Framing Operation Barkhane: moral rhetoric and symbolism in presidential speeches
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Framing Operation Barkhane: moral rhetoric and
symbolism in presidential speeches
July 2021
UoG 2485634N
DCU 19108567
Charles University 30384875
Presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
Degree of
International Master in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies
Word Count: 20,557
Supervisor: Kenneth McDonagh
Date of Submission: 26/07/2021Abstract Democratic political leaders often use strategic narratives as a strategy of communication about oversees military operations. It is well- established that politicians use moral frames, symbols and emotional appeals to mobilize public support. This dissertation aimed at understanding the French President Emmanuel Macron’s strategy of communication about the oversees military operation Barkhane. Specifically, it analysed whether Macron’s communicative strategy employed a moral frame, symbols, and emotional appeals as part of a strategic narrative to mobilize the French public support of Operation Barkhane. To test the hypothesis that Macron used a moral frame, symbols and emotional appeals in his strategic narrative, a discourse analysis of nine of Macron’s public speeches about Operation Barkhane was realised. The analysis was divided in three themes: the Just War frame; the symbols hero-protector, coward-villain, victim, and its emotional appeals; and lastly, the overall structure as a strategic narrative. The results show that Emmanuel Macron’s strategy of communication about Operation Barkhane employed the Just War frame, symbols, emotional appeals, and his discourses were part of an overall strategic narrative. These results suggest that democratic leaders aim at influencing the public’s perception of a conflict to mobilize public support using strategic narratives whose features include the Just War frame, symbols, and emotional appeals. On this basis, democratic leaders’ strategy of communication about the use of force should be understood as an intent to influence the public rather than informing it. Given the drop of the level of public support of Operation Barkhane, the results suggest that the effectiveness of such strategy is mixed. The results also call for further study on the formation of public opinion about the use of force in democracies.
Table of Content
1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 5
2. Literature review ..................................................................................................... 13
2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 13
2.2 Strategic Narratives........................................................................................... 14
2.3 Moral framing ................................................................................................... 17
2.4 Symbolism ......................................................................................................... 18
2.5 Emotional appeals............................................................................................. 20
2.6 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 22
3. Method design ........................................................................................................ 23
3.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 23
3.2 Data collection .................................................................................................. 24
3.3 Data analysis ..................................................................................................... 25
3.4 Justifications of methods .................................................................................. 26
3.5 Limitations of methods ..................................................................................... 29
4. Results ..................................................................................................................... 30
4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 30
4.2 Just War............................................................................................................. 31
4.2.a Legitimacy of Operation Barkhane............................................................. 32
4.2.b Just cause and right intentions .................................................................. 35
4.2.c Means proportional to the ends and last resort ........................................ 37
4.2.d Reasonable chance of success ................................................................... 39
4.2.e Conclusion .................................................................................................. 41
4.3 Symbolism and emotional appeals ................................................................... 42
4.3.a Hero-protector and victim ......................................................................... 43
4.3.b Coward-Villains .......................................................................................... 47
4.3.c Relationship between symbols and emotional appeals ............................. 49
4.4 Structure of strategic narrative ......................................................................... 52
4.4.a Beyond content .......................................................................................... 53
4.4.b Actors ......................................................................................................... 53
4.4.c Events ......................................................................................................... 53
4.4.d Time Setting ............................................................................................... 54
4.4.e Space .......................................................................................................... 55
4.4.f Plot .............................................................................................................. 55
4.4.g Conclusion .................................................................................................. 56
5. Discussion................................................................................................................ 576. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 65 7. Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 67 8. Appendix: Dissertation Archive Permission Form................................................... 75
1. Introduction This chapter contextualised the research. It outlined the general ideas and the theoretical basis for the research. It also discussed the hypotheses supporting the research. It explained why the research topic has been selected. In sum, in this chapter was considered how contested by the public the use of force by democracies can be; but still used by the democratic leaders as a form of foreign policy. It mentioned the concept of audience costs; if the use of force is contested, can the public hold accountable the leaders? Can the leaders mitigate audience costs? The communicative strategy of politicians was discussed as a tool to influence public’s perception of a conflict to garner public support and evade audience costs. Specifically, it was considered how politicians frame a conflict through language, and which communication techniques they employ. French President Emmanuel Macron’s speeches about Operation Barkhane was introduced as materials for this research. Last, this chapter stated the main objectives of the research and set out the main themes of the dissertation. Democracies bolster peace, but many are at war; France is fighting a war against terrorism in the Sahel region. Since the Cold War, there has been a rise in armed actions by democracies (Goetze, 2008: 57). In the Sahel region, France deployed 5,000 military personnel to combat jihadism (Ministry of Defense, 2021: 30). The French military operation Barkhane was launched in August 2014, as the successor of Operation Serval. Operation’s Barkhane aimed primarily at curbing terrorism in the Sahel region (Ministry of Defense, 2021: 3). France’s engagement was diverse. The European Council on Foreign Relations reported in its article ‘Mapping Armed Groups in Mali and the Sahel’ that Operation Barkhane ‘engages in everything from combat patrols alongside Malian forces and partner militias to intelligence gathering and training to local development activities […] and it has undertaken operations to kill important jihadist leaders […]’ (www.ecfr.eu). Operation Barkane is the largest French oversees operation
