Irregular Warfare Podcast - Breaking the Boom-Bust Cycle of Irregular Warfare

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Where does irregular warfare fit within the framework of national security policy? Does the recently released Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy attenuate focus, or relegate irregular warfare to a policy afterthought? How can irregular warfare concepts become enduring elements of a comprehensive effort toward competition and conflict with US adversaries? Those questions are at the center of this conversation with two guests: Retired Col. David Maxwell, a thirty-year US Army veteran and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Mr. Deak Roh, the acting principal director in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.

Irregular warfare is not an afterthought. It is not a lesser included case. It is an integral part of not only great power competition, but major theater war as well. And we would do well to be able to embrace the entire spectrum of war fighting with our training, our education, our organization and equipment. For those sitting in J5s, J3s, and TOCs who are actually charged with going out and figuring out how to operate in this ambiguous, very fluid environment that is today's security environment, this is written for them. Welcome to episode 16 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I am Shauna Sinnott, and I will be your host today

along with our new teammate Andy Milburn. Today's episode examines the recently released Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy and includes substantive insight from the Department of Defense Office responsible for writing the annex. We start today's episode with an introduction to the Irregular Warfare Annex and its role in relation to the National Defense Strategy of 2018. Our guests discuss why the Annex is so important, even now, or perhaps especially now, in this era of great power competition. And they talk about how best to implement the concepts outlined in the Annex, how to institutionalize the theory and practice of irregular warfare across DOD and beyond.

David Maxwell is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Army, retiring as a Special Forces Colonel. He served over 20 years in Asia, primarily in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Following retirement, he served as the Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Colonel Maxwell has taught unconventional warfare and special operations for policymakers and strategists at graduate schools across the D.C. area. Deke Rowe is the Acting Principal Director in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism. Prior to this role, he was the Director for Irregular Warfare Policy in SOCT, where he led the OSD team to revamp irregular warfare policy to focus on great power competition.

And he led the development of the irregular warfare annex to the National Defense Strategy. He has 20 years experience in defense and security policy. 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 Dave and Deke. David Maxwell, Deke Rowe, thank you so much for joining us today for this discussion. My pleasure.

Thank you. Great to be here. And I think we'd just like to start by getting some context first. So, Deke, as we frame the Irregular Warfare Annex and what that really means for policymakers and practitioners in the Department of Defense and beyond, what is the value of the annex? Why is that something that your office produced? Right, Shauna. So the Irregular Warfare Annex, the National Defense Strategy is exactly what it says it is. It's a continuation of the National Defense Strategy. And the reason it was written is the National Defense Strategy was a very timely and very focused shift for the Department of Defense away from a focus on counterterrorism, combating terrorism and CVE, or whatever term

you want to use, over 19 years towards a more pressing threat that is great power competition today. And it does the great thing of actually setting priorities. It talks a lot about the problems and concerns created by Russia and China and the activities that they use to undermine our influence without actually rising to the threshold of war. What the NDIS does not do is really describe that in great detail. So what should the department do? So Dave Stevenson, my partner in the Joint Staff J7 and I were tasked with developing a document that kind of gets after that issue. And we developed a couple of core central ideas based off of directions we were getting from Jim Mattis.

One was to break the boom-bust cycle of irregular warfare. What we tend to do as a nation is under-invest and under-think about the irregular asymmetric nature of some of the conflicts we get into. Example, the early efforts in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq after the invasion. And when faced with these asymmetric problems, be it counterterrorism or COIN, we find ourselves having to recreate our approach to it, ramp up and create a lot of capability to get after these problems. And as soon as we kind of get a motocross of success, we tend to dump it, ignore it, walk away, and then focus back on highly traditional warfare capabilities, only to have to repeat the cycle. So Matt has wanted us to break that cycle and institutionalize it into the department as a core competency. That's another one of our core principles is

this needs to be a core competency for the Department of Defense, the entire joint force, not just special operations. And Dave, is this the way that we've normally approached this or how we've incorporated IW into our policy process? No, I don't think so. You know, I don't think we've done a good job of it. I think Deke is exactly right. The boom and bust cycle, I don't think so. You know, I don't think we've done a good job of it. I think Deke is exactly right. The boom and bust cycle, I think, is a good way to describe that. To follow on what Deke was saying, in 1975, most of the Army schools purged everything to do with counterinsurgency, because we're never going to fight another counterinsurgency, you know, after Vietnam. And one of my mentors, Colonel Bob Light, we commanded the same battalion in Okinawa,

