Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Practice and Politics of Security Force Assistance

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

When, why, and under what circumstances does security force assistance work? This episode focuses on best practices of security force assistance, along with challenges, realistic expectations, and the role it will play for the United States in an era of great power competition with guests Dr. Mara Karlin, author of the book Building Militaries and Fragile States: Challenges for the United States, and Brig. Gen. Scott Jackson, commanding general of the US Army's Security Force Assistance Command. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

If you want to pay the butcher's bill, then don't do security force assistance. And we can just go back and secure objectives later on through ground combat. But if you don't want to pay the butcher's bill, which I don't, right, then you need to do it through engagement and maintaining presence and influence and access and competing on this side of conflict. That's why you do security force assistance. and competing on this side of conflict. That's why you do security force assistance.

State-building endeavors are political exercises. You know, there is often this idea that we should be distanced from political dynamics in working with partner militaries. And effectively, I found that that's just a waste of time, effort, and resources. In fact, it's fundamentally flawed. When we were able to really transform militaries in fragile states, it was because we were getting involved in all sorts of sensitive issues, like what's the military's mission? What's its organizational structure? Who are its key leaders? Welcome to episode 14 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I am Nick Lopez, and I will be your host today along with Kyle Atwell. In today's episode, we discuss how to

most effectively conduct security forces assistance and building partner capacity. Our two guests start by describing what security force assistance is and what role it plays in the current national security environment. Between them, they have worked on Security Force Assistance programs in the Pentagon, in the field with partner forces around the world, and written a book on the topic. best practices, realistic outcomes, and to dig into the specifics of how the Army Security Force Assistance Brigades and other military advisors should be resourced, trained, and employed in the future. Dr. Mara Carlin is the Director of the Strategic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Carlin

has served in various national security roles for five U.S. Secretaries of Defense. Her most recent position in government was as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development. She is the author of the book Building Militaries in Fragile States, Challenges for the United States, which will serve as a foundation for today's conversation. Brigadier General Scott Jackson is the Commanding General of the Security Force Assistance Command, for today's conversation. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, holds two master's degrees, and was an Army War College Fellow at the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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 Dr. Carlin and Brigadier General Jackson. Dr. Mara Carlin and Brigadier General Jackson, welcome to the Irregular Warfare Podcast,

and thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Looking forward. Yeah, same here, Nick. Looking forward to it. I would like to start off with a question for Dr. Carlin. You released Building Militaries in Fragile States, Challenges for the United States in 2018 that tackles a question implied in the title. How can we effectively build partner militaries? Can you talk a little bit about what motivated you to get started with this project? Definitely. So I had spent a number of years in the Pentagon trying to do exactly that, trying to build militaries in fragile states. So I'd worked on train and equip programs in places like Pakistan. And the plan was to go and write a book saying that everything I had done was really awesome. And so that was going to be pretty easy and look great, obviously. And then inconveniently, I started getting into the research. And you know, sometimes research

takes you somewhere else. And it turns out I was pretty spectacularly wrong. I had been living in the Pentagon during this period where by, with, and through was really being seen as a panacea. And I realized I had probably bought into that a little too much. I think that's sort of natural when you're working on something. And the more I kind of dug into the history of it and sort of the longer tail that is kind of working with militaries and fragile states, the more that I realized that as much as the US needs to find a way to cheaply stabilize fragile states, the way we were going about it wasn't really having the effects that we wanted. We were in many ways taking kind of this Excel spreadsheet approach, this really technocratic approach. And when I

looked at kind of examples where we had done a better job, it was really because we were getting involved in all sorts of sensitive military affairs. Dr. Carlin, before we go any further, can you define security forces assistance for us? Sure. So, I mean, I define it as looking at how you are training, equipping, and building a partner military. I include in that, by the way, not just what you're giving them, but also what they are purchasing. I think it's important to have, frankly, a wide aperture. And does that resonate with you, General Jackson? A little finer point, I would say it falls back to efforts which increase the capacity and the capabilities of a partner force to maintain internal and if needed, external security. And that latter point, I would just push on slightly, you know, really depends on the mission that you want that force to have, right?

You know, sometimes we want them to go outside their borders and deal with the problem. Sometimes we want them to just secure their own territory and extend that monopoly on violence. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can find examples all across, pick a con that you're going to add the entire spectrum, right? So you've got low-level insurgencies in certain countries like Mali, and you have other forces. You're like, hey, the Senegalese are great at taking care of issues outside their borders. So we want them to have some a little bit more expeditionary capability, maybe not offensive capability, but expeditionary capability. So that's about logistics. That's about extended command and control. That's about, you know, sustainment capacities and things like that. So we're talking about building a partner military to really do all kinds of things. It just depends on who we're working with and our goals there.

Dr. Carlin, you obviously did not find in your research that security force assistance is always the panacea we might want it to be. Do you still view it as playing an important role in national security policy moving forward? Yeah, absolutely. The U.S. doesn't want to deal with all of the problems around the world ourselves for a whole bunch of reasons, right? It's really expensive. There can be casualties. There's a constrained fiscal environment. You got to focus your priorities. Oh, by the way, there's a national defense strategy

obsessing over China and Russia. So the US has to find a way to kind of deal with these problems without causing too much heartache. Just given the nature, I think, of transnational threats, the shifting global security environment, this problem is only going to worsen. And our ability to focus on it, I think, is only going to grow more and more limited. So it's not going away. You've got to find a way to deal with it. And I think that, in many ways, kind of gets us to where we are today. You have a bunch of states that don't have this monopoly on violence, like the number one thing you want a state to be able to do. How do you minimize that from affecting you or your national security interests? And Kyle, if I could tag on to that one a little bit, I think there's also an aspect

of deterrence to this as well. The more capable you can make them, you know, the less possible the odds of something bad going on. If you go back to the days of 1917, right? And we know violence will spill across borders. Next thing you know, it becomes a big deal. If we can make our partners stronger, more prickly, if you will, that can kind of have a deterrent effect as well and have a peace producing effect. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And in fact, this is such a good point by General Jackson, because I think if I can put words into his mouth, what he's really saying is figure out why you're doing this stuff and then focus your effort.

