Leading up to the first gulf war when the US and its allies first attacked Iraq in 1990 the western media bent over backwards to show how deadly Saddam Hussein was and hence the justification for his removal.
They consistently touted Saddam’s battle hardened army – it had
just been in an eight-year war of attrition with neighbour Iran and his
400,000-strong republican guard, which was disciplined, well trained and sophisticated.
On later thought we laugh that Saddam must have been reading
the western press and wondering whether they were talking about him, because before
we could reach for the popcorn General Norman Schwarzkopf’s troops had reached
the gates of Baghdad and the war was effectively over.
Later reports were that the US and its allies in some places
found soldiers armed with nothing but pitchforks.
"It took a second war, a decade later – with a new narrative about the fictitious weapons of mass destruction, to dislodge Saddam and send Iraq back to the dark ages....
As I see the noise around the current war in Ukraine, I
cannot help going back to that first gulf war three decades ago.
With the benefit of experience, I now see that Saddam’s
major failure was his inability to win the communications war. All the
international media houses, including at that time, the fresh-out-of-the-box
CNN were western controlled and dominated the narrative. In a time before the
internet, their narrative of events is all we swallowed.
In communications training I always insist that when you are
operating in a vacuum, that is little to nothing about your enterprise is being
communicated, the vacuum will be filled and more often than not to your
detriment. If you are a serious player, you have to ensure that vacuum does not
exist, you have to populate it with your message, so when the fight comes you
have a foot to stand on.
So Vladmir Putin, who the west have demonized – I have heard him referred to as a thug in
certain sections, is suffering Saddam’s problem. His story is being written for
him and not by his friends.
The former KGB boss probably is not surprised by all this
firestorm of negative press and has probably factored it into his calculations,
despite what the western press says. But he might learn or already has that the
“manufactured consent” that has been created by the western media means he will
get little to no sympathy from everybody else leaving Russia open to all sorts
of attacks and a very uncertain destiny.
He is at a disadvantage. The number of people who can speak
Russian outside of Russia can be counted on one hand.
"Which in hindsight makes the colonial project a work of genius. Apart from extracting raw materials from the colonies at dirt cheap prices to fuel their industry, they ensured a critical mass of people spoke English. About one in five people on the planet now are English speakers and this number is growing as they teach English in schools today around the world as a matter of routine.
So when the western propaganda machine swings into action it
has almost two billion malleable minds paying attention.
The old saying that sticks and stones may break my bones but
words cannot is due for a readjustment.
Does the fact that Russia feels threatened by its enemies,
the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) pushing to set up camp at its
border in Ukraine, count for nothing? That Russia sees itself being squeezed
into nothingness, the end game in the cold war, with real consequences for that
nation, does this count for nothing? Never mind that a unipolar world, never
mind how benign the single power seems to be, will not be good for anyone.
Putin may as well be howling into the wind, we are not
listening.
I never know whether to laugh or cry at how our companies
and countries continue to treat the communications function as something to
endure with gritted teeth rather than embrace as a key function in achieving
their strategic objectives.
Many labour under the biblical saying “That we will be known
by our good works”. In a world where information is moving faster and faster,
that assumption is seemingly more and more dated, leaders and managers need to,
no, must communicate.
The thing is, communication is not as sexy as big procurement deals or commissioning big plants or juicy promotions. Communication like everything in life works by compounding, small moves made frequently and consistently build up to improved perceptions and associations. The challenge of course is the better you communicate the less it seems important, but when the crisis comes you will have built enough momentum to ride it through...
Russia possibly has cutting edge military technologies and I
believe they will make significant gains on the battlefield, but the war of
perceptions has been lost and will very well determine whether they have a
pyrrhic victory or not.
Which reminds me of the top NSSF official, who when the
organization was getting bad press for the Nsimbe Estate scandal about 20 years
ago, innocently said they felt no need to communicate all the good plans the
Fund had because people would see for themselves. Needless to say he is no
longer at NSSF and his good reputation did not survive the scandal.
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