Abstract 

Effective communications are today recognised as central not simply to achieving foreign policy or diplomatic success, but to realising any and all strategic aims. Consequently, strategic communications professionals play a critical role in a wide range of government agencies. In the light of an ever-transforming global media ecology, and the proliferation of state and non-state political actors who are able effectively to intervene in this fluid communications space, this observation has rising salience for international relations as a whole. Faced with rising geopolitical tensions, and public anxiety associated with terrorism, strategic communications has been viewed as an essential component of an effective response to campaigns by hostile state and non-state actors seeking to shape public opinion and attitudes in pursuit of their own strategic objectives. This article asks whether NATO members have given sufficient thought to the ethical puzzles raised by the changing landscape of strategic communications for international relations practitioners, and seeks to shed light on the practical ethical challenges faced by all strategic communicators in international relations today. We argue that effective strategic communication is an action that necessarily takes place within, and draws its efficacy from, ethical architectures that are settled constitutive features of international practices. 

Keywords: ethics, truth, international relations, practice, lies, strategic communications 

About the authors 

Mervyn Frost is Professor of International Relations in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and Senior Research Associate in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg. His research focuses on ethics in international relations. 

Bibliography 

Andreasen, Alan R., Philip Kotler, and David Parker, Strategic marketing for nonprofit organizations, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall: 2003). 

Archetti, Cristina. ‘Terrorism, communication and new media: explaining radicalization in the digital age’, Perspectives on Terrorism 9.1 (2015). 

Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt (Eds.), Networks and netwars: The future of terror, crime, and militancy, (Rand Corporation, 2001). 

Argenti, Paul A., Robert A. Howell, and Karen A. Beck, ‘The strategic communication imperative’, MIT Sloan Management Review 46.3 (2005): 83-89. 

Betz, David, ‘Communication breakdown: strategic communications and defeat in Afghanistan’, Orbis 55.4 (2011): 613-630. 

Botan, Carl, ‘Ethics in strategic communication campaigns: The case for a new approach to public relations’, Journal of Business Communication 34.2 (1997): 188-202. 

Campbell, David, Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity, (U of Minnesota Press, 1992). 

Castells, Manuel, Communication power, (OUP Oxford, 2013). 

Devji, Faisal, The terrorist in search of humanity: militant Islam and global politics, (Columbia University Press, 2008). 

Dinnie, Keith, Nation branding: concepts, issues, practice, (Routledge, 2015). 

Dworkin, R, ‘Justice for Hedgehogs’, Boston University Law Review, Vol 90 Nr. 2, 2010, p. 469-478. 

Epstein, Charlotte, The power of words in international relations: birth of an anti-whaling discourse, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 

Farwell, James P., Persuasion and power: The art of strategic communication, (Georgetown University Press, 2012).

Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International norm dynamics and political change’, International Organization 52.04 (1998): 887-917. 

Fletcher, T., Naked Diplomacy: Power and statecraft in the Digital Age, (William Collins, London, 2016). 

Frost, Mervyn, and Silviya Lechner, ‘Understanding international practices from the internal point of view’, Journal of International Political Theory (2015): 1755088215596765. 

Halloran, Richard, ‘Strategic communication’, Parameters 37.3 (2007): 4. 

Hallahan, Kirk, et al., ‘Defining strategic communication’, International Journal of Strategic Communication 1.1 (2007): 3-35. 

Hayden, Craig, The rhetoric of soft power: Public diplomacy in global contexts, (Lexington Books, 2012). 

Holsti, Kalevi J., ‘National role conceptions in the study of foreign policy’, International Studies Quarterly 14.3 (1970): 233-309. 

Hopf, Ted, Social construction of international politics: identities & foreign policies, (Moscow, 1955). 

Jervis, Robert, Perception and misperception in international politics, (Princeton University Press, 2015 (1976). 

Kroenig, Matthew, ‘Facing reality: getting NATO ready for a new Cold War’, Survival 57.1 (2015): 49-70. 

Lapid, Yosef, and Friedrich V. Kratochwil (eds.), The return of culture and identity in IR theory, (Rienner, 1996). 

Miskimmon, Alister, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, Strategic narratives: Communication power and the new world order (Routledge, 2014). 

Mor, Ben D., ‘Credibility talk in public diplomacy’, Review of International Studies 38.02 (2012): 393-422. 

Murphy, Dennis M., ‘In search of the art and science of strategic communication’, Parameters 39.4 (2009): 105. 

Nye, Joseph S., Soft power: The means to success in world politics, (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). 

Nye, Joseph S., ‘Soft power’, Foreign Policy 80 (1990): 153-171 and 1999. Cornell University Press, 2002. 

Owen IV, John M. The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510-2010, (Princeton University Press, 2010).

Peters, Severin, ‘Strategic Communication for Crisis Management Operations of International Organisations: ISAF Afghanistan and EULEX Kosovo. EU Diplomacy Paper 1/2010, January 2010’, EU Diplomacy Papers (2010): 34. 

Ringmar, Erik ‘Inter-Textual Relations The Quarrel Over the Iraq War as a Conflict between Narrative Types’, Cooperation and Conflict 41.4 (2006): 403-421. 

Risse, Thomas, ‘“Let’s argue!”: communicative action in world politics’, International organization 54.01 (2000): 1-39. 

Rubinelli, Sara, Ars Topica: The Classical Technique of Constructing Arguments from Aristotle to Cicero, (Springer, 2009). 

Tallis, Benjamin, ‘Living in Post-truth’, New Perspectives. Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations 24.1 (2016): 7-18. 

Waldron, Jeremy, ‘The rule of law as a theatre of debate’, in Dworkin and his critics: with replies from Dworkin (ed. Burnley, Justine), (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2004). 

Weldes, Jutta, (ed.), Cultures of insecurity: states, communities, and the production of danger, Borderlines Vol. 14. (University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 

Yablokov, Ilya, ‘Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case of Russia Today (RT)’, Politics 35.3-4 (2015): 301-315. 

Zehfuss, Maja, Constructivism in international relations: the politics of reality, Cambridge Studies in International Relations Vol. 83, (Cambridge University Press, 2002).