World War FOUR is already here
by Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Strategic Culture:
If you are still waiting for someone to officially proclaim the start of World War III (WWIII), well, you are wrong. We are already in. And there’s someone who is starting to talk about WWIV.
History, strategy, psychology
Western political and security leaders, to a much greater extent than their “eastern” counterparts such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China, have failed to realize that the main force on the strategic battlefield in the early 21st century is the psychological domain, even though they have long explored the cognitive dimension and invested long years of research. Levels of defense expenditure are only a small component of strategic success or failure. All success or failure is generated by the mind, and at no time in recent history has this been more evident than today, when formal conflict, during and after the Cold War, has become a minor factor in the shifting global balance of power.
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What goes on in the minds – and particularly in the “collective mind” – of populations is the critical factor that determines the success or decline of the strategy. This factor, the morale (as it is usually called), has always been manipulable, but today it’s especially so thanks to mass communications, that have made traditional forms of communication less effective. The ability to create mass psychosis, including mass hysteria, is now almost instantaneous due to the capacity for electronic peer-to-peer communication. All it takes is a little cognitive bias and immediately everything can change.
The masses still have power, but they are not aware of it. It used to be taught in school that “knowledge is power”, not any more. But the key still remains the same: awareness.
Even on the military battlefield, when the desperate struggle for survival and domination is literally existential, the psychological element can determine victory or defeat. Strategists and commanders in the past were taught to keep their troops’ spirits up, aware that it was not a question of quantity, but of quality and determination. A soldier who’s not convinced and ready to face battle, will never make it back alive from the conflict; on the contrary, a single soldier who is well centered and prepared can rout a large number of opponents.
This “morale” dimension also applies on a social level: a society kept poor, unhappy, full of problems, will be an easy target for manipulations, psy-ops, hybrid conflicts of various kinds. It all comes down to arranging the optimum conditions for interacting with the adversary – or the guinea pigs – in the best possible way. Minimum effort, maximum result.
The preparation of the hardware is crucial, but the software that manages it is even more important. Indeed, the mentalities required for formal military action are hierarchies that, in many ways, are antithetical to the conduct of strategic psychological operations. Even the combination of conventional military structures, special forces, and intelligence-based direct action capabilities – more far-reaching than at any other time in history – are insufficient for this task. Today, we are faced with the objective need for new profiles: the head of state must be the chief intelligence officer, but also the nation’s grand strategist, hence also the architect of the dominant strategy concept. Leadership takes on a new role, one that is no longer strictly political. A figure more reminiscent of the dictator of ancient Rome is back in vogue: he was an army man, often a general, with great political charisma who led the senate in a delicate phase of emergency and transition to a new political asset. We can see, for example, that King Charles III of the UK has emerged as the only British leader who has understood how to use the psycho-political aspects of prestige to promote Britain’s long-term agenda to a far greater extent, than the three prime ministers who have served him since his accession to the throne.
Read More @ Strategic-Culture.org
Originally Posted at https://www.sgtreport.com
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