The hidden grand narrative of western military policy: A linguistic analysis of American strategic communication

Abstract

War engages civilians in a very different way than is traditionally understood. The military-industrial complex has rooted itself permanently into the civilian world. In the US, recruiters have long operated in university campuses, the Pentagon has funded the entertainment industry for decades, and the current trend in most militaries is to advertise military careers that are less about war and more about individual expertise in civilian professions. The key place for military recruiting is shopping malls, where teenagers can play war games and enlist. Strategic communication has replaced information warfare. In a complex world, strategic communication exploits all possible media. As Art of War has been replaced by science, the representations of war and the role of the military have changed. Both war and military forces are now associated with binary roles: destruction and humanity, killing and liberating. The logic behind 'bombing for peace' is encoded in the Grand Military Narrative. This narrative is hidden in American (and NATO) strategies such as Effects Based Operations, which rely heavily on technology. As people aim to rationalize the world with technology, they fail to take into account the uncertainty it brings. In warfare, that uncertainty is verbalized as "friendly fire", "collateral damage" or simply as "accident". Success and failure are up to technology. Technology is no longer a tool, but an ideology and an actor that not only 'enables' the military to take action, but frees it of responsibility. This article analyzes American strategy discourse and the standard and trends of rhetoric they create. The article focuses on pinpointing some of the linguistic choices and discourses that define the so-called 'techno-speak', the product of modern techno-ideology. These discourses result in representations of techno-centered binary values, which steer military strategy and foreign policy.