The ability to
manage and change the perceptions of a targeted audience is considered the fourth
instrument of power available to a State, the other three being the diplomatic, the
economic and the military powers.
States not having
the required capability for perception-management and for countering the perception
management capabilities of not only other States, but also groups posing a threat to their
national security and economic well-being, tend to become soft and vulnerable to external
forces seeking to undermine the morale and culture of their people and the authority of
their Governments.
Expressions such as
psychological warfare or psywar, perception-management, precision-guided propaganda etc
refer to the same techniques of influencing the minds of the people. This power has
the hard and soft aspects.
The hard aspect
relates to creating in the minds of people negative perceptions of their state,
government, society etc in order to sow the seeds of alienation.
The soft aspect
refers to projecting before the targeted audience attractive images of the state or group
directing the propaganda in order to create a desire to follow its lead.
Both these aspects
have the ultimate objective of subverting the mind of the audience and influencing
it to act unconsciously as desired by the state or group directing the propaganda.
Among the weapons
now available for the exercise of this power are printed pamphlets and books, radio, TV,
the telephone and the fax, the E-mail, the CD-ROM and the Internet.
However, till the
second World War, the weapons used focussed mainly on the printed pamphlets. The radio
became an important instrument of propaganda during the war.
The Nazi forces
were defeated not only by the superior military might of the Allies, but also by their
better propaganda machine and, more particularly, by the British radio broadcasts,
which sapped the will of the German people to continue fighting.
With the onset of
the Cold War, the propaganda machine of the Western world was directed towards the
communist states of East Europe and Asia and Cuba as well as towards those countries in
the Third World, including India, which had strong communist and socialist movements.
A little-known fact
is that the US National Security Act of 1947, which set up the National Security Council
(NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended that the CIA should only
co-ordinate the functioning of the intelligence organisations of various government
departments and not indulge in independent intelligence-collection.
As psywar against
the communists and the socialists assumed importance, the CIA, which had a core of
experienced intelligence and psywar experts of the second World War vintage,
was asked to assume responsibility for psywar. Later, as covert actions against states and
individuals assumed priority, the agency took over the responsibility for intelligence
collection and covert actions too.
The Secret
Intelligence Service (SIS) of the UK, also known as the MI6, which is the UK’s
external intelligence agency, had distinguished itself in psywar and
behind-the-front covert actions during the second World War. The CIA, therefore, acted in
tandem with the MI6 in its psywar operations during the Cold War.
TRADITIONAL METHODS
The main
instruments initially used by these agencies were the printed pamphlets, the radio and
books. The CIA set up two radio stations in Munich, called Radio Free Europe and Radio
Liberty, to broadcast to the communist countries. The Voice of America, which is
controlled by the State Department and not by the CIA, worked in concert with the CIA
stations of Munich. The MI6 continued to rely on the BBC.
Another technique
widely used during the Cold War was the co-opting of journalists, authors and publishing
houses to help the intelligence agencies.
One would recall
the large number of baseless reports regarding India granting base facilities to the
Soviet Navy in Vizag and in the Andaman & Nicobar disseminated by the US and UK news
agencies and newspapers during the prime ministership of Mrs.Indira Gandhi. Another
baseless report disseminated by Western journalists was that experts of the KGB, the
intelligence agency of the erstwhile USSR, were attached as advisers to the late
Gen.Sunderji during Operation Blue Star of 1984.
These reports
stopped circulating as mysteriously as they had started after her assassination in 1984.
Following
disclosures in the media, the John Major Government of the UK admitted in 1995 that a
number of British authors, whose anti-communist books had become best-sellers during
the Cold War, had been co-operating with the External Publicity Division of the British
Foreign Office. Their co-operation was, in fact, with the MI6.
How did their books
become best-sellers? The MI6 encouraged publishing houses under its influence to publish
their books, persuaded book reviewers to review their books favourably, bought thousands
of copies of these books and had them smuggled into the communist countries
and gave them free of cost to book-sellers of Third World countries co-operating with the
MI6.
