Page 222 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

public and governmental support for military action. Could
America go it alone in removing Saddam Hussein from power,
and if so, should the UK join in? Or should the approval and
authorisation of the United Nations be sought before military
action began, as it had been on earlier occasions? In this debate
much hung on the question of whether, after September 11, the
threat posed by Saddam’s Iraq was sufficiently urgent to justify
unilateral US (with British support) action, or could be addressed by
the slower channels of international diplomacy. In late September
2002 concerns about the international political fallout of unilateral
US–British action against Iraq led George W. Bush, under pressure
from Tony Blair, to endorse and pursue a further United Nations
resolution on Iraq at his speech to the General Assembly. This
resolution, when it came, demanded that UN weapons inspectors
be allowed unconditional and unrestricted access to suspect sites
in Iraq, and authorised the use of force if such access were not
forthcoming. As this book went to press, the future of Saddam
Hussein was unresolved, but the desirability of multilateral over
unilateral action to depose him was accepted, at least in public, even
by the post-September 11 US administration.
In short, then, modern wars are as much about communication
as armed aggression. In a liberal democracy, where government
must submit itself to periodic electoral judgment, wars, to a greater
extent than any other aspect of policy, must be legitimised in
the eyes of the people. In recognition of this fact defence ministers,
generals and others responsible for the planning and execution of
warfare have been joined by public relations professionals, whose
job it is to ensure that the media’s image of a conflict is such as
to maximise the degree of popular support for it. Military public
relations has become an important sector of the opinion manage-
ment industry, without an understanding of which no analysis of
modern warfare would be complete. In the rest of this chapter we
examine the pursuit of military public relations in three conflicts,
chosen because of their importance in establishing the rules of ‘the
game’, as it were, and because they have been extensively researched
and written about. We deal, firstly, with the Vietnam War, often
viewed as the ‘first media war’. We then examine the media
management tactics of the British government during the Falklands
conflict. And finally, we consider the experience of the Gulf War
of 1991, in which many of the public relations lessons of previous
conflicts were applied with considerable success by the US, Britain
and their allies.

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