Strategic Communication

The Defense Science Board has written an interesting report about the US failure to explain itself to the world. The board recommends that the US pursue more vigorous "strategic communication" through a non-profit and non-partisan Center for Strategic Communication which would effectively be a marketing department for the government. It sounds silly, but is actually a good idea. The New York Times says

The report compares the national security challenge of the post-Sept. 11 world to the decades-long struggle against Soviet Communism. But the study then argues that the government's cold-war-era communications institutions have not understood that the Islamic world - and extremists operating in the Islamic world - present different challenges. The report scolds the government for casting the new threat of Islamic extremism in a way that offends a large portion of those living in the Muslim world.

"In stark contrast to the cold war, the United States today is not seeking to contain a threatening state empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value structure of Western Modernity - an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a 'War on Terrorism,'" the report states.

"Today we reflexively compare Muslim 'masses' to those oppressed under Soviet rule," the report adds. "This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies - except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends."

Clearly, one of the great pre-war errors was a gross misjudgment of the Iraqi people's response to being freed from Saddam. The nation's leaders simply assumed their world views would be shared by all, failing to understand that people in other parts of the world, with other cultures and backgrounds, may have a fundamentally different view of the world. This disconnect between American and Arab world-views is a major component driving the insurgency in Iraq and the continuing problems the US has with the people of that region. What this Center would do, among other things, is to provide mechanisms by which the American viewpoint can be explained to and understood by others.

The report makes its case by saying

For some the case for strategic communication is not self-evident. Global media already provide an abundance of information they suggest. "Why can't CNN, Fox, or MSNBC do it?" But commercial media are selective in ways that serve news and business interests first. And few politicians, corporations, or advocacy groups are content to leave their political campaigns, business objectives, and policy agendas to improvisation or the media. The U.S. Government needs a strategic communication capability that is planned, directed, coordinated, funded, and conducted in ways that support the nation's interests.

As they say, the politician, in trying to explain his or her views to the public, would not simply rely on the news media to do it. Rather, the politician hires a staff of people whose job it is to communicate what the campaign or administration is trying to do. If a political campaign has this sophistication, why does the US government not, especially in an environment where our actions are so misunderstood around the world, a misunderstanding that is manifested in much of the violence that undermines our efforts. The government need to do a better job explaining to the world, especially the Islamic world, what they are trying to achieve, and why such goals are good for those who would benefit.