The Evolution of Strategic Influence

Abstract

Abstract : In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001 both the American people and the U.S. Government tried to understand why some people could hate the United States so much that they would perpetrate such acts. Time and investigation into the motivations behind the terrorist acts have revealed that simply destroying terrorist organizations will not alter the conditions or mind sets that fostered such actions. America has again entered a war of ideas, of hearts and minds - a war of ideologies as potent and potentially dangerous as the Cold War. Failure to succeed could have equally dire consequences as any envisioned in the struggle against the Soviet Union and Communism. Like the Cold War, this is a global war. Like the Cold War, the War on Terrorism needs to contain the wellsprings of Anti-Americanism to prevent further spreading, and then to erode and eventually eliminate those wellsprings. Since September 11, the Bush Administration has wrestled with how to organize and conduct a campaign to influence world audiences on a global scale. In this paper, strategic influence is broadly defined as the deliberate conscious coordination or integration of all government informational activities designed to influence the opinions, attitudes, and behavior of foreign groups in ways that will promote U.S. national objectives combined with other elements of national power to achieve maximum psychological effect. This paper will examine the evolution of how the U.S. Government and the Department of Defense have organized to conduct strategic influence as an instrument of national power from the Psychological Warfare Division of World War II through the Psychological Strategy Board and Operations Coordinating Board of the early Cold War through the Vietnam years to today. Are they organized effectively today to meet the asymmetric threats of the 21st Century, and what can history teach us about organizing for strategic influence? (82 refs.)