Irregular Warfare Podcast - Operation Inherent Resolve: The Merits—and Pitfalls—of Fighting “By, With, and Through” a Partner Force

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Be sure to visit the Irregular Warfare Initiative website to see all of the new articles, podcast episodes, and other content the IWI team is producing! When the US military set out to combat ISIS in Iraq in the mid-2010s, it did so determined to operate “by, with, and through” partner forces. That approach would prove to have advantages in the case of Operation Inherent Resolve. But it can also prove deeply challenging. This episode features a conversation with Brigadier General Pat Work, who served as the commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division during Operation Inherent Resolve, and Mr. Jeff Martini, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation and coauthor of a 2022 report on US ground force contributions in the fight against ISIS in Iraq. They discuss the conditions that encouraged an approach that placed partnered forces at the center of operational plans, before examining Operation Inherent Resolve's effectiveness and exploring the question of how the United States can best prepare for future partnered operations in global operational environment characterized by strategic competition. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Money talks in combat too, right? You got to assist in order to advise, not just advise to assist. You know, you got to do some killing. You got to show them. They got to see it. It's got to be real. And you got to do a little bit of what they want, right, in order to help them move. But on the other hand, that's got to be balanced with this. We have interest too, and we have leverage. You got to have the spine to use your leverage. The other lesson I think we should generalize from and should take away is how important it is to help the partner or to make the partner more amenable to U.S. advising. They are really desperate for fires to soften the enemy before they advance.

They are really desperate for ISR feeds. By providing those things, we were creating the conditions for that local partner to be really receptive to the advising they were getting. Welcome to the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and my co-host today is Matt Muller. Today's episode examines the US military's by, with, and through approach while working alongside Iraqi security forces in Operation Inherent Resolve. Our guests begin by examining the geopolitical trends that led to America's re-engagement in Iraq in the mid-2010s.

They then discuss the merits and pitfalls associated with the U.S. military strategy to work by, with, and through Iraqi security forces to defeat ISIS. Finally, our guests conclude by considering what lessons we should take away from America's experience in Iraq and how the U.S. can prepare for future partner force operations in an era of strategic competition. Brigadier General Pat Work currently serves as a Director of Operations Readiness and Mobilization for Headquarters, Department of the Army. During his tenure as the Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, he led U.S. and coalition forces against ISIS in Operation Inherent Resolve. Brigadier General Pat Work graduated from West Point in 1995 and holds advanced degrees from Georgetown University and the Marine War College. Mr. Jeff Martini is a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation

where he focuses on security cooperation and strategic competition in the Middle East. Jeff Martini previously served as the North Africa lead at the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and holds a master's degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. In August of 2022, Mr. Martini co-authored a RAND report on U.S. Ground Forces' contributions to Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. 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's our conversation with Brigadier General Pat Work and Mr. Jeff Martini. Pat, Jeff, it's great to have you on the podcast and thanks for joining us for today's episode. Great to be here on an awesome show. Thanks, Ben and Matt. Gentlemen, thanks for having me. It's a real privilege to be here with Jeff, so I look forward to it. So for our first question today, we always center every episode in a piece of literature. And today we'll be talking about the report co-authored by Jeff Martini and his colleagues out at RAND. So Jeff, what was your primary motivation for writing the RAND report on America's by, with, and through approach for OIR in Iraq in the mid-2010s. So there are a couple of motivations, Ben. The first motivation is that some of my colleagues

in writing this report on ground force contributions had earlier written on how air power was employed in inherent resolve. And from that work, we had learned how important other services contributions were to the fight and also began to understand how underappreciated ground force contributions were. So we wanted to call attention to those in this report. That was one motivation. The second motivation was we thought there could be a common misunderstanding of by, with, and through as not entailing combat, when in fact, many of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine forces that deployed, and I'm sure we'll hear this from Pat, did experience combat, whether it was the delivery of surface fires, H-64 squadrons, and so forth. And so we wanted to draw attention to that as well.

