Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Costs and Benefits of Unconventional Warfare and Subversion

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

What are unconventional warfare and foreign subversion? Will they be important in an era of great power competition? What are some of the second- and third-order effects when states use subversion to undermine their rivals? Retired Lt. Gen. Ken Tovo and Dr. Melissa Lee join the Irregular Warfare Podcast to discuss these topics and more. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This is another type of warfare, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin, war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called wars of liberation, to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved.

Welcome to episode 12 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I am Nick Lopez and I will be your host along with Kyle Atwell. Our conversation today will be focused on the nature of unconventional warfare. Our guests argue that unconventional warfare and subversion, when states support foreign insurgencies or resistance movements to overthrow other governments, will play an important role in great power competition. However, they caution that as a tool of foreign policy, it carries both opportunities and risks. In particular, subversion can perpetuate ungoverned space, which often serves as the source of many irregular warfare threats. They argue that given its prevalence in world politics, the U.S. government should be prepared ungoverned space, which often serves as the source of many irregular warfare threats.

They argue that given its prevalence in world politics, the U.S. government should be prepared to both engage in unconventional warfare offensively and defend against it. Lieutenant General Retired Ken Tovo served a 35-year career as a United States Army officer. He has served as a detachment, company, battalion, and group commander in the 10th Special Forces Group and also commanded the United States Army Special Operations Command. He has extensive operational experience and several deployments throughout his career. Dr. Melissa Lee is an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and a University of Pennsylvania Perry World House Lightning Scholar. She is the author

of the book, Crippling Leviathan, How Foreign Subversion Weakens the State, released in the summer of 2020. 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 Melissa and Ken. Lieutenant General Retired Ken Tovo and Dr. Melissa Lee, welcome to the Irregular Warfare Podcast and thanks a ton for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Looking forward to the conversation. So I'm going to go ahead and jump right in. Melissa, you talked extensively about ungoverned spaces and subversion in your book that you released this year, Crippling Leviathan, How Foreign Subversion Weakens the State. I think that practitioners, especially in special operations, they'll find subversion very similar to unconventional warfare. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and the motivation behind it?

Yeah. So this is a book about the problem of state weakness. And it's a particular kind of state weakness that I was interested in, which is ungoverned space. And by ungoverned space, I have in mind places where the state is simply absent. It doesn't exert authority over its territory. There are no government services. These are places where government agents cannot go, right? So I was interested in why these spaces exist.

And the existing political science literature, I thought, was very unsatisfactory. It focused largely on domestic factors. And the cases that I knew well pointed to a different explanation, which is the role of external actors, specifically other countries. And so the book advances an argument about how adversary states use foreign subversion to undermine state authority in target states, producing state weakness, producing these ungoverned spaces. For example, you might think of parts of Pakistan or parts of Southern Philippines as places where government authority is contested. These are not usually literally ungoverned spaces, right? It's not that they're

vacuums of chaos. But from the perspective of the central state, the government doesn't have a strong presence there. And by foreign subversion, I have particularly in mind territorial subversion, the use of non-state, typically armed actors, to undermine government control over territory. So what I'm understanding is that subversion causes ungoverned spaces, and ungoverned spaces are important because it provides opportunities for those who want to weaken a rival state. I want to dig into that a little deeper because your definition of subversion is very similar to unconventional warfare, especially for practitioners. So with that, can you further explain the components of subversion? If I remember correctly from your book, it was means and motive.

Right. So the book discusses means and motive or put differently the proxies or the agents on the ground, these non-state actors, and then motive being the willingness or interest of the adversary state in actually using foreign subversion. Both of these factors are really important for foreign subversion to occur. At a very basic level, the adversary state has to want to deploy this tool. So it has to be some really deep policy and compatibility that will means are these actors on the ground. These are these non-state actors. There are typically non-state groups that are seeking to govern some area in lieu of the state. What happens under foreign subversion is that there are these actors who try to eject the central state and govern in its stead, right? So there's usually some alternate authority there seeking to govern. And Ken, how do you view ungoverned space in the context of current national security? Is this going to be a continuing threat into the future? Is this something that you faced in your career?

ungoverned space, really most of my career, but it really was brought to a finer point after 9-11, 2001, when it was the attacks on our country and this concern that these ungoverned spaces offer the opportunity for violent extremist organizations to use them as a base of operations as al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan and previously they did in Sudan, that these places offer an opportunity for terrorist organizations to build strength, plan, and then launch attacks that can cripple us or our friends. Yeah, I almost think of it as safe haven in military terms. Like, ungoverned space is a place where a non-state actor has safe haven to do what they will. Yeah, I mean, because of, you know, as Melissa puts it in a book, lack of consolidation by the sovereign government. People are operating in these, you know, almost no man's land where there's nobody to hold them to accountability and act in accordance with law.