And that was kind of one of the concerns that I found through my work. Oftentimes, it was hard to kind of gather around the table, sort of inside the family, if you will, inside the U.S. government and say, OK, no kidding. Why are we doing this? Are we doing this because we want this military to go against X or Y actor? How do we help shape them to do that? Or actually, are we doing this because we just actually need them to vote with us in the UN Security Council, you know, or some other reason? And unless we've kind of got that first order question honestly answered, it can be really hard to track your program in line with it.

What are some of the challenges with security forces assistance that you came across, It can be really hard to track your program in line with it. What are some of the challenges with security forces assistance that you came across either in your research or policy work in the Pentagon? Yeah, I think the one challenge is there's kind of this refrain, more better, faster yesterday. I do think we have to acknowledge that even when our system works as quickly as possible, which by the way is pretty rare, you're just rarely going to give the partner military everything they want and when they want it. They're always going to want something more sophisticated than you're going to be willing to

give them. It's not going to come in time. You might not want them to employ it in the way that they want. In some ways, I find this to be rather soul crushing because you have this kind of extraordinary apparatus across the US Department of Defense that tries to kind of thoughtfully get all sorts of kind of training and material to a partner state, but it's just, it's inevitably not going to meet all of their needs. And frankly, a lot of folks in the partner military are now going obsessed over what they didn't get. One of the most dismaying anecdotes from my research comes from this effort in 2007, where the US is working with the Lebanese military, which is fighting their first real conflict in decades. You could actually argue forever, but that's slightly harsh. And so the US rushes 40 C-130s and C-17s filled with material. And these planes land at Beirut International Airport.

The material is unloaded. It goes right to the fight against these Al-Qaeda affiliates. So it's against a group that we all have kind of mutual interests in. And the Lebanese kind of are day in and day out using it. And yet all you get are complaints from the Lebanese. You get the head of the military saying, we didn't get anything but promises and best wishes and some ammunition. You get other Lebanese officials saying, it's as though the Americans are telling us die first and assistance will follow. You even had Hezbollah making fun of the US assistance in which it was showing on TV, US government officials handing out socks and toy airplanes to Lebanese generals. So we do have to sort of bake in this idea that, you know, more, better, faster yesterday

will be the refrain. And yet there's still some utility in what we're trying to do. So Lebanon was like a lose-lose because we gave a bunch of stuff and nobody, one, it didn't really change the direction of the conflict. And two, we weren't even appreciated for what was given, essentially. Okay. So that's a little harsh, Kyle. I would slightly adjust that. Look, you had a military that, you know, before the U.S. assistance started in the mid aughts had three to five bullets per soldier. And by the way, that includes training. So that should terrify you a little bit. You know, when I would kind of wander on Lebanon in the early aughts, you didn't even see the military anywhere. There was no presence.

Because of US assistance, you now had the military able to kind of go across kind of all Lebanese territory, not necessarily do everything you wouldn't necessarily want it to do, but it could at least be there, be across Lebanese territory. And as we've seen in 2007 and more recently, the military has been able to take a bunch of actions against these mutually agreed threats. So ISIS types, Al Qaeda affiliates, and there's some goodness there. And I think this gets to General Jackson's point. That's actually not too much money. If you're telling me, say, one to two billion a year to get them to deal with these nefarious actors and contain them, that's kind of a win. However, you do have to accept that it's not going to be exactly as you kind of want it to be. So the Department of Defense has a lot of programs

and initiatives. Security forces assistance is rarely front page news. Can you explain why security forces assistance matters, especially in the context of your last point, that it's an activity that requires a good deal of expectation management? Because it can be a whole lot worse. I think oftentimes in our field, we're choosing between terrible and catastrophic options. Rarely do we have like the butterflies and unicorns options, or at least somehow I haven't been able to sort of find the problem set with that. And it can be worse. And the example that just hits me so hard on this is South Vietnam, right? So the US pays for the French military effort in South Vietnam for the first half of the 1950s. The French fail spectacularly.

