Irregular Warfare Podcast - SOF and Influence Activities

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Episode 116 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores the role of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in influence activities, featuring insights from Professor Martin Kitson and Major General Ron Smits. The guests discuss the value proposition of SOF in influence operations, emphasizing their ability to integrate various capabilities for maximum effect. They delve into the importance of understanding local environments, the challenges of conducting influence campaigns across different cultural and legal contexts, and the evolving role of European SOF in global operations. The conversation highlights the need for specialized training, diverse skill sets within SOF units, and the importance of adapting to new forms of warfare, including resistance operations in highly urbanized and cyber environments. The episode provides valuable perspectives on the future of SOF and their critical role in addressing complex security challenges in the 21st century.   Martijn Kitzen is a Professor and the Chair of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations, Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) in the Netherlands, and formerly served in the Royal Netherlands Army and Air Force. He Co-Edited The Conduct of War in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2021), and has written dozens of articles on coalition operations, counterinsurgency, and asymmetric conflict, to include serving as academic advisor for the revision of NATO’s AJP 3.4.4 (Counterinsurgency).   Major General Ron Smits was the Commander of Netherlands Special Operations Command. Notable positions include Head of the Manoeuvre Division within the Directorate of Operational Policy, Requirements and Plans; Chief of Staff with 43rd Mechanised Brigade; Commander of Training Command in Ahmersoort; Commander of 11th Air Mobile Brigade; and Special Operations Commander from 2021 to 2024.    Adam Darnley-Stuart and Don Edwards are the hosts for this episode. Please reach out to Ben and Matt with any questions about this episode or the Irregular Warfare Podcast.

You really want to understand the environment itself. I think they are great integrators. Sometimes resistance also are very highly professional and equipped military people who will only stand up when there is a period of crisis or conflict. Welcome to the Regular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Dymond Stewart, and my co-host today is Don Edwards. Today's episode is part of the SOF Special Project and discusses SOF's role in influence activities.

Our guests begin by outlining the value proposition of SOF contributing to influence activities. From there, they delve into the details on influence effects and and how soft supports deterrent strategies through understanding the human terrain. Finally our guests offer insights into the things special operations require but do not have to enable effective employment across the influence effect spectrum. Professor Martin Kitson holds the chair in irregular warfare and special operations at the Netherlands Defence Academy. In addition to his scholarly work, Martin has been involved in pre-deployment training and advice for various nations, worked as in-theater advisor in Afghanistan and the Sahel, and served as academic advisor for the revision of NATO's counter-insurgency doctrine.

Major General Ron Smits was the commander of the Netherlands Special Operations Command. Notable positions include head of the maneuver division within the Directorate of Operational Policy, Requirements and Plans, Chief of Staff with the 43rd Mechanized Brigade, commander of Training Command in Amersfoort, and Special Operations Commander from 2021 to 2024. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare podcast. We are dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Ron and Martin.

Ron and Martin, welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. Thank you very much, Adam. It's a pleasure to speak with you and also with Martha today about influence operations as part of software activities. Maybe to start with a small context of the Netherlands Special Operations Forces. For our listeners should be aware

that the Netherlands is a small country in the Western part of Europe, being a member of NATO. So we're not the leading country in NATO, but we do have a known vision on soft and soft activities. So I think it will be an interesting podcast today. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me and as Ron said, having both of us from a small country in Europe and sharing our ideas on special operations and on a regular warfare. And it's great to be on this platform which serves the community as a whole. So really honored to be here.

I'll throw this first question to you, Martin. Why was it important to write the chapter Embedding Influence Activities in the Conduct of War? And what drove the need to communicate SOF's role in influence activities? Well, actually, so the chapter is in a book, The Conduct of War in the 21st Century, which was published in 21, so before even the big war in Ukraine started. But actually, the chapter is based on work of Rick Breitfeld, the first author, who is also a Dutch soft lieutenant colonel, and he's a PhD candidate with me. So we based actually the chapter on the work he had been doing in practice, as well as the academic background and the academic concepts that the later work we're doing in reality.