And if I could just zoom out for a second, just for our listeners, Jeff, when you talk about America's by, with, and through approach, what does that actually mean? What does by, with, and through mean to you, and how did the authors of the report conceptualize it? Sure. So I think the most precise and relevant definition of the concept was given by former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel. So he, along with another co-author writing in Joint Force Quarterly, they went preposition by preposition defining what it means. And so they said, by means that local partners, be they state actors like Iraqi government security forces or non-state actors like the Syrian Democratic Forces, that operations would be conducted by them. So

that's the by. The with is that it would be with U.S. enabling, and that enabling could be kinetic or non-kinetic. And the through refers to agreements, that these operations would be conducted through agreements. And again, those agreements could be U.S. agreements, like an authorization of use of military force or being invited in for military intervention, as occurred in inherent resolve when the Iraqi government requested the U.S. intervention. So to me, that's the clearest and most precise definition that we've come across.

So with that, can you talk a little bit about where the concept originated from and how did it become such a pervasive idea and how is it different from other forms of coalition warfare? Sure. And I'm really excited to hear Pat's views on this as well, because he's grown up in these communities that developed the concept. So if you look at a community that this concept is most closely associated with, I would say it would be the Army SF, the Army Special Forces Green Beret community, because they're well known for building partner capacity to working through surrogates. And one of the reasons why this community was interested in popularizing the term is to differentiate themselves from other types of activities that we associate with the special operations community. So things like direct action, reconnaissance behind enemy lines, taking enemy airfields, those types of things that we associate with other elements of the soft community. And so no community owns by, with, and through. And of course, conventional forces

in inherent resolve were a big part of the way it was operationalized. But if I just had to associate it with one community, it would be U.S. Army SF. community, it would be U.S. Army SF. Pat, I feel like we really have to frame kind of the political and military context that the U.S. found itself in in the mid-2010s, because it's very complicated. And I know when he talked to veterans from the early stage of the Iraq War, they had a vastly different experience from those who were in Iraq in the mid-2010s. So could you just kind of provide some contextual evidence and give us a background on what the situation was in the mid-2010s? There is a context for every contest. And what I've found, particularly as an Army officer, and my perspectives here are just my own. I'm not speaking for the Army, but I've found that

Americans in general can be ambivalent about history. Those who do pay attention to history, many of them have a very Eurocentric view of history. You know, and I try to remind people that Marco Polo went east and Columbus was trying to go east. These parts of the world have been around for a very, very long time. And if you consider the trauma of what we call the Middle East, you know, middle of what, east of what, this is really a product of imperial preference. It's about 100 years old. You know, at the end of World War I, when the French and the British carved up the carcass of the Ottoman Empire, you know, I don't think people really understand the root causes of much of the tension in the region today. It's a very difficult neighborhood. And in 1991, if we recall,

the United States led a mighty coalition and went in and wrecked the Iraqi army. In 2003, certainly most are aware of the invasion of Iraq. In some respects, I think it's unreasonable to argue that it did not breathe some life into the jihad. These ideas of Salafism in this part of the world, there's always going to be plenty of people that are pissed off these ideas of Salafism in this part of the world. There's always going to be plenty of people that are pissed off, but violent Salafism in this part of the world, the rise of Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda in Iraq. And eventually you get to the year 2011, Operation New Dom, many Americans have forgotten that we left Iraq, we departed. And then the ISIS conquest of 2014. We departed. And then the ISIS conquest of 2014.

And before long, you've got ISIS setting itself down with what it wanted was a country, this quasi caliphate, this thing that it called the state right in the middle of the Shia Ark, and it takes over large swaths of Iraq and Syria and puts together this quasi-country that's about the state of Israel and Lebanon combined. It's about that size. So by the time we arrived in 2017, the Islamic State had been entrenched in Raqqa, the global capital, you know, the crown jewel, Mosul, been preparing the defense for about two years before October of 2016, when the Iraqis, supported by the coalition, started the counterattack in West Mosul. That had followed a series of operations out west, and the Islamic State was probably still viable, right? So for Islamic State, this really intoxicating narrative that it has where, you know, the only guarantee is that if you jihad and you're killed is that you're guaranteed paradise. That's really intoxicating for a lot of young men in that part of the world.

