Page 204 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 183

POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBALISED WORLD
However, many ‘proxy’ wars were fought in the post-Second World War
period, in which allies of East and West respectively were pitted against each
other. In the Angolan civil war, for example, the Marxist government was
supported for many years by the Cuban and Soviet governments, who
provided diplomatic and military assistance. The Angolan government’s
opponents, UNITA, were, on the other hand, funded by apartheid South
Africa and a rather murky coalition of Western intelligence and military
bodies. Wars in the horn of Africa, central America and South-East Asia were
also fought, with Western and Soviet involvement as ‘sponsors’. In addition
to these proxy wars, in which the superpowers (and their respective allies,
like Britain, France, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany) more or less openly
stood behind their favoured factions, many military conflicts were provoked
by the fear, real or otherwise, of the other’s advance into jealously guarded
spheres of influence. The Reagan administration’s support for the Contras
in Nicaragua and its endorsement of death squad activities in Chile, El
Salvador, Guatemala and elsewhere, was justified with reference to alleged
Soviet ‘subversion’ of the region, directly or through its Cuban communist
and Nicaraguan Sandinista allies. Grenada was invaded in 1983 on the
grounds that American citizens on the island were at risk from Cubans. In
this sense, many of the ‘hot’ wars of the post-war decades were rooted in
underlying tensions between East and West, capitalism and Soviet-style
socialism. There were also wars rooted in colonialist hangovers, such as the
1982 Falklands conflict; national liberation struggles, such as the Israeli–
Palestinian conflict; and the expansionist ambitions of maverick national
leaders, such as the Gulf war of 1991.
In the days before the emergence of modern electronic media, military
conflicts were covered by press correspondents, whose dispatches sent from
the front lines inevitably lagged behind events by weeks and even months.
By the time the public got to hear about a battle being fought in its name in
a foreign country, it was in all probability over. Nevertheless, the exposure
given to war by newspapers, limited as it was, meant that governments had
to formulate strategies for managing domestic opinion. Thus, during the
First World War, governments engaged in intensive propaganda campaigns
to convince their populations of the inhumanity and immorality of the other
side’s soldiers (Knightley, 1975). As the speed and efficiency of international
communication channels improved in the twentieth century, news became
more contemporaneous with the events being reported, and the importance
of public opinion increased. By the 1980s, one military expert could observe
of modern conflict that ‘what really matters is its effect on public opinion at
home and around the world’ (Hooper, 1982, p. 215).
In military conflict, as in the less violent forms of conflict which normally
comprise the domestic political process, public opinion is a factor which can-
not be ignored. When Western television viewers can watch on their evening
news bulletins as Hamas missiles fall on Israel, or Israeli missiles strike Gaza,

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