We really felt the need to capture this in a chapter in order to get it out there and share it with the community. We also share it with the broader defence community because we clearly see a role for understanding in the first place and influencing on the basis of understanding in special operations. But we also see this role more broader in warfare, even for our conventional brothers and sisters, it's very important. So we really want to get the ideas out there and show our partners and show the broader community actually that you can do this and integrate this in your operations. so it's not something which is

different you know something one of these other million tasks you should do but you really can integrate it into your kinetic operations as well. I think it's also important we come from an era where counterterrorism was especially focused on you know the, the door kicking, taking out hell of high value targets. It seems like influence operations have become of less importance during that period of time. We're entering now the period of time where we have global competition, deterrence is an important part of the hybrid warfare part.

So I think influence operations will play a much bigger role than they did in the past 25 years. Yeah, actually, this is a great point. And this is also one of the rationalists underlying these activities and the research we have been conducting in academic circles, because this is about population centric approaches and using the population to your benefit, but also to their benefit. And the thing is, despite all the talk about population-centric approaches during the last two decades, what we found is that actually in reality, even, you know, I'm also a former military guy, I've been operating in Afghanistan, and I found that despite all

these talks or all this focus on population centric, in reality, we remain very focused on just killing or capturing our targets. But there's more. If you really want to influence, get control over society and actually want to defeat your opponent, you need to go into these kinds of activities. So great point. Thank you. Ron, we'd like to offer the audience a baseline before we dive deep into the conversation

with a two-part question. First, could I ask you to offer the definition of influence activities? And second, sales value proposition in enabling influence effects. Well, to my opinion, a good definition of influence operations would be all the projected activities that are being done in order to change the behavior of selected target audiences. What I mean with projected activities is that there has to be a focus on the effect that needs to be achieved. So the activities can differ a lot. They can be physical in posture. They can also be cyber activities or with media messaging. But they all should focus on one effect that needs to be achieved.

And I think the most important is the effect is always focusing on the behavior and the ideas of the people that is the target audience. It could be one person, if it is the leadership, for instance, of a higher level unit or a political leader, but it could also be the population that's a much broader target audience. What is very important is that the analysis of your messages and your activities of influencing people need to be done by specialists. Because it's very hard to understand what the effect will be of the message that you are spreading. Because it is based on cultural background of the audience, of political ideas, of the goals they need to achieve.

And I think that's one of the most difficult aspects of influence operations, to have a good idea what the effect of your activities will be. Because if you don't have a proper analysis, then in practice, it could possibly go completely the other way. It could reinforce something that you do not really want to occur.

You need some specialist one for the analysis, and sometimes also for, well, the activity in itself you need specials. Like I say if you want to influence broadcast media by cyber operations it's not something that a general operator could do. I think that covers already some of the the whole influence domain. Your second question was about what a SOF's value proposition is in influencing operation, because I've already mentioned PSIOPS operations. They could be conducted by conventional units. And what is then the specific role of SOF? Well, in general, SOF is operating on the operational strategic levels. And that means that the impact that soft activities have are much bigger than a conventional

unit that a battalion or a company would have. So if you combine the impact what soft could have with influencing, the effects in practice will be much bigger. To my opinion, the second argument would be soft units are used to think about a problem and how to tackle it in different ways, in unconventional ways that makes us special and unconventional. And that would mean that opens a whole variety of possibilities to influence in a way where normally conventional units that are focusing on their specialty that they would never think of. So I think these are two very important points of SOF's importance in conducting influence operations. Yeah, to expand on that,

and this really boils down to the same point Ron was making about specialists. I think, you know, traditionally all our armed forces have some background in like PsyOps or CIMIC, whatever, or civil affairs, as you have that in the United States. But the thing is for SOF, SOF I think they are great integrators. To integrate all these functions and to deploy them to the benefit of the mission, that's something typically what SOF does. And SOF can do with small teams integrating all these different capabilities and generating

effects. And this is really, I think, a key point because often I experience when talking to forces, conventional forces, that they consider like, yeah, we're doing maneuver operations, we're doing connecting operations, and we're doing influence operations. But you really have to merge these operations. And that's why in the chapter we are talking about co-design. So your operational planning process and your operational design influence activities, they are part of that. And you can generate influence through everything you're doing, you know, from basic just kinetic operations, but also cyber as mentioned by Ron, information operation, PsyHubs.