And so they're able to kind of operate very freely. And so, you know, really, particularly in the early years of, you know, what we colloquially call the GWAT, the Global War on Terrorism, that was really the focus globally from a military perspective and also from an interagency perspective, looking at these places where groups had already taken advantage of ungoverned space or where they might take advantage of ungoverned space. And then the question of, okay, so what do we do about it? How can we help that sovereign nation extend its governance and reduce these vulnerabilities? From a counterinsurgency perspective, these ungoverned spaces are particularly problematic because the absence of government and the negative consequences of that for the people who live there, I think sort of set right conditions for gathering support among that

population, right? So if we think that these rebel groups or terrorist groups depend a bit on the local population, and the local population is sympathetic to them because they offer some alternative vision of governance compared to that of the state, that's really problematic for counterinsurgency, right? Yeah, absolutely. And which is why in at least one of the models of counterinsurgency that we've used over the years from a U.S. military perspective, that's one of the lines of effort that will help a foreign government get after, which is this idea of balanced development. Taking away the root causes that contribute to making insurgency a viable option to overcome grievances or disparities in the way society is run. grievances or disparities in the way society is run.

So ungoverned space presents a threat by providing a safe haven where terrorist or insurgent groups can percolate. And Ken, you noted that a lot of efforts in the global war on terror were sort of defensive efforts to counter these threats through counterinsurgency or counterterrorism interventions. But on the flip side of the coin, there are times when the United States might seek to actually expand ungoverned space or take an offensive stance of subversion. Sure. You know, the entire community of the U.S. Special Forces, the Green Berets, is designed to be the military's preeminent tool for what we call unconventional warfare, which looks an awful lot like Melissa's definition of subversion from a US perspective. But we have this capability to support proxies, surrogates, resistance movements for the purpose of disrupting, coercing, or overthrowing

for the purpose of disrupting, coercing, or overthrowing unfriendly regimes. Occupying power, for example. So, you know, in the classic case, if you think about, you know, resistance elements in France, fighting the German occupation and kind of the support that at that time, the OSS, the forerunner of both the CIA and the Green Berets, the support that we provided those resistance elements to throw off the yoke of the occupying power, we call that unconventional warfare. The OSS case is certainly fascinating as it involved several allied nations conducting subversion. Could you point us to a more recent example, quite possibly something from your

professional experience in the global war on terror? Well, I mean, my personal example with unconventional warfare is the days leading up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, and then the invasion itself, where at one point the plan called for putting a conventional force in the north. Turks wouldn't allow it through. We already had a plan for special forces to be up in the north. And, you know, the Iraqi army had two thirds of their combat power arrayed in the north. We were able to insert SF teams, work with the Kurds to the Peshmerga, a paramilitary organization with their capabilities and our capabilities essentially prevent those 13 divisions from moving south to fight off the invasion of Baghdad coming from Kuwait. And at the same time, also remove a pretty significant terrorist organization from over on the Iranian border.

That's one example of the use of unconventional warfare in conjunction with a conventional effort to essentially as an economy of force. So our five or 600 special forces soldiers, with support from others, were able to, with our Kurdish counterparts, about 50,000 paramilitary, tie down two-thirds of the Iraqi army. That's certainly an economy of force example and case study. I appreciate that. Melissa, I'm particularly interested in your perspective as to how important subversion and unconventional warfare is now, especially through the lens of great power competition, particularly defending or being prepared to defend against subversion? I think it's essential, not necessarily because we are going to be the targets of foreign subversion on American soil, territorial foreign subversion, I should say, but because our partner states, our allies could be targets of foreign subversion. In fact, I think

foreign subversion is going to be part of the landscape of great power competition for the foreseeable future and for middle power competition. It's cheaper. There's this possibility for plausible deniability, right, as states cloak their activities in the language of humanitarianism and international norms. And foreign subversion is effective. And so subversion is effective. And so I think we have to be prepared for the possibility that our, not just possibility, but for the reality of our interests being threatened by adversaries. So that's interesting.

