Grand Strategy: Inherent Tensions

This is a follow-on post to my earlier one concerning JFC Fuller's original concept of 1923. The military historian Professor Hew Strachan has published an article on grand strategy entitled, Strategy and Contingency. It is his usual high level of insight combined with thoughtful historical analysis, and worth a careful read. I think this subject very current given the level of turmoil in the world today directed particularly at the US and US policies.

What I am attempting with this post is to introduce some of Strachan's insights along with some of Fuller's original concept of "grand strategy". This placed within a post Cold War historical context, but especially since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. That is a hybrid concept of grand strategy: that is my own (hopefully adequate) synthesis of Fuller's original concept with Strachan's insights along with some thoughts and comments of my own. What this will indicate is that we have become prisoners of not only our ideological assumptions, but also our political dysfunctions. The two interact, precluding any worthwhile analysis at the policy level.

Let's start with a recap of Fuller's concept of grand strategy. This is laid out in Fuller's own detailed style in his The Reformation of War from 1923. Fuller starts with a pyramid of military forces comprising land, sea and air forces which together constitute "a very complex and unstable organization", in all force results from the integration of all three, so a political community could still extert force without air or naval forces, although this application of force would be of a more limited scope. The base of this pyramid rests on "the moral of the civil population and the commercial and industrial resources at their disposal". Fuller likens this base to "fire" with the military forces being "earth", the naval forces "water" and the air forces "air". These four elements together produce a fifth which Fuller describes as the "national will to exist" and "the driving force of all military activities". This "national will to exist" includes an ideological component including the soldierly virtues present in society ("integrity, honour, justice and courage"). I would include with this something that Fuller assumes, that being best described as the German term Opferbereitschaft, or the willingness of the individual to sacrifice themselves in the interest of the political community. Fuller concludes, "This control and direction of the will to win and all the means whereby this will may be expressed I will call grand strategy."

Before getting to what Hew Strachan has to say, let me point out one more very important point - for Fuller, this grand strategy is contingent. The totality of moral and material elements exerts force which is then resisted by the enemy, who have in turn their own totality of elements that resist. It is the interaction of force and resistance which characterizes the war in question, making each war unique. So while at the abstract level of theory, general principles apply (this makes Fuller clearly a Clausewitzian), in actual cases they provide an approach, but no formula for normative action.

Strachan naturally enough starts with a definition. "Grand strategy" or "national strategy" concerns the long term, 15, 20, even 30 years into the future. "The grand strategy, as we would define it, is looking at the world today as it is going to be in 2030 or 2040 and deciding what Britain's place in that world is", Chief of the Defense Staff General Sir David Richards to the House of Commons, in 2010. He also provides a second definition from Thomas P M Barnett which also includes "enhancement" in addition to "stability":

As far as a world power like America is concerned, a grand strategy involves first imagining some future world order within which our nation’s standing, prosperity, and security are significantly enhanced, and then plotting and maintaining a course to that desired end while employing—to the fullest extent possible—all elements of our nation’s power toward generating those conditions. Naturally, such grand goals typically take decades to achieve, thus the importance of having a continuous supply of grand thinkers able to maintain strategic focus.

Of course Grand Strategy has been a buzzword in US strategic thought for some time. Yale University has been teaching a grand strategy course since 1998 inspired in turn by Barnett's tenure at the US Naval War College where he taught from 1998 to 2005. Barnett also served in the Pentagon under Bush from 2001 to 2003, writing The Pentagon's New Map in 2004. So what does Strachan think about all this grand stratergizing?

If the wars to which the United States has committed itself over the past decade are part of a grand strategy that is oriented towards some distant future, then grand strategy is in danger of proving to be delusory. The presumption within grand strategy is not just that it is oriented towards such a distant future, but also—at least if it is to have purchase in policy—that it is designed to avert decline, and even that it can make the future better. Emerging states have less need of grand strategy as they forge their empires than do satiated states anxious to hold on to what they have acquired. It is not at all clear that China, let alone India or Brazil, has a grand strategy.