For example, in small countries like the Netherlands, like ours indeed, you'll find that SOF really are the vanguard of innovation. So to bring this approach and to get the right mindset for this approach and integration in the force as a whole, you see that actually SOF is carrying that flag, that banner at the moment. And we see there's a lot of follow-up and interest from other parts of our army, even from our international partners. But typically this is something which is first picked up by SOF that again are integrating all these different capabilities

to good effect. In general, the effects for influence operations are defined on an operational level. What do you think about influence operations being conducted, for instance, at the task group level? Do you believe SOF should conduct influence operations on their own or should they always be directed by higher levels? First, this is really a great question.

There are different angles to this and I will save some for later. But I think if you look at it pure operationally, so we're not looking to the judicial or you know, like the political or ethical background, depending on the environment and the effects you want to obtain, you might find it necessary to exert influence over certain actors. So it might be necessary at the task group level. Simultaneously, I think at least what you should incorporate at every level is understanding. There's no influencing without understanding and understanding is basically the first step and you'll benefit from this understanding in any approach. So for me basically and that's also in the chapter, there's two parts, understanding and influencing.

So understanding that something you should always do and influencing, whenever you think you will attain your desired effects through influencing, I think you as a commander should at least consider doing that. I was just asking you, because what I've seen in practice is that if there is an operation with a specific effect that needs to be created,

most of the time as SOF we think joint and as you mentioned, we have some subject matter experts. So we always bring in, can we reinforce the effect by putting some extra influence aspects in it? So yeah, most of the time we will make use of that. But then at the other end, what I also witnessed was that other departments, sometimes we are not aware of the effects we were extra creating. And sometimes it's created, well, misunderstanding or it doesn't really reinforce the effects they would like to achieve. So at least if you do include influence operations in your own sub-operations,

then you need to coordinate that with effects on a higher echelon or at least with other departments. Because in the end, all the messages need to be targeting and sending out one main message. And be careful that they do not interfere with other lines of efforts on communication or influencing. Yeah, again, I fully agree with that. And influencing, that's not only about influencing your opponent, but it's as much as taking into consideration the effort of the force as a whole and even the political level. So I would not call that influencing, but you at least should have good

communications, clear communications established in order to align all different efforts. And maybe it's good to go into an example if you ask me for a case and a case in which our Dutch special forces used influence operations. Well, I delved a bit into history and I think the best case to talk about Tel Aviv, so that's 2017, just after the end of the battle for Mosul. What we saw there is, so we have deployed a soft team and they really went a long way to obtain deep situational understanding.

Actually they had situational awareness, but they wanted to have real understanding. So what they did is they went out to refugee communities, to refugee camps in Iraq, talking to people who had fled the area, talking about what are the social dynamics, what are the dynamics, you know, concerning Islamic State. So what's happening here and how is Islamic State actually rooted in this part of Iraq? What are the bonds with local people? And they found out during that understanding phase that actually a couple of months before, that local branch of ES had been run over

by Apache helicopters, so AA-64s. And the fighters were really afraid of the Apache. So just sending out an Apache or sending even out, you know, just a word of their Apache's coming in, it was sufficient for letting them retreat and letting them actually leave their positions without a fight. So they started to use, you know, show force missions with the attack helicopters.

They start to, you know, spread radio communications. Yeah, patches are coming in and that really worked out locally there. So it was excellent approach. So influencing your opponent through show force, but that's based on a deep understanding of and that understanding actually went to far as really situational knowledge. They were really into the local situation. But what happened then is that the bigger task force in Iraq for Operation Inherent Resolve, it did see that this approach was successful.

So there came an order for all of Iraq. You know, you have to conduct show force with Apache helicopters. But really this use of the Apache was built on really this knowledge of the local fighters and the local understanding. So that wasn't the most effective approach for other locales in Iraq. And it didn't prove that effective. So it really boils down to using local knowledge to your advantage in order to exert influence. And I think this is a great case of winning the battle without fighting just to show force. Ron, as a soft practitioner, would you like to offer any additional comments based on your extensive experience commanding special operations forces? What we see nowadays where military systems has become an important part of soft activities,

especially in those areas where we are looking to build alliances, where we are enforcing the competition. The influence operations sometimes also affects the people that we are working with. So in one way there are messages we are sending out to the people we are in competition with, but on the other hand we try to motivate and reassure our partners or potential partners that either we are fighting on their side and we are supporting their operations, or that it's better to choose for us as a partner than to choose for another adversary.

