PsyOps, the one-eyed weapon

A declassified Pentagon document dating back three years may reawaken curiosity about how the US fights its secret wars.

A declassified Pentagon document dating back three years may reawaken curiosity about how the US fights its secret wars. The ‘Information Operations Roadmap’, issued by US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, confirms what has been one of the worst-kept secrets of governments: psychological operations, or PsyOps. This proven winner in combat and peacetime is one of the oldest weapons in the arsenal of man — a key force protector and multiplier, as well as an excellent non-lethal weapons system.

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The idea is essentially to convey selected information to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and, ultimately, behaviour. So it isn’t surprising that the newly declassified document exhorts the Defence Department to hone capabilities in areas like information operations, electronic warfare, military deception, and computer network operations. All these are part of the PsyOps arsenal of any modern fighting force. What’s surprising, however, is that the revelations suggest there might have been a lot more than met the eye in incidents and events of yesteryear that shaped modern history. Enduring controversies like President Roosevelt allowing the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbour as a pretext for war, or Lyndon B. Johnson staging the Gulf of Tonkin attack to launch the Vietnam War, may now be revisited. Because of their illegal nature, governments never formally order PsyOps; instead they are discreetly ‘arranged’.

Apart from the political embarrassment, it could also pose some uncomfortable questions for Pentagon generals who may wish they’d stuck to comic books instead. For didn’t the US military wage a novel battle only last year to win the hearts of young people in West Asia by publishing a new comic? Based on ‘the security forces and police in the near future’ in the region, it was produced by PsyOps warriors of the US Army.