Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Intelligence is now a lot more than the information gathering from another country. It is or should be the sole art of manipulating an enemy from within and altering, disrupting or pacifying ideological challengers. While this is technically considered “political action” and done at an operations levels start revolutions or overthrow an existing malign regime, on a case by case basis, it should be a strategic design that is coordinated beyond the regional level but not unsympathetic to the realities and diverse cases of each individual movement, political group and in each state. Rather, the ideological tampering should be the silent mover not “winning” the hearts and minds of a people so far removed, but rather influencing and manipulating them in stages over decades.
One real problem has been the lack of US intelligence agency strategic analytical accuracy and the paramilitary buildup or operations in coordination with the military that carry out non-political, out of theater, assassinations of terrorists, labeled “targeted killings.” This strategy of using a ‘mow the lawn’ tactic only sees the same threats grow again and fixates the short term daily and weekly and monthly cycles of threat-counter-threat. Either the proverbial grass must be wholly genetically modified in differentiation from what the enemy they are today or crossed with temperance and other traits which will halt any future malign growth. Manipulating terrorist activity and health would be a better course, but will require a massive effort and change of policy.
There must also be the priority intelligence focus targeting authoritarian and oppressive state ideological models that not only disenfranchise and abuse their own people but encourage political radicals and extremists of all types. Agencies must chart a new course that would have them in the business of pacification, perception alteration, choice correction and eventually conversion to Western sympathies and many years later, liberal forms of political systems.
If politics is effectively the art of mastering social power or social engineering, then social control and social manipulation are its next door neighbors. The politician is always a skilled manipulator and relies on the weakness of human psychological and sociological and cognitive and social and cultural limitations. Even if benign and honest, there will be enough tinkering with their methods and tactics as to make illusions of things that may not even be there or an emotional appeal having nothing to do with honest selfless sacrificial service to the people.
If pressed, a politician will state promises that have a less than hopeful chance of bearing any fruit to supporters. This does not need to imply demagoguery but can. The nature of politics even within democracies will always apply the usage of propaganda- one-sided information that use the vast range of propaganda techniques. Western intelligence must unite to these ends and appeal to an international audience underground.
The differences of propaganda and persuasion are disputed and there is great controversy over the word. But the major between that and persuasion is that of promotion, or in this case, self-promotion, defensiveness and offensive attacks against opponents. Politicians in democratic or non-democratic regimes rely on the influence and control of information flow and other tactics that play may appeal to emotions, flaws to reason via illogical arguments, tone, timing, volume, repetition, rhyme, trickery, half-truths, etc.
Persuasion, which attempts to use a setting of open informative debate, allows an environment where positions are deliberative and alter according to superior reasoning, rather than superior techniques of ranting, theatrics and methods of delivery. Clearly when one tries to persuade with the best interest of finding the truth, they depart from propaganda and step into the realm of persuasive debate for a higher purpose of learning and knowledge building. They will be inclined to admit mistakes or form new positions accepting the merits of another argument. There should exist no ulterior motivation for the discussion. The person attempting to persuade others around an argument must have found it through reason, studied the issue, and found it to be convincingly true and lastly, there is no advantage for the person to be wrong, as they are not attached to their argument with their whole-being but find it best among alternatives for the time being.
The modern political advertisements that deride their opponents are not the only form of political propaganda during elections. Speeches and targeted audiences and fixed messages- the intention of the politician is to get elected more than to serve the people and discover truth and therefore they are not persuading the public but attempting to manipulate it. Sometimes they do not need to do so because the public agrees with them. They may use reinforcing propaganda to secure their core positions. They may use a form of Jacques Ellul calls “pre-propaganda” to precondition the public before the actual position is taken.
Another characteristic is the changing of positions, which modern politicians readily do. This is often found in the refutation of prior statements, retractions, or an embracing of an opposing idea and claiming it as their own.
There are literally countless ways political propaganda is carried out but the real issue in this article is the role of intelligence grand strategy as manipulation. Propaganda is one form of political manipulation connecting and disseminating the words and ideals that will secure the desired objectives and end states.
America of course has multiple bans preventing them from doing this to a foreign audience and preventing the inspiration of terrorist strikes but it is okay to spy on millions of Americans without specific and individual probable cause because of physical terrorist threat. Interesting. Moreover, it is okay to use propaganda running for office and even while in office, but not even foreign enemies.
In any case, other nations are doing this and some small states like Israel do it very well, targeting the US. China is pretty good, but they are so far removed in understanding the West that they have a difficult time of content delivery; in addition to their plague like minute-by-minute socio-political conditions. And that is without any real effort of exposing China’s dirty deeds or putting much money pushing it over the air waves. Imagine what the US and Europe could do if their intelligence agencies strategically penetrated foreign governments as a primary focus. They would not even have to do this directly.