In addition to that, you know, ISIS must expand. It can't stay contained. Its entire theology, It can't stay contained. Its entire theology, its entire worldview is predicated on expansion. So I really like that General Work started in like a more zoomed out way to have sort of a macro level perspective on how we got there. Let me talk a little bit about the politics just in the couple years immediate as a complement to what General Work presented. years immediate as a complement to what general work presented. So I think some of the key developments were, of course, you had the Syrian civil war go really hot in 2012 and 2013, and the regime losing control of territory in the east that abuts Iraq. So you had a natural

rat line, if you will, into Iraq. And then that protest movement that preceded the violent uprising in Syria, that same thing was going on in Iraq. Not a lot of people were following, but in 2012 and 2013, Sunni Arabs in Iraq were protesting and the Nouriel Maliki regime put it down with violence. And many people think that that perpetuated a cycle of violence that ISIS was able to exploit in the following year. And the United States and other Western powers were starting to see evidence of that late in 2013. So late in 2013, ISIS was coming down from Eastern Syria and assaulting the population centers in western Iraq. So Ramadi, Fallujah, hit places that general workers probably spent a lot of time in. So we're getting signs that

there was a growing threat. But then we have to remember there was a parallel geopolitical threat in February of 2014 was when Russia moved into Crimea. So keep in mind that the United States was distracted by multiple crises. Okay, just a couple of more data points to remind your listeners. Then in the spring of 2014, there were national elections in Iraq. Those elections are important because Nouriel Maliki, who had already been prime minister for two terms, won a plurality, and therefore, although he hadn't formed a government, was going to have first shot at forming a government. And then Mosul falls in this spectacular way, whereby tens of thousands of Iraqi army and FedPol, federal police, basically fled the scene

in the face of a very inferior enemy, numerically and qualitatively. And so that's where the U.S., if you want to put yourself in the decision space, that's where they are in the summer of 2014. Pat, you were one of the main protagonists in Jess' report, in large part for the actions that you and your brigade accomplished, particularly in Mosul. Could you just discuss your experience working with the Iraqi army to help root out ISIS? Yeah, so I say this with all sincerity. The Iraqi security forces, not just the army, but the counterterrorism services, the federal police, and the Iraqi army, they bore the physical brunt of the pain daily. It wasn't uncommon that before 10 in the morning, they would have 30 or 40 traumatic injuries from ground combat. So I've got a great deal of respect for the Iraqi

security forces. And for me, it's the crowning experience on my 28-year journey in the Army is watching them and helping them dominate in close combat. But that coalition between the Iraqi Army, the federal police, the counterterrorism services, and its ability to stand in the storm and weather really difficult days of ground combat, the likes of which we have never really experienced at this sort of sustained scale. You can't help but respect it because the only way to reasonably define our success was their success. So approaching this coalition, I've got some kind of simple rules of thumb. I'm a mantras guy because when the pressure's on, I like to switch real quick to simple things that I can recall. Number one, you've got to listen.

So we stayed with them. We went with them all the time. We were very fortunate that we arrived in the late, like kind of November, December timeframe of 2016 and rolled into 2017. Because at that point, Tactical Directive 1 from General Townsend, that was implemented in December, and that really unlocked the lethal potential of the coalition. So it isn't like we were any better trained than anybody else. We just arrived at the right time. And if we stayed with them and listened to them and we were able to help them map out their own interests, map them out with our interests, be realistic about what we expected of them.

It takes a tremendous amount of humility, patience, empathy to do this kind of combat advising because they're bleeding constantly. Our brothers in Second Brigade 101st, Brett Silvey and his team taught us that there's money talks in combat, too, right? You've got to assist in order to advise, not just advise to assist. You know, you got to do some killing. You got to show them. They got to see it. It's got to be real. And you got to do a little bit of what they want, right?

