Irregular Warfare Podcast - Back to the Future: Resetting Special Operations Forces for Great Power Competition

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Special operations forces have been a favorite national security tool during the United States' post-9/11 wars. However, the release of the 2017 National Security Strategy pivoted the United States’ strategic focus from terrorism to near-peer competitors China and Russia. What will be the role of special operations forces (SOF) in this era of great power competition? Where is SOF falling short in the shift to meet this new focus area? Former Under Secretary of Defense for policy Michèle Flournoy and retired Admiral Eric T. Olson join this episode to discuss.

I don't think we should put deterrents on the backs of SOF, but they can make a big contribution. All of the missions that they can do to help us really both better understand the environment and to also set the theater, if you will. There's a lot of preparation of the environment that can be done that's not very visible, but is very helpful if you actually go into a crisis. The United States' relationship with China is actually less important than our relationship with the countries that surround China. We have got to help build their capabilities. We've got to steal their resolve. As we talk about great power competition, we're in it. We are dealing every day with Russian and Chinese aggression. I call

it war around the edges. Welcome to episode 30 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm Kyle Atwell, and I will be your host today alongside our newest team member, Abigail Gage. In today's episode, we discuss the role of special operations forces in the context of great power competition. Our guests today have extensive special operations practitioner and policy experience at the highest levels of U.S. government. operations practitioner and policy experience at the highest levels of U.S. government. They argue that special operations forces, known as SOF, need to reset following the past two decades focused on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in the war on terror. SOF has several important roles they can play to support deterrence against near-peer rivals, and our guests conclude by proposing multiple policy changes to adapt SOF to the era of great

power competition. Michelle Flournoy is the co-founder and managing partner of West Exec Advisors. She previously served as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy during President Obama's administration, where she played a key role in formulating U.S. strategy and policies that impacted SOFT. Michelle is also the co-founder and served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security, a DC-based think tank. Retired Admiral Eric Olson was the eighth commander of and first naval officer to command the United States Special Operations Command. Admiral Olson was also the first Navy SEAL to be appointed to the grade of a three-star and four-star admiral. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving SEAL on duty.

You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here is our conversation with Michelle Flournoy and Eric Olson. Michelle Flournoy and Admiral Eric Olson, I want to start by saying welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. This is a conversation that Abigail and I have really been looking forward to, and thank you for joining us today. Great to be with you.

Pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much. Always great to be in a conversation with Michelle. So I would like to start with Michelle. You know, when we invited you to be a guest on the podcast, you suggested we have a conversation on how special operations forces need to shift their focus in the new era of geopolitical competition. What motivated you to want to speak on this topic? Well, it really, it occurs to me that we've really focused so much of the SOF community in the last 20 years on the post 9-11 challenges, counterterrorism operations, counterinsurgency

and counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we've really honed the force and focused on those direct action missions primarily. And when I look to the future and I see the challenge of a rising China, the importance of trying to shape the environment War. But it really requires a pretty dramatic shift. And so I thought, you know, who better to have that conversation with than my good friend, Eric Olson. Thanks, Michelle. And I think you're exactly right. This is a great time to have this conversation. And I agree completely that the public awareness of special operations forces have been largely on their direct action missions. I think some can say that hasn't been the bulk of the work and it may be even not the most important aspects of their work, but it certainly is what has caught

the public attention. It's how people think of special operations forces now. It's how many policymakers think of special operations forces now. It's sort of a direct action capability. And as we rethink special operations force applications coming out of 20 years in largely Iraq and Afghanistan, focused on a defense priority of great power or strategic competition, thinking this through from the beginning is going to be very useful. Thinking this through from the beginning is going to be very useful. There's a lot to unpack here. But before that, Eric, as the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, why don't you describe what Special Operations Forces are for the layperson and talk to us a little bit about what puts special in that name?

