The Media, Strategy, and Military Culture

* The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not those of the British Ministry of Defence or of any other institution. An early version of this paper was first given to the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group at All Souls College, Oxford in November 2002.

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Until recently, discussions of the relationship between the media, strategy and military culture appeared only briefly, or by inference, in mainstream Western military thought. The neglect of this relationship is remarkable given that it has featured prominently in the practice of war for over a century and a half.¹ Not until the early 1970s were studies of the interaction between the media, military strategy and the conduct of operations regarded as being worthwhile scholarly undertakings. Only comparatively recently has investigation turned towards the implications of the mass media on military culture, with scholarly interest focusing on how the armed forces of developed countries have responded to media intrusion.

The Media, Imagery and Military Force

The unprecedented media coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 highlighted the importance of the role of the news media in military strategy. The stated aim of the United States in its invasion of Iraq was that of ‘regime change’ through the removal of Saddam Hussein’s government. To that end, the United States identified an important part of Saddam’s power as being his formidable reputation for survival in Iraqi popular culture. As a result, iconic or emblematic structures of the regime such as Saddam’s palaces—and even murals and statues of him—were deliberately captured or destroyed as ‘regime targets’. The American use of embedded reporters inside coalition military units was seen as being an integral part of the attack on Saddam’s regime.

Embedding represents a recognition that technology had conferred on journalists the ability to transmit real-time reports from the battlefield in a manner that was increasingly independent of direct military control.² The electronic imagery of the destruction of the symbols of Saddam’s power culminated on 9 April 2003 with the symbolic toppling in Baghdad by Iraqis of a large statue of Saddam. President George W. Bush highlighted this particular incident in his victory speech on board USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May. The President proclaimed that, ‘in the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era... With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians’.³

The combination of force and imagery in the 2003 attack on Iraq highlights the obvious and close connection between modern military strategy and media policy. Yet the importance of the connection has not been significant in the writings of many prominent conventional military analysts. Observers often view the place of imagery in US strategy as portrayed in the media as a manifestation of the failings of ‘public diplomacy’. As the Wall Street Journal put it on 17 May 2004, ‘the scale of the war was based on the fundamental strategic misconception that the primary objective was Iraq rather than the imagination of the Arab World’. The leading American strategic commentator, Anthony H. Cordesman, also noted that the United States failed to project a persuasive public image to the Iraqi people.⁴ Moreover, the military analyst, Ralph Peters, has argued that the greatest impact of the information revolution has been to convey a negative image of the United States globally. The power of Hollywood, he argues, has made the global masses aware of their inequality and poverty while portraying a fictional United States saturated in wealth, ease and sexuality. In this way the United States becomes the object of hatred, envy and blame for all the failings of less fortunate countries.⁵

Problems in the Study of Military-Media Relations

Part of the problem is that the study of the interactions between the media and military culture is relatively recent, and is part of the new academic field in the West of cultural studies. As a result, the relationship between the news media and armed forces is not sufficiently acknowledged in current military thought. For instance the literature on the media and the military is relatively large, but remains highly compartmentalised in different academic disciplines.

Diverse academics writing about the media and the military often reach similar conclusions, but usually by different approaches and methodologies. This diversity in commentary and analysis has obscured the reality that, for at least a decade, the military–media relationship has been of sufficient importance to begin to constitute itself as a new branch of strategic studies.⁶ Yet, for many observers, the subject of ‘the media and strategy’ still lacks definition and profile and, as a result, has found no widespread acceptance within strategic studies.

One of the dilemmas encountered by scholars seeking to understand the new interaction between the military and the media is the reality that there is no such thing as ‘the military’, and no such thing as ‘the media’. Both the military and the media are marked by diversity, and the recent interaction between the two fields reflects such issues as globalisation, exceptionalism, cultural meaning and causality. Understanding the military–media interaction requires a working knowledge of a variety of different intellectual disciplines, ranging from military history through strategic theory to communications technology and cultural studies.

