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ix Preface A Change in the Landscape Imagine a war that involves no physical violence. The stakes are the ones typically addressed: territory, economic resources, control over an enemy population, defense of one’s own population, and intangibles like honor, glory, freedom, adventure, fear, greed, revenge, and justice. There is pain. There are serious injuries. But not a single drop of blood is spilled. No one loses an arm or a leg. No bodies need to be buried. The war has a physical dimension, but only with regard to the equipment being used. Now imagine a movement to end war permanently. It is successful. Like all efforts at peacemaking, it emphasizes nonphysical strategies such as bargaining , reminders of the consequences of war, and appeals to love, kindness , international order, fairness, and dignity. And yet this effort relies on the very same physical tools that the makers of war employ, and even persuades them to stop using those tools. Neither of these scenarios is at present a reality. But in the early twentyfirst century the two are closer to being realized than at any previous time in human history. In both cases the reason is the same: mass communication . For more than a century it has been remaking war and efforts to end war, and we are only just beginning to understand the full scope of the change. Consider some of the things that have been happening around us in recent years. On the television screen we see images of war that affect us deeply and that seem to confront us in an almost endless stream, as planes crash into two towers in New York City, a political leader struts on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a pilot’s jumpsuit, soldiers with dogs compel prisoners to perform obscene acts, and newscasters interview totemic dignitaries about “late-breaking developments” in long-running military conflicts. Other media affect us just as deeply. For example, at an Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, many of the films being honored are about war, even including one that is about a photograph, in this case an image of six x Preface marines and a flag that was once raised during a battle. The military itself uses media as a weapon, both for persuasion and for combat. Thus in the sky over a battlefield, an airplane drops a hundred thousand leaflets urging one side in the conflict to surrender to the other, and at a military press conference, a briefing officer awes reporters with the latest videotape of a laser-guided bombing mission shot by a camera mounted in the nose of a plane. Meanwhile, on the wall of a building on a university campus, a carefully designed poster seeks to persuade students to enlist in the military. The enemy also exploits mass communication. On the screen of a laptop computer, a patron in a coffee bar views a clandestinely produced videotape of a bearded man who employs fear as a weapon by saying he intends to make war against all unbelievers. The public participates as, on a home computer, a boy enthusiastically plays a war game that was given to him by his father as a birthday present. We are reminded of the emotional scars that can be left by wars as a newspaper editorial urges necessary improvements in medical care for troops and asks why the predictable need to treat their psychological wounds was not adequately addressed before they were sent into battle. Peacemakers play their roles. In the mailbox of a house in a wealthy suburban neighborhood, a letter waits to be opened, asking for a cash donation to relieve the sufferings of refugees caught in a war on another continent. On a radio talk show, an interviewer converses with the head of a human rights group about a proposed peace conference. Even reputation becomes an element in the calculus of war and peace as, in an academic journal, an article about opinion polling shows how the most powerful nation in the world is losing the trust of other nations, not only because of that nation’s conduct in a certain war in progress but also because of the country’s failure to use mass communication effectively as a tool for garnering allies. In these and numerous similar instances we are reminded of the remarkable degree to which war and efforts to end war have become intertwined with large-scale communication, and we can sense the growing importance of intangibles in matters that...

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