On Friday, October 22, Wikileaks released almost 400,000 documents on the Iraq War.  At first Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell seemed to downplay the release, claiming the documents were “essentially snapshots of events” and do not “tell the whole story.” But chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen condemned the release, tweeting: “Another irresponsible posting of stolen classified documents by Wikileaks puts lives at risk and gives adversaries valuable information.”  Appearing on the Diane Rheem Show, Morrell also took a more serious tone toward the release in line with Mullen:

Well, what I’m speaking of is our fear is that our enemies can look at these documents and see patterns of behavior, can connect the dots in terms of how we respond in — when we’re engaged with small arms fire, when — what are our — what is our standard operating procedure in the aftermath of an IED attack, how we cultivate sources on working with Iraqis or Afghans, the capabilities of our equipment, response times, things of this nature. These and — listen, we are dealing with — and have been for years — a knowing, thinking, adaptive enemy. of this nature. These and — listen, we are dealing with — and have been for years — a knowing, thinking, adaptive enemy. They are — they know that this is a treasure trove of information that they can mine and make them smarter and better fighters.

Others emphasize different outcomes or downplay the danger these releases pose to troops. Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have called for a full investigation of the claims of abuse and torture found in the documents.  Daniel Ellsberg has been particularly outspoken in support of the release.  Appearing on the Larry King show, he responded to the issue of endangering troops by changing the subject:

KING: How do you respond to the White House assertion that this leak puts U.S. forces in danger?

ELLSBERG: You know, the people who put U.S. forces in harm’s way—100,000 men and women in Afghanistan—are the last two administrations, but particularly this one, with a decision to escalate the war. I think it takes a lot of –I don’t know what to say—chutzpah, effrontery, for people who made the reckless, foolish, and I would say irresponsible decisions to escalate a war that I’m sure they know internally is as hopeless as these new revelations reveal it to be.

So a crucial question seems to be: Are extremist groups really mining these leaked documents for information that could put our troops in danger, or is this threat being overemphasized, drawing attention away from issues of official misconduct?

To our knowledge nobody has taken a public look at this question, so we decided to address it by looking at web sites and message boards frequented by extremists, to see how the Wikileaks release is being discussed.  We discovered three “camps” that viewed the release in radically different ways.

Camp 1: That’s nice but…

Members of the first camp exist in virtually all of the forums we surveyed.  They believe the WikiLeaks documents are beneficial.  The documents provide evidence that support their claims against Nouri al-Maliki. These include claims that Maliki has had a role in Shi’a attacks on Sunnis, Americans turn a blind eye to his abuses, Iranian militias are fighting in Iraq, and the civilian death toll in Iraq is far higher than the U.S. will admit.  In their eyes, the documents do not contain new information, but provide only further confirmation of their existing views.

This group considers the documents “half truths.” The contents are “not surprising,” and they “do not want to touch” the documents because they “do not point to the main killers nor their aides and lackeys inside and outside Iraq.” They emphasize that these reports can help expose the “true nature” of Maliki and the American occupation, but relate only a fraction of the atrocities that have occurred.  For some, including the spokesman of Jaish al-Fatiheen, that is enough to have “no desire to touch the documents” any further.

Camp 2: It’s a trap

Those in the second camp advocate staying away from the documents entirely. They are suspicious of them and argue that the documents are part of a conspiracy. In their view, there must be a reason for the leak or some sinister motive behind it. These voices are loudest on the Shumookh al-Islam Forum, which the Quilliam Foundation recently rated as “the second most popular al-Qaeda affiliated Jihadist forum.” It is also endorsed by al-Qaeda’s online logistical network al-Fajr.

One interesting conspiracy theory, promoted on the Shumookh Forum, argues that the Wikileaks documents are part of an American-Iranian plot to fool Sunni Arabs into thinking America is an ally, while Iran and America are actually in a secret alliance. The documents are designed to delude al-Qaeda into thinking Maliki is not a strong ally of the U.S. and decrease their interest in attacking Iraqi ministries and forces. Other conspiracy theories also exist, including the idea that there are new mysterious documents in the list that were not originally there.