This period also
saw the mushrooming, with funds allegedly provided by the CIA, of a large number of
private radio stations in South-East Asia. Many of these radio stations, which were run by
Christian organisations, were anti-communist and anti-socialist in the contents of
their programmes.
Another technique,
perfected during the Cold War and still used, was the co-opting of policy and
decision makers as well as academics and other sections of the elite of the Third World
countries by arranging invitations for travel to West Europe and the US, either for
research or for participation in seminars, helping individuals in these countries to float
think-tanks and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and arranging funds for them.
The funds were
arranged through cut-outs of Western universities, academics and NGOs. The indirect
funding of the so-called Track 2 diplomacy gatherings is another psywar technique of
recent origin.
Amongst well-known
NGOs, which in the past had allegedly been in receipt of funds from intelligence agencies,
were the Amnesty International of the UK and the International Commission of
Jurists (ICJ) of Geneva.
The Amnesty
International was allegedly in receipt of funds from the Harold Wilson Government in
return for its playing down allegations of human rights violations by the British Security
forces in Aden and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the ICJ was allegedly in receipt of funds
from private lawyers’ organisations in the US, whose contributions to the ICJ were
re-imbursed to them by the CIA.
Following
disclosures to the British media by a secretary of the Amnesty, the Wilson Government had
admitted its links with the organisation and the CIA’s alleged contributions to the
ICJ through private lawyers’ organisations came to notice during the post-Watergate
enquiries into the functioning of the CIA and the FBI.
USE OF THE TV
The TV came on its
own as an instrument of perception-management in the 1960s. The role played by the
visuals from Vietnam disseminated by the anti-war groups in the West in turning
public opinion against the war brought home to the Western agencies the importance of
manipulating this medium.
TV Marti, the TV
station of the CIA , started telecasting programmes to the Cuban people and the CIA helped
a number of private businessmen to start TV stations for telecasting programmes to the
communist countries from places such as West Berlin and Hong Kong.
Instruments such as
printed pamphlets, books, radio broadcasts, the telephone and the fax, the E-mail and the
Internet are good for the hard aspects of psywar for alienating the people from
their state and for discrediting the state in the eyes of its people and the world, but
have only limited use for the soft aspect of projecting the power or group behind
the psywar in an attractive light and creating a desire to emulate its culture, ways
of life etc.
It is here that the
value of the TV as a medium comes. Through a sophisticated production and projection of
programmes, one can create in the minds of the targeted
audience, particularly the urban-based elite and youth, an
uncritical admiration of the Western societies, soften their prejudices towards the
West and evoke a desire to imitate them. Sections of the targeted audience lose faith in
their own society and culture.
Writing in the
“Washington Quarterly” of summer 1995, Gerald Segal, Senior Fellow, the
International Institute For Strategic Studies, London, said: “ It is only when Hong
Kong-based consortia began satellite broadcasting of foreign and Chinese soap operas and
international sports that the satellite broadcasts were watched by many millions of people
on a regular basis. The fact that the BBC World Service TV was carried on the
commercial satellite gave it greater penetration of the market, but persistent anecdotal
evidence is clear that the viewers (in Asia) were picking up Western values mainly from
the entertainment and only in passing from “talking heads” (talk shows)
discussing human rights. It was “Baywatch”, “Dallas”,
“Beavis and Butt-Head” or “Kung-Fu” episodes that were watched by most
people and precisely because they were so much more attractive than more cerebral
television, such programmes were more effective in undermining state retention of
authority and control over values.”
He further said:
“ When Rupert Murdoch, well-known for his outspoken criticism of Asian and especially
communist authoritarians, dropped BBCWSTV from his Hong Kong-based STAR TV because
China warned that its presence put at risk the entire venture, many saw the move as an
uncharacteristic pre-emptive kowtow to communists. But, by removing the overtly
political message and continuing to provide soap operas about conspicuous consumption and
loose morals, STAR was actually beginning to do far more damage to the authority of the
Chinese Communist Party.”