(www.ecfr.eu). Barkhane cost as high as 76% of France’s total expenditure for its military missions abroad (Tull, 2021). The costs attained up to almost 1 billion of euros in 2020 (Tull, 2021). More than financially costly, the conflict costed lives too; more than 50 French soldiers died in the clashes against the Jihadist (Freudenthal et al., 2021). However, the operations Serval and Barkhane were not only costly for France, but also for the Malians. Reports informed that French soldiers killed at least 25 more civilians in Mali since 2013 than France publicly acknowledged. The UN faulted ‘French military’s process for identifying targets and its broader decision-making’, and the democracy has been accused of killing 19 civilians during a marriage in the village of Bounti (Freudenthal et al., 2021). Despite all these financial, human, and moral costs, Operation Barkhane’s utility was questioned. As Tull put it, ‘[…] it has become a truism to state that Barkhane’s tactical successes do not translate into overall progress’ (2021). Hence, for some, Operation Barkhane did not justify the cost. On the 10th of June, Macron announced the end of Operation Barkhane, announcing a profound transformation of the format of the French presence in the Sahel region, turning towards further reliance on other partners (Salaün and Irish, 2021). This major shift in Macron’s foreign policy was an indicator that Operation Barkhane did not go as well as Macron depicted in his speeches. This shift could also be a reflection on the downward trend of the level of public support for the military operation. But democracies fighting wars abroad is often contested by public opinion, and democratic leaders can pay the price of a waning public support. It was understandable that Operation Barkhane, as a military operation of a democracy, was called into question. As Kant claimed: ‘Nothing is more natural than for those living under a republican form of government to oppose foreign military adventures because these citizens will have to bear the burden of war in blood, sweat, tears, and tax dollars’ (Kant, 1795 cited in Chan and Safran, 2006: 139). Hence, the deciders of military operations such as Operation Barkhane are facing audience cost. If the public opinion does not agree with the
politicians’ decisions about the use of military force in democracies, the deciders can face heavy political costs such as higher chance of defeat in the next elections or reduced margin of victory, or weaker future governing mandate (Tomz et al., 2020: 122). An unfavourable public opinion could also ‘make it harder to surmount institutional checks on war powers, raise funds for foreign interventions, and amass the political capital to achieve other international and domestic goals’ (Tomz et al., 2020: 122). Nevertheless, it is not because politicians can be sensitive to audience costs that they always devise their foreign policies according to the public opinion. For the case of France, Balme and Dieck found that public opinion was only a ‘permissive constraint’ on the French Government as the executive power has leverage on the legislative power (2010: 97). This leverage is notably intrinsic to how French foreign military operations are decided. Indeed, as La Rédaction reported, it is the president who decides to launch an operation, during a Defense Council meeting, where the orders of the operation, administration and logistics are decided (2019). If the government decides to launch the operation, it has to inform the Parliament within three days, and parliamentary debate without vote can be organised (La Rédaction, 2019). Consequently, the legislative power does not have much power in the decision to use military force and can only decide over the course of the operation four months after its inception, as the Government needs to ask for a prolongation of the oversees military operation (La Rédaction, 2019). Hence, the government has already a leverage in the decisional process, but another tool of the Government can play a key role to make sure the implementation of the military oversees operation is done without sparking public contestation: persuasion. Indeed, politicians use communication tools to decrease audience costs. When deciding to intervene militarily abroad, the government could ‘keep the population at bay’ (Balme and Dieck, 2010: 97). Using persuasion is a key tool to mobilize public support for the operation.
Consequently, understanding how president framed and justified Operation Barkhane could give insights on democratic leaders’ strategy of communication. These insights could provide materials to compare with other democracies’ communicative strategy to mobilize public support for military interventions abroad. It is especially interesting to analysis this when the operations are resorting to force, as the public may be more reluctant to support operations whose method is to kill. Therefore, Operation Barkhane provided very relevant empirics to study president Macron’s communicative strategy to the public. Indeed, the informational aspect of a military operation is key to maintain public support and reduce audience. The availability of information is one of the most important elements that will affect the level of public support. As discussed above, politicians wish to mobilize the public to support their overseas military operations. One tool is to frame their military interventions in a way that maximises public support across partisanships. Under the threat of audience costs, politicians designed strategic narratives that plausibly justify the high costs of military intervention. For example, politicians in democracies predominantly used the frame of Just War to narrate their decision to go to war (Goetze, 2008: 57). Within the politicians’ strategic narratives, authors found communicative techniques such as the use of symbols and emotional appeals to justify war (Klapp, 1954; Moerk and Pincus, 2000; Loseke, 2009; Sangar et al., 2017 etc). Authors also studied the relationship between the public’s emotions/ moral values and their opinion about the use of force (Lerner et al., 2003; Burkitt, 2005; Kertzer et al., 2014; Kornprobst, 2017). This field of research is relevant for studying the communicative process of the politicians when communicating about the use of force, and the implications on the level of public support. Research in this field is particularly important as public opinion depends on the public’s interpretation of the crisis (Goetze, 2008: 57), thus the need to study the politicians’ communicative strategy about the use of force as it may shape the public’s interpretation of the conflict, affecting their stance over the use of force.
