Contemporary wars are largely wars of influence and they will not necessarily be won by those with the most information or the most accurate data. They will be won by those effectively tell the meaning of the information and what difference it makes for the audience.

Understanding and harnessing the persuasive powers of narrative is central to U.S. and international counter-terrorism efforts. There is an urgent need to understand the narrative tactics of terrorist recruitment and an equal if not greater need to destabilize and exploit the weaknesses of those narratives. Maan makes a connection, unique to terrorism studies, between the mechanisms of colonizing narratives and psychological warfare aimed at the recruit. The power of both relies on misidentification, both types of narratives encourage individuals to take actions contrary to their best interests, and both are insidious: they are continued internally without the implementation of external physical force. While these narrative strategies have been powerful, Maan makes the argument, also unique to terrorism studies, that certain types of compositional structures lend themselves to manipulation and the weakness of those structures can be exploited from a security standpoint.

This book is literally, a first of a kind and ground-breaking in its intent. The intent of this book is to give national security professionals and other interested parties a baseline understanding of narrative and its principles regarding the potential for predictably triggering behavior. If we are to succeed on the battlefield of influence, understanding narrative is an imperative. This introductory study guide describes methods, from strategic to tactical, to win Narrative Warfare. We begin by defining narrative and its four components. We move to a description of offensive and defensive narratives and then provide details about the specific type of Narrative Identity Analysis of the target audience that will be necessary in order to put together a comprehensive Narrative Strategy. We demonstrate how to trigger identities and frame events in order to completely dominate in Narrative Warfare. For a more complete understanding of influence in general and a more well-rounded understanding of narratives' role in influence, it is highly recommended to add Narrative Warfare, Dr. Ajit Maan, 2018 and Information Warfare, the Lost Tradecraft, Dr. Howard Gambrill Clark, 2018 to your library. Both are Narrative Strategies publications.

On January 28 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London published one of the memos with an article headlined 'Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising'. The effect of the revelation was immediate, helping set in motion an aggressive counter-narrative to the nascent story of the Arab Spring. The article featured a cluster of virulent commentators all pushing the same story: the CIA, George Soros and Hillary Clinton were attempting to take over Egypt. Many of these commentators were trolls, some of whom reappeared in 2016 to help elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisings and how individuals on the ground, on air and online worked to shape history.

Narrative directly impacts the threat environment whether in a physical conflict zone, or in terms of the effects of radicalization, or the interference of foreign governments in domestic politics. Therefore dominating the narrative space should be a priority. That is where non-state actors fight best. That is where foreign governments have proven effective in waging war against us without getting dirty hands. That is precisely where our enemies dominate, and no amount of firepower will create a win in that space. The center of gravity in any conflict is the narrative space. It always has been. But in the past we have mis-identified parts for the whole; just as terrorism is only one aspect of psychological warfare, so too psychological warfare is only one aspect of Narrative Warfare. Narrative Identity Theory is the basis of Narrative Warfare. Psychological, Information, Influence, and Stability Operations, are all aspects of Narrative Warfare. They fall under its domain. The most effective weapons in warfare have always been the ones that target the cognitive space because they are the most enduring. Kautilya in India in the 4th century BC refers to the psychologically based tactics and strategies of those before him, suggesting that the strategies may have been employed as early as 650 BC. Hits in the cognitive space were prescribed by Sun Tzu, practiced by Genghis Khan's armies, employed by Xerxes, the Persian General 2,500 years ago, by Hannibal more than 200 years before the birth of Christ. Native American tribes understood that their blood-curdling screams terrorized their enemies, thereby reducing their will to fight before the fight began. But hits in the cognitive space do more than produce a win before the bullets fly. It is a mistake to assume that narrative is only a non-kinetic strategy that belongs in the soft power toolbox. Narrative underlies any conflict, even the most kinetically oriented.

In this collected volume fourteen experts in the fields of Classics and Ancient History study the textual strategies used by Herodotus and Livy when recounting the disastrous battles at Thermopylae and Cannae. Literary, linguistic and historical approaches are used (often in combination) in order to enhance and enrich the interpretation of the accounts, which for obvious reasons confronted the authors with a special challenge. Chapters drawing a comparison with other battle narratives and with other genres help to establish genre-specific elements in ancient historiography, and draw attention to the particular techniques employed by Herodotus and Livy in their war narratives.

This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, strategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems. This book will be of much interest to students of international intervention, foreign policy, political communication, international security, strategic studies and IR in general.