Now, the best at psychological warfare right now appears to be ISIS because most of the U.S. psychological warfare people retired after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, now we need to deal with China, ISIS and Russia and Iran. We need the U.S. best psychological warfare team assembled to survive all the present day threats too just like we did from World war II until 1990 once again.
The people best at this sort of thing are Social Psychologists and Psychologists and Psychiatrists with PHD level training specializing in psychological warfare. Unfortunately, we need them again to survive the present day world just as much as we needed them then from 1940s through about 1990.
psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Psywar" redirects here. For Norwegian black metal band Mayhem's song, see Psywar (Mayhem song).
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In Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul discusses psychological warfare as a common peace policy practice between nations as a form of indirect aggression in place of military aggression. This type of propaganda drains the public opinion of an opposing regime by stripping away its power on public opinion. This form of aggression is hard to defend against because no international court of justice is capable of protecting against psychological aggression since it cannot be legally adjudicated. The only defense is using the same means of psychological warfare. It is the burden of every government to defend its state against propaganda aggression. "Here the propagandists is [sic] dealing with a foreign adversary whose morale he seeks to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs and actions."[6][7]
Contents
History
Early
Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century AD employed this technique. Defeating the will of the enemy before having to attack a settlement was preferable to actually fighting. The Mongol generals demanded submission to the Khan, and threatened the initial villages with complete destruction if they refused to surrender. If they had to fight to take the settlment, the Mongol generals fulfilled their threats and massacred the survivors. Tales of the encroaching horde spread to the next villages and created an aura of insecurity that undermined the possibility of future resistance.[9]
The Khan also employed tactics that made his numbers seem greater than they actually were. During night operations he ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk to give the illusion of an overwhelming army and deceive and intimidate enemy scouts. He also sometimes had objects tied to the tails of his horses, so that riding on open and dry fields raised a cloud of dust that gave the enemy the impression of great numbers. His soldiers used arrows specially notched to whistle as they flew through the air, creating a terrifying noise.[10]
A later Mongolian chieftain, Tamerlane, built a pyramid of 90,000 human heads in front of the walls of Delhi, to convince them to surrender during his Indian campaign. Another tactic favoured by the Mongols was catapulting severed human heads over city walls to frighten the inhabitants and spread disease in the besieged city's closed confines.
The Muslim caliph Omar, in his battles against the Byzantine Empire, sent small reinforcements in the form of a continuous stream, giving the impression that a large force would accumulate eventually if not swiftly dealt with.
Modern
First World War
At the start of the war the belligerents, especially the British and Germans, began distributing propaganda, both domestically and on the Western front. The British had several advantages that allowed them to succeed in the battle for world opinion; they had one of the world's most reputable news systems, with much experience in international and cross-cultural communication and they controlled much of the undersea cable system then in operation. These capabilities were easily transitioned to the task of warfare.
The British also had a fine diplomatic service that kept up good relations with many nations around the world, in contrast to the reputation of the German services.[12] While German attempts to foment revolution in parts of the British Empire, such as Ireland and India, were ineffective, extensive experience in the Middle East allowed the British to successfully induce the Arabs to revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
In August 1914, David Lloyd George appointed Charles Masterman MP, to head a Propaganda Agency at Wellington House. A distinguished body of literary talent was enlisted for the task, with its members including Arthur Conan Doyle, Ford Madox Ford, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells. Over 1,160 pamphlets were published during the war and distributed to neutral countries, and eventually, to Germany. One of the first significant publications, the Report on Alleged German Outrages of 1915, had a great effect on general opinion across the world. The pamphlet documented atrocities, both actual and alleged, committed by the German army against Belgian civilians. A Dutch illustrator, Louis Raemaekers, provided highly emotional drawings which appeared in the pamphlet.[13]
In 1917 the bureau was subsumed into the new Department of Information and branched out into telegraph communications, radio, newspapers, magazines and the cinema. In 1918, Viscount Northcliffe was appointed Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries. The department was split between propaganda against Germany organized by H.G Wells and against the Austro-Hungarian Empire supervised by Wickham Steed and Robert William Seton-Watson; the attempts of the latter focused on the lack of ethnic cohesion in the Empire and stoked the grievances of minorities such as the Croats and Slovenes. It had a significant effect on the final collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Army at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.[11]
Aerial leaflets were dropped over German trenches containing postcards from prisoners of war detailing their humane conditions, surrender notices and general propaganda against the Kaiser and the German generals. By the end of the war MI7b had distributed almost 26 million leaflets. The Germans began shooting the leaflet-dropping pilots, prompting the British to develop unmanned leaflet balloons that drifted across no-man's land. At least one in seven of these leaflets were not handed in by the soldiers to their superiors, despite severe penalties for that offence. Even General Hindenburg admitted that "Unsuspectingly, many thousands consumed the poison", and POWs admitted to being disillusioned by the propaganda leaflets that depicted the use of German troops as mere cannon fodder. In 1915, the British began airdropping a regular leaflet newspaper Le Courrier de l'Air for civilians in German-occupied France and Belgium.[14]
The Central Powers were slow to use these techniques; however, at the start of the war the Germans succeeded in inducing the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to declare 'holy war', or Jihad, against the Western infidels. They also attempted to foment rebellion against the British Empire in places as far afield as Ireland, Afghanistan and India. The Germans' greatest success was in giving the Russian revolutionary, Lenin, free transit on a sealed train from Switzerland to Finland after the overthrow of the Tsar. This soon paid off when the Bolshevik Revolution took Russia out of the war.[16]
World War II
At the start of the Second World War, the British set up the Political Warfare Executive to produce and distribute propaganda. Through the use of powerful transmitters, broadcasts could be made across Europe. Sefton Delmer managed a successful black propaganda campaign through several radio stations which were designed to be popular with German troops while at the same time introducing news material that would weaken their morale under a veneer of authenticity. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made use of radio broadcasts for propaganda against the Germans.