Politicians have been crafting speeches artfully to frame the democracies’ use of force. This dissertation provided a discourse analysis of the speeches of the French president Emmanuel Macron available at https://www.elysee.fr/, ranging from the 19th of May 2017 to the 21st of February 2021, about the presence of French troops in the Sahel region, with Operation Barkhane. Macron gave his speeches either in the Elysée Palace, Paris, or during his visits in the Operation Barkhane’s Sahelian partners in N’Djamena, Tchad; Niamey, Niger; or in Gao, Mali. The direct audience of the speeches were the French troops of Operation Barkhane and to the high-ranking military/ politicians of the partner countries. However, these speeches were made available to the public on the Elysée’s website and were advertised in the media. Hence, the civilian French population also had access to these speeches and exposed in the media. Therefore, this research relied upon the assumption that the speeches were crafted not only to satisfy the military audience but also the civilian audience. This argument was grounded in the literature on audience costs. Consequently, despite that the speeches were narrated to military/ politicians, these speeches also reached the civilian population and therefore served as relevant materials to study Macron’s communicative techniques to frame and justify the use of force to the civilian public opinion. However, speeches are not the only medium through which the public can be informed of their governments’ oversees military operations. Indeed, the public can inform itself within a much larger informational network. One must consider the overall availability of information beyond the information provided in the speeches. It is crucial for reflecting upon public accountability and understanding the relationship between how speeches are crafted and the level of public support. If diverse and transparent pieces of information about a military oversees operations are not available, the mechanism of public accountability cannot function properly. Indeed, Potter and Baum argued that ‘‘An uninformed public cannot independently evaluate a president’s claims’ (2008: 44). This is why freedom of press present in democracies must
facilitate the generation of audience costs through the availability of information to the public, to allow the public to make informed opinion. The public must be able to access the messages of whistle-blowers thought tv, radio or press, possible through free media (Potter and Baum, 2010 cited in Potter and Baum, 2014: 168). The heterogeneous and autonomous political opposition normally present in democracies must also generate whistleblowing to inform the population (Schultz, 2001, cited in Potter and Baum, 2014: 168). Consequently, not only the availability of information permits the public to hold informed opinion, but it also enables the public to hold accountable politicians and influence their foreign policy. Potter and Baum noted that ‘a consensus has emerged that the public is able to develop and hold coherent views on foreign policy, that citizens can and do apply their attitudes to their electoral decisions, and that this leads politicians to consider the electoral implications of their overseas activities’ (Chan and Safran, 2006: 137). Theories also support that leaders are not only responsive of the current public opinion after taking office but are also expecting future public opinions (Tomz et al., 2020: 122). The authors’ arguments suggest that politicians are sensitive to audience costs when designing foreign policies. Consequently, it is understandable that the elites have incentives to hide foreign policy blunders (Schultz, 2021 cited in Potter and Baum, 2014: 168). Academics also found that politicians own exclusive information and filter it selectively to the media (Goetze, 2008: 60). Not being fully transparent over the implications of a military operation could therefore be a method for politicians to avoid public backlashes if the information could question the soundness of the operation. Next, the aim, objectives, themes, contribution, and structure of the research was presented. The aim of the discourse analysis was to identify Macron’s communication strategy to frame Operation Barkhane to garner public support. Democratic leaders mostly used the frame of Just War to narrate wars, and this dissertation’s research contributed to the academic field on democratic leaders’ frame of Just War by
providing an analysis on very recent empirics: Operation Barkhane. As the speeches’ original content was in French, this dissertation’s contribution also permitted to provide the literature content from another language; indeed, the literature within the field of research is composed mostly by English-language narratives. Providing empirics from a French perspective could diversify the literature and provide a broader perspective on the democratic leaders’ communicative techniques. This research also built on the literature about the use symbolism and emotional appeals in democratic leaders’ narratives to justify wars. Hence, the study went beyond the frame of Just War, and included an analysis of key communicative techniques often used by politicians within their strategic narratives framed by Just War. The speeches were decorticated during the discourse analysis to understand the speeches’ content between the lines. This dissertation is not limited to simply analysing the speeches in a descriptive manner. The results’ implications on the relationships between democratic leaders’ communicative strategy and the level of public support of the use of force were discussed. Observations were drawn about the shortcomings of such analysis, and about the challenges and opportunities of future research in this subject. The dissertation helps to understand better how democratic leaders frame their narratives about war with the Just War frame, and how they use symbolism and emotional appeals within these narratives. The new empirical data could strengthen past academic studies on the same subject, but also question the relationship between these communicative techniques and their practical impacts on the level of public opinion. To answer the research question ‘Framing Operation Barkhane: moral rhetoric and symbolism in presidential speeches’, the dissertation had the following objectives. First, to conduct a discourse analysis of the selected speeches around three themes: Just War frame, symbols and its emotional appeals, and the structure of the speeches as a strategic narrative. Second, to determine how and the extent to which president
Macron used moral rhetoric and symbolism with the three communicative techniques of Just War framing, the use of the hero- protector, coward-villain and the wronged victim symbols, and the appeals to specific emotions. Freedman argued that ‘effective narratives work because they appeal to the values, interests and prejudices in a target audience’ (2006 cited in Gow and Wilkinson, 2017: 377). Schmitt added that to attain their political objectives, actors could also appeal to ‘emotions, metaphors, and historical analogies’ (2018: 489). The three communicative techniques under this dissertation’s study could therefore capture president Macron’s intent to appeal to the French public to sustain Operation Barkhane. Last, the objective was to survey the level of public opinion of Operation Barkhane and identify how the trend evolved. These objectives were laid out to achieve the aim of understanding how president Macron formulated his speeches, draw inferences on his motivations, and determine the success of his intent on the level of public support of Operation Barkhane. The content of this dissertation was divided into five parts. First, the introduction above aimed at providing a context to the dissertation’s research, its focus and scope, its relevance and importance, and its questions and objectives. Second, a review of the literature was realised to provide a critical analysis of the relevant theories and concepts, with the identification of the key debates and associated gaps. The literature review served to lay the theoretical background upon which the research is built on and contribute to. Third, the methodological aspect of the research was discussed, with a justification and an evaluation of the methods of data collection and analysis employed. Then, the results of the data analysis of Macron’s speeches were presented in detail and discussed. Last, the dissertation concluded with reflections upon the findings and their implications to the academic research and to real-life politics.
