File Notes on Information, Communication, and Public Diplomacy (#95)
August 24, 2018, Seen on the Web 4419-4526
TABLE OF CONTENTS
In the News
1. THE WHITE HOUSE
2. ON CAPITOL HILL
3. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
4. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
5. DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND HOMELAND SECURITY
6. ELECTION 2016 CONTROVERSIES
7. ELECTIONS
8. MORE HEADLINES
Elements of Informational Power
9. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
10. LOOKING BACK AT USIA
11. PUBLIC AFFAIRS
12. BROADCASTING
Professional Topics
13. DISINFORMATION, FAKE NEWS
14. SOCIAL MEDIA, INTERNET
15. CYBER
16. PROPAGANDA
17. SOFT POWER
18. HYBRID WARFARE
19. GERASIMOV DOCTRINE
20. INFORMATION WARFARE
21. POLITICAL WARFARE
22. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
23. NARRATIVE
24. HISTORICAL NARRATIVES
25. BRANDING
26. THE FOUR FREEDOMS
27. IDEAS, CONCEPTS, AND DOCTRINE
28. IDEAS OF AMERICA
Countries, Regions, Case Studies
29. RUSSIA
30. SOVIET UNION
31. CHINA
32. CHINA-UAE
33. NORTH KOREA
34. MOROCCO
35. AFGHANISTAN
36. IRAN
37. JORDAN
38. SOMALIA
39. ISLAMIC STATE
Toolkit
40. EXCHANGES
41. WORLD’S FAIRS
42. INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN THE U.S.
43. GASTRODIPLOMACY
Precepts
In the News
1. THE WHITE HOUSE
● SEC. 1284. Modifications to Global Engagement Center. * * * The purpose of the Center shall be to direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and foreign non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States and United States allies and partner nations.”; * * * Identify current and emerging trends in foreign propaganda and disinformation in order to coordinate and shape the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures to expose and refute foreign propaganda and disinformation, and pro-actively support the promotion of credible, fact-based narratives and policies to audiences outside the United States.” * * * Use information from appropriate interagency entities to identify the countries, geographic areas, and populations most susceptible to propaganda and disinformation, as well as the countries, geographic areas, and populations in which such propaganda and disinformation is likely to cause the most harm.”; * * * For each of fiscal years 2019 and 2020, the Secretary of Defense is authorized to transfer, from amounts appropriated to the Secretary pursuant to the authorization under this Act, to the Secretary of State not more than $60,000,000, to carry out the functions of the Center.
Became Public Law No. 115-232, August 13, 2018
· The White House is drafting an executive order that would authorize President Trump to sanction foreigners who interfere in U.S. elections, the administration’s latest effort to demonstrate it is serious about combating Russian disinformation and hacking.
Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey, and Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post, August 8, 2018
2. ON CAPITOL HILL
· U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in introducing the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act of 2018, comprehensive legislation that would increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Vladimir Putin’s continued interference in our elections, malign influence in Syria, aggression across Eastern Europe, and other destabilizing activities.
Office of Senator John McCain, August 2, 2018
· Key elements of the legislation include: * * * The establishment of an Office of Cyberspace and the Digital Economy within the Department of State. This office will lead diplomatic efforts relating to international cybersecurity, Internet access, Internet freedom, the digital economy, cybercrime, deterrence and responses to cyber threats.* * * Making interfering in our elections a ground of inadmissibility under immigration law * * * The International Cybercrime Prevention Act which would give prosecutors the ability to shut down botnets and other digital infrastructure that can be used for a wide range of illegal activity; create a new criminal violation for individuals who have knowingly targeted critical infrastructure, including dams, power plants, hospitals, and election infrastructure; and prohibit cybercriminals from selling access to botnets to carry out cyber-attacks* * * The Defending the Integrity of Voting Systems Act which would allow the Department of Justice to pursue federal charges for the hacking of any voting system that is used in a federal election* * * New sanctions on political figures, oligarchs, and family members and other persons that facilitate illicit and corrupt activities, directly or indirectly, on behalf of Vladimir Putin* * * Sanction on transactions related to investment in energy projects supported by Russia state-owned or parastatal entities* * * The creation of a National Fusion Center to Respond to Hybrid Threats. The aim of this center is to better prepare and respond to Russian disinformation and other emerging threats emanating from the Russian Federation. A reauthorization of the Countering Russia Influence Fund
Office of Senator John McCain, August 2, 2018
· Members of Congress are moving ahead with legislation seeking curbs on Chinese government influence operations in the United States. Lawmakers in the House plan to introduce legislation today that would require Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes operating on American university campuses to register as foreign agents. The bill, called the "Countering the Chinese Government and Communist Party’s Political Influence Operations Act of 2018" also would require American intelligence agencies to provide a detailed report on Beijing's extensive covert and overt influence operations.
Bill Gertz, The Washington Free Beacon, June 4, 2018
· Last month, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released a batch of some 3,500 Facebook Kremlin-backed Facebook ads. They yielded further evidence of Russia’s campaign to sow national discord before (and after) the 2016 elections by exploiting weaknesses in the rules that regulate online political advertising.
Richard Clarke and Ian Vandewalker, The Hill, June 4, 2018
3. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
· Disinformation circulates in a variety of ways online and is often difficult to detect. Watch this video to learn more about the history of disinformation, its effects and ways to spot it.
Share America, August 10, 2018
4. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
· Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis acknowledged Aug. 7 that Russia made attempts to influence the 2016 election and outlined ― more or less ― how the Pentagon is helping states bolster their election cybersecurity efforts. The text below includes lightly edited excerpts of the official transcript from a press conference Mattis held at the Pentagon.
Fifth Domain, August 8, 2018
5. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
· The Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security * * * determined that the opportunities and challenges in working toward dramatically reducing threats from automated, distributed attacks can be summarized in six principal themes. 1. Automated, distributed attacks are a global problem. * * * 2. Effective tools exist, but are not widely used. * * * 3. Products should be secured during all stages of the lifecycle. * * * 4. Awareness and education are needed. * * * 5. Market incentives should be more effectively aligned. * * * 6. Automated, distributed attacks are an ecosystem-wide challenge. No single stakeholder community can address the problem in isolation.
Department of Commerce and Department of Homeland Security, May 22, 2018
6. ELECTION 2016 CONTROVERSIES
● The trolls were engaged in a sophisticated and intricate Russian assault on the political debate in America and several other countries. It was an assault waged both before and after the 2016 presidential election — and an assault that appears to continue, at least in some form, to this day.
