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This book analyses the evolving Anglo-American counter-terror propaganda strategies that spanned the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as reconstruction, between 2001 and 2008. It offers insights into the transformation beyond this period, tracking many key developments as much as possible up to the time of writing (2013) and providing a retrospective on the 'war on terror'. Using empirical data located within multiple spheres, the book draws on sociology, political science and international relations, developing an interdisciplinary analysis of political communication in the international system. It shows how media technologies presented legal, structural and cultural problems for what were seen as rigid propaganda systems defined by their emergence in an old media system of sovereign states with stable target audiences. Propaganda successes and advances were an inconsistent by-product both of malfunction and of relationships, cultures and rivalries, both domestically and between the partners. The differing social relations of planners and propagandists to wider society create tensions within the 'machine', however leaders may want it to function. The book demonstrates that the 'messy' nature of bureaucracy and international systems as well as the increasingly fluid media environment are all important in shaping what actually happens. In a context of initial failures in formal coordination, the book stresses the importance of informal relationships to planners in the propaganda war. This situated Britain in an important yet precarious position within the Anglo-American propaganda effort, particularly in Iraq.
meant quite different things to each side. US planners considered that an atomic air campaign might have to be conducted in the teeth of a base country’s refusal to give consent; it would fetter US sovereignty to act otherwise. Equally, while a ‘blank cheque’ would best suit American purposes, no sovereign state could ever offer it. Yet as negotiations continued with further talks in which the British sought to discover the shape of the US strategic air plan, and the Americans to conceal it, such political realism was largely absent. Service-to-service discussions
British propaganda arguments that he would have regarded himself “proGerman” if he had not acted as he did’ (1939: 180). But it was still seen as a threat to US sovereignty to have foreign policy decisions taken in alliance with other states, and the US Congress rejected Wilson’s commitment to enter into the 1920 League of Nations (the predecessor to the UN). Early British propaganda bodies, including the Milner Group7 (a loose, though powerful network) stepped up efforts, targeting the media and intellectual debate (Quigley, 1981: 3–14). America began using the ‘Creel
out different interpretations of democracy. However, these different concepts of democracy do not form a paradox at the heart of US constitutional culture. Rather, they clash because they belong to different notions of sovereignty that are embedded in different discourses. In his historical re-examination of sovereignty, Hideaki Shinoda argues in the same vein by contrasting popular sovereignty with constitutional sovereignty. With regard to the emergence of US sovereignty in the eighteenth century, he draws the conclusion that ‘[t]hese two pillars of the United
point, although some critics assert that there may be complications in terms of international law (Mulligan, 2018). After Vietnam There were some early efforts to rein in the use of executive agreements. In the first half of the 1950s, the Bricker Amendment (which was inspired by conservative fears that US sovereignty was being eroded) sought to end executive agreements. It faced fierce opposition from President Eisenhower and, amid Cold War anxieties about a Soviet attack, was defeated. The
Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American relations during Reconstruction (Ithaca, 1969), 73; PFAGB, part 1, Seward to Adams, 11 December 1865. 45 PFAGB, part 1, Fanning to Seward, 11 November 1865; NARA, D/S, USD, 4, 4, T199, Declaration of Captain Fanning, 21 November 1865; ibid., 6, 6, T199, First series, John D. Garde, Crown Solicitor Longford and Cavan to West, 25 November. Whelan_04_Ch4.indd 166 17/06/2010 10:06 American foreign policy and Irish nationalism,1865–70 167 went to the core of US sovereignty. West was able to tell Adams that he had already secured