So most of the time we speak about audience and then we think about adversary audiences, but sometimes influence operations could also mean probably future partners that we are focusing on. So if I look at the recent exercise of Flintlock that we had in Africa, we see that in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, that the three countries have made their own confederation, and they are moving away from the ECOWAS, the other West African states.

We know that West Africa is a very important area when it comes to drug, weapons, human trafficking, smuggling of drugs and weapons. A lot of criminal activities going into Europe have their origins in that area. And we do have a lot of terrorist groups operating in that area. Also for us, not as a global player, but as part of the European Union and as part of our security strategy, West Africa is a very important area. So for us, it is of the highest importance to keep the Sahel area safe and to have partners over there, just in case something goes wrong that we need to evacuate Dutch citizens. And we do that, of course, in a coalition,

but it's not a coalition like NATO. So to reassure, for instance, the coastal states that we would like to support them, that having the Western ideals like democracy, like a freedom of speech, et cetera, to have that on a higher level. And in that case, to have them on our side, to reassure a specific part of the security

for Europe is very important. So the messaging to them is also first, we are there to help. And then again, in practice, a very important message that we send out is not that the things or the ideals or the effects that we have on priority one is what they must have on their first to- do list also. But we listen, what are your goals? What do you want to achieve? And how can we help? Because that is what it brings out for you. And then if we have the belief that we can both bring something to the table that is of importance, that there is trust amongst

each other, then we can see, okay, what benefits the Dutch interest or the Alliance interest. So that is maybe also from practice, if you speak about projecting your behavior and in some way influencing then your partners. It's also something that you have to keep in mind when you conduct operations as SOF in other parts of the world. Yeah, I think this is a great point again, because it shows you that actually for effective influencing,

you need to be there. Of course, you can do a lot nowadays through cyber, through other means, but being there, effective local partnerships, I think they're key because they will help you to get this necessary understanding about the local environment. And they allow you to tap into local networks as well. And I think as a community, the global soft network, which for us and for the Netherlands special forces is great being part of that.

I think it's pivotal that we as special operations forces of our partner nations keep on operating together, but also, you know, deploying together and operating together because I think one of the key challenges at the moment in competition, we see there's a lot of influencing and it's not necessary from the Western side, but we should counter that and we can only do that together. But that's maybe something also for later in the conversation. Ron, we have spoken about SOF having placement and access, especially in the human domain. This comes with challenges.

Would you be able to offer some strategic and bureaucratic challenges when attempting to apply coherent influence campaigns? Sure. Let me give you an example of a strategic challenge. And then I'm focusing, for instance, on the Indo-Pacific. We know that China is focusing on Taiwan to attack the islands and make it one of their own parts of China. So there is an influence and a deterrence operation ongoing to message towards China

that there is an alliance that will react just in case Taiwan or China would attack Taiwan. And we want to reinforce that message by as much alliance partners as possible in many ways, either in false posture or in media declarations, et cetera. But on the other hand, there are countries in the Pacific area that are depending a lot on China for their economy, for instance. So for them, they would rather not be messaging that fierce and that hard on China because it could come back on them and influence their economy in a negative way. So then you have to adjust your messaging with that country.

Okay, what do they think it's acceptable in sending out a message but not too strong that there would be a reaction that would be a negative effect of their own nation. So that is a difficulty on a strategic level. On a bureaucratic level, a challenge that we have as the Netherlands, for instance, if we have agreed to a European law on privacy, that is very strict, that we as the military, we follow almost the most strict laws on privacy. That would mean for us, it's simply not allowed to use all the influence opportunities that are available.

So there is a strict control on what we are doing as soft units. And that also means that we must be as creative as possible to find out what is possible, what can be used. And sometimes we need to have approval on the forehand on everything we do. So that is very bureaucratic and it also it limitates us to specific actions. And that's a pity because the limitations also sometimes would mean that it is more insecure to our people. It could mean an insecure situation.

Finally, an example of challenges is, well, national and international aspects. For instance, we would like to influence a specific group in another country, and a partner nation would also like to do that, but needs to do it in another way. But in the country itself, where, but at least the mandate to say what is happening in their country, either agrees or disagrees in our approach. So that is also national rules, national laws,

national plans, or maybe national cultures. They could influence the approach of different partners when conducting those kind of operations. Yeah, and to continue a bit on that, I think the judicial and ethical questions that pop up with these activities, that's something our people, they are trained for. We pay a lot of attention to that. Because you're seeking to understand and influence a completely different society. So you have to know all the effects that can be obtained that way. But also what are the second or third order effects.

