Klaus von Clausewitz, the famed Prussian military historian and theorist, defined war as being \u201can extension of politics, using violence to constrain the enemy to accomplish our will.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0While that may have been a perfectly sound concept in Clausewitz\u2019s time, the early 19th<\/sup> century, the destructive power of modern weaponry tells us that things are no longer that simple or clear cut.\u00a0 Something new has been added.\u00a0 Never in his wildest dreams could Clausewitz ever have imagined global real-time television and the influence that it has in world affairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an era when our most deadly enemies are no longer nation states with well-defined borders, but global insurgencies fighting from behind women and children and schools, the mightiest weapons on Earth are of little value.\u00a0 In a war in which our enemy attempts to instill terror by indiscriminately attacking non-combatants in public places, it is clear that the rules of engagement must change to fit the circumstance.\u00a0<\/p>\n In unconventional warfare such as the Global War on Terror\u2026 or \u201cOverseas Contingency Operation\u201d \u00a0as it is referred to in Obama circles\u2026 global real-time television is the medium for what is potentially the most powerful of modern day weapons: information warfare.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chuck de Caro is a leading expert on information warfare and an author and co-author of numerous books and studies on Cyberwar and Information Warfare.\u00a0 He reminds us that, \u201cIn Clausewitz\u2019s time there was a sharp line between diplomacy and belligerent conflict because constraint of another society\u2019s will was possible only through massive application of gunpowder and cold steel.\u00a0 But that sharp line no longer exists because of developments such as global television, motion pictures electronically distributed by satellite and terrestrial broadcast, new media, and the Internet.\u00a0 Because television transmits information by perception<\/em> of images and sound, it becomes a tremendously powerful medium for influencing the will of entire societies.<\/p>\n It is in this large gray area between war and diplomacy where tools such as Information Warfare\u2026 or \u201cSOFTWAR,\u201d as de Caro prefers to call it\u2026 must prevail.\u00a0\u00a0 As de Caro defines it, SOFTWAR is \u201cthe hostile use of global television to shape another nation\u2019s will by changing its vision of reality.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But where does the United States\u2026 the most technologically advanced nation on Earth and the world\u2019s only remaining superpower\u2026 rank in the knowledge and strategic use of this powerful non-violent medium?\u00a0 The answer is we rank somewhere well behind al Qaeda in our ability to use global real-time television as a geopolitical force multiplier. \u00a0Despite years of warnings by de Caro and others, the United States still has no comprehensive plan for the strategic use of worldwide television in the war against Islamic terror.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In early 2002, with little fanfare, the Bush Administration created the Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), the purpose of which was to study how the Defense Department could design an \u201ceffective strategic influence\u201d campaign to combat global terror.\u00a0 However, in typical Pentagon fashion, the OSI was placed under the command of an Air Force Brigadier General (trained in astrophysics), and staffed with aging cold warriors, none of whom had the slightest inkling of global real-time television or its strategic capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, when then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Torie Clark, perceived a potential threat to her turf, word was leaked to the press that the OSI was considering plans to provide false or misleading information to unwitting foreign journalists \u201cas a means of influencing policymakers and public sentiment abroad.\u201d\u00a0 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was forced to disband the office.<\/p>\n During the summer of 2002, de Caro had his closest brush with success when the Republican-controlled House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence authorized the implementation of a comprehensive SOFTWAR program to remove Saddam Hussein from power without the necessity of putting \u201cboots on the ground.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, while Senate Democrats were openly supportive of efforts to remove Saddam, militarily, they were apparently more interested in having a political issue to use against the Bush Administration.\u00a0 When the SOFTWAR authorization arrived in the Democrat-controlled Senate it was allowed to die a slow death in the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV).<\/p>\n But now, in an unlikely turn of events, SOFTWAR has unexpectedly become part of a battle of wits between a na\u00efve and inexperienced American leader, Barack Obama,\u2026 winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize\u2026 and the erratic and delusional Iranian dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.\u00a0 It is not the United States, but Iran, that has the wisdom and foresight to initiate an information warfare program designed to influence, not only the Iranian people, but the entire world against U.S. \u201caggression\u201d in the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a front page, above-the-fold story in its November 24 edition, titled, \u201cIran Expanding Effort to Stifle the Opposition<\/span>,\u201d<\/em> the New York Times <\/em>provides proof that Iran\u2019s new \u201csoft war\u201d program not only co-opts the name<\/em> of de Caro\u2019s\u00a0 information warfare theories, but also the underlying<\/em> principles<\/em> he has delineated.\u00a0 According to the Times<\/em>, \u201cthe Iranian \u2018soft war\u2019 effort underscores just how badly Iran\u2019s clerical and military elite were shaken by the protests which set off the worst internal dissent since the country\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times<\/em> reports that, \u201cIran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been using the phrase \u2018soft war\u2019 regularly since September, when he warned a group of artists and teachers that they were living in an \u2018atmosphere of sedition\u2019 in which all cultural phenomena must be seen in the context of a vast battle between Iran and the West.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Times<\/em>, the Ahmadinejad regime is \u201cimplanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in public schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution.\u201d\u00a0 The Times quotes Mohammad-Saleh Jokar, the head of the student and cultural section of the Basij, as saying that the Basij centers were being established because \u201cstudents of (elementary school) age are more open to influence than older students.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Ali Daraei, an official at IRIB, the Iranian state broadcasting system, has indicated that he sees the new \u201csoft war\u201d plan to propagandize the Iranian people as a double-edged sword.\u00a0 In announcing that 40 percent of Iranians\u2026 twice as many as a year ago\u2026 now have access to satellite television in their homes, Daraei said, \u201cThe enemy no longer invests in the military to advance their goals.\u00a0 Their primary investment is in the media war through satellite channels.\u201d<\/p>\n Once again, our foreign enemies give us entirely too much credit.\u00a0 If our civilian and military leaders were half as smart as they are given credit for being, the United States would rank near the top in our ability to shape events by changing our enemy\u2019s vision of reality.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In the years before and after the collapse of the Pentagon\u2019s ill-fated Office of Strategic Influence, de Caro has doggedly continued to teach the finer points of SOFTWAR at the National Defense University, the National Defense Intelligence College, the Naval Post Graduate School, the Air War College, the Army Command and General Staff School, and many other Department of Defense institutions.\u00a0 And while he has won thousands of converts from all branches of the uniformed services in two decades of intense effort, the Pentagon bureaucracy continues to resist change or enlightenment.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in a period of just six months, our Iranian adversaries, faced with a perfect media storm, have adopted and enacted de Caro\u2019s SOFTWAR principles for use on their own people, thus promising a restive Iranian population far more difficult to reach in any future U.S. Information Warfare effort.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, de Caro soldiers on relentlessly, determined to give our reluctant military a strategic advantage over the tactics that our Iranian adversaries have already adopted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In unconventional warfare such as the Global War on Terror\u2026 or \u201cOverseas Contingency Operation\u201d as it is referred to in Obama circles\u2026 global real-time television is the medium for what is potentially the most powerful of modern day weapons: information warfare. Continue reading