Strategic Narratives Public Opinion And War

This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, strategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems. This book will be of much interest to students of international intervention, foreign policy, political communication, international security, strategic studies and IR in general.

Compelling narratives are integral to successful foreign policy, military strategy, and international relations. Yet often narrative is conceived so broadly it can be hard to identify. The formation of strategic narratives is informed by the stories governments think their people tell, rather than those they actually tell. This book examines the stories told by a broad cross-section of British society about their country’s past, present, and future role in war, using in-depth interviews with 67 diverse citizens. It brings to the fore the voices of ordinary people in ways typically absent in public opinion research. Always at War complements a significant body of quantitative research into British attitudes to war, and presents an alternative case in a field dominated by US public opinion research. Rather than perceiving distinct periods between war and peace, British citizens see their nation as so frequently involved in conflict that they consider the country to be continuously at war. At present, public opinion appears to be a stronger constraint on Western defense policy than ever.

Communication is central to how we understand international affairs. Political leaders, diplomats, and citizens recognize that communication shapes global politics. This has only been amplified in a new media environment characterized by Internet access to information, social media, and the transformation of who can communicate and how. Soft power, public diplomacy 2.0, network power – scholars and policymakers are concerned with understanding what is happening. This book is the first to develop a systematic framework to understand how political actors seek to shape order through narrative projection in this new environment. To explain the changing world order – the rise of the BRICS, the dilemmas of climate change, poverty and terrorism, the intractability of conflict – the authors explore how actors form and project narratives and how third parties interpret and interact with these narratives. The concept of strategic narrative draws together the most salient of international relations concepts, including the links between power and ideas; international and domestic; and state and non-state actors. The book is anchored around four themes: order, actors, uncertainty, and contestation. Through these, Strategic Narratives shows both the possibilities and the limits of communication and power, and makes an important contribution to theorizing and studying empirically contemporary international relations. International Studies Association: International Communication Best Book Award

Showcases a range of empirical studies that highlight the potential, inclusivity, and durability of the strategic narrative approach to International Relations

This book examines the role of US mass persuasion during modern war and the effects of propaganda, strategic narrative, military strategy, and policy on morale and public opinion. Through historical analysis of several phases of US war propaganda, from the world wars to the Global War on Terror, this book aims to understand the political essence and the cultural and functional nuance of propaganda in a wartime democracy. Prevailing wisdom holds that the United States managed a coherent, focused, and intelligently wielded campaign of mass persuasion in Europe, 1941-1989. Yet, American strategic mass persuasion efforts since 2001 have consistently failed to persuade friend and foe of the strategic efficacy of American and allied campaigns. This book finds that wartime propaganda has little effect if it is not derived from a concrete overall strategy, policy, and narrative. The most impactful uses of mass persuasion rely on a perpetual rebalancing of military theorist Carl von Clausewitz paradoxical trinity violence, chance, and policy, anchored in democratic statecraft and the virtues of pluralism. Therefore, to better facilitate balancing, an independent governmental agency charged with information management during war may better serve the public, policy makers and the military, producing the desired political ends.

Strategic Narratives, Ontological Security and Global Policy provides a pathbreaking account of why some states successfully convince others to join their policy initiatives, and why others fail. Examining China’s Belt and Road Initiative and COVID-19, Thomas Colley and Carolijn van Noort argue that strategic narratives can help persuade states to join global policy initiatives if they convincingly promise audiences material gain while avoiding undermining their ontological security. They make their case by analysing eight diverse countries: India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, the Maldives, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Theoretically novel and global in scope, this book provides a compelling explanation of how strategic narratives can help achieve the global policy coordination needed to confront vital challenges in contemporary international relations. The proposed strategic narrative buy-in framework is applicable to many global policy issues, be it promoting trade and infrastructure projects, mitigating climate change or managing pandemics.

This handbook offers a collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of strategic culture by a mix of international scholars, consultants, military officers, and policymakers. The volume explicitly addresses the analytical conundrums faced by scholars who wish to employ or generate strategic cultural insights, with substantive commentary on defining and scoping strategic culture, analytic frameworks and approaches, levels of analysis, sources of strategic culture, and modalities of change in strategic culture. The chapters engage strategic culture at the civilizational, regional, supra-national, national, non-state actor, and organizational levels. The volume is divided into five thematic parts, which will appeal to both students who are new to the subject and scholars who wish to incorporate strategic culture into their toolbox of analytical techniques. Part I assesses the evolving theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the field. Part II lays out elements of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, including sources and components of strategic culture. Part III presents a number of national strategic cultural profiles, representing the state of contemporary strategic culture scholarship. Part IV addresses the utility of strategic culture for practitioners and scholars. Part V summarizes the key theoretical and practical insights offered by the volume’s contributors. This handbook will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defense studies, security studies, and international relations in general, as well as to professional practitioners.

In order to better understand how the world viewed the US 2016 presidential election, the issues that mattered around the world, and how nations made sense of how their media systems constructed presentations of the presidential election, Robert S. Hinck, Skye C. Cooley, and Randolph Kluver examine global news narratives during the campaign and immediately afterwards. Analyzing 1,578 news stories from 62 sources within three regional media ecologies in China, Russia, and the Middle East, Hinck, Cooley, and Kluver demonstrate how the US election was incorporated into narrative constructions of the global order. They establish that the narratives told about the US election through national and regional media provide insights into how foreign nations construct US democracy, and reflect local understandings regarding the issues, and impacts, of US policy towards those nations. Avoiding jargon-laden prose, Global Media and Strategic Narratives of Contested Democracy is as accessible as it is wide-ranging. Its empirical detail will expand readers’ understanding of soft power as narrative articulations of foreign nation’s policies, values, and beliefs within localized media systems. Communication/media studies students, as well as political scientists whose studies includes media and global politics, will welcome its publication.