The American boomerang
In America, Mayor Bloomberg has banned smoking in public places, especially in restaurants, inadvertently turning New York into an unlikely but almost spook-free zone. (1) American intelligence officers may not smoke, but some of their overseas contacts will. If meeting in the West, they will prefer to do so in London; or, if London goes the same way as New York, Geneva. (2) Mayor Bloomberg may wish to set the world an example but this could boomerang.
There are quite a few boomerangs around at the moment. Take US pride in the meaningless phrase that America is ‘the world’s only superpower’. War may be technology’s show case but if the US really was the only superpower, the commercially aggressive Chinese would not have a commercial presence at both ends of the Panama Canal. (3) Nor would huge chunks of prime US real estate be owned by equally commercially aggressive Arabs, Asians and Far Easterners. (So far as I am aware, America does not own similar private real estate in its nationals’ myriad diaspora countries of origin.) If America’s currency goes completely belly-up it is curtains for the US – one reason why it is so neurotic about the strength of the Euro and will do all it can to maintain a divided EU. Branding itself the only super power is defensive, albeit clever, PR.
Iraq
In Iraq, the US executive has inadvertently offered similar case-studies in ‘boomerang PR’. The most obvious examples are its self-defeating, despicable demonisation of the Shia branch of Islam and of the Ba’th whose personnel, including its schoolteachers, Iraq needs. Many compliments are paid to the high educational standards of the Iraqi people. Overstatement of this is part of US/UK ‘feel good’ PR. The truth is that huge swathes of Iraq’s population have no education at all. Meanwhile, the battle for the minds of Iraqi schoolchildren has begun. The US is looking for a contractor to rewrite Iraq textbooks. (4)
To pander to its misplaced perception of Islam, highly educated women in Iraq, the Christian population and other groups are airbrushed. In addition, it has excelled at ‘bouncing responsibility’: For example Iraqis, it claims, were to blame for the shameful murder of Shia cleric Abd al-Majid Khu’i whose memory has since been traduced because he accepted CIA money. The truth is that this vital, courageous man returned to Iraq at the time he did, solely at the request of the ‘allies’. He was dead within days. The death of Khu’i is every bit as significant for Iraq as that of Abdul Haq was for Afghanistan. These men, their circumstances, and events leading up to their deaths, could not have been more different; but their murders could have been prevented.
Meantime, US/UK spooks are saying that the best intelligence available on Iraq is Iranian. What did they expect? This is a bit like saying the Scots know more about the English than, say, the Turks. The US/UK intelligence product is rumoured to have been so poor that the spooks are alleged to have resorted to picking up intelligence from ‘tainted official [ French] sources in Algiers’; (5) and US/UK intelligence on prominent Iraqis living in Iraq was so sparse that, prior to the invasion, the KGB’s extensive files were being traded on the black market by rogue private security companies for huge sums of money.
The spooks are also supposed to have listened too closely to some members of Iraq’s diaspora opposition. Unsurprisingly, they told the spooks what both sides wanted to hear. The spooks spurned or were unable to access the independents. In addition, it is said:
‘The police and security service have been slow to draw on the expertise of academics working in the field and many feel they have been over-reliant on foreign intelligence sources for their information.’ (6)
‘Omission-PR’ has also been in evidence. For example, there was no footage in western media of Basrah’s pre-war beauty. Omission-PR is also determining the oil debate. (7) Cleverly, the ‘allies’ are conditioning Iraq, and those who wish it well, to concentrate solely on its oil wealth when reconstruction should be about its superb agricultural capabilities; education – Iraq should boast one of the finest business schools in the world; physical beauty – greenery, desert and snow making it ideal as a movie location or offering superb leisure facilities; or tourism – had its potential, with the exception of the religious, not been wantonly destroyed. The British School of Archaeology (BSA) in Iraq wrote repeatedly to the British government expressing concern about the safety of Iraq’s antiquities, museums and archives. They received no answer. Now, culture secretary Tessa Jowell ‘insists that the Government could not have predicted the destruction.’ (8)
Rubbish.
