Irregular Warfare Podcast - Closing the Chapter: Ending Afghanistan for US Army Special Forces

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

US Army Special Forces units continued to quietly operate in Afghanistan when conventional troops withdrew around 2015. These soldiers have worked closely with Afghan commandos and government partners to hold the hard-won and fragile stability. What happens when they leave the country this summer? This episode examines that question and features two guests with experiences and perspectives that uniquely equip them to do so. Jessica Donati covers foreign affairs and national security for the Wall Street Journal, having served as the paper's bureau chief while reporting from Afghanistan between 2013 and 2017. Colonel Brad Moses is a US Army Special Forces officer who most recently served as the deputy chief of staff for strategy and policy, United States Forces Afghanistan and Operation Resolute Support. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The reality is that the people that you're sacrificing may be very good people, very intelligent people, people who joined the military really to serve their country and who deserve a lot better than being used to plug holes in a narrative before an election. Without the assistance of the 39 nations that make up the footprint supporting the Afghan government, I don't think that they can sustain, based on their economy, the number of security forces currently being employed. Welcome to episode 31 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm Abigail Gage, your host today, alongside Shauna Sennett. In today's episode, we will discuss the role of special forces in Afghanistan post-2015.

Our guests today have extensive special operations and journalism experience in Afghanistan. They will argue that special forces, also known as Green Berets, have been instrumental to preserving stability in Afghanistan since 2015. They will also discuss the role of media in influencing policy in Washington and the responsibilities that the military, journalists, and policymakers have to build a detailed understanding of the situation in places like Afghanistan. Our guests conclude by discussing the forever war's impact on policymakers and practitioners. Jessica Donati covers foreign affairs and national security for the Wall Street Journal in Washington. She joined Wall Street Journal as a bureau chief while reporting from

Afghanistan between 2013 and 2017. She is the author of the book Eagle Down, The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War, which tells the stories of the Special Forces soldiers fighting to keep Afghanistan from collapse after most American troops left in 2015. Colonel Brad Moses is a Special Forces officer with nearly two decades of operational experience, including 70 months in Afghanistan. Brad commanded the 3rd Special Forces Group from 2016 to 2018, conducting enduring operations throughout North and West Africa. Brad most recently served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy and Policy, United States Forces Afghanistan, and Operation Resolute Support. You're 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's our conversation with Jessica Donati and Brad Moses. professionals. Here's our conversation with Jessica Donati and Brad Moses. Jessica, Brad, thank you so much for being here with us today to talk about Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan post-2015. We are excited to talk with you because you both have deep professional histories and yet very different perspectives on the war in Afghanistan. Thanks so much for having us here. I'm happy to be a part

of the conversation today. So Jessica, we're going to open today by asking you about the book itself and what motivated you to write this book. I was in Afghanistan for over four years when I started working on the book. As a journalist for Reuters and then the Wall Street Journal, I realized that we were missing a big part of the war in our coverage of it. And that was the critical role that the U.S. military was playing in preventing large parts of the country from falling under Taliban control, preventing the kind of scenario that we are witnessing now. of scenario that we are witnessing now. During the course of my reporting, it seemed to me that this was not only wearing down Afghan forces, but it was also wearing down US forces because there was a disconnect between what was really happening on the ground there and what was understood to be happening in Washington. And when I left in 2017, it was just after a huge truck bomb had gone off outside of the German embassy. It destroyed part of our bureau as well while I was in it and other people were there too.

And I was feeling quite bitter and angry and I felt motivated to tell what I thought was an important story just to leave some sort of record for history that as journalists we hadn't really captured. Brad, you come from a different perspective. I mean, you've more or less lived a version of the story that Jessica tells, and you and your soldiers have been nothing short of an enduring presence in Afghanistan throughout this time. So why is this aspect of longevity important to understanding the role of special forces in Afghanistan over the past 20 and particularly the past five to six years?