I don't want to be too bureaucratic, but the Special Operations Forces, as we think about them now, are those forces under the command when they're in the United States, in the United States Special Operations Command, distinct from Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, other combatant commands. And these people, the Special Operations Forces, serve under the umbrella of the Special Operations Commander during their time in the force. They are selected at a certain level. They are trained at a certain level. They're equipped at a certain level, all of which is different than other military forces. A special operation itself is a difficult thing to define. There is no doctrinal definition of a special operation. And so the default definition is a special operation is an operation for which no other force is organized, trained, or equipped to conduct. So it becomes kind of a catch-all force to do things that are being done for the first time or that require a different kind of a problem solving or an operational or tactical capability. But it is members of the Army, Navy,

Air Force, Marine Corps recruited into the special operations community, transferred from that service to the operational authority of the commander of the special operations command, and then trained for the special operation mission set. When I think about special operations forces, I do think about their history and their origins, even before SOCOM was officially established, right? I mean, so if you look back to World War II and the sort of precursors of the OSS, and obviously that was an intelligence organization, but I think a lot of our early special operations came out of that tradition, if you will. And so I think of some of those missions related to clandestine operations, operations behind enemy lines, you know,

reconnaissance, counter reconnaissance, preparation of the environment, you know, those kinds of Cold War missions that were happening all the time, I think those are now becoming much more relevant again in terms of not just such an exclusive counterterrorism, counterinsurgency focus. But I would love to know what Eric thinks about that. Yeah, as always, Michelle is exactly on point. Mentioning the OSS is very appropriate. exactly on point. Mentioning the OSS is very appropriate. The Office of Strategic Services was created to be a special, capable, different kind of a force to do the things that Michelle mentioned, but it only existed for less than four years. It only ever had one commander. It was just established at the end of World War II in 1945. But within a few years, that gap in our capability was quite

apparent. And so the CIA was established in 1947 to cover the intelligence side of what the Office of Strategic Services did. And an Army Special Warfare Group was created in 1952 to recreate the military aspects of what the Office of Strategic Services did. Army Special Warfare was actually built on three pillars. Psychological warfare, which were known as morale operations. Unconventional warfare, which is supporting insurgents against an illegitimate government. And counterinsurgency, which is supporting a legitimate government against insurgents. So it began as more of a training force than a fighting force.

The 1st Special Forces Group, which was named the 10th group, actually had a high number of its personnel quotas reserved for Eastern European immigrants who brought micro-regional knowledge from Eastern Europe, who brought language skills from Eastern Europe in order to counter the then emergent Cold War. They had to be ready to fight, and many of them were great and some famous fighters, but their primary mission was to infiltrate, to train, to build a low-profile capability, to build networks and relationships early on. And that evolved because requirements caused it to, into a much broader force that included the kinetic operations as a primary, as a primary skill set. Yeah, that's interesting. So, SOF, if I understand correctly,

evolved out of the necessities mandated by World War II and the Cold War with a whole range of skill sets. And yet you both mentioned that you think, you know, over the past couple of decades, it's honed its focus on direct action missions. You know, why has this happened? It seems like, you know, maybe the legacy of the global war on terror is part of that. And what are kind of the implications of this shift to direct action focus? And one more kind of question is, is it that there's a perception due to, you know, Hollywood and other variables that there's a direct action focus, or in reality, is the force actually focused on direct action? Well, when you say focused on direct action, that is a focus,

not necessarily the focus, but it has to be good at direct action in a way that no other force is organized, trained, and equipped to do. Direct action, small units, often operating more independently, often exposing themselves to higher risk, often having to look after themselves in a different kind of a way. And so the direct action capability had to be honed at a high end. And this wasn't sort of a leap from the OSS to the global war on terror, because Vietnam was in between. And the operations in Vietnam required direct action, sort of the emergence of the Green Berets in their more current form, the Navy SEALs in their more current form, were a result of

Vietnam, where often there were single cycle of darkness operations. You went out and did a thing and came back, and then regrouped to the next thing. And those were often direct action operations. I don't want to say that all they did in Iraq and Afghanistan was counterterrorist kinetic action. That actually was not the brunt of what they did. They were out in far greater numbers. They were out in the villages. They were training Afghan and Iraqi forces. They were living in the hinterland for long periods of time.