Oliver Roeder, FiveThirtyEight, August 8, 2018
● U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies saw some warning signs of Russian meddling in Europe and later in the United States but never fully grasped the breadth of the Kremlin's ambitions. Top U.S. policymakers didn't appreciate the dangers, then scrambled to draw up options to fight back. In the end, big plans died of internal disagreement, a fear of making matters worse or a misguided belief in the resilience of American society and its democratic institutions.
Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Jaffe, The Washington Post, December 25, 2017
● International influence campaigns have been around for centuries, but 2017 made clear how much they remain a part of daily life. Through court documents, congressional testimony, press reports and other sources, Americans learned not only about the extent of the “active measures” — as they’re known to intelligence officers — that Russia waged against the U.S. through the presidential election.
Philip Ewing, WCLK 91.9, December 22, 2107
7. ELECTIONS
● On November 6, Americans will head to the polls to vote in the congressional midterm elections. In the months before the contest, hordes of foreign hackers will head to their keyboards in a bid to influence its outcome. Their efforts will include trying to get inside the digital infrastructure that supports the electoral process. * * * Voter Registration Systems * * * Voter Check-in * * * Voting Machines * * * Vote Tallying and Reporting * * *
Martin Giles, Technology Review, April 18, 2018
· Is the White House’s cyber security weakness due to malfeasance or incompetence? It’s a familiar question under Trump, but regardless of the answer, the fallout likely will be the same. Whether or not Trump’s willing to admit reality, the White House seems entirely unprepared for another round of Russian electoral interference in the midterm elections in November.
Sarah Jones, The New Republic, July 27, 2018
· . . . “meddling.” It is not, however, an appropriate word to use when referring to the ongoing Russian attacks on American democracy that gained prominence in the 2016 presidential election and will accelerate as we head into the November midterms. This isn’t “Scooby-Doo.” The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the monsters we face are real.
Brian Klaas, The Washington Post, July 17, 2018
· With a new prime minister and parliament to be elected in September, Sweden is already working hard to make sure its polls are free from any meddling.
Erik Brattberg and Tim Maurer, Carnegie Endowment, May 31, 2018
· What we saw in the 2016 election is nothing compared to what we need to prepare for in 2020.
Nick Bilton, Hive, January 26, 2018
8. MORE HEADLINES
· . . . more invasive than obviously false information is the relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans and their behavior. We are faced with a crisis concerning the use of data, the manipulation of our data, and the targeting of pernicious views. In particular, we heard evidence of Russian state-sponsored attempts to influence elections in the US and the UK through social media, of the efforts of private companies to do the same, and of law-breaking by certain Leave campaign groups in the UK’s EU Referendum in their use of social media.
UK Parliament, House of Commons Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sports, July 29, 2018
· The [Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport] select committee’s far-reaching interim report on its 18-month investigation into fake news and the use of data and “dark ads” in elections offers a wide-ranging, informed and sustained critique that carries with it the full weight of parliament. The verdict is withering: Facebook failed. It “obfuscated”, refused to investigate how its platform was abused by the Russian government until forced by pressure from Senate committees and, in the most damning section, it aided and abetted the incitement of racial hatred in Burma, noting that even the company’s chief technical officer, Mike Schroepfer, called this “awful”.
Carole Cadwalladr, The Guardian, July 28, 2018
Instruments of Informational Power
9. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
· . . . the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that [Steven] Seagal has been appointed to a new role, which will apparently be unpaid. His responsibility will be to “facilitate relations between Russia and the United States in the humanitarian field, including cooperation in culture, arts, public and youth exchanges.”
Siobhán O’Grady, The Washington Post, August 4, 2018
· A public diplomacy strategy for Southeast Asia is necessary if the United States is to neuter [China's] three warfares’ effectiveness and successfully implement its broader approach to the region. Without such a strategy, the United States will have greater difficulty shaping a peaceful, prosperous, and strong Southeast Asia.
Michael Mazza, American Enterprise Institute, August 2018
10. LOOKING BACK AT USIA
· During the Cold War, the USIA was responsible for public diplomacy. Unfortunately, this tool has not been prioritized or effectively used since the USIA was disbanded in 1999. Going forward, American policymakers should view it as a key instrument in carrying out the strategy described in the third and fourth chapters of this report. Southeast Asia may provide a particularly receptive ground for public diplomacy efforts.
Michael Mazza, American Enterprise Institute, August 2018
· The established methods and practices of American public diplomacy are commonly credited to the publicity agencies created during and after the Second World War, such as the Office of War Information (OWI) and the United States Information Agency (USIA). However, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was the first practicing public diplomacy agency. Created by President Woodrow Wilson in April 1917, the CPI and its Foreign Division became a tool for winning the First World War through the dissemination of newspaper articles, films, photographs, and other media techniques.
Lauren West, LSU Digital Commons, May 16, 2018
11. PUBLIC AFFAIRS
· Whatever the cause, your voicemail and inbox are filling with interview requests, and news articles about your scholarship seem to be published every 10 minutes. You’re facing a wave of media interest. How do you keep from drowning?
Erin Thompson, Chronicle Vitae, June 4, 2018
· . . . you’ll find a brief primer on the kinds of conversations journalists have with sources — and the kinds of conversations we have about those conversations. * * * On the record * * * Off the record * * * Background * * * Deep background * * * Phrases like “not for attribution” and “no fingerprints” are familiar refrains for those who traffic in deep background, as though each article were a sort of linguistic crime lab. “Please note in your story that my primary opponent hates puppies and liberty. No fingerprints!” * * * If fingerprint-free material can be verified independently, these exchanges can have tremendous value. Many of our best scoops are the fruit of such encounters. And you can quote me on that.
Matt Flegenheimer, The New York Times, August 2, 2018
12. BROADCASTING
● A large Spanish-language radio station in Mexico will soon begin broadcasting in Chinese in a deal critics say will bring Beijing propaganda to Chinese Americans throughout Southern California.
Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon, August 13, 2018
· . . . there is something insidious about RT, as its content is a distillation of the least attractive features of American government and society—and offers a warped presentation of America’s conduct in the world. Russia, in this tilted narrative, is blameless, “the old scapegoat” for the United States, as I heard a commentator say while listening to RT programming in my hotel room. I found myself wondering about the many Russians involved in RT production. Should such people be thought of as the for-hire members of a theater company, dutifully producing a script, as one Muscovite suggested to me, or is there sincere conviction at work? It’s hard to say. But to help deliver its message, RT makes use of a familiar type whose sincerity is beyond question—the disaffected American, typically left-wing, outspoken about our social and economic inequities.