It would seem that the US and UK don't have a grand strategy either, at least based on the events of the last ten years. Here is where Strachan's analysis really starts with "three sets of observations" concerning Barnett's definition. First, "while long-term in outlook, it is also opportunistic". This is connected with "risk management" which is the normal role of the military. Instead of limiting risk, the US approach since 2001 has been to exploit it, to use extensive military force to deal with essentially low-risk situations.

The assumption behind this imo is that force is seen as the preferred method of dealing with security issues, even seemingly negligible ones. Now, assume further that the US is a satisfied great power benefiting from the current global system which the US has also done the most to implement. How does engaging in foreign military adventures promote the stability of the balance of power/status quo? How does financing these very expensive "wars of choice" with borrowed money promote the US's long-term financial stability? We see here how notions of US exceptionalism, or basically that the US is "too big to fail" interacts with the preferred use of force.

Strachan's second set of observations has to do with ideology:

Second, for the United States in particular, such an application of grand strategy confronts it with a logical absurdity. As Barnett’s definition makes clear, Americans still see themselves as the democratic and progressive power par excel- lence. This creates a tension between its domestic self-definition and its external status. Its use of strategy today supports an agenda that is conservative, not least because it recognizes that change may not be in the national interests of democratic powers dependent on the workings of the free(ish) market. Unable or unwilling to shoulder the full burden of global responsibilities itself, it looks to allies to do more of that work for it. But America’s friends have already had to handle their own decline, and now have less appetite for thinking in terms of grand strategy at all: indeed, they have been told by some Americans that mid-ranking states cannot craft grand strategy, since—in Williamson Murray’s words—‘grand strategy is a matter involving great states and great states alone’.

This is about as good an explanation for US policy confusion during the Arab Spring as one could care to find. We are trapped by the assumptions of our own ideological view of ourselves, that being the "foundation of democracy" or something like that along with "freedom" . . . So once the masses are "free", how could they not want to be "just like us"? The rub of course is 50 odd years of supporting authoritarian Arab regimes which enjoyed dubious legitimacy, not to mention our waging of "wars of choice" against Muslim populations. Then of course imo there is our at times self-defeating support of Israel which has led to an quasi-assimulation of what some Israelis see as existential threats. Nice touch at the end by Strachan, reminding his readers of all the Rumsfeldian chest thumping back in 2003. He also mentions that it is precisely mid-ranking states that need grand strategy in order to best utilize limited resources. The context here is worth recalling: the Brits have got burned - as have the Germans, Dutch, Spaniards and others - following the US since 2001 and their appetite for any more military adventures is low to non-existent. Funny enough, their experience doesn't seem to have soured the French on military adventures, who missed out on Afghanistan and Iraq, while seeing intervention in Libya and now Syria as in their, that is solely French, not necessarily US at all, interest. This seemingly paradoxical French response I would see as yet further proof of US decline.

Strachan's third set of observations has to do with linking military means with political ends:

Third, establishing too close a relationship between strategy and the very long term does not allow for the unexpected—for the 9/11 attacks in 2001 or ‘the Arab Spring’ ten years later. Of course, prudent and intelligent men and women, like the authors of Strategic Trends or of the JOE, anticipate this criticism. The former has a section devoted to what it calls ‘strategic shocks’. . .

The possibility of ‘strategic shocks’, the unexpected appearing in short order, is part of the stock-in-trade of policies designed to give effect to grand strategy. No defence white paper or its equivalent produced in the western world is deemed to be complete without a reference to the ‘uncertainties’ (invariably increasing) in a rapidly changing and tautologically ‘globalized’ world. The driver in much defence policy is that procurement is a long-term process intended to deliver insurance against an uncertain future. It is also accepted that equipment is increasingly likely to be used in roles different from those for which it was first designed. Ironically, therefore, one of the pressures in the escalation of equipment costs is the very need to produce equipment flexible enough to cope with the expectation of the unexpected. So the tail wags the dog.

