Mind-Munitions

Information-Age Conflict in the Post-Cold War Era 313
umbrella of ‘soft’ power information campaigns. Radio Free Europe
continues as well in an effort to consolidate democratic ways of
thinking in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. In
what has now been labelled ‘international information’, the victors
of the Cold War see a newly invigorated and potentially decisive
instrument for consolidating a New World Information Order.
In the new terrain that has been identified for war-fighting and
democracy building alike, the concept of Information Operations
that is emerging assumes strategic dimensions across the full spectrum
of conflict (the RMA) and diplomacy alike (prompting what
might be called a Revolution in Diplomatic Affairs). Old forms of
thinking still prevail as this terrain continues to be mapped out.
The paradigm shift for the new world is simply too great a leap in
faith to make fully as yet. However, the acquisition, transmission,
storage and transformation of information makes IO a target, a
weapon, a vulnerability and an integrated strategy all at the same
time. This strategy will continue to require the capacity for greater
physical destruction than an adversary, both in traditional terms
and in new ways that utilize the digital revolution to its full
advantage, whether it be in ways of protecting information systems
from virus attack or the insertion of logic bombs into adversary
systems. And because of the increasing inter-relationship between
civilian and military information infrastructures, homeland defence
becomes a pre-requisite in light of vulnerabilities to hacker attacks
from adversaries that are increasingly difficult to identify in a
world which may be witnessing the triumph of democratic systems
but which is also seeing new and often individualistic adversaries
rather than state actors.
Within this thinking, ‘influence operations’ to either pre-empt
future adversaries, to defeat them in the case of conflict, and to
consolidate triumphal value systems once victory is achieved,
assumes a central role. The objectives are to support foreign policy,
deter aggression and support democratic reform. What raises some
doubt from the sceptics who liken this thinking to Orwellian ‘mind
control’ is indeed an old philosophical conundrum faced by PSYOPS
practitioners since the First World War. To put it simply, is it better
to persuade an adversary to lay down his weapon and to desert,
defect or surrender than it is to blow his head off? A hundred years
ago, before the advent of mass slaughter that characterizes industrialized
warfare, there were many who would have said ‘no’ to