You're saying it's not just great powers that will engage in foreign subversion and unconventional warfare and other things and great power competition, but also weaker states. Weaker states do this on each other. Do you have examples of that from your book or from the past of middle states engaging in subversion? Yeah. So the book considers two Cold War era examples, both in Southeast Asia. And so one of them was Malaysian subversion of the Philippines in the 1970s. So there was a number of disputes between the two countries. And both countries felt that they could not confront each other in a confrontational war. The Philippines was an ally of the US. Malaysia was part of the Commonwealth. And basically, confronting the Philippines in conventional means was off the table. But there were a variety of non-state actors who eventually

became the Moro National Liberation Front. And Malaysia trained, they brought together these groups who became the MNLF and trained them and helped them undermine state authority in the Southern Philippines. The second example I bring in the book is also from Southeast Asia from the 1980s. And it's Thailand's subversion of Vietnamese-occupied Cambodia. So this is after the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, in which Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge. And this is part of the Cold War era confrontation between, you know, communists and non-communist states. So subversion is an old practice. But this example shows that it's not something that is confined to the arsenals of the great powers.

Right. Other states will use it. And in fact, if you're a weak state, it's going to be especially attractive. Much of what we've talked about to date about the use of subversion or unconventional warfare as a tool is very backwards looking. We're talking historical examples in our past history, particularly the last 20 years. I think Melissa touched on this, but I think it's an important point to underline. And that's that as we move into this era or have already moved into this era of great power competition, I think we're going to see even more of a use of this tool. And the reason is that by their nature, great power conflict is destructive and incredibly costly. And none of the great powers go into conventional great power conflict and war if they can avoid it. But they still want to achieve their objectives. But they still want to achieve their objectives. And the use of proxies and subversion as a means to coerce or disrupt or overthrow friendly nations is a way to, or nations that are friendly to one's adversary, I should say, to clarify, that those tools are seen as viable, as a viable tool to achieve one's national objectives at a lower risk, at a lower cost, and keep below the threshold of a conventional conflict between two great powers.

So I think we're going to see more of this when we talk about great power competition potentially with China or Russia. So we have described what subversion and unconventional warfare is and why it is relevant today. Melissa, your book focuses on whether subversion works and what its implications are. Can you tell us the key findings of your research? I think the banner finding is that foreign subversion works, that it is a significant contributor to ungoverned space. It creates ungoverned space, and it allows that ungoverned space to persist. So even in the face of target state efforts to counter subversion, subversion will work to maintain state weakness. It is easier to break things than to build things back up.

It is very hard to build things back up while an adversary is actively working on breaking things. Ken, given Melissa's findings, I'm particularly interested in your thoughts from a practitioner's standpoint on subversion moving forward. As we look at potential competition in the great power realm, I think we ought to acknowledge that there are going to be times where this is an effective tool for us to wield, particularly given that our adversaries tend to be non-democratic states that align with other non-democratic states. The thing that totalitarian or authoritarian regimes fear the most is internal stability. Look at Russia. What is Russia's main concern? Do they really believe that NATO is going to launch an armored assault across their border and drive on Moscow? No. What they are afraid of is that somehow NATO

is going to incite a color revolution inside their territory that will overthrow Putin and his cronies. Totalitarian governments, authoritarian governments fear internal instability almost more than anything else. Melissa, if I understand correctly, you're wary of the use of subversion because though it may work as a short-term foreign policy tool, it essentially increases ungoverned space, which is a strategic challenge for the U.S. Is that a fair characterization? That's correct. I worry about subversion because it has insidious long-term effects that hang around well after the cessation of the immediate security threat. With that in mind, do you think there are instances where the U.S. should employ it, or is it better just to take the long term, we should be against using this tool?

In the long term, we're all dead. I like that. All right, podcast over. Stop. I'll drop my mic on the ground now. That's awesome. Melissa has left the room. Yeah, the mic dropped.

