Roadmap to Moderate Network Building - Part 2: Lessons of the Cold War

Previous article - Part 1: An Introduction to RAND Corporation

Post World War II, the US realized that the Soviets were more supreme in power and numbers. A 'hot' war between US and the Soviets was a sure defeat. Thus, they resorted to a 'cold' war; a war of reconnaisance and propagandas; a safer, less obvious way of obtaining dominance. The Cold War was a battle of ideologies between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States of America. The war was less of guns and bombs and more of ideological influence and networking-efforts.  It was a war of Soviet Union’s communistic ideologies against US’ democratic beliefs. 

It was in this war that many reconnaissance technologies were developed. Classified satelites were launched by the US' National Reconnaissance Office during this era. The famous Lockheed Blackbird (known as Jetfire in Transformers) was also used in this war. It carried no missiles or bombs, rather it was specifically designed for reconnaissance purposes. Although the Cold War was in the most part, a battle of ideologies, there were some periods of 'hot' engagement. Examples of such engagements are the U-2 Incident, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Major parts of the Western Europe were dominated by communist ideologies. These parts formed the Iron Curtain; an ideological barrier that separated the communist world from the rest of the world. The Soviet Union strategically managed to maintain allegiance from these countries through a grassroots method of maintaining influence through labor unions, youth and student organizations, and journalists’ associations. This grassroots strategy managed to give Soviet Union an effective span of control across important sectors of society. The Soviets knew that without a balance of support in the society, a revolt would result in the downfall of the Communist era. Thus, The Soviets took control of mass media and made use of existing civil societies in Western Europe.

In order to infuse democratic influence into the Iron Curtain, the US discovered that they have to make use of the existing few liberation movements that were against communist ideologies. They decided that leveraging anti-communist ideologies were vital. They realized that for the US to openly promote ideas of liberal democracy on its own, it would not be an effective strategy. Then, the US decided that US containment policies should encourage the creation of parallel democratic institutions as a counter measure to the communist domination in the society. In essence, the existing anti-communist associations in the Iron Curtain needs to be supported by a coalition / network of parallel democratic institutions across the globe as a grand strategy of ideological influence.

Three main challenges were faced by the USA during the Cold War:

1. Deciding to take an offensive or defensive strategy. An offensive strategy includes openly aiding groups that were actively engaged in overthrowing current communist government. A defensive strategy takes a more covert approach by building a network of global democracy-promoting institutions (also known as a civil society) which simultaneously includes anti-communist organizations in Western Europe. They eventually decided to take a more subtle, defensive approach.
2. Maintaining the credibility of civil societies in the eyes of locals. The US realized that in order to gain credibility for the civil societies, it is vital to select local prominent individuals of influence in the respective countries, and it is best for the civil societies to maintain distance with the US in order to avoid any initial perceptual biases of citizens toward civil societies. 
3. There was widespread recognition that the US is engaged in an ideological conflict. It was well known that the US were engaging in promoting democracy. Thus, any direct link of organizations with the US would be recognized as an immediate threat by the Soviets. The US decided that as long as the institutions/individuals of influence adhere to basic principles of American liberal democracy, any individual could be part of the coalition. RAND mentioned that,“disagreement with US policy was allowed – and even encouraged – because it helped to establish the credibility and independence of supported organizations”.

RAND concluded that the background of the war of ideologies between communism and liberal democracy is similar to today’s war against Islamism. It is “both a battle of arms and a battle of ideas”, in which ultimate victory can be achieved “when 'extremist' ideologies are discredited in the eyes of their host populations and tacit supporters”.  The table below summarizes a comparison between the demographics of the Cold War and current Middle East.

Next article -Part 3: Defining Contemporary Islam