Okay...
Posted on 08/24/2005 8:33:32 AM PDT by Valin
As the "global war on terrorism" enters its fifth year, it has become increasingly evident that the United States and its allies are involved in an ideological war, in which propaganda and moral suasion will play a large part. Some Bush administration officials, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have recently jettisoned the "GWOT" moniker in favor of the less martial and more comprehensive "struggle against violent extremism." National security advisor Stephen Hadley has also begun emphasizing the ideological nature of this conflict, recently telling a reporter that the United States is involved in "more than just a military war on terror" and must offer an alternative to the "gloomy vision" of Muslim extremists.
A key part of any foreign policy aimed at winning such a battle of ideas is public diplomacy -- government-funded efforts to communicate directly with foreign publics, largely through broadcasting. The role of Radio Free Europe in the Cold War, for example, is an undeniable testament to the power of this tool of statecraft against an ideologically motivated enemy.
But U.S. public diplomacy has not changed much since it contributed to the collapse of the Soviet empire, even as communications technology has advanced dramatically. The Internet is the fastest growing medium for spreading political ideas, but government-funded broadcasting has not progressed much beyond the old media of radio and television. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are aggressively using the Internet to promote jihad. If adherents of a medieval ideology like militant Islam can adopt modern technology, then the United States government -- which, after all, helped invent the Internet -- should be able to use it to promote values like liberty and democracy. Fortunately, tentative progress is being made in Internet-based public diplomacy -- but more still needs to be done.
Until recently, an Internet strategy was disturbingly absent from U.S. public diplomacy programs. After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States launched two Arabic broadcasting services, Radio Sawa and Alhurra television, but government broadcasters have seemed to ignore the promise of the Internet as a tool of public diplomacy. Comparing the Internet presences of Al Jazeera, the most popular television network in the Muslim world, and Alhurra, the American-funded network designed to compete with it, illustrates this point.
In 2002, in only its second year of operation, Al Jazeera's Web site received more than 161 million visits, according to the network. Both its English and Arabic sites have all the features one would expect from a news organization, such as searchable archives, the ability to sign up for e-mail news alerts and a section of special reports on important subjects. Al Jazeera's "Iraq Under Occupation" report begins like this:
"U.S. and British occupation of Iraq is regarded as the re-emergence of the old colonialist practices of the western empires in some quarters."
Those who see evidence of anti-Western bias in that sentence might hope Alhurra is providing Arabic-speaking Internet users with a different view of U.S. intentions in Iraq. Until very recently, a visit to Alhurra's Web site would have left them disappointed. From the network's founding in February 2004 until last week, Alhurra's Web site was not merely less sophisticated than Al Jazeera's site, it could scarcely be called a Web site at all. The only information available at www.alhurra.com was the schedule for the network's television programming, directions for tuning into its broadcast signal and a few words describing the network's mission. There were no links to other Web pages. (The old Web site can still be viewed here.) Radio Sawa's Web site does host short print articles and audio clips of Sawa programming, but it is not nearly as comprehensive as Al Jazeera's site or, for that matter, as good as the Web sites of the vast majority of comparable professional news operations.
Fortunately, this unacceptable situation improved last week when Alhurra's new Web site went online. Although the new site appears to lag behind Al Jazeera in some respects, such as the quantity of news stories available, it is a step in the right direction. For example, it will provide access to streaming audio and video feeds of Alhurra programs.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors plans to expand the scope of audio and video streaming across all its Web sites and make better use of new Internet technologies like Real Simple Syndication, according to a spokesman. The sophisticated Voice of America site is perhaps an example of what is to come. (There are VOA news sites in several languages, but not in Arabic.) The BBG says it is also researching ways to get around access restrictions that governments like China and Iran put on VOA sites.
