Everything about Psychological Warfare totally explained
The
U.S. Department of Defense defines
psychological warfare (
PSYWAR) as:
"
The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives." Psychological Warfare is also known as
infowars. This type of warfare is often used in modern situations, such as the dropping of leaflets and propaganda campaigns. Psychological warfare could be considered a type of
unconventional warfare. This is because it attempts to influence the mind of the
enemy rather than destroy its military. The press is one of the most commonly used weapons for spreading propaganda.
History
Alexander the Great
Although not always accredited as the first practitioner of psychological warfare,
Alexander the Great of
Macedon undoubtedly showed himself to be effective in swaying the mindsets of the populaces that were expropriated in his
campaigns. In order to keep the new Macedonian states from revolting against their leader, Alexander the Great would leave a number of his men behind in each city to introduce
Greek culture, control it and oppress dissident views as well as interbreed. Since this method of persuasion did indeed influence loyalist and separatist opinions alike, it directly altered the psyches of the occupied people to conform.
The Mongols
Genghis Khan, leader of the
Mongols in the 13th century AD, united his people to eventually conquer more territory than any other leader in
human history. Defeating the will of the enemy was the top priority.
Before attacking a settlement, the Mongol
generals demanded submission to the Khan, and threatened the initial villages with complete destruction if they refused to surrender. After winning the battle, the Mongol
generals fulfilled their threats and
massacred the survivors. Examples include the destruction of the nations of
Kiev and
Khwarizm. Consequently, tales of the encroaching horde spread to the next villages and created an aura of insecurity that undermined the possibility of future resistance. Subsequent nations were much more likely to surrender to the Mongols without fighting. Often, this more than the Mongol's tactical prowess secured quick Mongol victories.
Genghis Khan also employed tactics that made his numbers seem greater than they actually were. During night operations he ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk in order to deceive and intimidate enemy scouts and give the illusion of an overwhelming army. He also sometimes had objects tied to the tails of his horses, so that when riding on an open and dry field, would raise a cloud of dust that gave the enemy the impression of great numbers.
The Mongols also employed other gruesome terror tactics to weaken the will to resist. In one infamous incident during the
Indian campaign, the Mongol leader
Tamerlane built a pyramid of 90,000 human heads in front of the walls of
Delhi, to convince them to surrender. Other tactics included firing severed human heads from catapults into enemy lines and over city walls to frighten enemy soldiers and citizens, and spread diseases in the close confines of a besieged city. The results were not only psychological: In 1347, the Mongols under Janibeg catapulted corpses infected with plague into the trading city of
Kaffa in
Crimea. The dismayed Genoese traders withdrew, bringing the plague back with them to Italy and beginning the European phase of the
Black Death.
Vlad Tepes
Vlad Tepes would physically and psychologically
torture his enemies with brutality. His most well-known psychological tactic was an incident involving
impalement (thus earning him the title "Vlad the Impaler"), where the bodies of thousands of Ottoman soldiers were suspended in the air, impaled through the
heart or
rectum on giant wooden sticks. This was so effective, it made an
Ottoman army cancel their
campaign to invade
Romania. In a twist of fate, Vlad Tepes was captured and killed by being impaled through a spike. His severed head was paraded around Istanbul for 3 days before being discarded.
Propaganda Warfare
Most of the events throughout history involving psychological warfare utilised tactics that instilled fear or a sense of awe towards the enemy. But as humanity continued into the
19th century, advances in
communication technology acted as a catalyst for mass propaganda usage.
One of the first leaders to inexorably gain fanatical support through the use of microphone technology was leader of Nazi Germany,
Adolf Hitler. By first creating a speaking environment, designed by
Joseph Goebbels, that exaggerated his presence to make him seem almost god-like, Hitler then coupled this with the resonating projections of his orations through a microphone. British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill made similar use of radio for
propaganda against the Nazis.
During
WWII, psychological warfare was used effectively by the military as well. The enormous success, that the invasion of
Normandy displayed, was a fusion of psychological warfare with
military deception. Before
D-Day,
Operation Quicksilver created a fictional "First United States Army Group" (FUSAG) commanded by General
George Patton that supposedly would invade
France at the
Pas-de-Calais. American troops used false signals, decoy installations and phony equipment to deceive German observation aircraft and radio interception operators. This had the desired effect of misleading the German High Command as to the location of the primary invasion, and of keeping reserves away from the actual landings.