2. Literature review 2.1 Introduction An analysis of the content of political speeches must be structured by a theoretical framework. Speech and linguistics are broad subjects and therefore the need to narrow down to frameworks to guide the analysis. Of course, if Operation Barkhane has been implemented, it is because it was in the best interests of the political elite, headed by President Macron. And under the assumption that France’s democratic systems of accountability were working, Operation Barkhane must have been supported by at least the majority of its citizens. Having a direct and universal referendum, the French president was directly elected by its citizens. More, in France, the president is the head of the army. Consequently, citizens directly elect the head of the French army, and it is under democratic principles that the president, and thus the head of the army, must be accountable of its decision. Consequently, this dissertation followed the assumption that the presidential speeches under study, which are all about Operation Barkhane, considered to some extend public accountability. This sensitivity to public opinion could therefore have been considered when devising the content of the presidential speeches, which was analysed in this dissertation. It is by following this rational that the theoretical frameworks of this dissertation was selected, which ultimately guided the content of the literature review. Indeed, these considerations provided a roadmap of the key theories to review. First, the review considered the concept of strategic narratives, as the presidential speeches under study in this dissertation presented all the criteria to be considered as ones. There are an infinite number of ways to approach the discourse analysis of political speeches. To be relevant to the context, moral framing, symbolism, and emotional appeals were selected as approaches to analyse the presidential speeches. So, each of these concepts are parts of this literature review. Critically analysing the literature relating to these concepts provided a theoretical basis to
develop arguments to discuss the results of the discourse analysis presented further in the dissertation. The scope of this literature review was mostly limited to academic works relating to the use of force, as it was the perspective the most relevant to the topic. The reason was that Operation Barkhane is primarily a military, anti-terrorist mission and the use of force was prevalent. 2.2 Strategic Narratives Strategic narratives have been a tool used by politicians to make sense of reality, and mostly in a context of war or the use of force. Authors have been studying strategic narratives intensively and there has been a link identified between strategic narratives and public opinion regarding war and the use of force. Freedman introduced the concept of strategic narratives in strategic studies in 2006. He argued that this concept is an analytical device and consist of ‘compelling story lines which can explain events convincingly and from which inferences can be drawn’ (2006: 11). He argued that the aim is to structure responses from others, by relying on emotions, metaphor ad historical analogies (2006: 23). The key perspective of Freedman was that one must be attentive to how issues are framed as part of a strategic narrative, and the danger that represents the media using only one single frame (2006: 25). Still, Freedman’s work was focused on an American context. It was Mary and Martin who studied strategic narratives in a European context (2007). The authors explored if the doctrine of Human Security could provide ‘a shared strategic narrative for the EU, which would serve to clarify and consolidate the nature of EU actorness (2007: 2). This work considered strategic narrative as a way to express the normative basis of the EU’s foreign policy (2007: 4). The authors’ understanding of a strategic narrative emphasis less on the objective to influence public opinion as Freedman did. According to them, ‘Narratives connect elite discourses with more widespread understanding of issues, interests and values, and contribute to a process of ‘sense-making’ which helps
to circulate information among wider publics as well as narrow elites’ (2007: 8). From this definition, one can interpret the concept as a tool facilitating the understanding of reality rather than creating a reality. It was more recently that Miskimmon et al. re-emphasized the influencing nature of strategic narratives. They defined strategic narratives as ‘means for political actors to construct a shared meaning of the past, present and future of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors’ (2015: 341). This understanding of the concept was more useful as a theoretical basis for this dissertation’s analysis, as the assumption was that leaders aim at influence public opinion through strategic narratives. Ringsmos’s and Børgesen’s study is especially relevant as it showed a connexion between strategic narratives and the level of public acceptance of the human cost of war (2011: 6). This conclusion is in line with Freedman´s and Ringsmose´s and Børgesen´s previous studies supporting that strategic narratives may influence the public support for military missions (2006, 2001). These studies illustrated well the definitions of strategic narratives discussed above. Indeed, from these conclusions, one can understand that as strategic narratives create a certain perception of reality, this narrative can convey a specific -maybe biased- portrait of a military mission. As a reality of a military mission is constructed to facilitate policymaking, it is understandable that strategic narratives are connected to public opinion as the public’s perception of a mission would affect their judgment and therefore their level of support for the mission. This idea was a conclusion of Dimitriu´s and Graaf´s work, as they argued that strategic narratives create ‘public understanding of a mission, support, legitimacy for the mission´s purpose and relevance’ (2016: 6). From this work, one can identify the influence of strategic narratives on public opinion. However, this conclusion must be more developed: what is it in strategic narratives that makes the audience of such narratives believing in a reality crafted by the authors of the narratives?
