Document created: 26 August 04
Air University Review,
July-August 1970
In my opinion, Vietnam suggests that if we are to deal successfully with future insurgencies we must carefully refine our international public information program. As much can be lost in public opinion as can be won on the battlefield. The characteristics of an insurgency and of the public media are highly likely to create a picture of the counterinsurgency that is prejudicial to our efforts. To maintain a balanced impression, a carefully constructed public information effort on our part is essential.
Public opinion around the world may seem a nebulous thing, but it can be crucial in dealing effectively with an insurgency. Through the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office in Saigon and other means, we carried out an intensive and impressive public information effort regarding Vietnam. The effort was imaginatively and industriously conducted and obviously had many beneficial results. Great talent and resources were devoted to this activity, and information about Vietnam was imparted through all the media and in many forums.
Despite this effort, a large body of opinion against the United States’ role in Vietnam built up around the world. The growing pressures of antagonistic world opinion made our steadfast efforts to deter aggression in Vietnam vastly more difficult. At best, these pressures have badly obscured the seemingly simple truth that indirect aggression must be shown to be fruitless if peoples around the world are to have reasonable opportunity to work out their own destiny. At worst, these pressures may yet lead to a settlement in Southeast Asia that fatally compromises this basic principle. It is often fashionable to deride world public opinion. But once it starts to flow, it is a powerful force, shaping attitudes and policies in a way that is very hard to alter or deter.
These comments stem from my service in Europe as the Vietnamese problem came to a peak in 1965-67. I was the Embassy officer assigned responsibility for Vietnam matters and was actively engaged in trying to explain Vietnam and our policies there to Europeans. This commentary is impressionistic and, of course, is far from a complete picture of all that was done in the public information field. Nor are these suggestions comprehensive in the sense that they present all the things that need to continue to be done in any effective public information program. Nor, it should be emphasized, are these comments meant to disparage the fine efforts of USIA, JUSPAO, and the others who participate in our information program. These suggestions are offered in the hope of sharpening our efforts toward the attainment of the vitally important goal of demonstrating that indirect aggression cannot succeed.
A basic consideration must be the concerns of our audience. This may not always be easy. One might have thought that Europeans would be responsive to the threat of indirect aggression, having themselves but recently experienced both Nazi and Communist aggression. But few Europeans put Vietnam in this context. For most of them, Vietnam was a faraway place; they knew little, if anything, about it, and few were prepared to make the conscious effort to become more knowledgeable about the country and its problems. Europeans were far more absorbed in their own economic boom and in their aspirations for material and social betterment. Having shed their colonial responsibilities, they were distinctly disinclined to concern themselves actively about problems in the underdeveloped parts of the world. In short, Vietnam was a very peripheral subject for the overwhelming majority of Europeans.
With this in mind, let’s consider the type of information that Europeans received as the Vietnamese crisis came to a peak. The principal news was the United States’ decision to intervene. The news services and other media covered this story and its developments in thorough fashion. The coverage, by and large, was factual. But what it presented was a steady succession of photos and stories about American military forces being deployed in Vietnam. These are the things the European audience got from radio, television, and newspaper. But such photos and reports can easily, and quite unconsciously, produce an awesome, calculating, and thoroughly military image of the United States’ role.
Most of the European audience had little if any knowledge of what had gone before. A new generation had grown up in the decade since France left Vietnam. American leaders made many lucid expositions of U.S. goals and restraints, and USIA and JUSPAO put out impressive material explaining American policies and activities. While this information had an impact on many areas of European leadership, its effect on much of the general public was very limited. The average European neither knew nor cared to learn much about such key historical factors as the Geneva Agreements, the failure of the International Control Commission, the post-1954 developments in the two parts of Vietnam, and the evidence of Hanoi’s calculated efforts to subvert and conquer the South. Put in the context of his absorption in his own concerns, it is not surprising that factual reports of the American buildup gave the average European an unfavorable initial impression of the United States’ role in Vietnam.
As the crisis developed, the picture presented by the public media tended to become more unfavorable. As American activity stepped up, the news services and other media reported this activity in detail. Again, what the Europeans saw on TV or read in their newspapers were photos and reports of American military sweeps, American bombings, American bases, American naval vessels, ad infinitum. The cumulative impact, without any malicious intent, was highly prejudicial to the United States. It presented an image of massive and highly destructive military force being repeatedly and callously loosed in a small and long-suffering country.
On the other hand, little about the widespread and vicious Viet Cong terrorism got the attention of the European audience. The acts of terrorism were not conducive to sustained newsworthiness. Even less newsworthy were such things as textbook distribution, improved rice crops, monetary reform, trained teachers and doctors, and similar constructive achievements of the U.S. aid program.
