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We can see the centrality of Public Relations in the political realm
in the United States by considering public attitudes toward an institution
central to the maintenance of a global Empire: The U.S. military.
Vietnam and Iraq: "One Important Difference"
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published a
small but remarkably revealing article in March of 2007 comparing public
opinion in regard to what they call "the war in Iraq" to public
opinion in regard to the U.S. war in Vietnam.
In March 1966, only 26 percent of USAmericans "told a Gallup poll
that they thought sending U.S. troops to Vietnam was a mistake."
That number was up to 60 percent by 1973.
Pew notes that, as of March 2007, "public attitudes about the
war [in Iraq] have followed a similar downward trend." (I would
call it an upward trend, but put that aside for now.) Shortly after
the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, a Pew survey found only 22 percent
of USAmericans "calling the intervention a wrong decision."
By December 2005, that number had risen to 48 percent and "reached
54 percent in Pew's February 2007 poll."
Pew then notes "one important difference" between the Vietnam
era and the Iraq era. In the Vietnam era the "growing American
disillusionment with the war in Southeast Asia" was accompanied
by "a sharp decline in confidence in U.S. military leadership."
That hasn't been the case so far in the 21st Century.
In February 1966, 62 percent expressed a great deal of confidence in
"people running the military" but by March 1973 "that
number had fallen to 32 percent." And, Pew notes, that lack of
confidence in the military persisted "in the decades following
Vietnam," with "very favorable" attitudes toward the
military "ranging in the neighborhood of 20 percent in the late
1980s, jumping briefly to 60 percent in the aftermath of the short and
successful [sic] Persian Gulf War, and then retreating into the 20 percent-30
percent range until the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centers
in September 2001."
Despite the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war in the years since
the 2003 military occupation of Iraq began, "positive attitudes
toward the military, at least as a whole, have scarcely diminished."
In one May 2002 poll, "positive attitudes toward the military were
nearly universal," hovering around 93 percent. A Pew survey in
January 2007 "found those numbers virtually unchanged."
Gallup reported last month (July 22, 2010) that "The military
continues its long-standing run as the highest-rated U.S. institution,"
adding that "The military has been No. 1 in Gallup's annual Confidence
in Institutions list continuously since 1998..." 76 percent of
USAmericans last month told Gallup that they had "a great deal"
or "quite a lot" of confidence in the military.
What we see here is a failure of the "marketing"—including
the advertising and branding—of the war in Iraq, but an enduring
success of Public Relations in regard to the armed forces who are carrying
it out. This makes a huge difference in practical terms, as a look back
at the Cold War reveals.
Anti-Imperial Sentiment Was Heard
Historian Robert Buzzanco, writing in the Encyclopedia of American
Foreign Policy in 2002, remarked that "By the mid-1970s, the United
States seemed less prone to intervene in world affairs, a condition
derided as the ‘Vietnam syndrome' by conservative critics but hailed
as an anti-imperialist triumph by progressive and inter-nationalist
forces." I don't really agree that the U.S. government's ability
and desire to manage its Empire was ever seriously challenged during
the Cold War—as Buzzanco notes, "most Americans accepted the
new global role ushered in by the Cold War"—but I do think
that there was a period in the late 1950s into the 1970s where some
voices challenging the entire enterprise were at least allowed into
the public discussion.
Years before the U.S. escalated its involvement in Vietnam, black leaders
like W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Harry Haywood had been questioning
the entire imperial project. Buzzanco notes that such leaders argued
"that the United States had assumed the position of a white imperial
power suppressing the yearnings for freedom of nonwhite peoples, whether
in Indochina or below the Mason-Dixon Line."
Anti-imperial sentiment has never been a majority position at any point,
yet there was enough questioning of the Imperial Project in the air
by 1961 that it led outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower to very publicly
warn of "the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the
military-industrial complex." One of the effects of the Vietnam
War crashing into the living rooms of the general public was that "Many
Americans in the 1960s opposed U.S. intervention in a foreign war and
developed a larger anti-imperialist critique as a result of their challenge
to the conflict at hand." (Buzzanco again)
Historian Howard Zinn writes that "As early as 1970, according
to the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, ‘trust
in government' was low in every section of the population. And there
was a significant difference by class. Of professional people, 40 percent
had ‘low' political trust in the government; of unskilled blue-collar
workers, 66 percent had ‘low' trust." Activist Max Elbaum
points out that "A 1971 New York Times survey indicated that four
out of ten students—nearly 3 million people—thought that a
revolution was needed in the United States."
Radical sentiment at the time was sufficiently strong as to provoke
action in the legislative arena. In the wake of President Nixon's attacks
on Cambodia and Laos Congress enacted the War Powers Act in 1973 in
an attempt to restrict the power of the president to commit U.S. forces
abroad. 1975 marked a year of intense scrutiny of the illegal activities
and abuses of the intelligence community. Zinn reports that "The
great demands in the sixties for equality had transformed the federal
budget. In 1960 foreign affairs spending was 53.7 percent of the budget,
and social spending was 22.3 percent. By 1974 foreign affairs took 33
percent and social spending 31 percent."
Samuel Huntington, a Jimmy Carter advisor, worried about a "general
challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private."
One of the results of this "general challenge" was a growing
reluctance on the part of the public to support foreign military adventures.
Imperial planners came to refer to this reluctance using the epithet
"Vietnam Syndrome."
The Vietnam Syndrome
It's worthwhile noting, in the present context, the origin of the phrase
"Vietnam syndrome." While it's not clear who first uttered
the words, the phrase entered the public lexicon on August 18, 1980,
when presidential candidate Ronald Reagan told a Veterans of Foreign
Wars convention in Chicago that "For too long, we have lived with
the ‘Vietnam Syndrome.'" Reagan claimed that the existence
of this "syndrome," which (he claimed) said that the world
would be better off if the United States would only "stop interfering
and go home"—from Vietnam or wherever—was the result
of "the North Vietnamese aggressors" who "told us for
nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests."
Their "plan," said Reagan, was "to win in the field of
propaganda here in America what they could not win on the field of battle
in Vietnam." The job of the hour, according to the would-be President,
was to finally "recognize that ours was, in truth, a noble cause"
in Vietnam.
And how, exactly, would people be brought to see things in this way?
This was a job for Public Relations! And Ronald Reagan, former actor
and "great communicator," was ideally suited to the job.
From Reagan's evocation of a "city upon a hill" (recalling
John Kennedy's use of the same phrase), to George W. Bush's statement
that the United States is "the brightest beacon for freedom and
opportunity in the world," the Public Relations effort emanating
from the White House has been ongoing.
The success of this Public Relations is seen in the fact that the U.S.
public can increasingly reject the war in Iraq while maintaining an
ongoing positive attitude toward the institution that is executing it.
That is, while one particular "product"—the occupation
of Iraq—may be increasingly difficult to market, Public Relations
has maintained the good standing of the seller (the military-industrial
complex) at a high enough level that the next "new product"
the seller comes up with can be expected to sell regardless. One new
product—Afghanistan—is already being sold, with more products
potentially on the way: Iran, Yemen, Somalia, North Korea.
If the Imperial Public Relations effort is effective enough, perhaps
the U.S. public can be convinced to go so far as to "buy"
a new World War, even if it means the escalating the ongoing evisceration
of domestic infrastructure and social welfare policies here in the United
States.
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