Strategic Mythmaking: How Great Powers Use Symbols to Shape Global Perception

By Adelio Debenedetti – Archive 211

Chess pieces placed on an old world map, symbolizing the strategic moves great powers make across global geopolitics.

Source: Wikimedia License : CC0 – Public Domain

Every great power claims to act in the name of interests, security, and geopolitical necessity. And yet, behind every strategic decision lies something older, simpler, and far more influential: myth.

Not myth as fantasy.Myth as infrastructure.

In the analytical framework of George Friedman, nations behave like organisms constrained by geography, history, and structural imperatives. But what ties those imperatives together—what gives societies direction, cohesion, and the illusion of purpose—is the symbolic layer beneath them.

This symbolic layer is the invisible architecture through which states build legitimacy, mobilize populations, and define both allies and enemies. It is here that strategic mythmaking becomes a weapon—subtle, durable, and essential to cognitive dominance.

Symbols as geopolitical accelerators

Symbols are cognitive shortcuts. A flag, an emblem, a geometric pattern—each one condenses centuries of cultural memory into a single visual trigger. In intelligence terms, symbols are behavioral activators: stimuli that provoke predictable emotional responses before rational thought even begins.

Tom Clancy would call them “the quiet part of psychological operations”—the element that primes a target population long before any overt message arrives.

Consider:

• the Soviet hammer and sickle

• the American eagle

• the Chinese five stars

• the Iranian calligraphic seal

• the Nazi swastika

• the Israeli menorah

• the Russian double-headed eagle

These icons do not inform.They condition.

They activate identity, memory, fear, pride, resentment—whatever strategic function the state requires.Symbols make geopolitics emotionally coherent, turning abstract interests into existential narratives.

Myth as operating system of national power

In Friedman’s view, national behavior is driven by structural forces—geography, demography, economic cycles. But populations don’t follow structures; they follow stories.

This is where myth enters the equation.

Myth provides:

• continuity in times of crisis

• legitimacy during expansion

• unity during fragmentation

• certainty during ambiguity

From a statecraft perspective, myth is not decoration. It is command authority.

Myth turns a geopolitical necessity into a perceived cultural destiny. It transforms strategic decisions into moral imperatives.

Without myth, states are brittle.With myth, they are mobilized.

Symbolic warfare: the operational layer

Modern intelligence agencies—CIA, GRU, MSS, Mossad—understand that symbolic engineering is not a cultural exercise. It is a strategic capability.

This is where Tom Clancy’s level of detail becomes essential.

Symbolic warfare includes:

1. Identity shaping

Embedding symbols that reinforce national unity or fracture adversarial cohesion.

2. Archetypal triggers

Using shapes, colors, and ratios that evoke predictable psychological responses.

3. Narrative scaffolding

Designing symbols that anchor long-term messaging campaigns.

4. Cultural capture

Infiltrating popular culture, architecture, or digital platforms with symbolic cues.

5. Cognitive anchoring

Repeating symbols across media until they form stable neural patterns—what modern neuroscience calls perceptual anchoring.

This is not propaganda. It is deep-structure influence.

It does not target opinions. It targets interpretation mechanisms.

The Ahnenerbe emblem, a historical example of how regimes weaponized symbols to construct mythic narratives and justify geopolitical ambitions.

Source: Wikimedia Pubblic domain

Historical continuity: from antiquity to the Cold War

Ken Follett’s narrative depth allows us to see the long arc of this process.

• Ancient India encoded symbolic sequences into mandalas.

• The Mayans embedded cosmic cycles into architecture.

• Imperial Rome designed military insignia to manifest divine authority.

• The Ahnenerbe attempted to weaponize symbols to construct a “superhuman destiny.”

• The CIA studied symbolic priming in MK-Ultra subprojects.

• The GRU developed identity-fragmentation symbols for psychological destabilization.

Symbols evolve.Their function does not.

They remain tools for shaping the emotional and cognitive terrain on which geopolitical power unfolds.

The Naacal Protocol – Code 211: the symbolic weapon reborn

In The Naacal Protocol – Code 211, the concept reaches its logical extreme.

The Naacal—custodians of an ancient perceptual system—understood something modern intelligence is just rediscovering: symbols bypass reason and rewrite perception at the root level.

Code 211 merges:

• Naacal symbolic grammars

• Nazi-era perceptual experiments

• Cold War psychological operations

• today’s neuro-algorithmic steering techniques

The result is not simply a myth. It is a weaponized mythos, engineered to influence cognition across borders, cultures, and generations.

A myth that does not tell a story.A myth that controls the ability to form stories.

Why strategic mythmaking matters now

In a world saturated with information, symbols provide the stable coordinates through which societies interpret chaos.

Whoever controls symbolic frameworks controls:

• national cohesion

• public perception

• geopolitical legitimacy

• the emotional architecture of entire populations

This is why the most powerful states invest heavily in symbolic warfare.Not because they believe in legends,but because they understand that the mind is the decisive battlespace of the 21st century. Real power today is not territorial. It is perceptual. And the struggle for that power begins with a symbol.

Article by Adelio Debenedetti, author of The Naacal Protocol – Code 211. A narrative research project exploring power, perception, and modern cognitive warfare.