( – promoted by buhdydharma )
David Kilcullen is a member of Gen. David Petraeus’ famous team of intellectuals. He has served in Iraq as part of the general’s cadre and is currently working for the State Department as well as in the private sector. Dr. Kilcullen has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of New South Wales and wrote his dissertation on counterinsurgency in traditional societies.
At the Department of State website devoted to collecting resources about counterinsurgency (“COIN” for short), there is a powerpoint presentation by Dr. Kilcullen titled “Counterinsurgency In Iraq: Theory and Practice, 2007 – by David Kilcullen.” This is possibly the single most, shall we say “interesting,” powerpoint presentation I have ever seen.
From slide 46:
COIN ops are fundamentally perception management operations in which we shape the perceptions of the population, the enemy, our own side and a global audience. This demands a solid, realistic understanding of the environment and an ability to coordinate enormous numbers of info sources and communication tools.
“US COIN ops” is shorthand for “United States Counterinsurgency operations.” US COIN ops in Iraq is operating, or anyway is being advised to operate, on a level of sophistication and deliberativeness in psychological counterinsurgency that I had not previously appreciated.
According to a surprisingly long Wikipedia entry on Dr. Kilcullen:
He is currently serving as the special adviser for counterinsurgency to the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. During 2007 he served in Iraq as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force – Iraq, a civilian position on the personal staff of American General David Howell Petraeus, responsible for planning and executing the 2007-8 Joint Campaign Plan, which drove the Iraq War troop surge of 2007.
— snip —
He is one of a group of highly educated, combat-experienced, civilian specialists and military officers, including Colonel H.R. McMaster and others, who were seconded in late 2006 to the personal staff of General Petraeus, to oversee the specialized counterinsurgency aspects of the Iraq campaign in 2007. He previously contributed to the new United States Counterinsurgency Field Manual FM 3-24, published in December 2006, of which he authored a chapter entitled “A Guide to Action”.
Reading through the 90 often text-dense slides in Dr. Kilcullen’s powerpoint, one is struck by the dispassionate insistance on total information control. Counterinsurgency is critically dependent, we are told, on unity of message “from President to the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman on the street” (slide 47). War as extended psyop, every military manuver must grow out of strategies of perception management. Everything, everything is orchestrated by concerns of information control towards the target audiences, audiences both in the country of operations and in the domestic audience back home.
In Slide 33 Dr. Kilcullen notes that there are three approches to war: enemy-centric, terrain-centric, and population-centric. In slide 34 he insists that counterinsurgency is population-centric:
Why counterinsurgency is population-centric
+This is not about being “nice” to the population, it is a hard-headed recognition of certain basic facts, to wit:
+ The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, provocation) — without this insurgents wither
+ The enemy is fluid; the population is fixed – therefore controlling the population is do-able, destroying the enemy is not
+ Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means (e.g. Vietnam VC losses)
+ In any given area, there are multiple threat groups but only one local population – the enemy may not be identifiable but the population is.
Slide 46:
Components of the Information Dimension
+Intelligence – tactical, operational, political, economic, strategic
++Information collection – geographical, cultural, economic, governance, infrastructure, agricultural, media landscape, local political and social landscape
+ +Information Ops – psychological ops, military deception, operational security, computer network operations, electronic warfare
+ +Public Diplomacy – education, media engagement, visits, legislative liaison, think tank engagement, long-term perception shaping
+ +Public Affairs – local media, regional media, global media, homeland
+ +Joint Influence Operations – combination of physical + informational
+ + COIN ops are fundamentally perception management operations in which we shape the perceptions of the population, the enemy, our own side and a global audience. This demands a solid, realistic understanding of the environment and an ability to coordinate enormous numbers of info sources and communication tools.
