Effective Defense Support for Public Diplomacy (DSPD) with a Sub-Saharan Africa Target Audience: A Case Study of the African Crisis Response Force Proposal

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Support for Public Diplomacy (DSPD) sources and messages using the African Crisis Response Force (ACRF) as a controlled comparison case study. The ACRF case can provide useful lessons for USAFRICOM on how to communicate more effectively with its African partners. From a more narrow DSPD perspective, the absence of an explicit adversary in Africa means that military tactics there should be focused on capturing human terrain through the robust utilization of information operations rather than more conventional stratagems. To accomplish this, the DoD needs to understand how to communicate effectively with Africans. The command's focus on interagency cooperation and building partnerships with African states makes successful Information Operations even more critical and the role of DPSD even more central to ensuring that DoD actions align with and complement other elements of national power to synchronize an American grand strategy in Africa. The focus in this thesis is on informational causal mechanisms, defined as the "physical, social, or psychological processes through which agents with causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts or conditions, to transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities." Using Wilbur Schramm's disaggregation of communications into a source and message, the case studies will treat the ACRF's and related DSPD sources and messages as independent variables, and the acceptance or rejection of ACRF as the dependent variable. The target audience is composed of the state-level actors who possessed the ability to accept or reject the ACRF proposal.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA493950

Entities

People

  • Christopher S. Ieva

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Case Studies
  • Command And Control
  • Department Of Defense
  • Diplomacy
  • Geographic Regions
  • Governments
  • International Relations
  • Military Science
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • North America
  • Public Diplomacy
  • Public Policy
  • United States
  • United States Africa Command
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Strategic Security Studies
  • Systems Analysis and Design