Military-Media Relations and the New Strategic Environment

The main reason for the new importance of the media in military thought can be attributed to the dramatic changes in the strategic environment during the post–Cold War decade between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 War against Terror. The post–Cold War era has brought into sharp relief the extent of the changes stemming from the impact of economic globalisation. In particular, some writers have questioned the place of the nation-state in a world of many more trans-state actors. One extreme argument that some military theorists have advanced is the belief that the state system is dying and that the world is entering a ‘New Middle Ages’ of growing and decentralised anarchy.⁷

In the 20th century industrialised warfare along the lines of the world wars required the mobilisation of the resources of the developed states of Europe. More recently, as Western economies move from industrial to post-industrial modes of production, there is an unwillingness to mobilise society and its economic resources. For example, in 1991 even the United States struggled to project industrialised warfare into the Persian Gulf region to fight a comparatively small war.⁸ In addition, since 1991 major Western states have faced the difficulty of having to engage in conflicts that do not appear to be wars in the traditional interstate sense. The overt declaration of war by President George W Bush in response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has served to highlight the controversy surrounding the extent to which recent US military operations are wartime rather than peacetime acts. Some leading British strategic commentators have, for example, disputed the idea that the 11 September attacks should qualify as an act of war in the traditional sense.⁹

Scholars such as Mary Kaldor and Mark Duffield have popularised the concept of ‘New Wars’ in the Third World and in regions such as Eastern Europe. Such wars are characterised by Western military concerns with humanitarian assistance as much as with the use of lethal force.¹⁰ The present British Government has, in its use of military force overseas, maintained that the promotion of fundamental human values should be part of foreign policy and the pursuit of the national interest.¹¹

Such military operations are often inherently paradoxical in that they threaten, or employ, organised lethal force in the name of humanitarian assistance. In consequence, even before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the role of Western public opinion both domestically and internationally in supporting such military operations had assumed much greater importance. Michael Ignatieff described the 1999 Kosovo conflict as a ‘virtual war’, and in an even more colourful coinage Colin McInnes characterised Western military involvement as ‘spectator-sport war’. Similarly, the radical theorist, Noam Chomsky, has written of the rise of ‘the new military humanism’.¹²

The Mass Media and Classical Military Thought

What has not yet been absorbed into military strategic thinking is the reality that media portrayal of such operations reflects much wider changes within civil society itself. What is emerging is greatly increased influence of the media in affecting strategic decision-making. The implications for the conduct of military operations under new conditions of media intrusion are considerable. The presentation of a military action has become indivisible from its conduct. Increasingly military force is being employed not simply to achieve a decisive result as in classical military theory, but in order to shape a resolution by political means.

In the past, the arrival of the armed forces and the creation of a war zone meant the suspension or subordination of ordinary civilian life. Today in contrast, military operations often take place within the organic structure of civil society, enveloping themselves around ordinary events. This change in operational character requires a corresponding change in military thinking and in the way in which military force is conceived.

In many respects, the use of the media to announce the deployment and arrival of Western military forces into a theatre has now replaced the traditional needs of operational security. It is startling to discover that the one statement by Clausewitz in On War on the subject of the media makes this very point. In On War, Clausewitz complains that strategic security has become non-existent because the newspapers now warn the enemy of an army’s despatch before it reaches its zone of operations.¹³

Wars of choice take place in the context of domestic politics that are shaped by the mass media, and this reality has produced some major changes in strategy. Given the overwhelming conventional power of the US armed forces, its enemies have sought to follow strategies that limit traditional military effectiveness. Thus Iraq first sought to prevent the start of the 1991 Gulf War. Then, when hostilities broke out, Iraq sought to dictate the war’s political agenda by firing Scud missiles at Israel—essentially a propaganda ploy.¹⁴ Since that time, attempts to influence international media representatives in war zones have become standard practice. For example in 1999, during the Kosovo war, while the United States and NATO fought an air power campaign, the enemy—Serbia—replied by employing the strongest weapon available to it, namely ‘media power’. By using the electronic media as a propaganda tool, Belgrade was successful in shaping the limitations on how the United States and its NATO allies were prepared to fight that war.