Right. But this is why decisions to engage in foreign subversion need to be carefully deliberated among all the relevant actors, right? This is a tool that has long-term effects. And the U.S. has not been particularly great at addressing those long-term effects. And the US has not been particularly great at addressing those long term effects. And not as like, responding to subversion, we are not particularly great at building states, period. Full stop. Hard work, right? Promoting good governance and democracy is hard work. And those things get undermined along with state control, good governance, control of territory, and democracy take a long time, and we are not particularly good at it. So given the fact that

we will have to live with the consequences and we are not good at addressing those long-term consequences, the decision to use foreign subversion should be very carefully thought out. So I would not say we should never use it. There will be times in which we face national security threats that merit the use of subversion or unconventional warfare. But this cannot be used all the time. It has to be a tool that is used only sparingly. Yeah, it shouldn't be looked at as a cheap alternative to war, because it's a form of war. And that's kind of my point is that this isn't, you know, should we go to war to achieve our objectives? Or should we support a proxy movement that creates violent action inside a country, which is also an act of war?

I mean, we sometimes seem to think that this is somehow a freebie and it's not. And it's got it's got many of the consequences of war because it is. Because it is. And we need to recognize that and kind of have that decision making of that this is one of those tools we use when we have no other tools available that can achieve the objectives and outcomes that are really important to the nation. So understanding that unconventional warfare comes with consequences, which are essentially ungoverned spaces and basically a requirement to conduct state building at some level. So that brings me to Melissa, going back to your previous point, which was that the United States really is not the best at the state building or democracy building game. What do you attribute that to? I think there's a fundamental tension in state building in other countries when done by external third parties like the U.S., which is that the people who living in that country are far greater than the stakes for the US, even when cases where we see that country as very essential to our national security. I think there's going to the extent that there's

disagreement, right? The people who live there can wait us out, or they will fight harder than we will. The other tension is that we are a democracy and we have to be accountable to the American public. And how can we continue? How do we explain our activities in other countries? Right. Given this problem where it's hard to take credit for something that didn't happen. How do we justify promoting good governance, democracy, strong, responsive, capable states? We often justify these activities with respect to American interests. And so we have to articulate an American interest. And you cannot say America's interests concern the whole world. We do not live

in a world in which we are going to improve governance everywhere in the world. It's not only that, you know, the stakes are higher for the people who are there, it's that the stakes are particularly low for the American public. And it's very hard to convince them otherwise. So that's interesting because, you know, when we talk about maybe if we increased our interagency collaboration, we could, you know, tip the scales and be better at, you know, building governments or countering insurgencies. If I understand correctly, you're saying that there's something more fundamentally challenging to doing this, that no matter how we adjust our levers and widgets and policies, just fundamentally, it's going to be hard to ever be able to build states because we don't have the national interest

relative to what the indigenous population has. That's right. Right. We are very good at helping the indigenous population achieve goals that they already want to achieve. We are very bad at changing their minds and doing things they don't want to achieve. We are very bad at changing their minds and doing things they don't want to do, right? And the places where we are trying to address state weakness, malgovernance, authoritarianism, those are precisely the places that are particularly resistant to efforts to promote change for the better. Even if our interests are aligned, you still have to make the case to the American people that there's a reason for us being there, helping somebody else take care of business in their country.

Right. And how do you tell an American that what's happening in Nigeria is important to America's national interest? How do you explain to an American that what's happening in the Philippines matters for our own security? I'd like to take a step back and think on the offensive side of unconventional warfare. So when is subversion or the usage of unconventional warfare a viable tool? And what do those conditions look like? Well, first of all, whether it's a viable tool, I think there's really a couple of questions that need to be answered. First of all, there's a policy question of, is this the right thing to do in this situation? I mean, there's a technical question, if you will, of is it a viable option in an environment?

But the secondary question, that policy question is, is it kind of the right thing to do? environment. But the secondary question, that policy question is, is it kind of the right thing to do? You know, unconventional warfare, as Melissa points out in her book, it can be a destabilizing tool in many ways. We're, you know, kind of breaking a lot of things with the idea that we'll put them back together better later in the future. But that's really hard to do. And our track record on putting things back together better in the future is somewhat spotty. And then the question is, is the right form of warfare to unleash unconventional warfare or subversion? Or should it be conventional warfare? But we've exhausted the other options.