In order to help them move. But on the other hand, that's got to be balanced with this, which I think is, you know, this is kind of where I lie on this thing. We have interest too. And we have leverage. You got to have the spine to use your leverage, right?

Because we have interest too. So Pat, with that, you mentioned a little bit about how we have our own interests as well and how important that is whenever we're working by, with, and through a partner force. But with that, there's a little bit of finesse that comes with actually advising a different army. So can you talk a little bit about some of the pros and cons with working with a partner force, especially in intense combat operations such as the Battle of Mosul? Yeah, so our shared interest first and foremost was ripping ISIS apart. So we always agreed on

that. We didn't necessarily agree on the path or pace for doing so all the time, which is fine. So in a coalition like this, I think we need to remember that the first member of the coalition is the host nation. And unless it really put our interests at risk, and I'm going to speak for the chain of command here a little bit to tell you what I think the secret sauce for this whole thing was, in my experience, just my perspective. I worked for Major General Joe Martin and the CJ Flick OIR, First Infantry Division. Tremendous ground combat commander. We all worked for Steve Townsend, the 18th Corps CJTF OIR. He was responsible for all of Iraq and Syria. We all worked for General Votel. And this thing was aligned.

In other words, we had a mind meld going from the top down where all of the coalition combat advisors, myself, my team, their teams of teams, this thing was aligned around what we were trying to do. It was really about fighting to dominate by, with, and through the Iraqi security forces to achieve this goal of knocking ISIS out of Mosul, then knocking them out of Tal Afar, so on and so forth. So I've got a little metaphor I use. I'll come back to it in a little while. I call it the Lethal Observer Controller Network, and it's an imperfect analogy, but it'll help bring this thing to life. So Jeff, what are your thoughts on just the way you observed what we were doing? Very aligned with your general work,

and I'm glad you started with Tactical Directive 1. That's one of the things we focused on in our report. Of course, that came out under a CJTF OIR Commander Townsend and the CJFLIC, Joe Martin, General Martin, as you mentioned. And our understanding, you can correct me if we're off here, Pat, is that there was three major changes. You know, one of the changes was the lowering of target engagement authority so that fires could be more responsive down to the level of field grade officer, whereas they were previously held by brigadier, that advisors could move as far forward as the last cover and conceal position,

which made them much more responsive, and that advising could take place, you know, at the brigade and battalion level, not at the division level where you had to be far back from the front. And so we heard time and again from folks from your brigade, and then comparing that with the experience of Brett Sylvia's brigade or Scott Nomen's brigade, your predecessors, that those things made a major difference. So definitely aligned with your views on that, sir. Yeah, a lot of this is just the timing of it. We had a different experience than the others because we arrived at the time when the chain of command took the gloves off. And you understand tactical directive for what it is. I just cut to the chase and say

it allowed us to crank up the coalition killing machine, okay, to use all the tools available in a much more aggressive way. It was always done responsibly. The Iraqis approved every single shot we took. But, you know, there's this kind of agility that it gave us where, you know, kind of the three inputs. I have a platoon, for example, that moved to 14 different patrol bases during the Battle of West Mosul. When you talk about agility, you know, our motto or mantra was you'll never have to wait for us. Wherever you want to go, we would start moving on about 40 to 70 percent of the information. In other words,

if we started to sense momentum building where they were going to make a move or they want to go left, right or up the building, we would start putting things in motion, you know, at about 40 to 70 percent certainty. Jeff, you brought up an interesting point about the U.S. decision to delegate tactical decision-making down to lower levels rather than just consolidating it at higher-level leaders. So I'm just curious, and this is an open question for either of you, but was that difficult to do while working with a partner force? Was there something about working by, with, and through Iraqi security forces that forced the U.S. to have to delegate decision-making down, or was that maybe not so much a factor? You know, I think that holding

