Never Awake a Sleeping Giant

So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers that were in their hands.

And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.

And they stood every man in his place round about the camp: and all the host ran, and cried, and fled.

JUDGES 7:19-21

ONE OF the earliest recorded examples of psychological warfare occurred three millenniums ago. Outnumbered and in a tactically inferior position, Gideon was about to take it on the chin. Well aware that the table of organization and equipment for a standard night attack called for one light carrier and one trumpeter per 100 men, he used this same awareness on the part of his enemy, the Midianites, to rout them. Each of his 300 Israelites was equipped with torches, vases, and trumpets. The vases were used to conceal the torches until the propitious moment, when the vases were deliberately shattered.

The Midianites, sleeping blissfully in a valley (Judges 7:1), were suddenly subjected to a deafening blare of trumpets. The noise, in combination with 300 lights, was perceived by them to represent a force of some 30,000 men. The confusion and fear were so general that those Midianites who were not fleeing were killing each other. (Judges 7:22)

This combination of deception and surprise used to assist the tactician is but one facet of an esoteric type of warfare. On a strategic level it has caused the shifting of divisions and the saving of thousands of lives.

"Operation Mincemeat," popularly known from the book The Man Who Never Was, ¹ was a spectacular deception that facilitated the Allied invasion of Sicily. The corpse of a fictional Major William Martin of Britain's Royal Marines was "buried" at the mouth of the Huelva River in Spain. The incoming tide deposited him on the beach, where it appeared that he had been in a plane crash. Documents he carried were designed to convince the Germans that the attack on Sicily would only be a feint while the main attacks would be in Greece and Sardinia. The deception was so effective that Hitler continued to believe it for two weeks after the invasion of Sicily, sent Rommel to Greece, and moved many of the torpedo boats from Sicily to Greece.²

The impact of this alternative weapon system has been recognized by some of the greatest strategists-military and civilian-throughout history.

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

SUN TZU³

Sun Tzu was a famous general of China (ca. 500 B.G) whose writings are described by B. H. Liddell Hart as unsurpassed in their comprehensiveness and depth of understanding of strategy and tactics. Sun Tzu expresses the belief that it is the moral and intellectual components of man which are decisive in war, and only when they are properly applied can war be waged successfully. War as a construct is to be thoroughly studied in advance; the enemy's plans frustrated, his alliances broken up. Cleavages are to be created between commanders and subordinates, the enemy demoralized, his will to fight broken before actual hostilities begin. Sun Tzu considers national unity an essential prerequisite for victory while the corollary is to cause disunity within the opposing state. He writes that an indispensable preliminary to battle is to attack the mind of the enemy.

Although we are dealing in generalities, it appears that another lesser known but brilliant strategist refined the concepts and extracted the following principle:

In preparing for armed insurrection, propaganda is the essential task to be performed. During the insurrection, propaganda is even more important than fighting.

GENERAL Vo NGUYEN GIAP⁴

Giap is apparently referring to local propaganda, but he is clearly aware of the impact of actions and their interpretation on the international community. In his book People s War, People s Army, he makes reference to "world opinion" and the press as if the effect of North Vietnamese actions on these groups were more crucial than the realities of the battlefield. At the risk of seeming simplistic, one finds in retrospect that he appears to have a superlative grasp of political realities. Was it not Clausewitz who said "War is politics continued by other means"? If war is politics, then the principal objective of war is to cause the opponent to change his government to one with which we can live and work in peace. An enemy is riot a people, perhaps not even an army, but a government. Inescapably, then, a goal of war ultimately involves manipulation in the internal affairs of another nation. Our real targets, therefore, are the minds of the enemy-perceptions and attitudes, not bodies.

There is a widely held view that psychological operations (PSYOP) and its wartime component, psychological warfare, are something a nation or its armed forces can elect to do or not to do. This view is based on the concept that PSYOP is an independent activity of specialists or that there is something inherently evil embodied in the concept. Such views ignore the fact that whatever this nation, including the military, does or does not do, the international community will interpret or perceive as evidence of U.S. intentions or policies.

If programs are explained, they are less subject to misinterpretation. If there is no direct explanation, then the action will be interpreted by others. One implication is that although actions might speak louder than words, the action is subject to several interpretations, and it is in our best interest to provide meaning to the action.