On the one hand, Goetze found that public opinion for a military operation does not depend on classical reasons such as geostrategy but rather on the interpretation of the crisis (2008: 57). To shape the audience´s interpretation, Knightley identified a pattern found in strategic narratives. First, comes the presentation of the threat and the crisis, then comes the demonization of the enemy’s leader and the enemy as individuals, and eventually comes a presentation of the war as ‘a war of our civilization against their barbarity, a just and necessary war´ (2012: 379). Schmitt also emphasized the importance to consider the role political myths in strategic discourses: ‘they provide significance to people and a way for them to make sense of conditions of existence’ (2018, 491). According to Schmitt, to be effective, strategic narratives must ‘appeal to emotions, metaphors, or historical analogies’, and that the narratives must follow a specific structure: ‘actors, events, plot, time setting and space (2018: 489-490). Gilbert argued that it exists an easy way to shape the audience’s perception of the crisis: ‘All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.’ (Gilbert, 1995 cited in Knightley, 2012: 378). Finally, Dimitriu and de Graaf noted that the key for effective strategic narratives is not solely their content, but the fact that the successful narrative is the one that dominates the others, as ‘public opinion depends on the conjunction between the narratives and its counter narrative’ (2016: 20). But most importantly, the authors found that to be effective, a strategic narrative must resonate with the values, interests, and prejudices of the audience vis-à-vis military- related foreign policies. (2016: 6). Consequently, it appears from the literature that strategic narratives are deeply embedded in a social context, and therefore the key to study strategic narratives is to focus on how the authors of the narratives play on social values and norms -in short, on morality. Morality is especially relevant as France is a democracy and President Macron must be accountable to its citizens, so the strategic narratives -in the paper’s case, presidential speeches- must play on values and norms to
effectively shape the audience’s perception of the crisis to which Operation Barkhane is responding, to justify the operation and to keep or increase public support. That is why the next section of this literature review considered the moral frame of the use of force, which is used in strategic narratives to frame military operation. 2.3 Moral framing Rightly framing a foreign policy, and especially a military intervention abroad, is critical to gather public support. As Freedman argued, ‘narratives are about the ways that issues are framed, and responses suggested’ (2006: 23). Indeed, President Macron must have framed Operation Barkhane in a way that suggest the public to support the operation in order to keep it ongoing. Like Macron, other political leaders aimed to justify foreign policies by framing them morally (Jerit et al., 2014). Kertzer et al. concluded from various studies that politicians use a moral rhetoric to gather public support, and that the use of specific moral foundations as a frame impact constituencies support (2014). This conclusion fits well with Dimitriu’s and de Graaf’s observation that strategic narratives are embedded in a social context, as morality is a concept deeply embedded too in a social context (2016). The use of moral rhetoric by politicians is especially relevant as democracies highly regard morality, at least in principles, such as France. However, morality is a broad concept, and the observation above does not specify what is moral and what is not. However, other scholars identified several ways politicians frame morally their foreign policy. The focus of the literature review is more precisely on the moral framing of the use of force, as Operation Barkhane is a military operation whose practice is to use force. First, Goetze argued that politicians predominantly use the concept of ´Just War´ to frame their discourses (2008: 57). It is especially relevant as geostrategy is commonly absent of the debate, then the frame of Just War gains more importance. A war must meet certain criteria to be considered as just. Mostly, the consensus in the academic literature is
that a Just War has a just cause, the parties must have the right intentions, the war must be a last resort and must have a reasonable chance of success, whose benefits outweigh the cost of war (Johnson et al., 2017). Emphasizing the benefits of the use of force relative to its costs is especially important as in democracies, politicians are accountable to the citizens and a costly war might as well risk their mandate due to audience costs. As Nielsen rightly stated, ‘Only with a full appreciation of the costs and risks would leaders take an approach likely to maximize benefits and minimize the perils of a military undertaking’ (2007: 208). This statement recalls that cold calculus cost- benefits go together with intangible, moral considerations of going to war. Lastly, for a Just War, the state who declares the war must do it openly and with legitimacy (Johnson et al., 2017). This last criterion supports Cooper’s and Patterson’s observation that ‘force could only be legitimately exercised by the rightful authorities to promote security (2001: 143). The moral framework of Just War is prevalent in strategic narratives as democracies aim to bolster and respect international law. Cooper and Patterson noted that Just War is now embedded into legal texts such as the Hague and the Geneva Conventions (2011: 143). Hence, the Just War framework is legitimised by international law and therefore may explain the prevalence of this frame as Goetze supported (2008: 57). 2.4 Symbolism In the academic literature, scholars also discussed symbols as a tool politicians use to improve the impact of their strategic narratives. In their piece ‘How to Make War Acceptable,’ Moerk and Pincus argued that leaders use the symbols of the ‘victim’ and the ‘villain’ (2000:18). The authors defined the victim as ‘wronged’ and ‘who is forced to sacrifice himself for a higher and noble cause’ and the villain as ‘the opponent who is declared to have unreasonably insisted on warfare’ (Moerk and Pincus, 2000: 18). The word ‘sacrifice’ is key as it implies the victim has no other choice but to attack, while the words ‘unreasonably insisted’ emphasis the fact that the victim had no other