They were supporting conventional operations in a large number of ways. But sort of the public attention was on the dramatic raids, which occurred every night. But something every night in a spectacular way is in addition to something that occurs every day and every night in a less spectacular way across the rest of the country. Yeah, I mean, I think it's always been a mix. But Kyle, I think you're on to something, the public imagination, the public view of soft really does come from Hollywood, and the focus on, you know, stupendous kinetic or, you know, direct action operations, whether it's the modern raid, or the rescuing of Captain Phillips and his

crew. I mean, these are the legends that everybody has in mind. And what I think people don't realize is how much is going on around the world that is of a different nature, which is building the capacity of partner forces, be it for counterterrorism operations or for other purposes. One recent example, I remember General Tony Thomas, when he was head of SOCOM, he put a lot of teams, Army Special Forces teams into the Baltics to try to help the Baltic states thicken their defenses. And he said, we were trying to create the Baltic states as porcupines that will be indigestible to the Russian bear, meaning, you know, help them put in place all kinds of things that would actually make it very challenging and very painful and much more arduous if the Russians were to come across the border. That, to me, is the kind of indirect mission, if you will, capacity building mission, working with partners and allies that is going to be much more relevant as we look to the future and we think about how do we improve the capabilities of our allies and partners

to defend themselves, to police their own sovereignty, to be able to contribute to deterring aggression by, say, a rising China, you know, in a territorial dispute or something like that. I do think it's always been a broader set of missions. It's just that the focus and the popular understanding of SOF has kind of narrowed to the specific counterterrorism piece, even though the mission set has been broader all along. So as we've discussed the different roles of SOF, especially the attention on direct action versus their other focuses on indirect action and capacity building, it seems that SOF is often a favorite tool of policymakers, the department itself in the White House. Has SOF

become overextended? And if so, how will that impact their ability to shift focuses as we move into this new era of great power competition? Overextended may not be the best term for that. They've been improperly applied in some cases, simply because they are able to do things that nobody else can do. I think there was a period a few years ago at the sort of the height of Iraq and Afghanistan, when they were meeting themselves coming and going and were clearly overextended. I mean, back to back to back to back deployments for some of the operators. But the idea of overextension, for some of the operators. But the idea of overextension, I think there's a high expectation that they will be able to do almost anything. They have been asked to take the lead and counter weapons of mass destruction. They've been asked to take the lead and counter information warfare.

They're asked to take the lead and counter terrorist threat financing. They're asked to take the lead at these things that don't neatly fit anywhere else. So if that equates to overextension, then I think you can make that argument. But I think it's a good question about why no one else is organized, trained, and equipped to do some of these things that are enduring challenges for the military and national defense. challenges for the military and national defense. Yeah, I would say that as we look to the future, speaking to the op tempo issue, the operational tempo issue, given that SOF is so frequently deployed and they have gone through these periods of meeting themselves, coming and going, I think one of the things that we're going to need, that SOCOM is going to need from the higher command authorities

is some breathing room to have the time and mental bandwidth to reorient the force towards the new mission set. So, for example, if you look at the Navy SEALs, and Eric should speak to this and see if he is one, but I think of their role in counterterrorism operations and on land-based counterinsurgencies for the last 20 years. Now they've got to retrain, reorient, refocus on what are the key missions in a maritime domain that will support bolstering deterrence of China. And if deterrence fails, strengthen our capability to very quickly defeat that aggression and roll it back. Again, very different mission set, which will require different concepts, different training,

maybe even some changes to material and equipment. But you can't do that reorientation if you are constantly deploying to CENTCOM or wherever. So I do think there's an organized, trained, and equipped piece to this that they need to have time for. Yeah, I would agree with that. Absolutely. The last 20 years have caused many elements of the Special Operations Force to sort of drift away from their traditional mission areas. The SEALs haven't spent as much time in the water. The Army Special Forces who are regionally focused have been primarily focused on the Middle East, and they've given up some other global experience in order to do that. And so there is a requirement to think about what is important with respect to the new world situation that we're in. And it is a different

