Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War

Winning domestic support for the Afghan War

Beatrice De Graaf, George Dimitriu, Jens Ringsmose, Beatrice De Graaf, George Dimitriu, Jens Ringsmose

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138221840
• eBook ISBN: 9781317673279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies.

In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, strategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems.

This book will be of much interest to students of international intervention, foreign policy, political communication, international security, strategic studies and IR in general.

Part I

Introduction

1 Introduction

Shaping societies for war: strategic narratives and public opinion

Beatrice De Graaf, George Dimitriu, and Jens Ringsmose

All sorrows can be born if you put them in a story …

Isak Dinesen (Arendt 1958, 175)

How do western governments endeavor to build and maintain public support for costly military interventions that are generally perceived as “wars-of-choice?” What types of arguments and interpretive frameworks do they employ? How do the public respond to elite attempts to generate popular backing for drawn-out military interventions? And to what extent can policy-makers actually influence the public’s war perceptions by the use of carefully designed storylines? These are the main questions addressed in this book. Specifically, the volume examines how various western states contributing to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan have “marketed” the armed intervention to largely reluctant voters and taxpayers. We choose this NATO-led security mission since it was a military intervention involving several countries, sanctioned by NATO and the UN, where public opinion support was crucial. Moreover, since the war has lasted more than a decade now, it provides a sound case study to really flesh out the waxing and waning of political and public support over a substantial number of years in many countries synchronically. How, in other words, have the contributing nations tried to sell the war in Afghanistan? We answer this question through the theoretical prism of strategic narratives. Our point of departure is that in contemporary wars, public opinion has decisive effects on outcomes.

At heart, the book serves three major purposes: it investigates the arguments and explanatory frameworks utilized by different ISAF governments when “arguing Afghanistan” – i.e., their strategic narratives; it describes how the public in those countries reacted to different strategic narratives as well as to actual developments taking place on the ground in Afghanistan; and, finally, the book probes the extent to which the official depictions and representations of the armed intervention had a causal effect on public support for the war. In other words: did strong and consistent strategic narratives translate into wide-ranging public support, and vice versa? By employing the concept of strategic narratives, we offer a novel interpretation of the war in Afghanistan and the link between policy-makers and public opinion. We moreover add to the growing literature on strategic narratives by applying the concept in a structural fashion to one operation in 13 countries simultaneously, something that has not been done before in this field.

Accordingly, the book also takes on the empirical question of why the war in Afghanistan has been so extraordinarily unpopular in some countries (e.g., Germany, France, Poland, and Italy) while governments in other troop-contributing nations have been blessed with relatively steadfast support for their military commitments to ISAF (e.g., Denmark, Sweden, United States). The basic theoretical proposition we assess against the empirical evidence is that policy-makers can shape public opinion during times of war. They are not just windsocks reacting to the will of a volatile electorate or largely impersonal forces but independent actors with the ability to mobilize and preserve popular backing for overseas military missions. Simply put, our proposition is that they do so by crafting stories that help domestic and international audiences make sense of the actions taking place before, during, and after conflict.

Obviously, it is not a novel observation that political elites are able to persuade the public to back military action by way of skilfully designed narratives about the why, what, and how of armed interventions. As also pointed to by Lawrence Freedman in his contribution to this volume (Chapter 2), Pericles made use of seemingly coherent and sense-making storylines when convincing his fellow Athenians of the necessity to take bold military initiatives. And, surely, there is no dearth of studies examining how governments have employed strategic communication, propaganda, and (dis)information campaigns during times of war. Still, analyzing the nexus between public opinion, elite argumentation, and war through the lens of strategic narratives brings forth new insights and a more nuanced understanding of what sways a domestic (or international) audience to support the use of armed force. By emphasizing that humans understand and give meaning to the world by using stories, it helps us comprehend how some forms of argumentation will persuade while others will fail to do so. As such, the concept of strategic narratives provides a fresh perspective on a very old theme.

This short introduction does two things. The following section provides a brief account of contemporary war, and, in particular, of how persuasion, legitimacy, and the so-called cognitive domain have come to occupy a prominent position in strategic thinking (scholarly as well as practical). We do so in order to set the scene for the introduction of the book’s overall conceptual framework and the notion of strategic narratives in the second section. The third and final section presents a brief outline of the rest of the book.

