In December, COMOPS was invited to participate in a question and answer forum with General Stéphane Abrial, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, hosted by Atlantic-Community.org. Atlantic-Community is a leading European online think tank focused on transatlantic relations. The Q&A reveals that General Abrial has an integrative, forward-looking conceptualization of the role of strategic communication in NATO.  A close read also suggests that NATO faces both internal, as well as external, strategic communication challenges.

As the head of Allied Command Transformation (ACT), General Abrial is one of two strategic commanders in the NATO organizational structure (Allied Command Operations or ACO is the other, led by Admiral James Stavridis), and is charged with leading and facilitating the continuous improvement of NATO capabilities to meet NATO missions, operations and goals now and into the future.  The online forum consisted of a video by General Abrial introducing the concept of “Smart Defense”, an initiative recently put in place by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and General Abrial’s thoughts on what Smart Defense means for ACT.

Members of Atlantic-Community were invited to submit questions to General Abrial, facilitated by the editors at Atlantic-Community, and over the course of two subsequent sessions General Abrial answered a selection of these questions.  The first set of questions addressed specific implementations of Smart Defense, including definitions and ACT implications as well as transparency and development concerns.  The second inquired about broader NATO issues such as maritime security, cultural obstacles to cooperation and strategic communication.  The complete question and answer session can be found here.

One of the underlying factors driving Smart Defense, emphasized both in General Abrial’s introductory video and his answers to multiple questions, is the increased pressure on defense budgets in the face of the current European debt crisis and severe recession in the United States.  Yet, the security challenges faced by NATO and member countries have not abated.  These fiscal conditions motivate a need to do more with less, or as the general puts it: “We need to spend better.”  General Abrial provides some interesting thoughts about cooperative procurement as a method to leverage economies of scale.  In addition, he suggests the coordination of each member-country’s unique strengths and capabilities would be more efficient than developing parallel capabilities across the Alliance.

Acknowledging the fiscal challenges underpinning Smart Defense, my question to General Abrial centered on what sort of security dividend could be realized by emphasizing strategic communication as an additional tool for achieving NATO security objectives.  In other words, with the significant rise in insurgency and other irregular warfare situations, might non-kinetic solutions offer a cost-effective supplement to traditional kinetic military capabilities (and by implication, could successful non-kinetic solutions reduce the need for expensive weapons systems procurement and maintenance, if only slightly)?

General Abrial’s answer emphasized the role of strategic communication as part of a broad public diplomacy effort and cited a 2009 NATO Summit conclusion that strategic communication must be an integral part of both political and military objectives.  This dual role of strategic communication points to a significant challenge for conducting it effectively.  Which arm of NATO (or any government for that matter), the political or military, should lead strategic communication?

Thinking of strategic communication in terms of public affairs and information operations is too restrictive. It is a discipline that bridges both political and military domains and is intricately enmeshed with both political and military operations.  It requires careful planning and forethought, otherwise devaluing its strategic benefit.  General Abrial calls for “building a professional framework strategic communications related military disciplines” and I would argue that this framework should be overtly collaborative with the political dimension of the alliance’s functions.

General Abrial’s answer also got me thinking about two sides of strategic communication and the special challenges faced by NATO.  All countries when seeking to communicate their objectives and goals, and seeking to persuade an audience to cooperate in the achievement of those goals have two audiences, external and internal.  In its traditional definition—communication crafted and coordinated to support the achievement of a goal—strategic communication is often conceived as an externally focused process, and this is especially true when subcomponents of the discipline such as public diplomacy, information operations and psychological operations (psyops) are considered.  However, countries have domestic audiences that require information and need to understand what their government is trying to accomplish.

In NATO’s case, this internal audience presents a particular challenge:  28 member countries, each with its own unique security and diplomatic concerns, its own internal political turmoil, not too mention significant historical and cultural concerns.  Each country itself has both internal and external audiences.  General Abrial’s comments introducing Smart Defense indicates this need to address this internally-focused facet of strategic communication.

He observes that a question facing NATO is: “how do we best encourage groups of like-minded countries to reap economies of scale by working together more often?”  This sounds like a strategic communication issue, but not one suited to information operations or pysop campaigns.  Rather, it is about getting all the member countries to share the same vision of NATO’s future and the same vision about how they can contribute to that future.  In short, they need to participate in the same narrative.

