Covert Military Strategy The Theory Of War

Political warfare

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American foreign policy demonstrates a tendency to move towards political warfare in times of tension and perceived threat, and toward public diplomacy in times of improved relations and peace. American use of political warfare depends on its central political vision of the world and its subsequent foreign policy objectives.

Truman established a government political warfare capability in the National Security Act of The act created the U. National Security Council , which became the infrastructure necessary to apply military power to political purposes. President Truman voiced the United States' national, universalist vision for political warfare against the Soviet Union in an address before Congress on March 12, , thereby establishing the Truman Doctrine:. The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria.

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I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.

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The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation. The Truman Doctrine was the post-WWII basis for American political warfare operations on which the United States government went further to formulate an active, defensive strategy to contain the Soviet threat.

This directorate fell under the authority of the Secretary of State, while the Board had complete authority over covert political operations. It recognized political warfare as one instrument in the United States' grand strategy. Kennan defined 'political warfare' as "the employment of all means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.

Such actions are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures such as ERP — the Marshall Plan , and 'white' propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of 'friendly' foreign elements, 'black' psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states. The memo further defined four projects that were activated by the Board to combat growing Communist influence abroad, including:.

The United States used gray and black propaganda research, broadcasting, and print media operations during the Cold War to achieve its political warfare goals. These operations were conducted against Eastern European targets from Western Europe by two public-private organizations supported partly by the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSC, and partly by private corporations. Officially, "the US government denied any responsibility for the radios and took care to conceal the channels of funding, personnel recruitment, and policy influence.

Obviously, the major support was American, but it was plausibly not official American and it could be excluded from diplomatic intercourse and international legal complication. The goal of the radios was to present the truth to suppressed peoples behind the Iron Curtain "to aid in rebuilding a lively and diversified intellectual life in Europe which could In addition, Voice of America VOA started broadcasting to the Soviet citizens in under the pretext of countering "more harmful instances of Soviet propaganda directed against American leaders and policies" on the part of the internal Soviet Russian-language media.

In the fall of a group of scholars including physicists, historians and psychologists from Harvard University , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and RAND Corporation undertook a research study of psychological warfare for the Department of State. An overt, non-governmental form of political warfare during the Cold War emerged after President Ronald Reagan's 8 June speech to the British Parliament. In his speech, Reagan appealed for a "global crusade for democracy" [46] and as a result, the National Endowment for Democracy NED was created in December The NED "funded programs in support of candidates acceptable to the US in elections in Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, and Guatemala throughout and in order to prevent communist victories, and create stable pro-US governments".

Other notable efforts included anti-Sandinista propaganda and opposition efforts in Nicaragua as well as anti-Communist propaganda and opposition efforts in support of the Solidarity movement in Poland between and Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union was committed to political warfare on classic totalitarian lines and continued to utilize propaganda towards internal and external audiences.

However, instead of moving their troops to meet the potential amphibious landing, the Italians withdrew into Eritrea and were in greater strength when the genuine attack occurred. Clarke thus learned that the focus of military deception is not what you want the enemy to think but what you want him to do. Deception played an important part in the war in North Africa. Steven Sykes built a dummy railhead to protect the real railhead at Misheifa for Operation Crusader. British and American troops used false signals and double agents to deceive German intelligence as to the location of the invasion.

Dummy equipment played a negligible role as the Germans were unable to carry out aerial reconnaissance over England. The Germans awaited the Pas-de-Calais landing for many weeks after the real landings in Normandy, diverting several divisions from the battle for Normandy. In the Pacific theater, Japan continued its diplomatic engagement with the United States through late November and into early December , even while the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was being planned and after the attacking ships had actually sailed, in secret, from their base in the remote Kuril Islands in northern Japan, bound for their eventual destination several hundred miles northwest of Hawaii.

The fleet proceeded in secrecy, clinging to the foggy latitudes of the northern Pacific Ocean and maintaining radio silence as it approached its target so as to avoid premature detection. The attack on Dec.

In recent years, Japanese researchers and historians have asserted that formal notice had not been given to the U. Army Air Forces B bombers flying off of the U. Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet was conducted under similar conditions of top secrecy, resulting in a virtually complete element of surprise.