target engagement authority at a higher level came from a good place in the sense that, in my opinion, it was driven largely by wanting to avoid civilian casualties, which of course is a good objective. And I think that setting up the targeting complex or the targeting setup, if you will, at the beginning of the conflict was hard because you might think that the U.S. Air Force was going to deliver deliberate strikes, that is pre-planned strikes. They ended up having to deliver what they would call on-call close air support, on-call CAS. And so they needed to finesse a solution. And what they finessed were these strike cells in which that would be a brigadier general, one star, would ultimately sign off on the strikes. My understanding for tactical directive

one is they were able to push down that sign off a level lower. But I think that, you know, holding it a level higher didn't come from a bad place or wanting to create a bottleneck. It came from, you know, really good intentioned concern over trying to avoid civilian casualties. Pat, you've made a distinction between low-intensity and high-intensity combat advising. Could you explain what you mean by those terms and discuss some of the differences between the two approaches? Many will relate to this and this idea of countering an insurgency. We've experienced this and it's grinding, difficult, exhausting work. You're still trying to achieve nothing happens quickly it's

really hard to describe and define success it's fleeting you know how do you ensure that what you're doing is meaningful and durable you never get to choose your partner right you don't control your partner and we've experienced and you all have so many have you know these partnered operations when you're really put the partner first and the partner is the number one member of your coalition. There's a certain type, you know, this kind of irregular war that we experienced for so long in Iraq, for so long in Afghanistan, a recent experience. And really for you all special forces soldiers, you know, that it's really your wheelhouse. You know, there's a continuum of combat that happens somewhere between offense, defense, and stability all the time. And so if you're trying to defend facilities, protect a population, ensure stability, you're going to behave a certain way.

If you're trying to dominate the Islamic State that conquered northern Iraq, you're going to behave a different way. And so somewhere on that continuum, you've got this typology of combat advising where it really is advise, assist, accompany. And then you got this other thing that I call the lethal OC network, the imperfect analogy. And many of the listeners have been to a training center or done some sort of military training, observed it, participated it, where your unit goes into the war game and starts its force on force. You know, you got your adversary out there, the opposing force, that's trying to defeat you, humiliate you, outthink you, outfight you. And you're trying to do the same to the other.

And you've got this team of observers that wraps itself around you. And if they're really good, worth their salt, they're humble and they're trying to coach you. And they're trying to help you improve every day, right? Because we're always growing or dying when we do these things, right? So ideally, I'm better three days into it than I was on day one. And they're empathetic to know that the pressure is really on you, not on them. Well, imagine if that advisor or that observer network were combat advisors,

where they had a moral obligation to destroy the opposing force too. So not only do you have a unit that's in contact mixing it up all day every day, but you also got someone that's got a little degree of separation from the stress and the slaughter. It's also got its own robust comms network that also is able to connect joint kill chains to help you dominate. That's the lethal OC network. And that's a metaphor that I use. It's imperfect. We weren't OCs. We were combat advisors. But I think people can kind of wrap their head around the way we behave. And many people describe this as advising and assisting.

You know, I call it all six A's of A&A. So you advise, that's your intelligence-based advice you get. So our collection, our analytics, how do we help them see what's in front of them and put their finite resources in a position to get advantage? How do we advise them through intel? How do we assist them with fires? You know, the assistance really is lethality. How do we kill the enemy in front of them to help them keep moving? A company, we talked about that earlier. I said, you got to listen. Well, you can't listen if you're not a company, and that's the third A. The fourth fourth a is assured to remain calm and steady on the really hard days to use the little bit of space you have from the close contact the little bit of space to use that as a shock absorber for the entire coalition the next one's anticipate that's the fifth day if you're

with them and you're listening and if your network your advisor network is alive on a disciplined battle rhythm and you're able to get the right information the right leader at the right time you really can't anticipate i told you earlier we would move and start shaping on about 40 to 70 percent certainty and our chain of command you know my bosses trusted us to do that and the final way is agility i already made the statement our mantra was they'll never have to wait for us. So with that, and this is kind of like tying both something you said earlier, Jeff, with what you just mentioned, Pat, is Jeff, you really mentioned the success of the strike cells. And when discussing special operations, there tends to be a distinction between special warfare and surgical strike. Can you talk about how the

