Resisting Brainwashing
The author considers the points of Eisenhower's code of conduct for American soldiers in captivity, which is essentially an attempt to resist interrogation and attempts to turn them against their country. Key points are:
- To be prepared to die in the defense of the country, its ideology, and fellow soldiers.
- To never surrender if there is any means to resist
- If captured, to continue to resist and make every effort to escape
- To special favors from the enemy
- To take no action that would harm fellow prisoners
- To avoid providing any information
- To make no statement implying disloyalty
These guidelines are essentially pointless, as they tell soldiers nothing more than they already knew or intended to do - simply to resist their captors. Meanwhile, their captors expect captives to be resistant in exactly these ways. So in effect, this is a guidance to soldiers to behave exactly as their captors will expect, maximizing the effectiveness of techniques developed to break down and convert hostile captives.
Moreover, these expectations tend to make capitulation more effective and permanent in the mind of the soldier. If he should break under deprivation and torture, he feels he has committed an irrevocable act of treason for which he will not be forgiven. He may be more enthusiastic about resisting, but when his resistance is finally broken (an anyone can be brought to a breaking point), he feels that there is no going back. In any civil court of law, a contract signed under duress is considered null and void and the party who signed is relieved of his obligations without being deprived of his citizenship. In courts martial, a contract signed under duress is considered just as much an act of treason as one signed willingly. So ultimately, this measure is dreadfully misguided.
At the same time, the mere existence of such a code acknowledges that the nature of warfare has shifted from the physical battle to the mental one: whether dealing with captive soldiers or the civilian population of another nation, the tactics of combat have shifted from disabling the enemy's functional capability to fight to undermining his will to fight. If tactics can be developed to subvert the will of the civilian population, armed conflict becomes entirely unnecessary.
Fighting Indoctrination with Indoctrination
When totalitarian governments are in conflict with one another, or when a free nation has become totalitarian in defense, then the conflict is between two sides that wish to make their indoctrination more effective than the enemy's attempt to indoctrinate the same people (soldiers or civilians).
There is the premise that a person who is strongly indoctrinated will resist attempts to sway them from that ideology, which is essentially the basis for military training. Aside of learning basic skills of camping and camping, soldiers go through an ordeal that is designed to strip them of their individual beliefs and cause them to identify as a loyal member of a military group. The methods of this training can be quite barbarous and cruel, and are intended to harden the men against the barbarism and cruelty of the enemy. Such programs are often criticized for catering to the hidden sadistic tendencies of the instructors - but in any case they are quite pointless: one does not build an army by killing or maiming soldiers, so the "training" will never be as brutal as the enemy's treatment.
It's also noted that most indoctrination does not require physical torture - and has found it to be counterproductive. A person is able to recognize when he is being manipulated, and quite capable of acting like he agrees with someone to avoid being punished, whereas they actually become more resistant against their tormentor. Once they have the reward or the threat has been removed, they stop pretending to agree and reaffirm their previous beliefs. It has been seen that prisoners of war who had been "successfully" broken and reeducated by their captors very quickly recant and revert when returned to their home country.
Effective indoctrination is done without any component of torture: a person who declares their loyalty under duress is not loyal, but one who makes a choice at their own leisure can be fiercely and permanently loyal. The process of indoctrination is more subtle and insidious.
Defenses Against Accusations of Treason
On the topic of false compliance, the author mentions that there are a number of criteria that are used in evaluating whether a person has actually committed treason of their own free will, or if they have been manipulated or coerced into pretending to have shifted their loyalties:
- The artifacts of treason (such as a written or recorded statement or confession) can be examined to determine whether an individual was compelled by force
- Whether the individual might have been acting as part of a group, subject to "mass psychology" rather than individual decision-making.
- Similarly, whether the individual might have been used as a scapegoat for a group of prisoners, or singled out to be made example of by the enemy
- Whether the individual has a weak personality, is incapable of forming strong individual ideas, and as such is the type to go along with whatever is presented him at the moment. This is often the case when an individual is insane, mentally deficient, or simply a "dull average" conformist.
- A consideration of the methods used to elicit the statement or confession: whether the subject was physically tortured, deprived of sleep, drugged, or otherwise mentally compromised.
Again, the deeper significance of this list is that it is a reorganization that there are often false confessions, and that the methods used for thought control are often ineffective or only temporarily so for normal individuals.