in Afghanistan over the past 20 and particularly the past five to six years? You know, when I look back at my early employment as a Special Forces Operational Detachment Commander in April of 2002 is when I arrived. And there was teams there before me. There were some Tier 1 units that were part of the initial entry force. But the long stay in terms of living amongst the population, working with the warlords and the surrogate forces before the government of Afghanistan stood on its feet again. We probably weren't trained to the capability that you would see now. And with the technological advances and over 20 years of lessons learned, the special forces detachments of today are much better than they were when my detachment went in. And it's not saying I had a bad detachment. They were extremely competent men,

but you just can't replicate those lessons learned and the human dimension of reapplying the same people in Afghanistan over and over again. The double-edged sword in that is based on our experience and technological advantages. Some of this comes out in Jessica's book when they talk about the senior leadership. There is this insatiable desire to have rapid, accurate information. And when you're dealing with and by and through a surrogate force, that necessarily isn't always the case, regardless of the technological solutions that you may or may not have at your disposal. And certainly there's inherent error in any human dimension and the reliance on going to have the accuracy of information that some of the senior leaders have been reliant on for special forces teams across this period of time. And Jessica, if you could build on that, because you chose to focus on this 2015 onward timeframe. When we're talking about policymakers and the politics of this, what is some of that context that's unique to this period of the war? When I set out to write the book, I really thought that I would find the exact point in which

policy had become divorced from what was going on the battlefield. But the reality was that it was just a step-by-step process where by the time you got to the top, the picture was muted. They didn't really have a good sense of how urgent many of the problems that they were facing on the ground were. But the other big problem is that Washington revolves around the electoral calendar. And a lot of the decisions that were made by the Obama administration in 2015 were oriented around the fact that the following year there was going to be another election and President Obama had made certain promises to leave Afghanistan or draw down from Afghanistan and he wanted to deliver on those in time for the election. And so software also a convenient way to

prevent the country from collapsing while also not having to say that the war was still going on. You could rename these operators or whatever you want to call them. You could call them advisors and you could change the names of their missions from combat missions to training missions. And then it would look like the war was no longer going on. And that would be a useful sort of bullet point when you were making your pitch for the next election. Was there really much of a distinction as we moved into this last period? Or are we kind of constructing that? Because it seems in some aspects, combat was still enduring beyond the time when we said we were conducting combat in Afghanistan. There's Resolute Support Authorities and there's Operation Freedom Sentinel Authorities. And the Operation Freedom Sentinel Authorities are specific to U.S. forces' ability to execute operations and use of resources to best enable their ground partners in certain cases and their inherent right to self-defense. The resolute support, and I'm just trying to keep this as simple as possible, is strictly as a advise and assist, not combat operations method. That is the majority of the forces that were operating at the time that this book revolves around in 2015 under resolute support.

Whereas the U.S. Special Operations Forces, depending on the mission and the level of approval that it would require, could go either way for Operation Freedom Sentinel or Resolute Support. So the authorities were set a certain way. How did that affect the function of what was expected of those special forces? It's relative to the actions that were captured in Eagle Down that when this initiated, it did cause some level of confusion by the small tactical units. The other piece is it's understandable that in a book like this, reports from a younger officer or younger NCO not taken away from anything about their intelligence. They're all extremely intelligent people, but their perspective is only relative to, one, their experience and their level of authorities and resources to employ. So the battalion commander probably had a better understanding of prioritization of resources in terms of assets that he could allocate to help the ODAs during their train, advise, and assist and accompany missions with the commandos.

Whereas it may not be as clear to the team that's engaged at the time that they may not be the highest priority. It is clear, at least from the perspective of the men that were interviewed for this book, that there was a level of confusion on what their authorities were and were not. I think the solution is that the confusion wasn't just about the authorities, but what actually they were supposed to be achieving. Whether on one hand they were building up the Afghan commandos to eventually train themselves out of a job, or whether their role was to prevent parts of the country from falling or districts or provincial capitals and giving the Taliban a win in that sense. or provincial capitals and giving the Taliban a win in that sense.

And so I think that second mission overtook the first one because the commandos were always out firefighting. The actual training part didn't happen. And so the Green Berets would at times go out with commandos that they had not spent any time with or that they had not had any time to train with. And so that aspect of what they were supposed to be doing seemed to sort of fade away. And that became more and more pronounced over the years, as far as I could tell. You would have to go back and look at, and I was never a part of these, the decision on why the Afghan government forces, MOI and MOD security forces, were built to the level that they were.