security environment. I mean, the rise of China is certainly a factor of more aggressive Russian behavior, the pursuit of nuclear weapons by certain nation states. Those are different than they were 10 or 20 years ago and need an adjustment to address those. We think about the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the surge of resources required often, and this isn't a statement about whether those were the right decisions. It's undeniable they were costly, though, and required a lot of attention from the troops. If I understand, one of the costs we might be thinking about is essentially our troops' ability to maintain some of their core competencies. But maybe we've lost some of that, if I'm understanding correctly, because we've been

focused on one mission at the expense of being able to adapt and think about other missions that might be developing. I would just also say, I think the other thing that is so different in the future is the environment. I mean, so it's not necessarily that they only did one mission focus, but they were in an environment that is so different than the one that we will see the bulk of our focus on in the future. And not only in terms of being predominantly maritime and, you know, full of island chains and all kinds of different geography, but also in terms of the concepts and

approaches that need to be developed. This is as much about thinking through new concepts for deterrence and how to complicate the attack planning, the calculus of a competitor, how to shape the environment to constrain their ability to launch successful aggression, how to build capacity of others to join us in that endeavor. It's just a very different political, geographic, and physical environment. And oh, by the way, all of your C4ISR in the theater is going to be constantly contested and disrupted and jammed. And so it's just, it requires some rethinking, a different mindset, and then obviously the training that goes along with that to really be ready for that.

Yeah, and it's real and it's now. This is not a future of warfare. This is where we are now. I mean, as we talk about great power competition, we're in it. We are dealing every day with Russian and Chinese aggression. I call it war around the edges, but it's certainly we're in conflict. And the nations that surround China feel that every day. And so, I mean, I'm kind of getting into Michelle's lane here, but my sense is that our, the United States' relationship with China is actually less important than our relationship with the countries that surround China. We have got to help build their capabilities. We've got to steal their resolve. I mean, as China is making

extraterritorial claims, as they are doing intimidating behavior locally, as they're building up a military for regional dominance. All those countries that surround China, they're at the roulette wheel with a chip in their hand and the wheel's spinning. They don't know whether to put it on black or on red. And if they put that chip on China, then we lose. If they continue to hold it in their hand or bet on us, then we'll be fine for a while. And so I think it's up to us. Military has a role in this to maintain these relationships at a level that lets them know that we care how prepared they are to stand up to the Chinese threat and build. I like Tony Thomas's analogy about the porcupine. I mean, we need a bunch of porcupines around China as well as we do in the Baltics. Yeah, I would say, you know, an old Asia hand once said

to me, the best China policy is through allies and partners. And I do think that we need a much more strategic approach to how we engage with those allies and partners, how we use our security assistance dollars to really have a plan with each of them on how are we going to help you to protect your sovereignty, have situational awareness, contribute to deterrence in a crisis, to really not just sell them shiny objects through the foreign military sales process, but to really have a plan that we're working towards together that governs our sales, our training, our capacity building, everything we're doing to try to get them to a different level of being able to both protect their own territory and waterways,

but also to contribute to any kind of deterrence or any kind of deterrence operation we have in the future. At times, the discussion of great power competition and specifically deterring China makes me wonder if we could substitute Russia for China in the conversation and suddenly be talking about the Cold War. But what are the distinctions between the Cold War and this new era of great power competition, especially our competition with China? And what will be the long-term implications for special operations forces in this new era? And what will be the long-term implications for special operations forces in this new era? Yeah, I would say, you know, I don't think the Cold War frame is a good one for what we're going to be dealing with in with China, because China is a fully integrated economy. It's part of the

global economy. It's one of our largest trading partners, and that will continue in the future, even if we do a better job of kind of disentangling some of our supply chains related to things like national security and public health. And it really is about competition in all its dimensions, economic, technological, ideological, military. But it's also, you know, we have important areas of cooperation with China. We don't get to an answer on, you know on climate change or better managing the next pandemic, and there will be another pandemic. We don't deal with those things. We can't deal with those things effectively without China's cooperation. And given that China's