Paul Starobin, City Journal, Summer 2018
· It’s “Music Time in Africa” once again. Each week 12 million or more listeners tune in to the Voice of America broadcast to hear African music, from the latest, chart-topping hip-hop to jazz classics to gospel to the traditional folk songs of different countries and cultures.
Christopher Connell, Share America, August 3, 2018
· Our role and our mandate are defined in a Charter approved by the Congress and signed into law by President Gerald Ford on July 12, 1976. That Charter requires that we: serve as a consistently reliable source of accurate, objective and comprehensive news; present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions; and, present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively along with responsible discussion and opinion on those policies.
John Brown, Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, May 29, 2018
· There’s been a growing tendency lately (particularly on BBGWatch, an online watchdog) to compare, unfavorably, VOA’s performance, as measured by number of stories or live reports from the scene of breaking news, with other national and international news organizations. Behind much of this criticism is an implicit expectation that VOA’s coverage should be as fast and broad as that of large wire service-type enterprises such as AP or CNN, or even the BBC. It’s an erroneous assumption, and it should stop.
David Jackson, PDC, July 29, 2018
· After the [1983] phone interview was aired, the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw raised doubts whether VOA could be certain that they were interviewing Lech Walesa. But former Polish Radio broadcaster Piotr Mroczyk who conducted the interview had been earlier one of Walesa’s advisors in Poland. There was no doubt that the person being interviewed by phone in Gdansk was the Solidarity leader. Gene Pell told the Polish Service to be careful but did not forbid conducting further phone interviews with Walesa and other opposition figures in Poland. For several years, the service broadcast such interviews almost on a daily basis and greatly expanded its audience in Poland.
John Brown, Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, May 29, 2018
· A broadcasting organization backed by the federal government has used Facebook to target ads at United States citizens, in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which typically broadcasts to audiences in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, bought several ads on Facebook in recent days that were targeted at users in the United States. * * * As with other state-funded media organizations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is mostly restricted by law from promoting its content in the United States except on request.
Kevin Roose, The New York Times, July 19, 2018
· For over sixty years, the Smith–Mundt Act prohibited the U.S. Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) from disseminating government-produced programming within the United States over fears that these agencies would “propagandize” the American people. However, in 2013, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban, which has led to a heated debate about the role of the federal government in free public discourse.
Weston Sager, Northwestern University Law Review, Winter 2015
Professional Topics
13. DISINFORMATION, FAKE NEWS
· Putin was able to manipulate the information framework, saturating Russian-language media outlets within former Soviet Union countries with targeted information and disinformation to influence public perception.
Valerie McGuire, US Naval Institute Proceedings, August 2018
· There is nothing new about the Kremlin’s use of disinformation — the intentional spread of inaccurate information to undermine public confidence, sow confusion, and destabilize democracies. But the new digital tools for spreading disinformation present different challenges.
Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried, War on the Rocks, May 30, 2018
· Disinformation is another component of Active Measures; both of these terms have been used so frequently by the media since the fall of 2016, that they words have become clichés. Disinformation is extremely intentional. It does more than disrupt; it goes beyond causing chaos. What a good disinformation campaign will do that is most dangerous is cause doubt. It has caused people to doubt the legitimacy of an election, it has caused people to doubt their government; it has caused people to doubt the status of the United States as a leading superpower. Doubt can cause the people and the government to turn against one another and it can cause the government to turn on itself.
Joel Harding, To Inform is to Influence, June 4, 2018
· . . . the storyline — that the U.S. government created AIDS — has proven one of the most durable examples of "dezinformatsiya," as it was known to its practitioners in the Soviet intelligence world. Both that story (Kanye West believed it) and those practices endure today in the world's information bloodstream, and former CIA Director John Brennan appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill to talk about "active measures" with the House Intelligence Committee.
Philip Ewing, NPR, May 23, 2017
· Take “fake news.” This used to be a very particular term referring to a very particular manifestation of lies masquerading as news, mostly stemming from botched efforts to emulate The Onion, whose fake news is identifiable as purposeful satire. Yet the term was apparently too delicious to waste on such a narrow purpose, and today “fake news” is a bipartisan insult leveled against basically any collection of words or ideas deemed unpleasant in any way. An unhinged conspiracy website is “fake news,” but so is the mild partisan spin of a campaign ad. An unintentional error by a reporter is just as much “fake news” as a story containing facts you’d prefer not to encounter.
J.J. McCullough, National Review, August 9, 2018
· Wineburg’s team has found that Americans of all ages, from digitally savvy tweens to high-IQ academics, fail to ask important questions about content they encounter on a browser, adding to research on our online gullibility. Other studies have shown that people retweet links without clicking on them and rely too much on search engines. A 2016 Pew poll found that nearly a quarter of Americans said they had shared a made-up news story. In his experiments, MIT cognitive scientist David Rand has found that, on average, people are inclined to believe false news at least 20% of the time. * * * The scourge of “fake news” and its many cousins–from clickbait to “deep fakes” . . . –have experts fearful for the future of democracy.
Katy Steinmetz, Time, August 9, 2018
· A not-so funny thing has happened to communications on the World Wide Web. Nearly everyone now has to doubt much of what they see and hear. Deliberately faked news is only part of it. Social media, videos gone viral and gassy lieutenants of cable news pass along many so-called “facts” that may be mere factoids. With fewer gatekeepers, a lot of chaff comes with wheat on the Internet. As the World Wide Web casts a wide net for readers and viewers, big holes are exposed where sources of “alternate facts” force their way through the unwary consciousness.
Suzanne Fields, The Washington Times, August 1, 2018
· Responsibility for warning the public about disinformation threats should fall to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which are responsible for providing accurate information during crises.
Alina Polyakova and Geysha Gonzalez, The Washington Post, August 4, 2018
14. SOCIAL MEDIA, INTERNET
· Unlike traditional news sources, that are generally fact checked and more verified, social media is a double-edged sword in the digital age where anyone can be a crude journalist spreading information quickly, or disinformation. According to a 2017 Pew poll, approximately 25% of Americans obtain their news from social media sites, compared to 2013 when it was only 15%. Social media allows information to spread more quickly to a broader base than traditional news sources. In fact, social media is a powerful tool that actors use to conduct political warfare.