The number of Afghan army forces and Ministry of Interior policing forces is extremely high given that government's GDP. And was that estimate sustainable based on the U.S. long-term intention to either stay or leave? Without the assistance of the 39 nations that make up the footprint supporting the Afghan government, I don't think that they can sustain, based on their economy, the number of security forces currently being employed. And I think that's important to note because when it goes to, you know, why was SAW having to redirect forces on a rapid manner to go and retake districts, the Afghan has enough capability in terms of sheer numbers and volume of equipment and resources, but the longstanding impacts of levels of corruption, ineptitude,

may not facilitate that operating at its best ability. There are great Afghan leaders that are very capable of guiding, leading, and maintaining forces in Afghanistan, probably not to the size that we helped them build it to. Jessica, you spent a lot of time getting to know many of the soldiers who appear in your book. Why was it important to you to tell these individual stories? The reason that I think that it's important to focus on individuals is because bad policy in a lot of cases happens to good people. And I think it's important to understand why it matters to have a sound policy. A lot of times I would hear from all sorts of levels where, you know, special forces, they knew what they signed up for and or otherwise things that you even hear now being discussed as people discuss whether the U.S. should be staying in Afghanistan or leaving. They'll say, oh, there's a low body count and that we've only lost recently very zero.

But in earlier years, you know, 20, 30 people, that was considered to be quite a low price for keeping Afghanistan from boiling over. The reality is, is that the people that you're sacrificing may be very good people, very intelligent people, people who joined the military really to serve their country and who deserved a lot better than being used to plug holes in a narrative before an election or because policy hadn't formed. And so what I really wanted to do was show exactly how much the sacrifice of a single individual was so that people can better consider what they're asking the wanted to do was show exactly how much the sacrifice of a single individual was so that people can better consider what they're asking the soldiers to do. And when they say 20, 30 people, and however many hundreds are injured year in, year out, they would have a good sense of exactly what that loss was. Unfortunately, you could write 100 books

like this. And I appreciate that Jessica humanized this story to include the families that are so important to the culture and special operations. When we're on a repeat cycle going in and out of harm's way in Afghanistan, pick your place, the global hotspot, right? They don't send special forces ODAs to pleasant places. place, the global hotspot, right? They don't send special forces ODAs to pleasant places. There are some for training, but generally speaking, when policymakers approve a decision to send special operations to effect a change in a region, it's not a pleasant place. And it's shameful if you truly have heard from senior officials that it's a low body count. That's somebody that doesn't have an intimate relationship with 60 headstones line and third special forces. That's somebody that's never had to make a decision in front of their men and women and understand that some of them are going

to get carried out. Brad, it strikes me that you say Eagle Down could be written a hundred times as if it's capturing the same story that happened over and over again. Are you thinking about any specific experiences? Just before Jessica got there in November of 2011, there was a similar incident where Special Forces ODA, employing their commandos in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, came under some overwhelming fire and used U.S. resources to mitigate the threat to themselves. And it became a very politically tenacious time with the Pakistan government, U.S. policymakers, and regional actors. And quite frankly, the Taliban

had the means to rapidly, not truthfully, exploit that situation to limit what the U.S. forces would be doing very shortly after that. When you look back at that timeframe, unlike when the book was written in 2015, in 2011 into early 12, there were soft forces, small units of action in 93 locations across the country. So the ability for the 06 Command and even the NSOC Alpha two-star command for SAW to rapidly get a relatively accurate picture of the landscape across Afghanistan or provide that up to either U.S. policymakers or the senior officials in Afghanistan at the time was pretty good. Brad, you've referenced how in this 2011-2012 timeframe, it was possible to get a fairly accurate picture of the situation because of the distribution of special operations forces

around the country. But as we know, this presence was eventually drastically drawn down. And Jessica, I imagine this contributed to the reduced media access that you have referenced. What do you see as some of the drivers of limited access and the implications of what the media may have seen as incomplete knowledge about the situation on the ground? If you all agree at the top that journalistic work is still a public service, then you're going to support and direct the U.S. military to open up more. When I was still at Reuters, this was before a lot of the coverage had closed down because of the Obama administration's need to present a picture that the war was over.

