Military-Public Relations: A study of contemporary Information Warfare in Clausewitz Trinity

Abstract

Contemporary information warfare aims at weakening a state internally. Literature shows that such attacks are targeted at the relationships between and among the elements of Clausewitz’s Trinity i.e. government, military, and public. The study offers military and academic literature to contextualize the dimensions, attacks, and vulnerabilities of COGSEC (Cognitive Security) in the Online Information Environment The present study explores the public discourse on twitter to comprehend military-public relationship in Pakistan in the context of COGSEC (Cognitive Security), the hashtag under study was #PakArmy.  The study is a qualitative research and the researcher has carried out discourse analysis by using the Speech Act Theory of Searle (1979) and examined tweets into five categories: Assertive, Commissive, Declarative, Directive and Expressive. The researchers have also mapped vulnerabilities as proposed by Linan Huang and Quanyan Zhu (2023) i.e. Perception, Memory, Attention and Mental Operations.  In addition to this, the researchers have categorized the public discourse into favorable, unfavorable, and neutral in the context of military-public relationship of the Clausewitz’s Triangle. The data shows that perception is the most persistent vulnerability in the public discourses. Whereas, the data also poses that public discourse is also dominantly unfavorable towards the relationship-reflecting attacks on the relationship. Furthermore, expressive tweets were found to be in majority.  The study has recommended a three phased strategic framework to strengthen Military – Public Relationship. The advised framework poses that aggressors are trying to create a wedge between Military and Public, therefore, at the short term level SOCMINT should be used to encounter such activities. For mid and long term level, perception management as well as narrative warfare must be engaged.

Keywords: Cognitive Security, Military – Public Relations, Information Warfare, Online Information Environment, Public Discourse.