Through no fault of its own, the BSA, and, for example, the British and Ashmolean Museums, could not get their message across in time because, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, they tried to lobby government, when instead they needed to mount a high-profile, integrated political/press campaign across the European Union, as well as in the UK and US in order to put pressure on the (British) government. This, however, requires well-placed, non-academic, specially designated staff to run it; and costs an enormous amount of money. Lurching from one day to the next, the museums have neither. (9)
Clever PR
Cleverer PR is the phrase ‘United Nations’. Ask the Armenians and Chechens. (10) The democratically unaccountable UN recognises governments. It does not recognise nations. In these days of mass communication and the ability to influence perception, selective PR is also ‘clever’. For example, there is wide recognition in Britain and America of Saddam Hussein’s massacres of Kurds and Shia: (11) but very little of the murder of thousands of Iraqi Communists. These, unlike the Kurds and Shia came from all sections of Iraq’s society.(12)
Another example of selective PR are the many references to US/UK assistance given to Bosnia’s Muslims. Usually omitted is what happened, and why, on 11 July 1995 in Srebrenica.
More ‘successful’ US/UK executive-PR is the apparently accepted wisdom that those who protested the invasion of Iraq ‘failed’ and need to apologise to the ‘allies’. The protesters were not wrong. They were defeated. There is honour in that, just as there is pride in the Foreign Office’s senior woman lawyer who resigned, with all the implications for her pension, because she considered the invasion illegal/immoral – which it was. Moreover, the only reason why Baghdad does not look as bad as London did during the Blitz, or Dresden at the end of WW2, is because of the protesters. And incidentally, it is not ‘pilots’ who bomb – another example of clever PR – but state bombers.
British executive PR is indicative of different incompetence including the poor relationship between the Prime Minister’s PROs and Whitehall’s. This is best illustrated by Prime Minister Blair’s full page photograph in the Sun, which went around the world as an ‘exclusive’. It will be remembered by many overseas not for the sun-drenched image of a post-invasion youthful-looking Mr Blair, but because the same photograph included a large impression of the soles of his shoes, a cultural gaff in some countries, symbolic of treading on ‘unholy’ ground.
I think it unlikely that a Foreign office PR would have passed it, unless s/he wished to stuff the PM, which is always a possibility, as revenge, say, for:
- the summoning of the FCO’s 200 British ambassadors and High Commissioners to what was insultingly styled a ‘leadership conference’ in January this year;
- ignoring the advice given;
- because of the stance on Iraq, endangering or embarrassing Brits overseas, especially the diplomatic community;
- and presenting all diplomats as public school clods and/or commercial stooges, (13) while allowing similarly public school British Army personnel to be seen in their ‘modern’ role and multiple identities. (14)
‘Hearts and Minds’
A good PR prevents the client from reducing its ‘mission statement’ into a ‘soundbite’. The US executive’s PR strategy, however, has been to merge the two. This I am told, is called ‘reductive conceptualism'(!!!) The result was the phrase ‘Hearts and Minds’ which is now out of control. All audiences, including hostile ones, are using it. (The Vietnamese prayed for Iraq (‘hearts’) and, following the invasion, consolidated their abhorrence of America (‘minds’).
Another aspect of US strategy is financial aid. This, however, is as nothing compared to the generosity of global migrants:
‘World Bank figures show that last year, for the first time, more money flowed from relatively poor migrant workers (restaurant workers, taxi drivers etc) in rich countries than the combined total of government aid, private bank lending and IMF/World Bank aid and assistance. The total value of these remittances to developing countries reached $80 billion, double the aid provided by rich nations……. Today, hundreds of millions of poorly paid people are propping up the finances of developing countries …..surprisingly, rather than receiving investment, developing countries are actually exporting capital. The rich elites of poor countries are racing to ship their money into safer western havens.’ (15)
Movies and sport
Historically, movies have played their part in US/UK PR. However, Hollywood’s announcement that ‘007 goes to Bollywood’ (16) has more to do with the fact that within a decade most of Hollywood’s funding and the next big studio are likely to be Asian, than anything else. (17) To survive, Hollywood needs the overseas market; it is only belatedly tackling the power of cultural differences and their effect on global enterprise.
‘If you take the main Asian markets – Japan, India, China – and their derivatives – Indonesia, Bangla- desh, Pakistan, the Arab countries, East Africa, Egypt, Iran, Morocco – you have 80% of the world’s population.'(18)
Much of this audience is aged under 30 and the marketing world believes we have made most of our life decisions on brands by the time we are 35 after which we are resistant to trying something new. The majority of these under-30s do not speak English – the visual effects of the James Bond movies require no translator.
