Comments
Counterterrorism has been important to the U.S. and the West as whole since at least the late 60's and terrorism will continue to be an important threat that we will have to monitor and address whether or not AQ is actually defeated, but as Dave Maxwell stated our security interests extend well beyond CT.
My concern is SOCOM's laser like focus on CT. As SOF's strategic headquarters I hope they have some of their best and brightest looking over the horizon. Topics that should be of high interest for SOCOM is how SOF will be employed to conventional wars and irregular warfare beyond terrorism in the near and mid future.
We have seen a rapid evolution of military technology since 9/11, much of the technology has outpaced our doctrine, and I suspect some of the technology can either make SOF much less relevant, or if SOCOM starts focusing again on the future (with their best people) we will be able to leverage the new technology and superempower SOF for future conflicts.
I think ADM Olson has been overly focused on "dark places" and the requirement for the U.S. to be there. The latest Foreign Policy issue finally challenges some of these assumptions and puts them in context. Most of the significant threats to the U.S. will not come from failed states, but unfortunately this rhetoric that requires us to pursue nation building like activities around the world is the new political correctness movement in foreign policy circles, so logic no longer applies.
Excerpt:
"This idea of being able to wait over the horizon and spring over and chop off heads doesn't really work," he said, describing the "yin and yang" of special operations as including capture-and-kill raids as well as long-term engagement with host countries' militaries. The latter involves U.S. troops "developing long-term relationships, learning languages, meeting people, studying histories, learning black markets."
"If you don't know that, you won't be an effective counterterrorism force," Olson said.
I think he is right, but there has to be the right balance between the force that does the capture kill mission (which will always be funded to maintain the highest level of national capability) and the force that does the long term engagement that should set the conditions and provide the information/situational understanding, training of host nation and indigenous forces and facilitate interoperability with US forces (all harder to justify to the long term investment in people and funding to maintain these capabilities especially in terms of declining defense budgets). But the key point is that the same force cannot be good at doing both the capture/kill mission and the long term engagement mission, so the "yin-yang" he talks about is as much about the two forces as the two capabilities or perspectives as some term the direct and indirect approaches and these approaches must be complementary and mutually supporting (thus the yin-yang of constantly shifting to maintain balance and harmony between the two). The "CT force" will never be able to be large enough to do all the necessary engagement (and still maintain its high end skill sets) and the engagement force can never commit the time and resources to be the best at capture/kill because there are so many engagement requirements. But the "engagement force" does have the added benefit of being a force multiplier and in an ideal situation can advise and assist the host nation to resolve the situation (capture/kill the high value target) in its own country without requiring commitment of US national forces. I am afraid that is not always understood by those making the resourcing decisions (e.g., in DC). And lastly, these capabilities extend far beyond the narrow counterterrorism mission - something we should not forget - terrorism is not the only problem we face in the world.