Writing of the CNN
and the BBCWSTV, Segal further said: “ CNN and, for a time, BBCWSTV added
subversive images to the subversive voices that came from the likes of the Voice of
America and a wide range of European shortwave broadcasters.”
As examples of such
images, he cited the coverage of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the popular uprising
in Romania in 1989-90 and the student riots in Bangkok in 1992.
India has bitter
memories of how doctored TV images and stories were used to incite the Kashmiris
against the Government of India. In 1989-90, before the advent of the satellite TV
to the South Asian region, Pakistan TV bought large quantities of video clips of the
Romanian uprising from Western TV companies and telecast them to the Valley, inciting the
local people to emulate the Romanians and rise against their government. Concerned over
this, the then V.P.Singh Government set up a special committee to counter the
subversion of the Kashmiris through the TV.
In October 1993,
when the Kashmiri extremists occupied the Hazratbal shrine, the BBC telecast a report
alleging that the Indian army had launched an operation Blue Star type raid of the shrine
as a result of which it had caught fire. It never corrected this blatantly false report.
In May 1995, after
the burning-down of the Charar-e-Sharif holy shrine in Kashmir by the extremists,
the BBC, while telecasting the news, showed visuals of Russian-made tanks, apparently to
create an impression in the minds of the Muslim viewers that the shrine probably
caught fire because of the use of the tanks by the Indian army. When the Government
of India protested and pointed out that the same visuals had some days earlier been shown
while telecasting the fighting between Russian troops and Muslim extremists in Chechnya,
the BBC telecast a correction only in its Asian service and not to the rest of the
world. It admitted that the visuals were from Chechnya and not Kashmir and
attributed the mistake to a technical mix-up.
Digitalisation and
Direct-To-Home (DTH) TV have added to the concerns of security experts. The
Strategic Assessment for 1995 brought out by the Institute For National Strategic Studies
of Washington, which functions under the National Defence University of the Pentagon,
said: “ Tomorrow’s antennas can increasingly be blended into walls and other
background, thus frustrating bans on their possession. Electronic focussing can
frustrate terrestrial jamming. Video compression, which multiplies the number of
channels that any satellite can host, enhances the economics of narrowcasting. A
billion dollar investment can yield well over a hundred digital stations, which, in turn,
could be profitably leased for perhaps US $ two million a year. At that price, any
of several aggrieved national or political groups—Kurds, radical Shiites, Sikhs,
Burmese mountain tribes---could afford to broadcast propaganda 24 hours a day to wide
swaths of territory.”
The DTHTV provides
extremist elements, having large funds earned from narcotics, and foreign intelligence
agencies with the opportunity of leasing channels under front companies from a DTH
operator and using the channels to disseminate doctored images such as those of a Muslim
killing Hindus or Christians or vice versa and rumours to the drawing rooms of individual
viewers, thereby adding to social and communal tensions.
Writing in the
“Foreign Policy” (Fall 1997) , John Deutch, Director of the CIA during
Clinton’s first term, referred to the dangers of morphed images and messages being
introduced into a country’s radio and TV systems, spreading lies and inciting
people to violence.
Till recently, in
the US, foreigners were not permitted to operate telephone and DTH services. Murdoch
had to take up US nationality and permanent residence there before he could apply for a
DTH licence . However, he has since abandoned his DTH project because of opposition from
local cable operators. Now because of the stipulation of the World Trade Organisation on
the opening-up of the telephone services to foreigners, the US Congress has been
considering conditions under which foreigners would be issued a licence. One of the
conditions seeks to lay down that a licence can be refused in public interest, that is, on
grounds of national security. Similar conditions are expected to be imposed in respect of
DTH services by foreigners too.
In South-East and
East Asia, only Japan allows foreigners to have 25 per cent equity participation in
companies offering DTH services. In other countries, including China, there is a ban on
foreign participation in DTH services.