And I visited a bunch of ODAs all over the country, including the ODA in Helmand, which I describe in the book. They took me there just a couple of days after they had that insider attack at Camp Antonik that ended up killing two American soldiers and injuring a bunch of others. And to me as a journalist being taken there, it was surprising because officially all US forces had left Helmand. So to find that there was a US.S. base there with a special forces team, there was potentially quite a big revelation. And not trying to say that I'm a great journalist or that all journalists behave like this or should, but it could have been sensationalized as, oh, my God, we're back in Helmand. And that means the country's falling apart. But I think that what it did instead, by taking me to see all of these different ODAs or teams

around the country, that I ended up writing a story for Reuters about what the Green Berets were trying to do in terms of trading up the Afghan special forces to take over their job as the US was leaving. And so whereas the picture that was presented in the news article was probably not as rosy as policymakers or certainly the White House would have liked to see, I think it does show that when you do work to build trust with a journalist and you set out to agree on what the topic of the story is, what the ground rules are, you know, don't name or show the faces of operators, it is possible for the media and the military to work alongside each

other, even in these kind of sensitive environments. And I think that if more of that had been done, there would probably have been a better policy at the outset. But as it happened, that embed that I did in 2015 was the last access that I had to any kind of U.S. military operations for the rest of my time there. I don't disagree with Jessica's comments relative to the media having better access to fidelity on military operations. I don't disagree with that. But your comments would lead me to believe that your opinion is it should be that way so that policymakers are better informed. And I don't see it that way. I would respond that when you are speaking to the people that form policy for Afghanistan, they're also looking at the entire region.

They may, especially the NSC, they have a responsibility that's not just Afghanistan. And there's the saying, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And if you're looking at the oil as the president's attention, these policymakers' attention, and the squeak being the media, if you have more media access and more reporting, good and bad, you're more likely to have the correct amount of attention from policymakers invested in it. I don't disagree. If policymakers aren't paying attention to where they put U.S. servicemen and women in harm's way, that's not right. And I've got it. Everybody's got it. Your attention span can only be so long. But if we're relying on the media, and where I've seen overcorrection of

policies generally after an incident didn't go the way it should have, and that's the conflict. We're in war. There's a fog of war, and the enemy gets a vote. But I've seen where policymakers overcorrect based on media reporting for an incident that didn't go the way gets a vote. But I've seen where policymakers overcorrect based on media reporting for an incident that didn't go the way it was planned. And that's a dangerous slope. Jessica earlier said that there's resistance for the military to talk to the media. And I can't speak that as a totality in statement because I don't know what the yeses and noes that her organization or others have received from conventional military forces. However, there is a pretty deliberate process for

embedded media to go with a special forces operational attachment alpha or any of the other soft, small units of action. Some of that is to protect the status of the operators and their families. And that's not specific to just Afghanistan. That's a SOCOM policy on the embedded efforts for media. which Brad described, is that often the media does not have a complete picture because at times they don't have complete access or they haven't been given the resources to get that kind of information. So there's different ways. No journalist, I mean, generally no good journalist sets out wanting to get the story wrong, even if it just means missing important context. And when you're looking at a picture as a journalist, especially somewhere as complex as Afghanistan, often you don't know how much of the picture that you're looking at. So you're building a puzzle and you don't know what the picture is or how many pieces you have.

Part of that responsibility clearly lies with journalists who have been unable to present a whole picture. I think that if over the past 10 years, the U.S. military had made itself more accessible and perhaps what would have been needed was more top-down guidance from the very top saying, we want to open it up. We think that because American taxpayers are paying for this war, they have a right to know what is going on. You wouldn't see the kind of flawed reporting that we sometimes see now, which is, of course, a problem, but I think a minor problem when you look at the big picture. Is U.S. policy solely based on best military advice that comes from Afghanistan on the state

of affairs, whether it's the district falling, the readiness of an Afghan unit, or does it go both ways? And I say that because it relates to my comment about a young team that's in the center of a conflict that may not understand that the resources have a higher priority to go to another effort. And I'm not saying that's the case in Kunduz or down in Lashkar Gahar for the vignettes that were used in the book. But the reality is I wouldn't be able to answer that because I don't know what the competing priorities for the political officials at the time were. It still seems to me like special forces, the Green Berets specifically, have been spending so much time in Afghanistan and their families have sacrificed both their time and birthdays and anniversaries

to Afghanistan. It's hard to imagine that there isn't going to be some sort of identity crisis, at least at the individual operator level, as they leave behind a country and whatever happens next happens. And how do you think this withdrawal from Afghanistan is going to impact special forces identity, both at the individual level and the collective? Special Forces identity, both at the individual level and the collective? I don't know that it'll be an identity crisis. I know that, you know, when I commanded third group and we moved back to the continent of Africa, it takes two years to build an operator. So when that individual signed up to become a Green Beret and pass their selection and assessment program, in their mind, they were going to go to, in my case,

