NATO Needs More Than Planes and Tanks and Guns

Introduction The focus in this chapter will be on Western human rights protection and promotion during
the Cold War, which was a key contribution to winning this global conflict.1 A discussion of these efforts
serves two purposes. Firstly, it will show that the “novel” concepts in the field of strategic
communication and non-kinetic influencing have clear historical counterparts, even within the military,
and that “new” therefore is not really new. Western policy makers understood the necessity of a
coherent narrative that should perform two functions: (a) convince the population in each NATO
member state that the alliance would be successful in defending core Western values because its
member states formed a community of values rather than a mere temporary coalition, and (b) convince
the Soviet Union and its allies that it was committed to defend these values by military means if
necessary. In the early 1970s a third element was added: partly for domestic reasons, Soviet human
rights practices were put centre stage; they became a litmus test of Soviet good will, and improvement in
this field was made a condition for a stable relationship between the two blocs. Secondly, the study of
historical counterparts of contemporary strategic communication will offer the opportunity to identify a
number of mid to long-term effects of such activities. Whereas contemporary strategic thinkers and the
military organizations that draw upon their ideas lavishly use acronyms to suggest that strategic
communication and non-kinetic operations are miracle devices that enable victories without fighting, a
study of past counterparts will reveal the complexities and inherent contradictions involved. These may
serve as a warning against over-optimistic claims about the possibilities to predict and control their
effects and outcome. They also give additional credence to critical analyses of more contemporary
efforts such as those to “sell” the mission in Afghanistan to the wider public.

There is considerable debate as to when human rights actually became a topic in international relations.
Some, like Samuel Moyn, have argued that our current understanding and embrace of human rights
stem from the 1970s; these should be attributed to the failure of other ideologies such as socialism and
liberalism to deliver.3 In Moyn’s words, ‘Our idealism is one born of disappointment, not of horror or of
hope’. 4 The dominant view however is that human rights owe their attraction to the horrors of the
Second World War, and the Holocaust in particular.5 By contrast, while acknowledging the impact of the
Second World War, I propose to connect the rise of the human rights paradigm to the early Cold War,
when in a deliberate act of framing, a number of European countries founded the Council of Europe as a
“statement against the totalitarian countries of Europe”. 6 In spite of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary—after all it was only four years after the end of the Second World War, and a number of
European states were involved in savage wars of decolonization—the Council defined Europeanness as
respect for human rights. Its key document, the European Convention on Human Rights (signed in 1950),
was meant to serve as a bulwark against the lure of totalitarianism. By the time it entered into force in
1953, this bulwark had been furnished with additional and credible defences. After the communist take-
over in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, Western European states joined forces in the Western Union. A
year later, on April 4, 1949, its members joined with Canada and the United States to found NATO. It was
obvious that individually the European members would be unable to withstand a Soviet onslaught and
that forming an alliance was a potentially sound solution to this problem. Still, several if not all of its
member states found it necessary to provide additional arguments as to why it would be advisable to
commit to closer cooperation. One reason may have been that in several countries there was evidence
of strong anti-American sentiments, which of course posed a risk for the cohesion of the alliance.7 Be
that as it may, NATO itself also was very much aware of the necessity to broaden popular support and its
Paris-based information office NATIS tried to lead efforts to promote the “Atlantic community”. This was
a community of like-minded states founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the
rule of law. This community, of which NATO was said to be an expression,8 was always somewhat
problematic. Not only was Portugal a corporatist dictatorship when it joined, but NATO member states
included Italy, and from 1952 even Greece and Turkey, that could hardly be said to border the Atlantic
Ocean. To complicate matters, NATO was both said to protect this community (intimating that such a
thing was actually in existence) and help create it (which of course implied that it didn’t exist as yet). In
NATO’s early days this uncertainty may explain why the Dutch Defensie Studie Centrum (more or less
equivalent to the advanced staff course and consisting of excellent mid-career officers of all branches,
and a number of civil servants) paid disproportionate attention to the question of the nature and
substance of the Atlantic community and how to sell it to the Dutch population.9 Regardless, it was only
one amongst many institutions, media outlets, and military journals and training programs in Western
countries to promote human rights.10 Central coordination by NATIS was rejected though because of
each member state’s national sensitivities and cultural peculiarities.