and he's a former commander of the Special Operations Command in Korea. He was at Leavenworth an instructor in the 1980s, and as a special forces officer, and was tasked to teach about coin and irregular warfare. And so he started developing the curriculum, and there was nothing. There was nothing at Fort Leavenworth. He went to all the schools, the intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Fort Benning, the infantry school. And the only place that he found any information on counterinsurgency was the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. And in fact, he tells a story of talking to the proverbial doctrine person who'd been there for decades, who said, yeah, 1975, we were told by the army to purge everything to deal with counterinsurgency. And so he had to recreate the curriculum at Fort Leavenworth

just to have a short block of instruction of counterinsurgency as an addendum to operational art and the core curriculum there. So what Deke describes, it's been that way for a long time. Now, what I think is interesting about the I.W. Annex and the National Defense Strategy is, as I understand it, the I.W. Annex is the only annex to the National Defense Strategy. And as David Bucco wrote on the Modern Warfare Institute page, they wrote an article criticizing the fact that it's an annex. I disagree with him. I think that actually an annex is very worthwhile and helpful because it focuses attention on it. You know, my big concern is that both the concepts of the national defense strategy, as well as the national security strategy, and the IW annex really transcends administrations. Because the work that has been done is sound, it is important, and it really should carry forward because we really need continuity.

important and it really should carry forward because we really need continuity. So one quick anecdote talking about why we did the annex. And Dave mentioned that it's the only annex to the National Defense Strategy, and that's true. I think part of the reason that we were tasked to go out and write this document is when the NDS came out, most of the Department of Defense that comes from a fairly conventional educational background in terms of military doctrine and education looked at it. I mean, the NDF talked about lethality, readiness, partners, and allies. Most people stopped at lethality. Right.

I understand that. I was trained to that standard. And so we're going to focus on that. And that was not the intent, certainly not the sole intent of the document. When you talk to Frank Hoffman about that, I think he comes away with a very different view of what was supposed to be understood. But the NES does, to his credit, talk about a lot of these asymmetric issues that are challenging and are challenging us on a day-to-day basis, but maybe didn't draw a big highlighter around those issues. So a lot of what we did in the IW Annex was really highlight why those things are a challenge and what we need to do about it.

And since we had the pen, we took a little liberty in actually getting into the details on structural changes and PME and creating exquisite understanding and how one does that and getting into reiteration of partners and allies really hit home on the interagency piece, interagency integration, not just coordination. So we had to write this document to really highlight this and beat people over the heads with it. And when you look at how we're institutionalizing and implementing across the department, people must think I'm like a crazy bureaucrat for how much detail we're into it. But it is necessary because if you don't bird dog this, it will become like IW has been immemorial, pushed to the side in favor of focusing

on high-end weapon systems and high-end warfare. We have to do both. We have to integrate both. Dave, I know you were quite excited when the annex came out. Can you explain why that is? So irregular warfare, I look in the context of the national defense strategy as about great power competition. That's really what we're talking about. The four plus one, the two revisionist powers, China and Russia, the two rogue powers. I like to say rogue and revolutionary powers of Iran and North Korea. And then, of course, the fifth violent extremist organizations. But too often we think about great power competition as major state warfare.

And we are really focused on fighting the big wars in which that's the most dangerous threat, the most dangerous course of action. And we have to build a military to defend, to deter war and be able to fight and win those wars. So we've got to focus on that. And that's the most dangerous course of action. But the most likely course of action in great power competition, enemy course of action, is that competition. And it's really what I would call political warfare. In that space, from a national level, interagency, it's political warfare. George Kennan defined it in 1948.

