Demonstrators in support of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, June 16, 2014. Source: Voice of America
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, commonly referred to as ISIL, ISIS or just IS, has certainly displayed not just surprising military prowess, but also significant communication skill as it has grown into a meaningful force in a vital region of the world. Buttressed by successes on the ground in Syria and Iraq, it has positioned itself in the Islamic world as a rival to al Qaeda and perhaps even its successor.
To the extent the Islamic State is engaged in an information war with al Qaeda, whose leadership threw ISIL out of the club for being too violent, it is definitely winning.
But a number of national security commentators have gone so far as to suggest the Islamic State is winning a propaganda war with the United States and the West. This is giving the Islamic State too much credit.
Exposure and influence are two different things.
The Islamic State is communicating effectively. It has shown remarkable sophistication in its media campaign. Its latest video, featuring British journalist John Cantlie in Shakespearian fashion asking his audience to “lend its ears” to hear the “other side” of the ISIL story is “diabolical” as one commentator suggested.
ISIL does seem to be growing in strength – at least for the moment. Its ranks include true believers in the formation of a Caliphate and others who see it as the lesser of evils compared to the governments of Iraq and Syria. It has shown an ability to attract a meaningful number of young men from Europe and the United States.
This is advertising. And as a relatively small but nonetheless a sadly compelling niche, the ISIL brand is advancing. Hopefully, as more and more people realize how unappealing the product really is, ISIL will steadily lose market share over time.
But in its outreach beyond the Muslim world, where the propaganda rubber hits the strategic road, the “information effect” of the media campaign is the opposite of what ISIL claims it wants.
In theory, the Islamic State message to the West is, “Leave us alone.” But the net effect of recent videos, particularly the gruesome murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, has been the formation of a coalition of countries dedicated to confronting and defeating the movement both militarily and politically.
Propaganda or strategic communication, its modern corollary, is supposed to create an information environment that enables a broader strategy to succeed. ISIL’s communications have actually crystallized international public opinion in opposition to its movement.
Sunni-led countries are prepared to take direct action in support of the Shia-led government in Baghdad, something that rarely occurred over the previous decade. Western countries that were previously reluctant to get re-involved in Iraq, including the United States, are now conducting air strikes against ISIL forces.
It is also possible the Islamic State is trying to draw America back into an active military conflict in the Middle East, trying to reinvigorate perceptions of a Western “war against Islam.” But here again, Washington, London and other capitals are committed to helping regional forces in Iraq and Syria against ISIL, ensuring this is appropriately framed as a struggle within Islam.
Strategic communications is not about the channel or the connection but the effect. If an information campaign actually makes it harder to win the war, it’s a strategic failure, not a success.
There are a number of competing and overlapping terms to describe how governments communicate with or relate to their own citizens and those of other countries, including strategic communication, public diplomacy, public affairs, information operations and global engagement. Depending on who is saying what to whom and where, different authorities, funds, channels or even laws can apply.
For example, by law, the United States government cannot “propagandize” its own people, but is permitted to try to “persuade” others around the world to support U.S. interests and actions. It can “inform” anyone about U.S. policies, actions, history, culture and opportunities.
When the State or Defense Departments communicate with the American people, usually through the media, it is called public affairs. How the State Department interacts with global audience is termed public diplomacy. When the Department of Defense does something similar (but usually with a short-term objective) it has been known as strategic communication — until recently.
But late last month, the Department of Defense issued a memorandum announcing that the term strategic communication is out, and communication synchronization is in. Why the shift and what does it mean?
According to the memo, strategic communication, which has been a joint responsibility of DoD’s Public Affairs and Policy communities with lots of interested players on the margins, created bureaucratic and functional confusion regarding military planning and oversight. As Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs George Little wrote, “most things previously termed ‘SC’ are in fact Public Affairs responsibilities.” This makes sense.
But are strategic communication and communication synchronization the same? Not necessarily.
