ABSTRACT
In this volume, we have selected the war in Afghanistan, more specifically, the political debate about that war in the participating countries of the west, as a multiple case study to highlight the importance of war narratives, understood here as “strategic narratives,” as explained in the Introduction. The war in Afghanistan offers an exceptionally rich case study, because it involved several countries, was sanctioned by the UN, and was carried out as a NATO-led security mission. Also, due to the protracted years of commitment and the complexities of the mission’s aim and context, public opinion support was tested to the brink and beyond. Hence, the book also offers a substantial contribution to the broader debate concerning public opinion and war. Next to testing and explaining variables of public consent, the goal was also to understand why and how strategic narratives matter. We consider strategic narratives in the words of Klarevas as “the essential domino in understanding why and when nations go to war.” These narratives bridge the gap between capabilities, resources, and public or political willpower. We did so not only to solve the conundrum of why “big nations lose small wars” – which has been answered many times before by pointing to the “asymmetry of political will” (Mack 1975) – but also to meticulously assess how asymmetry and flailing/ unsteady policy goals impact the course of action. The contributing authors have laid bare how the respective contributions, the degree of the participating nation’s caveats and restrictions, and the reluctance of some countries to send troops to volatile areas corresponded with the importance that governments – and their respective constituencies – attached to the war in Afghanistan. As the old adage goes, the less importance a nation attaches to achieving a political goal, the more reluctant political elites are to allocate the means to achieve that goal (von Clausewitz, in Howard and Paret 1976, 20). More often than not, the dulce et decorum est only survives in war poetry,1 rather than in war politics; and the promise of “glory” hardly serves to convince reluctant political or public audiences. In this conclusion we will try to summarize the insights garnered by the authors on how strategic narratives matter with respect to the course of war support and the actual course of combat. A strategic narrative is not to be equated with mere propaganda, information operations, or with “framing.” It is a narrative form of presenting policy goals, e.g., basic principles of government that guide decision-making, that aims to convince a specific audience. As Lawrence Freedman eloquently elaborated: “A strategic narrative does not seek to predict events but to convince others to act in such a way that the story will follow its desired course” (Freedman, Chapter 2 in this volume). In addition, we will offer a rubric of “argument types” pertaining to the purpose of this kind of mission and likewise, by applying the notion of elite responsiveness, highlight the broader context in which these sorts of
arguments have to be crafted. In doing so, we also tentatively suggest a few new directions for research. Jakobsen and Ringsmose in their chapter put forward six criteria for narrative coherence, explaining which qualities a narrative should possess in order to be effective. However, as the previous chapters have illustrated so well, strategic narratives do not operate in the field of imagination or on discursive planes alone. They will be confronted with brutal reality, and play out in the context of a given political system that dictates the room available for maneuvering. As Freedman has it: “A strategic narrative is a purposive and creative art form that allows for an issue to be framed in the light of prevailing circumstances” (Freedman, this volume, italics by the editors). These insights taken together prompt us here to reflect a bit more on the way strategic narratives operate in policy and politics. We will first of all address the nature and quality of the policy goals, as formulated in the strategic narrative. A strategic narrative is, in fact, strategy in a narrated form. The policy objectives being “told” provide the interpretive structure that gives the actions on the ground meaning and links them to the intended ends (Simpson 2012, 28; Smith 2005). Thus, if they want to convince the population of the necessity of engaging in a particular war, it is paramount that statesmen, generals, and strategists have a shared understanding of the narrative that they want to craft. In this final chapter, we will try to qualify the types of narratives generated in each country, and group them together in a matrix depicting ideal types of arguments when making the case for the use of force. Second, we will also focus on the importance of politics, here defined in line with Clausewitz as the intercourse of governments and their audiences. For Clausewitz, policy and politics are used interchangeably (Strachan 2006; Heuser 2010; Freedman 2013). For us, however, politics, as the exercise of governance within the coordinates of a given political system, differ from policy in the sense that policy deals not with strategy, or overarching goals and purposes, but with the daily business of putting principles into practice. Politics comprise the rules of the game; policy is about the end goals and objectives of that specific game. Distinguishing policy from politics in analyzing the effectiveness of strategic narratives has the advantage of explaining the intrinsic criteria of transforming principles (policy) into strategic “stories,” and of addressing the context (the politics and political system) that determines how these narratives are actually interpreted and received. Context determines, for example, any gaps between policy goals and the targeted audience. The wider the gap is between policy-makers and their constituencies, the more the former will have to work at crafting a compelling strategic narrative. Moreover, the nature of the political system dictates the impact that public opinion can have on its policy-makers. Authoritarian regimes, or even presidential democracies, need to worry less about convincing an intransigent or
reluctant audience than do multiparty, consensual democracies. Military culture, tradition, and historical experience, e.g., the cultural reservoir of a given political system, also informs the receptiveness and responsiveness of the audience. As Freedman put it, the narratives must “resonate with the historical and cultural understandings of their intended audience (‘narrative fidelity’)” (Fenton and Langley 2011; Shaw, Brown and Bromley 1998). In short, while designing strategic narratives, policymakers need to be aware of the political constraints within their polity as well as be well versed in strategic thinking and rhetorical clarity. The previous chapters have taught us much about the dependency of strategic narratives on content and context, enough to undertake an attempt to categorize these insights here below.