However, as with air power, the effects of the media in warfare are often difficult to assess. In the cases of both Iraq in 1991 and Yugoslavia in 1999, the use of the media did not bring the success that Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic had hoped for. Studies of Northern Ireland and the Middle East on the long-term effects of the media in framing the context of conflicts confirm that, once a particular side has been identified as a villain, only sustained propaganda effort over a long period of time can alter that perception.¹⁵

The Casualty Factor and Public Opinion

One aspect of warfare that is uniquely vulnerable to the influence of media intrusion is the belief that casualties in armed conflict (where the pursuit of state objectives is involved) are increasingly unacceptable to advanced democracies. The importance of this belief in current strategic thinking and the centrality of the media in reporting on casualties cannot be overstated. As General Wesley K. Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander—Europe (SACEUR), noted during preparations for the war in Kosovo in 1999, ‘Nothing would hurt us more with public opinion than headlines that screamed, nato loses ten airplanes in two days’.¹⁶ On available evidence, the casualty aversion hypothesis is not very convincing, but it can only be tested by the unpalatable method of engaging in military activity. A belief that there exists a high public sensitivity toward sustaining casualties in military operations has also been extended to include losses inflicted on the enemy. Indeed, bombing and targeting policies that produced little or no Western domestic reaction in Iraq in 1991 were highly controversial in Yugoslavia in 1999.

One notable factor following the 11 September attacks on the United States is an apparently increased American tolerance for casualties, as demonstrated by Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001 and the war in Iraq since 2003. Currently, there is a debate in strategic circles as to whether there exists a ‘threshold of violence’ that must be crossed in order to justify the employment of strong military action.

After 11 September 2001, there was an important shift in the United States towards a war mentality, or even a war culture. This development was assisted by the long-accepted—if tacit—understanding that, in a democracy at war, the relationship between the government and the national media is different from that which exists during peacetime. The official belief that the rules with regard to media management had changed after 11 September was symbolised by the creation of an Office of Strategic Influence in the Pentagon in February 2002. However, the new office proved to be short-lived since there was a hostile public and media reaction to an official government institution developing techniques that smacked of war propaganda.

Democratic governments in wars of survival, such as the two world wars, have successfully created propaganda instruments in order to shape public opinion. Such governments have also practised deception on national security grounds and have used clandestine organisations to that end. However, classical strategic theory on military–media relations has long stressed that the key to successful government–media relations is credibility. While information deliberately intended to deceive the enemy must be coordinated with information given to the press, the two should never be confused. What was significant after 11 September 2001 was the apparent assumption in the US administration that a propaganda organisation would be widely acceptable to both the media and public opinion.

Two major strategic conclusions can be drawn from the above events. The first conclusion is that the Western media’s frame of reference for the use of military force remains based on the experience of World War II. Indeed, the World War II framework has been identified as a significant factor in the Western response to the disintegration of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999.¹⁷ Even after more than half a century, the 1939–45 frame of reference continues to dominate public understanding of what is meant by a ‘war’ and to define the political and military behaviour that is acceptable in such a struggle.

The second major strategic conclusion is that the United States’ official response to its own media supports the depressing hypothesis that what began on 11 September 2001 was a form of total war. The two world wars were fought by entire nations and societies, and employed all the resources of 20th-century industrialisation. Similarly, the American response to the al-Qa’ida attacks since 2001 suggests the arrival of a global war of cultural survival—again involving entire populations, only this time the struggle embraces the early 21st-century’s post-industrial information societies.

The Revolution in Military Affairs, Military Culture and the Media

The behaviour of the media, and the reaction of military culture to that behaviour, provides further evidence of these strategic trends. The transformation of the military–media relationship from that of military control during the two world wars to that of the present day has been studied by scholars in terms of examining sociopolitical, institutional and technological changes. These approaches are compatible with the debate surrounding the changing character of war known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). If current changes to war are temporary, then strategy and military culture need not change and military establishments can continue to treat industrialised warfare as their main function. However, if the changes in warfare are fundamental and long term, then both strategy and military culture must change in order to meet new realities.

The strategic theorist, Colin S. Gray, has compared the debate over the RMA to the development of theories of nuclear deterrence and limited war in the 1950s. He has argued that the main contribution of theorists to such a debate is to explore and influence the meaning of transformation and change in their early stages. Once the practitioners of defence and warfare absorb a new paradigm of strategy and settle on particular definitions and doctrines, then their institutional and military cultures become highly resistant to further ideas.¹⁸ In the United States this process has largely been accomplished. The RMA is now perceived as essentially an argument for increased computerisation, electronics and space systems for use in military operations.