nuclear power, the name of the game here is preventing conflict. So I mean, to me, it means focusing on deterrence, focusing on the ability to rapidly defeat and deescalate if it comes to that. And again, I just think that's a very different set of missions than where we've been focused in the past. it too much as like another Cold War. It puts us in the mindset of sort of taking probably lessons that aren't very helpful or maybe even unhelpful from the Cold War period in the Soviet Union. Yeah, I agree completely. I think that we initially used the term return to great power competition. I think that was a very dangerous term. It's not a return to anything, in my view. It's a whole next generation, next level of great power competition that is going to be different in every way from the Cold War. Chinese behavior is different. It's an economic competition as much as more so maybe than any other kind of

competition. It's a technology competition in a way that didn't exist in the Cold War, at least outside of the nuclear weapons competition. And I think the fundamental similarity, if there is any between the two, is in the application of special operations forces with respect to allies and partners. It is still about using this capability on a personal level to build relationships, to build confidence, to build trust, to establish a wall of resistance in the region. You know, you've used the term deterrence multiple times, Michelle. I wonder if you could dig into what do you mean by deterrence in this context and how do you envision it looks like for SOF?

Eric's mentioned it involves activities revolved around our allies and partners, but what other types of activities should SOF be playing to support deterrence today? You know, deterrence, if you unpack it, the first element is demonstrated resolve, ensuring that your competitor or your adversary believes that you are committed to protecting a set of interests or allies or what have you. And I think in that regard, because there's a narrative of US decline that's taken hold in Beijing, given the early mishandling of the pandemic, given what it's done to our economy, given our internal political divisions and the events of January 6th, they really have come to drink their own Kool-Aid about US decline. And that creates a mindset that is more ripe for

miscalculation. if they underestimate our resolve, our ability and willingness to show up and defend our interests and our allies. So that's thing one. Thing two is demonstrating capability to be able to thwart aggression, so stop it from being successful, or be able to impose such costs as to make it undesirable. And, you know, I don't think we should put deterrence on the backs of SOF by itself, but they can make a big contribution. The first thing is all of the missions that they can do to help us really both better understand the environment to under, you know, from an intelligence reconnaissance point of view, the environment to under, you know, from an intelligence reconnaissance point of view,

to understand where the Chinese are doing, you know, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering on us, and to also kind of set the theater, if you will, there's a lot of preparation of the environment that can be done that's not very visible, but is very helpful if you actually go into a crisis, and you're needing to use military forces to stop aggression. So there's a lot of that, you know, sort of day-to-day work. I also think that there are some ways in which SOF can contribute to just complicating the planning of the other side by just creating new dilemmas and new problems. And, you know, I want to, I don't, we're, you know, I don't want to give you too many examples there, but I think it's a very important role, you know, even before we ever get to a crisis. Prior to industrial strength fisticuffs, I mean, it is an asymmetrical

kind of a conflict and SOF is a tool for our national authorities to use in asymmetric conflict. And so Michelle's quite right. This really is about a deeper level of understanding. And it's not just understanding our adversary, it's also understanding our partners and allies at a deeper level, we often have made mistakes about who we can work with at the tactical and operational levels. And knowing that in advance and having relationships with them helps a lot. Let me jump in here and bring us back to something Eric mentioned earlier in the conversation, war around the edges. Eric, tie war around the edges to deterrence and talk to us about what that's going to mean for the SOF mission moving forward. I think war around the edges to deterrence. And talk to us about what that's going to mean for the SOF mission moving forward. I think war around the edges is the non-kinetic, non-steel on steel kind of warfare. And we're not there with any major adversary now. So it's about cyber, it's about finance, it's about control of populations. And I think that a deeper understanding of that is part of what we can do.