Alexander Grinberg, The Strategy Bridge, July 31, 2018
· The GroupSense discovery also underscores how disinformation operations such as the Russian one named in the indictment, the Internet Research Agency, work across multiple platforms to bolster the credibility and prominence of their posts on each. Acquiring and repurposing real accounts -- created by people who had forgotten about or simply abandoned them -- likely helped Russians evade detection by offering the illusion of authenticity, experts say.
Craig Timberg, The Washington Post, August 6, 2018
· . . . Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media.
Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, July 27, 2018
· Hostile governments looking to influence foreign elections. Terrorists and terrorist groups communicating with each other and sharing extremist content. Unwitting consumption of fake news. These are just some of the many threats to individuals’ safety, security and privacy across social-media and online platforms.
New America, June 6, 2018
· There’s a lot of disagreement on social media, but not a lot of meaningful debate. In this episode, we figure out how to change that by first understanding the nature of disagreement in the online space. Anonymity, silos, outrage – these flourish in our filter bubbles, but why is that? And we talk about how to go from text-based disagreement – which de-humanizes people, to the most powerful way to do meaningful debate – face to face.
Arthur Brooks, The Arthur Brooks Show, August 2, 2018
· Moral outrage is a powerful emotion that motivates people to shame and punish wrongdoers. Moralistic punishment can be a force for good, increasing cooperation by holding bad actors accountable. But punishment also has a dark side — it can exacerbate social conflict by dehumanizing others and escalating into destructive feuds
M.J. Crockett, Square Space, 2017
15. CYBER
· Despite the divestiture of information capabilities after the Cold War, top officials have argued that the trajectory of operations and the dynamic environment of cyberspace and information could lead to an integration of the two. “. . . . maybe three or five years from now it’s not going to be U.S. Cyber Command, maybe it’s going to be U.S. Information Warfare Operations Command,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, commander of Army Cyber Command, said at a July 18 event hosted by the Association of Old Crows on Capitol Hill. “Maybe instead of Army Cyber Command it will be Army Information Warfare Operations Command.”
Mark Pomerleau, Fifth Domain, July 26, 2018
· This report focuses on the following issues: Foreign economic and industrial espionage against the United States continues to represent a significant threat to America’s prosperity, security, and competitive advantage. Cyberspace remains a preferred operational domain for a wide range of industrial espionage threat actors, from adversarial nation-states, to commercial enterprises operating under state influence, to sponsored activities conducted by proxy hacker groups. * * * Foreign intelligence services—and threat actors working on their behalf—continue to represent the most persistent and pervasive cyber intelligence threat. * * * A range of potentially disruptive threat trends warrant attention.
National Counterintelligence and Security Center, 2018
· We've reached an inflection point: we now depend upon connected technology to accomplish most of our daily tasks, in both our personal and business lives. * * * So the time has come - indeed, if it has not already passed - to think seriously about some fundamental questions with respect to our reliance on cyber technologies: * * * Although we continue to forge ahead in the development of new connected technologies, it is clear that the legal framework underpinning those technologies has not kept pace. Despite our reliance on the internet and connected technologies, we simply haven't confronted, as a US society, what it means to have privacy in a digital age.
Glenn Gerstell, NSA, May 23, 2018
· We urgently need new norms and conventions that will protect civilian interests: a Geneva Convention for the digital world.
Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Diplomatic Courier, April 23, 2018
· While Thucydides may not have predicted smartphones or the Internet of Things, the Athenian general’s theories are still relevant in the age of cyber. The digital technologies rapidly changing our planet certainly raise compelling and difficult questions—around such issues as proportionality, attribution, and deterrence—but that doesn’t mean old principles are useless.
Anastasios Arampatzis and Justin Sherman, The Strategy Bridge, May 30, 2018
16. PROPAGANDA
· Putin of course recognizes that he is not in a position to defeat the West by a direct attack, the regionalist says. And “therefore, his ‘long game’ is a series of a multitude of ‘special ops,” ranging from direct military intervention as in Ukraine, Georgia and Syria, to propaganda penetration as in Europe and the United States. More than his Soviet predecessors and more than any current Western leader, Putin views propaganda as a major tool to achieve his ends; and those require that it “play on the contradictions within the present-day West,” rather than simply offering an alternative Russian narrative, and thus spreading doubt in the West about democratic values.
Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia, August 1, 2018
17. SOFT POWER
· In the past few days, commentators have mocked the prospect that a North Korean agreement to host a McDonald’s fast food outlet or chain of outlets might be one of the outcomes of a US-North Korean summit. Actually, it could be an important outcome. For those who have stayed anytime in Pyongyang, a McDonald’s outlet would be a refreshing change, particularly if it met the standards of McDonald’s. Knowing that edible, worm-free food was available every day without special arrangements would be unusual for people who were not among the regime’s elite, although many could not afford a burger. It would be a curiosity. As such it could be subversive of socialist principles of discipline, hostility to capitalism and self-sacrifice by the workers and soldiers. The young adult and teen children of the elite are certain to be patrons. Some could be a pool of potential workers, eventually. The government would ensure that McDonald’s only hired Party loyalists who paid most of their salary to the government, until the idea caught on.
Joel Harding, To Inform is to Influence, June 5, 2018
· Recently the US has tasked the DoD with taking on increasingly more soft power projection roles in addition to maintaining their core competencies. Simultaneously, we have seen a decrease in involvement in soft power projection by other US governmental organizations. The military option becomes the “easy button” for US leaders to not only address the problems of security, but also provides capabilities to engage in soft power application in realms such as humanitarian assistance, training foreign militaries, and improving domestic stability abroad through justice and law enforcement institutions.
Hans Winkler and Robert Kerr, Small Wars Journal, n.d.
· Getting more people in Taiwan to appreciate Western literature and film is a boon for U.S. soft power, as it encourages them to feel attraction and admiration for American culture. I think this type of diplomatic exercise is a crucial way for the U.S. to engage Taiwan, as the two countries share an amiable but complicated relationship.
Zach Hollo, USC Public Diplomacy, June 21, 2018
18. HYBRID WARFARE
· Hybrid warfare, often employed in the gray area between traditional peace and war, is the synergetic fusion of asymmetric tactics, unconventional methods, and traditional instruments of power and influence applied across and within every warfighting domain—air, land, sea, space, cyberspace, and information—to pursue national and strategic interests. * * * The uniqueness of Russia’s application of hybrid warfare tactics is Putin’s emphasis on manipulating the information environment and swaying public opinion to win favor for his objectives and his ambivalence toward actions that may otherwise have caused international backlash and retribution.