This challenge illustrates how approaching narrative from a systemic perspective can be helpful, not only in terms of narrative analysis and understanding, but also in terms of strategic communication planning.  Smart Defense already articulates some fundamental themes: cooperation, fiscal prudence, balancing sovereignty and solidarity, etc.  As we’ve noted here at COMOPS Journal before (notably here and here), a narrative is (1) an explanatory organization of information; (2) is structured with a trajectory towards the resolution a conflict or satisfaction of a desire (and the events of this trajectory illustrate themes, values and ideals); and (3) is a system of stories.

Constructing a Smart Defense narrative, then, would consist of identifying a variety of stories that constitute the events in the overall narrative trajectory.  For an effective and coherent narrative that unites the alliance, these stories would ideally be sourced from the member countries and thus consistent with those narrative landscapes.  Next, they would contain within them actions and characters and events that, when collected together, place Smart Defense at the resolution of the conflicts or the satisfaction of  desires germane to each member country.  Of course, that’s easier said than done.

The most encouraging of all the general’s comments, though, was his assertion that strategic communication “must be incorporated into all operational planning, instead of being relegated to an after-the-fact attempt to explain, or build support for a decision that has already been taken.”  As my co-authors and I argue in our upcoming book Narrative Landmines, understanding the narrative landscape and incorporating that knowledge into the decision-making process at operational and strategic levels can make the difference between success or failure of civil affairs, public outreach, crisis management and other soft power enterprises.

We at COMOPS thank General Abrial and Atlantic-Community for the opportunity to engage in this dialogue, and look forward to following NATO’s efforts in implementing Smart Defense and ensuring both European and Transatlantic security in the years to come.

____________________________

*Dr. Scott W. Ruston is an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Strategic Communication at Arizona State University. A specialist in narrative theory and media studies, he is the co-author of Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism and the Struggle for Strategic Influence (Rutgers UP, available March 2012).  He is also an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve newly assigned to a NATO ACT reserve support unit.

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Efforts in European countries including France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands to restrict or prohibit women from wearing burkah and nikab (face veil) are well known in Indonesia. Reports about these efforts in the Indonesian media are overwhelming negative.

There is no visible support for these efforts even among women who do not cover their hair. There is also growing concern among Muslim women who wear the hijab (headscarf) that they would not feel safe or welcome in European countries. Some students are now reluctant to consider studying in countries where headscarves have become politicized. Most Indonesian criticisms of European “veil policies” are written from Muslim perspectives and at least implicitly describe Europeans as “Islamaphobic.”

The article we discuss below is written from a different point of view. Its arguments resonate strongly with those made by Joan Scott in The Politics of the Veil. Scott suggests that  “anti-Burkahism” is deeply rooted in colonial discourse about sexuality and the control of women’s bodies. She argues that claims made by proponents of such legislation about “liberating” women are ironic, yet another example of the politicization of the female body in attempts to enforce sexual and cultural order.

On April 27th, the Jakarta daily Koran Tempo published an article entitled “Pelarangan Burqa: Membebaskan Perempuan?” (Prohibiting the Burkah: Liberating Women?). The author, Dr. Soe Tjen Marching, is a well-known feminist thinker and activist, and a staunch critic of Islamist causes. She holds a Ph.D. from Monash University in Australia and now teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She is also an award-winning composer of avante guard piano pieces. She divides her time between Jakarta and London.

In this article Marching is critical of those who would require women to cover their faces but is concerned primarily with European attempts to outlaw the practice in the name of “freeing women who are trapped by religious fundamentalists.”

This argument closely resembles Scott’s. Marching begins with the observation that on a recent trip to London she found that laws and regulations concerning women’s clothing were a frequently debated topic. She observes that some people find the sight of women wearing either the burkah or hijab disturbing and even frightening. She also states that she found it ironic that in the Netherlands she encounters nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings of bare breasted Balinese women, produced at a time when women in “Puritan” areas of Europe were required to cover their ankles. By contrast, today in Indonesia one encounters local women who cover their hair, and bikini clad European women on the beaches.

Marching notes that some European secularists want to prohibit women from covering their faces and some Islamists want to require it for the same reason, to “safeguard” their honor and dignity. Indonesian Islamists and European secularists use similar language. Both speak of safeguarding women’s dignity and human rights. Islamists use these arguments to justify making women put on the veil. Some European secularists use the same arguments to make them take it off.  She compares these claims and counter claims to a football (soccer) match: “If this was only a game and what rolled back and forth was a ball, it would not be a problem. But it is women’s bodies that are being used as a ball by male dominated cultures and political leaderships and this is NOT funny!”