Doubtless the movie will carry an unsubtle message about countering terrorism or similar, but it is unlikely that it will become a long-term player in the US executive PR effort because ‘outreach’ requires consolidation.(19) Entertainment/ fantasy is for the moment, no matter how much money you throw at it. Moreover, the educated young are more likely to remember the latest cinematic depiction of Graham Greene’s 1955 novel The Quiet American, funded by Miramax, than they are the new James Bond. Despite re-editing, the movie’s ‘attack on the naiveté of the American establishment’s military adventurism abroad is intact and powerful.’ (20) It is therefore unlikely it will play in ‘liberated’ Iraq.
The Brits have other minor advantages over the US because they play football. The Americans do not, although they are being pestered to fund British teams. They are working on their Footie – which is to say, trying to bend the world to baseball and meeting with some success – but they will not manage it fast enough to ‘conquer’ the Middle East. In the war of hearts and minds it could, in the end, boil down to Becks v Major League.
Meantime, no linkage will be made between the racist, misogynist, ‘religious’ fervour of a minority of British football fans – fuelled in part by successive British governments shafting the white male working class – and other fundamentalists. ‘Fundamentalism’ is deemed to be a ‘foreign’ import.
Cumulative PR
The greatest challenge to US/UK influences the growth of subliminal linkages. The conduct of British and US companies is not always all it could be, (21) any more than is that of some ex-pat communities, including some NGO personnel. Nor are the interpersonal skills of some senior diplomats.(22) Retired ones also influence subliminally. Some of these reinforce dated attitudes and crony-clusters as they head into post-retirement jobs promoting London hotels or chairmanships of various prestigious ‘Anglo + foreign country’ chambers of commerce, sustaining existing status quo.
What has also worked against US/UK influence is mass tourism, whether or not this recovers. Tour groups (TGs) may be welcomed for their dollars, but the conduct of TG individuals is frequently despised by their host nations. The Foreign Office meanwhile, despite various initiatives, continues to give the impression that it laments the days when ‘tourists’ were part-time ‘Friends’ making their way across Wadi Hadramawt. Today, intrepid travellers not only do not promote the ‘brand’ but may actively despise it. Meanwhile, Oman, beloved by a certain type of British official, invites ‘respectful tourists’ to admire its flora and fauna. But not, presumably, its people’s (lack of) civil rights.
What also has ‘legs’ are the sentiments of all those highly educated kids exploited in Bombay call centres organising ‘cheap’ (equivalent to ten years of their annual salary) holidays for Britons. These young Indians, to make them user-friendly, have ‘Christian’ names forced upon them, stripping them further of their identity. Presumably, with the collapse of the travel market, many have now lost their jobs. (23)
Books
One of the tactics likely to be used to address global contempt for US/UK conduct in pre/post-invasion Iraq, will be revisionist articles and books. There will be a spate of these on the Middle East. Some will be written by ‘approved’ British academics and journalists. Those who read them could keep in mind a throwaway comment (1997) by Sir Percy Cradock, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee under Prime Ministers Thatcher and Major: ‘The bulk of the records of its outposts, principally JIC (Germany), JIC (Middle East) and JIC (Far East) have disappeared.’ (24) That they have is an unnoticed national scandal. The ‘approved’ will be able to concoct whatever back-history SIS chooses. (25)
Not that, according to Defence Secretary Hoon, a back-history is of any consequence. Facing a courteous, articulate predominantly Arab audience – and profoundly out of his depth – he insultingly suggested they ‘move forward’ and stop looking to the past. (26)
Britain’s case could not have been weaker.
Notes
1 Historically, cigarette advertising/packaging – Marlborough for the ‘young country’ (USA); Rothmans for the ‘imperial’ Brits – has been an essential vehicle in selling/branding America/Britain to aspirational and/or new elites. New York shopping-tourism (a barometer of new elites, including cigar-smoking wealthy men/their mistresses, always useful background information for espionage) could also suffer.
2 With all its WTO business, Geneva is enjoying a renaissance and the spooks presumably are again running around all over the place.
3 In an otherwise disappointing script, the Anglo-French spy-spoof ‘Johnnie English’ is worth seeing for the gleeful swipe at the Americans and double-entendre: ‘There are no chinks in our security’. Doubtless, had the script not been so bad, the story about the happily bungling spy could have played in Iraq as part of Britain’s ‘hearts and minds’ campaign: a sort of movie equivalent to British troops losing 9 – 3 to the Basrah football squad. (BBC report following the fall of Basrah.)