This isn't a cost-free way of doing business. It's still going to have the same downsides that warfare does. And I think that's what Melissa's book tells us, is that this has got some long-term consequences subversion does when it's used. Subversion also has an additional complication, which is that it involves non-state proxy, right? So for subversion to be a viable offensive tool, the state that uses it has to be confident that they can control the proxy. And that is not always going to be the case. A good proxy is one that's going to be aligned with the outside state's interests. And maybe that proxy does or does not exist. A good proxy is

also going to be one that has the capabilities to not only help the outside state achieve its objectives, but also to build back up that area to limit or to mitigate the damage that is done as you disrupt and undermine the adversary state. And part of the dilemma of subversion is that as you empower that proxy more and more, that proxy becomes less dependent on the support of the outside state, right? And so if they are not aligned, you can easily lose control of the proxy. Really, most of these cases, when you're using a proxy or empowering a proxy, you're playing on fissures in society, whether they're ethnic or economic or some kind of social or religious fissure. So in many ways, the more you play on that, and the more you empower a proxy, really, the more in a longer term, the less likely you are going to be able to

kind of undo that work and set the conditions for a stable society in the future. I mean, the example I would use would be perhaps Iraq. In 2003, I was involved as a special forces officer up in northern Iraq, where we empowered the Kurds to help rest of Iraq, but we certainly didn't make that better by empowering them. And in fact, one might say that as a result of that, they moved even further away from the nation of Iraq and made it even less likely that they could once again somehow be a coherent whole where they are a viable part of Iraqi society, as opposed to kind of continuing to enhance their desires to be a separate nation state. Right. I think the lesson here is that if a state engages in subversion, it is potentially entangling them in that country's domestic affairs for a long time, right? Perhaps well after the immediate security threat has disappeared, right? And so to answer,

what could we have done? Well, I think, you know, it's hard to have to game out in the moment, like what would happen, but to at least be prepared for sustained engagement. Melissa, I want to look at the other side of this, especially because you looked a lot at all of the actors and the relationships within subversion, in other words, unconventional warfare. How do you pick apart an unconventional warfare campaign, just based off of the research that you conducted in this book? I would start by thinking about the relationships between the key actors, right?

So you have the target state or, you know, the partner, our ally, our partner state. There is the adversary state, so the state that seeks to undermine our partner. There is the non-state proxy that is the agent of subversion, right? The actor that's actually undermining state authority. And then there's a fourth actor, which I don't spend a lot of time discussing in the book, but this is the population that supports that non-state actor, right? So you can think of there being relationships between each of these actors. And in each of those relationships, you can mitigate or reduce the risk of or effects of subversion, but it looks different at each step, right? So think about the relationship between the partner and the adversary state or the target and the adversary state, right? So think about the relationship between the partner and the adversary state,

or the target and the adversary state, right? There is some really significant policy and compatibility. So can there be ways to address that, you know, whatever dispute is causing these two states to engage with each other in this way? In reality, this is pretty hard, right? Like, given that subversion is used sparingly, it already suggests that other options were not viable. But perhaps the U.S. could assist by, you know, thinking about other ways in which that security issue, foreign policy issue could be addressed. You could also think about breaking the link between the population and the non-state group. Right. So these proxies depend on support from populations as well, right? So how do you sway the population away from that group? And that's another

link that could be broken. Any solution has to start by visualizing the relationships and looking for entry points within those relationships. How do you break those relationships or change those relationships for the better? And I would add, I think that's a really, really good way to view it. The most viable of those options are the way to kind of sort through which of those you try and do or in combination is somewhat influenced by where you are in time. If you don't yet have a problem with a proxy, but you have a disagreement, for example, with a neighbor, the question should be, what are my vulnerabilities as a nation? And these vulnerabilities, as Melissa talks about,

really come from groups within a country that have some kind of grievance, real or perceived, that can be exploited. And so if you're not at the point yet where the neighbor or the, you know, the wielding state has chosen to cause trouble, perhaps you can inoculate yourself from the approach. You know, I think of the challenge in the Baltic states that have, in some cases, pretty significant Russian diaspora inside their countries. Obviously, they've got some policy, potential policy disputes, we'll call them, with Russia across the border. But they've got these Russian diaspora inside their country that are a potential vulnerability should Russia try and exploit them. And the question should be to those Baltic states are what are you doing to incorporate them into your society and reduce their grievances? And