Contemporary war and the cognitive domain

At its core, success in war is nearly always a matter of convincing one or more audiences of a particular understanding of reality. As such, armed conflict is about persuasion and the influencing of perceptions – or as succinctly stated by Emil Simpson: “For war’s outcome to have purchase on people, they need to accept it’s meaning; if they do not, they may well see things differently” (Simpson 2012, 31; see also Freedman 2013, 614–615). A certain political ambition can, of course, be realized by way of the complete annihilation of an enemy or some other key actor (in which case persuasion is not necessary). But most of the time victories are won when “those other actors in war” are brought to subscribe to a specific interpretation of events taking place on the physical battlefield. This is, indeed, the case when the enemy concedes defeat and accepts “a peace on our terms.” Until the enemy is made to believe and accept that he has lost, the fruits of victory can seldom be fully enjoyed.¹ At other times, success is highly dependent on other audiences than the enemy accepting a particular depiction of the why, what, and how of war. In such cases, allies, domestic audiences, and/or civilian spectators in the area of operations have a decisive effect on the final outcome of armed conflict.

Over the last decade, scholars and practitioners of war have increasingly come to focus on persuasion and the non-physical side of war (see for instance Merom 2003; Betz 2008; Rid and Hecker 2009; Simpson 2012; JCOA 2012; Freedman 2013). The whole gospel of counterinsurgency, for one, is based on the premise that success in contemporary war is mainly achieved by winning “hearts and minds” – i.e., persuading – rather than by defeating the enemy in a narrowly or conventional military sense (see for instance U.S. Army/Marine Corps 2007; Kilcullen 2009). Also, the popular idea of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) puts perceptions and convincing center stage (Lind 2004; Hammes 2006).

Obviously, the recognition that emotions, willpower, and persuasion are crucial elements in war is far from new. Already Clausewitz emphasized that the total power to wage war is the product of physical means and moral forces (e.g., patriotism, motivation, passion, will, and intuition) (Clausewitz 1976). Yet, the current amount of attention paid to what have been dubbed the “cognitive domain” or “virtual dimension” of war (Betz 2008) is unprecedented, and can in the main be explained by two factors: the highly asymmetric character of today’s wars, and the advent of a new global and all-pervading media ecology.

Asymmetric war

The scholarly and practical understanding of contemporary war has, needless to say, been greatly informed by the confrontations between western powers and various insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. Finding themselves engaged in asymmetric wars, the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents – like so many militarily weak groups before them – opted for the only logical approach when faced with a much stronger opponent: they sought to avoid open battle seeking instead to influence the minds of key western decision-makers and their constituencies indirectly.² Largely circumventing the forward military capabilities of the U.S.-led coalitions, the insurgents thus aimed to undermine the political will of the United States and its partners by other means than decisive battlefield victories. Drawing out the conflict, inflicting continuous small-scale (but highly visible) pain on their opponents, as well as speaking directly to western domestic audiences have been their preferred instruments of war.

Unsurprisingly, various insurgent groups in both Afghanistan and (in particular) Iraq often perceived their armed attacks as carefully staged media events rather than attempts to deal a military blow to the much superior western forces (Kilcullen 2009; Rid and Hecker 2009). As already understood by Algerian insurgents fighting French colonial forces during the 1950s, small-scale attacks only had the desired effect when reported to western and regional audiences. Unreported strikes were irrelevant; they had no strategic impact. Little wonder that insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan have done a great deal to record and publish videos and pictures of IED attacks, snipers in action, and the beheadings of western journalist and humanitarian aid workers (Dauber 2009).

The insurgents’ conscious and rather successful attempts to make the outcome of the military confrontations less relevant to the outcome of the overall political struggle effectively forced western militaries and governments to pay increased attention to the “cognitive domain” in those wars. The U.S.-led coalitions had no way of forcing their rebel opponents into open battle (they either hid amongst civilians in Iraq or across the border in Pakistan), and, consequently, they had no choice but to accept that the center of gravity had been shifted from the physical battlefield to the “war of perceptions and ideas.” Both domestic (western) audiences and local Afghans and Iraqis had to be won over. In effect, asymmetry and a mostly invisible enemy compelled western governments to rediscover the importance of war’s non-material dimension. Whether the current acknowledgement of the importance of being able to persuade and construct compelling explanations during times of armed conflict will also translate into a more long-term and profound understanding of war’s inherently political nature remains to bee seen.