4 The Times 7 April 2003.
5 The Observer, 12 January 2003. This is a wholly different conflict, albeit ripe to spill out into Europe any day soon: there is little public awareness of Algeria’s 130,000 dead in its civil war sparked by the cancellation of a 1992 election that Islamists were set to win.
6 Ibid. One academic who has a cult following on both sides of the Atlantic is Professor Bernard Lewis. This appals me. When I was an undergraduate in the seventies, sitting alongside courteous Sunni and Shia, the Professor would begin his lectures: ‘The followers of Islam were more interested in the profits of Islam than they were the Prophet…’
7 Alternative sources of energy are to oil what the microchip is to the typewriter ribbon. In 25 years time, Arab oil could be irrelevant. Not that anyone is telling the Iraqis.
8 The Times 18 April 2003
9 Protecting what is left of Iraq’s heritage will also require money. The day cannot be far off when, as with the Forbidden City in China, a plaque reading ‘Supported by American Express’ will be strategically cited on Ctesiphon’s ancient arch.
10 Or the Scots/Welsh for that matter, if their Assemblies ever really get off the ground.
11 Professor Christopher Andrew has set up the Cambridge University Intelligence Seminar to find out what makes despots and fanatics armed with power tick. Without irony, he declares himself the convenor of the ‘Cambridge mindset project’. The Times 5 December 2002.
12 The CIA unleashed fundamentalism as a sop to Communism. Today, America offers ‘democracy’ by which it means consumerism.
13 See ‘An increasing number of diplomats in British embassies are employees of commercial companies….. the Foreign Office for months battled to keep secret the posting of these private enterprise diplomats…..’ The Guardian 5 October 2002.
14 The Guardian 2 April 2003
15 The Observer 20 April 2003
16 The Observer 13 April 2003
17 The Guardian 23 August 2002
18 Ibid.
19 It is too early to tell how Washington’s apparently independent ‘Middle Eastern Television Network’ which will ‘play a role in the broader cultural campaign’ will fare. TheGuardian 24 April 2003.
20 Evening Standard 3 October 2002. Michael Caine’s performance, incidentally, is said to be a brilliant British brand extension.
21 ‘Dyncorp has won a £32m US state department contract to provide up to 1000 civilian law enforcement advisers to rebuild Iraq’s police force, prisons and judiciary.’ Meantime, a former Dyncorp employee won her case for unfair dismissal having revealed that UN peacekeepers employed by Dyncorp, and international aid workers had ‘links to prostitution rings in the Balkans’. Another former Dyncorp employee exposed company staff involved ‘in inhumane behaviour, purchase of women, forged passports and illegal weapons.’ The Guardian 3 May 2003.
22 A friend of mine attended a cocktail party in a European country at Easter. Those present included two arrogant serving US ambassadors. Presumably they were not aware of ‘viral’ marketing: i.e. my pal’s views of them, coupled with his professional standing, have ‘legs’…. By chance, I also met two principled American-Arab diplomats attached to the US embassy to Britain, at the London office of Al-Jazeera. Their eyes red with exhaustion/anguish, at the height of the US/UK invasion of Iraq, they had been given the impossible task of presenting President Bush to Al-Jazeera’s Arab viewers as ‘the one candidate the US right-wing did not want’.
23 Well-meaning Brits are unlikely to be able to do for an educated Asian whose dreams have crashed, what sending copies of the Spectator to a desperately poor African village teacher achieves. The Spectator, 14 December 2002: ‘We make a humble appeal to our readers …. to send the Spectator to Africa ….. with the enthusiastic support of the British council….”. A senior leftwing eastern Euro-pean diplomat told me that, while having no illusions about the magazine (!), he ‘welcomed’ it in his country because ‘my government has only limited capability to challenge the spread of American culture’.
24 Percy Cradock, Know your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World (London: John Murray, 2002).
25 This is one reason why I was not surprised when MI5 announced the preparation of its official history – a best-seller in the making, with I assume, the profits on this occasion going to the taxpayer – to be completed in time for its centenary. MI5’s records, apparently, have not ‘disappeared’. Its subtext is that unlike MI5, SIS will not be providing the British public with a record of what it did in its name.
In PR, a ‘history’, sometimes called a ‘legend’ would be, say, ‘The US/UK government went to the aid of Bosnian Muslims’. The ‘back history’ (in PR) is glossing over/ignoring Srebrenica: i.e. the truth.
26 Secretary of State Geoff Hoon, a guest on the BBC’s Questiontime, broadcast from Doha, 24 April 2003.