utilization of the strike cell was uniquely effective during OIR and how it seemed to sync both that need for special surgical strike with a by, with, and through approach? I think the strike cells, in my opinion, were a good improvised solution. So we had to move from basically, if the default position would be to develop an ATO, you know, and have like a 48-hour ATO and conduct strikes. That couldn't be the model for this operation. And so I think the strike cells is a really smart innovation and made them much more responsive. It also comes back to the importance of this being a ground fight. Although many people wanted to do basically more strategic level bombing, ultimately you needed to give the Iraqi security forces enough confidence to move forward. And so you needed really responsive fires

that would operate as their close air support. And so I think that the strike cell was a good innovation, although we really emphasize in our analysis how important Tactical Directive 1 was to make it even more responsive. I'll hop in there as well. I mean, we've got a moral obligation to strike targets that are legal targets. We should be able to start with the investigation and work our way back. We're responsible for every shot we take. And the decentralization of decision-making, the Tactical Directive 1 put in place, made us far put in place made us far more responsive, made us far more lethal, allowed us to hit the breadth and depth of objectives. But I remind people frequently that the Iraqis, they approved every single shot.

You know, in other words, the strike cell was not just, I mean, it wasn't us. It was us with an Iraqi general. They have comms as well with their commanders. You know, they've got wants and priorities as well. So there was this coalition angle to the strike cells as well that's really important. Jeff, if we could just pivot and kind of zoom out a little. Your report also says that despite America's success working alongside Iraqi security forces, This exact model may not exactly be replicable elsewhere. What led you to draw that conclusion? We drew that conclusion because we thought that

the coalition had a lot of advantages in Operation Inherent Resolve that started with the inherent weakness of the adversary. I mean, their most sophisticated air defense system was maybe MANPADS. You know what I mean? This was not a high-end adversary. The fact that the U.S. leadership there, for instance, general work, they had prior deployment history in country, another very big advantage. And the fact that there were capable local partners, I mean, we don't want to overstate it, but the counterterrorism service, other elements had evolved into at least pretty competent light infantry forces, even though CTS was not designed to be an assault force, it evolved into such.

There were kernels of capability, there were sort of something to draw on. And so we wondered if it may not be replicable elsewhere if those same conditions don't obtain. That said, we have used by, with, and through subsequently and are having success. And so we may need to revisit that conclusion. But we wanted to throw some caution to say what was a resounding short-term success for inherent resolve. Don't necessarily expect that elsewhere because of these starting advantages. I'll hop in there too because I'm always really forthright about this. What happened there was specific to a context. I encourage everybody with their thinking, start with your red pen, figure out what problem you're

trying to solve. Don't confuse the problem you had with the problem you wish you had. And I encourage everybody to remain really skeptical when they're framing their problem and then be really willing. You know, all of my ideas are provisional. If I learn something, I change my mind. And I think to stay skeptical and stay curious in these sorts of problems, I agree. We ought not pretend that this is going to translate elsewhere. You know, it's going to be different every time. But the principles, some of it really does

translate. And certainly the mindset we had translates. OK, so let me talk about the mindset. There's skill sets and mindsets. And I think the mindset, you know, this idea that the partner is always the first member of the coalition, that their success is our success. The way we speak about them matters. We don't say things like we, us, ours. It's always them, their, they. How can we help them? How do they?