Perhaps the most important points she makes are that those who would outlaw the burkah and those who would require it engage in the same type of controlling discourse, attempting to use women’s bodies for their own purposes. Her argument that there is not a fundamental difference between opposing the practice of female face covering and prohibiting it is as profound as it is simple. By prohibiting the burkah the state makes women into puppets that it can manipulate at will for its own purposes. To oppose  face veiling is to attempt persuasion and employ coercion. In an irony of Orwellian proportions, she observes that burkah bans would make criminals out of women who refused to be coerced in the name of liberating them. Her argument is libertarian –- that the state can not legitimately require women to cover their faces nor prohibit them from doing so. Many Indonesian women who would never consider wearing a burkah themselves nevertheless oppose attempts to prohibit others from doing so.

*Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Inayah Rohmaniyah is Senior Lecturer of Tafsir and Hadith at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta Indonesia.

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Geert Wilders is a Dutch parliamentarian and head of the Party for Freedom (PVV).  He is also a very clear opponent of Islam.  Most critics of Islam are very careful to say that they oppose “radical Islam” or “Islamism” or “Islamic extremism,” but have no problem with the religion as a whole.  Not Wilders.  He has made it clear in no uncertain terms that he “hate[s] Islam.” He has compared the Qur’an to Mein Kampf, referred to Islam as fascist, and made a film, Fitna,(“discord” in Arabic), that juxtaposes passages from the Qur’an with images of 9/11, the Madrid bombings and other acts of terrorism.

Normally, unless their words lead directly to violence, advocates of hate can be dismissed.  Wilders gets a little more attention because he is an elected politician and is adept at using the media to promote himself and his beliefs.  Recently two things occurred that raised Wilders’ status.  First, he was banned from entering the United Kingdom.  This was seen by many (not just his supporters) as a violation of freedom of speech.  The ban was later overturned.  Second, Wilders was charged with violating hate speech laws in his native Netherlands.  Once again, Wilders is crying foul and saying his freedom of speech is being violated.  Wilders’ trial began January 20th.

The issue of Geert Wilders boils down to one of hate speech versus free speech.  Certainly one should be allowed to express one’s opinion freely and without fear of prosecution, but there are hate speech laws for a reason.  If Wilders’ intent is to bring about hostility toward a group (Muslims) then his speech is “hate speech” and the prosecution is justified.  If it is merely criticism, and not intended to cause harm to anyone then it is free speech and the prosecution is unjustified.  However, Wilders seems to want to make his trial not just about free speech but about Islam as well.  In a statement to the court Wilders said:

This trial is obviously about the freedom of speech.  But this trial is also about the process of establishing the truth.  Are the statements that I have made and the comparisons that I have taken, as cited in the summons, true?  If something is true then can it still be punishable?  This is why I urge you to not only submit to my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of freedom of speech.  But I ask you explicitly to honour my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of Islam.  I refer not only to Mister Jansen and Mister Admiraal, but also to the witness/experts from Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom.  Without these witnesses, I cannot defend myself properly and, in  my opinion, this would not be a fair trial.

Among those Wilders wants to call as “experts” are Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan and Andrew Bostom, all of whom are highly critical of Islam.

The Wilders case illustrates a larger problem in Dutch society, and potentially across Europe.  While approximately five percent of the Netherlands is Muslim, they are increasingly victims of prejudice and even persecution.  Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was killed by a Dutch Muslim (of Moroccan decent) over his short film, Submission,which crudely criticized Islam’s treatment of women.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a native Somali and former Dutch parliamentarian went into seclusion for a period and has since had significant security because of her statements about Islam (she was the writer of Submission).  These acts have in turn lead to an increase in attacks against Muslims in the Netherlands, including the burning of a Muslim school among other acts of violence.  Muslims in the Netherlands have a very low voter turnout rate.  They tend to be insular and stay within their particular communities, causing them to identify more and more with their  religion and less with their ethnicity or nationality.

A pattern has developed over the past ten years or so that goes as follows: A prominent non-Muslim figure speaks out against Islam, a Muslim reacts, sometimes violently, leading to more statements and actions against Islam, again a Muslim reacts, and so on.  All the while the Muslim community begins to turn further inward and embraces the status of a marginalized outsider.  The alienation of the Muslim community will obviously only create more strife and tension.  If this pattern continues, things will only get worse in the Netherlands, for both Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

The real issue in the Wilders case is one of motivation.  What is the purpose of his statements?  What is the strategic goal of this level of discourse?  Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and others use language like “infidel”, “crusader” and “apostate” to define their enemy in terms of “otherness.”  Once the designated (often abstract) enemy is seen as a violent oppressor it is easier to recruit followers and continue the cycle of violence, or so the theory goes.

