"Deconflicting" Military Euphemisms

A CNN commentator used the word deconflict. It was clear that the word had to do with lessening some sort of conflict, but I had never heard the word before. Here's a dictionary entry on the word, which was first used sometime between 1970-1975.

 

DECONFLICT

verb (used with object)

1.

Military.

1. to avoid a potential clash or accident involving (nonenemy military operations, weaponry, etc.) in a particular combat area:
   to deconflict coalition forces from three nations.
2. to avoid such conflict in (a combat area):
   to deconflict airspace.

2.

to adjust or coordinate so as to prevent or resolve conflict:

The witness never explained or deconflicted his earlier statements.

 

I wanted to do a little more digging on the word's usage. A 2015 article in the Guardian took a negative prescriptive view of the word, stating:  

 

"With the launching of Russian air strikes in Syria this week, the already brutal conflict has taken another ugly and awkward turn – and it has thrown up a new ugly and awkward word to match.The word “deconflict” – or worse “deconfliction” – is being used by US officials to describe attempts to ensure that US and Russian air forces don’t shoot at each other while they conduct overlapping air campaigns over Syria."

The author spoke to Gary Rawnsley, a professor of public diplomacy at Aberystwyth University: 

“It’s meaningless,” he said. 'It’s one of those phrases like ‘collateral damage’ that militaries use to soften the blow of their activities.'

More from the same article:

"It was first noted as Pentagon jargon by the Guardian in 1991 during reports on the Gulf war. The paper carried a Gulf-English dictionary which gave this definition of deconfliction as 'trying not to have so many planes in the air that they collide'.

It was also a favourite of Donald Rumsfeld, the master of Pentagon doublespeak. In 2006, he came out with this sentence to defend US strategy in Iraq: 'We’ve gone from ... service-centric warfighting to deconfliction warfighting to interoperability and now towards interdependence.'

The verb deconflict has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary since 2005. It provides this definition: To reduce the risk of collision in (a combat situation, airspace, etc) by separating the flight paths of one’s own aircraft or airborne weaponry. Also: to coordinate (one’s aircraft) in this manner."
 

 

Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/01/deconflict-buzzword-to-prevent-risk-of-a-us-russian-clash-over-syria