Slide 47:
Shaping Perceptions
+ Virtually every action, message, and decision by a force shapes the opinions of an indigenous population, to include how coalition personnel treat civilians during cordon and search operations, the accuracy or inaccuracy of aerial bombardment, and the treatment of detainees. Unity of message is key in this regard. The panoply of U.S. force actions must be synchronized across the operational battlespace to the extent possible so as not to conflict with statements made in communications at every level from President to the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman on the street. Given the inherent difficulty in unifying the American and coalition message across disparate organizations, within and across governments and over time, these shaping efforts must be designed, wargamed, and conducted as a campaign. The goal of such a shaping campaign is to foster positive attitudes among the populace for U.S. and allied forces. These attitudes, while not the goal in and of themselves, help decrease anti-coalition behaviors and motivate the population to act in ways that facilitate friendly force operational objectives and the attainment of desired end states. + +
But we should back up. What is a counterinsurgency operation?
Slide 5:
Insurgency: an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict…an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control.
Counterinsurgency: military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency. Political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies.
Slide 14:
The fundamental problem is CONTROL – of people, terrain and information.
Slide 24:
Narrative as a weapon
+People are not mobilized individually, by cold consideration of rational facts
+They are mobilized in groups, by influencers and opinion leaders, through cultural narratives that include 7 basic elements:
1.A simple, easily expressed story or explanation for events
2.A choice of words and story format that resonates with the target group
3.Symbolic imagery that creates an emotional bond (ideally at the unconscious level)
4.Elements of Myth (“sacred story”) that tap into deep cultural undercurrents of identity and appeal to universal ideals
5.A basis in, or a call to action (ideally, action that lies within the immediate capacity of the listeners)
6.Credibility built on a high degree of consistency between what is said, what is done, and what is seen
7.A future focus that inspires people to mortgage current self-interest for future benefits
In reading through this powerpoint, I was struck by the extent to which it could easily be re-titled How to Rule the World. A military — in particular a military larger than the rest of the world’s militaries combines, give or take — devoted primarily to counterinsurgency is a military devoted to neo-imperialism. I take this as obvious.
As Defense Secretary Gates said in April:
What has been called the `long war’ is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational challenge cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies.
Tom Engelhardt recently called this long war, hauntingly, “the war in the slum cities of the planet.” I add only that the war-planners see this war as a war for populations, not to be “nice” to them, as Dr. Kilcullen notes, but to “control” them. And this is true in the slums of Iraq and in the skyscrapers of Chicago, both. This war has no exit strategities because it has no boundaries.
So how do you rule the world?
Slide 46:
COIN ops are fundamentally perception management operations in which we shape the perceptions of the population, the enemy, our own side and a global audience.
Slide 14:
The fundamental problem is CONTROL – of people, terrain and information.
16 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
Also at Daily Kos.
Thank you for your analysis and bringing this chilling presentation to our attention. Crucially important.
Kilcullen’s PPT [presentation may contain the seeds/methods needed to bring he and they down.
Why anti-war/fascism activism is population-centric
+This is not about being “nice” to the population, it is a hard-headed recognition of certain basic facts, to wit:
+ The anti-war/fascism activists need the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, provocation) — without this antiwar activists wither
+ anti-war/fascism activists are fluid; the population is fixed – therefore controlling the population is do-able, destroying the political establishment is not
………….
DD and other blogs… Progressive Psyops?
appears to be at the heart of Kilcullen’s theory.
He mentions repeatedly that perception management is based on unifying the message across all counter insurgency units. This consistency supposedly creates a ‘credibility’ that allows control of the population in order to starve the insurgents of their base.
Of course, this emphasis on a consistent top-down message is no different from that of any other counterinsurgency strategy nearly every Western Empire has tried since Roman times.
The theory basically argues that by coordinating the same hard-line message from the leaders to the generals to the grunts, you create a big enough megaphone that lets you drown out any anti-occupation messaging.
What’s more, universal consistency also supposedly allows you cow the population into submission by enforcing a crystal clear message that nobody anywhere on the government side will ever cut you any slack if you help the rebels.