choice but to use force as self-defence. Consequently, both definitions of victim and villain had implications regarding the principle of self- defence. Later, Loseke developed these definitions and rendered the link of these symbols to morality more explicit. Indeed, Loseke insisted on the distribution of responsibilities; that the harm done on the victims is the exclusive responsibility of the villain, and that the harm is ‘unjust’ (2009: 504-506). The combination of injustice and the total responsibility on the villain gives a morally valid justification for the victim to use force, while depreciating the villain as the cause of all the woes. These symbols provide to the audience of a black and white depiction of the reality that biases the audience’s understand of reality. Sangar et al. more recently analysed narratives justifying the use of force, and also found the use of the symbols of the ‘innocent victim’ and the ‘perverse aggressor’ (2018: 184). These authors went further than Loseke in their definition to not only depict the aggressor as morally wrong, but also to dehumanize it. Indeed, they found that ‘the figure of the perverse aggressor is often dehumanized, closer to animality than humanity. Even when the aggressor is perceived as technically human, it is generally portrayed as insensitive, ruthless, calculating, often psychopathic, and/or cruel by nature’ (Sangar et al. 2018: 184). The strength of their article was also to add the symbols of the hero-protector. They defined hero as a person who acts as a ‘protector’, who ‘puts his/her material well-being and/or physical life at risk to protect the innocent victim (and its community) because this is the morally right choice’ (Sangar et al. 2018: 184). This definition joins Moerk’s and Pincus’s definition of a victim as there is also this notion of sacrificing for a higher and noble cause (2000: 18). Based on these definitions, it may be hard to differentiate the victim from the hero, as both are depicted as morally right and able to defend themselves from the adversary. Indeed, in the context of military operations where there is a use of force, allied soldiers can be labelled as the heroes, but also as victims of the adversary’s harm. Nevertheless, these labels provide a solid moral frame to the use of force.
Lastly, the articles previously mentioned built up well upon Klapp’s work. Klapp argued that symbols are agent of social control, which agrees with the argument that symbols are used in strategic narratives to influence the audience (1954). As symbols can guide moral considerations of the audience, that is differentiating who is wrong from who is right, strategic narratives can finally control the audience. The strength of Klapp’s work is that he associated a social status with the labels. He argued that the heroes’ status is ‘high, exclusive and honorific’ and that heroes are ‘set apart, placed on a pedestal, rewarded with special privileges, and regarded with an awe that verges on veneration, having in many ways the ritual place of an ikon’ (1954: 60). In turn, Klapp’s definition of a villain is very well in line with Sangar’s, Clément’s and Lindemann’s definition of the perverse aggressor: a villain is conceived as ‘a monster incompatible with social organization, a wilful and inveterate enemy of mores, who must be expelled or destroyed if society is to be safe’ (1954). So, this definition adds another dimension as it suggests a response. Klapp’s idea that the use of symbols suggest responses from the audience has been further studied. Scholars found that the use of symbols appeal to the audience’s emotions. 2.5 Emotional appeals Framing the use of force as moral and emphasising the righteousness of such action by using symbols in strategic narratives is an effective way to garner public support. A reason why morality and symbols are effective is because they appeal to the audience’s emotions that affect their judgments regarding the use of force. Schmitt investigated how strategic narratives are effective, and he noted that actors use narratives to appeal to emotions (2018: 189). This idea can be traced back to the twentieth century, as qualitative analyses of WWI and WWII war declaration speeches showed that belligerents not only declared war, but also appealed to emotions: ‘The weaker the justification and logical argument of the leader, the more he had to distract his audience from logical analysis and attempt to arouse strong, emotionally laden
connotations of greatness and victory or […] sacrifice for the good of the great nation’ (2000: 20). More recent studies assessed the link between the public’s emotions and its policy preferences. Lerner et al. found that anger and fear had opposite effects on the public on risk judgments and policy preferences: fear led to the preference of precautionary anti-terrorist policies while anger led to the preference of more aggressive policies (2003: 144). It emphasizes the importance for the politicians to craft their narratives carefully, as emotions are connected to the public’s stance vis-à-vis a policy (Hudd et al., 2005: X). For example, Huddy, Feldman et al., found that the higher the level of anxiety of the public, the less likely it was to support aggressive attacks against terrorists abroad (2005). All these studies highlighted that an emotions and moral conceptions are interrelated and can impact the opinion about the use of force The pivotal study linking emotions and the use of symbols was done by Loseke, who analysed presidential speeches justifying war (2009). Loseke found that the use of emotional and symbolic codes is effective to appeal to the audience’s emotions, which is critical for a persuasive communication (2009: 497-515). The author found that the symbol of the victim appealed to sympathy, caring, compassion and worthy of help, while the symbol of the villain appealed to hatred, repulsion, or disdain (Loseke, 2009: 505-510). These latter negative emotions appealed to fear and anger, which drive the audience’s desires to destroy the villain. This conclusion was reinforced by Sangar’s et al.’s study which supported that to justify the use of force, not only rationality but emotions come into play (2018). They found that the use of symbols ‘innocent victim’ – ‘perverse aggressor’ and ‘hero-protector’ – ‘coward’ drives total compassion towards the victim and moral anger towards the aggressor (Sangar et al., 2018). They concluded that these emotions lead the audience to overcome their natural resistance to the use of force (Sangar et al., 2018). Consequently, a politician wanting to implement a military operation would benefit from inciting the public to become more acceptant of the use of force by appealing to emotions, to boost public acceptance of the operation.
