Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
Furthermore, no modern army ever went into operation with certain units
designated as wholly and exclusively defensive, and certain others as
wholly and exclusively offensive. (The Great Wall of China is the
world's most celebrated example of purely defensive planning, yet it
protected Chinese offensive bases for twenty-one hundred years.) But in
Psychological Warfare, the Japanese-language short-wave broadcasts from
San Francisco had no imaginable effect on the American forces in the
Pacific. The only people who could understand them were the
Japanese-language officers in G-2 and ONI offices; their personal
vexation did not matter.
The offensive operations of combat troops are predicated upon finding
the enemy, effecting contact, and either destroying the enemy or making
him yield terrain. The defensive operations of combat troops,
contrariwise, are planned with a view to resisting an enemy who has been
met.
In Psychological Warfare, operators and enemy do not effect contact. The
audience cannot strike back through a radio set; the enemy reader cannot
throw a leaflet back at the bomber which has dropped it on him. When
American planes bombed German radio stations, they did not do so because
the flight commander was trying to get German propaganda off the air;
they did so because the Americans were trying to break up the entire
German communications network. It is almost impossible to pinpoint radio
transmitters and printing presses with such accuracy as to deny the
enemy all chance of talking back. In a purely physical sense, there are
only two sets of measures whereby an actual defense can be set up
against Psychological Warfare. Each is a measure of desperation; neither
is considered effective; the Americans did not bother with either in
World War II.
The first physical defense consists of radio jamming and of the planned
interception of enemy leaflet raids. Radio jamming is ineffectual except
in the case of an enemy possessing hopelessly inferior signal equipment.
(The Japanese tried to jam our radio at Saipan, just as the Germans
tried to jam BBC. They impeded reception, but they never succeeded in
blocking it out altogether.)
The second physical defense consists of destroying reception facilities.
It is possible to sweep an occupied territory and to sequester _almost_
all the radio sets in use. It is possible to issue a military order that
any soldier or civilian found in possession of enemy printed matter will
be court-martialed and punished. These measures are useful to dictators
having secret police, and among armies having the Prussian level of
discipline, with the enlisted men regarded as robots. It is not to be
expected that they would work against Americans.
Therefore, propaganda does not meet propaganda. Combat forces _meet_;
Psychological Warfare forces pass one another in opposite directions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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