Information-psychological war: factors, determining format of the modern armed conflict
Date: September 07, 2006Source: Computer Crime Research Center
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Nowadays an attention of all scientific community is absorbed by events developing in Iraq. It is already obvious enough, that Iraq is considered by the American headquarters as an ideal testing area for checking new means and ways of war conducting, and, first of all, for working through of new tactical concepts and technologies of information-psychological influence in real time operations regime. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of events happening in Iraq in political context: namely, thanks to success of the selected by occupying forces tactics of conducting operations, the country has not only been taken under control (or it has been occupied if someone likes it more), but also an opportunity has appeared to plan compulsory returning of such old opponents, as Iran and Chinese People Democratic Republic into in the channel of American policy.
Analyzing situation scientifically many scientist don’t stop noting, that the American-Iraq confrontation develops absolutely in a different way than its predecessors, and many actions of the American command are not simply unclear, but sometimes seem illogical, primitive, not taking into consideration local specificity if consider it purely in the military sense. For outer observers who followed the conflict from TV screens, strange “trample” of coalition forces near Basra and complex maneuvers of armoured columns around unimportant small Iraq port towns provided an occasion to speak that either Americans got involved in the conflict without precise plans of suppression of Iraq defense, or they met unexpectedly strong resistance to which were not prepared. When active actions of coalition forces have been paused, this, as a rule, was explained by an attempt of allies command to avoid losses.
However, these losses arose anyway and frequently exactly that moments when public staring on TV screens, started missing to observe as elite armies of allies having huge striking power unsuccessfully tried to beat out Iraq pointers from three-four their sheds. Thus battle losses of the USA army in Iraq instantly collected a huge audience of the American citizens at TV screens and then focused their attention to those materials, which followed directly the reports from fronts.
If considering the version of rather poor initial readiness of the USA army for conducting operations in Iraq, when, from our point of view, it is certainly not true, i.e. if the American armies started Iraq conquest without having a plan in advance, it would hardly be possible to reach their aim with such minimal losses and for such short time.
From a commercial point of view, the Iraq operation was exclusively successful form of the commercial project realization, i.e. for a short term the administrative control over huge territory has been transferred to the allied command which now freely disposes the rest of the saved economy of the subdued country and its richest oil deposits. This let us conclude, that none of the American command actions was casual, simply in front of us, external observers, nicely directed performance has been played, which was aimed in keeping an audience under constant pressure, operating its emotions in the interests of realization of own state policy. Really, within several months millions spectators all around the globe bewitchedly observed the multi-series reports of Iraq operations which on the popularity has superseded even well-known "soap operas". But in this process there were just a few people who noticed that the shock groupings of allies looked like posing in front of the TV cameras and they started operations only in the case of the in advance known PR-effect.
Nothing superfluous, no one movement was done which has been missed by TV cameras. An impression is created that the Iraq fighters play in performance a role of mass meeting which is "spent economically" to remain enough for the next series. The campaign script itself is built in such a way that it could provide information-psychological influence on the American and international public, i.e. the audience tracking the war on TV screens, with the purpose of keeping its voluntary submission. Such script, as a matter of fact, is a new version of technologies of information-psychological influence on consciousness in which they work with reality in similar way as in journalistic reporting. Thus actual operations become one of the stages stipulated by the script and lose their key independent role.
From our point of view observing on TV screens "strange" war in Iraq, the world has seen an occurrence of new generation of wars, namely information-psychological wars, in which actual operations play the subordinated service role, and the plan of the armed campaign is built by the rules and accordingly to the script of PR-influence on own citizens, on citizens of political allies and opponents, and on the international community as a whole. Thus, it is proved to state that modern confrontation develops in a genre of reporting and under the laws of this genre so that news it generates are as close to PR-material format as it is necessary for realization of technologies of information-psychological influence. As a result, such sequence of the battlefield news manufacture (by fighting divisions of the armed forces) and practical realization (by the forces of psychological operations) becomes the hi-tech production conveyor of tools for processing and formation of public opinion, for provision of voluntary submission, for political aim-directing and for governing a vector of political activity of the elites which are being at the authority in various countries. A product of the modern operation of information-psychological war is a news report of mass-media in the format of journalistic reporting.
Today information-psychological wars of new generation become an effective tool applied in foreign policy: the society should not be deceived by the fact that in reports from battlefield spectators watch that victims of aggression are not themselves but the citizens of Iraq in the far away country which position on the map not everyone can find from the first attempt. The purpose of any information-psychological operation is to develop a voluntary submission of society which is provided by means of technologies of psychological influence on the consciousness of its citizens. The PR-company, accompanying military actions in Iraq, is a bright poof of this fact, i.e. format and character of the broadcast are intended mainly for the citizens of those countries which accepted negatively to more or less extent the political rate of the USA administration, thus in the presented to spectators materials the manipulating information processing can easily be revealed. This allows us to say that in the information-psychological war carried out in Iraq, not only the citizens of this country but also we ourselves are under a sight.
Information confrontation and information-psychological war - to a question on a parity of concepts
The term "information-psychological war" itself has been borrowed to the Russian ground from the dictionary of military circles of the USA. The literal translation of this term ("information and psychological warfire") from its native language, i.e. from English, can sound as both “an information confrontation” and "information, psychological war" depending on the context of particular official document or scientific publication.
The polysemy of translation of the given term on Russian caused for some reason a division of modern Russian scientists into two competing camps, namely the supporters of "information confrontation" and the supporters of "information war", in spite of the fact that in original language this, in essence, means the same. Introducing a term “ information-psychological warfire" the American scientists, both civil and militarians, follow traditional for the American culture pragmatic ideology focused on the nearest prospects rather than on the concrete momentary needs: using the term " information war ", they form in a consciousness of the top state authorities in particular and of the public as a whole the aimed installation that in the future this form of attitudes will become so developed and effective, that completely will supersede the traditional armed confrontation. Yes, the Americans say, we have already studied the human’s psychology and have learned to operate it so well, that to provide the unconditional control of people we do not need to apply a brute force like army and police.
The same ways of submission can be applied to any social system. If the social system does not wish to submit voluntary, we shall urge it to do that by means of modern complex technologies of secret information-psychological influence, and for rebellious social system the result of such confrontation will be equivalent to a defeat in war. In our opinion, Americans use information war not so much as a term designating the modern phase of conflict sociopolitical attitudes development, but rather as a vector of foreign policy formation, as a program of political rate choice and as an ultimate goal of evolution of the political management tools.
That is why endless fights of Russian scientists on whether or not it is lawful to name modern information-political conflicts “information wars” or it is better to use for this purpose the term "information confrontation", in our opinion, will not lead to the scientifically significant results.
It is not a secret, that modern concept of information-psychological wars of the USA is based on the works and practical experience of the strategic politics of the Chinese...
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