How do We Train to Match our Actions to Our Narrative?

[marct]

Hi Eden,

Some honest questions from a guy who thinks you are on to something, but still doesn't quite get it.

1. I often hear it said that the enemy's narrative is 'better' than ours, that he is whipping us in the information war. Is that true, or is that just one of those truisms that people have come to accept? How is that measured? Who establishes and monitors the metrics? Or are we just using that as an excuse for our failures? My experience in Afghanistan is that Al-Qaida's and the Taliban's narratives were largely rejected by the natives. Suicide bombers and random violence were counter-productive within Afghanistan, though they may have played well elsewhere.

Metrics are a tough one - we do have the techniques for getting them, but I have grave doubts about their validity in a war zone.

2. Is it possible to approach a place like Afghanistan with a single narrative? Can we develop a common narrative that is acceptable both to the Afghans, to our international partners, and the Great American Public? And our soldiers, by the way? Can we even develop a single narrative that is acceptable to the layered, nuanced, complex culture of Afghanistan? Again, my experience is that the indigenous peoples are not stupid. They understand our agenda; it's just that many segments reject while others are suspicious of our ability to sustain it.

In short, that would be a limited "yes" to all. Basically, you need to develop and deploy a grand narrative (see above). This was done in Afghanistan originally, but was pretty much displaced by the time of the 2003 Loya Jirga to a social narrative from the US. A really bad mistake that is slowly being fixed by co-creating a social narrative for Afghanistan.

The best option, in my opinion, is to assume that you will have to co-create a specific social narrative within a larger grand narrative. It's not really possible to go into an area with a pre-cut, one-size fits all narrative and assume it will work (well, you could but you would then have to be labelled as a Darwin Award winner due to shear stupidity).

3. If the answers to the above are no, do we strive to create alternate narratives tailored to different audiences? How do we wall these narratives off from each other so they don't leak to other audiences? Or do we just ignore certain audiences and accept the fact that they will reject our messages? Someone used an example about how WWII's narrative was simpler. True. Does that imply that diametrically opposed narratives can only be resolved through brute force, and that the 'softer' tools of information war are sometimes useless?

The short answer is that you can't wall off one audience from another and any attempts to do so will fail miserably. This isn't to say that your narrative won't change over time; of course it will. As to whether or not diametrically opposed narratives can only be resolved by force, I would have to say that force is one option for their resolution, but not the only one. In some cases, it is possible to create a shared narrative that will contain the resolution of the two - not simple mind you, but possible.

Marc