It served us well through the Cold War. But the military contribution to political warfare is really irregular warfare. So the national defense strategy really gives us what we should be focusing on, irregular warfare. But I would argue, perhaps, and I'd just like to hear your comment to this. This is not so much about institutionalizing things that we have done in current doctrine, even in soft doctrine. The things that Dave has just talked about is revolutionary. I mean, we're talking about a giant leap in doctrine to political warfare. That is quite different than COIN, obviously, and CT, stability type operations

that are mentioned in the annex and that we have become used to in these cycles. You're absolutely correct. And we're certainly not going to conduct counterterrorism against the problems posed by Russia and China. But what is the tool set that we want to transfer over is, one, is the understanding of networks, especially the understanding of threat networks. Two, it really is about not the tools and the capabilities, just the cognitive understanding of working in complex environments against an asymmetric threat that is not what we train an infantryman and an armor officer to go after. It is that ability to be flexible and adaptable in a wide variety of

scenarios against a wide variety of threats that often don't even present themselves as military threats, but have at their end state the ability to create military effects or undermine our ability to secure the nation effectively. So stabilization may not, it actually probably will not be the thing we're going to be focusing on. You mentioned why the annex is important in preventing the cyclic boom and bust for sustaining a competence in irregular warfare across DOD. But in order to institutionalize the concepts you're talking about, that's going to take a shift in mindset, a cultural shift, isn't it?

Culture is a great way of explaining it because military culture, U.S. military culture is very important. And we're certainly not advocating that we break away from that which has made the military successful. What we are advocating for is a requirement to understand the complexity of today's security environment and the need to be adaptable and flexible for the challenges that are presented. Deidre, can you expand on how the security environment has changed and really what type of threat necessitates such a significant cultural shift? Right. So the requirements you have high end traditional warfare capabilities to create the security environment you want, i.e. deterrence, effective deterrence,

is critically important. You cannot start this conversation if you don't have the ability to create conventional deterrence. But as we do that, as we maintain and even grow our conventional overmatch against potential adversaries like Russia and China, they will naturally seek other ways, other asymmetric approaches to gain advantage. And let's be clear that their long-term global strategic vision is in complete direct conflict with ours. And they are actively seeking as nations to undermine the international global environment that we and our allies have built since the end of World War II. So this is a very real threat that we can't simply sit on our laurels and think that our

conventional returns is effective at undermining those competitive strategies. On top of that, if we were to get into a high-end conflict, God forbid, the consequences of going to war with China, but if we did and we succeeded in a conventional conflict, we still have to put together the broken pieces. And if we don't have an understanding of what, say, stabilization looks like or what, say, a whole-of-government approach to conflict resolution looks like, then we're not going to be successful. And I dare say, look at conflicts like Vietnam, where we were conventionally absolutely superior, yet we didn't achieve our strategic objective at the end of the conflict.

So, you know, war termination tends to be something that goes into the more irregular realm as well. And these are all things that we have to keep in mind as we're kind of moving forward and thinking about how to institutionalize these concepts, this thinking in our doctrine and our education and in our culture. So there's a recurrent theme in here of how our adversaries have really outstripped us in the areas that Deke has just been talking about.

The era of modern war is political warfare. It's a battle for legitimacy and influence. And we in the United States are far behind. And areas such as information and disinformation, maybe we've forgotten all the lessons that perhaps we learned in the 50s and 60s. So Dave, I'd like to hear your thoughts about, again, about institutionalization. How do we close this gap? What sort of things do we need to do? That's a great question. And so much to add to what Deke said. But let me say this first, is that, you know, a shift in culture and a shift in our educational institutions really has to

start with us learning our Clausewitz, but also flipping Clausewitz on its head. And, you know, for Clausewitz, it's drilled into us that war is a continuation of politics and policy by other means. But for our adversaries, politics is war by other means. Or really, as Mao said, politics is war without bloodshed and war is politics with bloodshed. And so politics is at the root of everything that we do. And of course, any successful military operation is defined by what? Achieving the political objective. That's what defines success for a military operation, whether it's conventional, whether it's irregular, unconventional, political, it is achieving the political objective. And so we've got to put that first and foremost in our minds. And then we have to learn to lead with influence, because that's what our adversaries are doing. They are leading

with influence. And the kinetic is either supporting either an after effect, or is not necessary at all. But we are afraid to lead with influence. We are afraid of information operations of psychological warfare, psychological operations, propaganda. We are so afraid. If I could interject for a moment briefly, is that something that we've traditionally associated with irregular warfare, though? I mean, are we expanding the scope of what IW is by understanding influence is such a heavy component of that? Not at all. In fact, influence is the currency of irregular warfare. Exactly. And the definition is a fight for relevance and influence and legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the foundation. But let me just give you a quick vignette. I was out at Fort Leavenworth and at the soft campaign artistry program giving a lecture on unconventional warfare. And there were five psychological operations officers. And we got together for a beer after and they lamented to me the fact that it is easier to get permission to put a hellfire missile on the forehead of a terrorist than it is to put an idea, get permission to put an idea between his ears. And information and influence activities are not just about leaflets or loudspeakers or even cyber social media. It is all encompassing. And so that's one of the first changes that I think we need to make institutionally and to our cultural thinking is that we've got to learn to lead with influence.