Communication synchronization can be viewed as constructing a narrative and sustaining it across the bureaucracy. The United States is actually pretty good at this. Take one recent celebrated example. Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, echoed talking points about Benghazi developed by the intelligence community when she appeared on several Sunday shows five days after the attack. The criticism from some Senators has been that she should have been less, well, synchronized.
The word strategic communicates importance, something directly related to a vital interest or a core function. The evolution of the concept of strategic communication within the military a decade or so ago reflected the emergence of a 24/7 global media environment, the interconnected world of the Internet, traditional media, satellite television and now social media and citizen journalists. In this world, governments communicate with each other and with broader society. People communicate vertically and horizontally and have access to more and better quality information than ever before.
United States policies, pronouncements and actions receive relentless scrutiny. In order to gain international understanding and support, to the extent possible, what we say and what we do need to complement and not contradict each other. Strategic communication is about keeping our words and deeds in the same zip code, or offering a quick and coherent explanation when one or the other strays beyond the established narrative.
This can be very difficult, particularly when policies and priorities, or interests and values, collide.
More often than we’d like to admit, our actions look one way to us, but are perceived very differently half a world away. Think of the bin Laden raid in Pakistan. From Kalamazoo, taking bin Laden off the battlefield was a no-brainer. From Karachi, it was a violation of sovereignty and a national humiliation.
Recognizing that the raid, necessary as it was, would inflame Pakistani public opinion, the initial description of the operation by President Obama was carefully constructed to try and mitigate these vastly different perceptions between the two countries. That’s strategic communication.
It’s not clear that communication synchronization addresses situations where our actions, no matter how well we attempt to explain them, have potentially far-reaching public policy consequences. Despite assertions to the contrary, the United States had no trouble communicating in Iraq. But what we viewed as liberation, others viewed as occupation. What we described as a war on terror, others perceived as a war against Islam. Our narrative was clear and consistent, but carried high costs we are still paying in a critical part of the world.
Going forward, the United States must recognize how consistent words and actions translate into effective and sustainable policies, regardless of what you call it.
DISCLAIMER: Many of my writings on Take Five will propose concepts that seek to describe state communication activities. Concepts are critical for building theory, my overriding interest. I want make sure my concepts and theory resonate with students, more experienced academics and practitioners, a marker of validity. I am using this blog for testing my ideas and welcome your feedback, whether constructive or dismissive.
The Transitive Property Reviewed
The transitive property in formal logic is essentially:
If a = b and b = c, then a = c.
This is useful shorthand for one problem facing public diplomacy practitioners and states’ strategic communicators. How does one better a country’s image when it is vulnerable to “guilt by association” when that country’s friends are seen as bad actors? Alliances between countries are something like equations, at least in terms of public perception, even if those alliances are complex and nuanced, combining elements of cooperation and competition. Alliances require defending or at least very lightly criticizing allies while keeping relations normal, which is easily interpreted as complicity.
Rooted in Cognitive Processing or How People Perceive Political Problems
While this seems a perfect mathematical formula, perceptions of countries to do not transfer so easily, of course. The emphasis is then on the basic dynamic, drawing on a notion of how people process politics cognitively, or associational thinking. Psychologist Drew Westen and pollster Celinda Lake write about “what psychologists and neuroscientists call networks of associations,” or:
interconnected sets of thoughts, feelings, images, metaphors, and emotions that are unconsciously active in people’s minds and brains at any given moment.
People think through links, through series of relations in which one analytic or sensory unit calls up another. Perceptions are shaped by what associations a certain subject produces. International alliances are both actual associations but also useful mental associations in how people cognitively process the complexity of foreign affairs.
For communicators and public diplomacy specialists, perception is their central currency and it matters more than actual policy even as the two are often, though not always, related. Thus, even if the guilt in question is not fairly ascribed, it must be addressed. Their challenge is to create new associations. The transitive dilemma suggests that old associations can be affirmed, or new ones established, due to the actions of allies. This poses an agency problem, that is, they are ultimately responsible for more than just their own government’s activities.
