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,”
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