I think Strachan has a good point here, but misses another. Not all "strategic shocks" are of the same magnitude, that is to say "strategic". The Libya intervention was such an unanticipated military operations but within the capabilities of the US to perform. What seemingly held the US back were more domestic political considerations. Nine-Eleven was more an actual strategic shock and the military forces in place at the time were adequate to invade and overthrow the Taliban government, although in retrospect it's questionable whether "going to war" was the proper response at all.

Distinguishing between operational military "shocks" and actual "strategic shocks" would help. The US has a history of both. The failure to anticipate command and control difficulties in a mass army in 1918 and the surprise German attack in the Ardennes in 1944 were both operational military shocks, which were rectified in time. The attack on Pearl Harbor, China's entry into the Korean War in 1950 and 9/11 were strategic shocks. In each of the strategic shocks there were numerous indications that such an attack/intervention could in fact occur, but too often reacting to these indications played against political considerations held prior to the attack, inducing a strategic blindness among US political leaders. Regarding 9/11 there were security procedures put in place at the Genoa G8 conference that July to deal with Al Qaida crashing highjacked aircraft into buildings, not to mention numerous warnings of an Al Qaida attack in the US. These same political considerations inducing strategic blindness influence the formation of grand strategy, which gives us an indication of how far our current notion of "grand strategy" has drifted from conventional strategy which is essentially both military-focused and contingent.

This leads us to the final point in Strachan's paper I wish to bring out:

Strategy as it was understood by nineteenth-century generals was not vulnerable to any of the three observations entered in relation to current US definitions of grand strategy. It was not reactive, but proactive; it was about changing the status quo, not preserving it; and because it was applied in war, it flourished specifically in the realm of uncertainty.

Here we see Strachan's main point, which is a confusion of terms/concepts. This due to the simple fact that strategy deals with two actual political communities in conflict and not "maintaining states or conditions of being" - that is dealing with any potential conflict - as our current grand strategy implies. Thus there is an inherent tension between the current notion of "grand strategy" and what we define as "strategy" proper. This confusion has roots in how strategy and strategic theory have been conceptualized and taught in the US, and the irrational (from a Clausewitzian perspective) desire to come up with a positivist or normative theory of strategy that will fit all sorts of potential conflicts. In other words, what those writing grand strategy today wish for is a "cook book" with a recipe for any strategic situation which could arise. This explains the common presence of various types of (sometimes barely coherent) doctrinal speculation or what Alexandre Svechin described as "charlatanism" in US strategic thought today.

Here I leave Strachan's very interesting paper to provide my conclusion to this post. I recommend Strachan's article and my brief introduction does not begin to do it justice. Please read it for yourself and feel free to comment here.

If we look back at Fuller's original concept we see that grand strategy was impossible to formulate without a clear advisory. It was precisely the interaction between the hostile intentions, and the moral and physical characteristics that formed the potential or actual conflict in question. Thus for Fuller, even grand strategy to be worthy of the name, was contingent. What we have experienced in the US since the end of the Cold War is a confusion as to what strategy actually is and how it functions. When we say "strategy" what we actually mean is "plan" or "wish list", not the contingent interaction of two or more opposing wills over time.

As a comparison, here is my own definition of strategy:

Focused and contingent adaptation of divergent sources of power assisted by control over time in pursuit of a political purpose through methodological theoretical construct (strategic theory) with the aim of creating strategic effect/a strategic dynamic greater than the sum of the individual power sources. For the strong political community, strategy can be an option, for the weak it is a necessity.

"Contingent" here means both in terms of time and specific advisory.

US policy, such as it is, has been since 1992 to maintain dominance, period. 9/11 imo provided our political elite with the golden opportunity to exercise unrestrained military force in the ME/Central Asia and to impose ever tighter restrictions at home. It seems that our elite finds it best to promote an atmosphere of constant and unending war in order to maintain dominance, both at home and abroad. The moral sprit of the nation to defend itself, the "fire" in Fuller's formulation, is stoked by means of domestic propaganda, with the nebulous enemy, "terrorism", which is not an enemy but a method, projected as a serious, even existential threat. This however does not stand up to serious questioning. In all, this situation of continuous wars, or a series of wars to undo the strategic consequences of the previous war (as with Iran) indicates a political community in crisis. This may be called various things, but "strategy" or "grand strategy" it is not.