there are grievances that they'll air about, you know, inability to teach my language in school, we don't get the same level of government resources. And so before there's a conflict or before a proxy has been weaponized, a state should try and extend its control. It should consolidate control. And part of consolidating control means reducing the disagreements between the state and that marginalized group within a society. So good governance, consolidated state authority all prevents the availability or the fissure that you explained for an entry point of a proxy to come in and exploit. Yeah, as Melissa articulated, I mean, this happens in the presence of means and motive. Motive is hard to change, particularly if it's two nations' disagreements about policy.

But I may be able to tackle the means. But if the means has already been weaponized, now I've got a whole different problem. So we've been talking about troops going abroad and supporting resistance movements to conduct subversion against an occupying power or a state. I want to pivot the conversation a bit. I'm particularly interested in how you both see subversion or unconventional warfare in an era of global connectivity. Do you all think that it's going to be more prevalent that subversion will happen globally in, let's say, the domain, and that neighboring states will not be the most likely actors in unconventional warfare? Yes and no. So which sets of states are able to take advantage of this new technology, right? So there, I think the great powers have a significant head start. And the

great powers have always been constrained, right? They're great powers because they can project power far beyond their borders. And I think this is going to be true with technology, right? They're going to be able to adapt, not just adapt, but create the technologies that allow for foreign subversion to take place far away from the homeland. But to the extent that non-great powers want to use foreign subversion, I do think we're going to see, you know, the continuation of foreign subversion across borders of neighboring states. Well, I'll give you a non-state or non-great power example of attempts at using the digital environment through subversion. And that's ISIS's ability or desire and use of the internet and chat rooms, et cetera, to radicalize people here, even in our country or in Europe, radicalizing citizens of a nation to

take on acts of violence within those nations. Now, so those are episodic, what we would essentially classify as kind of tactical events. But certainly, it gives you a peek into the potential of digital subversion, if you will. In the end, a lot of what we call unconventional warfare subversion, a big aspect of it is cognitive warfare, right? You're really trying to get in the minds of decision makers, but also of the population. You're trying to sever the connection between the population and the legitimate government and make the population no longer trust, support, and believe in the legitimacy of the sovereign power. And that's a cognitive act. Sometimes it's done through means of violence and kinetics, but it's essentially we're trying to convince them of a behavior or change their mind about something. And so the power of information and the reach of our digital world, I think will open up new horizons in this environment.

So if I'm understanding you, it's leveraging information operations, weaponization of information to effectively influence populations. Absolutely. It's a way to wield influence, right? It's about wielding influence. In past insurgencies, the heavy aspect of that was kinetics. But even then, the kinetics is to purpose. If I'm the insurgent, I'm trying to make the populace believe that I can provide better than the government, or at the very least, that the government cannot provide. They can't provide security. They can't meet my basic needs, etc. Because in the end, most insurgents are looking to replace the government. Unless they're a pure proxy that's

just bent on achieving disruption or chaos. They have a vision to replace the sovereign nation and exert their control instead of the nation's. This is an absolutely critical point too for the book, right? So foreign subversion is not simply the violence of destruction and the killing of the government officers who may or may not have been there in that territory. It is about replacing government authority with some alternative. It is about providing other services, different kinds of services, providing different kinds of institutions to replace that of the punitive central state. And this is part of what makes foreign subversion so insidious, because it's

not just destruction, it is replacement. If anything, the toolkit of foreign subversion is going to get even bigger. It's going to include information and influence operations, and it's going to include electoral interference. It's going to include things that we can't even imagine right now, because this is effective technology makes it cheap even cheaper in the past you needed some kind of geographic access to to someone's population to achieve a lot of the effects whether you did it through a proxy as melissa describes in her book or in a conventional sense, you invaded a country to enforce your will on another country. But in essence, you were still trying to change their behavior, change their minds about a policy disagreement, if you will.