Camp 3: Translations wanted

Those in the third camp do not share the suspicions of Camp 2. In fact, they are very interested in acquiring information from the leaked documents. To do so, they call for translations of the documents into Arabic and encourage others to analyze them to find information that can benefit the “mujahideen.”

This indicates a couple of things.  First, they recognize that the documents could support the extremist narrative by helping prove that the U.S. has acted criminally and inhumanly.  But second, this camp realizes that a complete translation might backfire against them, so selective work is advised.  If the documents are treated as credible (and they must be credible or why bother translating them?) and they indicate that the “mujahideen” have committed crimes or atrocities, it has the potential to weaken support for the extremists.

The third camp is found on multiple forums, but seem strongest on al-Hanin Forum, where a separate section of the forum titled “WikiLeaks” was created for users to post translations and discuss the documents. There is a significant amount of activity in the “WikiLeaks” section with one user in particular, named “Sword of the Samurai.” This user has contributed over thirty translations since the section appeared on the form around October 26. Another ongoing forum thread contains translations posted by a user named “Abu Yousef al-Bashir,” now at a length of seven pages with over 2,500 views since October 24.

Analysis

What do these sites tell us about the threat of the Wikileaks documents to national security?  The first camp sees the documents as irrelevant. If the leaked documents do not contain anything new, then nothing has changed.  Most of the posts coming from the second camp, regarding conspiracies, are found on one site, Shumoukh Forum, and those posts ceased after three days of activity.  This suggests that the second camp is probably the smallest and least significant of the three.

It is the third camp, which seeks translation of the documents, which should command our attention. In the hands of this group the Wikileaks documents could, at minimum, provide a strategic communication ammunition for the extremists.  The documents could support their “justification for hostilities” against Maliki and the U.S. and affirm what the extremists have said about U.S. motivations and activities all along.

This brings us to another concern: The documents could serve as a recruiting tool. Non-participants, who may have been skeptical or uninterested in extremist claims against the U.S., could become roused or active in response to new information, largely due to the source. That said, it is important not to overemphasize the scale of the threat here.  There is no shortage of grievances, being deployed by extremists against the United States, whether based in reality or on bizarre conspiracy theories. Further confirmation or expansion of those grievances, especially based on documentation of the past, does not present a unique or novel threat.

Overall, in the immediate sense and judging by the sites analyzed, the Wikileaks documents do not appear to pose a threat to national security in the way conceptualized by Mullen and Morrell. We found only minimal effort to mine the documents to learn more about American battle tactics and strategy on these web sites.  However, the documents may well pose a more significant threat from a strategic communication point of view, providing evidence of bad behavior by the U.S. and its allies.  The release of any such internal material that supports a negative narrative about U.S. involvement in the Middle East is most certainly counter to U.S. interests.

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One of the important challenges of President Obama’s administration is to sell the continuation of our “overseas contingency operation” (or perhaps FATAVE) in Afghanistan to an increasingly disenchanted audience at home and abroad. But there is a worrisome absence of a good narrative–a coherent collection of stories–about why we are there and what we hope to accomplish.

In recent press conferences and briefings, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates have maintained a consistent posture of support for a continued U.S. military presence, despite polls showing a growing lack of popularity for that posture. In a recent (September 22. 2009) Pew Research Center poll, the results were striking:

The poll shows that even though 76 percent of Americans see a Taliban takeover of the country as a major threat to U.S. security, 43 percent favor pulling out all U.S. and NATO troops as soon as possible. The number of those advocating withdrawal has increased five percent in just three months (from 38 percent in June), while the ranks of those set on ‘staying the course’ shrank by seven percent during the same period.

Since that poll was released there has been an upturn in debate over direction and policy in the White House, including a plea from General Stanley McChrystal for an additional 40,000 troops. As a Washington Post story about the apparent disagreement between McChrystal and the White House put it yesterday:

Obama may take weeks to decide whether to add more troops, but the idea of pulling out isn’t on the table as a way to deal with a war nearing its ninth year, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “‘I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear,” Gibbs said.