So you fully realize what actually this approach is bringing along. And especially from the judicial framework also. It might for instance for European nations be difficult if you're just in a competition phase you're not in a conflict to actually use for instance data obtained through the cyber environment data to social networks you cannot always use that in your approach because the judicial frameworks of different nations it just prohibits you from doing that in a situation that is not a conflict situation. So there are some huge hurdles in this approach but i think as people are realizing and politicians are realizing throughout europe that we are actually in a huge competition with a full-scale war going on in the continent, in Ukraine, is that people are realizing more and more, even in society, that such approaches

are a necessity. So things are changing at the moment, but we still have a lot of judicial frameworks to deal with whenever we try to implement such an approach. We might shift focus a little now towards the broader SOF collaboration question. Ron, from a European perspective, what type of missions do you believe European SOF is best positioned to lead on across the global SOF community? My first response would be because we are prepared for all kinds of soft missions that, well, is there really a specific part of the soft missions that we as European Union members

would be better in? I think what is a positive aspect of working in Europe is that with a specific group of countries that we are very dear to, we understand the culture, we understand the language. So if we speak about influencing others, we do have a better background of what is important for them or what a specific effect or an action would mean. So when we speak the same language and we have the same ideas,

it would also be easier to assist each other. So that's a positive aspect. As I said, that is when we speak about deterrents. So what kind of activities, there could be demonstrations. It could also mean that when messaging in media or in the digital domain, that we have the same capabilities and the same ideas about that. If we speak about helping each other with military assistance to reservist parties, I think it's a strong message that we reinforce, we support each other with whatever is needed.

If you look at how we work together in the Baltic Sea area with the local countries, with Finland, Sweden, with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. That all different countries from Western Europe come together in that area to reinforce the presence over there to show that we have a great interoperability, that we have all the capabilities that are needed in that area, both maritime and land in the air, demonstrates cyber and space capabilities. I think from a deterrence point of view, the capabilities that are needed in that area, both maritime and land in the air, demonstrates

cyber and space capabilities. I think from a deterrence point of view, that's a very strong message. And either, like I already mentioned in the beginning, either when you are living in the most western part of Europe, that does not mean that we do not understand maybe the danger or the threats that the more Eastern European countries are living in, and that it does not affect us. We speak about cyber, it affects everybody. Like our bank system or our whole digital system in the Netherlands, electricity would be affected by cyber.

It would have the same effect as it would have in Poland. And with all the electricity cables, with the internet cables, gas pipelines in the North Sea, we have also something to defend. So from a deterrence point of view as European nations, the way we understand each other and we help each other out to reinforce that message, I think that is very important. Where in the end, language and interoperability are two very important factors. So coincidentally, James Kairos and I, we just published this edited volume into the Void, special operations forces after the war on terror. Basically, we argue that the war on terror is still ongoing, so we still need to fight terror,

but we also have, of course, great power competition and everything that comes with that. And from the perspective of European soft, there is a chapter in there which I co-wrote with Bas Bjerust, Dutch Marine Colonel. We're looking into soft roles and soft strategic utility. And what you see is that I think European soft not only in deterrence, they really have basically is a new role for European soft. It's what's called unconial warfare in the US. That was something that's not acknowledged as such in European special operation forces,

but they are now picking up, you know, like resistance training, organizing resistance, assistance to resistance. So deterrence-wise, that's something we are picking up now. And I think we're making huge steps forward in that regard. Also due to our close connections to the region, as Ron was saying, we're familiar with the area. We have sometimes a tradition going back, working with each other for decades. So I think that's a great power of European Special Operation Forces.

Another thing is also if you look more at global projection and being there globally, I think either through MA or through other types of missions. I think there is also a lot of European countries that have long-standing relations in other parts of the world. Sometimes actually that doesn't turn out to be an advantage or benefit. We all know what for instance currently is happening to France in parts of Africa. But sometimes you can use these long-standing ties with local societies to your advantage and that's something we also see.

