Media

Vaughan Bell - The Observer

Social influence has traditionally been conceptualised as winning hearts and minds, but many military thinkers are now focused on a new approach informed by the behavioural sciences. A milestone in this approach has been the book Behavioural Conflict by Major General Andrew Mackay and Commander Steve Tatham, who co-ordinated influence-informed British military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book has become a core text for a new generation of officers and argues that changing behaviour – not beliefs or perceptions – is the key to military influence. This is an alternative to the propaganda or public relations model that says that getting the target audience to share your beliefs and understand key information is central, despite well-established research showing that beliefs and attitudes are relatively poor predictors of behaviour.............

Richard Bath, Scotland on Sunday

Behavioural Conflict is a blueprint for a new way to wage war, one based around the wielding of what Mackay and co-author Steve Tatham characterise as “influence”. This means that everything you do is designed to win over the civilian population rather than simply killing as many of the enemy as possible.

In an era of declining military spending, when the Western world moves away from expensive boots on the ground and surgical strikes, and towards working with domestic political movements and UN-led peace-keeping missions, the less-costly “soft power” first championed by Mackay, which measures success not in body bags but in friends won and peaces kept, is the new military zeitgeist. Or at least it is in America. The first e-mail of congratulation Mackay received came from the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan David Petraeus, while his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, contributed the foreword........

The ART of INFLUENCE

A BBC online Magazine article that explains how the Taliban were driven from a strategic Afghan town - as told by the man who led the battle, retired Major General Andrew Mackay.

The battle for Musa Qala placed the role of Influence at the centre of its operational design.

To find out how British, US and Afghan forces worked together in late 2007 the BBC website has an interactive presentation that details what they found when they made it into Musa Qala .

Some Reviews of Behavioural Conflict

Lieutenant General HR McMasters, US Army

Behavioural Conflict makes a compelling argument that influence must be an integral component of future military operations. In so doing, the book contributes signicantly to our understanding of contemporary armed conflict.  

Dr Neville Bolt. Teaching Fellow in the Department of War Studies, Kings College London

A change is long overdue – certainly in the world of military strategic communications. It has become axiomatic that information-rich message clusters be launched over horizons at (hostile) populations, both seen and unseen, in the hope of finding sympathetic targets and achieving behavioural change. Well, according to Andrew Mackay, Steve Tatham and their fellow contributors, it can no longer be a question of if but when we abandon this fallacy, and transform our own behaviour. What is called for, they plead, is a Copernican shift of perspective...

LCol Rita LePage, Canadian Armed Forces

Behavioural Conflict is written by two seasoned British military officers – Army Major General Andrew Mackay, who commanded 52 Brigade in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and Navy Commander Steve Tatham, PhD, CO of 15 PSYOPS Group. The book is based on their work in preparing 52 Brigade to deploy to Helmand province. While the authors discuss previous conflicts from the Balkans in the 1990s, through Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, and Gaza, to the Iraq war, it is 52 Brigade’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployment that provides the case study upon which the book revolves.

Professor Robert Hinde. St John's Cambridge

Analysing the nature of conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, largely on the basis of personal experience, the authors describe the use (or misuse) of communication. Messages and policies crafted in Whitehall often proved irrelevant on the ground. Communication is never simple. The message sent by the sender (S) may have a different meaning to the recipient (R) to that intended by S. Attempts by US soldiers to stop Iraqi youths throwing stones at them by distributing leaflets demanding that the children should stop did not work because the children interpreted the message as indicative of their own success. The success of a message depends not only on accurate transmission but also on what R expects, desires and does, and may be influenced by a larger communication system in which S and R are embedded.

Professor Eric Grove, The Navy News

The "population was the prize" but, as Mackay found the trouble was there was little or no source of advice from within the MOD on the social dynamics of the region so that the Brigade could apply "dynamic influence at the tactical level".  What little advice that was available from the Defence Academy (rather than from the MOD's relevant section which actually opposed such assistance being given) helped in the setting up of "Non Kinetic Effects Teams' which could respond to local factor at brigade, battalion and company level that allowed ordinary soldiers, "strategic corporals and privates" to act in ways that maximised influence over the population. Mackay then teamed up with a kindred spirit, Cdr Steve Tatham, a Naval officer with an impressive record, both in recent operations in Sierrra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan and distilling their lessons into the literature..."

Untallguy. Army Rumour Service Blog

General Sir Rupert Smith, Martin Bell, untallguy: what a lineup and not one you are going to see on a regular basis. We’re not on each other’s Christmas card lists nor do we play Sunday League football together. What we do have in common is a very high regard for Behavioural Conflict – if you think that you may be going on operations between now and, say, 2050, read this book. If you wish to become a better professional member of the Armed Forces, read this book. In short, read the book – now.

The authors, Major General Andrew Mackay and Commander Steve Tatham, have subtitled their book, Why Understanding People and Their Motivations Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict and this neatly encapsulates the main drive of the book: that Influence will be a key factor in future operations and that we, the British Armed Forces, do not do it well and that we need to do it better. Seeing what I see in my current appointment, I agree wholeheartedly with the authors...

small wars journal

“There is no more complete way to misunderstand a foreign civilization than to see it in terms of one's own civilization.” Paul Bahanan

This was quote in the Behavioural Conflict book, which is an outstanding book that I highly encourage SWJ members to read. It presents fresh ideas on the importance of understanding human behavior (especially in conflict zones), and subsequently more effectively influencing it. The quote GEN McCrystal was particularly relevant, “After 10 years in Afghanistan, the U.S. still lacks the knowledge to bring the conflict to a successful end. We didn’t have knowledge enough and we still don’t have knowledge enough.”

Hardly a new topic, but this book presents the information in a way that often challenges the prevailing wisdom and offers some common sense recommendations. An added bonus is the sources the authors cite, because they are also incredibly valuable for those who study conflict.