With due respect to Mr. Gibbs, I think nothing about this decision is yet “very clear” and much of the storyline is simply “missing.”

What is missing from reports about the ongoing debate over the future of our military mission in Afghanistan? From a strategic communication perspective, it is any mention of narrative. As Scott Ruston pointed out in a previous post:

A narrative is a system of stories that hang together and provide a coherent view of the world. People use narratives to understand how their world works. Narratives contain patterns that fit the data of everyday life (events, people, actions, sequences of actions, messages, and so on), explaining how events unfold over time and how one thing causes another.

In other words, what the Obama administration is missing is a collection of stories that provides a clear explanation of our military mission in Afghanistan. We don’t have a well-imagined view of the future of the world with our troops active in Afghanistan, or absent from it. We lack a firm (or better yet passionate) resolve among our leaders not only to accomplish our mission, but also to enact a particular storyline.

Without such a coherent system of stories to provide a clear and credible narrative storyline, American and overseas audiences are left with what narrative scholars call “the presence of an absence, and the absence of a presence.” That is, what we lack is the knowledge that there is, in fact, a believable, credible storyline guiding the trajectory of political decisions and military actions in Afghanistan.

What fills this gap for audiences is increasingly made up of competing narratives, which further fragment the issues and divide citizens and politicians from each other. Our public discourse about Afghanistan is a disconnected series of conflicting news accounts and press statements, daily political opinion polls, the (often inflamed) rhetoric of commentators on the left and right, and the rantings of our opponents overseas. The gap is also filled by widespread public and political anxiety. We fear what we do not know, and in this case, what we do not know is the narrative guiding vital decisions and actions.

Meanwhile, are left with one consistent pattern, one coherent, credible and disturbing storyline. Our leadership seems impotent as an undeclared war goes on, Americans continue to die, the leadership in Afghanistan remains corrupt, the Taliban grow stronger, and our treasury is drained of resources.

This narrative–constructed out of the noise of media stories and images–is eerily similar to the one that corroded support for the White House during the Vietnam War. It eventually led to political defeat, military withdrawal, and a resulting genocide as insurgents sought revenge on those who had assisted U.S. efforts.

It does not have to be this way. The American people expect a believable, credible narrative from this White House. We have learned to expect it. We want a story that closes the gap and provides us with a hopeful view of the future, whatever policies that future must embrace. More importantly, we want to have confidence in the resulting storyline. We want to understand where and how this story ends and have some way of accurately assessing the effectiveness of the steps taken to accomplish those ends.

We will not be satisfied by “a never-ending story.” Notice how short-lived was Secretary Rumsfeld’s rhetoric of “a long war.” Nor will we be content to support characters who don’t demonstrate what we expect from our national leaders/heroes. Bravery, honesty, and justice are all qualities that depend on connecting the narrative to desired ends.

Finally, there is an important principle from narrative theory that ought to guide the reinvention of America’s role in Afghanistan: The story determines the content, not the other way around. Translated into political language this simply means that until our leadership has settled on the narrative, there should be little discussion of specific policies (those smaller stories that make up the system) in the public sphere. A narrow focus on policy absent a compelling narrative will only confuse the popular audience and anger the pundits, leading to a further division of citizens from whatever the resulting storyline might be.

So, to fill the dangerous narrative gap, our leadership must first get the story straight. Then they should keep to it, measure success against it, and demonstrate those qualities of leadership, and leadership communication, that we associate with stories worth living, fighting, and/or, even dying for.

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The new strategic communication leadership at the State Department is still a work in progress.  Nonetheless DoD is making plans for better corrdination with it.  So says the Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review (QRM) released last week.

This emphasis is an outgrowth of DoD’s evolving doctrine on Irregular Warfare (IW).  The QRM notes that

Irregular warfare emphasizes winning the support of relevant populations, promoting friendly political authority, and eroding adversarial control, incluence, and support.