Worst Case Planning

"Relax," said the night man,

"We are programmed to receive,

You can check out anytime you like...

but you can never leave" 

--Hotel California, The Eagles

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,

And say my glory was I had such friends 

--The Minicipal Gallery Revisisted, 

W. B. Yeats 

______________________

The recent murder of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other diplomats along with the release of Mark Bissonnette's book No Easy Day prompt further thought:

The Special Forces Son Tay raid was an Act of War into a hostile nation to retrieve United States Prisoners of War.   It was a high-risk operation, just as was the SEAL team assassination party's incursion in Abbottabad, Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden.  The difference is, Pakistan is an ostensible ally, and allies do not invade other allies; the idea is, a nation runs hostile operations in hostile countries.

If Son Tay had failed, the U.S. could accept that fact and the resultant loss of friendly lives, but what would a botched job have done to America in the case of the OBL raid? Could we have accepted a Black Hawk Down scenario, in which U.S. dead would be dragged through the streets of a friendly nation in hideous glee?

Would the U.S. have fought any Pakistani troops sent to establish Pakistan's control of their sovereign territory?  Did anyone wargame these questions?  Were the risks worth the payoff?  Was the killing of OBL worth taking these risks?

Since the inception of the Phony War on Terror the military logic of operations has consistently been composed of pie-in-the-sky planning and ignoring worst-case scenarios.

What strategic value attended this operation?  If the intel was as good as Bissonnette's book suggests, why not just JDAM the target area?  If indeed killing was the object, why not simply put a precision target on the compound?

Maybe the fix was in, and the Pakistanis had been read into the scenario and had agreed to avoid and contact with U.S. troops, but this seems unlikely. If this were true, then they are a duplicitous bunch of opportunists sans straight-talk or straight-dealing. Whatever the situation, the operation lacked any semblance of military logic.

These thoughts pose further questions, "What is 'hostile'?"  Are Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan allies or even friendly, or are they hostile to the U.S.?  How does the U.S. treat enemies, and how, friends?  Can we even distinguish the difference these days?

It is hardly credible that Iraq and Afghanistan are friendly to the U.S.  It is readily believable that they will suck every dollar that we will throw their way, but they will never love or befriend us, and to believe so is delusional.

Certain Maxims of Hafiz

"Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,"

For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

~R. Kipling

My friend Labrys is infuriated that the Afghan muj have, once again, proved that our "strategy" for Afghanistan is about as cunning as that of the sixteen-year-old rube who has pushed into the traveling carnies' poker night. He - and we - are fools for the plucking and will, and are, being plucked. The only tragic part is that our losses are in blood and lives as well as treasure. We are the rubes in this central Asian game of double- and triple-cross, and are surely proving that we are unwilling to learn by others' example.

We were fools and more than fools to imagine that in a decade or two and with a force that wouldn't have made up a corporal's guard in Alexander's or Baibur's armies we could do what those ruthless conquerors couldn't do in lifetimes.

I really have nothing more to add on this subject. In a polity that had genuinely well-moderated public fora, a robust political intelligence, and a competent popular press the "wisdom" of trying to Hustle the East would have been taken out back and shot twice in the head years ago.

Being the nation we are, and being the public we are, we will manage to kill many more of the locals, and our own, before we accept the inevitable facts.

And, while tragic, this is entirely to be expected. I wish I thought I could change that, but I cannot. I wish I thought I could viciously punish those who are going to perpetuate that, but I cannot do that either.

All I can do is sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.

"If He play, being young and unskilful,
for shekels of silver and gold,
Take his money, my son, praising Allah.
The kid was ordained to be sold."

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

  Can't kill your way out of war
--General David Petraeus 

Acting is all about honesty.
If you can fake that, you've got it made
--George Burns

 I think I'll move to Australia 
--Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day, Judith Viorst
________________________

Retired SEAL Matt Bissonnette's No Easy Day (published under the pseudonym, "Mark Owen") is a kiss-and-tell about the assassination of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team 6 (ST6), of which he was a member.  Many things surrounding this book reveal the questionable nature of the War on Terror.