Psychological efforts conducted to effect a desired international result before a war must be continued with greater emphasis in support of hostilities until national objectives are achieved. As Sun Tzu makes explicit, success is predicated on a strong national resolve. Alternatively, strategists must take full advantage of all internal vulnerabilities in the mental resolve of an enemy.

The psychological ramifications of a combat action must be taken into consideration. Just as the planning staff will prepare psychological advantages and disadvantages of each Course of action for the commander, as do the intelligence and the training and operations personnel, so this same type of analysis at the strategic level might have dissuaded the Japanese from attacking Pearl Harbor. The failure to take a wholistic perspective and the concomitant lack of coordination were causal agents in the eventual Japanese decision. Taken in the context of prevailing American public opinion in November 1941, the failure becomes aggravated. The manifestation of this opinion-Congress-had retained a selective service capability by the slender margin of one vote. The mood of the country was clear. It would take an extraordinary event to arouse and unite the American public. Essentially, the prevailing attitude of tens of millions of Americans was ignored, which is to say that a long-term psychological overview was not included in the Japanese planning, at least not in the military planning. Although a great military Success in the short run, the attack was self-defeating in the long run. It was a sensational defeat for the United States and instrumental in paving the way for American entry into World War II. General Yamamoto is quoted as saying that "Pearl Harbor awoke a sleeping giant." As an instrument of national power, the PSYOP role supports, complements, or amplifies diplomatic, political, economic, and military actions. At all levels there are two requirements for PSYOP effectiveness: a voice in the policy planning process and coordination among the various agencies involved.

The PSYOP planner must participate in the policy planning process at its inception. Too frequently, especially at lower levels, he is approached either incidentally or as a last resort. Policy guidelines have already been established, and implementation has started. Without a coordinated national policy directing the different aspects of a comprehensive psychological operations effort, PSYOP has only a latent capability. Its characteristics of economy, flexibility, and minimal loss of life make it a highly attractive addition to our strategic arsenal.

In spite of these apparent advantages, psychological operations and psychological warfare remain misunderstood, maligned, and generally ignored until a war comes along. Then an ad hoc psychological operations committee is quickly created at the national level, frequently evolving into a permanent committee with significant responsibility for policy as well as operational decisions. Unfortunately, the metamorphosis is usually not complete until the middle of a war so the system does not become fruitful for months or even years after a war begins. Because there is no separate standing committee during peacetime to perform this function, the ad hoc committee makes the same mistakes that were made by the ad hoc committee at the beginning of the previous war. There is no institutional memory to provide continuity and avoid repetition of mistakes. While it functions, the committee performs one more essential activity in addition to shaping policy-coordination. This ensures that varied, seemingly unrelated programs are directed toward the same national objective. Viewed independently, they appear autonomous. In fact, these programs are different means used to achieve that end deemed appropriate by the Commander-in-Chief. Coordination ensures unity of effort with either minimum redundancy or planned redundancy. Reinforcement of a particular message is not left to chance. It follows that coordination must be conducted prior to implementation and continued throughout the duration of a program.

IN AN age of increasing budget consciousness, perhaps the story of Gideon has increasing relevance. As his costs were negligible (clay vases and candles), so, of all weapon support systems, PSYOP is clearly the least expensive. As a flexible instrument it provides options in situations short of war and in every level of conflict. The lack of association between bloodshed and effectiveness is illustrated by the "mopping up" operations in the South Pacific. Local PSYOP teams with the 1st Cavalry Division on Leyte were able to "clean out caves in which isolated but desperate enemy soldiers were holed up. Often this was accomplished without the loss of a single American life."⁵

1. Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (London: Evans Brothers Limited, 1953).

2. William E. Dougherty and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Press, 1956). p. 384. Hereafter cited as Casebook.

3. Sun Tzu Wu, The Art of War, translated by Lionel Giles (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The Military Service Publishing Company. 1944), p. 48.

4. General Yo Nguyen Giap, Peoples War, Peoples Army (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), pp. 77, 79.

Captain James O. Younts III, U.S. Army, (USMA; M.A., Texas Christian University) is an instructor in the Psychological Operations Department of the School of International Studies, Institute for Military Assistance, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is a graduate of the Army and Air Force psychological operations and of the Infantry Officer Advanced Course. He served as company commander with a served as company commander with a mechanized battalion in Vietnam. Captain Younts has published in Infantry magazine.