Erwin Rommel was the primary target of the psychological aspects of this operation. Convinced that Patton would lead the invasion, as he was clearly the best Allied armored commander, Rommel was caught off-guard and unable to react strongly to the Normandy invasion, since Patton's illusory FUSAG hadn't "yet" landed. Confidence in his own intelligence and judgement was also reduced enough that the German response to the beachhead wasn't decisive.
British use of psychological warfare
The British were one of the first major military powers to use psychological warfare in
World War II, especially against the
Japanese. The
Gurkhas, who are
Nepalese soldiers in British service, have always been feared by the enemy due to their use of a curved knife called the
Kukri. The British put this fear to great effect, as
Gurkhas were used to terrorize Japanese soldiers through nighttime raids on their camps. It has also been reported that when the Gurkhas landed on the
Falkland Islands, some
Argentinian troops abandoned their positions and fled.
United States use of psychological warfare
» See also Psychological Operations (United States)
The
United States ran an extensive program of psychological warfare during the
Vietnam War. The
Phoenix Program had the dual aim of assassinating
Viet Cong personnel and terrorizing any potential sympathizers or passive supporters. When members of the VCI were assassinated,
CIA and
Special Forces operatives placed
playing cards in the mouth of the deceased as a calling card. During the Phoenix Program, over 19,000 Viet Cong supporters were killed.
The CIA made extensive use of
Contra death squads in
Nicaragua to destabilize the
Sandinista government which the US claimed was
communist. The CIA used psychological warfare techniques against the
Panamanians by broadcasting pirate TV broadcasts. The CIA has extensively used propaganda broadcasts against the
Cuban government through
TV Marti, based in
Miami, Florida. However, the Cuban government has been somewhat successful in jamming the signal of TV Marti, making the CIA effort partly useless.
In the
Iraq War, The United States used the
Shock and awe campaign to terrorize, psychologically maim, and break the will of the
Iraqi Army to fight.
The CIA conducted several experiments in its
MKULTRA project. Some of these experiments were performed on hospitalized persons in
Montreal, Canada, without the informed consent of the subjects. LSD, electroshocks, and drug-induced comas were used trying to find efficient brainwashing methods. The affected patients eventually received financial compensation from the government of
Canada, which knew about the CIA experiments.
Recent military psychological warfare methods
In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. troops used music, most commonly American heavy metal or rock music to confuse or scare insurgents.
However, most uses of the term psychological warfare refers to military methods, such as:
- Distributing pamphlets, for example in the Gulf War, encouraging desertion or (in WWII) supplying instructions on how to surrender.
- Propaganda radio stations, such as Lord Haw-Haw in World War II on the "Germany calling" station
- Renaming cities and other places when captured, such as Baghdad airport
- Shock and awe military strategy
- Projecting repetitive and annoying sounds and music for long periods at high volume towards groups under siege.
- The use of Humvees and other vehicles to create mobile broadcasting stations, allowing the US military to verbally harass and agitate Taliban fighters in Afghanistan so that they emerge from hiding places and engage US troops.
- Spreading rumours, hoaxes and wild stories.
- Use of loudspeaker systems to communicate with enemy soldiers.
- Very recently mass text messages and emails have been sent to opposition military leaders and to the general civilian population.
- The tactic of hanging of dead terrorists with their intestines torn out from their anuses with barbed wire was used successfully by Sri Lankan special forces during the 1980s phase of the Sri Lankan civil war to demoralize various Tamil terrorist groups.
Most of these techniques were developed during WWII or earlier, and have been used to some degree in every conflict since. Daniel Lerner was in the OSS (the predecessor to the US CIA) and in his book, attempts to analyze how effective the various strategies were. He concludes that there's little evidence that any of them were dramatically successful, except perhaps surrender instructions over loudspeakers when victory was imminent. It should be noted, though, that measuring the success or failure of psychological warfare is very hard, as the conditions are very far from being a controlled experiment.
Lerner divides psychological warfare operations into three categories:
White : Truthful and not strongly biased, where the source of information is acknowledged.
; Grey : Largely truthful, containing no information that can be proven wrong; the source may or may not be hidden.
Black : Intended to deceive the enemy.
Lerner points out that grey and black operations ultimately have a heavy cost, in that the target population will sooner or later recognize them as propaganda and discredit the source. He writes, "This is one of the few dogmas advanced by Sykewarriors that's likely to endure as an axiom of propaganda: Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." (Lerner, 1971 p. 28) Consequently, the Allied strategy in WWII was predominantly one of truth (with certain exceptions).
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