Thus, the nature of the media news soon gave the European audience a distinctly unfavorable image of the United States’ role in Vietnam. There was nothing sinister about this; the things we were doing were open, reportable, and conducive to news items likely to be printed. In particular, they could be photographed, and people who see photographs without reading the complete written story often get inaccurate impressions.
Yet neither the terrorism nor constructive activities were likely to be reported or photographed. A nighttime killing or a cold-blooded ambush could not, by its nature, be photographed, nor was a photographer or reporter likely to be handy when terrorists deliberately burned a school or medical center. As candidates for newsworthiness, these things were not as dramatic or attention-getting as large military activities, bombings, or bomb damage. A report on “15 More Teachers and Doctors Assassinated Last Night” might or might not make the newspapers or TV, but one on “Massive New American Military Sweep” or “U.S. Bombs New Targets in North Vietnam” was virtually certain to appear. Similarly, it was hard to photograph or report in attention getting fashion the new textbooks, the better rice, the sounder currency, or the additional teachers and doctors.
With his central concerns focused on his own welfare, the average European did not reason, inquire methodically, or balance information carefully. He got his impressions intuitively from the information which the public media did present to him and which he absorbed in casual fashion. With the information heavily weighted in one direction, it was not surprising that he developed an unfavorable impression of the United States’ role in Vietnam. And once he did, the process became cumulative; he tended to interpret additional information in even more unfavorable manner.
Since his own direct interests were not involved, the European tended to react to the Vietnamese crises in “human” terms. As an unfavorable image of the United States’ activities developed, he became increasingly disinclined to consider the questions of deterrence, world order, geopolitics, or other pertinent considerations. The view that all would be well if the United States would just “stop” gained acceptance. Strong pressures thus developed for the United States to end the bombing of the North, to go to the negotiating table, to overlook “details” like the shape of the table, and to give ground in the negotiations.
Symptomatic of the prejudiced image of the United States that developed was the belief that the United States had intervened in Vietnam to maintain its domestic prosperity. This theory contended that the American economy depended on defense production and that a war had been necessary to maintain this production and thus the prosperity of the rest of the economy. This view gained remarkable currency and strength. It yielded grudgingly, if at all, to the clear evidences of inflation and other economic and social distress caused in the United States by the war in Vietnam.
Similar opinions prejudicial to the United States undoubtedly developed in other areas of the world. In underdeveloped areas, where there was little knowledge of or interest in Vietnam and where the flow of information was largely verbal and transmitted second-, third-, or fourth-hand, the likelihood of misunderstanding the nature of American military strength was probably greatest.
The clear lesson for us is that in any future counterinsurgency situations—and there will inevitably be more—we must seek ways to preclude this development of antagonistic world public opinion. I suggest that we must adjust our efforts more precisely to the nature of our audiences and to the characteristics of the public media. A well-rounded effort of the type that USIA does so well will again be necessary. But vigorous priority should go to portraying quickly and forcefully the human dimension of the problem.
We must concentrate our efforts frankly and strongly on making clear the brutal nature of the aggression. Our audience, we must remember, has only a peripheral interest. It will not be attracted to, much less respond to, historical reviews of who did what to whom in the past, legal analyses of international law, exhortations on world order, philosophizing on the sanctity of agreements, or other “reasoned” rationale. The basic feeling will be a “gut” reaction in human terms. We must make clear the vicious, cold-blooded, inhuman terrorism of the aggressor. We must make it abundantly clear that it is we who are coming to the defense of an oppressed and innocent people.
We must also move promptly. Before, or at least while, the news reports of our intervention are appearing, we must make crystal clear the full and vicious nature of the aggression we are responding to. In many respects, prompt and effective public information requires one of our highest priorities in the initial stages of a counterinsurgency operation. Unless we explain the situation immediately, unfavorable impressions of our actions are liable to start developing. Once that happens, we stand to lose as much through unfavorable world opinion as we gain through military action.
Our efforts must be hard-hitting and explicit. Frankly, we must overcome our natural tendency toward decency. We must set out to shock. We need plenty of photos showing atrocities in grim and horrifying detail—the dead, the mutilated, the tortured, the women and children. Vivid photos are also needed of schools, medical centers, churches, and other humanitarian facilities deliberately burned, bombed, or attacked by terrorists. Along with these photos, we need plenty of dramatic and poignant stories. These should point up the innocence of those attacked and the brutal and deliberate nature of the assault. I invariably got a stunned and sympathetic reaction when I related instances such as one in which the Viet Cong not only blew up a school bus but then deliberately machine-gunned the school girls as they lay among the wreckage. We must make clear the viciously calculated pattern of assassination—of teachers, priests, medical workers, doctors—in an effort to destroy the social fabric.
Put bluntly, we must make it convincing that, as John Steinbeck once put it, “Charley is a son of a bitch.”