Valerie McGuire, US Naval Institute Proceedings, August 2018
· Six major changes are driving hybrid threats to the fore. The first is the changing nature of world order. * * * Second, the world sees a new type of network-based action, the dark side of globalization. * * * Third, fast developing technologies, a literal revolution, give rise to new domains like cyber space where national and international rules of the game have yet to be created. * * * In general, new technology provides new tools for influencing. In particular, the changing domain of information space, and the media landscape, is the fourth major change affecting today’s security environment. Digitalization and social media as new opinion builders have changed the speed with which information travels, the way information is produced and the way people are connected across national borders. This change has brought forward the need to understand different political and strategic cultures because information produced in one country can be interpreted in other, very different ways elsewhere. Likewise, the gatekeepers of information are changing. The Internet has become a new battlefield where rules are still being formulated. Fake news, content confusion and opinion-based “facts” agitate the public domain. Trust, one of the fundamental pillars of functioning societies, is eroding. The * * * fifth change is the changing nature of conflict and war. * * * Finally, there is generational change. We have left behind the Cold War and even the post-Cold War era. The Cold War had two very distinct features, which underpinned a clear world order: superpower relations – and the ideological struggle between communism and capitalism – dominated, while the fear of nuclear war guided many security policy decisions. * * * During the post-Cold War era, globalization, emphasizing ideas of integration and interdependence, became the fashionable way of describing the world. Today’s new generation is a digital generation informed by two contradictory trends – cosmopolitanism and neo-nationalism.
Gregory Treverton, Andrew Thvedt, Alicia Chen, Kathy Lee, Madeline McCue, The European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, 2018
19. GERASIMOV DOCTRINE
· Often referred to as the Gerasimov Doctrine, the article highlights the evolution of Russian tactics to influence the operating environment, with an emphasis on attaining political and strategic goals by breeding chaos and dissent within a disenfranchised population. In her article “The Gerasimov Doctrine,” Molly McKew contends “Gerasimov took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare—one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on.”
Valerie McGuire, US Naval Institute Proceedings, August 2018
20. INFORMATION WARFARE
· In a modern conflict, authorities may be delegated to a one-star to drop a bomb, but the same informational ‘call for fire’ such as sending a tweet or uploading a YouTube video typically has permissions much higher. * * * there are four options offered here for delegation. These options are to deny, dissuade, discredit, or manipulate (D3M). These effects can be aligned sequentially or concurrently to support actions in other domains.
Tyler Quinn and Von Lambert, Grounded Curiosity, May 21, 2018
· Air Force recruiters will prize computer skills more highly, while the service will encourage airmen to experiment with their own solutions. Forget the flight suit. The ideal airman of the future has serious tech chops in programming, signals intelligence, or some other core technological capability and isn’t afraid to break things. The Air Force is looking to begin recruiting more intensively for these core competencies, in anticipation of the ways artificial intelligence will change the nature of air war.
Patrick Tucker, Defense One, August 7, 2018
· The Russian attacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the country’s continuing election-related hacking have happened across all three dimensions of cyberspace – physical, informational and cognitive. The first two are well-known . . . The third dimension, however, is a newer target – and a more concerning one. This cyberspace comes from my late mentor, Professor Dan Kuehl of the National Defense University . . . foresaw the potential – now clear to the public at large – that those tools could be used to processes, too.
Richard Forno, The Conversation, July 30, 2018
· Despite the divestiture of information capabilities after the Cold War, top officials have argued that the trajectory of operations and the dynamic environment of cyberspace and information could lead to an integration of the two. “. . . . maybe three or five years from now it’s not going to be U.S. Cyber Command, maybe it’s going to be U.S. Information Warfare Operations Command,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, commander of Army Cyber Command, said at a July 18 event hosted by the Association of Old Crows on Capitol Hill. “Maybe instead of Army Cyber Command it will be Army Information Warfare Operations Command.”
Mark Pomerleau, Fifth Domain, July 26, 2018
21. POLITICAL WARFARE
· Political warfare embodies measures used by an actor to target another actor’s political fabric where the end state is to influence the target’s policy. George Kennan wrote a state department memo in 1948 describing political warfare in which he urged both covert and overt nonmilitary actions to either degrade enemy public opinion of its government’s leaders or to support anti-governmental forces. The goal of political warfare is to achieve political dominance over another actor. Political dominance is the successful degradation or influence of a political narrative where the enemy’s public opinion is indecisive or even hostile to the target state’s policy.
Alexander Grinberg, The Strategy Bridge, July 31, 2018
· There has been a tendency among the targets of political warfare to view Russian and Chinese actions as a series of ad hoc activities rather than individual elements of an overarching strategy. As a consequence, the United States and its allies have been ineffective in defending against or countering these actions. The purpose of this monograph, therefore, is to help remedy this situation by providing scholars and policymakers with a better understanding of political warfare threats. Specifically, it argues that although Russian and Chinese approaches to political warfare differ in some respects, they are sufficiently distinct from the types of approaches adopted by other nations and share enough attributes with one another that they should be viewed as examples of a unique form of authoritarian political warfare: comprehensive coercion.
Thomas Mahnken, Ross Babbage, and Toshi Yoshihara, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, May 30, 2018
· The goal of political warfare is to achieve political dominance over another actor. Political dominance is the successful degradation or influence of a political narrative where the enemy’s public opinion is indecisive or even hostile to the target state’s policy. Throughout this paper, I discuss actors to include both state and non-state actors. Historically, even non-state actors were able to compel state actors to change their policy through means including political warfare. * * * In today’s digital age, social media is an emerging tool as well. History and present-day political environments suggest that political warfare can degrade and affect a target nation’s ability to execute policy.
Alexander Grinberg, The Strategy Bridge, July 31, 2018
22. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
· One of the most powerful yet commonly overlooked aspects of warfare is that of psychological manipulation. People are often made so aware of the brutality and violence of war itself, that they ignore a commonly employed weapon, known as psychological warfare. World War II offers a vivid example of psychological warfare and the way it was employed to target the morale and sentiment of numerous troops. The most fascinating means of dissemination was in the form of leaflets dropped from bomber planes. These papers filled bombs contained messages intended to curb the motivation and enthusiasm of the soldiers. For example, some leaflets depicted scenes of marital infidelity, a theme that no doubt touched on an insecurity felt by many soldiers. The power of psychological warfare, when performed successfully, is the inability of those being brainwashed to defend themselves against its effect. Psychological warfare aims at the insecurities and desires of its targets and uses these as a means of achieving objectives.