What do they want? And then really, as I went back to those kind of first principles with coalition, you know, if we listen, we're realistic. We remember that we got to assist in order to advise, you know, money talks. But when you have your interests at stake and you have leverage, you got to have the will to impose your will. And I think the first principles, you know, the mindset, the way we approached it as a team and the way we thought about it and the way we aligned. Here's another thing we were able to do, Jeff. The whole point of command and control is to get

the right information, the right leader at the right time so we can make decisions. And we would be able to bring General Votel in and General Townsend in and aim them at problems and fire them because they had such good awareness of what we were doing. So now a combat advisor at center stage is suddenly a four star or three star. And it's really powerful. center stage, it's suddenly a four star or three star. And it's really powerful. The other lesson I think we should generalize from and should take away is how important it is to help the partner or to make the partner more amenable to US advising. And Pat has talked about that throughout this podcast. So when our partner had been attrited, and they were attrited in this conflict as Pat has gone through, they are really desperate for fires to soften the enemy before they advance. They are really desperate for ISR feeds. They are really desperate for money, for support. Earlier on in the conflict, they were really desperate for medical support, which the U.S. provided combat engineering so they could do contested wet gap crossings. And so by providing those things, we were creating the conditions for

that local partner to be really receptive to the advising they were getting. And to bring it back to Pat's comments for his metaphor, I really like the adjective that it starts with lethal. The fact that lethality is one of the things we're providing along with those other things, medical, engineering, and so forth. But that is what creates the partner being amenable to the advice. Jeff, that's a great point. And that's kind of a good segue into a tangentially related question I've been thinking about. So there's this academic concept that originated out of the Cold War known as the security-insecurity paradox. The idea being

that weapons of mass destruction may actually deter large-scale combat, but it might, and quite perversely, actually incentivize more conflict at lower thresholds of violence. So as we return to an era of strategic competition with the looming specter of great power war now hanging over Eastern Europe and possibly the Western Pacific, how can the U.S. employ lessons learned from OIR for a future conflict? And I'll direct that one at Jeff first. Okay, I'll take a shot at it, though I'm real interested in Pat's thoughts. I do think that we need to prepare for the potential for greater proxy war because of strategic competition, and that gets at that paradigm you just mentioned, Ben. And so there are probably lessons from

conflicts like inherent resolve where we're working through surrogates. They are to do counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, but you can also imagine it using those same techniques to subvert your adversary rather than defend. So I think what we need to do is really think through what is portable, what can we take from OIR for the potential that proxy war could proliferate as a result of the strategic competition? I think we should be humble. Too many of us take for granted that everything we've done since essentially August of 1945 has played out in this shadow of nuclear deterrence. And the deterrent has helped. And that's a really good thing. But it's a really perverse way to establish securities. It's kept the big guys from fighting.

But they still find other ways to fight. Moreover, if you even look at this idea of the Middle East, you know, just think of Syria. This is the crowning catastrophe of the jihad is the Syrian Civil War. And, you know, you're either dealing with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps there or the Islamic State. You choose. That ain't going anywhere. And then in 2015, the Russians show up. I mean, how's that going to get better anytime soon? We should be really practical and really skeptical, I think, about our ability to solve some of these problems. These are problems to be managed. I think that's important. And it goes back to our first point about humility. Additionally, I think what

we should never underestimate is our ability to just like accidentally do things or do stupid things. And it's not like the competition for finite resources in this world is going to get any better. If you look at the Middle East and North Africa in particular, that's a very dangerous place. And the demographics are going to make it increasingly dangerous over the next 20 years, most likely. And it's a place where you've got plenty of reasons to be angry. So I think just humility, understanding why what is, is. Understanding that these are not problems we can solve, but we've got to be able to manage them. We see ourselves as benevolent. I'm not sure that's how anybody else in the world sees us and how our policies zig and zag. So how do we find consistency

in a world where there's no bouncer at the bar, but there's certainly some heavyweights that can really hurt each other? So what environmental conditions should U.S. national security decision makers look for when deciding it is an appropriate strategy to use by, with, and through? I guess going back to an old doctrine, I think you want to see is by, with, and through, which is usually a small footprint approach, is that going to be decisive or sufficient? That to me would be your first litmus test because you could imagine many conflict environments in which by, with, and through is insufficient, in which it's going to take large application of US conventional forces and high-end allies to be able to accomplish

the objective. And so there, by, with, and through, unfortunately, while much less costly and posing much less physical risks to U.S. forces, wouldn't be on the table. I think the other would be the character of the partners or the options you have for partnering. Although the serious side of the equation in inherent resolve says you really can do a lot to build up a force. We did not have great options there. And although there were political costs to partnering with the Syrian democratic forces, they ended up proving a capable force to do the job. So the first two that come to mind is, is it appropriate to the circumstances? Something Pat was alluding to earlier.

