Perception Management - Foreign Policy and Terrorism

Foreign Policy and Terrorism

Perception management has long been a key issue in the United States government. Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA contracted out several hundred different public information and news agencies for different "assignments." This practice grew, and currently operates with several thousand initiatives helping to privately shape public opinion of the government. Indeed, the Department of Defense views perception management as a psychological operation aimed at eliciting the behavior you want by manipulating the opinions of both enemies and friends. Best put by the DOD directly, "Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations." Since the U.S. engaged in the War on Terror, perception management tactics have become vital to military success and relations with other countries.

...It is absolutely vital that the Perception Management campaign of the United States and its allies be coordinated at the highest possible level, that it be resourced adequately, and executed effectively. Properly coordinated, such a campaign could be a war-winning capability. When left uncoordinated, such operations will achieve only modest success, at best, and at worst, could seriously backfire. Even a poorly chosen word, used in the heat of the moment (e.g. ‘crusade’), can have significant negative consequences.

Typical counter-terrorism (CT) thinking focuses on the violence, or its associated threat, to identify and exploit associated avenues for meaningful response and reaction. In the years of the Reagan/Bush administration the government saw a lot of reluctance to commit military forces abroad. They used many tactics to change the outlook of peoples' thoughts about oversea issues. Warfare experts from the CIA and the Army Special Forces were included in this plan. They accomplished this by pushing issues about the events in South America and Leftist right issues in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.