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Paul R. Hollrah, O.E.
Chuck de Caro’s War
December 2,
2009
Klaus von Clausewitz, the famed Prussian
military historian and
theorist, defined war as being "an extension of politics, using violence
to constrain the enemy to accomplish our will.”
While that may have been a perfectly sound concept in Clausewitz’s time,
the early 19th century, the destructive power of modern weaponry tells
us that things are no longer that simple or clear cut. Something new has
been added. Never in his wildest dreams could Clausewitz ever have
imagined global real-time television and the influence that it has in
world affairs.
In an era when our most deadly enemies are no longer nation states with
well-defined borders, but global insurgencies fighting from behind women
and children and schools, the mightiest weapons on Earth are of little
value. In a war in which our enemy attempts to instill terror by
indiscriminately attacking non-combatants in public places, it is clear
that the rules of engagement must change to fit the circumstance.
In unconventional warfare such as the Global War on Terror...or
"Overseas Contingency Operation” as it is referred to in Obama
circles...global real-time television is the medium for what is
potentially the most powerful of modern day weapons: information
warfare.
Chuck de Caro is a leading expert on information warfare and an author
and co-author of numerous books and studies on Cyberwar and Information
Warfare. He reminds us that, "In Clausewitz’s time there was a sharp
line between diplomacy and belligerent conflict because constraint of
another society’s will was possible only through massive application of
gunpowder and cold steel. But that sharp line no longer exists because
of developments such as global television, motion pictures
electronically distributed by satellite and terrestrial broadcast, new
media, and the Internet. Because television transmits information by
perception of images and sound, it becomes a tremendously powerful
medium for influencing the will of entire societies.
It is in this large gray area between war and diplomacy where tools such
as Information Warfare...or softwar, as de Caro prefers to call
it...must prevail. As de Caro defines it, softwar is "the hostile
use of global television to shape another nation’s will by changing its
vision of reality.”
But where does the United States...the most technologically advanced
nation on Earth and the world’s only remaining superpower...rank in the
knowledge and strategic use of this powerful non-violent medium? The
answer is we rank somewhere well behind al Qaeda in our ability to use
global real-time television as a geopolitical force multiplier. Despite
years of warnings by de Caro and others, the United States still has no
comprehensive plan for the strategic use of worldwide television in the
war against Islamic terror.
In early 2002, with little fanfare, the Bush Administration created the
Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), the purpose of which was
to study how the Defense Department could design an "effective strategic
influence” campaign to combat global terror. However, in typical
Pentagon fashion, the OSI was placed under the command of an Air Force
Brigadier General (trained in astrophysics), and staffed with aging cold
warriors, none of whom had the slightest inkling of global real-time
television or its strategic capabilities.
However, when then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs,
Torie Clark, perceived a potential threat to her turf, word was leaked
to the press that the OSI was considering plans to provide false or
misleading information to unwitting foreign journalists "as a means of
influencing policymakers and public sentiment abroad.” Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld was forced to disband the office.
During the summer of 2002, de Caro had his closest brush with success
when the Republican-controlled House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence authorized the implementation of a comprehensive softwar
program to remove Saddam Hussein from power without the necessity of
putting "boots on the ground.”
Unfortunately, while Senate Democrats were openly supportive of efforts
to remove Saddam, militarily, they were apparently more interested in
having a political issue to use against the Bush Administration. When
the softwar authorization arrived in the Democrat-controlled
Senate it was allowed to die a slow death in the Senate Appropriations
Committee, chaired by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV).
But now, in an unlikely turn of events, softwar has unexpectedly
become part of a battle of wits between a naïve and inexperienced
American leader, Barack Obama,...winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace
Prize...and the erratic and delusional Iranian dictator, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. It is not the United States, but Iran, that has the wisdom
and foresight to initiate an information warfare program designed to
influence, not only the Iranian people, but the entire world against
U.S. "aggression” in the Middle East.
In a front page, above-the-fold story in its November 24 edition,
titled, "Iran Expanding Effort to Stifle the Opposition,” the
New York Times provides proof that Iran’s new softwar program
not only co-opts the name of de Caro’s information warfare
theories, but also the underlying principles he has
delineated. According to the Times, "the Iranian softwar
effort underscores just how badly Iran’s clerical and military elite
were shaken by the protests which set off the worst internal dissent
since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.”
The Times reports that, "Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, has been using the phrase softwar regularly since
September, when he warned a group of artists and teachers that they were
living in an ‘atmosphere of sedition’ in which all cultural phenomena
must be seen in the context of a vast battle between Iran and the West.”
According to the Times, the Ahmadinejad regime is "implanting
6,000 Basij militia centers in public schools across Iran to promote the
ideals of the Islamic Revolution.” The Times quotes Mohammad-Saleh
Jokar, the head of the student and cultural section of the Basij, as
saying that the Basij centers were being established because "students
of (elementary school) age are more open to influence than older
students.”
However, Ali Daraei, an official at IRIB, the Iranian state broadcasting
system, has indicated that he sees the new softwar plan to
propagandize the Iranian people as a double-edged sword. In announcing
that 40 percent of Iranians...twice as many as a year ago...now have
access to satellite television in their homes, Daraei said, "The enemy
no longer invests in the military to advance their goals. Their primary
investment is in the media war through satellite channels.”
Once again, our foreign enemies give us entirely too much credit. If our
civilian and military leaders were half as smart as they are given
credit for being, the United States would rank near the top in our
ability to shape events by changing our enemy’s vision of reality.
In the years before and after the collapse of the Pentagon’s ill-fated
Office of Strategic Influence, de Caro has doggedly continued to teach
the finer points of softwar at the National Defense University,
the National Defense Intelligence College, the Naval Post Graduate
School, the Air War College, the Army Command and General Staff School,
and many other Department of Defense institutions. And while he has won
thousands of converts from all branches of the uniformed services in two
decades of intense effort, the Pentagon bureaucracy continues to resist
change or enlightenment.
Meanwhile, in a period of just six months, our Iranian adversaries,
faced with a perfect media storm, have adopted and enacted de Caro’s
softwar principles for use on their own people, thus promising a
restive Iranian population far more difficult to reach in any future
U.S. Information Warfare effort.
Meanwhile, de Caro soldiers on relentlessly, determined to give our
reluctant military a strategic advantage over the tactics that our
Iranian adversaries have already adopted. |
