Page 218 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

countries in the anti-Iraq alliance had to be convinced of the justness
of the coming conflict, with its unpredictable and potentially
enormous consequences. This task was of course complicated by the
fact that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had been the friend of the West for
most of the 1980s, and had been in receipt of sophisticated military
equipment from Britain, France and other countries in the pursuit of
its war with Iran. Now Iraq was the enemy, and explanations were
required before a military solution to the invasion of Kuwait could
be pursued with confidence. As John Macarthur puts it in his study
of US media management during the conflict, ‘on August 2, when
Hussein grabbed Kuwait, he stepped beyond the imaginings of the
practitioners of real-politik. Suddenly more was required than
manipulation by leak. Convincing Americans to fight a war to liberate
a tiny Arab sheikdom ruled by a family oligarchy would require the
demonisation of Hussein in ways never contemplated by human rights
groups. It called for a frontal assault on public opinion such as had
not been seen since the Spanish— American war. The war had to be
sold’ (Ibid., p.42).
Pursuing these objectives in the Gulf was never going to be as
easy as had been the case in the Falklands, Grenada, or Panama.
The geographical location of the conflict, and its international
dimension, inevitably increased its media accessibility and
newsworthiness. Media organisations, particularly the television
crews of CNN, the BBC and others, had access to more sophisticated
communications technology, such as portable satellite transmission
equipment, than had been the case even a few years before.
Furthermore, many Western journalists located themselves in Iraq,
beyond the reach of allied military censors, before hostilities proper
began.
Despite these environmental factors, the allies could still have
prevented journalists reporting the conflict, had they been inclined
to do so. As Macarthur points out, however, the war had to be ‘sold’
as well as fought and won. Indeed, as noted earlier the two procedures
were, by the end of the twentieth century, closely related. It was not
therefore in the interests of the anti-Hussein coalition to block all
coverage, and to antagonise international public opinion by denying
it information. Better by far to ensure that the information about,
and images of, the conflict which made it into the public domain
were compatible, as far as possible, with the allies’ military and
political objectives. This resulted in the Gulf War, and its buildup,
being conducted against the backdrop of a sophisticated information
management and public relations campaign.

201