How Can Political Campaign Strategy be Adopted to Support Information Operations in a Counterinsurgency Campaign

摘要

As Karl von Clausewitz noted, war is a continuation of political activity by other means and counterinsurgency provides one of the best examples of how this is true. The contest for support of a population is a contest not about the people but for their allegiance. U.S. political campaign theory developed over many decades of local, regional and national elections is about influencing the population to support one side or another. Political campaign strategy can provide a valuable and appropriate mindset for all COIN forces in addition to numerous useful practices to benefit the informational campaign within counterinsurgency because it also targets the population's allegiance in the same manner. This paper will present a framework based on political campaigns theory for both the Joint Task Force Commander down to the lowest tactical members of the COIN forces to take the offensive in the message war within counterinsurgency. It will also present a few of the many common political campaign practices such as benchmark polls, focus groups, development of messages and political campaign targeting and demonstrate how they can serve the counterinsurgency effort. Finally the paper makes recommendations in its conclusion on how the counterinsurgency forces could implement this model throughout the force.