Stanford Univwersity, n.d.
23. NARRATIVE
· The Kremlin puts forward the narrative that democracy and human rights are, at best, irrelevant to success, and, at worst, a tool of the duplicitous West used to justify intervention in domestic affairs. Kremlin propaganda reiterates the idea that Western ‘democracy’ is a sham; that the democratic revolutions of 1989 led to unhappiness in Central Europe; that Western politics are governed through conspiracies. The Kremlin may have failed to provide a strong ‘Russian idea’, but it has been successful in promoting the concept that the whole world is rotten . . .
Vasily Gatov, Institute of Global Affairs, May 5, 2018
· Narratives matter everywhere. Those of us in the field of public diplomacy must be able to balance multiple “truths” so that no one version of the story prevails.
Vivian Walker, USC Public Diplomacy, May 28, 2018
24. HISTORICAL NARRATIVES
· History is a powerful weapon, and some of the fiercest battles are fought over how it is interpreted. Although extremist groups are fighting in the present, historical narratives are often used to justify their ongoing causes, and as a result feature prominently in their propaganda output.1 A phenomenon that has been highlighted in recent years in the extensive propaganda output of the Islamic State (IS).
Alastair Reed and Jennifer Dowling, Defence Strategic Communications, Spring 2018
25. BRANDING
· As we have explored, the original ‘freedom brand’ the US built up in the Cold War has been deconstructed and lost its coherence. The challenge for today’s public diplomats and broadcasters is to find what aspects of the American idea are still powerful and resonate with Russian audiences. * * * To our mind the over-arching idea is the Pursuit of Happiness with a sequence of supporting themes. ‘Progress and the Pursuit of Happiness. * * * Imagine the Future: * * * Innovation * * * Health/Social Welfare/Charities * * * Education: * * * Consumer Culture and Commercial Culture.
Vasily Gatov, The Institute of Global Affairs, May 5, 2018
26. THE FOUR FREEDOMS
· In the Cold War the West's. and the US' especially, 'personality' was based around the concept of 'freedom'. The roots of this freedom narrative can be found in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms -- freedom of speech and religion and freedom from fear and want -- which had been articulated in 1941 as he basis for a democratic and peaceful world. With the onset of the Cold War the US administrations quietly dropped the idea of ‘freedom from want’ as a right: it was difficult to uphold while denouncing Soviet provision of social housing. Instead the US emphasized civil, political and cultural rights. The 'freedom personality' was packaged support in for ‘free-form’ arts, such as jazz and abstract expressionism, promoted through the allure of economic freedom and its material benefits, such as Western cars or cosmetics; institutionalized in political freedoms, such as religious rights and the right to travel, and expressed through freedom of information.
Vasily Gatov, Institute of Global Affairs, May 5, 2018
27. IDEAS, CONCEPTS, AND DOCTRINE
· A person’s speech communicates his or her thoughts and feelings. We predicted that beyond conveying the contents of a person’s mind, a person’s speech also conveys mental capacity, such that hearing a person explain his or her beliefs makes the person seem more mentally capable—and therefore seem to possess more uniquely human mental traits—than reading the same content.
Juliana Schroeder, Michael Kardas, Nicholas Epley, Psychological Science, October 25, 2017
· There was once a time when the people who think about such things lamented the rise of information silos and filter bubbles and echo chambers: the newfound ability for people to choose their own adventures when it comes to the types of information they consume. Those concerns remain; they also, these days, seem decidedly quaint. Competing truths—“alternative facts”—are no longer the primary threat to American culture; competing lies are. Everything was possible and nothing was true: * * * Hannah Arendt warned of the mass cynicism that can befall cultures when propaganda is allowed to proliferate among them; that cynicism is here, now. And it is accompanied by something just as destructive: a sense of pervasive despair. Americans live in a world of information pollution—and the subsequent tragedy of this new environmental reality is that no one has been able to figure out a reliable method of clearing the air.
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, August 3, 2018
· . . . as Albert Einstein put it in 1926: ‘Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.’ The same applies whether we are talking about chest-thumping gorillas or efforts to probe the very nature of reality.
Teppo Felin, AEON, July 5, 2018
· Second, the lines between the public and private sectors are blurred and opaque in cyberspace. Malicious state and non-state actors maintain symbiotic, sometimes proxy relationships with hacker communities that conduct non-attributable cyber operations targeting an enemy state’s critical infrastructure, defense industry, and private sector writ large, sometimes on behalf of powerful benefactors or those with whom they shared an ideological affinity.
Daniel Hoffman, The Cipher Brief, August 9, 2018
· Humour entertains, but can also be used for propaganda purposes if it reaches a large audience and influences their emotional response to specific topics. The article focuses on humour as a comprehensive concept: elements of humour that serve a propagandistic function, including shared knowledge, the target audience, the perception of humour, the functions of humour, and the communication process, are identified and analyzed in New Year’s Eve programming on Russian television.
Žaneta Ozoliņa, Jurģis Šķilters, and Sigita Struberga, Defence Strategic Communications, Spring, 2018
28. IDEAS OF AMERICA
· The shift of the United States from global rule maker to rule breaker is likely to end in the country becoming a mere rule taker. Indeed, U.S. allies and other trading partners are moving ahead with economic arrangements that do not include the United States on terms that are likely to harm U.S. interests.
CSIS, August 1, 2018
· The idea that we’re always getting better keeps us from seeing those times when we’re getting worse.
Sean Illing, Vox, August 1, 2018
Countries, Regions, Case Studies
29. RUSSIA
● “What Putin has tried to do is exploit division in our own society. They have used their intelligence collection to understand where the fault lines are and hack into our systems and weaponize that intelligence to try to drive people in different directions in our own country. But they have also done that in Europe and I would argue in the Middle East.
Levi Maxey and Bennett Seftel, Cipher Brief, November 30, 2017
· . . . the US Department of State removed from its website a report on the downing of the Malaysian passenger liner that included a condemnation of Russia for its role in that horrific event. Not surprisingly, Moscow is pleased, especially because it is linking this act to the recent Helsinki summit. * * * Taking down a post which says as all independent investigators have found that Russia was behind this act of state terrorism represents a serious act of betrayal not only of Ukraine but of the truth. Perhaps even more ominously, it shows just how far down into American officialdom Trump’s deference to what Putin wants has penetrated.
Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia, July 21, 2018
· On 30 July 2018, Russian President Putin signed papers creating “Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov as . . . Chief of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” * * * today the main tasks are [to] work with the moral and psychological state of personnel, information and propaganda work and patriotic education of servicemen, organization of military special, psychological and cultural-leisure work, as well as creating conditions for free confession. * * * Notice the ever-increasing information control over Russian citizens and now over the Russian military.
Joel Harding, To Inform is to Influence, July 31, 2018
· The Russian government launched a broad influence campaign against the United States starting in 2014. Intelligence professionals call it the latest examples of "active measures," secret tools of statecraft that have been used for centuries and were employed throughout the Cold War.
Philip Ewing, NPR, April 25, 2018
· Today the Kremlin has co-opted and spun many elements of this ‘freedom’ personality. Western cultural symbols, such as pop music and television formats, sit next to Kremlin hate speech and renewed authoritarianism on Russian TV, proving that you can watch MTV while spurning democracy, drive Mercedes’ while imprisoning dissidents. Freedom of movement and religious freedom have been granted, while Kremlin propaganda works hard to undercut the allure of other political freedoms.
Vasily Gatov, Institute of Global Affairs, May 5, 2018
Alexander Grinberg, The Strategy Bridge, July 31, 2018
30. SOVIET UNION
· Evidence suggests continuous and comprehensive involvement on the KGB’s part played a strong role in affecting public opinion. The World Peace Council, a large disarmament advocacy groups, was supported and directly funded by the KGB throughout the Cold War.
Alexander Grinberg, The Strategy Bridge, July 31, 2018
· The key problem for the late-Soviet model was that the information services, including the KGB, eventually ceased supplying critical information to the top for fear of telling their bosses what they didn’t want to hear.
Andrei Soldatov, Foreign Affairs, May 31, 2018
· Propaganda using the latest technologies of the day, provocations, assassinations (at home and abroad), front-organizations, a nexus between organized crime and state power, and the political use of diasporas were all used extensively by the belligerents of the Russian Civil War. Many of the hot-spots are even the same: Crimea, Donetsk, Kharkov, Abkhazia, Adjara, Transnistria, and others.
Jon Askonas, The Strategy Bridge, July 23, 2018
31. CHINA
· The crackdown on Christianity is part of a broader push by Xi to “Sinicize” all the nation’s religions by infusing them with “Chinese characteristics” such as loyalty to the Communist Party. Islamic crescents and domes have been stripped from mosques, and a campaign launched to “re-educate” tens of thousands of Uighur Muslims. Tibetan children have been moved from Buddhist temples to schools and banned from religious activities during their summer holidays, state-run media report.
Yanan Wang, Associated Press, August 7, 2018
· [Southeast Asia] is also a prime target of China’s “three warfares”—legal warfare, media warfare, and psychological warfare—which Beijing uses to control and shape the environment in ways conducive to its own interests. Indeed, China is applying the three warfares alongside traditional diplomacy and economic and security policies to, in some respects, successfully bind Southeast Asia more closely to itself, weaken alliances and institutions that may oppose Beijing, undermine the desire of publics and elites to oppose Beijing, and undermine the confidence of elites and Southeast Asian militaries in their American partner.
Michael Mazza, American Enterprise Institute, August 2018
· Homework, not gaming, was the top reason cited by teenage respondents for going online, according to a study by Tencent Holdings, which is facing public scrutiny over its role in policing gaming addiction among youths. Besides online research, the other top reasons for going online include reading online novels, getting English translations, sports and poetry. Girls pay more attention to drama, pop music, celebrities news, food, make-up and online shopping, while boys are into comics, games, jokes and pranks, according to the Tencent study . . .
Celia Chen and Iris Deng, South China Morning Post, May 31, 2018
· In his powerful petition Xu [Zhangrun] had warned against the dangers of, and the potential disruption caused by, new political campaigns. He expressed concern about a party, insecure in its rule, targeting the country’s disgruntled intellectuals, in particular academics who had studied overseas, and treating them as scapegoats for its own political deficiencies.
Geremie R. Barmé, China Heritage, August 8, 2018
32. CHINA-UAE
· Sheikh Zayed's vision for deeper public diplomacy relations with China was not understood by many at the beginning, yet today both the UAE and China are harvesting its fruits. Nearly 1,000 students have graduated from the Sheikh Zayed Centre, building a bridge between China and the Arab world. * * * Moreover, the center’s establishment led to greater cultural and educational cooperation between the UAE and China, a cooperation considered unique in China's relations with Arab states.
Khaled bin Dhai, China Daily, July 20, 2018
33. NORTH KOREA
· The pressure of sanctions must be maintained, but that doesn’t mean there is no room for subtlety in efforts to shape North Korean behavior. The sanctions campaign, if handled carefully, might be designed to target the regime while leaving space for market development, information dissemination, and humanitarian assistance among ordinary people.
Victor Cha and Katrin Katz, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2018
· When I was at college in North Korea, I was watching South Korean dramas and other foreign media. I realized that North Korea was so backward, and I wanted to travel on a plane and enjoy life. So I decided to escape.
Anna Fifield, The Washington Post, August 3, 2018
· [Oh Young Jae's] work, printed in newspapers and literary journals, eventually caught the eye of the central party, which sponsored his college education and put him through a poetry training program. By 1965, Oh was a state propaganda poet working for the central party.
Max Kim, The Atlantic, August 11, 2018
· The level of control that the Kim regime holds over the North Korean people is exemplified in the North Korean classroom from the teachings to the uniforms that all students must wear. From the first year of school until adulthood, North Koreans have no freedom or human rights to speak of. This system of total control in the classroom is just one part of the whole picture that contributes to the totalitarian mafia state of North Korea.
Hye-soo Kim, NK Hidden Gulag, n.d.
· Because I believe that North Koreans are deserving of the same freedom and human rights as South Koreans and Americans, the Kim Jong Un regime has labeled me “a female monkey”, a “dirty miser”, “an ugly political swindler”, “a witch” and other unprintable words. They even depicted me as a kangaroo in a cartoon attacking the annual North Korea Freedom Week when we first hosted it in Seoul. But in July something happened that went way beyond these typical slurs and attacks. I got this message directly in my email: “To Suzanne Scholte, this is your destiny. You will DIE!! We see you everywhere. We will Kill You. Go home, and Wait Die.”
