Why, after thousands of years, do we still read Plato's dialogues? And why, once another "strategic communication" report appears, practically no one pays attention to it?
Because, I would say, Socrates sees communication as an intellectual -- and emotional -- voyage that defines us as human beings searching for truth and pleasure, whereas SC sees communication as yet another, essentially short-term, tool for Victory over the Enemy.
And, closer to our own time than Socrates, consider the Jazz Ambassadors funded by the State Department to perform the world over during the Cold War, perhaps the best among the many public diplomacy programs of that epoch.
When Louis Armstrong did his thing overseas, he was playing his music, improvising as he wished, not communicating "strategically."
No wonder audiences abroad admired -- yes, loved -- him. Being the least propagandistic, the least mapped-out and predictable kind of public diplomacy, Armstrong's music indeed was public diplomacy -- or, if you wish to call it so -- propaganda at its best.
(Of course, Plato, who wanted to exile poets from his ideal Republic, would probably not have approved of jazz. But Plato was not Socrates, although Plato longed to be like like Socrates in order to be what he -- Plato -- was not, in his worst moods: a doctrinaire).
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Admiral Michael G. Mullen,
by the way, has it right about SC:It is time for us to take a harder look at 'strategic communication.' Frankly, I don't care for the term. It is now sadly something of a cottage industry.
In a world with so many problems, far too many words are wasted discussing an inside-the-beltway-cottage-industry subject, that, at most, is secondary *.
Let's by all means talk about America's role in the world -- a key question of our new century -- but do we really need one more committee-produced report about ideologically massaging (barbecuing may be a less polite but more accurate way to put it) foreign brains and hearts for the ultimate American "Victory"?
Essentially, we Americans, as we are seen by others other than ourselves -- are what we do and how we -- including American diplomats and military personnel overseas -- behave and listen & speak with others, not necessarily what staffers at the Pentagon (or the State Department) "strategically" plan in order to obtain Congressional funding for their organization.
DoD SC and psy-ops experts should revisit Socrates' wisdom in Plato's dialogues. Then maybe their reports would be more widely read (well, maybe it's just as well they're not).
Incidentally, Richard Crossman, recognized as a master of psychological warfare against the Nazis during World War II, was the author of Plato Today (1937).
*One notable exception to this jaw-breaking verbiage is "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication" (2004), which was actually written, for the most part, in complete sentences and comprehensible English.
P.S. Exchange with a valued friend, a scholar of the classics: "I've read only two of the dialogues all the way through in Greek - the Apologia and Gorgias. There are still plenty of them that I have
never looked at in any language. Plato didn't like democracy. After all, it was a democracy that
condemned and executed Socrates. I guess that doesn't necessarily make him a fascist, does it?"
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