The Future of Warfare is Irregular

by Seth Jones – The National Interest

Among the Trump administration’s most significant national security decisions has been the shift from counterterrorism to inter-state competition. The United States is increasingly engaging in global rivalry with “revisionist” states like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. To do this well, some U.S. policymakers have argued that the United States needs to develop capabilities to fight—and win—conventional and possibly even nuclear wars against these states if deterrence fails. As the National Defense Strategy argues, “The surest way to prevent war is to be prepared to win one. Doing so requires a competitive approach to force development and a consistent, multiyear investment to restore warfighting readiness and field a lethal force.”

While there are good reasons to focus U.S. national security on balancing against global and regional state adversaries, it would be a mistake to assume that most future conflict will be conventional or even nuclear. It won’t. The United States remains the world’s preponderant military power. For Russia, Iran, North Korea and even China, conventional or nuclear war with the United States would be risky and prohibitively costly. What’s more, America’s struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest that the U.S. military is vulnerable when faced with adversaries that resort to irregular strategies, operations and tactics.

These realities suggest that competition between the United States and its main adversaries will likely be irregular—not conventional. Russia will likely continue to focus on a suite of overt and covert actions, from supporting state and nonstate proxies in Syria, Ukraine and potentially the Baltics to information warfare. Iran will attempt to expand its power through proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Bahrain—not by amassing a more potent army, navy or air force capable of fighting conventional battles against the United States. China is already spreading its influence in the Pacific by utilizing economic coercion, conducting a sophisticated information campaign, and resorting to fishing vessels and other “grey zone” tactics to lay claim to islands. Even North Korea will likely continue to develop its special operations and cyber capabilities…

Read on.