In a phrase popularised by the futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, there appears to be a close link between ‘the way we make war and the way we make wealth’.¹⁹ The RMA is a military version of the ‘e-business’ boom of the 1990s and is based on decisive military advantage being conferred by access to information. In the early 1900s the United States developed an ‘American way in war’ based on an interaction between military concepts and industrial methods that proved immensely successful during the 20th century. Similarly, at the beginning of the 21st century, the RMA debate is concerned with a search for a new conception for the use of military force according to new information concepts.

To date, the only country outside the United States to have fully embraced the RMA is Australia, which in 1997 adopted the ‘Knowledge Edge’ as one of the foundations of its defence policy. The official British position, as described in the 1998 Defence Review, is that the RMA debate is still continuing and that any fundamental restructuring of British armed forces or their doctrines is premature. This military approach has not been altered by the Review’s ‘New Chapter’ of 2002. Most other countries either lack the resources, or do not have the inclination, to try to adopt the RMA and its associated technologies.

An important facet of the RMA debate is the belief—probably first articulated by the Italian airpower theorist, Giulio Douhet, in the 1920s—that changes in technology dictate the character of warfare in any given era. This view is frequently accompanied by claims that the changes have been so radical that military history is either dead or has nothing to contribute to a new understanding of war. Yet the confinement of the idea of the RMA to changes in technology represents an impoverishment of strategic thinking. Historians and strategic theorists familiar with history have responded to the RMA’s technological bias (perhaps rather cruelly) by studying the RMA itself as being part of the history of ideas. RMA theorists sometimes clash sharply with orthodox Clausewitzians. The latter argue that the nature of war cannot change even if its methods may. An alternative term that is sometimes advanced by scholars is that of a ‘Military Technological Revolution’ (MTR)—a notion that derives from Soviet theoretical writings of the 1960s. An MTR may be described as an important but limited set of changes to warfare, rather than as the fundamental and permanent shift that is explicit in the idea of an RMA.

The contemporary military revolution debate may be further illuminated by the research that has been conducted into the development of communications technology in commerce and business practice. This research often stresses the social nature of communications technology.²⁰ In the history of technology the intertwining of social impact and military applicability is often evident. For instance, the military application of television followed long after the technology was introduced into civil society. Even more complex is the case of the Internet. Initially developed in the 1960s for military purposes, the Internet’s real impact was on society. The Internet returned to military importance in the 1980s and 1990s when evidence of its networking value had been demonstrated by civil society.

The Media and the Military: Incorporation, Manipulation and Courtship

Classical military and strategic thought has long been concerned with describing warfare chiefly in terms of the development of firepower and logistics. However, the development of post-industrial warfare can be conceived and described in terms of changes to communications and their impact on the development of such new military theories as effects-based operations. The relationship between the armed forces and the media is largely concerned with the power to control information both in an institutional and a physical sense. In his work on the postmodern military, the military sociologist, Charles C. Moskos, has proposed a simple three-phase model of modern, late modern and postmodern in order to explain changes in the history of the military profession and the military–media relationship. In the Moskos model of military professionalism, the ‘Modern’ era (defined as being the period 1900–45 but more accurately until about 1955), the media were ‘incorporated’ into the armed forces and into the war effort, both as institutions and as individuals.²¹ The main method used by democratic governments in the world wars was to control the sources of information, but to allow the media to present that information largely as they wished.

According to the second part of the Moskos model, in the wars of the ‘Late Modern’ era between 1945 and 1990, the media were no longer incorporated but were ‘manipulated’. Although media institutions were not formally placed under government or military control, various methods were used to influence their portrayal of a war, usually by mutual agreement. News organisations accepted military restrictions on their reporters in war zones in return for access to operations. One aspect of this era was the debate over the extent to which the methods of control used during the world wars could be applied to the media in an age of limited wars.

The third part of the Moskos model is the post-1990 or ‘postmodern’ era, in which the media are now ‘courted’ by military establishments that have increasingly adopted the methods of public relations gurus and of spin doctors. These changes exhibit all the characteristics of a true RMA. For example, the cultural and societal basis for traditional ‘incorporation’ of the media into a national war effort has been weakened, as evidenced by the US media’s response to 11 September. Many media institutions have become international in their scope, and news as a commodity has become globalised. As a result, there has been much less success in appealing to the patriotism of a reporter or a news organisation. In the past, the main advantage to the media of accepting ‘incorporation’ and ‘manipulation’ was that of access to the battlefield and to military communications, both for physical movement and for the transmission of information.

