Science of Coercion, reviewed by Brian Martin

Before I read this book, I would have thought that psychological warfare was basically strong propaganda. No longer. This was the idea promoted by early US academic researchers into mass communication. Much of their work was funded by and carried out for the US military. The military had its own definition of psychological warfare.

A 1948 US Army document stated that: “Psychological warfare employs any weapon to influence the mind of the enemy. The weapons are psychological only in the effect they produce and not because of the nature of the weapons themselves. In this light, overt (white), covert (black) and gray propaganda; subversion; sabotage; special operations; guerrilla warfare; espionage; political, cultural, economic, and racial pressures are all effective weapons” (emphasis in original). So-called “special operations” include activities behind enemy lines including sabotage and assassination.
— Read on documents.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/94BRgl2.html