Our theme should be: “Who is truly helping the people?” Is it those who are deliberately murdering innocent people? Is it those who are deliberately and systematically murdering those, such as doctors and teachers, who are working to improve the life of the people? Is it those who deliberately and systematically attack and destroy those facilities, such as schools and medical centers, designed to improve the life of the people? Is it those, no matter what their political or other claims, who aid and abet this cold-blooded terrorism by sending in arms and troops?
Rather, isn’t it those who have come to the defense of these oppressed people? Isn’t it those who have sent sons thousands of miles to die to protect these innocents and who have poured forth treasure and might to try to end the cold-blooded slaughter of a peaceful people? Isn’t it those who officially and voluntarily perform untold acts of human kindness for the people among whom they are serving? Isn’t it those who are working mightily to train-not slaughter-teachers and doctors, to build and equip-not destroy-schools and medical centers, to improve the health, food, and conditions of life of the common people?
Use of these themes enables us to put a difficult situation in human terms that elicit audience response. I frequently had audiences turn from hostile to friendly when I pictured Vietnam in these terms. This approach catches the imagination. It enables us to make clear the enormity and brutality of the aggression and the humanity of our response. It sets the news reports about our military activities in context and gives us manifold opportunities to make newsworthy both the terrorism and our friendly economic and social development efforts. The issue of who really is helping the people makes the basic issue absolutely clear.
One question that arises is the impact on such an approach of reports alleging American atrocities like those regarding the incident at My Lai. Wouldn’t we make our credibility vulnerable? Obviously, reports of this type, if they seemed to be true, would not help us. But the approach suggested in this article would make us less vulnerable than we are at present. For one thing, we would have established the vicious nature of the aggression and provocation, against which such an aberration is more humanly understandable even though deeply deplorable. The strong and widespread repugnance toward even alleged atrocity and the prompt and thorough effort to investigate and assess blame demonstrate again the humanitarian nature of our response. And they offer abundant opportunities to underline publicly the contrast with the aggressors, to whom such inhumane behavior, far from being an aberration to be condemned, is deliberately chosen and executed policy.
The approach suggested in this article is more easily described than fulfilled. We must include provisions for this public information operation in our contingency planning for counterinsurgency. Qualified personnel should be earmarked for prompt deployment, since speed is of the essence. The plans should include procedures and personnel not only for obtaining the necessary in-country photos and stories but also for rapid transmission of this material around the world. There should also be flexibility to respond rapidly, in pinpoint fashion, to requests for material particularly useful in a given area of the world.
Especially important would be the rapid deployment of teams to each of the major geographic areas of the world. These should consist of experienced and imaginative United States Information Service officers and, ideally, a Foreign Service or military officer with a sound political-military background in the area of the insurgency. Each team would have to have good secretarial and other support. Some such officers were deployed to deal with Vietnam, but not until after the Vietnamese situation became critical. And, for whatever reasons, the program did not seem to produce the vigorous and carefully adapted flow of information needed. These teams must have strong priorities. Their principal purpose would be to provide an on-the-scene source of quick-response information geared to the particular characteristics of the audience in that area. It would also offer guidance and assistance to the American embassies, military commands, and other agencies involved in getting out our information in the area.
The group would also help to obtain information geared to particular audiences in its area. For instance, photos and human-interest stories of terrorist attacks on Catholic priests, teachers, students, and schools in Vietnam would be powerful material in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and other Catholic areas of Europe. Regular material on the Spanish Military Medical Team in Vietnam would have been useful in Spain and among the medical and military professions generally; it also would have been an excellent peg for stories on several aspects of our humanitarian and aid efforts. (While JUSPAO offered this service for Vietnam, there were many competing demands on its time and resources. It is essential that this activity have a priority claim on resources to ensure that the desired information is fully and rapidly provided.)
These teams would be familiar with both their audiences and their material. This is essential to a convincing presentation. They would be highly valuable centers for guiding an effective on-the-scene public information operation.
Counterinsurgency is a battle for men’s minds internationally as well as internally. To be effective internally, we must be effective in dealing with world opinion. To do this, in turn, requires attention to the nature of public media and the impact on distant audiences. From this must flow equally careful plans for a public information program likely to meet the particular and very real problems involved.
Arlington, Virginia
Dr. Raymond J. Barrett (Ph.D., Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) is Assistant. Chief, Global Plans and Policy Division, Directorate of Plans, Hq USAF, under the State/DOD exchange program. His Department of State position is Deputy Chief, Program Staff, Office of International Conferences. As a U.S. Foreign Service Officer he has served at American Embassies in Mexico, Managua, Dublin, Cairo, and Madrid. He also served in the Office of Southern and East African Affairs, 1961-63; and Canadian Desk Officer, 1963-65, when he was U.S. Secretary of the U.S.–Canada Permanent Joint Board on Defense. Dr. Barrett has contributed articles to Military Review and U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions
expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of
expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the
official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United
States Air Force or the Air University.
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