Deke, if you could kind of touch on that, does the Annex lay the foundations for that? How does it actually give the weight behind making some of these transitions to influence and the scope of some of the other activities that are described in it? It does. It does. In fact, we have a draft definition, new definition for irregular warfare that's currently awaiting approval in JP1 Volume 1. And, Dave, have you ever been involved in a Pentagon debate over definitions? They're ugly up there. I did.

I was on the working group that redefined unconventional warfare in 2009. So I was very painfully involved in that. You know, I'm hoping that we will see a new definition. And I would turn to Congress in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. That is a pretty comprehensive definition. Yeah, the 2017 NDAA Section 1202 definition, which we like, I agree, is very expansive and very useful for what we're doing in that section of law. But it would never get through the DOD process because it's so comprehensive. So the draft definition that we, which we are actively using is actually

a simplified version of the last definition, which we found to be constricting. So the new definition that we're hoping gets approved quite quickly here is irregular warfare is a struggle among state and non-state actors to influence populations and affect legitimacy, period, boom. What that does is it expands the remit of what irregular warfare is outside of the violent sphere, of which a lot of things we're talking about don't necessarily include violence. It could include violence, but we are not obviating the need for violence in certain aspects of how we conduct irregular warfare, but it doesn't require it. And I think when you get into information operations and the focus of legitimacy, you get into a realm where you need to have military activities that don't necessarily create violent effects. Cyber is another example,

a very useful tool that the Department of Defense uses, but it doesn't necessarily result in bloodshed. And that's important to understand the balance of the two and the breadth of what we're trying to get after. A regular worker is about influencing populations. It is about creating legitimacy, degrading legitimacy, and influencing people's cognitive understanding of things. And the tool that you get after are important, but it's the end state that we're

trying to focus on here in this new definition. So getting back to what you're both hitting on, one of the big cultural leaps, I think, for everyone involved, it's going to be the fact that maneuver often will be in support of information operations vice the other way around. Everything will be in support of information, which in turn support a legitimacy. Yes, in some circumstances, absolutely. Information might be the main vector of whatever you're trying to accomplish tactically to create those effects. But not always. Information as a joint function is still incredibly important across the entire spectrum of conflict. But let me give an example of where information maybe we are under utilizing or under thinking is value. So let's say we send a striker brigade out to

train with Poland out in the countryside. That is an inherently conventional activity, but it creates an information bubble just by the fact that it's there. And that information bubble and the activities we do with that conventional force as we're training can be used to create perceptions in Poland or on the other side of the border, show our allies are resolved

to support them and work with them and train with them, just show our capabilities. And this is where the role of public affairs officers come in often and some of our exquisite psychological operations capabilities.

If we're going to create an effect, we need to understand how to take advantage of the information bubble that will be affected around it as well. So that's an example of the role of information operations across the spectrum. So in the totality of what you're describing, that's a lot of complexity. Given that, are there specific roles for different elements in the DoD for this? And when we specifically look at special operations forces, do we see their role evolving as a result of what the annex describes? Does it change any of their core competencies? Yeah, let me take a stab at that. I think that the IW annex does an excellent job of saying that

irregular warfare is not soft exclusive. And I think that's important because everybody has a role in irregular warfare. It's whole of government, whole of society, and certainly joint military as well. But from a soft perspective, the way I interpret irregular warfare from the annex and more broadly, I like to think of special operations in terms of two trinities. The first one is simply irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, and support to political warfare. That's what really the foundation of special operations, where we have forces that are organized, trained, equipped, educated, and optimized to operate in this environment, in the irregular warfare environment, conducting unconventional warfare, which is a foundational

capability for a big part of special operations, and support to political warfare. Again, a national level whole of government effort really called statecraft in that competition, in great power competition. The second trinity though, is the comparative advantage of SOF. Again, forces that we have organized, trained, equipped, optimized, and educated for, which is three things, governance, and educated for, which is three things, governance, influence, and support to indigenous forces and populations. Now, that to me is, those two trinities are really the essence of SOF, combined with a last one, which is, of course, the exquisite capabilities that we have for the no-fail mission of counterterrorism and counterproliferation. To me, that is the all-encompassing description

