Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 123

ATLANTIC RESOLVE Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, the public affairs team again raised concerns. “We wanted to maximize the exposure of the events in the news cycle. One big splash would be forgotten a couple days later,” said Childs of the decision to stagger the ceremonies. In addition, events in four separate countries posed unique challenges for coordination and would have left the forward USAREUR and 173rd public affairs teams overextended. The plan was thus changed to have four ceremonies over the course of five days. The forward public affairs team split up into teams to ensure proper coverage and coordination of the ceremonies, with each team handling responsibilities in two countries. As shown in figure 2, Weisman’s Facebook update following the first ceremony in Poland offered another glimpse as to how influential public affairs guidance was on the final outcome of the operation. “Got to tell the Polish Air Force today, ‘I need that fighter jet moved up like 5 feet…perfect,” read Weisman’s Facebook status just after midnight on 24 April.24 Evaluating Effectiveness of Communication Efforts Consequently, when the 173rd’s Company C, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, streamed out of two C-130 Hercules aircraft at Swidwin Air Base in Poland, the cameras were waiting. Photographers with Polish national daily publications and regional television outlets jockeyed for the best shots with international wire photographers such as Agence France Press, Getty Images, and Reuters, recalled Weisman. “All the Polish television outlets broadcast the event live and CNN picked up the Reuters live-video feed,” added Weisman, allowing the images to reach the U.S. and host-nation audiences in real time.25 The public affairs teams’ efforts to ensure imagery and information were quickly available to tell the story accurately were right on the mark, according to Sean Gallup, chief photographer of Germany News for Getty Images.26 Gallup, whose photos were some of the first publicly available from the ceremony in Poland, later shared his perspective of the U.S.-Poland military event. “I would say the visual impression the event created was that the U.S. had sent a serious military unit but was not pursuing a confrontation,” Gallup wrote in an email. MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2015 What Gallup and the rest of the media saw was exactly the message that the Department of Defense, U.S. EUCOM, USAREUR, and the 173rd intended to convey at the outset of the mission. As days of furious planning culminated in paratrooper arrival ceremonies over the last week of April, the images and personal impressions the public affairs operators had visualized became reality on newspaper pages and TV screens worldwide. The story and accompanying imagery made the front pages of The Wall Street Journal, International New York Times, and USA Today weekend edition.27 An initial report to higher headquarters from NielsonGreen read, “[Ministry of Defense] and Embassy media experts assess that the coverage is positive and message of assurance and U.S. commitment are well received by public.” Jurga Zelvariene, a media affairs representative with the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, provided the most vivid illustration of public attitude in her translation of a few powerful lines from a column in one of Lithuania’s largest daily publications, Lietuvos rytas. “About the arrival of the U.S. troops,” Zelvariene translated, “we celebrate one small victory today. The trample of American boots on Lithuanian ground is the most beautiful music, as is the rumble of NATO fighter jets flying over Vilnius. This is how our freedom sounds.”28 The results were clear: U.S. Army Europe and its public affairs practitioners had met the goal to ensure “key publics are informed of U.S. commitment to our allies,” as established in the operation order. Bruce Anderson, a civilian member of the USAREUR public affairs staff, compiled the media analysis of the operation. Anderson noted that reporting early on focused almost exclusively on the theme of assurance, and later included more use of the words “deter” and “reassure.” Some of the coverage characterized U.S. action as “escalatory” or “provocative to Moscow,” Anderson noted in his findings, but “these were mostly drowned out by the dominant narrative of support for the U.S.’ move.”29 Campbell’s reception at the charity dinner in Tallinn illustrated that the mere arrival of U.S. forces was enough to assure a room full of Estonian spectators of U.S. commitment to allied nations. Moreover, the arrival of military forces, according to Campbell, promoted a similar sentiment among the nations’ militaries. “Having been on the ground, it is reassuring,” 121