Special Forces at the Lion’s Tail: Managing Risk in the Use of Special Operations Forces and the Application of Law

Special Forces at the Lion’s Tail: Managing Risk in the Use of Special Operations Forces and the Application of Law

T. Nelson Collier

Just over one year ago—as is now well known—a platoon of Islamist militants ambushed a team of American and Nigerien soldiers near the Mali-Niger border and killed four Green Berets.[1]  Later that month the Weekend edition of USA Today featured the front-page headline: Africa is the new front line on terror.  What is not so well known is that, months before, the official U.S. Strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa expired with nothing to replace it.  The lapse left gaps in national strategy.  The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) does little to fill them, and so allows undue risk.  Specifically, its ends, ways, and means toward Africa are not in balance.  The ways remain unclear.  The paradigm shift of the new way of war demands a new way of strategy (Part I), especially for the Sahel (Part II).  Complications heighten strategic risk to operations there (Part III).  The national security staff must present a clearer way ahead for U.S. policy concerning northern Africa, particularly one that mitigates the risk inherent in the interplay of the use of U.S. Special Operations Forces (USSOF) and the application of law.

Part I - The New Way of War Needs a New Way of Strategy for Success in the Sahel

In the American way of strategy, the United States endeavors to apply the instruments of national power on the whole-of-government approach to further strategic interests.[2]  The problem is that this approach enables the ends-means exercise and leaves ways unclear.  And the rhetoric worsens the problem such that “grand” strategy[3] remains no more than operational art.  With ways left unclear, risk inheres.[4]  Not least for this reason, the American way of strategy fails.[5]

With its series of compromises and expediencies, strategy toward Afghanistan and Iraq was wayward, lurching headlong in fits and starts.  No wonder.  The way of war in Afghanistan and Iraq had no grand strategy to guide it.[6]  National strategies toward the region existed, to be sure, but ways remained unclear.  The ends, ways, and means toward Africa in the 2017 NSS are not balanced because—just as with Afghanistan and Iraq—the ways remain unclear.

In November 2009, the Washington Post published a front page above-the-fold article on the Afghanistan surge, Newly Deployed Marines to Target Taliban Bastion. Days later, President Barack Obama addressed West Point graduates on the way ahead throughout the surge, saying “…our cause is just, our resolve unwavering.”  Soon after, the United States moved toward “a new way of war in Afghanistan and elsewhere in which battlefield restraint, cultural subtleties, and armed nation-building enterprises matter[ed] more than destruction of the enemy.”[7]

Obama’s clarion call in the West Point speech carried through not only in deed but in words in OIR.[8]  President Obama himself vaunted this “new way”[9] in a valedictory at the end of his second term.  In December of 2016, he addressed an audience at MacDill Air Force Base, headquarters of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).  Counterterrorism against ISIS, as the MacDill speech went, “demonstrates a shift in how we’ve taken the fight to terrorists everywhere from South Asia to the Sahel.”

The paradigm shift of the new way—taking place in earnest in Afghanistan in 2010[10]—harks back at least to 2003, as an outgrowth of the lessons learned from the Iraq invasion.  Still, by then the new way and the old had failed (or neglected) to consider how to turn wins of war into strategic successes.[11]  If this is right,[12] then the new American way of war necessitated a new American way of strategy.

What is concerning is that the 2017 NSS stands out as another example of the failed way.  In particular, the NSS strategy toward Africa speaks of partnering with governments to end conflicts on the continent and working with African nations to promote good governance and promote the rule of law, but does not offer ways to do so.  More is needed.  And far from being only an example to illustrate a more general point, the northern Africa region is relevant in its own right as important to U.S. interests, especially the Sahel.  With comparisons made between Mali and Afghanistan and between Nigeria and Iraq, the Sahel region’s complex environment demands heightened attention.

Part II - Stability in the Sahel is an Important U.S. Interest, but the Region is Complicated

The Sahel has become increasingly relevant.  In 2013 Rudy Atallah—a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council—presented a prepared statement before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on The Growing Crisis in Africa’s Sahel Region.  Regional instability invites non-state armed groups hell-bent on imposing strict Islamic law and staging attacks throughout the region and in Europe.  Atallah asserts that “Left unaddressed, these patterns and nefarious actors will increasingly threaten the interests of the United States and her allies.”  The 2015 NSS emphasized that “Africa is rising,” and that “violent extremists fighting governments in Somalia, Nigeria, and across the Sahel all pose threats to innocent civilians, regional stability, and our national security.”  Now more than ever, stability in northern Africa is an important U.S. interest.  This is especially true with respect to Mali and Nigeria.