Wilders seems to be the flip side of the coin.  His statements are attempts to define Islam not just in negative terms, but as a threat that should be met with violence.  He seems to desire a “clash of civilizations” much like Bin Laden.  Otherwise what is the point of his speech?  Obviously there is not going to be a mass exodus of Muslims from the Netherlands, nor are they going to convert to Christianity en masse.  So if violence is not the point, what is?

When a Muslim extremist commits an act of violence, many in the West call on extremist Muslim preachers to be held accountable for their inflammatory rhetoric.  This trial is the Dutch people calling Wilders out.  If his language is something beneficial to the people of the Netherlands, then he and others like him need to prove it by clarifying their goals.  Otherwise they are doing nothing but furthering the cycle of animosity and violence.

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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first visit to Germany in the beginning of February illustrates the “Islamic dilemma” Western European countries currently face. In front of a predominantly German audience, Erdogan had emphasized the need to better integrate the Turkish minority. He stunned Chancellor Angela Merkel when he suggested that Germany build Turkish high schools and universities in order to help the integration process.

But when he visited Cologne, thousands of Turkish immigrants from all over Germany and Western Europe traveled there and enthusiastically waved their Turkish flags. Kurdish protesters called Erdogan a murderer while German police officers stood in the middle, trying to maintain order. Before this riled-up crowd the message of integration was slightly altered. According to The Economist, Erdogan urged the predominantly Turkish audience to stay aloof from the German society. He denounced assimilation, calling it a “crime against humanity.” The Turkish minority in Germany should proudly maintain its identity, and Turkish children should be able to study in Turkish, he said.

Needless to say, Erdogan’s visit aroused uproar among the Germans, raised more suspicions about Turkey’s prospects of integration into the European Union, and left Western Europeans ever more puzzled about what to do regarding their Muslim minorities. If integration means that the majority should dedicate resources to protect a minority and subsidize a segregated education system for a segment of the population that refuses to adopt the German lifestyle and Weltanschauung, then it should come as no surprise that it’s a tough sell.

But just because it’s a tough sell doesn’t mean that it’s a bad sell. While Erdogan might have an interest in promoting Turkish nationalism in order to maintain a devout constituency and a significant support group within a Western European country (whose “club” Turkey wants to join), integration doesn’t have to exclude assimilation. In fact, a sensitive combination of integration and assimilation could be the only hope for a European Union whose demographics are shifting so rapidly and dramatically, that according to Savage the Muslim population might become the majority by mid-century.

Of course the big pink elephant in the room (or perhaps the big green elephant), is the question of what threat Islam actually poses for Europe. Assuming that the worry here is not caused just by xenophobic fears of “the other” outnumbering “us,” it is important to evaluate what types of threats Islam poses, and how they can be countered. Savage, for example, suggests that

The European-Islamic nexus is spinning off a variety of new phenomena, including the rise of terrorism; the emergence of a new anti-Semitism; the shift of established European political parties to the right; the recalibration of European national political calculations; additional complications for achieving an ever closer EU; and a refocusing, if not a reformulation, of European foreign policy.

Bawer sees a threat emanating from “creeping Sharia,” especially in Western Europe. Judging by firestorm set off when the Archbishop of Canterbury said in February that adoption of some aspects of Sharia in UK law was “inevitable,” this thinking is not unusual . There are two sets of issues underlying these concerns: Challenges to established democratic norms and practices, and challenges to the stability of the state/political system. Thus, the rise of Islamism in Western Europe, and in particular the propagation of extremist views are of great concern to secularists that support the strict separation of church and state, to human rights activists that support gender equality and minority rights, and to special interest groups such as the Jewish community or the gay and lesbian community, who are direct targets of much Islamic extremist diatribe.

Yet religious extremism and conservative movements exist in virtually all democracies, and democratic politics is supposed to emerge out of the bargaining process among groups with divergent world views and divergent interests. The key to democratic politics is that all interest groups accept the rules of the game, and seek to redress their situation through the political system. When groups with extremist views reject the democratic system, resort to violence and seek to undermine the state as a whole they become an issue of domestic terrorism.

In Western Europe the threat of “Islamist terrorism” is real and immediate, as evidenced by the Madrid bombings in March 2004, the London bombings in July 2005, the assassinations in the Netherlands and various violent demonstrations. Kilcullen reports that European police and security services have foiled 20 major terrorist plots in the past 5 years. Savage reports that between 250,000 and 500,000 European Muslims are involved in “some type of extremist activity,” and that more than 20% of the detainees at Guantanamo bay are citizens of European countries.