of special operations forces that we have today. What about the role of conventional forces in this? Now, conventional forces play a huge role in irregular warfare because they are engaged. They are engaged with friends, partners, and allies. We have capabilities. And again, the irregular warfare annex, I think, really highlights this. So many of our conventional capabilities have direct application in an irregular warfare environment. And this goes back to our culture and our thinking and our education, is we just have to learn how to adapt those capabilities and apply them in the context of what? Campaign planning. And this is really the essence of what we really need to be able to do.

We need to be able to campaign in the irregular warfare environment, in that space between peace and war, in the context of great power competition. We've got to be able to translate the strategic objectives of our national security, national defense strategy into actions and activities, operations that achieve those objectives. And that's why campaigning is so important. And that's got to be done at every level. And regardless of whether you're a special operations force, or a conventional force, or ideally, a task force, a joint task force that combines the two. And that's how I think we'll be going forward, operating as a joint force that includes the right capabilities to conduct the right missions.

Yeah. Deke, how did your team envision that as you were constructing the annex? Right. So we definitely have from day one fought this belief that IW equals CT, CT equals SOF, because it's not. And I think that the biggest challenge we had, especially working with the services who are a big part of the development of this document, was breaking the understanding, breaking the belief that all we do is prepare for high-end conventional warfare. We've conducted high-end conventional warfare over the past 20 years, one time for a brief three weeks in March

of 2003. The rest of that time, we have been engaged decisively in a very asymmetric war against non-state actors and have evolved into this new environment where state actors are challenging us conventionally, but making great gains asymmetrically. So getting that understanding out there is really the most important thing. And then you can start getting after the role of who does what. The service's job is to be prepared to conduct and succeed in the missions that they're given. How they do that is up to them. But there must be an agreement that you have to have this common understanding of the objectives, that you have to understand the security environment that

you're in. And often the objectives we're going after are simply not high and conventional. Dave Stevenson, my partner in the joint staff, likes to use the term, likes to look at F-18s. Like the United States Navy does not employ an IWF-18, but it doesn't utilize the same platform in an IW context, be it recce, overwatch, or actually delivering munitions against terrorist entities. How you use that platform against the mission that's been assigned is what's important. The TTPs that are unique for that mission. Again, it's all cognitive. The IW tool is not the platform. It's the gray matter between the pilot's ears. Is there a better way to differentiate then what assets and capabilities should be allocated

towards different elements within the scope of IW? In the IW analytics, we talk about two types of irregular warfare capabilities. IW focused, which is your special operations Green Beret ODAs, things that are designed to do IW style missions, and IW capable, which is the vast majority of what the US kit entails, because you can utilize them in both a traditional and an irregular environment. And we have done so. In fact, great argument. I mean, I think the evidence bears it out that conventional forces have done the vast majority of the irregular warfare missions over the past 20 years. And even those specialized special operations are often or

always enabled by the conventional force. There is a symbiotic relationship, and we have to understand the interrelated connectivity of these concepts in order to create that campaigning. Dave, I know that you're an optimist about the U.S. military's ability to adapt to irregular warfare. What are some of the best practices that you're already seeing that the rest of us can learn from collectively? So, you know, what is an example of how SOF contributes to irregular warfare? And I would say one of the concepts is through unconventional deterrence, which Bob Jones down at USOCOM has really pioneered the concept. And you can read his paper on Small Wars Journal on unconventional deterrence. But really, the way I would frame his work is to help harden populations and militaries of our friends, partners, and allies

to resist the malign influence of revisionist, rogue, and revolutionary powers and violent extremist organizations. And this is best exemplified by the resistance operating concept pioneered by Special Operations Command Europe, which is really instituted to counter Russian malign influence in Europe. Now, this model has application around the world, especially if it's adapted for countries targeted by China's One Belt, One Road initiative, or in countries such as Taiwan. So for Dave and Andy, you described really well, one of the hardest questions, which was how does this gain traction within DoD? How do you see it going ahead? And Dave does a great description of joint task force, essentially involving IA elements.