So then the US spends the next half decade trying to do a decent job building that military. Massive effort, half a billion in assistance. You know, you've got hundreds of U.S. military personnel working on it. And it's a failure, right? The South Vietnamese president reorganizes the military according to his preferences, leaving it ill-equipped for the communist insurgency at home. The military's leadership is weak. Its chain of command is

confusing, its method of promotion is based on loyalty rather than merit. And so then when that security situation starts to deteriorate through our 1960, and it's clear that Vietnam's military is incapable of dealing with it, what do we do? We start getting deeper and deeper and deeper involved. And if you tell me that doesn't matter, there's at least 58,000 Americans who lose their lives in that conflict because we couldn't figure out how to train and equip and advise that partner military. Yeah, great point. I would say this matters because if at least on the military domain, this is how you achieve your national objectives without going to war. And so if you want to pay the cost, the butcher's bill, as General Milley would say all

the time, if you want to pay the butcher's bill, then don't do security force assistance. And we can just go back and secure objectives later on through ground combat. But if you don't want to pay the butcher's bill, which I don't, all right, then you need to do it through engagement and maintaining presence and influence and access and competing on this side of conflict. That's why you do security force assistance. and competing on this side of conflict. That's why you do security forces assistance. As the commander of security forces assistance command,

can you explain to us how the security forces assistance brigades fit into advising in this overall effort of security forces assistance? Sure. So in conjunction with the geographic combatant commanders that we have around the world, all the five of them that are outside the United States, every one of them has theater security cooperation objectives or things that they want to achieve. You know, let's just say be blunt about it. Short of war. Right. So in peacetime, what do we want to do with respect to the security environment?

And that's done through a lot of different ways. Everything from senior leader engagement to work by on behalf of the U.S. Embassy country team. It goes a little bit to foreign military sales and foreign military financing. It comes out a little bit in joint exercises between us and them. But then there's also a partner capacity development aspect of it where, again, it goes back to my points about deterrence, right? So we want to make them a better, more capable military institution. And I use the institutional word as opposed to force,

because it's more than just creating a very hard tip of the spear or hard tip of the knife, if you will, to use a kind of a crude analogy there. It's really about creating more of a stronger institution that can support that tip of the spear. And so I think that's where the secure force assistance brigades will come into play. And so by looking at where the combatant commander wants to focus his efforts at, be it a country or a region, we can then apply against the defense institutions. And sometimes it's selected units, making them better on tactical level. Sometimes it's advising or consulting, if you will, some of their defense institutions, be it their training bases,

which we've seen. And to go to Dr. Carlin's point, I mean, one of the things she points out in our success stories is where we've gotten deeply involved in their training bases, which we've seen. And to go to Dr. Carlin's point, I mean, one thing she points out in our success stories is where we've gotten deeply involved in their training bases so that we're not just creating tactical effects, we're creating more institutional operational effects through basically operational endurance or strategic endurance in their military institutions. Can you talk a little bit about how the SFABs fit in laterally with special operations units that may be conducting advisory missions of the same nature? Yeah, so, Nick, I would say it's, you know, up front, it's an easy answer. It's a complementary effect.

And so if you look at past efforts over the last 17 years or so, I mean, it's no secret that the special operations community has been doing security force assistance on the soft side for a long time and doing it very well. If you look at a lot of these developing countries that we're looking at in the future, you know, they have built a foundation of tactical competence in their special operations forces, you know, namely focused on counterterrorism work in the kind of the periphery. Well, what they haven't been able to do, one, because of bandwidth, and I think as well, secondly, is because of competency and their mission sets, is kind of look at the larger institutional aspects of a military enterprise. And so while they've forged a very sharp and hard tip of the spear, what's lacking is, you know, to continue the analogy, the shaft, right? So, you know, the generating force, the ability to sustain the force,

the ability to command and control the force, that's largely been lacking at the country level or even the kind of the sub-country or sub-regional level. So when you bring an SFAB force in, you do a couple of things. One, you can now start bringing in a force that will look at the institutional side and look at how we generate forces to then support, you know, the host nation special operations forces. But then we can also bring in advisors and teams that will focus more at the higher command levels, be it brigade or, you know, our equivalent of a U.S. Army brigade or even national level command levels. Maybe it's the National Military Command Center in some countries that then employ these special

operations forces. And then on a much more simple level, you know, I had a special operations general officer one time talking to me about this. He goes, hey, I can build great operators, but what I can't build are the doggone truck companies to move them around from point A to point B. He says, so I got great, you know, great operators out there, but they can't do their job. And so the most simplistic level, it's about building a complete, what we would call a joint force, if you will, that can then be employed on the battlefield in support of internal security. So the security force assistance brigades are largely, are they largely focused at the tactical level or are they also looking at strategic level? So they're built to work at the tactical level.

But with what we found through experience now is that they, I would call them at the theater operational or country operational level, if you will. I mean, our battalion commanders are working alongside MODs and CHODS on army-wide or service-wide problem statements in some cases. So, you know, again, a very tactical focus, but that tactical focus provides the right information that works laid up to the top where our senior level advisors inside the SFABs can can implement some change at the departmental level. You know, institutionally, I'll be very curious to see how the SFABs play out over these coming years. I mean, do you end up seeing a situation where there's sort of a bifurcation across the army of how to deal with threats? Or is there still a way to kind of come together as one total force?

of how to deal with threats, or is there still a way to kind of come together as one total force? Yeah. And we would like to, in these, the first three years have all been, you know, very Afghanistan focused, obviously, you know, it was the raison d'etre, if you will, for building the first SFABs. But as we started to get more engaged in the other combatant commands, and as we look at the application of the SFABs across the spectrum of conflict, so not just in great power competition, but as you transition to crisis temporarily, God forbid, but if you were to transition to crisis, what's the role of the SFAB there? And then finally into conflict,

as you introduce more large-scale ground combat forces, there's still a role for the SFAB. It's kind of that thread of continuity across, not just with the partner force, but with the theater itself. And so I think to go back to your question is that you will see an integration of security force assistance brigades across all three. Then their contribution, if you will, will ramp up as we move to the right and then hopefully come back down. Oh, that's interesting. So the same unit that was doing advising

