pentagon

The Pentagon's role in public diplomacy was strongly endorsed by panelists at a Heritage Foundation forum here yesterday. “Influencing the enemy’s will to fight is as old as warfare,” argued Colonel Matt Venhaus of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. “Sending teams out to embassies to support public diplomacy is one way we do that.”

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's role in public diplomacy was strongly endorsed by panelists at a Heritage Foundation forum here yesterday.

“Influencing the enemy’s will to fight is as old as warfare,” argued Colonel Matt Venhaus of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. “Sending teams out to embassies to support public diplomacy is one way we do that.”

In a week of tragic accidents, the WikiLeaks story may be the toughest one to bear, horrifying both for what it showed about the current state of war and what it says about the current state of our media environment. As most know, thanks to the whistle blowers at WikiLeaks, U.S. military video footage, purloined or leaked, showed up on the Internet last week, and revealed in chilling detail a U.S.

Along the gradient of power, there’s a possible mix of “soft” and “hard” varieties. The public diplomacy originating at the U.S. State Department is commonly associated with the “soft” power of peaceful persuasion and cultural appeal; the foreign information efforts at the Pentagon are often in the service of some tangible “hard” power goal. The mixing often takes place in conflict zones, where a variety of forces and actors are in play. So who decides the mix, and how?

The effectiveness of information campaigns today will more often dictate a victory than how well bullets and bombs are put on a target. Putting information on target is more important when dealing with an asymmetric adversary that cannot – and does not need to – match the military or economic power of the United States and her allies.

The war in Iraq has spawned a new industry in Washington that could be called Psy-ops Journalism. The new breed of journalists are following the money trail to the Pentagon.

With U.S. elections little more than a month away, America's public diplomacy has been cast into the fray. By an odd coincidence, on the same day President Bush charged that a classified intelligence report on Iraq had been leaked to the New York Times to embarrass the administration leading up to the November elections, another news organization published an exclusive story regarding U.S. public diplomacy.

Pages