A new media ecology

The emerging global media ecology – and in particular the advent of Internet-based means of mass communication – has been the second key driver behind the increased focus on “the intangibles of war.” Mostly, it has done so because the new types of media have bolstered the weaker side’s chances of turning the virtual dimension of war into the decisive arena. And just as the invention of gunpowder revolutionized military clashes on the physical battlefield, so the coming of new media types has ineradicably transformed the fight for perceptions in the cognitive domain.

Some 20 years ago, smaller (regular as well as irregular) powers could only access the domestic political base of western governments via mostly national mainstream medias (MSM). Certainly, communicating to western publics through MSM was sometimes effective – witness the Vietnam War. Yet, a much more diverse and easily employed set of mediums have made it possible for even very small and technologically unsophisticated groups to speak directly to western audiences. By utilizing Internet webpages, YouTube, social media, and cheap IT-technology the old, vertical media can now be circumvented and the target audience engaged more directly with visuals and words. Moreover – and perhaps more importantly – the insurgents’ ability to influence the war coverage of the traditional MSM (which are still most people’s predominant source of information about armed conflict) has increased significantly (Dauber 2009).

In sum, political developments have led to the engagement of western military forces in asymmetric wars while the coming of new media technologies has empowered the weaker sides in those conflicts. Together, these changes have focused the minds of both scholars and practitioners on the virtual dimension of war. Hardly surprising, legitimacy and persuasion have moved center stage in strategic thinking. As it is increasingly accepted that people organize and make sense of their real world experiences through coherent stories, the so-called “narrative turn” has also gained traction in security studies. This brings us to the key theoretical concept of this volume: strategic narratives.

Narrating strategically – a conceptual framework

Looking at war without an organizing framework, theory, or interpretative construct will inevitably leave the observer bewildered. As is the case for all social activities, there is no inherent pattern or self-evident form to armed conflict. What the actual fighting means and how individual events fit into a larger picture can therefore only be discerned with the use of concepts or basic assumptions about causality. Much like an expressionistic or abstract painting, war only becomes intelligible to the observer when some sort of prior knowledge (true or false) is applied to the physical world’s appearance. Without at least a crude form of theory or some very basic concepts, war is nothing but meaningless dots, lines, and shapes in different colors and sizes.

The point of departure for scholars utilizing the concept of strategic narrative is that people make sense of war by means of stories. In this perspective, the observing public render armed conflict intelligible by applying more or less sophisticated storylines “through which shared sense is achieved, representing a past, present and future, an obstacle and a desired end-point” (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2012). Accordingly, strategic narratives tie together otherwise disjointed events and trends by providing a general structure through which war can be understood; they offer answers to the fundamental why, what, and how questions of a given conflict and allows individuals and groups to identify success and failure.

Strategic narratives do not appear out of the blue, however. They are deliberately designed and nurtured by political elites with the intent of provoking a particular feeling or opinion and hence facilitate distinct policy initiatives. At its most basic, strategic narratives are “about the ways issues are framed and responses suggested” during times of war (Freedman 2006, 23; see also Antoniades, O’Loughlin and Miskimmon 2010; Ringsmose and Børgesen 2011; Simpson 2012, 179–226; Freedman 2013, 414–432). Seen through the lens of strategic narratives, political elites thus justify and explain actions (or the lack of actions) via stories that take into account and resonate with national culture of norms, values, and attitudes regarding war and peace.

Crucially, this volume rests on the assumption that policy-makers can effectively employ strategic narratives in order to persuade a domestic audience of the need to shoulder the human and financial costs of war. As implied by the quote from Danish novelist Isak Dinesen (a.k.a. Karen Blixen), humans have the capacity to bear significant sorrow, hardship, and costs if only the story is right. In other words, when a domestic audience accepts and internalizes a distinct storyline about the use of armed force – including assumptions about cause–effects relationships, basic values at stake, and the prospect of success – it can be convin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface: framing the war in Afghanistan: an introductory note
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Theoretical part
• PART III Case studies
• PART IV Conclusion
• Index