But the most recent Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept makes it clearer why coordination with State is so crucial for IW efforts (emphasis in original):

Influencing foreign governments and populations is a complex and inherently political activity.  This Joint Operating Concept (JOC) describes the military role in protracted IW campaigns; however, these campaigns will fail if waged by military means alone.  The nature of IW requires the US Government (USG) to achieve the level of unified action necessary to integrate all available instruments of national power to address irregular threats.  The USG will have to develop “Whole of Government” approaches to waging IW at the political, strategic, operational, and tactical levels.  Other government agencies must build their capacity to operate in unstable or hostile environments.

Irregular warfare is about people, not platforms.  IW depends not just on our military prowess, but also our understanding of such social dynamics as tribal politics, social networks, religious influences, and cultural mores.  People, not platforms and advanced technology, will be the key to IW success.  The joint force will need patient, persistent, and culturally savvy people to build the local relationships and partnerships essential to executing IW.

Waging protracted irregular warfare depends on building global capability and capacity.  IW will not be won by the United States alone, but rather through the combined efforts of our partners.  This will require the joint force to establish long-term sustained presence in numerous countries to build the necessary partner capability and capacity to extend US operational reach, multiply forces available, and increase options for defeating our adversaries.

This goes a long way toward explaining why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has emerged as an unlikely champion for the State Department, which has traditionally competed with DoD for money and influence.  Over the last year or so he has called again and again for more funding for diplomatic efforts.

The QRM envisions better coordination with State (and other agencies) in its planning for the “war on terrorism” (Note to DoD:  The boss would probably prefer that you stop calling it that).   And it singles out Strategic Communication as a “future opportunity” that can only be realized through better alignment of actions with policy.  Accordingly it says:

• The Department has significant capabilities and resources to support strategic communication priorities, particularly to counter ideological support to terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are committed to using our operational and informational activities and strategic communication processes in support of the Department of State’s broader public diplomacy efforts. This cooperation will better enable the U.S. Government to engage foreign audiences holistically and with unity of effort.
• The Department of Defense and Department of State will expand our partnership to conduct strategic communication planning in support of the Global War on Terror, building partnership capacity, and regional issues. This partnership encompasses the full range of information and Theater Security Cooperation activities to synchronize efforts; improve regional and cultural expertise; develop and deliver information products; and train international partners to build their information networks.

In my view these are very positive statements to see coming out of DoD.  As long as they don’t fall into the trap of thinking it will produce control, the kind of coordination proposed here will do wonders for reducing the say-do gap in relations with foreign publics–especially if it reaches all the way to the policy formulation process.

Now all we have to do is get someone at State for them to coordinate with.

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Yesterday I participated in a Blogger’s Rountable discussion with Dr. Thomas Mahnken, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, about the DoD’s Minerva program.  The audio from the roundtable was supposed to be up immediately after the event, but it’s not there  yet as I’m posting.  Perhaps it will be up by the time you read this.  The audio is now available here.

I wrote about the Minerva program following a previous roundtable discussion with Mahnken in May.   In the mean time the President of the American Anthropological Association complained about the program to OMB, asserting that the Pentagon has a “conflict of interest,” without explaining what that conflict is.  The letter said: “we believe it would be more efficient and more likely to produce authoritative results” if an agency like the NSF handled the review and awards. Now that’s a very interesting theory, that the agency handling the review and handing out the money–rather than the quality of the research itself–determines the authority of the results.

I think what’s really going on here is that that the anthropologists, who have an NSF division of their own, want to be sure they have control over the money (isn’t that a conflict of interest?).  Also many of their members are squeamish about taking money from the Big Bad DoD, and somehow the same money will be purified if it is routed through NSF.

In a press release yesterday, the AAA bragged that “the Pentagon was apparently listening” because they signed a Memo of Understanding (MOU) with the NSF.  Well, not exactly.  The MOU is about future NSF programs.  The original Minerva program is going ahead as planned, with DoD organizing the reviews.

In the roundtable discussion, Mahnken bristled at the suggestion that DoD is automatically unqualified to manage this process.  He pointed out that there are lots of smart people in the DoD with PhDs in relevant  social science disciplines from impressive schools.  Pressed on who would be doing the reviews, he said that these folks, and possibly academics from outside who are willing to sign non-disclosure agreements, would be involved.

