Developing Mastery of Irregular Warfare is a Pipe Dream if the DOD is Forced to Rely on SOCOM

James Armstrong wrote “Developing Mastery of Irregular Warfare is a Pipe Dream if the DOD is Forced to Rely on SOCOM” in response to a piece by Cleveland, Egel, Maxwell and Rothstein (“Developing a mastery of irregular warfare”).    I found bits and pieces of both articles useful but also missing the mark, so without addressing points directly I will very briefly make my own attempt at defining “our” problem and possible solution.   

First of all, USSOCOM and US Army “Special Operations” leadership was long ago taken over by the conventional Infantry Army.  As much as they like the title “Special Operations,” those whose expertise is tied to the Ranger Regiment or JSOC are focused on only the direct action type missions.  They are admittedly among the best in the world at those missions but neither their training nor professional education gives them any real insights into the topic under discussion – unconventional warfare.  They go back and forth easily to conventional Army assignments because that is their fundamental skill set.  The relatively small parts of the special operations community which learn about, practice and operate much of the time in the UW arena were relegated to subordinate places in the hierarchy long ago and so only have a limited voice on the topic.  Being able to plan and execute the most successful raid to kill terrorists or rescue prisoners does not give an organization the insights into developing counter-insurgency campaign plans.     USSOCOM therefore, and most of the officers who have USSOCOM assignments really don’t know UW and systemically the organization only has a very, very limited baseline knowledge in that area.  

There is a fundamental part of leadership and management which requires the assignment of responsibility and authority for a given task.  In practice, from Vietnam to now, UW in our big events has been given to the conventional Army at the time.    When we decide and have to go in with large conventional forces, the conventional Army is the only piece of DOD with the assets to do that, but nobody is forcing them up front to prepare to do that mission right.   The elements of “Special Operations” which know UW can do really good work when the scale is limited but our fundamental failure is that nobody has assigned the mission of conducting major UW campaigns, in a concrete and realistic way, to the force that would have to execute.  Neither think-tanks, doctrine writers, academic programs or offices buried in the DOD can prepare and lead a real UW capability.   The only solution is to force big-Army to accept the major UW mission now and have parts of their structure really get their heads, hearts, and training into that mission so they can do that right when they have to do it again in 20-30 years.   (But the challenge is to know that winning a full-on conventional fight is still the core mission.  UW is so different, though, that if at least a part of the conventional force doesn’t take it on full-time, there will never be the right leadership and forces to do that mission when needed.)    At the cost of much blood and repeated failures we somehow have not grasped the reality of this need and solution.   Getting the big Army over not wanting to do this mission is of course a huge part of the challenge. 

As I read this article, my hopes that this could be the beginning of a great discussion between special operations and non-special operations thinkers, was quickly dashed after I read the second paragraph.  I should have stopped reading, for the remainder of the article devolved into nonsense with a misrepresentation of the facts and a complete reversal of where the blame for failures over the past 20 years should be, that is if blame is to be assigned.

As I mentioned in my opening line, the author demonstrated quite clearly in his second paragraph his lack of understanding of Irregular Warfare, and I would argue that this thinking is prevalent with in the US Army and is one of the reasons the Army failed to learn in both Afghanistan and Iraq, in fact I would take it all the way back to Vietnam.  His lack of education in Irregular Warfare is not his fault.  The services in many respects, treat Irregular Warfare not as a type of war but as a type of operation.  This is quite evident in the resent effort in the Pentagon to change the definition of Irregular Warfare from a form of warfare to a form of operation such that it is another tool to be used by the services to identify required capabilities for justifying budget lines and requesting funding from congress.  When in fact Irregular Warfare is a form of warfare that requires a strategy, and the art of Irregular Warfare is underpinned by a completely different science.

Joint Pub 1 identifies two types of warfare, Traditional Warfare, and Irregular Warfare.  Traditional Warfare is one nation state forcing its will on another.  The mechanisms of victory for Traditional Warfare are to be close with the enemy, to destroy his will and capability to fight and to occupy his terrain.  When you have achieved these three conditions you have victory.  Traditional Warfare occurs in the physical domains, it is about the terrain.  The education system in the department, regardless of the service, is focused on traditional warfare and all official education is based on the study of the science of traditional warfare.  Irregular Warfare is a competition for power between a governing authority-whether the legal government or occupying power and an element of the population.

This type of warfare, while many actions occur in the physical and cyber domains, is waged in the minds of the people.  Irregular Warfare is about the population, the mass base, not about the terrain.  A long-standing principle of resistance forces is not to hold terrain.  The mechanism of victory in IW for both the opposition and the governing authority, while not described in the Joint Pub, is to obtain the active support of most of the population and to use that weight to force the desired outcome.

As I argued in my February 2017 SWJ article, The Science of Resistance, waging this type of war is based on a different science that results in applying a different art than the one used for Traditional Warfare. While traditional warfare predominately occurs in the physical domains, Irregular Warfare occurs in minds of the effected population, it is about the narrative, the story being told by each side, and to convince or force the mass base to engage.  I would call this the Human Terrain not the Human Dimension as mentioned by the author which if I remember correctly is primary focused on the human condition of the enemy’s soldiers and maybe dealing with refugees within the context of Traditional Warfare.  We have seen the results of applying the wrong art to the war we are engaged in; it is time we start getting it right.

Wow..requires more words than available space. Dave M my response submitted to editorial staff. 

Aside from the glaring lack of understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and authorities of USSOCOM, the conflation USASOC and USSOCOM, and the lack of historical context (Desert One is a landing site – the mission was Operation Eagle Claw) for this argument to have purpose, there would have to be interest at the Secretary of the Army level in a large-scale investment to “professionalize the entire US Army on irregular warfare."
Since we haven’t seen calls for this from senior Army leadership, shouldn’t the author’s concern be with who doesn’t want to do IW, and not with who does?