First, if the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) were real, would it not be an act of sheer insanity to identify oneself in the media?  Would one not then be a sitting duck for al Qaeda retribution?

Second: All members of ST6 were awarded the Silver Star Medal (SSM) for this operation in which there was, by Bissonnette's account, less-than negligible hostile action.  This award should be bestowed for conspicuous valor in the face of an armed enemy -- how does this equate with assassinating an unarmed man in his nightshirt, in his house?

The Silver Star is appropriate for the Bedford Boys in World War II Normandy and later, the Battle of the Bulge. Appropriate for the Battle of Lang Vei or the Son Tay raid in Vietnam, in which large enemy forces were engaged and neutralized in a genuine military raid conducted for a military reason.  More recently, think Waygul and Wanat.

The SSM is NOT awarded for service or achievement; the Bronze Star without "V" device (valor) device takes care of that need. As with the Pat Tillman scenario, the statutory requirements for the award were not met.  There were more SSM's awarded for the OBL action than were awarded to entire Ranger and Airborne Battalions on D-Day.  Moreover, assassination is not a military term.

Third: The Law of Land Warfare and the Geneva Conventions, which are the law of our land and all civilized nations, does not recognize the actions of Bissonnette's "No Easy Day".

Bissonnette admits that OBL was shot in the entry phase with two to the head, and he said he himself then fired a handful into the body of a grievously-wounded adversary, whom he "could not identify".  If the target was no longer capable of hostile action (any man  is neutralized when he takes two to the head from a 5.56 carbine, and Bissonette describes OBL's brains spilling onto the floor), then his action is a violation of the GC's.  

He justified his trunk shots on the program 60 Minutes by saying he wasn't sure if OBL held a grenade under his clothing which he might throw, but that would be a scenario only seen in Marvel comics. Of course, after a cascade of dissimulation from the highest levels, what matter a final fib from a triggerman?

Fourth, but perhaps most significantly: Why was there no credible effort made to capture the most valuable source of intelligence concerning al Qaeda?  A live prisoner is an invaluable asset for neutralizing terror networks.  A kill mission in this case lacks military (though perhaps not political) logic.

The author has been criticized for jeopardizing national security, but what SEAL or SOCOM technique, training or operational imperative was exposed that had not already been revealed in the recent Navy propaganda film, "Act of Valor"?

If Act of Valor is a righteous film, then too is this book.  If this is a false conclusion, then Bradley Manning may be getting a new bunk mate.

Washington's objection to this book is that this soldier compromised the White House's carefully-scripted theater, revealing that the rapt faces in the NSC viewing room the day of the assassination were actually conducting the finest performance of the day.

[cross-posted at RangerAgainstWar]

Islamofascism, Umyyad Style!

This month at GFT; the Second Siege of Constantinople, 717-718.

Fighting them here because, well, because they kicked ass there; tricks that wouldn't fool a woman, Greek Fire, and the Man with the Golden Nose.

Check it out the Labor Day Specials!

Intel Brief

(FYI, I'm just passing this on to the smart guys around here. My sum total of military intelligence wisdom was looking at the order of battle for our potential DPRKA enemies and remarking "That's a whole fecking assload of yellow Reds up there, hunh?"

Help from more intelligent intel types would be greatly appreciated.)

Looking for some help and advice from the crowd in the Pub (I think the new term for this is targeted Crowd-sourcing).

I am starting a Masters Program at DIA this week (National Intelligence University, formerly known as National Defense Intelligence College) for a Masters in Science and Technology Intelligence with a concentration in Information Operations and Cyber. I have to write a thesis, and the topic needs to somehow touch on Cyber, preferably with a foreign focus (meaning that the topic of study isn't the US infrastructure, but instead focused on the infrastructure or capabilities or a foreign entity). It can be classified, but I am fighting hard to keep my topic unclass so I can work it at home and for other obvious reasons of convenience.

