The adverse security impact of propaganda during a war is increased resistance in a country under attack and external support for it.
Propaganda, the broadcasting of emotive stories, is a political tool which has been used for centuries. It is normally used to actively manipulate opinion, as described earlier in the following scenarios:
· It can be used to gain political support within a country, nowadays using mainstream or social media (6.4.2.4).
· It is a key component of soft power in a country’s foreign policy (6.7.7.3).
· It has been mentioned as a component of hybrid warfare (7.3.5).
The negative publicity arising from the conduct of a war is in a different category. It is generated by critics of the war, using legal or moral arguments:
Using military force without UN agreement, to target people in another country, is illegal under international law (5.3.6.1).
And it usually fails to meet the criteria of a ‘just war’ (4.3.5.5), so it can also be condemned on that basis.
Such criticism can affect the war’s outcome. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, for example, drew widespread condemnation – and sanctions were imposed on it as a penalty, affecting its ability to fight.
The security impact of propaganda is examined further in the following sub-sections:
· Leaders of a country being attacked can call for unity in the face of aggression, to stiffen people’s resistance (7.4.3.1). This diminishes the effectiveness of military force as a tool of coercion.
· Some forms of harm to civilians are classified as war crimes, which damage the reputation of the attackers and generate international pressure against them (7.4.3.2). Other countries might rally round to support the country being attacked.
· Attackers can intentionally commit war crimes to intimidate the population being attacked, in the hope of persuading it to surrender (7.4.3.3). This can have unintended side-effects.
As described earlier (6.3.7), Israel’s response to terror attacks by Hamas illustrated all of the above points. It was politically damaging and counterproductive.
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).