But it is doubtful that there is a presence of total commitment in this arena. The activity of such scale would be measured by its positive effects and the rest of the world is in political decline. In other words, the absence of such an active program promoting political Westernism has permitted an environment conducive to international political instability. Other factors include Western courses of actions that are disruptive to developing national real politics perspectives and the fact that the US and others Western states continually shoot themselves in the foot by baring non-violent tactics of political manipulation (e.g. propaganda).
Non-state actors like al Qaeda are based on ideological communication channels of propaganda and propaganda networks. In spite of vast attempts, the US military is not in the place to combat this at the strategic levels and barely have the resources and skill sets to do so at the regional or operational levels. They are very equipped to affect the tactical locals through psychological operations, in neighborhoods, sections of large cities or small cities but they are under-resourced and funded. They remain a last priority.
This is where intelligence agencies should come in but have not stepped up to the plate. Presidents erroneously relied on a military and to a paltry extent diplomacy instead of mass diplomacy and intelligence working an ideological war. Political conversion might be multiple generations away for some countries but take Iran for example. As many have long pointed out and the Woodrow Wilson Institute makes recent mention, the youth which make up a vast percentage of the population, would like a new government. They seek an alternative. When a system gets too bad, there is usually a significant portion (say a 30 percent figure) that are ready to change it. That was about the percentage that sparked the American Revolution and could be the threshold needed to spark a “Second” Iranian Revolution by moderates and secularists- and one that may already be underway.
While the Arab Spring and before that Hamas were lessons of democracy in the Middle East now, liberalizing the Middle East through gradualism and the artistry of political action should have been the right move. Encouraging a few people or groups to overturn a government is not difficult but is extremely risky and when all outcomes are negative or unsustainable it is foolish. The US and the Soviets played decades of that game with satellite states and spheres of influence around the world. Then there appeared to be a stale truce by the US and a defeated Soviet Union or a new Federation of Russia to not interfere with any state’s internal affairs. Really there was a lack of mission to politically alter the ideologies of other states and instead focus on the economic international order first. Obviously, the new Russia takes this issue the most seriously because it has the greatest prior experience. The West is too visible in Russia and it is easy for them to shut any of these idea pushers out that attempt to interfere with their internal policies. But a great many of states are not in any position to do this, nor do they have the skillsets and intelligence required. And even in large resistant states like Russia, the methods could be greatly improved. The design is flawed, as it is a direct ideological assault approach that is spiraling downhill.
What am I suggesting? Universal graudualist political conversion through peaceful, passive, subversive programs and agents of interaction. This would not be an intelligence or diplomatic strategy but a national foreign strategy. Call it the “saving the world” strategy or the background radiation strategy. Like a white noise, it will always be operating under everything else until all the people of the world begin humming the same tune and not even realizing where the tune came from. The objective would be to increase liberalism through grass roots movements over decades, rather than all-out democracy and institutional changes in yearly or five year benchmarks. Liberalization of authoritarian and tyrannical governments, letting the sponsored groups in the movement spout their own counter-authoritarian propaganda.
Obviously, this could not happen in certain conflict regions. But even in Saudi Arabia, social relaxing of restrictions on freedoms has been reported and is possible in the long term. The biggest fear in even the most oppressive regimes is that freedom breeds chaos or that an immediate liberty would drive them out of power. This is not true. What “chaos” exists in Western democracies? What is true is that the worse they are, the more they have to fear. Nevertheless, an encouragement to increase political freedoms and reforms over time
This is a working from the top through the State Department. Thus there is a need for a top-down approach of the officials and the people. The US should become so good at political conversion of particular societies that the targeted states effected will never even know the US was involved and believe that they generated their own non-Western variant of a liberal government. The old method of buying other states internal policies so they align with ours is outdated, wasteful and may soon go to the highest bidder which may not be any Western country in the coming decades.
The US cannot do this not by applying universal faulty standards that do not apply but by learning and integrating and adapting key relevant local systems, turning them into more and more open and free environments from within. In short, the US must become the greatest political missionaries, covert or otherwise, that the world has ever seen- rivaling the prior centuries of religious Christians. They need to produce a path to better relations, greater power to the people, and friendlier relations and cooperation not only to prevent future attacks against us but also to stabilize the future of the state, region, and world politically. They need more resources, greater commitment and national focus at all levels. The use of key allies and new alliances is necessary to initiate the program with the help of the most trusted partners. Such operations might take place on the cellular level.
And the US will especially have to rebuild its trust. What happened to Dr. Shakil Afridi in Pakistan that aided the Americans in helping to find Osama bin Laden? He should have been broken out of prison, given a medal and asylum for him and his family within the US. If we cannot take care of our own foreign agents in the most high-profile cases, why would they trust us with the smallest ones? And money runs a lot thinner than ideological commitment and solid fidelity. So America must become the benign patron of states again and a recharged model to look up to- that is where the newly rehabilitated and overhauled State Department comes in.
Comments are closed.