During the lead up to the Allied invasion of Normandy, many new tactics in psychological warfare were devised. The plan for Operation Bodyguard set out a general strategy to mislead German high command as to the exact date and location of the invasion. Planning began in 1943 under the auspices of the London Controlling Section (LCS). A draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael, was presented to Allied high command at the Tehran Conference. Operation Fortitude was intended to convince the Germans of a greater Allied military strength than existed, through fictional field armies, faked operations to prepare the ground for invasion and leaked information about the Allied order of battle and war plans.
Elaborate naval deceptions (Operations Glimmer, Taxable and Big Drum) were undertaken in the English Channel.[20] Small ships and aircraft simulated invasion fleets lying off Pas de Calais, Cap d'Antifer and the western flank of the real invasion force.[21] At the same time Operation Titanic involved the RAF dropping fake paratroopers to the east and west of the Normandy landings.
The Operation was a strategic success and the Normandy landings caught German defences unaware. Subsequent deception led Hitler into delaying reinforcement from the Calais region for nearly seven weeks.[24]
Vietnam War
When members of the PRG were assassinated, CIA and Special Forces operatives placed playing cards in the mouth of the deceased as a calling card. During the Phoenix Program, over 19,000 NLF supporters were killed.[25]
Recent operations
In the Iraq War, the United States used the shock and awe campaign to psychologically maim, and break the will of the Iraqi Army to fight.
Social media has enabled the use of disinformation on a wide scale. Analysts have found evidence of doctored or misleading photographs spread by social media in the Syrian Civil War and 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, possibly with state involvement.[27]
Today
This section needs additional citations for verification. (February 2011) |
- Distributing pamphlets that encourage desertion or supply instructions on how to surrender
- Propaganda radio stations, such as Lord Haw-Haw in World War II on the "Germany calling" station
- Renaming cities and other places when captured, such as the renaming of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City after Vietnamese victory in the Vietnam War
- Shock and awe military strategy
- False flag events
- Projecting repetitive and annoying sounds and music for long periods at high volume towards groups under siege like during Operation Nifty Package
- Use of loudspeaker systems to communicate with enemy soldiers
- Terrorism[28]
- The threat of chemical weapons[29]
Lerner also divides psychological warfare operations into three categories:[30][page needed]
- White [Omissions + Emphasis]
- Truthful and not strongly biased, where the source of information is acknowledged.
- Grey [Omissions + Emphasis + Racial/Ethnic/Religious Bias]
- Largely truthful, containing no information that can be proven wrong; the source is not identified.
- Black [Commissions of falsification]
- Inherently deceitful, information given in the product is attributed to a source that was not responsible for its creation.