And then to counter some of those aggressive behaviors. Training our counterparts is very important. It requires a higher level of sensors, a better ability to analyze content, and a better ability to analyze intent. It requires clandestine and potentially covert kinds of operations to counter that kind of behavior. And these are all inside of soft's sort of sweet spot. They are the force that can operate at very small levels and very remote places for very long periods of time to build relationships, to learn the languages, to learn those things that are essential in a pre-conflict deterrence kind of an atmosphere. They've proven

very capable of doing those in the past in other places. I think Asia's, the Indo-Pacific region is a good place to do that now. So we've talked about where SOF has come from, its focus during the global war on terror, and the need for SOF to reorient to a new era of geopolitical competition with deterrence or prevention of warfare as kind of an area that SOF can contribute to. I'd like to pivot to asking what are the implications of this conversation for the way forward for policymakers and practitioners? What is it that we need to be focusing on next? So I would start by saying I think there needs to be some clarification at the level of strategy and policy for what the objectives of the military will clarify what are we trying to achieve and and then to maybe in some of the more classified defense planning documents specify what are the

particular priorities uh you know for soft going forward what's the kind of basic expected division of labor both you know day to day uh in the in the war around the edges, as Eric said, but also in crisis and, God forbid, a transition to conflict. So I think there's a lot of areas where policy can be clarified. In addition, the Secretary is undertaking a global posture review right now, trying to find ways to shift more resources and focus into the Indo-Pacific for deterrence and other objectives. And sort of keeping in mind as part of that, not only, you know, moving forces on the chessboard, you know, in accordance with the strategy, but also this issue of creating some bandwidth and some time for elements of soft to

reorient to the new environment and the new mix of missions they're going to have in the future. So I hope that that is considered as in the posture review, because it means that there will be places like in CENTCOM relative to where we've been in the past with that being the number one focus area, where we're going to have to manage some degree of risk while maintaining deterrence against Iran and others there. But we do have to create some breathing space for the concept development work to be done, for the experimentation work to be done, for the training to be done, and for forces really to be ready. And I was going to say for the future, but as Eric said, that future is here now. That competition is happening now, and that

reorientation has to happen now. Yeah, so when you're talking about the posture review, you know, most people would think, hey, where are we going to put our forces? But you're saying not just where are we going to put our forces, but how are we going to give a portion of them some time off, essentially, to reflect. And retrain. I mean, they'll work really hard. They're not just going to put their feet up on the desk and think about it. They're going to be retraining and redefining how they approach things and learning a completely new environment. There's a lot of training associated with this, but there's also a lot of education associated with it. We just need to be smarter about the context of the competition or the conflict. And that requires time. It requires language study. It requires regional study. It requires a deeper understanding of people,

of histories, of cultures, of religions, of all of that. And if SOP is going to be effective in a place, it needs to have that deeper understanding because it does work at a much more interpersonal, much more local level in the places where it goes. But I would also drill policy down, and Michelle is policy at the highest levels. And in my whole job as a commander of SOCOM, I think there's also some policy considerations that can be made. I do think personnel policies within SOCOM ought to be considered. Changes to personnel policies, changes to the acquisition authorities ought to be considered. Change it to budget authorities ought to be considered. And I think there ought to be

just generally a recognition that if SOF is bundled up with any other combatant command or any military service, that you're shaving off some of the most important aspects of its uniqueness. And that needs to be thought of as a unique organization and enhanced in its uniqueness. Not brought more into the fold, but sort of thrown more out to be able to do things with more independence and with more speed. I do believe in a higher level of civilian oversight along the way, but I believe that civilian oversight needs to be competent long term, respected across government and on Capitol Hill, as Michelle was when she was the Undersecretary for Policy. She was in her job for three years or more. And I think that's critical that in order

to build trust and build relationships and all of that. And I think that that all falls in the category of policy. It's how do you treat the Special Operations Command and the Special Operations Force that you have. If I could, I'd love to dry you out the special operations command and the special operations force that you have? If I could, I'd love to dry you out, Eric, on both the points about personnel changes, policy changes and acquisition policy changes. You know, on the personnel side, I mean, I don't know. I'd love to be talking about languages or different backgrounds or greater diversity. I'd love to hear what you're thinking. And then on the, interesting on the acquisition side, I mean, SOCOM is seen as having the most flexible, the most successful, I would argue, in terms of agility, flexibility, speed,