There are plenty of topics out there that I can write some lengthy information papers about, but the purpose of this drill is to come up with a thesis question, make an argument, have a theory, etc. That is where I am struggling, I am used to identifying problems, analyzing them and proposing solutions. My professors want something that is "academically interesting" and they want me to posit a theory about something. Not the way I am wired to think. I don't care much for theories, I am used to focusing on solutions.

My original plan got shot down, so I am looking for some good ideas. I wanted to look at how Cyber Command and NSA are recruiting computer hackers, and compare that to that actual threat (for example, if Chinese will be the dominant language on the internet in 5 years, how many Chinese linguists are working computers at NSA). I still haven't gotten this sold to my professors because they consider this more of a Human Resources problem with some intelligence supporting the argument, and not truly an intelligence problem. I am arguing that resourcing intelligence operations is an "intel problem," but I haven't found a professor yet who agrees with me. Again, the difference in how I think as a senior leader in tactical intelligence, and how academics at the strategic level of intel think.

So, I need help, and need it quick. I am leaning towards something in regards to social networks and their future role. But I am open to any ideas at this point.

Thanks!

bg

My Conclusions on "Defining Literacy"

My last post has been up for a while and I was very pleased with the comments that came from it. I've had a bit of time to consider the various points made so here are my conclusions:

First, there seems to be a good bit of disagreement as to what "literacy" actually means. Is it being able to read labels on medicine bottles, or read and understand books, or is not reading/text required at all? From a Western perspective, I think we link literacy with reading/text/the written word. Other cultures may combine literacy with orality, but Western cultures do not, that is there is a distinction. To this I would add that this form of Western literacy was a requirement for much of our history since the invention of the printing press. Without this form of literacy, science and rational capitalism (as opposed to traditional capitalism) would never have changed the world the way they have. Without this literacy it would have been impossible for the modern world to exist as we know it.

Second, there seems to be a strong link between literacy, as in the ability to read and understand complex texts and the possibility of mass democracy. As I.F. Stone writes in his book, The Trial of Socrates:

Elementary education for all citizens was achieved early in Athens, at least a century before Socrates, and literacy seems to have been widespread. This reflected the rise of democracy. But the higher education remained the monopoly of the aristocracy until the Sophists came along. They provoked upper-class antagonism by teaching the art of rhetoric - for the ability to speak well in public was the open door to middle-class political participation in the debates of the assembly and the higher offices of the city. page 42

Not only that, but having the laws posted publicly was one of the great reforms of this pre-Socratic period as well. Ignorance of the law was thus no excuse as long as the laws were posted where any citizen could read and discuss them. Ancient Athens had no lawyers as we understand that profession today, since every citizen was expected to understand and argue the law themselves.

Notice that I have qualified the type of democracy I'm talking about, that being "mass democracy" as existed in Athens in Socrates's time. Small communities could be democratic without literacy but beyond a certain number, writing becomes a necessity. Before we get all warm and complacent with our current good fortune, let's consider my next point . . .

Third, while there is a connection between literacy and modernity and democracy, there is also one between it and propaganda, that is manipulation in the modern mass state. This is how Jacques Ellul described it in his classic, Propaganda of 1965:

Primary education makes it possible to enter the realm of propaganda, in which people then receive their intellectual and cultural environment.

The uncultured man cannot be reached by propaganda. Experience and research done by the Germans between 1933 and 1938 showed that in remote areas, where people hardly knew how to read, propaganda had no effect. The same holds true for the enormous effort in the Communist world to teach people how to read. In Korea, the local script was terribly difficult and complicated; so, in North Korea, the Communists created an entirely new alphabet and a simple script in order to teach all the people how to read. In China, Mao simplified the script in his battle with illiteracy, and in some places in China new alphabets are being created. This would have no particular significance except that the texts used to teach the adult students how to read — and which are the only texts to which they have access — are exclusively propaganda texts; they are political tracts, poems to the glory of the Communist regime, extracts of classical Marxism. Among the Tibetans, the Mongols, the Ouighbours, the Manchus, the only texts in the new script are Mao’s works. Thus, we see here a wonderful shaping tool: The illiterates are taught to read only the new script; nothing is published in that script except propaganda texts; therefore, the illiterates cannot possibly read — or know — anything else.