Today, the rapid changes in commercial communications technology have largely removed any need for special access to military communications in war zones or operational areas. Indeed, reporters in a 21st-century war zone may often possess better and faster means of communication than the armed forces. Unlike the era of the world wars, the reality of limited wars and the increased employment of military forces among civilian noncombatants has meant that the media retains access to the whole infrastructure of civil society.

Moreover, a growing realisation by modern militaries that public image and the presentation of events is now a primary rather than a secondary part of operational activity demonstrates how military culture has itself been influenced by the wider social and political currents of the mass media.

'Manufacturing Consent' and Spectator Wars

The adoption by defence establishments of many of the methods of corporate public relations as an integral part of the conduct of military operations has not gone unnoticed. For example, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky have developed a radical critique based on the idea of ‘manufacturing consent’.²² This radical critique has found further expression in the works of such British writers as Richard Keeble and the Australian journalists John Pilger and Phillip Knightley.²³ Indeed, if one considers the works of two other Australians, Peter R. Young and Peter Jessel, on this subject, it is possible to speak of a distinctively Australian school of strategic thought on media–military relations.²⁴

The radical critique of the military and its relationship with the media takes its inspiration from President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning in 1961 about ‘influence sought or unsought by the military–industrial complex’. The radical school has argued that the issue of generating popular support through the media is now a primary military objective. Simultaneously, various institutional changes to the news corporations have made the media particularly susceptible to co-option by the military. These institutional changes have included the decline of analytical reporting in favour of entertainment or ‘infotainment’, and the rise of multinational media corporations led by powerful moguls have made the news media willing partners in their own seduction. In the radical interpretation, McInnes’s ‘spectator sport wars’ involve the United States and other Western countries propagandising their own people through the media. The aim has been to manufacture an artificial level of support for a particular war through a tissue of lies that can only be exposed after hostilities have commenced.

A significant feature of the radical critique is the way in which the military move towards a new relationship with the media. The new approach is justified, and even praised, by political and military leaders on the basis of the need to inform the public and to win support for declared policies. At least one American analyst, A. Trevor Thrall, has argued that changes in military relations with the media since Vietnam are best explained as delayed responses to the growing institutional power of the media in relation to state authority.²⁵

Yet it is also possible to suggest a different explanation for the behaviour of the armed forces towards the media in the new strategic environment—and an explanation that is once more realistically related to military culture and its historical development.

It is no coincidence that the period of history that saw the emergence of mass politics and the mass media also saw the establishment of the idea of professionalism. In Europe a claim to professional status, including self-regulation and control over a special body of knowledge, arose and became widely acccepted in the 20th century.

Conclusion

In the first half of the 20th century, wartime propaganda and the control of the media were largely civilian-led activities. However, since 1945, discrete distinctions in war between civilian and military spheres have become increasingly blurred. Nuclear weapons, doctrines of military limitation, insurgency and terrorism, and the new strategic realities of globalisation have all accelerated this process. Thus, perhaps the most convincing explanation of present Western military behaviour towards the media is that, having recognised the growing importance of electronic news, the armed forces are now seeking professional competence in an area previously left to civilians.

The military’s approach has meant an intrusion into the wider politics and culture of society with which most uniformed professionals are traditionally unfamiliar. Yet both the strategic studies establishment and military organisations remain uncomfortable with the military–media relationship. Indeed, many defence analysts treat the new relationship as transient or exceptional rather than as a manifestation of a permanent new development.

Ultimately, the starting place for any realistic discussion of military involvement with the media should be the role of the armed forces in protecting the core values of society and the media’s place in those core values. If the role of the media is one of the most visible aspects constituting evidence of a genuine RMA, then considerable changes will be necessary in military culture in the future. Such change will have to encompass how the military now view their own place in society. However, the present status of Western military thought and practice suggests that achievement of this goal is still a long way off.

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Endnotes

1    The author gave a paper exploring this relationship, ‘The Media and the Art of War in the Western World 1792-1975’ to the XXIXth International Congress of Military History on ‘War, the Military and the Media from Gutenberg to Today’ in Bucharest, August 2003.

