Howard Gambrill Clark, Ph.D.

The views expressed on this post (blog) are Dr. Howard Gambrill Clark’s personal views alone. The views and findings do not imply endorsement by any government or private entity. Nothing on this page or website represents the views of any government or government-affiliated organization, private corporation, university, college, school, institution, or other entity foreign or domestic, private or public.

Citation: Clark, Howard Gambrill, "Consonance and Resonance 2.0," unedited unpublished streamlined summary of a chapter (serving here only as a social media blog) in forthcoming book Influence Warfare Volume II: Primers, will be submitted to Narrative Strategies Ink, Washington, DC, expected summer 2022.

 CONSONANCE

IDENTIFY STABILIZING CIVIL-SOCIETY NATIVE NETWORKS WHOSE GOALS ARE IN CONSONANCE WITH THOSE OF THE USG

Nature of Civil-Society Consonant Networks

·      Undermine support / recruitment / influence of malign actors.

·      Support or lead efforts to kinetically defeat malign actors.

·      Offer or support viable alternatives to malign-actor programs such as security and courts.

·      Increase support for locally recognized informal governance systems and leaders.

·      Strengthen societal capacity—the ability of a community to address its own sources of instability.

Conditions

·      Areas economically independent of malign actors.

·      Areas with just enough security for freedom of movement to organize, plan, and operate.

·      Areas that have recently been victim to persistent wanton attack or suppression by malign actors.

Longevity

·      Display autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-determination.

·      Are without characteristics of attempting zero-sum power, but ambition may be an attribute of some networks. 

·      Invest in longevity / sustainability through empowerment of deputies.

·      Display determined ideology, narratives, or personal motivation to undermine support for malign actors.

Some Specific Methods

·      Often ignore formal or informal titles—powerbrokers may not be the designated ‘leaders’ in any group.

·      Repurpose already available intelligence on malign actors’ targets: enemy’s ‘red cell’ can inform our ‘white cell’ analysis.

·      Repurpose multiple populace surveys that answer, ‘to whom does civil society turn to address grievances.’ 

·      Repurpose available threat finance analyses on which non-malign influencers extra-judiciously tax locals—a few perhaps may be stabilizing powerbrokers (rare).

·      Repurpose already available intelligence on influencers’ congregations, wealth, weapons, and/or land—consonant network leaders are often potent and influential in their own right.

·      Through local press and malign actor messaging, research who are already collapsing malign influence with resolve.

Consonant actors do not necessarily support coalition forces or governments directly. Sometimes credibility derives from independence. There is no perfect consonant network. Consonant networks will likely have some negative attributes.

RESONANCE

 ENABLE CONSONANT NETWORKS / ALLOW AN ENVIRONMENT FOR CONSONANT NETWORKS TO THRIVE

       Some Potential Methods with Minimal Intervention

·      Avoid intervention or communication but instead keep distance and report. In some cases working directly with a government entity may reduce a consonant network’s credibility, autonomy, and potency. ‘Doing nothing’ is a viable option.

·      Negotiate with governments to allow easy visa processes and easy inter/intra-state travel w/o consonant system knowing.

·      Oversee easy access to and uncomplicated successful completion of grant applications without consonant system knowing.

·      Negotiate with governments to grant amnesty—if moral, legal, and appropriate—for past minor criminality.

·      Target those that target consonant systems.

·      Negotiate with government for a security buffer to allow consonant actors to operate without immediate enemy retribution.

·      Encourage local training on leadership, technocratic, and technical skills.

·      Negotiate with local and informal governance structures to appoint consonant network leaders to governance posts.

·      Help host nation to provide security and transportation for consonant actors to attend meetings outside secure areas.

·      Foster networking. Ensure consonant actors have contact information of neighboring consonant actors. 

·      Ensure consonant actors have contact information of local and regional radio stations and other media outlets.

·      Discretely search engine optimize influence websites, podcasts, audio and digital book sales, social media platforms. 

·      Train consonant actors on the above resonance techniques and on mitigating sources of instability. 

• If you must conduct direct strategic communications, emphasize consonant systems are on their own. Any subtle support is temporary. No cavalry is coming. There is no ‘superman.’ We do not want movements prudently waiting for ‘saviors’ such as the full weight of a U.S. incursion or lasting support of unconventional warriors.