can build itself out to become essentially an infantry brigade, or at least operating at a more intense level of conflict, essentially. Yes. Well, I wouldn't phrase it that way, Kyle. I would say, you know, so you could potentially take an SBAB and blow it out, if you will, and sprinkle some young soldiers on it and make it into a big formation. You could do that. Jackson's personal opinion is that that's a waste of resources. And so option A is sprinkle young soldiers, grow it out to a combat formation. That takes about a time. Option B is you take that same core cadre of skilled advisors with strong lasting relationships with the partner force, and you bring the partner force to the fight. as opposed to bringing more U.S. forces to the fight,

now you bring in more combat forces from the partner force. So you really truly are a combat multiplier. So instead of one brigade of U.S. advisors turning into one brigade, right, one brigade of advisors turns into a division of foreign partners, right? That's the math that goes along with SFABs as they transition to conflict with every organization snap linking into a partner force brigade size element or bigger. You've now brought all that coalition and partner force combat capability right alongside U.S. combat capability. When I thought SFAB and special forces originally, my initial conception was that special forces would be like tactical and SFAB would be institutional, which I don't think is correct now. And you made a great point, General Jackson, that the SFAB can bring in technical skills like logistics and artillery

and other things that maybe other units aren't fully trained or capable of doing. But we've identified this potential gap of synchronizing our strategic or institutional level reform. I guess for you, Dr. Carlin, when your book said that a key to security force assistance success is getting involved in sensitive type of activities, what level of analysis were you looking at within the partner force? Where is it most critical for the United States or another to get involved? I think that's going to have to happen at the institutional level, but you can't just go in at the institutional level because you won't really understand what's going on. I mean, this sort of tactical and operational involvement with a partner military is where these patterns will emerge, where you'll start to realize, oh, there are these issues. They don't know how to do

this. They're getting this pressure from kind of this key leader, or here's the problem about how kind of this political leader is thinking about the force. So it's more of a yes and answer than an either or. Unfortunately, I think, and this has started to shift in a positive way in the last few years, there's just been so much emphasis on the tactical and operational assistance that folks have been less comfortable with the institutional. But I think that's kind of like your secret sauce that enables a game changer. Yeah. I agree 100%. That's where you consolidate gains, if you will. I mean, you can improve the tactical edge all day long, but until you kind of wrap it all up with some institutional reform and capacity development, you know, it's all short term. With that, Dr. Carlin, you know,

what were the specific findings from your research and policy work? Definitely. So I looked at a number of examples post-World War II and trying to understand when the U.S. had done a better job building militaries in fragile states. And I looked kind of across various regions and various threats. And I tried in particular to focus on places that were important to the US for reasons larger than themselves, right? So Greece after World War II was really important to the US because it is seen as sort of this first kind of, this first battleground for what's going to happen in the Cold War, for example. You know, Vietnam plays into that as well. And so I really came up with two findings that I didn't necessarily expect. The first is that state building endeavors are political exercises. There is often this idea

that we should be distanced from political dynamics in working with partner militaries. And effectively, I found that that's just a waste of time, effort, and resources. In fact, it's fundamentally flawed. When we were able to really transform militaries in fragile states, it was because we were getting involved in all sorts of sensitive issues, like what's the military's mission? What's its organizational structure? Who are its key leaders? It was really uncomfortable for me, frankly, as I started to get into the archives to find just how deeply the US had gotten involved in working with militaries and fragile states in those success stories. I couldn't believe it that you saw examples where the US is working with the Greek military and it is just pushing out leaders left and right. Folks who kind of aren't in line with the changes that are in kind of line with

the US goals and the US strategies. I mean, you're seeing a situation where almost kind of every Lieutenant General in the Greek military is pushed out. And so that was kind of extraordinary. And yet it's actually really obvious when you think about it, right? If we sort of take off our national security wonky hats and put on our business hats, like, of course, we know people's policy, right? Of course, we know that if you don't have the right leadership, if you haven't gotten together and said, okay, what are we trying to do? And does our org structure actually align with that mission? Well, of course, that's not going to work. And yet what I found is that that was rarely the approach we were taking, right? In the US, it was much more of this really,

as I said, kind of refer to it as like a technical or technocratic approach. So that was kind of big set of findings. The other big set really focused on the role of third parties. So often, this is a bilateral conversation. The US is trying to build the Afghan military. Well, gosh, we sure know that Pakistan plays a pretty darn big role here. And we should kind of look around the room and acknowledge that and acknowledge that there are going to be limits to what we're willing to do vis-a-vis Afghanistan because of this role Pakistan plays. Okay.

So the first consideration is how we conduct security force assistance. But even if the U.S. security force assistance approach is solid, we may still need to contend with other states or third parties who are seeking to actively undermine our efforts? Absolutely, for a whole bunch of reasons. Maybe they really like having a weak state next to them. Maybe they're using that territory for other reasons. Very rarely is it a third party or a proxy military force pushing back, although that

does happen in certain areas. But what we're really seeing the pushback is where big third party nation states are starting to twist the screws on the economic side of the house and the informational side of the house of either proxy IO efforts or information warfare efforts against our security force assistance. So you take something that's inherently good, right? And it's all positive, right? And then through third party informational operations, you turn it into a negative, leveraging host nation sensitivities or longstanding ethnic faults.