one of the best acquisition systems in the department. So I'd be interested to know how you would change it. In terms of personnel, the kinds of things that we're talking about SOF doing are not all done by high-end warriors trained in kinetic skills or language skills. A lot of it is done by cyber warriors or language warriors or information warriors or these other kinds of warriors that require a different kind of training, a different kind of career management. SOF is actually only about half what you think of as a SOF operator. The other half, these partners in this broad range of skill sets who come and go out of SOF, sometimes they can only stay one tour without sort of being sacrificed by their service, is no longer relevant to the service. And I think there needs to be a broad appreciation that service in SOF, it merits special attention and that careers ought to be managed around the ability to do special operations.

Do you have an example or a recommendation of a specific policy change to personnel management that would enable these conventional service members to support SOF throughout their careers? Yeah. SOF requires real experts in places. Using the Lawrence of Arabia analogy, we require the Lawrence of Colombia and the Lawrence of Pakistan and the Lawrence of Thailand and the Lawrence of wherever, and even more micro-regional than that. But you can't create those under current personnel structures. If you try to create those,

you guarantee they'll never be promoted past the mid-ranks because those are aberrations in a career, not core to a career, the way that the services all select and promote people for higher ranks. Soft doesn't manage anybody's promotion. The services do that. And so I'd be in favor of allowing the commander of special operations command some quota of people that he could manage, he or she could manage uniquely to special operations capabilities, because now some of that gets watered down. In terms of acquisition, all of the acquisition personnel at SOCOM are certified by a service to a service standard, not to a special operations standard. So it takes them a while to understand the special authorities and permissions that special

operations command has. And because their careers depend generally on how well they do in their service acquisition structure, not how well they do at SOCOM, They're often reluctant to explore the edges of those authorities. They tend to work in the center of what they were certified to do at their service level. And so I applaud the language of the law that created Special Operations Command, but I think it stopped a little bit short in that the authority of the commander is to monitor the management of people, not manage them. And it accepts acquisition certification from the services. It has no authority to have its own level of certification. And those are just two examples of, I think, the way that SOCOM

can be recognized as something different. It's such an important point because when you really, when you have a situation where you need to try to change ingrained behavior in the Department of Defense, so often it comes down to changing incentive structures, you know, and that gets down to personal policy. It gets like, what will get you recognition? What will get you promotion? Is there a career path? Can you continue to rise if, you know, I'm a technically trained, you know, airman or sailor or soldier or Marine, but, you know, I figure out pretty quickly that if I want to get promoted, I shouldn't be working as a technologist. I should go off and do the general things that people do. So I really applaud this point. I think it applies not only to change within soft,

but change within the department more broadly of thinking things through in terms of how we incent behavior, how we incent more agile approaches, more sort of creative approaches to concept development or what have you. And I would just pile on one more sort of creative approaches to concept development or what have you. And I would just pile on one other sort of reference back to the Office of Strategic Services, where the commander of that, Major General Donovan, had the authority to reach out into the civilian world and bring in technical experts, bring in PhDs, and make them majors, make them master sergeants in the OSS, give them a uniform, assign the military responsibility, the authority to give orders. And that was a temporary service based on a high level skill. So absent that, we now tend to contract that out. And I can make a case that

would be much better to bring it in than contract it out. So we've talked today about changes to both the employment and the management of special operations forces, but we haven't yet talked about the implications for civilian oversight of the special ops community. What do policy and elected officials need to do differently as they oversee this transition from the war on terror to the air of great power competition? Well, I think first of all, you know, they need to invest the time to really understand what they've got in special operations forces. And I count myself very fortunate that early in my career, I had a couple of folks, one of my first assignments, sadly, was doing lessons learned from what happened in Somalia.