By 2011, Mali had become a regional paragon of a stable democracy.  Then suddenly in 2012, Malian soldiers staged a coup, which in turn drew in a power vacuum reminiscent of post-Soviet Afghanistan.[13]  According to CNN, Mali then became the next-most-likely haven for al Qaeda.  As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in 2013, “[the United States has] a responsibility to make sure that al Qaeda does not establish a base for operations in North Africa and Mali.”[14]  The Niger ambush proves the prescience of these forebodings.

No less profound complications exist in Nigeria.  Spoken of as a “key strategic ally of the [United States],”[15]  Nigeria also remains relevant to U.S. interests, not least because it has for decades remained alongside Iraq as one of the United States’ foremost sources of foreign oil (according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration).  But other reasons support the comparison between Nigeria and Iraq, between Boko Haram and ISIS, top among those reasons being terrorist tactics and civilian death tolls.[16]  And Islamist extremist insurgency and terrorism in Nigeria will only worsen.  As Atallah stressed in his statement, since 2013, “some members of Boko Haram have turned their sights outside of the Nigerian border—another indicator of affinity for the global jihad.”[17]  Make no mistake, “helping Nigeria confront the terrorist threat of Boko Haram is in the interests of the U.S. and the international community.”[18]

Still, the case for U.S. engagement in the Sahel is not perfectly clear.[19]  What is clear is that something needs to be done.  In January 2018, the National Defense University’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies published its updated graphic on Africa’s Active Militant Islamist Groups, depicting stark concentrations of “violent events” in Mali (AQIM-affiliated fighters) and in Nigeria, at the borders of Nigeria, Niger, and Chad (Boko Haram and ISIS-affiliated fighters).  The data show that activity rose again in 2017.  After the Niger ambush, the national security staff can expect that Congress and the electorate will pay more attention to the Sahel.  A close look reveals that national strategy toward the region is already quite wayward.[20]  Complications in the region demand a clearer way ahead. 

Part III - Complications in the Sahel Heighten Strategic Risk and Demand a Clearer Strategy

The new way of war seems to necessitate the use of USSOF.  First, remember that the paradigm shift[21] of the new way had its origins in 2003.  Then, Foreign Affairs published an article by Max Boot that summarized the Iraq invasion—a harbinger of the new way—in part as having been “heavily reliant upon precision firepower, special forces, and psychological operations.”  Second, consider that “[t]he new doctrine relie[d] heavily on the use of indigenous surrogate troops, the goodwill of the local people, societal reconstruction, and the host government’s legitimacy, policies, and conduct.”[22]

But what has been true in Afghanistan[23]  and Iraq[24] has been true for Mali and Nigeria: local forces are outmatched.[25]  In Iraq and Afghanistan SOF were used to train surrogate forces, part of a task-set referred to as foreign internal defense (FID).[26]  So, “As it was in Iraq and Afghanistan,” according to former Navy SEAL and author Dick Couch, “the final assessment of whether we ultimately win or lose [in Africa] lies with our success in the conduct of [FID].”[27]  And, “[SOCOM] is the only combatant command with FID as a legislatively mandated core task.”[28]  But the use of SOF itself demands a grand strategy.[29]  And complications in the Sahel region are such that unclear ways of strategy allow undue risk, especially at the intersection of the use of USSOF and the application of law.

As the history bears out, strategy toward Iraq shifted in 2003 and in Afghanistan in 2009.  Law was there all along.  The day of Obama’s MacDill speech, Kate Brannen, a national security reporter, published a piece on the Just Security blog emphasizing some of Obama’s most salient points: In MacDill Speech, Obama Makes Case for Why Wars Should be Fought Lawfully.  Among his remarks, Obama spoke for “a nation that stands for the rule of law, and strengthen[s] the laws of war.”  As for laws of war, Obama’s talk in the West Point speech of the cause being “just” alludes to the principles of the just war tradition, made suitable for practical use in the Powell Doctrine.  Candidate George W. Bush had echoed this Powell-Doctrine principle in 2000: “When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just.”  Just war principles depend on the application of the laws of war.  After all, “A just cause can be undone if it is pursued in unjust ways.”[30]  Commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan understood this, but bad strategy undermined the efforts.[31]  Conditions improved under Petraeus: “General Petraeus’ strategy emphasized protection of the population, more discretionary use of force, and heavy emphasis on human rights.”[32]  These ideals echoed the U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, revised just two years earlier, signed under Petraeus’ hand.[33]  In the end, “[u]nder the new strategy implemented by Petraeus, Iraqi civilian deaths dropped dramatically.”[34]  Also, “Iraqi Special Forces trained by USSOF stood out as the most capable Iraqi armed force.”[35]