2    See Bryan Whitman, ‘The Birth of Embedding as Pentagon War Policy’, in Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson (eds), Embedded: the Media at War in Iraq, Lyons Press, Guilford, CT, 2003, pp. 203–8;

3    Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception, Robinson, London, 2003, pp. 1–7.

4    Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics and Military Lessons, Praeger, Westport, CT, 2003, pp. 508–15. See also Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales Jr, The Iraq War: A Military History, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003, which likewise has no discussion of the link between United States’ strategy and the role of the media in the war.

5    Ralph Peters, Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?, Stackpole, Mechanicsburg, PA, 1999, esp. pp. 2–10; for a similar conclusion reached from a very different political perspective see Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People Hate America?, Icon, Duxford, 2002. For a general discussion of the role of fictional depictions, particularly in feature film and television, in the cultural understanding of war see Susan L. Carruthers, The Media at War, Macmillan, London, 2000, pp. 244–67.

6    See in addition to other books cited in this paper: Tim Allen and Jean Seaton, The Media of Conflict, Zed Books, London, 1999; Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, Free Press, New York, 1991; Bernard I. Finel and Kristin M. Lord (eds), Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1998; Chris Hables Gray, Postmodern War, Routledge, London, 1997; Ingrid A. Lehmann, Peacekeeping and Public Information, Frank Cass, London, 1999; and Philip M. Taylor, Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media Since 1945, Routledge, London, 1997.

7    See for example Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999; Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, Random House, New York, 2000; and Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997.

8    See for example William G. (Gus) Pagonis, Moving Mountains, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1992.

9   See Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace and the Reinvention of War, Profile, London, 2002, esp. pp. 115–26; Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Third World War?’, Survival, no. 43, 2001, pp. 61–88.

10  See Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2001; Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, Zed Books, London, 2002.

11  See Richard Little and Mark Wickham-Jones (eds), New Labour’s Foreign Policy: A New Moral Crusade?, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000; and Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994.

12  Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War, Vintage, London, 2000; Colin McInnes, Spectator-Sport War: The West and Contemporary Conflict, Lynne Rienner, London, 2002; and Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo, Pluto, London, 1999.

13  Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Everyman, London, 1993, p. 248 (trans. Howard and Paret 1976, originally published as Vom Krieg, 1832).

14  See Philip M. Taylor, War and the Media: Power and Persuasion in the Gulf War, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992.

15  Gadi Wolfseld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997; and Daphna Barham, ‘Disenchantment’: The Guardian and Israel, Politico, London, 2004.

16  Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War, Public Affairs, New York, 2001, p. 183.

17  Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia, Allen Lane, London, 2001; and Kalus Schmider, ‘The Wehrmacht’s Yugoslav Quagmire: Myth or Reality?’, in Stephen Badsey and Paul Latawski (eds), Britain, NATO and the Lessons of the Balkan Conflicts1991–1999, Frank Cass, London, 2004, pp. 14–26.

18  Colin S Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, pp. 243–70.

19  See Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, Little, Brown, New York, 1994, passim.

20  See for example Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media, Polity, London, 2002; Mark D. Alleyne, International Power and International Communication, St Martin’s, New York, 1995; Debora L. Spar, Ruling the Waves, Harcourt, New York, 2001; and Brian Winston, Media Technology and Society, Routledge, London, 1998.

21  Charles C. Moskos, ‘Towards a Postmodern Military: The United States as a Paradigm’ in Charles C. Moskos, John Allen Williams and David R. Segal (eds), The Postmodern Military, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. 14–31; Elinor C. Sloan, The Revolution in Military Affairs, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2002.

22  Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon, New York, 1988.

23  Richard Keeble, Secret State, Silent Press, University of Luton Press, Luton, 1997.

24  John Pilger, ‘The Media War’ in David Miller (ed.), Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, Pluto, London, 2004, pp. 15–40; Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty, Prion, London, rev. edn 2000, with an introduction by John Pilger; Peter Young and Peter Jessel, The Media and the Military: From the Crimea to Desert Strike, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1997; and Peter R. Young (ed.), Defence and the Media in Time of Limited War, Frank Cass, London, 1992.

25  A. Tevor Thrall, War in the Media Age, Hampton Press, Creskill, NJ, 2000.