Psychological Warfare

With most military planning, it is feasible to work from the top down, define the strategic objective and then work out the actual requirements of the operation in advance. This is not true of psychological warfare.39 The objectives may be defined, and in the process of definition the general needs of a propaganda agency may be clarified. If a plan calls for a press or a radio, somebody can requisition a Davidson Press or a Hallicrafter radio and get ready to use it. But the plan cannot define goals, set time limits for the achievement of the goals, relate the goals to one another in a scheduled pre-fixed program of success, establish terms whereby psychological victory can be told from psychological defeat.

Psychological victory exists only in terms of the military victory which it is designed to assist. Psychological defeat, no matter how much critics or the enemy propagandist may allege it, can be proved to exist only when an actual defeat makes it real. Psychological plans are always contingency plans for the assistance of military operations. They are dependent on the military operation and they cannot be checked against fact except in terms of the military operations they ostensibly support.