So, in Nigeria, “One particular area in which USSOF could be useful is in providing training and helping security forces to be more precise in their use of force, as [former Commander, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)] General [Carter] Ham proposed.”[36]  But in Afghanistan so too in Nigeria: the Leahy laws[37] present problems.  Human rights violations—including excessive use of force and torture—have constrained U.S. monetary and military aid to Nigeria.[38]  Meanwhile, Malians have continued the fight against regional insurgencies.  Last October, former Malian Defense Chief of Staff General Mahamane Touré spoke to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies on Mali’s COIN strategy.[39]  Among his remarks, General Touré emphasized the importance of “the need for senior leaders and commanders to help the rank and file understand that protecting civilians is the key to success.”  He also emphasized that “[COIN] by nature requires the use of lightly armed and highly mobile units.”  But here, USSOF+ law = good strategy is a gross oversimplification.  There is a point of fact from recent history in Mali that represents a profound strategic challenge for USSOF and U.S. national interests.  In the coup’s melee, “members of the elite army units trained by USSOF reportedly [ ] defected to Islamic extremists operating in the north of the country.”[40]  One is left to wonder whether these men, or some of them, were the same who carried out the Niger ambush.  Worse than that, as the Malian military embarked on its COIN campaign (backed by French forces), its men reportedly committed reprisals and summary executions against civilians.[41]

As for rule of law, in Afghanistan President Obama had turned word into deed by way of Brigadier General Mark Martins’ Rule of Law Field Force-Afghanistan, with Rosa Brooks in the civilian lead.[42]  Why was a rule of law program under the DoD (vice Justice or State)?  One possible reason: “rule of law is the West’s alternative to jihadist terrorism.”[43]  The problem is, “[r]ule of law is an abstraction, a term that is easy to employ in rhetoric, but hard to measure in result.”[44]  Worse, “In truth, the rule of law is a complex, fragile, and to some extent inherently unrealizable goal.  Nonetheless, projects that are self-conscious about the nuances and paradoxes of the rule of law are much more likely to be successful.”[45]  On Brooks’ account, working within Afghanistan’s legal system “posed even steeper challenges than Iraq.”[46]  The 2017 NSS strategy toward Africa reiterates the rule of law as a priority, but does not offer clear ways for success.  These complications and others demand a clearer national strategy for the region.

In Closing: Thoughts on Grand Strategy

In Obama’s defense, his was the duty to work within the pressures of the then-current political situation.[47]  To borrow a phrase used in military parlance, this reality is inherent in the Commander-in-Chief’s burden of command.  It is fundamental and indispensable to the U.S. constitutional framework.  In fact, Brooks notes in Foreign Policy that “This isn’t a problem specific to the Obama administration, or to the White House; other administrations and other executive-branch agencies are just as bad.”  A natural consequence is that a grand strategy needs popular support to succeed.[48]  After all, “politics and grand strategy are matters of the practicable.”[49]  This is one among several reasons why the use of USSOF is appropriate.  The use of SOF tends to be more politically palatable than the use of conventional forces.[50]

Debates continue as to whether the United States can sustain a grand strategy at all.  Changes in administration, together with the political, bureaucratic processes demanded of a democratic republic heighten complications in developing a lasting national strategy.[51]  Not least for this reason then, “one must think of grand strategy in terms of an idiosyncratic process rather than a specific, clearly thought-through approach to the world.  When successful, it almost invariably involves the choices and guiding hands of individuals.”[52]  For this reason—as a passing note—merit remains in the grand-strategy-as-a-people-process approach of the Eisenhower model.[53]  In any case though, as with Powell and Petraeus (and Martins, Mattis, and McMaster) fighting wars lawfully depends on commanders.  And commanders depend on strategy.[54]  With Mattis as Defense Secretary and McMaster as National Security Advisor, the United States has the leadership for a clearer strategy for the Sahel that facilitates right action.

Conclusion

The 2017 NSS allows undue risk.  A parsing of the NSS strategy toward Africa helps make the point: the NSS defers to ends and means and leaves ways unclear.  The Lykke model of military strategy (ways to apply means to ends) is brilliant in its simplicity.  But this model fails as a construct of national strategy.  With ways left unclear, risk remains in just how national means are applied to regional ends (Part I).  And nowhere are these complications more profound than in the AFRICOM area of operations, particularly in the Sahel (Part II).  The inherent difficulties in the Sahel, and those in the use of USSOF and the application of law, demand a clearer national strategy (Part III).  The United States’ continued provision of support of efforts throughout the Sahel region (and the world, to be sure) present current strategic challenges.  But, with worn-thin resources and a war weary electorate, it remains to be seen whether the United States will make Mali, Nigeria, and the Sahel region anything more than peripheral to its strategic and national security interests.  Still, it is a mistake to ignore the region.  To the national security staff: give AFRICOM and SOCOM a clearer strategy for the Sahel.

End Notes