What to Know Before You Go

Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D

The attached paper is the pre-conference discussion draft that will be presented at the Stability Operations & State-Building: Continuities & Contingencies Conference at Austin Peay State University on February 13-15th, 2008. The editors of the Small Wars Journal have graciously agree to post it so that people will have an opportunity to read it before the conference.

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that warfare and “peace building” are forms of communicative action in Habermas’ sense of the term. Drawing on Canadian Communications Theory, Symbolic Anthropology and the work of Bronislaw Malinowski, this paper examines three main areas of military operations in terms of communicative action — communication about global policy, communication in the operational environment, and communication in terms of narrative-mythic structures — and uses them to pose specific operational questions.