Third Special Forces Group and go to Afghanistan and execute combat operations. And some of them, when they showed up, now we've moved on to something else, less combat operations, although there's still inherent risk. It's the basis of what Green Berets do to work by, with, and through surrogates, partners, and allies, regardless of where you're at. But I think there was a tone of some of those young sergeants that came onto teams that thought, this isn't what I signed up to do. And that culture change, it takes a few years for that to change. And I think they've all found value in the work that they've been given. At an individual level, I think there will be some struggles. All of the operators, myself included, have personal relationships with Afghans. You know, I think there will be some struggles. All of the operators, myself included, have personal

relationships with Afghans. You know, I've known the previous Minister of Defense since 2004. When you're living with your surrogate force and you're living in the villages, you build relationships with these people. You know, there's guys that I've worked with, you know, self-professed mayors that are now provincial governors in Afghanistan, and their districts are falling. And I do have worries for them. And I know that my peers and previous subordinates have similar concerns over the relationships that they've built and what happens to those individuals and their families. There is a lot of different perspectives. I think that's also what I was trying to do in the book was show that there isn't just one way that all special operators think.

I was also keen to show those that had survived despite the very difficult experiences that they had had. I think looking at it, one of them described to me that it was like watching a relative flush all the cocaine down the toilet. flush all the cocaine down the toilet because special operations have become so addicted to this constant pace of war and deployments that it had become part of their identity and so letting go of that like an addiction was very difficult and so I think that even for some of the people in the book who managed to hold it together keep keep their sense of direction and everything else together through what they experienced. When Afghanistan goes away, they may find it difficult reinventing themselves or finding something new.

Looking at Afghanistan now, I wonder, and the influence that the media has on policy, I wonder what the level of tolerance in Washington will be for what happens next and whether you won't see another phase of special operations going in and making a last ditch effort to save Kabul. Because we've seen it in, as I described in the book, the way that combat was supposed to be over and then 30 guys or 40 guys are thrown into the middle of a Taliban-controlled city and told to win it back with very little preparation and resources, whether you're going to see that happen on a huge scale where to prevent massacres and whatever else in Kabul,

whether you won't see the U.S. intervene. I think that for me an unanswered question is just what the appetite is, whether the president has really understood what could happen very soon on his watch and whether he understood that when he made a decision to get out as fast as he did. And there is now a huge amount of media attention on Afghanistan, more than there's been really for as long as I've been covering it. And so I wonder what the effect will be. I would extend that comment out even further.

And I don't disagree with you, but it's not just the Americans that have skin in the game for a long-standing period of time. The Germans in Masri Shri from the north, the Italians in Herat in the west, the Brits in the center for their schoolhouse currently in Kabul, even the 230 Mongolians that are securing air bases, they've all got skin in the game.

And some of the countries that have had a larger footprint for an extended period of time, I'm sure they've got operators just like we do. They've got personal relationships with their Afghan counterparts over the years. But Brad, there are elements of this Afghan identity that will not go away, right? SAF may be serving elsewhere, but those missions should benefit from what's now a very highly trained, highly experienced force coming out of Afghanistan. So I think there's plenty of work globally for special operations forces, and more specifically to the ones addressed in this book, the Special Forces ODA. You know, we've gone back to our regional approach. Third Special Forces Group is, you know, from the time I took command in 16, gone back to Africa and focused across specifically north and west and easternmost Africa. So there's plenty of work globally. What I'd say the benefit, and I hate to put it in that term,

