(30.) The Department of Defense produced a roadmap as an outcome of the Quadrennial Defense Review in September 2006 that defines strategic communication as "focused USG processes and efforts to understand and engage key audiences in order to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable to advance national interests and objectives through the use of coordinated information, themes, plans, programs and actions synchronized with other elements of national power." See Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, Joint Publication 1, 14 May 2007, Chp. 1, 1-9.

(31.) Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game (New York: Free Press, 2006), 1. Ms. Clarke was the chief spokesperson for the Pentagon during the first George W. Bush administration. The quote is the title of the first chapter of her book.
 

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