So it's definitely got more complex. And the third party, I think it's probably one of the most of the three things she pointed out are probably one of the biggest problems we have to worry about. And inconveniently, the U.S. military is not going to be the one to fix that, right? And yet we have a situation, of course, in which that's really the force that we resource the most to focus on these kinds of issues. But I think General Jackson is just spot on that the sort of aperture needs to widen, given how competitors and adversaries are engaging in this topic. But the right thing to do will not be to point to General Jackson and say, hey, can you go fix that kind of thing?

Because he's just not going to have the resources and the capabilities to do that. He's not going to be best postured to do that? There's been a lot of talk in both academic literature and within the military that the American way of war is essentially not conducive to generating good advisors. It's focused on massing force. And, you know, it's a contested kind of perspective. But we did have one guest who argued that the reason the special forces qualification course is two years long is not because the natural talent isn't there, but because it takes two years to change the mindset of a conventional Army soldier to essentially take on the advisor mindset. I just wonder how you have addressed in your pipeline for the SFAB advisors, getting them

ready for conducting military advising missions. And if there's any kind of organizational culture things you've done to make the SFAB become a kind of a culture appropriate to advising. That's a really good question. That's pretty complex by itself, which is part of the answer. Right. It's acknowledging the fact that it's complex. So, you know, the one thing I say to everybody that comes in, I say, hey, look, you know, you obviously were a successful leader in your first job before you came to us. And that's phenomenal. I appreciate that. I said, but by and large, just take this as general intent. Don't do there what you did here. I should say, don't do here

what you did there. Right. So what made you successful in your conventional formation will probably not always fit well with this formation. And so, you know, your degree of, of, you know, hands on this, if you will, to make up a word, you know, it's not needed here. And so you've got a stable of just top notch talent. And first of all, I acknowledge that. So when you have a stable of top notch talent, you can afford to take a step back, right? And you can let your subordinates run with it. So I think, you know, the biggest thing I tell people is I say, look, this is not a brigade combat team. Don't fight it like a brigade combat team. Don't have that mindset. Believe in mission command. Believe in working through complexity and uncertainty. Because when you get someplace in the world where you don't have your boss

hovering over you like you do in a linear or a conventional fight, those young captains and sergeants first class are going to have to make some challenging decisions. And so if you don't train them up front to operate with a degree of autonomy and understand the larger picture to make informed decisions that are consistent with the commander's intent, as well as the nation's objectives in that country, then you're setting them up for failure. And so I agree with the point about two years to train a special forces, an operator to get them in the right mindset. I would agree with that. Now, the fact of the matter is I'm pulling in soldiers into my formation that are already more senior than their peers. And so I think I can compensate for a little bit of that

two years. But the key thing there is just recalibrating their approach on problem solving. It's the fact that, you know, we push information down as low as we can. We communicate as flat and fast as we can to enable decision-making at the lowest levels. So as Dr. Carlin mentioned, influence at the tactical and operational level sort of goes by the wayside if there isn't some type of institutional change or institutional pressure and getting into those sensitive areas. And a lot of that influence into those sensitive areas takes time. It takes persistent engagement. How do the SFABs deal with the issue of persistent engagement, especially with personnel that have to rotate out? So my concept is that we maintain continuity and regional familiarity, if you will, at the organizational level.

So while some people are very quick to point out, like, well, you know, a guy's going to come into the brigade, be there for three years, and he's going to go back to the conventional army. Yeah, well, the next sentence in that paragraph is, we hope to bring them back into the same formation after their time back in the conventional army, now at the next rank. So they've done their job as a sergeant first class. They go back to conventional forces. They come back as a master sergeant. And then some of them, the really good ones, when they go back out to the conventional army, will come back now as a sergeant major and continue to progress up the ranks on the S5 side of the house. So we get some individual continuity there, but more importantly, we get organizational continuity where the same formations are rotating into those theaters over

and over and over again, heel to toe. And so while one formation will be in there for a period of time, it gets replaced by another sub component will be in there for a period of time, it gets replaced by another sub component of that same formation for another period of time, and then another one. And then that same formation comes back, you know, maybe 12 months, 18 months later, but there's never been a gap in U.S. presence or an SFAB presence. So we have continuity of contact. We have a continuity of relationship and most importantly, continuity of information, both on the partner force side, as well as the U.S. side of the house. So, you know, I guess my point would be is we never stop pushing the ball forward with our partners. We may change the

people, but the organization is always right there with their partners. So we have discussed that tactical advising is important. And in fact, the SFABs and special forces are often oriented around it, but that the institutional level advising is critical to overall security force assistance success. How do you or, you know, how should the U.S. military and its allies balance these two approaches holistically? You know, the first word I would use is network, right? So when done properly, this is a network of advisors from the bottom to the top and from the left to the right. So as you talk about tactical, operational, strategic, and militaristic terms, there's a continuity of information that flows from the bottom to the top. And, you know, an example I'd use is it would be in Afghanistan

with the implementation of the SFABs in 2018, you now had a network of advisors all the way from the top down to the very bottom. And so when you've identified tactical level problems that had strategic level issues, be it logistics or command and control or force generation, you saw the effects of it at the bottom. You identified the problem and then you flagged it and then you reported it while you're working with your partner force to try to get them to fix it. You're reporting it up the advisor chains as parallel communications line. And next thing you know, it gets the core commander. And you're like, hey, did you know this? And he's like, no, I didn't know this. And so they start figuring it out.

