Political warfare is known as the use of political means and ways of making an opponent according to ones will under hostile intent. The use of the term political means the act of interaction between a government and a targeted audience in the aim of including a country’s government or military or its generation population. The government has to use different a variety of techniques that the opponent country cannot understand or in other words has a relatively less ability or strength to resist (Garnett, 2002). The nation may opt to use techniques like psychological operations (PSYOP) and propaganda. These two techniques adequately service the military and the national objectives. Psychological operation techniques are the processes used for strategic and intensely tactical military missions of which may be carried on the intension for harsh military and civilian populations.
When dealing with political warfare matters, it is of high importance for the aggressor to take into consideration the fact on how the targeted country will decode the message. A wrong or mistaken method of encoding the message which means the strategy or format of which they conduct the political warfare will lead to the uncalled in for feedback which might eventually lead emergence of war between the two countries. It is always important to use the right medium of communication that the country targeted will clearly understand clearly and fully. Another important thing to take caution about is use of the polysemy words or methods that have multi meanings.
The storage of information is conceptually a cognitive sub-processing of information through the general associative network. In relation to political warfare, once the information or rather the notification on the war by the aggressor nation has been received by the target nation and made understood, the nation keeps it on its right side and gives it the first class attention to prepare in case the aggressor attacks for them to be ready and waiting. This functions in the same way as the brain of which brain uses its nodes through which it uses them as sensors for storage of short-term and long-term memory and information can be easily retrieved.
Retrieval of the message is the third fundamental sub-process which makes it the function of the memory which is actually measured via the free recall. This is entailed fully one the process of the brains being able to recall the past happenings of the events or connecting to a familiar incident which has occurred at one time or the other. It torches on the deep side of the capacity of the brain to recall the past.
Political caption warfare’s nature of coerciveness leads to the destructive results on the opponent nation’s social, political and societal will which occurs as an impact of the force exerted by ones nation in one’s economical or national interest. In some cases, political warfare can compile of economic pressure which means being forced to have a type of political structure that one’s nation is not willing to have, subversion, and intensive diplomacy having in mind that its chief aspects are the exclusive use of images, words and ideas (Shin, 2006).
The construction, deployment, execution and continuation of the coercive methods occurs as a function of the nation’s statecraft and at the same time serve as a potential substitute for a wide range of direct military action. The methods and techniques which are used in execution of military war will depend on the target nation’s political composition and visions. By this, it means that the conduct differ relying on whether the country is authoritative, democratic or totalitarian.
The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) is explained to be an explanatory theory which takes it as an assumption that human beings have a limited capacity set for cognitive information processing due to the fact that it associates with mediated message variables. Adding to this fact, the viewers are always actively engaged mediated information processing which makes them quit similar to many mass communication theories.
In relation the to political warfare as a strategic problem, the LC4MP allocates resources to the process of information processing which leads to the controlled message being engaged and the initiation of a sub-process begins.
In the operation where one targets on conducting a political warfare, the main goal will be in the aim of achieving power and complete control over the targeted nation. This has been facilitated by discovery of the poor and incompetent leadership in the neighbouring country due to its corrupt and ill motived leaders. The aim of conducting this political war is to help stabilize this nation’s government and ensure it is fully restored to its former ways of operation that ensured fair treatments of all its citizens and its associates in general (Garnett, 2002).
After affirming the availability of the required resources for conducting the strategic problem, carrying a research on the available data and understanding this nations form and method of leadership would be most appropriate (Shin, 2006). This will give the aggressor a more assurance on what kind of hardship it will experience in the process of which highly helps ones nation in adverse preparation for the worst.
The methodology of how people allocate for the resources is quit applicable in this state. This highly helps the nation to understand the amount of resources available and gives a chance to allocate each resource to its applicable field for effective warfare process. Determination on what method of political warfare to use is quit an essential at this stage. One’s country might opt to use harsh or soft measures. For example, one’s nation might opt to use a peaceful political warfare which involves utilisation of all instruments that are short of war available to the nation for it to achieve its objectives or use an aggressive political warfare method; which includes aggressive activities that are conducted by one actor who offensively gain a degree of advantage over its victims.
For this type of operation, it is important for the nation to expect either seizure of its power or receive an open assimilation over the victim nation state into its political system. Under this type of relation between the aggressor and the victim, a few tactics are also available to the aggressor’s choice. They include, paramilitary activities, assassination, coup d’état, a guerrilla warfare, insurgency or civil war (Garnett, 2002).
References
Garnett, D. (2002). The secret history of PWE: The Political Warfare Executive. London: St Ermin's Press.
Pitney, J. J. (2000). The art of political warfare. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Shin, M., & Indiana University, B. (2006). Emotional message processing: A dual system approach. (Dissertation Abstracts International, 67-6.) Bloomington: Indiana University.
