Info And Influence By SilversJacobson Crisis Management

PR's Place in Modern Warfare

2/27/2022

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing his nation by mobile phone.

by Paul Jacobson, Partner

Armchair and scholarly historians generally agree that the American Civil War was the first modern war. It was fought with the products and technologies of the industrial revolution. The astronomical rise in casualties compared to previous conflicts was the tragic by-product.

The telegraph, railroads, ironclad war ships, submarines, repeating rifles, gatling guns, aerial observation and photographic documentation were all Civil War “firsts”.

Now we’ve hit another watershed in the history of warfare. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is arguably the first modern digital war.

Real-time satellite imagery and its rapid worldwide distribution denied Russian President Vladimir Putin the ability to secretly assemble his attack force.
The world saw the poised tanks, troop transports and field hospitals on its phones. The result was organizations like NATO, the European Union, the Munich Security Conference and the United Nations confronted and acted on the looming war weeks before it began.
Knowing it would quickly travel the globe on mainstream and social media, the United States adroitly disclosed intelligence findings to embarrass Russia and unite much of the world in opposition to Putin’s dangerous actions.
Russia’s absurd justifications for the attack were instantly discredited and turned into laughing stocks.
For perhaps the first time, cyber warfare played a key role. Ukrainian government web sites went down days prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The activist hacking group Anonymous crippled Russian government sites including the Kremlin, State Duma and Ministry of Defense.

Viral video images of patriotic Ukrainians huddled in subways singing their national anthem, middle-aged civilians taking up arms and other examples of selfless courage ignited sympathetic demonstrations and political support in world capitals.

With 100,000 people demonstrating for Ukraine in Berlin, Germany reversed its restriction against providing lethal weapons to conflict zones and raised its GDP military spending commitment to the cold war level of more than two percent.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet, a front-line journalist veteran of many conflicts, said that in this conflict the information war is arguably of equal significance to the actual battles.

Facebook and Twitter were major conduits for Ukrainian government official information and calls to arms for its citizen soldiers. The Ukrainian foreign minister held a news conference – on Facebook.

Nowhere was this change more evident than the inspired use of video and social media by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, an actor and comedian by trade who knows the value of frequent, inspirational communications. He used mainstream video to steel his country for war and mobile phone video, Telegram, Twitter and Facebook to inspire his countrymen and ask for international support.

In the future, military and civilian communication officials will likely lead or help plan the important function communications now provides in a battle plan alongside troop deployments and supply lines.

The Ukraine invasion, tragic as it is, marks a historic milestone in the field of digital communication. As the American Civil War was first to bring the industrial revolution into play, the war in Ukraine is the first to fully employ the inventions of the digital age. Military planning, warfare execution and the responsibility communications plays in both, will never be the same.

2 Comments

Skip Koebbeman

3/8/2022 04:23:37 pm

Thanks for sending this, Jake.

3/8/2022 04:31:31 pm

Oops - I guess I tripped the "send" button. I liked your summation. All those Civil war armaments formed a base that got continually upgraded over time. On bullet #3, I might have changed "dangerous" to "hostile", but that's just my take. Very concise writing - thanks for sending.

PR's Place in Modern Warfare

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