And he's like, well, I can't fix that stuff. So what do you do? Hey, Mr. Advisor, help me. So I contact the advisor at the strategic level. I'm like, did you know that this particular area, this region of Afghanistan, hasn't seen a single recruit out of the training base in six months. Can you help me with that? Like, wow, I didn't know that either. So let me go look into it. So he starts working his contact. And actually, you know, through this network, you have solved a tactical problem that's generated or produced by a strategic readiness problem at the very top, a policy issue, right? Or a lack of information.

And so that's kind of the interplay between the strategic, operational, tactical. So it's all about, you know, solving problems throughout the depth of the particular environment by having, you know, nodes and sensors, if you will, at every single level. You know, what I really appreciate about what General Jackson was just talking about is really that at the strategic level, hopefully you've been able to pick up on patterns that you're seeing kind of across a force and the challenges that it's facing, you know, whether it's willingness to fight, whether it's how they're interacting with the civilian population. And then you can tackle that, say, you know, by advising the chief of the defense forces by talking with the minister of defense, for example.

Yeah, I had a conversation a little while back, we had a minister of defense, for example. Yeah, I had a conversation a little while back. We had a minister of defense from a particular country come visit us when I was at Fort Benning. And we were going to show him off what we do in the SFAB. And we thought we're going to have kind of a very tactical lean to the conversation. And after we talked to him for about five minutes, he goes, let me ask you a question. He says, he looked at all the non-commissioned officers I had there. And he says, why did you join the U.S. Army? And then he says, why do you stay in the U.S. Army? And my NCO started answering the questions. And it was like, well, it's about health care and housing and progression and education.

And he's like, let's talk about housing. So the next thing you know, we talked about housing for an hour. And then it was about retirement pay. And so when you want to talk about, you know, strategic level advising, that's the kind of touchy little topics that you're going to have. And then he looks at me and he goes, let's talk about retirement in general. How much did you get paid in retirement? And I was surrounded by about 15 of my guys. And I was like, well, I wasn't prepared to have that conversation today.

But, sir, the number is X. And he's like, that's pretty nice. And, of course, all my guys were also like, yeah, that number is X, you know, and he's like, that's pretty nice. And of course, all my guys are also like, yeah, that number is pretty nice too. But that's, you know, that's the, that's how you build nations, I think, is when you start looking at the institutions that support the security structures, you just can't build a very strong tip of the spear. You got to build the whole thing in order to make it work. And part of that is pay, entitlements, reform efforts, and generating force development efforts.

So you've cited two examples from Afghanistan to talk about, you know, kind of successes in influencing at the institutional level. And then earlier you cited that we were able to get involved in sensitive political issues such as personnel because we were present. But in Afghanistan, it could be argued that we just have a huge amount of resources and investment that maybe give us more leverage in more resource constrained type of environments where we may have a much smaller footprint. Do you do you think that we're able to get influence over the sensitive issues that Dr. Carlin has brought up? And if we have limited resources, where should we focus them? Is it at the tactical or kind of institutional level?

Is it at the tactical or kind of institutional level? Yeah, great question, Kyle. I think that the answer to that is, you know, we use the phrase called, you know, is it a good partner, right? You got to have a good partner to work with. You know, so I think if you have a partner force that is vested in the problem statement, it doesn't matter about the scope of the resources you apply against it. They're going to be a professional about it, and they're going to do what they can with what they're given, be it advice or be it resources. So, you know, you can sit down and have a, you know, an under the shade tree conversation with your partner force in the smallest country in the world. And as long as you're proposing the right recommendations that are appropriate to the

situation and your partner is vested in as a good partner, you can make a heck of a difference. And again, you go back to that persistent presence of that presence gives you access and influence, and you can start making changes. I couldn't agree more. I mean, look, it's a little awkward to admit, but there are diminishing marginal returns to investment, right? At some point, you know, putting a couple extra dollars, a couple extra 100 million, or what have you, unless they're some point, you know, putting a couple extra dollars, a couple extra 100 million or what have you, unless they're really focusing on new capabilities, they're probably not going to change the partner's willingness to listen anymore. But to the

extent you've got a partner who actually wants to at least hear things out, I mean, they may or may not be able to take action as you would like for a bunch of different reasons. I mean, all systems are complicated and dysfunctional in their own way. You know, that's really going to be, I think, I think the key. General Jackson, Dr. Carlin's argument is that, you know, we need to get involved in sensitive issue areas. We need to kind of reform their and professionalize the military, but they may not want that because that may be fundamentally against their interests as leaders. How do we address working with partners who are not ideal partners, but we have to work with them? Yeah, that's a tough one. Dr. Carlin calls it, you know, make sure we're clear on what we want to get out of them. And that's the first one,

manage your expectations. So if you've got a partner that's marginal or not as ideal, then I think you need to make sure your expectations are managed appropriately and they're not as idealistic as you would want them to be. Shoot for the small victories. But at some point, if it's just not going to happen, as they would say in sports, don't force a shot that's not there and be willing to make that part of your assessment. Like, hey, this is just not happening. This is not a good use of resources. We need to find a different tool.