Moreover, there's a lot of European thinking and talking but also more and more practice about Europe being a strategic entity on itself. So that's not only true NATO but also European countries operating globally as an ally of the United States. For Europe, our main ally is the United States. And we very much hope that your perception is that's mutual and that stays that way. So for us, it's going out there, even like Ron has been talking about the Indo-Pacific,

going there, do MA, do training, work together with our SOF partners there from different countries. So deterrence-wise in Europe SOF is doing a good job making huge steps forwards, not only with traditional missions like more DA and SR, but also with unconventional warfare resistance training. Globally MA projection being there, that's something we are picking up and actually I think there's also a lot of progress in that field. You really want to understand the environment you're operating, so we should invest in that, in

training for people, in getting their mindset right in order to develop for themselves, to deploy somewhere, to a completely unknown locale and to start developing this awareness and knowledge of the local situation. Furthermore, I would argue that the primacy of SOF during the global war on terror, it hasn't done us that much good because the image, the prevailing image of SOF is still, you know, we are the door kickers going in and be going to arrest or kill the bad guys. Well, the mission is far more sophisticated and far more complicated. We've been talking about, and may about, unconventional warfare.

So I think we also should be very clear to communicate to others what our missions are and that we really need a versatile and broad force. And that means you need also diversity. You need diversity of thinking, but you also need to integrate female operators in order to reach out to certain part of target societies. I know for the US, for instance, looking to use army soft,

the way you're organized is you have your green berets, you have like civil affairs, PsyOps. For most European countries, that's not the case. Even for us as a small country, we really have like our tier one units with the army and with the Marines. And we also have a dedicated air squadron from the Air Force. But we don't have these embedded diverse capabilities that you need for influencing. So you also need to redesign the force in order to integrate that. And last, I know very much I've been talking about this,

you know, educating people, getting the right mindset, but I would like to stress again, this is also about mindset. You know, influencing is not that thing that you should also, should do, so to consider and another check in the box. No, it's really something you should integrate with your operation and you can integrate understanding.

I think in any stage of your decision making process and your planning process, but also you should look at the activities. Even when you're going on a patrol, you might exert influence in a certain way. So be thoughtful of this and consider what effects you want to obtain and what are the on-the-side effects. And think about first, second and third order effects.

So again, educating people but also getting the right people there. You might need other kind of operators who can deploy to an environment in order to understand that environment and influence that environment. So you need not only mindset, but also the very composition of the force, but also needs some tinkering. Yes, but you are mentioning the education process of our operators and we need some other kind of operate. We had a very important dilemma, the specific skills for working in the human domain, can they be thought to every operator that we have in our organization?

And if it would be the case, if we could, then the question is, do they also like it? And do they have the passion to be the best also, to be a specialist in the human domain? Well, the answer is no, they're not. So yes, we need people who are very good in communicating in the networking, who have an interest in cultural and historical backgrounds to certain areas, who would like to speak the local language, which is of great importance if you want

to work in the human domain to get acceptance and trust by people. And what we see is that we have a lot of young people that are really interested in this part of the soft activities. For instance, we have a captain and a sergeant first class working in either the Middle East or in Africa, speaking to ambassadors, to chief of defense, to a high level authorities, to CEOs of local businesses.

So it's not only that they need to have good skills for communication and networking, but also they need to have a good feeling for diplomatic aspects, because what they say or their actions could have big effects on Dutch interests or on relations. So how do you teach a captain of 29 years old who is operating in the Middle East

what he needs to say or what the implications of his actions are? So educating them also in a broad variety of aspects relating to that area is of great importance. And it always seems that within soft units, we do have a lot of those people. Well, we of course do select them on being great individuals

and knowing the responsibility of their actions, et cetera. So I do see that we need more of people with these specific skills in the upcoming years, and I think it cannot be combined completely. Of course, they need to be in general an operator also but not every operator can be a specialist in working in the human domain. Yeah and that triggers me that some terms that I haven't used yet but I should have used before because the kind of understanding we're talking about is what's called amic understanding.