It's the only real way to gain traction at the operational level. traction at the operational level. But taking a step above that, and right at the beginning of this podcast, you referred to George Kennan. And back in 1948, he was advocating for a Bureau of, I think it was a Management of Political Warfare was a terminology used. What do you envision going ahead? For want of a better word, what engine do you envision driving this across the whole of government, not just DOD? Well, I was involved in a project in a short RAND study that we did in 2018. It was titled An American Way of Political Warfare Proposal. And it was authored mainly by General Charlie Cleveland, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Dan Eagle from RAND, Andy Leitman, formerly of NTC, and myself. And we propose that we really need to have a capability

to be able to conduct political warfare at the national level. It's not anything special, but it's using all of the elements of national power to achieve our objectives short of war. Efforts range from covert action all the way to political alliances, to economic measures. Today, we're very good at using sanctions and measures of economic coercion. Of course, he talked about white propaganda and, of course, black psychological warfare, and then right down to the encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states. And it's undermining the legitimacy of hostile nation state or non-state actor by its own population. And this is where the fight for legitimacy comes in. And of course, all of that rests on the ability to influence. But just to answer your question there, we really need

a national level focus at the NSC level that is focused on political warfare. We could call that a National Political Warfare Center, directorate, an agency. And we've developed many things like this in the past. We've had the Active Measures Working Group during the Cold War that focused on countering Soviet disinformation and active measures. We've had the Special Operations Planning Group. We've had a number of agencies throughout the years that have been elements of this, but we really need a national level political warfare capability that integrates all of these capabilities to the interagency from the civilian aspect, and then the military through the application of irregular warfare to be able to compete in this environment. And remember,

we are faced with adversaries conducting political warfare supported by hybrid military approaches. And they are using their military in ways that are hybrid, that are not conventional, not necessarily special or unconventional, but they're hybrid. And that's something that we have to learn to do as well. And I think the irregular warfare annex really emphasizes that because we're combining conventional and special operations capabilities really in a joint way, which might be considered a hybrid way. Yeah. The way we tend to look at the term hybrid warfare is exactly how Dave described. And it's actually described pretty well in our joint doctrine that all campaigns will have traditional and irregular components to it. Some of our adversaries have just gotten very good at

blurring the lines of what they're doing. But how do we actually get these concepts into the planning and execution processes? I mean, that seems pretty essential to effective implementation. I think there's only one word that will take care of this and solve this problem, and that's leadership. It really is going to take leadership to really implement this across the board. Now, I'm a great fan of T.E. Lawrence and what he said about irregular warfare. Irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge. And I mean no disrespect to infantrymen who might have to conduct a bayonet charge. I was an infantryman when I started out. But it is really an intellectual, you know, this is a thinking person's game. General Downing used to say, borrowed from the SAS motto, who dares wins, who thinks wins. And General Schumacher, the former commander of USOCOM as well, used to say, we have to train for certainty and educate for uncertainty. And irregular warfare is an uncertain environment. It is constantly changing and adapting. And so we've really got to educate. Right. Well, let's start off with both the National Defense Strategy and the Irregular Warfare Annex.

There are base documents that are not public, that are classified. What is available to read are both the NDS and the Annex are summaries, very good summaries, very, very, very cogent to what is in the base documents. But the base documents are classified because it gets into a lot of the details on what you need to do and how you need to do it. So we are already in the middle of a very complex implementation process across the department, but we're in the process and it really gets into getting into the structural aspect of how the department organizes and thinks about regular warfare capabilities, the PME, the training, the education piece, all the way through operationalizing it. How do you continue your CT mission in a resource sustainable manner? How does this impact our approach to great power

competition? What is the role of irregular warfare and all these capabilities in great power competition to support DoD's role in this area, long of peace, but short of war. And then integration of the interagency, which we have to get right, we have to get better at, and bringing in our partners and our allies, our unique alliance structure to really amplify our ability to shape the global environment in our own needs. I would defer to Dave, however, on PME as he is really the expert on that. So I think PME is important and I think it really must be emphasized. Now that said, we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We've got great programs across all

the services, but all of the leadership of those schools and those different directorates of the schools and curriculum developers have to incorporate irregular warfare thinking and a mindset into their curriculum. You take the School of Advanced Military Studies at Leavenworth, or the School of Advanced Warfighting at the Marine Corps, or the School of Advanced Airpower Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base, and the Naval War College. It doesn't have a special school, but they do a great job of educating thinkers as well. But the commonality is campaign planning. And so we have the basis for developing campaigns.