Suzanne Scholte, NK Freedom, July 23, 2018
34. MOROCCO
· ... the continued governmental failures to enforce the constitutional changes of 2011 have pushed citizens to take democracy into their own hands, boycotting major foreign businesses in Morocco and expressing their concerns through online organization. These efforts are the natural conclusion of current politicians’ abuses of the privileges of their office and focus on financial gains over the will of the people, and the boycott’s success demonstrates how the solution to financial pressures on the poor may be to turn them back on the country’s elites.
Mohamed Chtatou, The Washington Institute, August 3, 2018
35. AFGHANISTAN
· First, the new ROEs [Rules of Engagement] will result in greater civilian casualties that will inevitably be criticized in the media and turn public opinion even more against the war. Inside Afghanistan itself, the mounting casualties will further erode Afghan confidence in us. Second, even without the new ROEs, our military and civilian leaders still have not come to terms with the simple truth that we are not welcome in Afghanistan.
Joseph Mussomeli, The Imaginative Conservative, May 17, 2017
36. IRAN
· Since the 1980s, the [Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance] has played a leading role in suppressing political and cultural speech that contradicts Tehran’s revolutionary creed. But while the Obama administration sanctioned the ministry in 2012 for engaging in censorship, its current leadership has escaped Washington’s attention.
Tzvi Kahn, Providence, August 9, 2018
37. JORDAN
· In order for this strategy to succeed, it is necessary to subject it to the principles of transparency, critical evaluation, and feedback. It is also necessary to facilitate access to information for scholars and journalists on a “need to know” basis, which would eventually allow the participation of all government and civil society parties in the battle against terrorism and violent extremism without undermining national or international security. Moreover, the strategy must work proactively to involve experts in psychology, politics, sociology, Sharia law, terrorism, and violent extremism who are qualified to hold dialogues and debates with those who adopt terrorist ideologies. By involving larger segments of society beyond the traditional governmental channels, Jordan’s counter-extremism policy will be able become more effective and more adequately account for current and future threats.
Saud Al-Sharafat, The Washington Institute, August 10, 2018
38. SOMALIA
· . . . al-Shabaab’s attempts to influence the mass media for news coverage purposes, despite its own operational security concerns since it withdrew from Mogadishu in 2011, is forward-looking, fast-paced, aggressive, and by and large successful. But the conclusions also assert that despite the group’s focused strategic communications and its opportunistic use of Propaganda of the Deed, its successes correlate directly to the failure of the poor and generally uncoordinated communications efforts of the international coalition working to counter it.
Robyn Kriel, Defence Srategic Communication, Spring,, 2018
39. ISLAMIC STATE
· History is a powerful weapon, and some of the fiercest battles are fought over how it is interpreted. Although extremist groups are fighting in the present, historical narratives are often used to justify their ongoing causes, and as a result feature prominently in their propaganda output.1 A phenomenon that has been highlighted in recent years in the extensive propaganda output of the Islamic State (IS).
Alastair Reed and Jennifer Dowling, Defence Strategic Communication, Spring, 2018
Toolkit
40. EXCHANGES
· . . . as North Korea has recently signaled that it wants to be perceived as a “normal country,” there are confidence-building steps that the US and the global community can now take together with North Korea, which will encourage positive change in North Korea without violating the global sanctions in place against Pyongyang’s nuclear program. One such step is a program for planting trees in North Korea to arrest deforestation and soil erosion, which is an acute environmental problem in North Korea. Pictures of North Koreans, Americans, and other nationals standing side-by-side on the hills of North Korea planting trees together will be highly appreciated in North Korea and help promote goodwill toward the US and other participating nations. Another is announcement of initiatives for educational, cultural, and sports exchanges. As North Korea transitions further toward an economy driven by market forces, it needs training in Western business practices and market economics. The US and other countries can host and train North Korean students, business leaders, and government officials as North Korea seeks to develop its economy further. A symbolic yet effective gesture would be establishing a scholarship program for North Korean students and professionals to enable them to study at US universities. Further goodwill will be promoted by reciprocal visits of athletes, musicians, and others between North Korea and the US.
Jongsoo Lee, Pacific Forum, May 21, 2018
41. WORLD’S FAIRS
· Expo 2020 Dubai — the next World’s Fair — may be two years away, but plans and preparation are well under way for the USA Pavilion. Recently, the U.S. Department of State announced that Big Things Group, leading the consortium Pavilion USA 2020, was appointed to oversee the fundraising, project management, design, construction, operation, and disassembly and removal of the USA Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai.
Exhibitor, July 19, 2018
· After the semi-debacle of the U.S. Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo -- which wasn't as bad as the critics panned but it was still uninspiring -- I was pleased to see a significant improvement by the U.S. Pavilions this time. Under the banner “American Food 2.0,” the U.S. Pavilion offered far more inspiring design and far more engaging content.
Paul Rockower, USC Public Diplomacy, June 8, 2015
42. INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN THE U.S.
· The Trump administration plans to shorten the length of validity for some visas issued to Chinese citizens, the State Department said Tuesday, as President Donald Trump works to counter alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property by Beijing. The changes begin June 11. The State Department said that under the new policy, U.S. consular officers may limit how long visas are valid, rather than the usual practice of issuing them for the maximum possible length.
Jeremy Goldkorn, SupChina, May 30, 2018
43. GASTRODIPLOMACY
· Food has been shaping our view of the world, strengthening and severing bonds between nations throughout history. These days, the idea of using culinary marketing to garnish the image of a country has a spiffy new name: gastrodiplomacy.
Shawna Wagman, Air Canada, November 5, 2014
Precepts
This is a compilation of news, articles, essays, and reports on strategic communications, Public Diplomacy, public affairs, U.S. and foreign government international broadcasting, and information operations. The editorial intent is to:
● share with busy practitioners the academic and policy ferment in Public Diplomacy and related fields
● from long speeches, testimonies, and articles, flag the portions that bear on Public Diplomacy
● provide a window on armed forces thinking on the fields that neighbor Public Diplomacy such as military public affairs, information operations, inform-influence-engage, and cultural learning, and
● introduce the long history of Public Diplomacy by citing some of the older books, articles, reports, and documents that are not available on the internet.
Public Diplomacy professionals always need a 360-degree view of how ideas are expressed, flow, and gain influence. Many points of view citied here are contentious, partisan, and/or biased; inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Edited by
Donald M. Bishop, Bren Chair of Strategic Communications, Marine Corps University
Carter T. McCausland, Virginia Military Institute, Assistant
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