It's that you seek to understand a society or local groups from the perspective of these groups themselves. So you really have to be able as an operator to place yourself between those people and to start learning to think how they are thinking, learn their line of reasoning. And that's indeed, I agree with Ron, that's something not every operator can do. And that contrasts, you know, like the ethic perspective, which more looks from the outside to other societies. But if you want to have effective understanding and effective influencing, you need this deep understanding,

which is understanding society as it sees itself. So the MEK perspective. And I fully agree that's not something that every operator can do. And we really should invest in that, both in recruiting the right people, but also in making sure that we give our people the right training to do that. Ron, based on today's conversation, what are the major considerations for policy makers, practitioners and researchers who are interested in the future of SOF. I would like to focus on three items.

First, as being part of NATO and focusing on the Russian Federation as the major threat for Europe and NATO. We know that there is an activation of NATO when one of the countries will be attacked. But before a country is being attacked, what we know is that Russia will conduct hybrid operations and all different kinds of influential activities to either put dilemmas on our decision makers. And when it comes to a real attack,

there is a question, how do we move on with deep operations? Are we allowed starting deep operations only when there is an actual attack and NATO is activated? Or are we starting with deep operations from a NATO perspective in a coalition plan on the forehand? Or will it be national initiatives? That is always a possibility. But then the national activity,

does it influence the NATO plan or will it cause a reaction on the Russian side? So that's a major consideration at this moment, not only for policymakers, but especially for the military higher level commands. Another consideration for specifically the policymakers and the diplomats is what is S.O.F.'s role in competition.

When there are Wagner military people operating in Africa and connecting to people who have thrown over the democratic chosen president, do we then still do business with the new rulers? Or when Russian people walking around, do we move away? Or do we actually see the competition with them in that country? Because moving away is leaving the country open to the influence of others. And that's a real difficulty for the diplomats and the politicians. And finally, a very important issue is what will be soft role in support of resistance.

Resistance will appear in a variety of features. Sometimes we think when we're speaking about resistance about, well, the French resistance in World War II, but sometimes resistance also are very highly professional and equipped military people who will only stand up when there is a period of crisis or conflict. So what then is SOF's role and do we have a role as SOF and what exactly is it? So that's also specifically for academics, but also for the lower military SOF commanders who are actually operating in countries very near to the Russian

Federation border. But in the end, it all will depend on what the national idea is of support of soft to their resistance, because it's not a NATO doctrine. It is an activity that only can get the mandate from the nation itself. And sometimes working in a resistance is a very dangerous activity. Sometimes the nation does not want you to interfere with resistance, because it can bring people in danger when actually being active in resistance. So these are some examples of what the major considerations of today for SOF will be.

I would like to add to that, that I'm fully stress what Ron has been saying, but I see some bureaucratic hurdles also in this regard, especially the reorientation to conventional warfare after two decades of counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism missions. I think it brings us again, you know, like a monolithic approach of military force, especially from the conventional side. And that makes it difficult for SOF to expand the mission set to explain the different mission set. For example many NATO armies if you look to Dutch or Netherlands special operation forces during the cold war that task was mainly

you know strategic reconnaissance and some direct action but they didn't have any other tasks so like MA or even like strategic presence in some areas, these are completely new tasks. So we're a bit caught in the side guys, to use a German word, that everybody's looking again to conventional warfare. And for instance, in the Dutch Ministry of Defense, we're totally now refocusing on conventional warfare. And it's totally right. And we should get our deterrents up to speed. But we also need to fight for a more broader role for special operation forces as Ron has just elaborated.

Furthermore, I would like to add, for instance, we really need to do our homework with some new tasks for the European perspective. For instance, unconventional warfare resistance operation. Like Ron said, we have typically this idea of the French resistance of World War II. But if you look at the reality at the moment, we have a cyber environment. We have highly urbanized environments.

How are we going to support resistance in such an environment with these conditions? So these are totally new concepts. So within bureaucracy, we are fighting a soft to be acknowledged in that we have a broad set of missions, but also we really need to do more research into that from an academic perspective. As last for the listeners, I would point out an article which was published at the Modern War Institute in 2020 by Rance Eric Robinson, The Missing Irregular Half of Great Power Competition. 20 by Rans-Erik Rommelsen, the missing irregular half of great power competition.

Because I think that greatly shows that there's more needed when you look at current situation than conventional deterrence. And it gives you a great underpinning for also communicating within your ministry of defense why soft should have a more broader mission. Ron and Martin, thank you for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to share our ideas and opinions with you. Yes, thank you, as we say in Dutch, thank you well for having us and to the community out there, keep up the good work folks. Thank you again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast.

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