As I said, that's really key. We've got the foundation for PME as well as out at Naval Postgraduate School and the SOLIT program out there as well. But what it's going to really take is leaders at those institutions and leaders at the service level to really take is leaders at those institutions and leaders at the service level to really drive thinking. And we have to just get out of the mindset that the only thing we have to teach and to prepare for is high-end conflict. To me, five simple foundational items of PME at all levels, military history, military theory, military geography, operational art, and campaign planning and strategy. That's the

foundation. And that applies to irregular warfare and to conventional operations as well. It just takes a critical mind to be able to think about the various conditions that we are faced with. And again, political warfare conducted by our adversaries, supported by hybrid military approaches. If we understand that, we can educate for it. The last comment I want to make about education, I'm really sorry to hear that the Army is doing away with the Asymmetric Warfare Group, the University of Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, and from what I just learned, the Assessing Revolution and Insurgencies Project is no longer being funded as well. We've got to invest in education. It's not expensive. And education should never be below the cut line on any of our budgets.

Well, the changes that need to be made in PME in order to institutionalize the mindset shift required for irregular warfare. But what about doctrine, especially soft doctrine? Do we need to take another look at our core competencies and perhaps modify them? Even a concept such as UW and the way it's laid out in doctrine has been a little bit different the way that we have actually practiced it against the proto-state, the Islamic state, in the last few years. So do we need to take a look at our doctrine, rewrite it? I wrote an article a few years ago, and the basic concept, we say that politics should stop at the shoreline, doctrine should stop at the shoreline. And I say that because we should use doctrine to have common terminology, common understanding,

and to train, to train in CONUS. But when we go overseas and we deploy, we want to keep those doctrinal concepts, but we want to adapt them for the conditions and for the reality that really exists. And the problem I see with doctrine is that we are too dogmatic. And of course, in the special operations community, we are very protective of doctrine. And particularly, you know, in my world, in special forces and green berets, we are deathly protective of unconventional warfare. And we think it only belongs to special forces, and which could not be further from the truth. Because if we think it only belongs to special forces, we will never conduct unconventional warfare. Unconventional

warfare, activities to enable a resistance or an insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power through and with an auxiliary underground or guerrilla force in the denied area. That's the essence of unconventional warfare, which is population focused, it's problem solving focused, it's politically focused, but it's not something that is done just by special forces. It is shared battle space among special forces and the intelligence community, but the decisions and the campaign to be able to support and enable a resistance or an insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power, that's a strategic level mission. That takes theater commands. That takes interagency.

And so it doesn't just belong to special forces. Now, that said, if we go overseas, we shouldn't be trying to fit every mission into, or every operation into a doctrinal mission set. When I went to the Philippines, we were conducting foreign internal defense in support of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. There's a lot in that, but it was a basically foreign internal defense mission. I argued and we prepared for being informed by unconventional warfare. We need to use our doctrine, but we don't need to be wedded to it in a dogmatic way and try to make every operation and mission fit into a stovepipe doctrinal category. Yeah, Dave, can you speak to that from your vantage point as well? Absolutely. And, you know, from OSD, as it would not be from Al-Qaeda, it would not be our role to dictate

what doctrine is on forces and on the services certainly wouldn't do that that's for them to figure out but i will say one of the directions we are driving is describing what is irregular warfare in documentation you know it's basically broken out into these core activities unconditional warfare fed ct coins stability operations and it describes a bunch of enabling activities that include a lot of things kind of threat networks and finance miso operations civil affairs operations. But if you look at it from that perspective, all you're describing are activities to be able to do things. And that's useful when you're trying to train.

As Dave said, I completely agree with that. But it doesn't give you the why are you doing it? It doesn't give you a good understanding of how to stitch those things together to create an effect. It doesn't give you a good understanding of how to stitch those things together to create an effect. So we are driving, trying to drive the thinking community, the IW community inside the building to think about an objective space or an outcomes based approach to these things. How do you utilize the activities that make up this thing called irregular warfare to build a campaign, to build an overall set of effects that allow you to achieve your objective. So we're trying to break that down. And this idea of a stove piping core activities and go towards a more IW focused operations and activities model that allows for much broader application of all those tools that we train both the special operations community and the conventional community to do. So, I mean, I echo Dave's sentiment on that wholeheartedly.

