"Persuasion Beyond Logic: The Importance of Rhetorical Training for Military Officers"

About the Author

Megan McIntyre is a PhD student at the University of South Florida where she works as Mentoring Coordinator for the University's First Year Composition program. Her research interests include writing pedagogy and practice as well as the intersections of rhetoric, writing, ethics, and politics.

Contents

Introduction

Donald Rumsfeld and Operation Iraqi Freedom

Winning Hearts & Minds: The Way Forward in Afghanistan

Rhetorical Training & Effective Intercultural Communication

An Overview of Rhetorical Training

Conclusion

Works Cited

 Winning Hearts and Minds: the Way Forward in Afghanistan

If the aftermath of the generals’ inability to persuade Rumsfeld and his aides isn’t enough of a reason to offer officers some formal rhetorical training, the importance of discourse, communication, and persuasion to the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan should offer a strong incentive to provide strategic rhetorical training. In late September 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, Commander, US Forces Afghanistan, reminded Americans that winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan was the key to a successful exit strategy: “What I'm really telling people is the greatest risk we can accept is to lose the support of the people here,” he told 60 Minutes interviewer David Martin. General David Petraeus, who succeed General McChrystal in Afghanistan, has often echoed those sentiments.  In an interview with CNN's Kristi Keck, Andrew Krepinevich, Pentagon adviser and president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, suggested that General Petraeus’ goal has always been to win the trust of the Afghan people: “What Petraeus is emphasizing a bit more than McChrystal is winning hearts: Can you convince the population that you’re the side that should remain victorious?” (Keck). In conflict, according to Andrew Birtle, whether COIN or traditional industrial war, “military means must be subordinated to political ends, and that political and persuasive arts play a vital role in waging and resolving internal conflicts” (Birtle 52). Above all else, the lessons learned in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2001 confrontation of the Taliban in Afghanistan suggest that, when specific political ends are ignored in favor of military means, a conflict can quickly turn from “shock and awe” to unmitigated disaster.

Indeed, The Counterinsurgency Field Manual, compiled under General Petraeus, has much to say on the role of discourse and persuasion in the execution of a COIN strategy. The June 2006 version of the Field Manual notes that a “protracted …war,” like the one in Afghanistan, “is best countered by winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of  the populace and separating the leaders, cadre, and combatants from the mass base through information operations, civil-military operations… and political action” (chapter 3, section 89). In fact, the Field Manual lays out at least two ways in which persuasion and rhetorical action are invaluable in pursuing a COIN strategy.  Rhetorical awareness (understanding one’s audience, building ethos, appealing to emotional connections, offering logical support for an argument, and creating an ethically responsible relationship with other interlocutors) is crucial in building “trusted networks,” which “is the true meaning of the phrase ‘hearts and minds’” (appendix A, section 26). Winning hearts involves “persuading people their best interests are served by the COIN’s success,” while winning minds “means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless” (appendix A, section 26). The attention here is not to strategic action but rather to strategic communication. The basis of a successful counterinsurgency is not necessarily tactical military action but intentional persuasion, which, if successful, builds networks capable of “displac[ing] enemy networks, forcing enemies into the open. That lets the force seize the initiative and destroy them” (appendix A, section 26). These trusted networks built through discursive rather than military action are key in an irregular conflict, in which it becomes increasingly difficult to tell allies from enemies.

The 2007 Field Manual further suggests that discourse, which it defines as “rigorous and structured critical discussion” at all levels of interaction, is necessary to build these trusted networks (chapter 4, section 9). There must be “dialogue among the commander, principal planners, members of the interagency team, and host-nation (HN) representatives” because such a dialogue ensures that all stakeholders will be committed to the strategy devised (chapter 4, section 6). The object of such discourse “is to achieve a level of situational understanding at which the approach to the solution of the problem becomes clear” (chapter 4, section 6). This stage of implementation requires an acute awareness of the audience’s needs and fears as well as a focus on “rationalizing the problem rather than explicitly developing courses of action” (chapter 4, section 6). Successful COIN leaders will, according to the Field Manual, recognize that it is imperative for them to “engage in discourse, and most importantly, listen, in order to get a true sense of the complex situation in their AO” (chapter 7, section 11). Complexity that delays necessary action, the authors of the Field Manual argue, can best be addressed through discursive action.

The consequences of ignoring the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan are obviously dire. The U.S.’s false sense of security in the containment of the Taliban after the initial invasion in 2001 arguably, according to Owais Tohid’s 2003 analysis for the Christian Science Monitor, contributed to the sharp, unexpected increase in violence between 2003 and 2005 (Tohid). A failure to recognize the important role of ethical and persuasive communication amongst the interested parties in addressing this complexity could be equally disastrous, though. In fact, it was the recognition of the importance of persuasion in COIN strategy that lead Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in late 2007, to task General Petraeus with choosing the next generation of military leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell’s interview with Time’s Mark Thompson, it was because of  “Petraeus' ‘progressive’ counterinsurgency skills, which rely on persuasion and security as much as on coercion and combat” that the Secretary thought him best suited to choosing and training the next generation of generals (Thompson).