There's plenty of work globally. What I'd say the benefit, and I hate to put it in that term, but the benefit of the 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, those locations, is the hard lessons learned and the growth of special operations forces, not just professionally, but in terms of the acquisition process for the appropriate equipment sets to best support the operators in today's environment, whether it's technological advances to what the operators are using to remotely advise and assist their surrogate partners. And that transcends from when it was me with some other government forces and my ODA and 3,000 guerrillas Erzgian province to now teams have the ability to use technological solutions to advise and assist remotely where they won't be exposed to potentially those engagements that Jessica used as vignettes in her book. They're certainly wrought with flaws

because technological advances in austere environments aren't always reliable, but it's certainly a better place than it was 20 years ago. Whether it's the institutional training at the Special Warfare Center in school for the Army or pick the other soft branches that have increased based on their lessons learned, how they've adjusted who's working within those units, the expansion of forces from 2005 till now. There's been a little bit of a drawback, but we've refined what those forces do for either intelligence gathering or operations common to what Jessica has in her book. There's just been a huge advance that has been taken

advantage by the leaders within special operations all the way down to the individual on one of those units of action. We've talked today about the conundrum that is Afghanistan, especially post-2015, the tie between special forces and their in-depth relationship with Afghanistan. But we also are about to leave Afghanistan. And Jessica, from the perspective of your deep professional reporting on Afghanistan, what do you think the implications are for the policymakers as we withdraw from this fragile country and move towards disengaging ourselves from this forever war? I would like to think that there would be a lasting impact on policy.

But I mean, a lot of what I found as I was interviewing people in DC, because while the book focuses very much on the individuals at the very bottom of the chain, I did spend a lot of time talking to those policymakers at the White House, the NSC, all of those people who were involved in crafting the rules of engagement and the policies that came together, or that were the ones that were involved in signing off on strikes, which, as described in the book, meant life or death for the guy on the ground. I also spoke to the people making the rules. And just too often, the influence really was the need to package things to fit what the president wanted,

or his staff wanted to, again again fit with the electoral agenda or just some castle in the sky concept about what Afghanistan should look like and I don't know that that has changed or even improved now. I think there's still a need to think more and more about the politics of it. What I hoped to convey in the book was why it is important to think about policy, because lives matter, because incorrect picture has a high cost to the people on the ground. I don't know that that message is really registered in Washington. And it certainly doesn't seem like it. I don't think that the costs were fully considered when the

decision was made to just, okay, we're leaving. There doesn't seem to have been any consideration into how we're leaving or what's going to happen next. And I think that's because the policymaking process in Washington hasn't changed that much. And what you're seeing is everybody pulling out and no plan in place for keeping at least the Afghan Air Force going and contractors and all of these processes, which it depends on, all of that is just a question mark, which cannot be resolved in just a matter of weeks. And it suggests to me that policymakers either don't know or don't care. And I really hope that it's the first one. Brad, do the policy considerations that Jessica describes have implications at the practitioner level, particularly for special operations forces?

Certainly. I mean, the decision of the policymakers is the implication on the operator level. And to Jessica's point, I've not been in the circle of decisions for the current administration, but I know factually that the current commander of forces in Afghanistan has provided, the current commander of forces in Afghanistan has provided, here's options on how reduction can work, and here's what implementations would be to the pace over time. Shorter period, longer period, middle period, what those implications would be. And that's a decision, again, with competing priorities globally that the administration has to make. And the effect of those decisions is certainly felt by the operators on the ground. And that's the effect of those decisions certainly

felt by the operators on the ground. And I'm not saying it's negative or positive. It's just that that's the way our system is. General Miller provides his best military advice through information that he determines based on his experience and the staff provides him. And decisions are made all the way from CENTCOM and include SOCOM and the joint staff and on up to the senior policymakers. Jessica, Brad, we are unfortunately out of time today. Thank you so much for this engaging conversation. Abigail and Shauna, thank you so much for having me here and giving me a chance to talk about my book and especially for bringing Brad along to talk about it. And thank you to Brad for reading the book. I really appreciate it.

I truly appreciate you having me on tonight's podcast. Big fan and supporter of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I like what you guys do and I think that you can expand this out in the future. I'd be happy to be a participant in anything you've got. Thanks again for listening to episode 31 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Laura and Kyle will discuss the Army and Military Competition 2041 paper with Chief of Staff of the Army General James McConville and Peter Roberts of the Royal United Services Institute and host of the Western Way of War podcast. Following this, Andy and I will speak to Colonel Liam Collins, editor of the recently released Rutledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations. Please be sure

to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. You can also follow and engage with us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this discussion, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. One last note, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of West Point or any other agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again, and we will see you next time. you you you