And SOCOM was doing lessons learned. The joint staff was doing, you know, sort of higher level lessons learned. And then I was supposed to do the policy piece. And so I ended up spending hours and hours and days and days and months and months with a lot of special operators trying to sort out what went wrong at every level there. So I got, you know, that beget many invitations to come to everything from capability demonstrations to where I remember one of Admiral Olson's predecessors taking the civilians on his airplane down to, I think it was Fort Bragg, and at some point opening up the back and jumping out to the shock of everybody on the plane. But, you know, I had a lot of people take an interest in educating me about SOF. And

so I think that first is to understand what we're talking about here, what the capabilities are, a little bit of the history, what the force is able to do and contribute. And that's on both the SOF community to reach out, but also on the civilians to take the time to do that. But I do really think we have to know, the department really has to engage in a broad and deep discussion of concepts of operation before we get into particular components. Really understand, you know, how are we going to try to deter? What do we need to do, you know, now as a crisis erupts, you know, if actual aggression occurs? I mean, but really think about how we're going to operate differently and more effectively in this very different and deny, you know, many ways denied environment. And then, you know, based on that broader picture, start to really pull out the

missions and areas of focus for SOF. And then you can do the reviews of, okay, if that's what we're doing, do we have the authorities, right? Do we have the personnel and career paths right? Do we have all these other things right? Now, I know there are lots of proposals to fundamentally change the oversight of SOF. My question is, what is the problem we are trying to solve? Because in my time, I saw the current approach with ASD Solic reporting through policy and to the secretary work very, very well with the right people in those jobs, people like Mike Vickers. And then I saw it not work so well when the wrong people were in those jobs. So too often, we try to correct a leadership problem with an organizational change or an org chart change. And I have yet to be convinced that a major change is needed.

I don't know, Eric, what you think. If you think, you know, there is some talk that, you know, or actually some sentiment on the Hill that SOCOM needs to be, have its own service secretary and service secretariat and a much sort of more built up civilian oversight than the current structure provides. I'd love to get your sense of whether that's a problem that needs solving. Michelle is right. It's not broken. And I think that Secretary Austin has recognized that it really isn't broken. He's rolled back some of the changes that were made by his predecessor. And I think he's probably found a pretty good compromise now. And I applaud that as way ahead. There's also some discussion about SOCOM being a service. And I think that would be a serious mistake. There's talk about elevating SOCOM to have a seat on the joint staff.

I don't think that's an elevation. I think it's a distraction. Right now, the commander of SOCOM to have a seat on the Joint Staff. I don't think that's an elevation. I think it's a distraction. Right now the commander of SOCOM reports directly to the Secretary of Defense. That works great with the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, the Undersecretary of Policy in that chain. And why we would consider making SOCOM a service, just I can't come up with a reason for that. I do believe that there is a general concern that SOCOM is too different. I think there ought to be general applause that SOCOM is different. But the concern causes a lot of policymakers to want to put a box around it or bring it sort of back into a more bureaucratic

structure with my view is that it ought to be released to be more independent with all of the oversight that it ought to have and and but with authorities to lead uh in certain areas and i do believe that as we talk about this war around the edges we We talked about the global situation now. SOCOM is capable of leading that effort for the Department of Defense with services and other combatants in support. This does require a different kind of a thinking at this time. It's not so regional, it's global. And SOCOM is capable of being the lead command in a great war environment. is capable of being the lead command in a great war environment. Michelle Flournoy, Admiral Eric Olson, unfortunately, we've run out of time,

but we want to thank you for joining us today. This has been a great conversation on Irregular Warfare. Thank you. I always learn from Eric, so I appreciate the opportunity. Pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much. Always great to be in a conversation with Michelle. Thanks again for listening to Episode 30 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Sean and I speak with Jessica Donati about her book, Eagle Down, The Last Special Forces fighting the forever war. After that, Kyle and Laura discuss the role of the Army in great power competition with General James McConville, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Dr. Peter Roberts, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and host of the Western Way of War podcast. Please be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you do not miss an episode. The Irregular Warfare podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

We generate written and audio content, coordinate events for the community, and host leading thinkers in the field of irregular warfare as fellows. You can follow and engage with us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. One last note. What you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of Princeton, West Point, or any agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again and we will see you next time.