Writing jointly in
the “Foreign Affairs” journal of the US (March-April,1996), Joseph S.Nye, former
Chairman of the US National Intelligence Council and former Assistant Secretary of Defence
for International Affairs in the Clinton Administration, and Admiral William
A.Owens, former Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Clinton Administration,
said as follows: “Soft power is the ability to achieve desired outcomes in
international affairs through attraction rather than coercion. It works by convincing
others to follow, or getting them to agree to, norms and institutions that produce the
desired behaviour. Soft power can rest on the appeal of one’s ideas or the
ability to set the agenda in ways that shape the preference of others. If a state
can make its power legitimate in the perception of others and establish international
institutions that encourage them to channel or limit their activities, it may not need to
expend as many of its costly traditional economic or military resources.”
They also added:
“ The Voice of America has in the last few years become the primary news source for
60 per cent of the educated Chinese. America’s increasing technical ability to
communicate with the public in foreign countries literally over the heads of their rulers
via satellite (TV), provides a great opportunity to foster democracy.”
After the collapse
of the communist regimes of Europe, the direction of the US psywar machine has turned to
Asia. The set-up of Radio Free Europe has reportedly been shifted from Munich to Prague to
broadcast anti-Saddam Hussein programmes to Iraq. Since September 1996, a new radio
station called Radio Free Asia, ostensibly privately run, but funded by the Congress, has
been broadcasting programmes in Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Vietnamese and Korean
languages. China started jamming these broadcasts in Septembert,1997.
THE FAX, THE E-MAIL, THE CD-ROM AND THE INTERNET
The Fax, the
E-mail, the CD-ROM and the Internet have placed new and sophisticated instruments of
psywar in the hands of not only intelligence agencies, but also separatist, extremist and
terrorist organisations. These electronic instruments have totally
revolutionised the concept of psywar.
Whereas psywar, as
practised in the past, whether by a state or individual groups, was directed at a
community or a group of people, these instruments have made it possible to direct psywar
at specially-selected individuals in the targeted country or population, who would be in a
position to influence others.
The Fax, the
E-mail, the Internet and the CD-ROM are being extensively used by the Amnesty
International, the Human Rights Watch of the US and other anti-establishment NGOs, either
acting on their own or at the instance of Western intelligence agencies, for maintaining
two-way communications with political dissidents in China and Cuba.
Political exiles
from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt living in the UK, the Algerian exiles in France, the
Kurdish exiles in different countries of Europe and the overseas supporters of the
Kashmiri extremists use these instruments for their propaganda. Similarly, the
Tibetan and the Uighur exiles have been using them against China and the Burmese students
abroad against the military regime.
Writing in the
“Strategic Review” (Spring 1997), Christopher M. Centner, an analyst of
the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), said: “ The modern information age provides
a means to make arguments directly to influential individuals and audiences, without going
through traditional diplomatic or propagandistic means. The era of state-to-state
diplomacy is fast declining. The era of state-to-person diplomacy is
beginning.”
He added: “
The new information media---Internet and its associate systems, E-mail, satellite
communications, personal computers , CD-ROMs and others--- permit the state more
opportunities to address foreign individuals on a one-to-one basis…Data manipulation,
E-mail spoofing (intentional electronic masquerading of oneself as another person or
electronic entity) , turned human intelligence resources, altered audio, video and other
media can all be used. Other information sources--- individuals, private companies,
agencies---that could impede the acceptance of the campaign’s themes may be disabled
or discredited by, among other means, the use of rumours spread through Faxes or E-mail,
during conferences or World Wide Web sites.
“The new
information age permits precision-guided propaganda, much as modern technology permits
precision-guided bombs. Propaganda can be customised to particular individuals,
interest groups and factions, increasing the probability of campaign success. It is
possible to envision the creation of a propaganda planning and execution organisation that
would co-ordinate a campaign in support of a major national security goal.
“ As we enter
the age of information technology and information warfare, it is time to re-examine and
revise our thoughts on propaganda. As information becomes increasingly critical, the
molding of information and the judicious orchestration of emerging media become not only
more essential to achieving national goals, but to US security itself, ” he assessed.
HOW TO COUNTER PSYWAR THROUGH ELECTRONIC MEANS?
