Is this the future of American Public Diplomacy? Of Counterinsurgency?
By Christopher Albon, January 3rd, 2008,
The United States has a problem. Despite overwhelming technological and military power, the US is rapidly losing the war of public perception. Matt Armstrong (aka MountainRunner) succinctly summarizes the situation in a 2007 Good Magazine article:
“Iraq has become a stage on which terrorists, insurgents, and Coalition forces compete for a global audience. YouTube, blogs, and all other forms of citizen media ensure that every GI Joe and Jihadi has at least a part in the theater of public opinion. The result is a new public diplomacy that insurgents understand, and the U.S. State Department doesn’t.”
Matt argues that the US is crippling its war for hearts and minds by building high security “Crusader castle” embassies in Baghdad and elsewhere. But just how can the United States fight an image war?
One idea is to copy Al-Qaeda’s PR strategy: use social networking sites, YouTube, and blogs. The problem with this strategy is that it plays to America’s weakness. Al-Qaeda’s decentralized, nimble network of members, supporters, followers, and fans is well suited to waging an information war on an online battlefield. The United States’ centralized structure, on the other hand,seems too slow and rigid to offer an effective PR battle. And, despite continuous cries for improvement, this situation does not appear to be changing any time soon. But what if there was a way to fight the war of public perception by exploiting US strengths.
Nobody can rival the United States in technological prowess and power projection capabilities. The ability of the United States to place military power anywhere in the globe separates it from all other states and certainly from Al-Qaeda. By applying these strengths, America moves the war of public perception to a new battlefield where it holds the high ground. The SkyFreighter (albeit theoretically) might be one way to do this.
The Sky Freighter, if the developer’s promises are to be believed (which is not that easy considering they misspell “freighter” on their homepage), offers a semi-rigid, amphibious, VTOL hybrid heavy lift aircraft capable of carrying 500 tons of cargo 6000 miles. In other words, it is a cross between a cargo ship and the Hindenburg.
Put into the right hands, these behemoth airship could fly American hospitals to the world’s medically underserved and through that mission, be American ambassadors. The US Navy already has a number of hospital ships used in humanitarian missions, however the ships are limited to working along coastlines or large port cites. SkyFreighter, however, has the ability to target specific communities regardless of their location. These craft allow the US to conduct public diplomacy campaigns almost anywhere, whether in the Somali bush or the Saudi desert. Poor, rural villagers will never be fully sheltered from Al-Qaeda’s PR. But, with a fleet of US hospital airships those same villagers would never forget that their free cleft-pallet surgery was conducted by an American Navy airship doctor. Al-Qaeda has little chance of competing against that.
Christopher is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses explores the relationship between armed conflict and public health. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Jen. Read more about him at his website.
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January 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Seems like if it had a “USA” logo on it, it’d be a giant slow-moving (explodable?) target. It kind of reminds me of something out of Starship Troopers.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Hurry for you Chris!! You found the misspell. Now we know you at least “looked” at our website. Chuckling.. We have been aware of the misspell for some time now and given our obvious “out of the box” mindset here, we find the comments derived by it somewhat amusing.
It is not amusing however to see a copyright infringement regarding the use of our renderings in that article, especially altering the side with the “US Navy Hospital Airship” livery. Had you asked permission, you might have been gladly given it. That said, I want to thank you for your insight insofar as it pertains to American Diplomacy. We at Millennium have been advocating such good will endeavors for years. Unfortunately, it has fallen on virtually deaf ears, even with such organizations as the United Nations, the Gates Foundation, etc. We believe it is because of same conventions that are expressed by Adrian. People think airships are flammable and will explode…Not so..lift in modern airships is derived from Helium. Helium is a totally inert gas that will actually put out a fire if exposed to it. The Hindenberg and her sister ship the Graf Zeppelin were using Hydrogen gas for lift, why??? Because our government refused to sell Nazi Germany helium for fear that they would use it for purposes other than airship operations. It is worth noting however the the Graf Zeppelin maintained scheduled air service between Germany and Argentina logging hundreds of thousands of miles carrying passengers and freight without incident.. before it was de-commissioned during WWII.
Adrian….
FYI…Modern airships do not explode. since the unfortunate Hindenberg incident, that would 62+ years? (and it didn’t explode either) not one passenger on an commercial airship has been seriously injured. I challenge you to find any other transportation system that can claim such a safety record. In fact, when the Hindenberg went down there were 85 or so people onboard. Of those, some 37 survived…If they had been in a 500 MPH aluminum tube, (Jetliner)I believe there would have been NO survivers. You do the math.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Modern airships don’t explode just like modern space craft don’t explode during launch. Err..
Accidents happen, so it’s a mistake to say “modern airships do not explode”.
The bigger problem, and this is what Adrian said in his comment, is that it would be a sitting duck target for anyone with a slingshot. It might be bad publicity in our minds for someone to shoot one down, but if they can run propaganda better than we can, who says anyone besides us will ever know it’s a hospital and not a warship, or the service comes with strings attached. Or if they shoot them all down before a single one lands, then we’re really screwed.
Personally though, I don’t see a need for this. We have medical equipment, we have planes, why not just fly them in? This seems unnecessary. And it almost does have a “Team America” feel to it, in that we drop in, do some health work, and then take off saying, “our work here is done.” It seems to me it would a better idea to just build permanent hospitals around the world rather then a fly-by chop-shop operation. First though, I think we need to provide better health care in America before we start to worry about everyone else’s cold.