Strategic Communication and National Security

Abstract

Simply stated, the objective of strategic communication is to provide audiences with truthful and timely information that will influence them to support the objectives of the communicator. In addition to truthfulness and timeliness, the information must be delivered to the right audience in a precise way. This generalized approach can be applied to essentially any organization, to the Department of Defense (DoD) broadly, and specifically to the individual nine combatant commands of the United States. Our approach at U.S. Southern Command is to consider strategic communication as an enabling capability for our policy and planning decisions and actions; provide truthful information about those decisions or actions; communicate it in a timely and culturally sensible fashion; use messengers who are likely to be well received; measure the results of our efforts diligently (clearly our hardest challenge and greatest shortcoming); and adjust both message and method of delivery accordingly. In the Southern Command's region -- 32 countries and 13 territories, including some 450 million people speaking 4 principal languages and dozens of dialects -- our view is that nothing we do is more important than strategic communication. In attempting to discover the right approach for strategic communication in the Southern Command's diverse region, we have examined a series of examples of strategic communication. These case studies include the announcement of involuntary feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in August 2005; publicity for a humanitarian exercise in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2006; and the cruise of the Navy's hospital ship, USNS Mercy, through the Pacific in 2006. Each of these recent case studies is worth thinking about in somewhat more depth as we consider an appropriate approach for the Southern Hemisphere.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA575204

Entities

People

  • James G. Stavridis

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Case Studies
  • Combatant Commanders
  • Corporations
  • Department Of Defense
  • Dominican Republic
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • International Organizations
  • Language
  • Measurement
  • National Security
  • Security
  • South America
  • Strategic Communications
  • United States
  • United States Southern Command
  • Unmanned Vehicles

Readers

  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Systems Analysis and Design