Rational ignorance: the strategic economics of military censorship.

• Author: Brennan, Timothy J.

1. Introduction

   News coverage of the Persian Gulf War was the subject of controversial restrictions by the military [1]. Opposition to these restrictions from the journalistic community springs in the first instance from the perception that these restrictions make it more difficult for reports to do their jobs. Part of that opposition may spring from a sense of professional duty; much of it may be part of the character of the journalist. Correspondents, particularly war correspondents, probably would not have chosen their careers unless they received personal as well as professional satisfaction from bearing witness to the action.

   Nevertheless, opposition to these restrictions does not refer only to personal and professional satisfaction. Moral force is invoked by appealing to the rights of citizens to know what their government and military are doing. In the language of ethics, citizens cannot fulfill their duties as moral actors without being able to control how others act on their behalf--especially in wartime, when those actions themselves raise profound moral concerns. In the more mundane terms of economic efficiency, an argument would be that a principal (the citizen) is better off if to the degree it can effectively monitor the action of its agents (the government and military).

   The leading and obvious argument presented against wartime disclosure of military activities is that such disclosure may inform the enemy as well as the citizens [4]. An informed antagonist may be better able to place its offensive and defensive capabilities to increase the likelihood that the protagonist will fail. A less appealing argument is that publicizing military activities may weaken political support in the protagonist's home country. A democracy's need for disclosure of government activity itself may make it more difficult for democracies to prosecute wars. This difficulty is amplified when altruistic or pacifist citizens have the political wherewithal to limit or halt the action or to punish the military for excessive effort. The Viet Nam experience suggests that social ostracizing of returning soldiers was potential punishment for military effort at least some of the citizens regarded as inordinate.

   In principle, the military should not escalate a conflict or employ tactics that a democracy's citizens find reprehensible, even if that means losing the war. An obvious example would be refraining from using nuclear weapons in Viet Nam; perhaps Agent Orange should have been on the forbidden list as well. But public awareness of a military's tactics, when many may be averse to their use, introduces a potential strategic cost. If citizens forbid the military from using a particularly destructive tactic, then the military cannot credibly threaten to use that tactic against an enemy. Knowing this, an enemy that might have been deterred from using extreme measures (e.g., chemical weapons) by appropriate retaliation now may credibly threaten to use them. In some cases an enemy might have been deterred from a conflict altogether, but if the deterrent lacks credibility, it may take its chances and fight.

   This raises the possibility that the citizens might choose not to know, to be "rationally ignorant" by means of censoring news of military actions. If the citizens could commit not to care about their military's tactics, the problem would disappear. There is extensive work on the benefits of seemingly irrational behavior that runs counter to one's objectives [3; 9]. It is difficult, however, to imagine how citizens could consciously commit not to have the preferences they have, as they might consciously commit simply to avoid information. The interesting issue is to investigate narrower commitments to resist information consistent with the original preference against extreme measures.

   Some differences in the prosecution and the outcome in the Iraqi war as compared with the Viet Nam war may be germane. CNN and the major broadcast networks brought much of the Iraqi conflict into U.S. homes in real time. However, one fact not well publicized was the extent of Iraqi casualties. Only after the completion of Desert Storm did estimates surface of over one hundred thousand Iraqi casualties--on the order of one thousand U.S. conflict-related casualties. by contrast, during the Viet Nam conflict the media supplied "body counts" with the regularity of baseball scores. There are many differences, to be sure, but perhaps the military outcome of the Viet Nam war would have been more in the U.S.'s favor had Americans been willing to inflict casualties in a thousand-to-one ratio. Perhaps Saddam Hussein underestimated American willingness to inflict that order of casualties on Iraqis--or perhaps he overestimated the ability of broadcast news organizations to let Americans know how much human damage its army was inflicting.

   The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of rational ignorance as a military strategy. If it is not feasible, an important argument against disclosure grounded on the virtue of keeping the citizens ignorant (as opposed to keeping the enemy ignorant) disappears. First Amendment-based criticism of military censorship, particularly when the enemy already has the information, would be justified. On the other hand, a successful model may identify conditions necessary to justify restricting media access to military information.

   We begin with a simple model that illustrates some of the basic criteria necessary for a military censorship policy to be rational. In this model, military censorship restricts access to information about either side's efforts. We will then examine more complex scenarios in which the enemy can supply information regarding its own efforts while the citizen's military controls information regarding war-related damages or its own military effort. To prevent the citizens from inferring what the military's effort must have been as a response to the enemy's...