This is all good news, but more has to be done. Of the $591 million the BBG will spend on international broadcasting in fiscal year 2005, just $6.9 million, or about 1 percent, will go toward Internet services, according to the BBG. U.S. public diplomacy must not simply catch up with the latest online technology, it must lead the way in using the Internet to promote American ideals. An effective Internet public diplomacy strategy would involve much more than building slick sites for disseminating news, it would take advantage of the Internet's strengths in networking and interactivity, using blogs and social networking applications, for example, to build moderate Muslim communities online. As an ideology, Islamic totalitarianism is positively archaic, but we should not forget that tomorrow's extremists are assuredly members of the Internet generation.
Hampton Stephens is freelance writer and a graduate student at the Institute of World Politics in Washington. His blog can be read at www.hamptonstephens.com.
Good post. Gotta get the technophobes out of decisionmaking posts. I won't ask for technophiles to replace them, but we at least need people who understand the uses of technology. If you, by chance, have a ping list for this, please add me to it. If not, you might like to consider creating one.
A very good point that is often missed by most people on both sides of Politics who hate Bush's Iraq policy. This is not a WW2 Situation. Counter Insurgency (or more accurately counter terrorism) is strange bastard form of warfare. It is not total war, yet it is also not the "mere Police Matter" the Hysteric Leftist claims. There is a large political element to counter terrorism ops. And it is a slow process. That pisses many Americans off. They want a bright shiny WW 2 style moral crusade. Anything less then that an we get all whiny and self-absorbed. In other words we become Cindy Sheehans. Americans need to realize this isn't a matter of simply kicking butt in 3 months and coming home (ala 1991). This problem did not metastasize over night, it will NOT be defeated over night. Question is. Do we have the intellectual, and political, courage to fight this war? Looking at Hagel, Durin Kerry, Kennedy et al, there is cause to wonder.
I guess "Global War On Terror" wasn't selling well, so a new catch phrase was needed.
The Internet: invented by DARPA, encryption by NSA, made ubiquitous by the World Wide Web, and human nature. My hope is that some have been playing chess on a higher level and for longer than we can fathom.
Amen.
Although recent experience might suggest misplaced faith.
Never underestimate a bureaucracy's capacity for incompetence.
I've been thinking and ranting about this for a while now. On the military side I couldn't really ask for more. It's been just what I expected...the terrorist stick their heads up they die...rather quickly.
BUT (and I know some here may not want to hear this) a large part of the war is hearts and minds, and I'd like to see us do more on this. For what it's worth Don Rumsfeld asked the same question a while ago.
They (the government) can call it anything they want, BUT the name of his war for better or worse is "The War On Terror".
Okay...
The Air Force Communication Command magazine "Intercom" had an article on "INFOWAR" a while back. It would be interesting to know what else they're playing with, and I can hardly wait for some of my high-school kids who are tech-saavy to get up there in rank a bit, to see what they come up with.
Do you have a link?
I guess I've dated myself, as it's now AFCA. For that matter, I think they were calling it infowar during the first Gulf War. Oh well.
http://public.afca.af.mil is the AFCA website, look at the Feb 2003 issue, IIRC. They talk about the Global Information Grid, or GIG. That's the article I was referring to.
In human conflict, it has always been about control of the minds of both the enemy and the home population. Set piece land warfare is obsolete. Guerilla war shifts the action to the realm of belief systems and interpretive frameworks; the battlefield is everyone. In this mindwar scenario the left has an achilles heel, their cafe umbrella reluctance to sacrifice themselves has led them into a battle by proxy, cynically using their Islamic "marcher cadres" to do the wet work, cadres that embody all the cruelties of midieval fascism that they purport to oppose. This twisted "fight fire with fire" strategy is basically a form of dementia brought on by the desperation felt as they watch their ideology dissappear into the dustbin of history. Islam IS bolshevism in all motivic aspects.
Walter
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AIR FORCE!We're the smart ones..send the officers out to fight.
"AIR FORCE!We're the smart ones..send the officers out to fight."
Bloody well right! Not to mention, if it is necessary to retreat, we can do it at 600knots/hour!
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