So why are European Muslims prone to extremism and terrorism? On one hand, the issue is that European Muslims maintain (or establish) links with extremist leaders in other countries, who are more than happy to expand their audience into the West. But why does anybody in the West buy their messages? Why do secular young immigrants turn to these messages and develop religious extremist views? Time and again studies show that the Muslims in Europe are economically and politically disadvantaged and that they face increasing discrimination. They have developed what Savage refers to as “isolation and self-encapsulation.” Thus, the problem seems to be one of representation and access to political power: Groups that might pose a challenge to democratic norms are excluded from the democratic process, so they resort to practices that challenge the political system as a whole.

From this perspective it becomes evident that in trying to solve its “problem” with the Muslim community, European countries need to start believing in the power and virtue of the democratic process they so adamantly defend, and actively promote the inclusion of the Muslim population in this process. This implies both undertaking domestic reforms that improve the social, economic and political conditions of the Muslim population, and allowing the voices from the Muslim communities to be heard in the public forum. While it is certainly discomforting to think that “undemocratic” or extremist views might enter the public debate, the alternative—clandestine groups manufacturing extremist interpretations of Islam and promoting their agenda outside of a public sphere, through avenues that are difficult to detect—is even more worrisome. In certain respects then, the way to deal with the “threat” of Islamist extremism is to give Muslims an equal seat at the table and allow their voices to “compete” in the so-called free market of ideas. This way, at least the Europeans will know who and what we are dealing with, and have a better chance of striking a deal.

Does that mean Germany should follow Erdogan’s suggestion and sponsor Turkish high schools and universities? The major problem is that he proposes an almost autonomous parallel education system, with teachers “imported” from Turkey. These types of concessions towards the Turkish minority are likely to only foster further segregation and reinforce the existing social cleavages. Incorporating more of Turkish history, literature and culture into the curriculum and offering Turkish language classes or German as a second language classes is one thing, but fomenting Turkish nationalism is another. Yet if the broader socio-economic and political integration of the Turkish population fails, and the Muslim minority starts promoting private schools sponsored by mosques, then the danger of separatist, nationalist and extremist views being propagated through such an education system is much higher. Against that alternative, having Turkish schools that nevertheless follow the same national curriculum (only most classes would be taught in Turkish) doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Some of the Eastern European countries provide instructive examples. Romania, for example, has German and Hungarian elementary schools and high schools. Romanian is considered the teaching language, Hungarian or German are considered the mother tongue. Other than some additional Hungarian/German literature and grammar courses (which often make these schools in fact more demanding and competitive), the curriculum follows the national education curriculum, and all exams are standardized. Thus, the German and Hungarian minorities are given the right to have the mandatory levels of education in their “mother tongue,” while also being assimilated into the Romanian culture and being raised into the collective norms of the Romanian system.

Such a model of integration might prove just right for Germany, if push comes to shove, and if the alternative is an emergent Turkish schooling system sponsored by fundamentalist mosques and extremist groups. To prevent such a separate system form emerging in the first place, Germany and the rest of Western Europe needs to accept its changing national character, redefine its collective identity to include Muslim minorities such as the Turks, and make a concerted effort to integrate these minorities into existing social, economic and political structures.

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An anti-Islam Member of Parliament from the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, has produced a short film that portrays the Quran as an inspiration for terrorist attacks and violence. A recent story in the New York Times on Wilders and his effort reported that

He routinely equates the Koran with Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” saying it should be banned in the Netherlands, and he declared in an interview that the Prophet Muhammad could be compared to the German dictator. “In his Medina time, if he would be alive today, Muhammad would be treated as a war criminal, being sent out of the country, being sent to jail,” he said.

Coming on the heels of a recent threat against Europe by Osama bin Laden stemming form the Danish cartoon controversy, the film promises to stir an already-heated cultural conflict over Islam in Europe.

Wilders, who has had trouble finding a Dutch distributor for his film, has been planning to distribute the film over the internet. But today the AP is reporting that his web site is being blocked by U.S. Internet Service Provider Network Solutions. The site at http://fitnathemovie.com now contains a notice that the site is under investigation for terms of service violations.

The ISP’s policy has broad prohibitions against “objectionable material of any kind or nature.” However, as one commenter on Digg pointed out, Networks Solutions also hosts the English web site of Hezbollah, whose material many people find objectionable.

According to the AP story, Wilders is undeterred by censorship of his web site:

“If necessary, I’ll go hand out DVDs personally on the Dam,” he said, referring to Amsterdam’s central square.

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