But now we have the means to reach into another country without ever having to have geographic proximity. In many ways, if you think about the Voice of America program back in the Cold War, where we used radio broadcasts to try and sow ideas inside the Soviet bloc with the idea that we were fomenting some level of discontent and disruption. This is on steroids. I mean, back then I had to actually put it on radio waves and hope that somebody tuned into the right station and listened. And now I can bombard them through the internet, whether they know I'm sending them a message or not. They may think they're reading their local newspaper or their neighbor's blog. But in actuality, they're reading a foreign agent's thoughts on a particular topic designed to sway an influence.

Or maybe just designed to break their confidence in their own government. You served as the commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the proponent for unconventional warfare. When you discussed the use of unconventional warfare options with policymakers or other military leaders, was it understood? Was it viewed as potentially useful? Or was it kind of dismissed in general as a viable national security tool?

Yeah, I won't say it was dismissed in general. I will say that it's not as well understood a tool as conventional warfare and that to some, it doesn't seem like the way Americans fight, if you will. Like it's somehow underhanded. way Americans fight, if you will. Like it's somehow underhanded. It's hard to convey, but there are some people who look at it and their reaction is, well, that's not how America acts. It's not in keeping with our principles, if you will. So because of that sentiment and the lack of understanding, did you find it challenging to maintain or even increase capability, whether that's training, manning, or equipping, or projecting out sustainment plans

for the force? No, not really, actually. I mean, the beauty of our special forces community, our Green Berets, is that they have utility in a wide variety of areas, They have utility in a wide variety of areas, and most of them are well understood and accepted. An ambassador in a country that believes his or her military partner needs help understands that having Green Berets in the country to do that helps, that they're effective trainers of foreign militaries, and that there's goodness in increasing and improving the capability of a partner nation's forces. There's just a little bit less willingness to even consider the use of the same tool in an offensive manner. And some of this was in our own military, you know, very conventional leadership that believes that if you really need to use a military tool, you should use one that is more under our direct control, which is, you know, US conventional forces. There is a little bit less control involved in trying to achieve one's objectives through proxy forces, as we have found

out over the past years in Syria, you know, where we attempted to use proxies, and in some cases, successfully used proxies to achieve our objectives. I mean, the defeat of ISIS in Syria by leveraging the Syrian Kurds was very successful in achieving that military objective. It wasn't always as fast as perhaps policymakers wanted it to be. And it brought in other complications like our relationship with our Turkish NATO ally. So in many ways, it's seen as a messy tool, less under control. Is reticence about this, using unconventional warfare, working through proxies, viewed from a kind of political lens in that it's not the American way to destabilize governments? Or is it, as you suggested, more because the military has a way of war, which is establishing dominance, and they're not comfortable with

essentially more irregular forms of warfare? I think it's all of those, and it depends who you're talking to. We do have an American way of war that is kind of the Powell doctrine, if you will, of if it's important, we go with overwhelming force, we crush the enemy, we come home as quickly as possible. It's an interesting doctrine. Unfortunately for us, it hasn't worked out all that well. Iraq is more of a, we go, we overcome the enemy with crushing power, and then we can't leave because of the consequences of what we've just done. Perhaps it's on this community as the practitioners. I think in some cases we need to do a better job explaining it, explaining that it isn't just uncontrolled chaos. There are levers

we can use. There are times where it's more suitable than others. And talk about it in a more professional manner about how we can exercise control and how we can maintain influence and just basically make policymakers a little bit more comfortable with what the tool is and what the tool isn't. the tool isn't. Because unconventional warfare appears to be messy to policymakers, do you think that it's possible to quantify or qualify progress in unconventional warfare? In other words, is it possible to get a win? Or is it simply just managing the conflict as opposed to a win or a loss? That's a really hard question. I think Melissa should answer it. It's something Kyle and I talk about a lot. Let me first. But I think the answer depends on what does it mean to win, right? What do you mean when you talk about management versus winning?