And then what are your options for local partnering? I sense that when we evaluate these things, we should keep skepticism alive and ask ourselves questions like what could go wrong? Who disagrees with us? What other options do we have? So I don't think you should take your first step on something until you understand the outcome you want. So let's figure out what the range of acceptable outcomes are.

You know, it's a zero-sum victory. Are we willing to settle for some level of advantage less than that? I think you've got to be really willing to understand how much time you're willing to put into this at the national level, you know, over strategic horizons. Will we hang in there for the amount of time it takes? Who is the adversary? In what environment is this playing out? What other actors and factors matter can kind of relate your range of acceptable outcomes for conflict termination.

Be realistic, skeptical about it. termination, be realistic, skeptical about it, understand who your partner or lead nation is, what they're willing to invest, what we're willing to invest, how much time we're willing to invest. I think that's probably a pretty decent place to start. I would tell you that in our country, we have a really checkered record since World War II with conflict termination. Okay, so we should be really checkered record since World War II with conflict termination. Okay, so we should be really thoughtful about this. Based on the conversation, what are the implications for the academic policymaking in practitioner communities who are interested in employing a by, with, and through strategy with foreign partners abroad? Real simple, kind of first things first.

Try and frame your problem build your coalition and then organize and when i say organize what decisions need to be made whose decisions are there when do they need to be made in other words there's a physics to all of this because you're ultimately losing opportunities if you don't move quick enough and i don't know what quick enough is and it's got to be constantly re-eval. And then I think they just need to keep a real curiosity about the changing situation and ensure that you bring the coalition with you on this journey, because I think once it starts, there's no guarantees, right? And I think that is the sort of risk calculus because we own it once it starts.

And I'll chime in on some implications for policymakers. Before you think about operationalizing by, with, and through, and I think if you are going to operationalize by, with, and through, you want the military to take the lead on that. Those types of decisions like whether you're going to do dynamic strikes, Those are best left to uniformed military. But policymakers have some big strategic level decisions to make at the outset. I think two very wise ones that were made in inherent resolve and help explain its success is the U.S. refused to intervene in a big way militarily until Nouriel Maliki stepped down and didn't take that third term that we talked about, because that would have made victory unsustainable if he was still

in power, or many thought that. So that was a big strategic level policy decision that had to be made. And I think it was the right one. There was also a big strategic decision that had to be made. Do you go at Iraq and Syria problem set all at once, or do you stagger them? And our policy was called Iraq first, and that's a pretty good description. It was Iraq first, Syria second. And so policymakers really needed to define the space at a high level. Of course, they need to provide oversight for the operations themselves too. And there were big decisions that had to be made, like in navigating Arab-Kurd issues and so forth. But a lot of the operationalizing of by, with, and through is done by the military.

It's really important for the policymakers to get those initial strategic level decisions right. Well, gentlemen, I want to be mindful of everyone's time but this was a truly fascinating conversation on you know america's biowithin through approach and oir and jeff it's been wonderful reading your report and also getting one of the main protagonists from your story here on the show so thank you both for coming on the regular warfare podcast today jeff great spending time with you gentlemen call me if you ever need me. Thanks for having me. Same here. Thanks, guys.

And just really grateful to Pat for joining for this. Thanks again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Julia will discuss how the U.S. can minimize security assistance program corruption by foreign countries with Ambassadors Anne Patterson and Carl Eikenberry. bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter for access to our content and upcoming community events. The newsletter signup is found at irregularwarfare.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a comment and positive rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the Irregular Warfare podcast. It really helps expose the show to new listeners.

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