2.6 Conclusion To conclude, the academic literature is already well developed with regards to the study of strategic narratives in the context of the use of force. Most of the authors agree regarding the definition of strategic narrative, and the works build on each other. The point of contestation in the literature is about the elements in strategic narratives that are the most powerful to influence the audience’s policy preferences. Many elements were discussed, and effective structures of strategic narratives was proposed. Authors focused their work on the use of myths, symbols, and historical analogies, other focused on morality, values, cultural congruence, or emotional appeals. What lacks in the literature are attempts to consider these elements in combination, to see whether they influence themselves. More, many of these works date back from a decade or two, and a few empirical studies were done within the past years. President Macron’s speeches about Operation Barkhane as a case study fits well the existing body of literature as it provides up-to-date empirical evidence of the use of strategic narratives in the context of the use of force. As France is a democracy, these speeches serve well to study the use of morality to justify the use of force. Unlike other studies, this paper aimed to connect three elements together -frame, symbolism, and its emotional appeals, all within the structure of a strategic narrative- to study the presidential speeches and draw conclusions regarding the use of narratives to shape policy-preferences of the public with regards the use of force. Ethics are understood as a body of moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour (Oxford University Press), as values also do. More, morals and values influence the emotional reaction of an individual from an event, as discussed in this literature review. Therefore, this paper emphasized the importance of considering the moral frame, symbols, and emotions as a whole in the speeches to study the impact of narratives on the audience.
3. Method design 3.1 Introduction The aim of this paper was to assess how president Macron used a moral frame, symbols, and their emotional appeals in its official speeches about operation Barkhane with the qualitative method of discourse analysis. In other words, it was the study of how the president provided the lens through which the readers or listeners of the speeches can interpret the reality of Operation Barkhane. Hence, the method of analysis relied on the ontological assumption that reality is socially constructed, and in this case through languages. From an epistemological standpoint, it assumed that meaning is fluid and can be subject to interpretation. As it exists many approaches to analyse a discourse, this paper specifically focused on the use of morality, symbolic and emotional codes in the speeches. This paper aimed at systematically describing the characteristics cited above in the speeches to identify a pattern in the different speeches. Finding a pattern in the speeches permitted to identify an overall structure of the speeches and the key commonalities between them. This approach relied on the assumption that president Macron carefully designed his speeches considering its audience, that is the French population and soldiers, given the democratic accountability and the desire to portrait the operation in a good light to keep public support. This assumption implied that the speeches were not made randomly but followed a certain methodology to be the most effective to please and influence the audience of the speeches. As seen in the academic literature, politicians often used moral frame -especially in democracies-, symbolism and emotional appeals in speeches in the following the structure of a strategic narrative to win public support of the use of force. Identifying the presence of these communicative techniques in Macron’s speeches could permit to infer about Macron’s underlying motivations to write the speeches the way he did and add to
the literature on democratic leaders’ communicative strategies. Therefore, a discourse analysis of Macron’s speeches was carried out. 3.2 Data collection The methodological approach of this paper was to fully rely on primary data: Macron’s speeches about Operation Barkhane destinated to the French soldiers, and secondly to the public via their publication on internet. Conducting a narrative discourse analysis upon presidential speeches is a standard methodology in the academic field of this paper’s topic. The speeches were selected from the official website https://www.elysee.fr/toutes-les-actualites. This source was chosen as it is from the French Government and fully available to the public at no cost. Therefore, the speeches were reliable and the fact that there are available supported the idea that the speeches were sensitive to the French public as an audience. As the materials to analyse were speeches, there was no need to create new data. All the speeches were originally given in French and are available on the website in French. Most of the speeches were already available in the format of text. Two of the speeches were available as a video format. The audio of the videos was transcribed with the Word’s transcribe function to get both speeches in text. The speeches were selected on the website mentioned above by applying several filters in the search function of the website. The speeches were found in the category ‘speeches,’ with the filters ‘security, defence and justice’ and ‘Emmanuel Macron.’ After filtering, more than a hundred speeches were found. The selection of speeches was narrowed down with matching-word searches of ‘Barkhane’, ‘Sahel’, ‘Mali’, ‘Tchad’, ‘Burkina Faso’, ‘Sudan’, and ‘Mauritania’. A total of nine speeches were found using these filters, which were selected as materials for the analysis. The countries mentioned above were selected as search filters as they are all countries from the Sahel region which facilitate to find speeches about Operation Barkhane. The total number of speeches under study was nine and they are spanning from the 19th of
