Celebrity power and powers of war: the rise of the COINdinistas in American popular media

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the public profile of a number of American defence intellectuals involved in the re-emergence of counterinsurgency strategy in US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although there has been attention to the rise of soft knowledges and new communication strategies in Western warfare, the recent foray of war experts into the glossy world of celebrity infotainment – that is, media venues that are designed to both inform and entertain – has not been explored. I argue that the fanfare that has sprouted up around these experts is an expression of the interconnections between war and public relations in which the legitimacy of US wars has always rested on how wars are packaged and sold to domestic publics. Furthermore, the presence of defence experts in popular media is an outgrowth of counterinsurgency techniques wherein the distinction between domestic and foreign publics is blurred, and mingling (virtually or otherwise) with ‘the people’ in their daily lives is part of the campaign itself.