But he also said Minerva is about basic research, not applied research.  That was not what I had assumed, and in my view this tends to undermine his arguments about the qualifications of the DoD personnel to judge proposals.  They are academically trained practitioners, not professional researchers who keep up with the state of the art in science.  DoD wouldn’t consider academics who had completed coursework at the War College qualified to do war planning, would they?

I asked how the NSF program would be different from the program described in the current BAA.  Mahnken referred me to the NSF press release on the matter (which is pretty darn close to information-free) and also said it could include things like workshops.  I’m guessing that the specifics of the NSF program are still being worked out, and nobody knows for sure yet if and how it will be different from the current BAA.  Interestingly, he hinted that there could be other things to come besides the BAA and NSF program.

I asked if they were on-track to conclude the review and awards process for the current BAA before they turn into pumpkins in January.  He said yes, they have the schedule and capacity to get everything done by the end of the year.

I also asked if it was possible that an incoming administration could reel-back the awards.  Mahnken said he doubted they would do that, but when I pressed the question he couldn’t rule it out.  Call me a cynic, but I think there is a non-trivial chance that awards made in 2008 by the Bush Administration will be rescinded, cut back, or otherwise altered in 2009 by an Obama or McCain administration once the Driving Force of the program, Sec. Gates,  is (presumably) not there to push it.  Anyone getting an award will be wise to not count their chickens prematurely.

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Matt over at Mountain Runner did an interesting post today about a bill pending in Congress to create a Strategic Communication Management Board. He says:

While members of this advisory body may and are likely to come from all parts of the government, it consolidates the shaping and execution of government-wide strategic communication, our public diplomacy with the world, within the Defense Department.

Specifically, the bill anticipates that membership would come from a wide array of agencies, most of them not military, including State, Justice, Commerce, USAID, Director of National Intelligence, National Security Council, and Broadcasting Board of Governors. However, the Board would be chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Matt worries that this broadens the power of DoD too much:

it represents the further entrenchment of the Pentagon as the sole protectors of our national security. We’ve seemingly forgotten the range of the tools of our national power.

For me the legislation raises three general issues that deserve comment. First, the bill represents further evidence of an outdated, control-based approach to strategic communication that we have repeatedly critiqued. The assumption is that if our strategic communication is not successful, it must be because we’re not trying hard enough to coordinate it, so the solution is to create additional management structures to improve coordination.

But if anything, the problem with U.S. strategic communication is that it’s not agile and adaptive enough. The solution to that problem does not lie in creating another high-level coordinating committee, but in flattening the responsible organizations and creating cross-functional integration at lower levels. This is a classic prescription for organizational adaptation to a complex environment.

Second, the fact that the legislators see this as an intra-government committee makes me wonder if they have bothered to read the latest Defense Science Board Report on Strategic Communication. It concludes that while strategic communication planning is a government responsibility,

government cannot succeed in carrying out its responsibilities without sustained, innovative, and high quality support from civil society. …The academic, research, business, and non-profit communities offer deep reservoirs of untapped knowledge, skills, credibility, and agility needed to strengthen strategic communication.

I have to wonder why the legislators aren’t pursuing a bill to create the DSB’s proposed Center for Global Engagement instead of creating another intra-government board. Not only is the suggestion from the government’s own report, prepared by knowledgeable experts based on in-depth study, but it is something the DSB has been calling for since 2004 (albeit under a slightly different name).

Third is the issue of how big a role DoD should play in this endeavor, and here I depart from Matt’s opinion a little. While he thinks this board should be managed by the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, it’s important to remember that public diplomacy is only one element of “strategic communication.” That is essentially a military concept that also encompasses public affairs, information operations, and international broadcasting, so I don’t see a close connection to the DoD as unnatural.

Though I share Matt’s concern about too much power being concentrated in the hands of the military, the fact is that the military plays a massive role in communicating about the United States. Take this definition of public diplomacy from the old USIA:

Public diplomacy seeks to promote the national interest and the national security of the United States through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign publics and broadening dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad.