May 2017 to the 21st of February 2021. This collection of data permitted to gather current empirics. The speeches were then downloaded as pdf files and uploaded onto the software NVivo 12 to pursue the discourse analysis. 3.3 Data analysis This paper relied on discourse analysis as method of analysis. Discourse analysis can be defined as ‘the analysis of spoken or written texts that contain more than one sentence, including their social context’ (Cambridge Dictionary; Luo, 2019). The qualitative analysis was based on the language of the speeches, that is, the words, sentences and expressions employed by president Macron. The analysis was structured into three themes: the use of a moral frame, the use of symbols victim/wrongdoers and heroes/cowards and the symbols’ impacts on the public’s emotions, and the overall structure of the speeches. These three themes constitute the approach to which the presidential speeches were analysed. As the themes are broad, they were further divided into sub-categories to precisely classify the analysis according to specific aspects of each theme. The themes moral frame, symbols and their emotional appeals and overall structure represented each a ‘node’ as part of the NVivo 12 coding. The specific aspects of each node were sub-nodes. The analysis of the overall structure within the frame of strategic narratives consisted in an analysis of the speeches at the meta-level rather than analysis of the words and sentences as such. The analysis of the overall structure considered the elements that make speeches as strategic narratives. For the theme ‘moral frame’, the sub-nodes were the criteria to be met to define a war as a ‘Just War.’ They were just cause, lawfully declared by a lawful authority, good intentions from the warrying party, the war chosen as a last resort, whose chances of success are reasonable and whose means are proportional to the ends. These criteria follow the conditions for a Just War as recalled by (Johnson, 2017).
The theme ‘symbolism’ was divided into two nodes ‘hero- protector/victim’ and ‘coward-villain.’ Both sub-nodes were further broken down into sub-nodes which were the characteristics of each symbol. The node ‘hero-protector’ had the nodes achievements, qualities, hardships and homage, elements that characterise a hero. Although hero and victim are two different symbols, they were regrouped together in the same node as the heroes were sometimes identified as victims as well. The node ‘coward-villain’ was broken down into six sub-nodes: identification of the villain, portraying the villain as causing harm on wronged victims, vilification of the villain, metaphors, their incompatibility with society, that they unreasonably insisted on warfare, and finally presentation of the wronged victims. These sub- themes were chosen as sub-nodes as they were previously used in the academic literature to define a villain in strategic discourses (Loseke, 2009; Sangar, Clément, Lindeman, 2018). Last, the overall structure of the speeches was analysed. The analysis was organised around the elements of a strategic narratives to uncover the extent to which the speeches present the elements of strategic narratives depicted in the literature (Schmitt, 2018). These elements consist of the interweaving of actors, events, time settings and places interwoven in a specific story line. 3.4 Justifications of methods Political speeches are made to convey messages that support a political agenda. Consequently, it can be easy to identify the political stance of the speaker, especially when he or she is affiliated with a political party, which generally is transparent regarding its political agenda. However, not all speeches are made to be so transparent about the speakers’ intentions, especially at the presidential level. Indeed, there may be hidden messages within the speeches, only decipherable when looking beyond the line. The method of discourse analysis was chosen under this assumption that the speaker of a speech can have hidden motivations, meaning that the action of giving
a speech can have multiple objectives that could be implicit. The discourse analysis is very suitable to read between the lines as this method permits to draw inferences about Macron’s motivations by studying the speeches. By doing the discourse, it was possible to identify and classify textual evidence to uncover a general pattern of the use of languages in the speeches to strengthen Macron’s strategic narrative. Political speeches can be analysed from many perspectives, and the discourse analysis gave the flexibility to design the approach to which Macron’s speeches were analysed. As the speeches selected are about a very politized issue, it was essential to select a method of analysis that take into consideration the surrounding historical and social context. Indeed, given that France is a former colony and is now a democracy, and therefore must comply with public accountability and with the respect of international law, the discourse analysis was approached and conducted around these elements; the discourse analysis permitted to provide an analysis very context specific. The theme of analysis ‘moral frame’ was chosen as it was already identified in the literature as an often-used tools by the democratic leadership to frame their overseas military operations (Schweller, 1992; Goetze, 2008; Kertzer, Powers et al., 2014; Sangar et al., 2018). This discourse analysis aimed at identifying the extent to which Macron framed Operation Barkhane in terms of morality to see whether Macron adopted the same strategy of communication as many of other politicians, and predecessors like Jacques Chirac (Goetze, 2008: 66). The second theme of the analysis ‘symbolism’ was chosen as it was identified in the literature as a tool to influence the audience’s perception of the enemies and the allies, to develop moral judgements about the justification of the use of force and to appeal to emotions. The symbols of the hero-protector, the victim, and the coward-villain were chosen as they could provide a black-and-white depiction of a crisis, which is very powerful to skew and polarise the public’s perception of the use of force, which was therefore considered a strong tool of influence. They also can also spark moral anger which affect the public’s policy preference about the use of force (Sangar et al., 2018).
You can also read