And there is utility to training to mission sets. You have to do that. But if you are the one who is charged with creating effects and achieving objectives, you must have a better understanding of the fluidity of all those activities and look at it as a toolbox, not as individual silos of activities. That's a really good analogy, Deke. And that has a lot of practical implications for those who are tasked with naturalizing these concepts. So on that topic, I'd ask both of you,

are there any other big takeaways that the publication of the annex offers to the practitioner? So I would say for the practitioner, I would read General Mattis's recent book, Chaos. And I say that because what we need to be effective at the practitioner level and at all levels is we need lifelong learners. And I'm obviously a big proponent of PME and education at all levels. But what I think is most important for operating in a regular warfare environment is self-education, is self-learning, lifelong learning. And General Mattis's book, I really commend it because it is, of course, in part an autobiography, in part a tribute to the great Marines and military personalities he's worked with. But it is also a tutorial in reading the classics and applying them to the various situations he found himself throughout his entire career.

And many of those situations were irregular and not just conventional. And so I think that what we've got to do is develop those lifelong learners that all leaders at every level, NCO and officer, have to have a thirst for knowledge. They have to want to be professionals to practice this profession, both conventionally and irregularly. I would say that for those sitting in J5s, J3s, and TOCs who are actually charged with going out and figuring out how to operate in this ambiguous, very fluid environment that is today's security environment. This is written for them. In fact, Dave and I had a mantra that when we were writing the document, we are not writing this for academics or senior leaders. We are writing this so that that major sitting in a talk can understand what we're trying to say and how it applies to that individual so that that individual can do their job developing tactical activities to support an operational end state. So everything

we're doing in the irregular warfare implementation process is about enabling on the ground activities. And as we begin to close out, I guess I just asked, what are the implications of not implementing or institutionalizing these core concepts in the annex that we've been discussing? Yeah, let me just plant a couple seeds we didn't get to talk about. Competition with China is obviously the 600-pound gorilla. And one of the things that I've been thinking about and I try to emphasize is looking at how China's One Belt, One Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative is being applied around the world. You know, we don't need to compete directly with China, but where it is conducting its wolf diplomacy, its debt trap diplomacy, it is having an influence on populations. And we can

compete in those areas in Africa, throughout Asia, in Latin America. China is operating around the world. And when you look at what they're doing, we can compete for influence in those areas. And that's a, you know, I think it falls into the political warfare and irregular warfare realm there. And so looking at their strategy, how do we mitigate their strategy? How do we counter it? And of course, most importantly, how do we seize the initiative to implement our strategies to be successful in competing with China. Now, lastly, I'd say that, God forbid, we have a war with any of the revisionist or rogue powers, irregular warfare is going to be a major element of it. And I focus on North Korea. North Korea is going to be the biggest through, by, and with operation we've ever conducted, because we'll have to enable our South Korean allies to be successful, not only to defeat North Korea, but to unify it. But there is tremendous resistance potential inside North Korea, whether there is war or regime collapse. And the myriad problems that we're faced with, from weapons of mass destruction to resistance, are a huge irregular warfare

problem for us, both before war, during war, and in post-conflict stability operations. So irregular warfare is not an afterthought. It is not a lesser included case. It is an integral part of not only great power competition, but major theater war as well. And we would do well to be able to embrace the entire spectrum of war fighting with our training, our education, our organization, and equipment. And then if we embrace irregular warfare, I think we are going to be a stronger military and a stronger nation because of it. I think that's a great place to stop the conversation. Deke, Dave, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been extremely informative and we appreciate all the insight. It was really my pleasure, Shauna. Thanks,

Andrew, for hosting us. Thanks. Yes, thank you to Shauna and Andrew. This was really my pleasure, Shauna. Thanks, Andrew, for hosting us. Thanks. Yes, thank you, Shauna and Andrew. This was a great discussion. I really enjoyed it and hope we can do it again sometime. Absolutely. I'm up for that. Thanks again for listening to Episode 16 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Nick and Kyle will discuss artificial intelligence and counterinsurgency and counterterrorism with retired General Stan McChrystal and Dr. Anshu Roy. Following this, Daphne and Nick will discuss stabilization assistance review and how civilians and the military coordinate to stabilize fragile states.

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