It’s hard to think of any agency of government that is doing more on a day-to-day basis to influence foreign publics than the DoD with its 170,000 odd communicators stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows how many stationed in other countries, all of them in close contact with foreign publics and creating messages–positive and negative–every single day.

I just returned from a conference in Rome entitled “Exploring Military Dimensions in Countering Ideological Support for Terrorism.” The participants, military officers from over 35 countries, reluctantly agreed that military plays a large role in countering ideological support for terrorism simply because it is in such close contact with relevant audiences and do so many things on a regular basis to antagonize and/or please them. There was also agreement that the days of bright lines between the different functions of government with respect to strategic communication are probably far behind us and we must find a way to comfortably integrate the military into matters that were seen in the past as strictly diplomatic.

In my view the way for the U.S. to do that is to avoid hasty fixes like the proposed coordinating board, follow the recommendations of the DSB for improving strategic communication, and strive for solutions that integrate civilian and military aspects of strategic communication while not tipping the balance too far toward the military.

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I just got off a blogger’s roundtable teleconference with Thomas Mahnken, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning (hat-tip to Matt for the heads-up about it). He was discussing the Minerva program, outlined by Secretary Gates in a speech last month. Gates, a former university president, wants the social sciences more involved in helping fight the Bad Guys, so he is forming a program in the DoD that will fund consortia to do work in areas like:

• Chinese military and technology studies
• Iraqi terrorist perspectives
• Religious extremism and ideology studies
• Forming new disciplines (like “Kremlinology” during the Cold War)

My first reaction to the project is “Hooray! What took so long?” This seems to be part of a growing realization in the upper-reaches of the Department of Defense about the importance of soft power, which has been echoed by Gates, Joint Chiefs Chair Mullin, Deputy Under SecDef Michael Doran, and others.

But after hearing Mahnken describe the likely parameters of the program, I’m less optimistic that it will produce significant breakthroughs any time soon. He cited likely funding in the range of $2 million to $3 million for multi-year projects involving multiple universities. Once you take off the indirect costs charged by all major universities on funded research, divide by x years times y universities, and hire translators to deal with foreign language documents, you’re not going to be left with much to spend on researchers and grad assistants to do the actual research. And this isn’t even considering projects that might do innovative things involving computers, which are even more expensive.

So kudos to DoD for wanting to fund important social science research on terrorism and other national security matters. But if they want research that will break new ground in a timely manner, they need to kick up the funding levels a few notches. Social science research is economical compared to other DoD research efforts, but it would be a mistake to try to do it on the cheap. Even tripling the planned award amounts, the Minerva tab would be dwarfed by development costs for any of several weapons systems that were never even deployed.

UPDATE:

Sharon Weinberger over at Danger Room picked up my post. First, a clarification. Sharon said:

If universities are hoping for a big paycheck, they should think again.

To be clear, I did not write the post because I am hoping for a big paycheck. Rather I think DoD has identified an important area where work is needed whether I get any of the money or not. Any level of funding would be welcome compared with what is out there now. But I scoped out a possible multi-year, multi-university project at the award levels being suggested, and concluded that DoD could probably not achieve the results they want/need at those levels.

Second, I disagree with her conclusion that DoD should not be the body to fund this. As I noted in my post, the Pentagon brass seem to be the only ones in the government who publicly recognize the need for this kind of work, probably because they’re most directly suffering consequences of not having it. They also have the money, and the ability to act quickly.

Third, to answer a couple of her queries: Why doesn’t State do it? They don’t have money, as any number of people there have told me recently.

Why doesn’t NSF do it? Their mission is to fund basic research whereas this is applied research. Furthermore, their normal planning horizon is something like 3 years. They take a year holding workshops just to design a program, which then has to be approved, which then has to get into their normal submission cycle, which has RFPs out for 6 months, then they take another 6-9 months reviewing and making awards. So they could be a long term solution at best. Also, they would have to take money away from other programs they deem important to fund this. If they thought of this as an important problem they would have launched programs years ago.

So again, I am not complaining about DoD and I think they’re is doing a good thing. But their funding levels should be higher if they envision robust projects that can produce significant results in a timely manner.

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