Modern use of Psychological warfare is not just limited to the military, however. It can also be applied in the household as parents wage war over custody of a child. As parents try utilizing the idea of "you'll never see your child again," they cause an alienation that psychologically changes their children which then leads to mental damage in one or both or the parents as well. This alienation often causes a child to be more hostile toward whichever parent they do not currently reside with or live with for most of their time, thus psychologically destructing the morale of the parent who receives such hostility.[31]
By country
China
According to U.S. military analysts, attacking the enemy’s mind is an important element of China's military strategy.[32] This type of warfare is rooted in the Chinese Stratagems outlined by Sun Tzu in The Art of War and Thirty-Six Stratagems. In its dealings with its rivals, China is expected to utilize Marxism to mobilize communist loyalists, as well as flex its economic and military muscle to persuade other nations to act in China's interests. The Chinese government also tries to control the media to keep a tight hold on propaganda efforts for its people.[32]Germany
In the German Bundeswehr, the Zentrum Operative Information and its subordinate Batallion fĆ¼r Operative Information 950 are responsible for the PSYOP efforts (called Operative Information in German). Both the center and the battalion are subordinate to the new StreitkrƤftebasis (Joint Services Support Command, SKB) and together consist of about 1,200 soldiers specialising in modern communication and media technologies. One project of the German PSYOP forces is the radio station Stimme der Freiheit (Sada-e Azadi, Voice of Freedom),[33] heard by thousands of Afghans. Another is the publication of various newspapers and magazines in Kosovo and Afghanistan, where German soldiers serve with NATO.United Kingdom
The British were one of the first major military powers to use psychological warfare in both World Wars. In current the British Armed Forces, PSYOPS are handled by the tri-service 15 Psychological Operations Group. (See also MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service). The Psychological Operations Group comprises over 150 personnel, approximately 75 from the regular Armed Services and 75 from the Reserves. The Group supports deployed commanders in the provision of psychological operations in operational and tactical environments.[34][35]The Group was established immediately after the 1991 Gulf War,[36] has since grown significantly in size to meet operational requirements,[37] and from 2015 it will be one of the sub-units of the 77th Brigade, formerly called the Security Assistance Group.[38]
United States of America
See also: Psychological Operations (United States)
"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives."[41]This definition indicates that a critical element of the U.S. psychological operations capabilities includes propaganda and by extension counterpropaganda. Joint Publication 3-53 establishes specific policy to use public affairs mediums to counterpropaganda from foreign origins.[42]
The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to US objectives. The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division of the Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service, responsible for Covert Action and "Special Activities". These special activities include covert political influence (which includes psychological operations) and paramilitary operations.[43] SAD's political influence group is the only US unit allowed to conduct these operations covertly and is considered the primary unit in this area.[43]
Dedicated psychological operations units exist in the United States Army. The United States Navy also plans and executes limited PSYOP missions. United States PSYOP units and soldiers of all branches of the military are prohibited by law from targeting U.S. citizens with PSYOP within the borders of the United States (Executive Order S-1233, DOD Directive S-3321.1, and National Security Decision Directive 130). While United States Army PSYOP units may offer non-PSYOP support to domestic military missions, they can only target foreign audiences.
A U.S. Army field manual released in January 2013 states that "Inform and Influence Activities" are critical for describing, directing, and leading military operations. Several Army Division leadership staff are assigned to “planning, integration and synchronization of designated information-related capabilities."[44]
The reserve Psychological Operation Command currently falls under USSOC but will be returning to Special Operation Forces in the near future.
See also
- Black propaganda
- Charles Douglas Jackson
- Demoralization (warfare)
- Electromagnetic Weapon
- Information warfare
- Lawfare
- Media manipulation
- Military psychology
- Mind games
- Minor sabotage
- Political Warfare
- Propaganda
- Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
- Psychological manipulation
- Special Operations
- Taliban propaganda
- Unconventional Warfare
- White propaganda
US specific:
- Information Operations Roadmap
- NLF and PAVN strategy and tactics
- Psychological operations (United States)
- Special Activities Division
- Zarqawi PSYOP program
USSR
Related:
References
- "Pentagon gearing up to fight the PR war" Washington Post, February 6, 2013
Bibliography
- Fred Cohen. Frauds, Spies, and Lies - and How to Defeat Them. ISBN 1-878109-36-7 (2006). ASP Press.
- Fred Cohen. World War 3 ... Information Warfare Basics. ISBN 1-878109-40-5 (2006). ASP Press.
- Gagliano Giuseppe. Guerra psicologia.Disinformazione e movimenti sociali. Introduzione del Gen. Carlo Jean e di Alessandro Politi Editrice Aracne, Roma, 2012.
- Gagliano Giuseppe. Guerra psicologia.Saggio sulle moderne tecniche militari,di guerra cognitiva e disinformazione. Introduzione del Gen. Carlo Jean, Editrice Fuoco, Roma 2012.
- Paul M. A. Linebarger. Psychological Warfare: International Propaganda and Communications. ISBN 0-405-04755-X (1948). Revised second edition, Duell, Sloan and Pearce (1954).
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Psychological warfare. |
Look up psychological warfare in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Movie: Psywar: The Real Battlefield is the Mind by Metanoia films
- Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger. Psychological Warfare at Project Gutenberg
- The history of psychological warfare
- IWS Psychological Operations (PsyOps) / Influence Operations
- "Pentagon psychological warfare operation", USA Today, December 15, 2005
- "U.S. Adapts Cold-War Idea to Fight Terrorists", New York Times, March 18, 2008
- US Army PSYOPS Info - Detailed information about the US Army Psychological Operation Soldiers
- IWS — The Information Warfare Site
- U.S. — PSYOP producing mid-eastern kids comic book
- The Institute of Heraldry — Psychological Operations
- Psychological warfare
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