The air crews were directed to not throw out empty fuel cans or other debris from their planes in flight, lest such a trail of debris lead potential Japanese pursuers back to the Hornet, and to make no markings on their maps for the same reason, lest those documents fall into enemy hands.

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When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked by reporters after the raid where the attacking planes had come from, he added to the mystery by playfully answering " Shangri-La " — the name of the fictional utopia high in the Himalayas made popular in the novel Lost Horizon. The months preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis involved a complex deception and denial campaign.

The Soviet attempt to position nuclear weapons on the island nation of Cuba in Operation Anadyr in occurred under a shroud of great secrecy, both to deny the United States information on the deployment of these missiles to the island and to deceive the United States' political leadership, military, and intelligence services about Moscow's intentions in Cuba. The parameters of Anadyr demanded that both medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles be deployed to Cuba and operable before their existence was discovered by the United States, and the Soviet General Staff and Soviet Communist Party leaders turned to radical measures to achieve surprise in this manner.

Perhaps the most fundamental deception in Operation Anadyr was the deployment's codename itself, which is associated with the sparsely populated and somewhat inaccessible areas of the Russian north, certainly did not suggest an operation in the Caribbean. Only five senior officers on the general staff, moreover, were privy to the details of the deployment or its actual location during the planning. The plans that were made were even handwritten to deny knowledge of the operation to even a single secretary. Prior to the voyage to Cuba, troops awaiting the journey were restricted to barracks prior to departure and were denied contact with the outside world.

Soviet soldiers constructed false superstructures with plywood to hide the ships' defenses and even on-deck field kitchens. Metal sheets were placed over missiles and missile launchers to prevent detection by infrared surveillance. Agricultural equipment and other non-military machinery was placed on deck to add to the subterfuge.

Once underway, the Soviet troops were not allowed on deck, except at night and only in small groups. Instructions to the troops and ships' crews were carried by special couriers to deny Western intelligence services the opportunity to intercept electronic communications regarding the operation. The ships' captains received instructions which revealed their final destination only after they had put out to sea.

Soviet denial and deception measures were equally rigid upon the ships' arrival in Cuba. The Soviet vessels unloaded at eleven different ports to complicate American surveillance. Military equipment was offloaded only under cover of darkness. The same applied to major troop movements, and all Soviet military positions were generally in sparsely populated areas of the island.

The Soviet troops were even forbidden to wear their uniforms. Simultaneously, the Soviet media trumped the massive agricultural assistance that the Soviets ostensibly were providing to their Cuban comrades as a false explanation for the men and equipment.

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The Soviet denial and deception campaign in Operation Anadyr, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, proved highly effective, and the eventual discovery of the missile emplacements only occurred after they were operational. Thus, the operation was a success. In the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the joint forces of Egypt and Syria, Egypt used a deception to fool the Israelis about the timing of the attack. President Anwar Sadat created an annual maneuver well in advance, which tricked the Israelis to thinking that the moving forces were in fact part of this drill.

The Egyptians also created the impression that they were going to attack several months before the war, making the Israelis announce an emergency draft. Since the draft was rather expensive, the Israeli government, including prime minister Golda Meir , was reluctant to repeat it when the real attack took place. After an aircraft hijacking had occurred on board an Air France plane in late June and the hijackers had diverted it to Entebbe Airport in Uganda , threatening to kill all of the captive Jewish and Israeli passengers if their demands were not met, the Israeli Defense Forces planned a rescue mission.

Israel kept pursuing diplomatic efforts to free the hostages while the raid was being planned in top secrecy, giving the outward appearance that it would not pursue military action. When the raid was launched, the advance party of IDF commandos invading the airport rode in a black Mercedes Benz automobile made up to look like Ugandan leader Idi Amin 's personal limousine, followed by two Land Rover vehicles similar to those customarily used by Amin's entourage in order to confuse the guards at the airport perimeter, so as to buy the raiding party extra time.

The ruse was only partly successful, as one of the guards realized it was a trick, precipitating a gunfight in which the element of total surprise was lost, although the overall raid still turned out successfully. In , France, heretofore Israel's main supplier of advanced weaponry, abruptly cancelled a contract to build patrol boats for Israel's navy, declaring an arms embargo and refusing to release the last five boats built under the contract, even though they had already been paid for.