With the advent of
the new electronic instruments, intelligence agencies have been facing difficulty in
counter-psywar as seen from the experience of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Algeria and
China. It is reported that there are 15,000 web sites on the Internet operated by
the Tibetan exiles and their world-wide supporters through which people in China can
access the Tibetan Government-in-exile, the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives, the
International Campaign For Tibet etc.
It is also believed
that just as in the past Western intelligence agencies funded many NGOs in order to use
them for their operations, they are now clandestinely funding many Internet service
providers for similarly using them for their operations. The CIA is believed to be
operating many Internet service provider companies in the Scandinavian countries so that
Chinese, Tibetan and Uighur political dissidents could directly send information about
human rights violations through these CIA-operated servers without going through the
servers of the Chinese Government.
In its
counter-psywar campaign, the Chinese Government ordered in 1996 that everyone subscribing
to the Internet should be registered with the Ministry of Public Security, the internal
intelligence organisation. On December 11,1997, the Chinese State Council approved a set
of 25 new regulations to prevent the misuse of the Internet by anti-national elements for
leaking state secrets, spreading harmful information, splitting the country and defaming
government agencies and to strengthen the supervisory powers of the Ministry of Public
Security.
The ASEAN countries
have also strengthened their supervisory mechanism to prevent the misuse of the Internet.
INDIA AND PSYWAR
The importance of a
co-ordinated, inter-departmental and inter-ministerial approach to psywar was realised in
1989-90 when the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan, the Kashmiri and Sikh extremists
stepped up false propaganda against the Government of India on alleged human rights
violations.
Effective
counter-psywar calls for collection of intelligence on the identities of the groups and
agencies carrying on psywar against India, the details of their propaganda and the medium
used by them for the dissemination ( pamphlets, radio, TV, Video cassettes, NGOs etc ).
While this task was
entrusted to the intelligence agencies, the formulation of a plan of action for
counter-psywar, allotting responsibilities for its implementation and monitoring the
execution of the plan were done by an inter-ministerial committee. This structure
produced good results.
Psywar work has
since become much more complex and difficult due to the easy access now available to the
Fax, the E-mail and the Internet, the mushrooming of foreign-controlled satellite TV
channels, all of them uplinking from outside the country, the likely advent of DTH
services provided by foreign companies and the proliferation of NGOs, some of them
suspected to be funded by foreign intelligence agencies, specialising not only in human
rights and environmental issues, but also in economic issues.
Many of the
economic NGOs and think-tanks, such as the Transparency International based in West
Berlin, have been periodically issuing assessments and indices of questionable value such
as the corruption index, the competitiveness index etc. Their only purpose seems to
be to create in the minds of the people of the emerging-market countries prejudices
against their own leaders, bureaucrats and business firms and make the people more
favourable to the multinationals.
Defensive psywar
work during peace-time has now a political as well as an economic dimension. Political
psywar relates to the identification of signs of alienation in any sections of our
population which might become the targets of cultivation by foreign elements, advising the
Government on action to remove their grievances, monitoring the attempts of foreign
elements to exploit the alienation in their propaganda against the Government of India and
countering such attempts and mounting a counter-campaign against the foreign elements in
order to frustrate their efforts.
Economic psywar is
about identifying foreign elements trying to create false perceptions about the state of
our economy through the dissemination of false reports, mischievous speculation and
rumours and to damage our stock and currency markets and competitiveness and countering
them.
The essential
requirement of effective psywar during peace or war-time is the availability of an
exhaustive database with details of the elements carrying on false propaganda, the
contents of their propaganda, the dissemination techniques used by them etc. The
building-up of such a database should be a priority task of the intelligence community.
While psywar during
peace-time is of a purely defensive reactive nature, during war-time, it has to be
proactive and aggressive in order to confuse and discredit the adversary in a pre-emptive
manner. The capability for such a psywar has to be built up in the intelligence
community even during peace-time.
B.RAMAN
27-2-99
( The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail address: corde@vsnl.com )