Sounds good on paper, but history has shown (Napolean in Spain, Hitler in France, Putin in Chechnya to name a few) that this rigid system of messaging command and control nearly always breaks down: first because leaders nearly always at some point change their messaging, and 2, lower echelon commanders and troops can not maintain the morale necessary to enforce the messaging with the discipline that supposedly makes this strategy work.
Finally, and most importantly, an emphasis on consistent messaging across the entire theatre of operations ignores political differences between regions, some of whom would be more amenable to a targeted message tailored to their individual circumstances than a broad based smack down that always ends up treating every area as if it were the most recalcitrant.
Bottom line: another Power Point warrior bites the dust.
This is part of the “to a hammer everything looks like a nail” syndrome.
We’ve gotten into deep shit because our military and intelligence [sic] outfits are really no longer under civilian control, and themselves are deciding policy. (Look at the lies provided to Congress and the Public in the run up to the Iraq, and upcoming, Iran wars.)
This as an outgrowth of WWII and the “Cold War.” We are a Republic more in the sense of Caesar’s Republic than in any way previous generations of Americans used the word.
Since militarists (and “rationalists” “realists”) by nature are prone to hierarchical arrangements–and hierarchies are appropriate in task-centered concerns–you end up with syllogisms along the lines of:
“everything in the nation depends on national security, we are in charge of national security. Therefore we who are willing to do the ‘hard’ things, must make the decisions, because the People in general are soft and disorganized and not fit to protect our national security.”
Therefore, anything goes when it comes to getting absolute control, because everything depends on this control.
In the real world, not everything is a nail. But the military can only see it’s own role. And all of life as a hierarchical affair. It is literally impossible for them to even imagine that our national security would have been immeasurably enhanced if we had merely taken a few hundred billion dollars and spent it enhancing the lives of humans the world over. There was a UN report in about ’99 or ’00 that said for $300-$400 billion spent over four or five years, all of humanity could be assured potable water, secure food access, and minimum shelter if the effort was made. And if the case had been made by our elites that this is the way to go, I’m certain the American people would have enthusiastically backed them.
But our real elites are the military brass, the secret police agencies, and their financiers in business. They can’t imagine that helping out the pawns to a better life, a genuinely democratic life, would automatically reduce threats to near non-existence. Never been taught it, never met anyone “serious” who would think it.
All the more reason to get the military and secret police back to their proper role, in a free country, as servants of the Public Will rather than manufacturers of it.
Can you imagine where things would stand today–where America would stand, how weak a threat terrorism would be–had we adopted helping ordinary people, as opposed to cowing them, as the route to national security? Most of the world would probably have added little American flag patches to their own national flag, just out of gratitude. (Slight exaggeration.)
To a hierarchy, the people who see themselves as at the top, the pawns are completely disposable.
If I were elected President, the first thing I’d do would be to get rid of any military brass that had a loyalty to anything whatsoever that wasn’t the Constitution of the United States. Then there’d be an order that all intelligence-related agencies had to get together at least twice a day to recite their oath to protect the same. I’d do everything possible to get rid of “espirit de corps” bullshit and replace it with “loyalty and service” attitudes.
In the meantime, what I’ve been arguing for years now, is that the key to power in the United States lies in the mass-reach media. The fact is that what we have is an ongoing Psyops against the public. And it’s being conducted by people who are “too smart by half” without a clue as to how normal humans behave.
I think this awesome essay underlines the high priority that making our media truly democratic has. As a matter of national security.
David
http://www.salon.com/books/rev…
says that puts me in the same group as Armedinijad, Chavez and Putin, so be it you pompous ass yuppie Gulfstream flying pieces of shit. Fucking with your profit margins by just existing am I?
of things like running over children and killing civilians at random, as though those alienating crimes can just be covered over with information control.
I don’t know what more to say about it, except: tell that to Hezbollah, motherfucker.