In response the IDF mounted an elaborate scheme involving, on paper, the legal purchase of the boats by a supposed civilian company for ostensibly non-military purposes. Secretly staffed by crews of Israeli navy officers and seamen disguised as civilians who gradually arrived at the French Atlantic seaport of Cherbourg , the five boats, without proper authorization, slipped out of the harbor on the night of Christmas Eve , sailing into a winter storm.

They made it through the storm, eventually reached the Mediterranean Sea and completed the more than 3,mile voyage to Israel safely. The ruse — which the Israelis called "Operation Noa" but which came to otherwise be known as the Cherbourg Project — was assisted by some sympathetic mid-level French shipyard and commercial officials, but the higher-ups in the government were kept totally in the dark about what was going on in the several months of preparations leading to the boats' secret departure.

There are different opinions among military pundits as to the value of military deception. For example, the two books that are usually considered the most famous classics on warfare Sun Tzu 's The Art of War and Clausewitz ' On War seem to have diametrically opposed views on the matter. Sun Tzu greatly emphasizes military deception and considers it the key to victory. As a more modern example, British military writer John Keegan seems to come close to Clausewitz' opinion in this particular matter, despite normally being highly critical of Clausewitz.

In his book Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda he gives several historical examples of situations where one side held a great information advantage over its opponent and argues that in none of these cases was this decisive in and of itself for the outcome. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Prehistoric Ancient Post-classical Early modern Late modern industrial fourth-gen.

Blitzkrieg Deep operation Maneuver Operational manoeuvre group. Military recruitment Conscription Recruit training Military specialism Women in the military Children in the military Transgender people and military service Sexual harassment in the military Conscientious objection Counter recruitment. Arms industry Materiel Supply chain management. The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article , discuss the issue on the talk page. February Learn how and when to remove this template message.

Page 6 and throughout. Defeated at the Battle of Long Island". Operations of World War 2. Retrieved 21 April The New York Times. Archived from the original on 23 March John Gooch; Brian Holden Reid, eds. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Military Deception in the Second World War. Gribkov, General Anatoli I.

An Autobiography and History. Mostly Unsung Military History. Classical Strategic Thought 3rd rev. Hesketh, Roger Fleetwood The D-Day Deception Campaign. Strategic Deception in the Second World War: Liddell Hart, Basil Henry Both desired their factions to deescalate the conflict while the state escalates against them, the objective being to target the opponent on the moral and mental levels rather than the physical level.

The state is then seen as a bully and loses support. With fourth generation warfare, there may even be no single organisation and that smaller groups organize into impromptu alliances to target a bigger threat that being the state armed forces or another faction. Yet, another factor is that political centers of gravity have changed.

These centers of gravity may revolve around nationalism , religion , or family or clan honor.

Disaggregated forces, such as guerrillas, terrorists , and rioters , which lack a center of gravity, deny to their enemies a focal point at which to deliver a conflict ending blow. It has been theorized that a state vs. Three principal attributes of the new-age terrorism were held to be their hybrid structure as opposed to the traditional microscopic command and control pattern [10] , importance given to systemic disruption vis-a-vis target destruction, and sophisticated use of technological advancements including social media and mobile communications technology.

Social media networks supporting the terrorists are characterized by positive feedback loops, tight coupling and non-linear response propagation viz. Fourth-generation warfare theory has been criticized on the grounds that it is "nothing more than repackaging of the traditional clash between the non-state insurgent and the soldiers of a nation-state.

Echevarria II in an article Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths argues what is being called fourth generation warfare are simply insurgencies. He also claims that 4GW was "reinvented" by Lind to create the appearance of having predicted the future. Simple displacement rarely takes place, significant developments typically occur in parallel. Lieutenant General Kenneth F. Lind are "providing an analytical lens through which to view the type of opposition that exists now 'out there' and to highlight the shortcomings of the current US military in dealing with that opposition.

Fourth generation warfare theorists such as Lind and Hammes wish to make the point that it "is not just that the military's structure and equipment are ill-suited to the 4GW problem, but so is its psyche". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

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