Yeah, I'll tell you. At one point in my time at USASOC, as part of our briefing to try and explain this idea of the gray zone, conflict below the level of traditional conflict. In this briefing, we talked about U.S. involvement in conflict in the 20th century. And I think it was something around the order of we've been in five conventional conflicts and about 25 or 30, depending on how you count it, irregular warfare conflicts. So I guess given that ratio, I'd say our policymakers have to figure out how to do a better job of explaining to the American people why we have to be involved in those things, because it's the reality of our existence. It has been,

at least historically, that for every conventional conflict where you can point to a surrender document and say, look, we've got one in the win column, there's four or five others of these that policymakers made the decision to be involved in because there were national interests at risk. And if the past is prologue, then we should expect that we're going to see this in the future, as we've talked already. The nature of great power competition seems to breed these kind of below-the-threshold-of-conventional-conflict challenges. And so, one, we've got to figure out at the political level a better way to articulate to the American people why we have military forces in fill in the blank in a messy, complex environment that may not end for several years and may result in America's sons and daughters coming home with a flag draped over them. That has to be done because our population needs to understand why we're there.

This is not a problem that's unique to the security sector. We see this all the time in the good governance space, development space, the democracy space. How do we know that we prevented democratic backsliding? We don't. We can count the number of ballot machines and training workshops we've given a partner, but what the counterfactual is, is incredibly hard to pin down. And I think we have to be honest that it's elusive and we're not going to get it. Moving away from implications for policymakers, what should practitioners be thinking about? Yeah, I think first and foremost, practitioners need to make sure that they have done everything

they can, that this is a viable and effective tool when called for. We need to make sure that we can walk the talk, so to speak, and that when it is called for, it will be called for. I mean, I grew up in an SF community that had a lot of naysayers. We'll never be asked to do unconventional warfare. There's too much hand-wringing. And then all of a sudden, the nation's attacked, and we're putting SF guys on the ground in Afghanistan to do essentially unconventional warfare. Or we open up the opening days of the invasion or even before the invasion in northern Iraq, working with Peshmerga in an unconventional warfare environment. So it is incumbent upon practitioners to have the capability

to a finely honed art. And that includes understanding what the impact of digitization and technology has brought so that we can bring unconventional warfare into the 21st century, maximize the opportunities that have been created. I think that's our job. And then as senior leaders in the community is to be able to anticipate policymakers' reticence to use the tool and explain and mitigate their perceived risks. You know, to the extent that a proxy group that is well aligned with our interests can be identified, we should strive to work with that group. And that implies that a lot of groundwork has to be done understanding the domestic context, right? Understanding the various actors, their interests, their objectives, you know, all of those things are absolutely essential to being able to identify a viable

partner. Having a viable partner is one way to mitigate the long term risks of foreign subversion. So this is a common theme, understanding the domestic context and the politics behind a local area is critical, because without that understanding, it just exponentially increases the risk of some of the long-term consequences that we've talked about. So we have time for one last question. How about the realm of academia? What should researchers be focusing on in terms of unconventional warfare? I think from a research perspective, we've done a lot of looking back at previous examples, historical examples.

of looking back at previous examples, historical examples. I'm not sure that we've done a really good job of looking forward and trying to envision how, given the changing nature of the world, particularly with digitization and the advance of technology, how unconventional warfare might play out in the future and how do we leverage some of these changes, not just in technology, but changes in society? And how can we leverage those in an unconventional warfare environment, particularly in the information domain? This the idea of what does it take to sway a population or to influence the key leadership of a nation to make decisions that we want them to make? How can we leverage existing technologies to wield influence in a more exact and precise manner? Melissa, how about you? Where do you see the gaps in research?

I think it's important to emphasize that most forms of statecraft are about influencing a target population or a target state's leadership. War and subversion works a little bit differently in that it is not about, you know, kinetic force across a border. It is proxy groups offering an alternative vision of governance on the ground. You know, if war is politics by other means, subversion is war by other means, but technology frees us from the constraint, the geographic constraints that we once faced in conventional warfare. And so in looking forward, we need to think about ways in which actors can influence populations and how new technologies will expand the set of tools available for doing that. Dr. Melissa Lee, Lieutenant General Kent Tovo, really appreciate you all coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast.

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Enjoy the conversation. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for joining us for Episode 12 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Shana and I will discuss strategies to address Islamic extremism with retired General David Petraeus. After that, Nick and I will have a conversation on security force assistance with Dr. Mara Carlin of John Hopkins University and Brigadier General Scott Jackson from the Security Force Assistance Command. 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. 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. And one last note, the Irregular Warfare podcast would like to thank Henry Thompson for supporting the effort with social media outreach. Appreciate you listening, and we'll see you next time.