THE RAINBOW IN THE DARK: ASSESSING A CENTURY OF BRITISH MILITARY INFORMATION OPERATIONS
THE RAINBOW IN THE DARK: ASSESSING A CENTURY OF BRITISH MILITARY INFORMATION OPERATIONS

Summary/Abstract: The West is again facing multiple threats spearheaded by hostile information activity. ISIL’s exploitation of social media has lured new recruits reaching straight into the bedrooms of our teenagers. Seemingly inexplicably, young intelligent minds have been radicalised through a perversion of their faith. A resurgent Russia has reinvented its ‘hybrid war’ doctrine of the Soviet Cold War-era, believing that it can only be secure when we are weak. Putin’s incursions into Ukraine and now Syria have required a vanguard of blatant untruths filtered through its expansive international news agencies RT and Sputnik. All the while our own performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has been questionable with our strategic communications (stratcom) never becoming as pre-eminent as they were in the World Wars. As will be shown in the following review of British military information operations, a recurrent pattern of under-resourcing, ad-hoc responses, and Whitehall battles of control have been a constant hindrance to effective stratcom, particularly through the Cold War period and despite the best efforts of those involved.

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