Military Perspective on Strategic Communications as the “New Kid on the Block”: Narrating the Czech Military Deployment in Afghanistan and the Baltic States

ABSTRACT

The military perspective of strategic communications is perceived as a newer dimension of the emergent discipline, even though it has been long dealing with similar issues around the boundaries and definition of the concept. This article builds on the research on narratives as a key tool of strategic communications. It explores how the Czech political and military authorities narrated its armed forces’ contribution to the Resolute Support Mission and the enhanced Forward Presence and how their communications aligned with the NATO narratives. The findings are interpreted in the context of small states’ behavior in foreign and security policy and the leader-follower relationship which implies these states have specific policy objectives that impact upon the narratives justifying their armed forces’ deployment. The findings confirmed the Czech dependence on NATO/US by adopting their argumentation despite the problematic connection of the Afghan mission to the country’s immediate security, or by stressing in the discourse its reputation for loyalty as part of “bandwagon for protection.” At the same time, the authorities were able to tailor the narrative to better align it with the country’s immediate security needs and public perceptions and to limit its communication efforts when needed to avoid potential consistency issues.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the journal editor and anonymous reviewers for many insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Four multinational battalion-size battlegroups were deployed to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

² The mission – in which for the first time, a Czech soldier lost his life – increased support for the army by the disillusioned public which had until then believed the forces did nothing but exercised. Finally, it was also since the Persian Gulf War that the prestige of the Czech Armed Forces has started to build up – especially thanks to its Chemical Unit (Pavel, 2019).

³ One statement could contain several different themes. For that reason, the sum of all statements does not match the sum of the themes identified in those statements.