Samenvatting

How to operate in the information environment is subject to intense debate. Identifying
and tracing multiple narratives on complex security problems enhances understanding for
contemporary military operations. As an illustration, this article discusses ‘narrative net
assessments’ of US and al-Qaida narratives in the 1990s, and Iranian and Israeli narratives
on military power projection in Syria between 2016 and 2018. The cases generate different
types of insights; on counter-productiveness of statements and actions, and the need
to shift the level of analysis. Both demonstrate the value of the comparative logic of the
applied methodology – Analysis by Contrasting Narratives (ACN).