DoD Officials: Irregular Warfare Will No Longer Suffer a ‘Boom-Bust’ Cycle in Eras of Great Power Competition by Kyle Rempfer - Military Times
The Defense Department doesn’t want to lose its irregular warfare edge, honed through more than a decade of conflict across the Middle East, even as it directs its armed forces to refocus on state-level adversaries.
Retaining the U.S. military’s hard-fought knowledge of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism was a priority for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped design a new national defense strategy in 2018 that prioritizes countering peer-level adversaries like China and Russia.
“Sec. Mattis specifically wanted to end this boom-bust cycle in IW [irregular warfare] that we’ve all experienced,” Owen West, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said at a defense industry symposium Tuesday.
The boom-bust cycle refers to the U.S. military’s preference for fighting traditional, high-end forces, rather than insurgents, according to Andrew Knaggs, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.
“This default setting has left the DoD unprepared for irregular conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq,” Knaggs said. “We have often been slow to recognize the irregular character of these conflicts and have forced conventional approaches as the first response."
“It seems we’ve also been prone to overstay ourselves,” Knaggs added. “When ultimately given the opportunity to right-size our approach, we have too easily discarded our ability to wage IW in favor of conventional readiness and traditional warfare."
This pattern leaves the U.S. military unprepared for the broad spectrum of global affairs challenges the country faces today, Knaggs and West both said at the symposium.
After all, even state-level adversaries have the potential to stoke conflicts outside their borders that resemble irregular warfare…