Varying definitions of PsyWar are adopted by official agencies from time to time. The current (1953) Joint Chiefs of Staff definition runs as follows:
"Psychological warfare comprises the planned use of propaganda and related informational measures designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of enemy or other foreign groups in such a way as to support the accomplishment of national policies and aims, or a military mission."
This definition differs from the one given in Chapter 3 in the following important respects: it stresses the planned character of PsyWar; it restricts the pertinent measures to those of an informational character; and it makes clear the operational goals. It is not clear why it is necessary to stress the element of planning of PsyWar as distinguished from other sorts of war, unless it is a homily to the PsyWar operator to keep his functions in line with those of other national activities. The question of restriction to informational character is more serious; it excludes the interpretation that in essence, psychological warfare depends upon warfare psychologically waged. Thus, substantive operations of a noninformational character, adopted and executed primarily for their psychological effect, could properly be called PsyWar. Finally, the specification of goals is chiefly important for the control of the function, and can largely be taken for granted. Therefore, to preserve an inclusive view of the function which will comprise the range of variation in official definitions—including those of one's enemies—the author stands by the definition stated in 1946.
Limitations of the American Originators.
A republic cannot impose a purpose upon mankind.
A democracy cannot enounce a policy and then stick to it for years and decades.
Americans are not Messiahs. The limitations of American civilization over and above our specific political institutions are such as to make it impossible for Americans to lead a fanatical counter-crusade against Communism, or to guarantee to the human race at large that Americans of 1955 promise that Americans of 1975 will perform this or that specific action.[54]
American propaganda is always limited precisely because it is American. Even in an age of atomic weapons, to be American means, to some degree at least, to be free. The people of this country, or at the very least an awful lot of them, do have something to do with operating the government. A new election and a hostile House of Representatives can cut off the funds for any project no matter what its merits may be in the eyes of the top-secret planners. The outside world knows this even if Washington politicians and bureaucrats sometimes forget. One can even contradict the title of Archibald MacLeish's famous poem, America Was Promises, and state categorically that in the propaganda field, America certainly is not promises. The promise of a tsar or a dictator is usually good for his lifetime, whereas the promise of the United States is good only within the letter of the law—a specific treaty, a definite commercial agreement, a very sharp and very narrow commitment.
There is an American strength in international affairs. This strength does not lie in a propaganda capacity to promise, to threaten, or to commit the United States Government to future courses of action. It lies, rather, in the immense probabilities of American life, in the virtual certainty that the American people will react in such and such a fashion to a new aggression, that the American people will (if attacked) in all probability destroy their attackers, whoever those attackers may be, and that the American people, despite their occasional shortcomings in matters of racial tolerance, political freedom, and economic injustice, will in the long run be solidly ranged behind whatever policies seem to promise equality, prosperity, and freedom for all mankind.
The limitations of the United States as a source of propaganda are sharp. There is no U.S. party line; it is virtually impossible to imagine that within our civilization as we now know it there could be one. There might be an official U.S. line, unanimous and binding upon all federal departments, but the federal government itself is, after all, only one among the forty-nine separate governments operating within the continental USA. The state governments, the cities within them, and the people at large are free to contradict what the federal government may say at any given point.