Also, one of the most effective propaganda methods in Asia was to establish "teachers" to teach reading and indoctrinate people at the same time. The prestige of the intellectual — "marked with God’s finger" — allowed political assertions to appear as Truth, while the prestige of the printed word one learned to decipher confirmed the validity of what the teachers said. These facts leave no doubt that the development of primary education is a fundamental condition for the organization of propaganda, even though such a conclusion may run counter to many prejudices, best expressed by Paul Rivet’s pointed but completely unrealistic words: "A person who cannot read a newspaper is not free." pp 109-110

Following Ellul, the modern mass state has to create a mass culture to support it and win the support of the population since traditional norms will not necessarily support the actions of said state. Basic literacy - especially mass education for children - is the best means of achieving this goal. This is what Ellul refers to as the first stage of literacy, basically reading at the level of a 5-6th Grader. The second, and higher level, that is being able to "reflect and discern" what one has read and dividing a text into what one agrees with and what one does not or is unsure of, is possessed by only about 10-15% of the population, according to Ellul.

How exactly does this come about? How does basic literacy open the door for propaganda and manipulation? The modern citizen of a mass state is an individual, one isolated from traditional forms of thought and alligance. There is little connection with community, family or religion in the traditional sense, whereas there is a host of lesser connections with "society", most of them increasingly of the materialist/consumerist sort, well those and "nationalism". This view went back to the turn of the century, but became fairly unquestioned as a result of the First World War. Walter Lippmann is Public Opinion (1922) wrote:

BECAUSE of their transcendent practical importance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following. What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged. The detached observer may scorn the "star-spangled" ritual which hedges the symbol, perhaps as much as the king who told himself that Paris was worth a few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it." [Footnote: The English Constitution, p. 127. D. Appleton & Company, 1914.] For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of a common will. Poking about, as every responsible leader suspects, tends to break the transference of emotion from the individual mind to the institutional symbol. And the first result of that is, as he rightly says, a chaos of individualism and warring sects. The disintegration of a symbol, like Holy Russia, or the Iron Diaz, is always the beginning of a long upheaval.

These great symbols possess by transference all the minute and detailed loyalties of an ancient and stereotyped society. They evoke the feeling that each individual has for the landscape, the furniture, the faces, the memories that are his first, and in a static society, his only reality. That core of images and devotions without which he is unthinkable to himself, is nationality. The great symbols take up these devotions, and can arouse them without calling forth the primitive images. The lesser symbols of public debate, the more casual chatter of politics, are always referred back to these proto-symbols, and if possible associated with them. The question of a proper fare on a municipal subway is symbolized as an issue between the People and the Interests, and then the People is inserted in the symbol American, so that finally in the heat of a campaign, an eight cent fare becomes unAmerican. The Revolutionary fathers died to prevent it. Lincoln suffered that it might not come to pass, resistance to it was implied in the death of those who sleep in France.

Because of its power to siphon emotion out of distinct ideas, the symbol is both a mechanism of solidarity, and a mechanism of exploitation. It enables people to work for a common end, but just because the few who are strategically placed must choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand. pp 150-51.

The leadership/elite of a state (Lippmann makes no distinction) use symbols to influence and manipulate the masses. But what of the "self-sufficient" individual? Lippmann dismisses that notion quickly. That's not the way the mass reacts, since while the individual thinks and reasons, the mass "feels". How else are they to know what to believe if they are not told essentially what to believe? Lippmann concludes this chapter with some of the most disturbing conclusions ever put on paper by an American intellectual:

That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough.

The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.

Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach. p 158

I think literacy as I have defined it very important in Western development, but I am reminded by my earlier reading of Ellul and Lippmann that Venkat makes an important point when questioning what exactly literacy is and the assumptions that we make in regards to it. If anything the events of the last ten years in the US have only reinforced the validity of what Ellul, and earlier Lippmann, had to say as a result of experiencing the power of state propaganda starting almost a century ago.