Following the tragic attack on 9-11, U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the CIA, supported by airpower, conducted a punitive expedition that resulted in the Taliban and al Qaeda being routed from Afghanistan. In 2003, working with the Kurds, U.S. SOF conducted operations in northern Iraq, accomplishing the mission intended for a U.S. infantry division that was not allowed to deploy through Turkey. U.S. SOF were already advising and assisting Colombian military and police operations as part of Plan Colombia that contributed to the peace agreement in 2016. And in Asia, U.S. SOF supported the Philippine security forces in degrading and destroying terrorist organizations linked to al Qaeda while supporting peace negotiations with Moro insurgent groups.
U.S. SOF were well positioned and ready in 2001 to execute their fundamental doctrinal missions for which they were organized, trained, equipped, educated, and optimized: unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense or Special Warfare. However, counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations soon came to dominate the U.S. military campaigns for both special operations and regular forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later in Yemen and throughout Africa.
What emerged after 9-11 was a special operations Surgical Strike capability that combined exquisite intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities with precision strikes from unmanned aerial systems and the unparalleled special operations ground and maritime capability to capture or kill high value targets at the time and place of our choosing, including killing Osama bin Laden in 2011. The development of such concepts as F3EAD – find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate – allowed the U.S. national mission force, often supported by regular forces, to take down enemy networks by operating at a tempo that paralyzed terrorist organizations. Counterterrorism direct action operations were raised to a high art form.
The 2006 QDR (Quadrennial Defense Review) called for a massive growth in SOF to nearly 70,000 personnel in the United States Special Operations Command. While the Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs), Ranger Regiment, Special Operations Aviation (Air Force and Army), the National Mission Force, SOF headquarters, and enabling forces (intelligence, communications, and logistics) expanded, the planned growth objectives for Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs were unable to be achieved. This proved two of the five SOF truths: competent SOF cannot be produced after emergencies occur, and SOF cannot be mass produced. One of the important developments post-9-11 was the establishment of SOF operational HQ in theaters as either Special Operations Command Forward (SOC-FWD) or Joint Special Operations Task Forces (JSOTF) to provide command and control of the tactical forces executing the full range of special operations missions for the Theater Commander.
While terrorism has been at the forefront of our security strategy the past 15 years, we are coming to realize that the threats we face now and in the future are larger than terrorism alone. Russia’s new generation warfare or non-linear warfare employing active measures and reflexive control; China’s Three Warfare’s: media warfare, lawfare, and psychological warfare; the Iran Action Network , and non-state actors such as ISIS and AQ are exploiting the conditions of political instability and ungoverned spaces and creating new security problems that cannot be addressed through counterterrorism operations as the single focus main effort.
The conditions can be described as revolution, resistance, insurgency, and civil war, and countries and non-state actors are exploiting them to achieve their geostrategic objectives. They are practicing a modern form of what George Kennan described in 1948 as Political Warfare. This is the norm in the Gray Zone space between peace and war.
SOF must maintain its sophisticated surgical strike counterterrorism capabilities but also reach back to its traditional special warfare missions to develop a SOF campaign capability to support a new national security strategy to protect U.S. national interests and operate in the complex security environment of the 21st Century.
We have a strategy gap between diplomacy and war fighting, and the U.S. government must become adept at statecraft orchestrating political warfare activities to achieve objectives using all means necessary, including and beyond diplomacy but short of war. Special warfare can provide a strategic capability to operate in this gap.
To be effective, U.S. SOF and the Intelligence Community must continuously assess potential, nascent, and existing resistance organizations around the world on a day-to-day basis. Assessments will contribute to understanding when U.S. interests and resistance objectives can be aligned and provide the intellectual foundation to determine if an unconventional warfare campaign is warranted or if adversaries’ unconventional warfare campaigns should be countered.
The U.S. must develop the ability to counter unconventional warfare (UW). Countering UW is not simply conducting counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense. It is about countering state or non-state actors’ strategies for exploiting a resistance or the conditions that create resistance potential to achieve their own strategic ends, which may or may not and most likely do not have the welfare of the indigenous population as their objective.
To be effective SOF must be able to support national strategy by developing campaign plans executed by campaign capable SOF headquarters. Influence operations or PSYOP also becomes an essential and not a supporting component of campaigns and the fight for legitimacy.
We must now expand our aperture regarding terrorism and understand that terrorism emanates from resistance organizations, whether they are resisting state governments, resisting the international nation-state system, or simply resisting globalization.
The emergence of The SOF Campaign, consisting of a balanced application of surgical strike and special warfare in conjunction with conventional forces and other instruments of national power in support of statecraft and political warfare, can address the future security challenges, where revolution, resistance, insurgency, and civil war is the only viable form of struggle. It is there that wars are now fought and won.
Our traditional tools of warfare, having been focused on state-on-state war, are in many ways ill-suited in war among the people where large-scale expeditionary warfare is not feasible. We must consider The SOF campaign in this old domain that is new again.