If it's not a military advisor, maybe it's an economic policy that creates an opening for a military advisor to work in. I mean, understanding that this is truly all aspects of strategy, get a vote in this thing. And so the door may not be open for our folks to come in and start working with the partner force. There may not be that motivation or that incentive. Well, maybe other aspects of either diplomatic or information or economic power may create an opportunity or create that incentive six months, a year from now. And then we can come in and work the military, you know, the internal security development piece. But you got to know that going up front and you got to be willing to, you know, call it, call the shot and say, hey,

this is just not happening under these conditions. Absolutely. You know, folks who aren't kind of of this world will read my book and say, wow, that's a success. That's pretty ugly. We're supposed to feel good about that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you got to look at your alternatives, right? Trying to be sober about our expectations and what's really feasible is just so very important. It can always be a whole lot worse if you're not sending in hundreds of thousand troops, if you're not spending hundreds of billions of dollars and you're getting a half decent situation, that actually may be the best thing you're going to get. But exactly as General Jackson is saying, you've got to have the sobriety about what's possible and what's working

and don't sort of romanticize the partnership. I think this has been a really dangerous element where you've got some folks saying, hey, a certain partnership's transactional and others are saying, no, no, no, it actually means much more. Obviously theory is like the fantastic case study here. And sort of the danger of kind of falling in love with partners, recognizing that they're all going to be flawed in their own way, as by the way, it turns out the US also is as a partner. But at the end of the day, you might just need to step back and say, we're throwing good money after bad. This thing isn't actually meeting

sort of the terms of our checklist and let's just kind of accept that. So maybe a good motto for security force assistance at large could be somewhat effective, terribly unsatisfying. Is that fair? Well, geez. I don't think I'm-

General, that could get coins made up right now. Until Kyle didn't major in marketing. Kyle, keep your day job, Kyle. But I think that is spot on. I will just say putting on the academic hat or even, you know, former policymaker hat. Yes, that is spot on. You're not going to feel great. This approach isn't going to be the panacea that so many folks have wanted it to be over the years and that it was painted as kind of early in the aughts. It's going to do something and that's worthwhile under the right circumstances. The flip side of that coin though, Dr. Carlin, it may not be the panacea, but it

keeps you out of a binary world of right? Of doing nothing or doing way too much. And so, you know, little steps towards an objective are better than no steps towards an objective or going off half-cocked in the wrong direction. So, yeah, it is frustrating work sometimes and it requires a patience and flexibility that not everybody has. I mean, when we see that play out in our own advisors' personal tempo, so we say, hey, look, why can't you do this for a year at a time? Because you can't do this for a year at a time. This job is hard slog, and it's victory measured in inches, not yards sometimes.

And so you just got to be patient and tag, bring the next guy forward. Yeah. So I want to circle back to something that was mentioned earlier, interagency collaboration, whole of government approach. So Dr. Carlin, this one's for you. A quote that I pulled from your book, you said, although the catchphrase whole of government approach became popular in the U.S. government for stability operations and institution building efforts. Its execution has been far more aspirational than realistic. So the question is, what do you attribute this to? Is it a lack of interagency processes, bureaucratic stovepiping, or is it

just the nature of massive enterprise level organizations that they're essentially corporations that have to coordinate and synchronize. Yes, you know, I was somewhat sober about the notion of whole of government in that book. And then in the book that I'm wrapping up now, looking at the impact of the post 9-11 wars on the military, I can't tell you the number of times in interviews, folks would say, oh, the whole of government,

you mean H-O-L-E. And that was just like soul crushing, dagger to the heart. I say that though, with a lot of sympathy though. I mean, look, part of it is just, these are really complicated and thorny topics. And it's important to sort of recognize that. Part of that is resources. We do a really good job resourcing our military and not the other parts of our government. That's not least because, frankly, most of the American public doesn't really know what the other parts of the government do. in fragile states, it's because you did have a functioning interagency process, right? I mean, you have a situation when you look at Greece post-World War II, where the interagency is regularly getting together and saying, let's reassess. How is it going? Right? And we know just how important, you know, things like assessment and evaluation are under all circumstances, but particularly circumstances like this. You know, you've got Truman sitting down and saying,

okay, do we need to send the U.S. military? Is this doing what it needs? Do we need to downgrade our involvement? And just stopping and forcing those kinds of questions. I think, you know, the push from Congress a couple of years ago on kind of all things security assistance is a really good start because there's this obsession with assessment, monitoring, evaluation, really saying, step back regularly and say, how is this thing working? What did we call wrong? Because by the way, we're going to call a bunch of stuff wrong. So let's at least start to figure that out. So when China offers equipment and training without conditionality, basically what that country wants, and the US comes in

and goes through the assessment process, has its methodology and its way of evaluating progress, and offers what the U.S. government thinks that country needs as opposed to wants. There's a little bit of an issue there. How do you see this all playing out in an era of great power competition? It's a really, really good question. Look, the unhelpful answer I can give you is our system is what our system is, and it's not going to change. So there's no point in complaining. Hopefully the slightly more helpful answer is China, and you didn't ask, but I'm going to throw Russia in that as well. China and Russia, generally when you've seen what they've given to so-called partners, and not really allies,

because by the way, they don't really have a whole lot of them. It's oftentimes not going to be great equipment. They're not going to give them the training that they need. They're definitely not going to take care of sustainment. And by the way, we're not talking gifts here. On the whole, China is slightly different, but particularly as it relates to Russia. And so I think the US comes with this comparative advantage that it's saying, we're building in a relationship and we're doing things that are going to make sense for you in the long term. You're becoming a part of the most globally connected network of allies and partners by being a part of this system. Yeah, there's a, you know, I've talked to a couple of folks who have, if you will, partnered or received some aid, if you will, from other countries that we were just now talking about. And there's no doubt that they realize it's a quality versus quantity type argument. Do you want to buy your stuff at Big Lots or do you want to go to Sears and buy the top quality tools?