Applied to US-Bahrain Relations
Let’s take a recent example P.J. Crowley covered on this blog. When Bahrain commits excessive violence against protesters, the government’s image is rightfully tarnished (Bahrain = Bad). The American alliance with Bahrain (America = Bahrain), however, means that the United States cannot take a strong, critical public stance because of its well-known alliances in the region, and thus looks bad by association (America = Bad).
When it comes to how people view American policy in the Middle East, Bahrain’s state violence and repression prime among many observers and attentive regional publics American foreign policy inconsistencies. P.J. Crowley called the United States an “interested spectator with Bahrain.” Its relative silence, he wrote, stood in contrast to its “loud” push for reform in neighboring countries.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch similarly observed that the “Obama administration’s grudging acquiescence to the Saudi-driven fait accompli [supporting the Bahrain regime] opened a gaping wound in American credibility.”
The transitive problem is exacerbated when an allies’ malfeasance reveals double standards, holes or hypocrisy in one’s own policy – suggesting an inconsistent adherence to state principles.
This puts public diplomacy and communication workers in an awkward position. While the state may be invested in projecting an image, for example, supporting human rights or democratization, an ally’s antics can directly undermine this. Practitioners’ hands are further tied in responding. They cannot threaten the health of the alliance without mandate from their government’s policymakers.
The sponsoring government’s alliance thus also prevents corrective action that addresses directly and credibly the substance of the guilt by association perception caused by the alliance. Public diplomacy workers are then expected to work on positive relations or find new ways to outreach to publics without taking on this one elephant in the room, even though it’s a substantial, contrary point to the message they are supposed to deliver.
Another Example: Hamas and Syria
This dilemma is a universal problem not just afflicting democracies or even states necessarily. While some actors may not care about transitive problems, others will abandon allies, even sponsors if the pressure due to unsavory alliances grows strong enough. Hamas, for example, seemingly turned against Syria by withdrawing its officials after a year of sticking with the Bashar al-Assad regime by default. It was in the uncomfortable position of claiming to support liberation and an Islamist politics, while allying with a secular regime that suppressed Islamist politics – a position it could not hold up against domestic and regional public criticism as well as Arab state pressure.
we have never attacked the Syrian regime or its president, so we are loyal to those who have stood by us when the whole world abandoned us, and we have said that we support the demands of the Syrian people and nobody can be against the people.
Seeking to escape the second equation, that between allies, of the transitive property, he urged that, “Hamas cannot be an exact copy of its allies.” That daylight is rooted in Hamas’s awkwardly-put position that:
there are some legitimate demands acknowledged by the regime that must be addressed and we must give priority to stopping the bloodshed on both sides in Syria.
Hamas is trying to both patch things up with a burnt ally and remain a credible critic, and the result is a familiar sort of confused, hackneyed official-speak. Showing this concept through an example with Hamas is important for making the case this is a general problem for diverse actors, and thus also of greater theoretical value.
Conclusion
The utility of this transitive problem concept, as elementary as it may be, is that it gets at the challenges of multiplicity in international relations and how it troubles work in state communications. The term is a neutral short-hand for the “guilt by association” problem that policymakers and communication specialists know all too well when their country is seen as liable for the acts of allies. The basic dilemma: how to communicate persuasively values and ideals when a close friend is violating them? Having a name for this problem, and understanding the cognitive roots described above, may give some conceptual tangibility and a greater analytic handle on the basic problem.
I am sure state communicators and diplomats have varied strategies from suspending activities and waiting out the storm, re-framing the government’s position, stressing other elements of its policy, back-channel communications to mitigate fallout and so on. The constraint of alliance and the policy need to maintain it – even in the face of reputational costs – makes for a particularly challenging communicative context.
Feedback is welcome below in the comments! Find me on Twitter: @wyoumans.