If you go to Sears and buy your stuff, it's going to last forever. If you go to Big Lots, it's going to break next week. And they know they're getting the Big Lots? That's what goes with the material stuff. And the best part, the best example I ever heard was about training. And he says, yeah, I participated in the Chinese version of IMET, which is their international military education training program, right? So the guy went to China for military training. He got put in a classroom with a bunch of other folks from his region in his home continent, not with the Chinese. So he sat in a classroom, received Chinese military instruction, taught in Chinese, not in his native language or anything else. And then he went home,

right? Compare that to the United States experience where the officer or NCO comes to the United States. He gets immersed in U.S. military culture, gets immersed in U.S. culture. comes to the United States, he gets immersed in U.S. military culture, gets immersed in U.S. culture. He learns our culture and he comes home with a long lasting relationship. All right. So that's the quality, you know, differential that the United States across all aspects of national power offer compared to our competitors out there. So, you know, people ask me, what's our competitive advantage? I say it's our people. All right. The quality of our people that we talk that work out there, be it in the military or the foreign service or the treasury department or whatever, they are just straight up good people that look out for our partner force's best

interests. We have time for one more set of questions. Dr. Carlin, I'll start with you. What are the implications moving forward for policymakers based off of your research and work in the Pentagon? Sure. So the implications, I would say, from my research are a handful. You got to recognize that this is a political effort, right? Don't take the Excel spreadsheet approach and we gave them X number of MVs and Y pallets of ammunition, and therefore we have train, advise, and assist. That's not going to work. You give them a bunch of stuff and some training, that's great. You're not really going to be able to transform them. Another kind of key implication is just accepting that you're going to need to get involved in things you don't feel comfortable doing, right? So thinking really hard with that

partner military about their mission, having conversations with them about their mission, maybe pushing them to make changes on the leadership front or to rethink their organization, helping them understand what the U.S.'s priorities are and why those priorities exist. Also going to need to have a hard conversation about the role of other actors outside of that partner military and how problematic are they? What do you need to do to counter them? What are you willing to do in particular to counter them? Inside the family, if you will, right? Inside the government, you're going to want to not just have those discussions about why you're engaged in this effort, but also regularly assess that. Figure out how to make your process, your decision-making process as functional as possible so that you can

figure out, look, is this effort to work with a partner military actually doing the things that we think it's doing? Or has the security situation changed? Or have we not had the effect we think we're having? And therefore, we need to turn the dial up or down on our level of involvement. And look, given all of those implications, some folks might just say, thanks so much. We don't really want to try these things. We think the bar you've just set is way too high and way too complicated. To which I would say, that's absolutely fine. Just be clear-eyed about it, right? If you still do want to work with a partner military, but you don't want to invest this time, this kind of focus on building the institution and reshaping that force, that's absolutely fine. But recognize limited U.S. emolument is going to have a limited impact. And a limited impact isn't

a terrible thing, right? Maybe you can help professionalize that force a little bit and get a little bit of intelligence per se. Maybe you can get some cooperation at the tactical and operational level on mutually agreed threats. You can give U.S. military personnel some good experience working with foreign forces. That's all fine. Just be sober and be clear-eyed about what kind of you can actually squeeze out of that. On the practitioner side, Nick, I would say that the implications for the future is if we are truly going to go all in, like our national defense strategy indicates with strengthening partners and allies, and a mechanism for that is security force assistance at some

scope and scale, right? So if we're going to do that, that's a commitment institutionally that to really, one, build the structure, build the training, build the right policy that brings the joint force and the entire department and to go back to the whole of government discussion, really start trying to pull them together. At least, you know, just thinking about inside the department itself. So as you look at actions like, you know, U.S. Satmo and you start synchronizing foreign military sales and financing along with the, you know, the capacity development efforts that are separate from those transactions and getting synergy between those two things. You know, there's, gosh, I can't even count the number of people that are engaged in the security force assistance and security assistance realm inside the department.

And so how do you get unity of effort, not necessarily unity of command, but unity of effort in a regional or sub-regional basis is something that we're going to look at in the future. And then a little more tactical focus, you know, the services are going to have to look at their own, you know, developmental programs, I guess, to, you know, continue to feed this process and this effort called Security Force Assistance in the future. I mean, the standups of the first five brigades were a Herculean effort and they've done great.

And the Army definitely got it right for what it was designed to do. But as we look to the future and we try to get that strategic, operational, and tactical nested advising efforts, how do we groom advisors to work at the strategic level? What's the training program? What's the structure? What's the organization? How do we tap into that resource somewhere inside the department to pull them out and put them in a country X to work on this particular human resources or logistics or organizational structure problem or strategy development, you know, and then pull them out of the regular army, put them over there to do a job underneath the umbrella of security force assistance. All big organizational questions

that we haven't really tapped into yet. Dr. Mara Carlin and Brigadier General Scott Jackson, we really appreciate you all coming on to the Irregular Warfare podcast. Great stuff. This was a lot of fun, y'all. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks for what you do. Thanks so much.

Take care. Thanks for listening to episode 14 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, our new co-host Daphne McCurdy and I speak with Candice Rondeau from the Center on the Future of War and Robert Hamilton from the Foreign Policy Research Institute about Russia's use of Wagner Group. After this, Shana and another new co-host, Andy Milburn, will discuss the Irregular Warfare annex to the 2018 National Defense Strategy with Deke Rowe from the Office of the ASD Solic and David Maxwell from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. 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. One last note. What you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of West Point or any other agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again, and we will see you next time.